Chinatown adventures!

So, for a few months now I had heard of a Nail beauty supply store in China town, its called Hollywood nail beauty supply and its a store that supplies to nail salons around the city. We were in China town over the weekend to see about some legal stuff, and I figured lets stop by and see what all the fuss is about (if, that is, there is any). Well, I must say that they have lots of resources for people who want to open their own salon, some cool asian nail books, a zillion bottles of nail polish, and some really cool fake nails with designs already on them. I didn't buy any because I tend not to buy polish unless theres something really special about it, like its 3-free or a special edition or a color I like thats on sale. None of these polishes were 3-free, in fact they were all brands I hadn't heard of (okay they had a few bottles of Essie and a few bottles of OPI, but nothing great by any interpretation of the word). That being said, I took a few cute photos, here you go. I wish there was a nail supply store in NYC that had all the brands and all products, if there were such a place I would go there religiously.

Also, side post, while we were waiting for the nail supply guy to come back from lunch, we were in the next store. I saw a girl who had these bling-ass nails. She said that the technician actually sculpted little 3-d pictures on her nails and she got them done bi-weekly for 50$. I think they were rad, and if fake nails didn't fall off my fingers in three days from all of the debauchery- i mean, typing- I would have gotten the address for that salon.

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tonights haul + my valentines day mani

So after we accidentally flooded our apartment and the three apartments below ours this afternoon, my husband and I made a trip to the queens center mall where I treated myself to some earrings and a few new shades of polish. We went to Urban outfitters where I found some pretty glitter polishes, a black and a smokey pink with small and chunky silver glitter. And I also found two cute polishes at forever 21. A hot purple color, purrrfect for spring and summer months, and a nice teal green color with gold micro glitter, also good for spring and summer. Earlier today, before the flood I gave myself a mani of one of the colors my husband bought me, OPI's lucky lucky lavender, and it looked really nice. A great color for the office or the job scene, really pretty yet not too flashy, very feminine. Then later on when I got home I decided to put the smokey pink glitter on it, and well, as you can see it looks bomb. The glitter polishes are by a company called NYX, obv you can get it at urban outfitters. The two summer colors I bought are by Love & beauty, sold at all Forever21 stores. The NYX sold for five, the Love & beauty for 3$. I know, super cheap. I should do a blog of all my fav colors by them.

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Manicure Impossible

So I wanted todays manicure to reflect how cold it is outside, and also to be one of the colors my husband recently bought me at a Rickys in a clearance basket. I decided on Matesse Mint Ice cream because it is a light blue/green creme color. I got a few compliments on it, and it really is an amazing color, but I have to say that the color didn't last long before chipping. This is important because my shit never chips. Now there are a lot of factors that could have come into play here, maybe I didn't buffer my nails enough, or maybe I should have put lotion on my nails and let them sit for a while because the cold weather will dry out nails and cuticles and cause them to break and not take polish well. A definite thing I can say about this polish is you need to be careful how you apply it because its streaky, which you can see in the photo of my thumb. I also wanted to say that I suffered a mean chip on my right pinky finger and on my right index finger as well. I honestly think the polish itself had something to do with it, tomorrows post will either confirm my claims or prove that I gave myself a neglectful manicure (eep). Here are some pics of the polish on my nails, you can't deny that the color is bomb.

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Fiercely Fiona + BarryM

So I probably have called every Rickys NYC and went to all the beauty supply stores that would have Black Shatter by OPI. And every bottle has been sold out till next year practically. Good thing I ordered Barry M's nail effects. I wanted to post picks of OPI's fiercely Fiona, because its named after me, but I couldn't stand the color on my skin tone on its own. So I had to put Barry M on it. Once its cleaned up tomorrow, it will look fab-ish.

Whatever its late and I've worked all day.

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Fiercely Fiona- My Husband buys me clearance nail polish

Yesterday I was babysitting and I had a craving for this OPI nail polish called fiercely Fiona from their pastel Shrek nail collection last summer/spring. I knew that my husband was nearby a Rickys and I asked him to go pick it up. When he got to the Rickys store he found the polish, which is kindof an ugly green yellow color, on clearance for two dollars. Which was awesome. He also surprised me with several other colors that were on sale for 2$ each also. They are all cremes except for one, and while they aren't the best colors in the world to wear right now, they will be excellent to wear for spring. I rocked a bunch of cremes and poppy colors last spring and summer and I'm going to do it all over again. Heres what I got

Matesee- Neon 15 power pink

Matesse- Mint Ice cream

Matesse- Neon 16 sunburst

OPI- lucky lucky lavender- reminds me of new Lancome color

OPI- Wing it- red with glittery red sparkles

OPI- Fiercely Fiona (named after me)- Green yellow

I will, hopefully do another manicure featuring fiercely Fiona for you by tomorrow, but its superbowl and I have to get the laundry done and myself on my way to the party. you know you know.

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Konad design success.

After I had been messing around with the Sally Hansen Nail stickers, I wanted to generate new designs on all my nails with my ghetto konad I bought. Online you can get nail plates for Konad for like 20 bucks for 18 of them. And you can buy the stamp & scraper for five dollars. Otherwise, a konad kit will cost you upwards of thirty dollars, but it will probably give you better results than what I can show you in this post.

You get what you pay for. Konad basically, for those of you who don't know, is a nail art kit by which you can make designs. You paint the plate, scrape it off with the scraper and use the rubber stamp to pick up the remaining polish and place it on your nail. It can look really sick. Or it can look messy. You have to be good at arts n crafts and stuff like that to be really successful with it, but here are some picks of a design I was told was very "pop art".

Anyway, as you can see in the photos that aren't drunkenly blurred out of proportion. Its hard to get each design on each nail to be perfect. This is because the designs are rather small, smaller than like, my thumb nail for example so I always try to maneuver it so I can put them next to eachother to make the design bigger (hope that makes sense) but it never works.

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Plain Nail color + sparkle Effects= my late winter trend

SO I'm back at school and back to real life, but its still blizzarding every other day and I want to reflect this in my manicures... Okay I just like the idea of lighter colors with sparkles because it gives a wintery feel. And I'm finally back up to speed with my photos on my mac so I can automatically update them from my phone and put them on here in a jiffy.

The first manicure I did was a couple days ago that I didn't change for a while because It was the weekend, and we got these new shelves for our living room. They were an awesome gift from my moms friend and our books are all displayed, our home office is so much cleaner and nicer, and I have a place for my keyboard. And the cat hasn't jumped on it so thats good.

Anyway, I wanted to put white on my nails, kindof like the manicure Gaga sported in her Bad Romance video, but I didn't want to look like I put white out on my nails and I only had the nail hardener brand (2 bucks at any drugstore) of a white color, so I knew it would look like white out. I put this thick sparkle color I got from forever 21 (4$) and I think it looked very cool.

The second light color with sparkle effect I did was a creme blue color by Matisse (rickysnyc.com like 5$ unless its on sale) with a hologram glitter and hologram chucks, and it looks like theres a snow storm on my nails. Both hologram effect colors were by the color club, I bought them at my local beauty supply store called rays beauty supply on 45th and 8th. Like a dollar or two each and really good stuff. Enjoy

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Sally Hansen Nail stickers

So I bought those stickers that my friend got. They are called Sally Hansen nail effects, google it. Honestly, they have some pretty lame designs and some neon colors. BUT they last for about ten days, with very little peeling and chipping. The first full day I wore them I got three complements within like two hours, it was awesome. The few designs they have that are unique I highly recommend. They have a lace one, a checkered one, jean design, different sparkle designs and then like twenty neon colors and some butterfly design. Some of the designs I feel are meant for little girls, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I mean that they are ideal for girls because they don't fall off, aren't messy, and can be a great activity for girl bonding.

I am also including a Nailene sticker I bought months ago and was inspired to use. This design was really cool because it had hot pink and mirror effect all rolled into one, but it peeled off within one hour of application, so DON'T buy it if you see it. I highly recommend Sally Hansen vs. Sephora brand. But I will do another post with a Sephora sticker and I also have these stickers I got from Urban Outfitters, so I'll give you the info on them also.

A note on application: All of these brands only give out like 14-16 stickers, not enough for two manicures. If you have slightly stubby nails like I do, you can cut them in half carefully with a small nail scissors and try to squeeze two manicures out of them. Otherwise, if you have long lovely nails that I dream for at night, your SOL.

I put some photos of myself with my Sally Hansen Manicure, and a blurry ass pick of the weird manicure that I bought with some nailene kit that lasted five minutes. Enjoy

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Shatter nail polish fiasco

So, you guys have seen the awesome Barry M black shatter top coat. It creates thick cracks and reveals the color you put underneath, and over all it is truely fun and looks good on most nails. OPI went ahead and made a dupe which was released this month for Serena Williams playing in the US Open and Katy Perry, the Serena Williams collection came with a shit green color, so I'm not really interested in that, however Katy Perry's collection was pretty awesome and the whoel digs and awesomeness on these two lines can be seen below.

http://www.refinery29.com/check-out-what-the-katy-perry-serena-williams-and-shatter-black-nail-polishes-look-like-on.php

Now, I couldn't wait for this to come out so I ordered two Barry M's from England, which were fairly cheap and exactly like the black shatter. And I've been peeking around recently to see if any of the NYC drugstores like Duane Reade, Rite Aid or even a Ricky's beauty supply might carry this, and they don't! I read on the OPI facebook page that there are some JCpennys that sell it, but a lot of girls have had altercations with the staff because those bitches went ahead and bought the nail polish before anyone else could. Anyway, I just wanted to say that I think that this product, because of its hype and its new-ness and all of that, should be sold on a grand scale, and its no wonder OPI was bought out or taken over.

Anyway, I have included some pictures of me and my friend Sachi doing our nails while our men played rock band and drank Four Loko. She should probably be a hand model and make lots of money doing that because her hands are really well put together and slender, plus her nails are very slender as well.

I'm also including photos of another product that another girlfriend of mine purchased with me. These Sally Hansen nail polish stickers. Now, there are TONS of products like these out there, Hello Kitty, Sephora, Glam, just to name a few, have created different nail stickers with the idea that you put them on, file them down and they should stay on for a bit. I have red mixed reviews about the Sephora ones, and my cheap ass definitely sampled a whole container of them when they left them out to be testers at a Sephora on the east side last year and they peeled off in a day and I was happy I didn't spend the heavy fourteen dollars on sixteen stickers. These Sally Hansen stickers however, which we bought at rite aid for nine dollars did not come off my friends nails for over a week, and we are both nannys, so we do a lot of cleaning and dish work in addition to being vomited on by children(part of the reason why I still give myself a daily manicure even though my lazy ass isn't blogging). So I highly recommend this product and when I finally start making the big bucks again I too shall go out and buy it and treasure them.

Now, apparently my coworker friend, (Gaby is her name) put on the Sally Hansen Chrome pen first, so she did put a polish down on top of these, as you can see from the pics, and it was really awesome. So I recommend playing with it, but you'll have to buy two because again they only give enough for 1 manicure, around 16 stickers.

(Just to clarify for these images, the one with the leopard design is the Sally Hansen stickers called Sally Hansen Nail effects, and the black on white is Barry M nail Effects, only available online at Barrym.com, but OPI black shatter is a dupe of this product but at the moment isn't available anywhere really.)

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i'm Back

Well...

Hi

1. Some douche stole my laptop. And a bunch of jewelry, and if your reading I hope the universe turns on you.

2. I also got married

3. I also had inlaws and finals at the same time.

However, the main reason why I have not been posting was because I was without my mac. Now that I have taken care of that situation, i will try my best to continue posting my daily manicures in addition to older pictures I took during my month plus absense. Please pray for my old macbook pro that it returns to my hands, cracked screen and all, and that of course the universe turns on the person who broke into my apartment and scared the shit out of my cat.

Anyway, tonight I put on high intensity Nail color by Jessie's girl in some sort of lavender color with Barry M's instant nail effects on top, and it looks baller.

Since I've been gone, like I said a lot has happened, i have a lot of wedding pics and wedding nail pics. And let me tell you something, although my manicure was always perfect during our three day wedding affair, the actual process would drive you to drink (and did it.. ha). I will never get married again, and I actually did none of the work for my wedding. These types of things, including being a full time student and working full time just puts too much stress on people. I love my husband, he is the best ever and he is totally worth every tear of sweat during the process, but that doesn't take away from the fact that we were both shitting our pants. We got married at city hall on a Friday, had to work the whole day after, partied with our friends on Saturday night, and had the reception with the family on Sunday. I have to say the parties were awesome. All of the family seemed to enjoy the food and drink, so it wasn't all in vain.

Also I didn't do as badly in school as I thought I had had. Even though my papers, along with my non-backed-up mac were stolen and I was totally fucked, I still managed to get an A and a B and passed my essay class ( its either pass/fail so don't think I got a C).

Anyway, here are tonights nails, again, Jessies girl (buy one get one free at 2.99 at rite aid till sunday) along with Barry M's nail effects. The new OPI shatter is exactly like this, and they are attempting to stock all the stores, I have yet to go buy a rickys and pick one up because I can barely pay my rent and am living off food stamps, so i'll tell you how it is once I get out of my computer/spending way too much on nail polish debt.

Oh, and yes i know I double posted the pictures of the bottles, give me a break, I havent posted in over a month ;O

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