Subway spotting: black shatter done right

Its not often that I ask a random stranger to let me photograph their nails. Okay I lied. Anyway this girl knew what she was doing with black shatter, she contrasted it over an electric blue, which compliments her skintone and really stands out. I really liked the shape of her nails, and how well the over all manicure looked on her. I liked it so much that I asked her from across the subway car if I could snap a photo. Send me your photos if you ever want to be featured! Fioalways@aol.com

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OPI's texas collection-Sorbet/Jelly finish

so OPI is really rocking it in terms of nail styles and having the "it" colors and techniques in nails this year. First they come out with some banging glitter polishes in line with the Burlesque movie ( I love those polishes, LOVE them) then they teamed up w Katy Perry and created some killer shades and glitter polishes AND black shatter. Because of all these distractions, I actually didn't realize that they created some cool Jelly polishes in their texas collection. Jelly polishes are colors that are see-through, and really shiny, they may take a few coats to reach an opacity, or they may not, this finish, when mixed with a cool or poppy summer shade or when in sun, look amazing. Definitely summer, beach nails all the way.

Here are some photos of the shade Guy meets Galveston, but I REALLY love too hot pink to hold 'em. I think these sorbet-finish lacquers are really great even though they took a while to warm up on me. As you can see, in some lights this color comes off as a lot more red than in florescent lighting. But I think that adds to its versatility. They REALLY shine in the sun! They remind me of the Butter London Jelly polishes, which I will now have to pick up and try :)

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Opi Black Shatter, vegan nail polish & more

So this will be a multi-polish review. The other day I FINALLY came across the full Katy Perry collection at Rays beauty supply NYC (tell them thedailymanicure sent you). So I picked up the OPI black shatter, Last Friday Night, Teenage Dream and The One That Got Away. So tonight I decided I would do a manicure with 5 different colors on my nails and black shatter over them. I chose the following:

Sally Hansen Quick dry- Silver sweep, a chrome-like silver fast drying polish. This color is awesome, high shine & chrome, and I only needed one coat.

OPI- Last Friday Night- sheer blue polish w silver chunky & micro glitter- I really love this color but I wish it wasn't so sheer, it comes off as very middle school to me, but I love this color the most with the black shatter.

OPI- Teenage dream- sheer pink polish w silver chunky and micro glitter - I like this color also, again I wish it wasn't so sheer. I would definitely use this over a pink or a sheer creme to give a better glitter effect.

OPI- Too hot pink to hold 'em- sheet hot pink w "sorbet" finish. This is from the texas collection by OPI. Which is a very over-looked collection. I've grown to really like the sorbet look, a manicure with this color is ideal for long summer days because it shines soo much. The sheer-ness needs some getting used to, but I missed this color when I took it off my whole manicure a few days back. So beautiful.

SpaRitual- Emerald City- Vegan nail polish! My boss bought it for me, who knew? I like the color, but it goes on very sheer and you need several coats to get it opaque, and on top of it the brush is small so it gets annoying and confusing to create proper coverage without it overlapping on you.

So I applied them to my nails and placed the Black shatter over them, and I have to be honest I'm almost disappointed in black shatter having used BarryM's nail effects. The nail effects are much clunkier and give more of both colors, where as this didn't, making all the nails look too similar. I'll try again and see if the effect is the same, maybe it was the way I applied the polish. Anyway, those are my thoughts on these polishes, enjoy.

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American Apparel Shade Review: Hunter and Rouge

How many times must I tell you that American Apparel did me a great favor Injustice by creating a huge variety of great colors that go on opaque, are three free and also have deals on. Here are some pre-clean up (do I ever clean up my nails?) Photos of Hunter, a great shade because it never looks black, but rather a beautiful dark green, and rouge, a lovely rose color.

These colors do peel easily, but then again I have to let you all know that I only put one coat of base, two of color and one of top-coat acrylic. Which for nails that go through significant daily house-cleaning, chores, and running around NYC, may not be quite enough. As a rule I find If I put more coats on of base and top, my Mani lasts longer but takes a significantly longer time to dry.

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Hair catastrophe

So over the course of the last three days I dyed my hair five times and did one color removal. Yes I still have hair. No it doesn't look terrible. Its just a little bit lighter. Usually I only want to focus this blog on nails, nail color review and manicure technology, but because I have tried so many brands of hair dye (including one japanese brand.. don't ask) I figure I might as well share my story and give a few tips while I am at it.

Before you read further, you must know that the moral of this story is, if it doesn't look terrible and you sort of like it, and your not a professional hair stylist or colorist, don't mess with your hair any further!

I naturally have reddish brown hair. For a while now I have been wanting to dye my hair blonde, ranging from different shades, but I definitely wanted some sort of blonde in there in leu of the reddish tones. So I bought a nice and easy dye box of a medium blonde, leaving my hair with a lot of highlights and slightly lighter, and letting go of some of the red. It looked good, but not great. After walking around doing my life for a day in this new shade, I decided to get some bleach.

I accidentally neglected the back of my head, and over-did my front. This left the top of my hair and all of my roots platinum with some of my longer ends and hair on the back of my head different shades of brown and blonde. Then I picked up a Garnier nutrisse "hot tamale" shade and dyed it. The mess came out Yellowish orange.

Thats when my husband insisted on going out and looking for a nice and easy hair dye to cover this up. Us living in Astoria and it being one o'clock, there were no shops open that sell hair dye.. except some random Japanese grocery and goods store by our house. So he found some reddish brown hair dye. All of the instructions were in Japanese, and my roots ended up being pink and the rest of my hair was purple-ish red. I had class at 10 am this morning.

I went to bed.. unwillingly. This morning I ran to Rite Aid and got a box of a light reddish blonde shade from nice and easy and color oops. Color oops removes hair dye by shrinking their molecules, which left my head bleached like before. Then I put the Nice and easy in, and it at least, looks a lot better now.

So I hope you enjoyed that story. These pictures are taken of all three blonde stages, the first was after my second dye (beige shirt) the second is my ultra-blonde (purple shirt) and the final, which is after I did the color oops and re-dyed it with the reddish blonde, in the grey sweater. I know, you can't really see the difference because I have a shitty iphone camera.

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Forever 21 nail stickers

So last night after my oscar debauchery filled party, we stopped by the forever 21 in Times Square so I could look at cheap earrings. I love love love this store for their earrings and nail polish, seriously I bought like twenty things and spent twenty bucks. Of my loot that I got, I came across glitter nail stickers, they are EXACTLY like the Sally Hansen Nail stickers but they only come in glitter varieties, they include 30 stickers per package and cost only 2.80$ per package. These stickers are also very easy to apply and look and feel awesome. I applied them hastily just now so there are a few spots that could have been done better. We'll just have to see how they last through my full day tomorrow, if I recall, Sally Hansen started to peel and move with me by the next day, but that could be because I put a base coat. These stickers come in several colors, light pink (which I have on) green, purple, red, blue and hot pink. I think they are an absolute deal, a great gift for little girls to do together or a great thing to wear one night to a party or something. I love nail stickers in general and I think it would behoove the Forever 21 company Love & beauty to create designed stickers also. They will sell out like hot cakes and they honestly have priced them very low, good for us, but I think they could have gotten away with higher- at 3$ your getting three sets of ten stickers, thats three manicures, the other companies like Sephora and Sally Hansen have gone WAY higher just because this is still a "new" nail technology. Bottom line, they are cheap, they look good and they don't take long to put on unless your like me and are a cheap bastard trying to salvage every last piece of polish I wasted spent my money on. Enjoy

:::::UPDATE::::::

These stickers peeled by morning :( I'm going to try them with a base and top coat, because they are sorta flimsy but I feel if they had some reinforcement maybe they would stay. They looked baller, but peeled very soon

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Hipsterpolish- Office!

So American Apparel has really won my heart with their polish. They have tons of unique colors and some pretty damn good staple colors- colors that I think any woman should own. One of these staples I wore yesterday- Downtown LA, a bright deep red, in honor of the oscars. Today I chose office, a light green creme color. No inspiration, but Lady Gagas video did premere today and I do think of creme nail polish and gaga because of her bad romance manicure. Anyway, here are a few pre clean up shots. I'll do another Mani after class tonight! or maybe i'll put designs on top. hmmmm decisions decisions

Oh, you might notice that I my ring finger on my left hand is considerably shorter. Thats because I had too much Oscar fun last night and tore it straight off.

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Hipster nail polish

call me out of touch with my new york hipster side ( since I fled bushwick I can't even look at girls with bangs without gagging, so don't even) but I didn't know until yesterday that American Apparel sells nail polish in all of their trendy and concentrated colors that they offer their clothes in! I love all the colors, so I ran out and bought six. If you buy three in the store they are $15, and they retail for $6 a piece. If you buy seven online they are $32, but you have to think about shipping also, so I decided to just go to a store and get six for $30. I bought Hunter, a dark green that I have seen many swatches online of and it doesn't look almost black, which is awesome. I bought downtown LA because believe it or not I don't have any classic reds ( and I'm wearing it tonight for the oscars!) I also bought Malibu green, Rouge, Office and L'Esprit, because the cremes are awesome and the the other two, Malibu & rouge are unique colors in my opinion. They are 3-free, come in a cool container, and I can't wait to buy the whole line. I'm just scared my husband will leave me if I go that far ;)

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