Tag Archives: Milani

A BIG Thank You!!

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I was lucky enough to recently win not one, but two!! giveaways and so I just wanted to do a dedicated post to those ladies out there that hooked me up with some seriously loved goodies and to send a BIG thank you along to the kind ladies who gave away such great gifts. PS, don’t mess- I know I used a roll of paper towels in the background- I figured you’d rather see them than Rafik’s feet :-)

I won Kristina’s Green Giveaway over at My Lucid Bubble

This giveaway included some really hard to find green polishes. Included in the giveaway were Essie’s Mint Chintz, Misa’s Embroidered Emerald, Milani Hi- Tech, Orly’s Opal Hope, Brucci’s Black Emerald, Orly’s Walk Down The Aisle, Sally Hansen’s Spring Green, and Wet ‘N’ Wild Fusion. I spent the afternoon playing this a lot of these (hence no nail design or swatches, I was playing- not doing serious business!)

I also won Megan’s Sula Giveaway at Dainty Darling Digits
This giveaway was another wonderful one! It included three of Sula’s Paint and Peel polishes, a Sula Paint in Peel polish/topcoat duo, Sula’s Vanilla Perfume Oil, and (an added surprise!) Sally Hansen’s Perfect Proposal. I didn’t play with these yet (though I’m wearing the perfume!) because I wanted to do special swatches of each color for ya’ll and I didn’t want to waste their peely goodness on a less than perfect mani.
Both Megan and Kristina are wonderful ladies and I’m so lucky not only to have won their giveaways, but more so to have had the opportunity to chat with them and get to know them a teeny bit more than I did before. I already frequent their blogs and you should too! Thanks ladies!
I’ll be doing a neat-o design in the following days- my apologizes for the lack of schnazzy nail art lately- due to the less than perfect health I had recently, I got a bit behind in school and home life (work, cleaning, errands, etc) and so I haven’t had the time to sit down and really focus on a sexy design. I will though, don’t ya’ll worry.

Peacock Pleasures

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I have ALWAYS loved peacocks- when I was little, there was a park nearby that had wild peacocks just walking around everywhere and I always thought to myself when people play the “what animal do you resemble” game that my animal was a peacock. Soooo, when I saw a suggestion of nail art of peacock feathers, I was ecstatic! Now, I’ll try feathers one day, but for Funky French Friday, I’ve decided to do a peacock manicure!!!

The first picture has flash and the color turns up baby blue, so I’ve included a non-flash photo to show you a better representation of color. I think my Kodak EasyShare doesn’t like yellow ratios very much…

A Pocked Peacock

For this manicure, I used one coat of OPI’s Natural Nail Base Coat, two coats of Milani’s Neon Fresh Teal freehanded on (much faster than tip guides, in my opinion) followed by two coats of Seche Vite to even out the layers. Then, I used Maybelline’s Plum Intense for the purple dots, and Milani’s Cyberspace for the blue dots. I followed up with two coats Seche Vite.

The Colors:

I had to pick up Milani’s Fresh Teal when I saw it, it’s teal, which is obviously my favorite color (okay, not obviously, unless you’ve read all my entries and saw that I mentioned it once or twice). I expected it to be semi-matte, as most neons are, and while it dried glossy, it had a bit of a difficult formula, more like a matte. It dried pretty quickly, about half the time normal glosses need, but it didn’t self level too well, so I needed to coats to even it. Still, I wouldn’t wear it without the top coat because it looked a bit gloopy until the Seche smoothed it out.

Don’t forget to enter my giveaway and to leave ideas for next weeks Funky French Friday!!

Also, Katrina’s having a giveaway! http://katrinasnailblog.blogspot.com/2010/08/400-followers-giveaway.html

I’ve Lost My Marbles Painting Marbles!

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I needed a new french manicure idea so I decided on a marble look, you know, like that bag of marbles you had when you were a kid. Now let me just say, I usually freehand my french manicures, but with all the dots, I had to use tip guides. A) I NEVER can get them straight and B) I still have to fix the lines anyway because I always have seepage!! They took forever and if you do this, you might as well freehand it to save yourself the time.

Marbles Marbles, Everywhere

You get both hands because when I pulled the guide off of my thumb, It “schmeared” the colors together, which, for a different look, would be very cool. Also, the staining isn’t visible pretty much at ALL in person, but my camera picks up reds too well and well, you see what I mean…… I’m not used to getting polish on my cuticles so I really had no idea on how to remove the stains. I gave up. There. I said it!

For this Manicure, I used one coat of OPI’s Natural Nail Base Coat, generic nail tip guides, Sally Hansen Lavender Cloud for white, OPI’s The It Color for yellow, Maybelline’s Plum Intense for purple, Milani’s Neon Fresh Teal for the green, Orly’s La Playa for the blue, Sally Hansen’s Rapid Red for the red, and OPI’s Chop-Sticking to My Story for the orange. I topped with one coat seche vite, waited for it to dry, peeled the guides off and did two more coats of Seche Vite top coat.

Ideally, I would have cleaned up all of the fingers to a straight line, but I guess I just didn’t care- the nail guides were a bit too arched for me but its just something I learned for next time! PS- this was fun, but took over two hours, so do this manicure if you need something to keep you occupied for a while!! Also, my nails aren’t all the same length (the tips of the longest tend to peel just a little and I have to file them down :-( ) so it doesn’t look as cool as if your tips were all the same length. Just have fun with it!