SUMMER MONTHS MEAN BRIGHT COLORS

BRIGHT COLORS
SANDY BEACHES
HOT AS HELL


       My daily thoughts during the summer months, aside from the general lack of panic and anxiety that accompanies me when I am actually working.

      What's on my nails today is a combination of Jessie J's Santorini from their SO FUN AND AWESOME Cruise collection line and the Mayebelline Bleached Neon's collection's Lime Accent.   The Jessie's Girl polish, Santorini has a very slight iridescence to it that is apparent in the bottle, but not on my way fancy camera or my really clean nails.  It looks more like a deeper blue than the traditional light creamy blue I have been rocking at work these past few weeks. I really like it now that I sort of (HA) have a tan. Lime accent is also a wonderful, creamy polish that pops and does not need a white base underneath to stand out. To be fair, neither does Santorini, but I wouldn't call Santorini a Neon by any means. Lime accent has a kind of streaky application so you'll need to be careful with your strokes, make sure they are light and balanced.

     If you cannot find this polish because it's on the rare side- Sephora makes a dupe of this polish called Over The Top, it was apart of their spring line, and can still be found in stores but is sold out online because it was on sale for 5$. The Sephora brand does not streak as badly as the Maybelline, so if you like the color and want a bette formula, I would go with that.

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The Polish Spoils of my trip to Turkey

My husband and I went to Turkey for nearly three weeks and of course, I had to buy some nail polish. Mainly because they have Golden Rose, a fancy European brand, and some other gems you cannot get in the states without spending an arm and a leg on Ebay or on Shipping. The best part is, is that the polishes are very inexpensive. None of the ones I will show you were more than 5$.

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Nail polish haul- THE ULTIMATE INDIE CHALLENGE... ok not really just excited here folks

       Okay, so in a short while I will be going on a vacation and will have to get gel nails.. and that means  that I will not be able to change my nails six times a day like I'm accustomed to...
         Despite this or because of this I have been buying polish and swapping polish like a maniac and have come into some really cool glitter top coats, base coats, texture polishes, and some colors that I've always wanted but didn't need have.  This post will show you some photos of polishes that I have gotten in the last month. Oh boy, is my husband sorry he introduced me to the Reddit laqueristas!

 So I ordered some glitter toppers from I Love NP and Glitterdaze, although I love the selection of both brands, I like the idea of getting a good sized smaller polish for four dollars from Glitterdaze then the entirely too small polishes from I love NP. If they only added that ONE ml I would be way more impressed.. but onto each brand

 I love NP: I decided to buy two regular sized polishes and two mini's, however I accidentally bought three mini's and two of the same- which is fine because I bought two mini of Animal Cookie. This polish is a beautiful, clear based glitter polish with hex white and pink glitter in different sizes and shades, and some white bar glitter, but there is a lot of mini pink glitter throughout the polish. It's a beautiful color


Glitter Daze-


A couple things I traded which I love-

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Today's mani- I love NP strawberry Creme

        As if  I havent been ranting about indie nail polishes since I started blogging again(why not ten more!-me on etsy earlier today), I am just posting you a swatch of today's manicure, I love NP's Strawberry Creme. I love it! Only, I should have used white as a base coat to make it really stand out and perhaps make my skin tan. I am going on a vacation soon to the beach, and I want to look tan.
     Those of you that know me know that I am irish and this is impossible.....however... one can dream.. or make it look like they are tan by wearing white-like creme colors on their hands and feet.  I'm thinking of getting white gel manicures of a creme gel mani/pedi for my vacation for the sole purpose of making my pasty white/red-when-tanned skin look actually tan. I feel like this is a quick fix that won't actually work though... back to this manicure..

     So this mani is two coats of strawberry creme, with a regular peeling base coat ( a base coat that prevents peeling, the name that I use is Esmalte.. its brazilian or something, super expensive except in harlem... you know I travel for that shit).
       I realized that if  I use the seche clear base coat with the Seche vite top coat, mid day the entire polish comes off of my nails. The worst part is, it always happens like, at the most inopportune time. Like, when I'm delivering a lesson to my students, or meeting with my boss, or at the bank and the bank teller asks "what the hell is that" and I dont know how to tell him that what looks like my entire nail coming off is actually just because of a shitty base coat. I do tell him that entire story, he looks puzzled  tells me i should stop buying polish because i got no money and i awkwardly leave.

        SO ANYWAY. I used two coats of the strawberry cream, and on my thumb and ring finger I put an I Love NP glitter top coat called purple stuff. I bought that one in a mini and it is SO CUTE. I will do a full haul post of all of my indies by the end of the week and everyone will die of their cuteness.  I like the glitters in this polish and it's application A LOT. I just wish it was more of a bright white, which can be fixed by applying a coat of white polish under it. So thats what I am going to try once I finish this post. It makes my skin look darker and I think its very feminine, which is good for me because it took me three tries to still not spell that word correctly.

Also- look how short my pinky is! I am ramping up my vitamins right now so it grows out a bit before turkey ugh!

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Gelly sandwich!

                   

jelly in regular light

jelly in entirely too much sunlight

      Today I have for you a lovely jelly sandwich combo with some glitters that I have been obsessing over. I find it weird that for the past few years I have been almost exclusively into cremes and holos but now for some reason I am all about funky and indie glitters. Next week it will be something else. Anyway, I really like Matte glitter right now, especially in black and white. I have also heard a lot of great things about the Sephora X line of nail polish and decided to try out two pink shades (shocker I know) and Chaotic, which is a black and white matte mix of various shapes and sizes of glitter. 

jelly in medium sunlight

   

         So for starters, a few weeks back I had a fab mani with Sephora x's Mischievous  which is a jelly hot neon pink, that I topped with Chaotic, and I wanted to continue that look but see what it would look like if I sandwiched the glitter between coats of the Mischievous polish. I liked the way it looked, but I felt that it was missing a little color(even though it was hot pink). I decided to put my KBshimmer laquer to good use and voila! Pink and blue glitters just lit up my nails!  I added another coat of the Sephora X Mischevious and topped it with a whole lot of top coat- couldn't stop looking at my nails ALL DAY!.

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KBshimmer's Awesome Indie Polishes

KBshimmer's The Dancing Green

KBshimmer's The Dancing Green

      Recently I have been OBSESSING over indie nail polish, I don't know why it took me so long, probably because I was too lazy to set up my paypal account. Needless to say, even though I am going on vacation soon and normally would be buying clothes with my spending money, I have only bought nail polish for the last month. Its bad really good. The first brand and nail polish I want to review is KBshimmer- now, I really like this brand and the variety of colors they have, but I learned a lesson, and that lesson is READ ABOUT THE POLISH before you buy it. Don't let your eyes do all of the shopping! More about that later though...

KBshimmer's Sugar Plum Fairy

       So far I have bought from two indie brands, Lush Laquer, and KBshimmer. This post will be about a few of my KBshimmer polishes. Kbshimmer has a lot of awesome glitters and different things that, like almost any other indie polish, you cannot and will not find in stores.  What I like the best about the indie trend is the mixing of color and glitter, it is such a unique and interesting thing. I have also seen great indie brands that specialize in glitters with a clear base, and those are also amazing.

KBshimmer's Sugar Plum Fairy

    The first polish I bought from them was the Dancing Green, which is a bright kelly green polish filled with hot pink, purple, green and small silver glitter. My terrible photos DO NOT do this polish justice, it is just so beautiful.

      The second I bought was Totally Tubular, which is a beautiful teal-blue color filled with purple, silver, blue and hot pink glitter. Very similar to dancing green, in that it is bright and eye catching. Both of these polishes remind me of that unique glitter mixed with color look that I wanted to try so bad.  I will try to swatch this polish this week as I FORGOT to take a photo.
They are awesome.

KBshimmer's The Dancing Green

     I also bought Sugar Plum Fairy, which is a purple polish filled with green, hot pink and very tiny metallic blue glitter. I really like this polish also, it is not as bold as the las two polishes, but it is very beautiful, especially in the sun.

     The last polish I bought from

KBshimmer's Sugar Plum Fairy

KBshimmer was squared away, which is a clear glitter polish with tons of  different colored square glitter. It has purple, silver two or three shades of blue and hot pink glitter. When I was looking on the website, they had jelly-sandwiched it in some purple jelly polish and it was beautiful, so I was disappointed at first when I got this because I didn't intend to buy a clear based glitter polish. However, I realize now that this is an awesome polish that I can do both jelly sandwich and top coat with, so I'm happy. The application of all the polishes is great and they shipped out immediately, overall I am very impressed and wish I could buy more :( after vacation!

 My favorite photo of the Dancing Gren is on the left, me holding onto my morning commute by drooling at my nails is my life...
   All of these polishes and many more can be found on Etsy.com. I found a lot of great brands just by googling "indie nail polish", I found tons of bloggers who mention various different shops that are up and running, the best part about buying indie for me is that I know its going to an actual person who is working for themselves. Plus they are so beautiful and unique :)

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Reddit Swapping

             Okay, so I have entirely too many nail polishes in colors that I either have never used or have seldom used. My husband gets irritated because like a special toddler I take them all out and line them up, put them against the light, oooh and aaahh at them and forget to put them away. He is a collector of video games and swaps games online when he finds cheap games at goodwill, so he suggested I go through my polish and swap a few. I will tell my story in great detail about all the awesome shit I traded, but bottom line: it's awesome and fun.
   So the first thing  I had to do was look at what other girls are trading on the site. The best place that I know of to swap nail polish is on http://www.reddit.com/r/RedditLaqueristaSwap. On this site, women go through their polish that they are willing to swap, and they make a swap list. The best swap lists have a full organized list of the polish you are willing to trade, at home pictures of the bottles to prove that they are yours, and links to swatches of the polish so people know what they look like on the nail. Needless to say, in the beginning I was overwhelmed, a good swap list would take me hours to complete, especially because I wanted mine to be perfect.
   It took me a couple of weeks to actually sit down and do it, but one night I got the energy and put twenty polishes together, took all of their photos, created a reddit list, and linked them all to swatches. the first time it took me (and my husband) like two hours.  It was such hard and annoying work and I was happy to be done with it. I made sure to put a mix of rare and not so rare polishes so i would get a lot of responses- and i did! So far,  I have done like, six swaps and nearly doubled my nail polish. So even though my husband was hoping my polish collection would downsize because of this, it actually increased (woops).
 As of today, I've done about ten swaps and gotten rid of stuff I haven't used.... and got more stuff I probably won't use! I don't know what it is, but I am a sucker for this. It is excited to exchange things with other women across the country.. even if you know you probably won't wear those polishes either.. I guess.

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Nail Polish Swapping and why you should do it

             Okay, so I have entirely too many nail polishes in colors that I either have never used or have seldom used. My husband gets irritated because like a special toddler I take them all out and line them up, put them against the light, oooh and aaahh at them and forget to put them away. He is a collector of video games and swaps games online when he finds cheap games at goodwill, so he suggested I go through my polish and swap a few. I will tell my story in great detail about all the awesome shit I traded, but bottom line: it's awesome and fun.
   So the first thing  I had to do was look at what other girls are trading on the site. The best place that I know of to swap nail polish is on http://www.reddit.com/r/RedditLaqueristaSwap. On this site, women go through their polish that they are willing to swap, and they make a swap list. The best swap lists have a full organized list of the polish you are willing to trade, at home pictures of the bottles to prove that they are yours, and links to swatches of the polish so people know what they look like on the nail. Needless to say, in the begginning I was overwhelmed, a good swap list would take me hours to complete, especially because I wanted mine to be perfect.
   It took me a couple of weeks to actually sit down and do it, but one night I got the energy and put twenty polishes together, took all of their photos, created a reddit list, and linked them all to swatches. the first time it took me (and my husband) like two hours.  It was such hard and annoying work and I was happy to be done with it. I made sure to put a mix of rare and not so rare polishes so i would get a lot of responses- and i did! So far,  I have done like, six swaps and nearly doubled my nail polish. So even though my hsuband was hoping my polish collection would downsize because of this, it actually increased (woop)

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Summer=Blogging time Brief Topcoat review!!

      hellooo everyone!!, its been almost a year of my nail blogging hiatus, and I realized that I still am buying nail polish like crazy so I need to put it to good use that I miss blogging so much! I have a lot of polishes I need to review for you guys, but first I must tell you about a problem I have been having for a while, that I sort-of resolved, which will result in this blog post. 

      Top coats, they are impossible for me. My nails repel polish, between teaching highschoolers in the Bronx, getting arm surgery,  washing dishes(HAHA), doing laundry(HA), typing and drinking too much(thats more like it), my nails chip on a regular basis, and its usually the SAME DAY or the DAY AFTER that they chip.

      I know what they say- go gel!  Get gel manicure! It lasts forever! My Nails look great!  Well, Gel manicures do last me a long time but the problem (for me) with Gel manicures is that I can't change my polish on a daily basis. And all of you who know me personally know that I MUST change my nails at least every two days otherwise I will go insane(part of the reason why I change it also is because they chip and I know that makes no goddamn sense but whatever).  I really just like being able to change my polish on a too-often basis because it might not match my outfit, or I might get bored of it, or I'm just insane, or I have too much nail polish that I've swapped or bought and its getting out of hand. 

       So I went on a hunt of different base coats, top coats, and combinations of them to see which ones work the best, how much they cost ect. There is one top coat that I need that I haven't been able to find,  and that is Sephora X topcoat, the internets say it is amazing, but I will talk about that later. The Contenders of this challenge are:

Seche Vite- many of you know this brand I am sure, it bonds all the layers of your polish so it doesn't chip, creating a bond. The problem with this is that it also shrinks the polish on the nail, which many of you also probably know and I HATE. I have also experienced that, when combining the Seche Clear base coat, a polish, and then the Seche Vite top coat, sometimes the entire polish will literally peel off of my nail. What I have done in the past to try and prevent this is put alcohol on my nails to dry them out a bit/get rid of excess oil. It didn't always work however. 

 A serious pro about Seche Vite- if you like glitter polishes or indie glitter polishes or putting glitter on your fingers and don't want a bumpy finish, two to three coats of Seche Vite will do the trick for you. I know that you may think that your using a lot of product, but the finish comes out smooth and amazing. Also, Seche Vite sells online in giant bottle plus a smaller bottle for like $15. I got mine on amazon, so don't go to the small beauty places and pay $7 a bottle when you can buy this product in bulk for less. 

GelATO-This is something I saw at claires, claims to have a gel top coat finish and prevent chips for days. I used it once, and was disappointed because it had many bubbles inside. This week, I will use it again and give it a try. I need to do more research on it, because it was $7 and theres no reason why this shouldn't work except that its from Claires and what was I thinking.

Ruby Kisses- This is another great topcoat, from what I hear, it lasts longer on people who don't use their hands a lot/repel polish like I do. I used it and only had minor chipping, no bubbles, great. The best part about it is that you can find it for like, 2$ in a local beauty supply store. Mine unfortunately sold it for 3$, whatever. This brand has many good base coats that I have used for various things, strengthening  garlic, growth, ect. I like their base coats VERY much and have been using them for years, and to be honest, the best part about this brand is the fact that they are very inexpensive. A downside is that (I THINK) they are not three free or vegan, and the polishes have a strong smell. 

Julep Freedom Polymere Top Coat- This is my favorite. Probably not because it prevents my nails from chipping, but more so because you can sure it under a 60 watt bulb for 2 minutes and, I feel like I'm doing something extra fancy to my nails. I got my first bottle for free in a Julep Maven box, and then I bought my second as an add on for 7$. This thing retails at Sephora for 18$ and on their website for a similar price. Its pretty expensive and not worth it if you can deal with the downsides of the top coats listed above. 

Sephora X topcoat- This week I SHALL find and buy the Sephora X topcoat because based on multiple websites, videos and reviews, the consensus is that this works exactly like Seche Vite but without the shrinking of the polish- which is great! So far I have bought some colors and effects top coats from the Sephora X line and LOVE the formula. My favorite from them is the chaotic effects topcoat- I will show you some manicures in my next post where I used Chaotic, and I just know that you will love them :)

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my rants about various top coats that I tried. I'm sure you polish know-it-alls have learned nothing, but maybe some of you had fun. 

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Bad Quality nail polish

blah blah blah pic

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I bought a helmer! (and its already full and I need another one)

          I dragged my husband up to harlem to buy a helmer from ikea for $20. They usually run around 40 or 60 so I think it was well worth the trip.   For the past three years I have been keeping my nail polish in random plastic boxes and shoe boxes. It goes without saying that its been a kindof a mess. I leave polishes all over the place as if I'm a polish fairy. It drives my husband nuts.  The good thing about the  helmer is it has 6 drawers and each drawer can hold like, one hundred polishes perfectly. The drawers have the perfect dimension to hold a standard bottle of polish.
Most bloggers who I have read who have helmer's organize theirs by color/type.  I decided to keep mine organized by brand and if the polishes have a special effect. So, clears/treatments are kept the same, and nail art/special nail polishes are kept the same. Otherwise, polishes are kept within a brand grouping. Enjoyy my messy pics!

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 I believe its safe to say I am back on game with doing my nails and making fun nail art. This post is mainly about my aztec nails. You see, during the long hours of my fabulous summer job, I am often at lack of things to do when I can't interact with the girls. You see, them being so damn old means they have to do everything by themselves for the most part, so while they do their homework and make cards and cupcakes and whatever, I am drawing ancient hieroglyphics on my nails.  I know, I know,  its a case of an Irish woman trying to tap into that native american scholarship that the government lies to us about.

 In anycase, here are my aztec nails, I used the same American Apparel nail polishes as my last post.  I thought this design was better, I liked the idea of having multiple colors between the black designs, reminds me of a totem poll or a five year old's scribblings. Enjoy ;0

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IT'S BEEN SO LONG!

  I have no excuses. Okay, maybe working seven days a week so I can have a mediocre job with health insurance(yeah not worth it-you), never sleeping, overworking, over-drinking, under-sleeping and NEVER doing my nails.  Yeah, can you imagine? I got a Masters(finally!), a job at the DOE(fuck..yes), made lots of money(okay thats a lie), my husband is going back to school to finally move forward- and I never did my nails.  It was a rough few months, and then I needed a month to drink sleep it off, then I started working with the girls for 12 hours a day(not to mention my weekend job)/going on crazy interviews for September. Overall, I am not exaggerating when I tell you I have worked like a slave.
 Anyway, this blog has been itching and dancing in the back of my head for these past few summer weeks. I've spent them with the two girls I babysit, on several job interviews and job fairs, and of course at NYC karaoke bars and two in the afternoon singing "I wanna dance with somebody". Okay, you didn't need to know that last part.
 I want to tell you that this is my I'm-sorry-I-haven't-posted post. Or my I'ma-promise-to-post-my-shitty-nails-now. Or my I'm-sorry-I-never-post-about-nail-polish-and-only-my-two-cats post. But your not stupid, or drunk. Okay scratch that last part, you need to get some help, its about time we talked about this.
Enough with the blog experimenting, the point of this post is to assure you that I will post at least once a day, but probably for the next few weeks I shall post all the pictures of the times that I DID do my nails and took pictures, which was quite often the past few months.
As I am sure all of you lovely ladies and two dudes know, magnetic nail polish is soaring and international and a big hit. Its in every CVS and Walgreens, comes in a variety of brands and I couldn't be happier. But alas, I am not going to blog about magnetic nail polish today, my last five thousand posts six years ago were, so I will give you something FRESH like Jamie Oliver.
Since I am taking a new job in september, I will no longer be working odd babysitting jobs or language lab jobs or teaching jobs, but rather I will have one job, benefits and weekends off. WEEEKENDS OFF means boozey brunch and shakey manicures, which means more posts. But it also means I will no longer be with my two favorite youngsters, the girls I babysit. SO I am letting them do whatever they want (as if you had any discipline with them-their mother). This includes drawing designs on my nails. And I have to say, even though I did the left hand, the 12 year old did a better job (figures.. ugh) than I did. She should start her own blog... at least she'd post every day after working 16 hours.. eep

Okay, This Manicure comes after one of my trips to American Apparel (Ugh I know I have a problem.. why do I support sex crazed hipster maniac companies.. oh  yeah your right) I loved these colors together, Crescent Heights (the green neonish color) and Angeline(this is a favorite amongst many bloggers) but since I was at work I couldn't really use any tools to combine them on my nails/I was lazy whatever don't judge. The girls have these cute nail pens, so we decided to alternate nail colors and draw random "tibetan/aztec" designs. At least thats what I told them they were. HAH kids will believe anything(okay they didn't believe me either).  Enjoy ;0

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More Magnetic swatches- LCN

Here I have a couple more pics of the LCN swatches, I had a ton more, but as i mentioned earlier i'm pretty sure my old iphone went for a swim- so I lost tons of photos and have to use my ancient 3GS. Good news about this? At least I have a phone, Bad news? its slow as molasses, can't access chase app or anything. FML

Anyway, here are pics of the grey, lilac and red from the LCN magnetic collection, they are named Magnetic moments (silvery grey) Amazing Mauve(lilac) and Copper seduction (red) which I wore for xmas and it was fab!

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More magnetic swatches-Nails Inc

Every single day since I got my magnetic nail polish pack I have been trying all the colors, and they really are fabulous. Here I have a picture of the Nails Inc trio, which still should be available at some Sephora locations. The bottles when sold individually come with a magnet each, and cost 16$, but the trio comes with three polishes and one magnet for $30. I went for the trio obviously. I also have included a shot of the turquoise which is called Whitehall. I'm sorry for the poor image quality, I may have woken up after a night of debauchery to see that it fell in the kitty's water bowl. FML. Can't wait for that Suri upgrade!

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New Year, new nail polish addiction-MAGNETIC

Okay, so believe it or not this idea has been around for a while and really never picked up. Since I have seen it on the internets, I requested magnetic nail polish for my holiday present- and santa did not disappoint! I have the LCN entire collection LCNUSA.com and the Nails Inc Magnetic trio, available at Sephora.

For this post I will show you photos of the entire LCN collection, which comes with a star and stripes magnet to make the different designs. I am also showing you a swatch of my favorite color in the collection, they don't have names on the bottles- but according to the website its called Fuchsia attraction. Anyway it is an awesome purple pink loveliness that people stopped me at a party to oogle over. I love the whole set, but its definitely my favorite color.

In case you don't know what this magnetic nail polish is- well its my new obsession, thats number one- but its a nail polish with magnetic particles inside that, when used with magnets shaped to a design, can create cool designs on your nails. All of the polishes have a shimmery affect, and so far you can make a star design, stripes design (using LCN magnets) or a wavy stripes design (using Nails Inc).

First, you put your base coat and let dry, then you put your 1st coast of nail polish and either let dry, or put the magnet just above your nail to show the design. You are supposed to use two coats and let the first dry without using the magnet, but I always end up trying on the first coat because I change my polish so much and because I use so many base coats to keep my nails from peeling.

I find that this is a tricky skill, I often put the magnet too far down and mess up the whole deal, you must be careful and move quickly. The nail polish dries fast, but not too fast- so you must hold the magnet on top of your nail for a whole minute at least in order to keep the design looking crisp. I found that when I move too quickly, the lines tend to get fuzzy.

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purple crackle over lime green

I really just liked this combination, got a lot of comments about it. It is Mattese shimmery purple over a lime green color. Enjoy!

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FINALLY:silver metallic crackle I can adore!

Some of you may have noticed that I have been trying to get myself into the metallic crackles- when they were first released I didn't get excited. The swatches on the internet were cool- but when I tried them in the store I was dissapointed. Gold crackle is easy to pair, blues and reds go great with it and make a great holiday manicure. Pink metallics go really well with pink shades and blue shades, and blue metallic crackle goes great with purples, pinks and blues. The Silver crackle took me forever to figure out however, but I think I finally got it! I need to pair it with dark purples, blues and blacks- and I mean dark for me to really enjoy it. I believe these photos are of the silver over a really dark green- American apparel's Hunter I believe. Although I haven't worn something like this since (its been at least a month) I do like this manicure.

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Mattesse blue crackle swatch plus factory mix up?

I was at a Ricky's store the other day drooling over nail polishes when I saw that Mattesse, like many other brands that have crackle nail polish, has made a shimmery and non-shimmery purple and blue crackle but doesn't distinguish the two colors. I saw this with color club also. Its as if they manifacture them differently for some reason but don't distinguish the colors- and the difference is obvious! Here I also have a swatch of their new dark blue crackle that they have on the shelves which I love!

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bubble gum pink manicure w sparkle

I'm not too proud of these nails. Its not like I was at a costume party and I was hello kitty. Its not like I was at a babyshower for triplet girls. Its not like I was walking for breast cancer. Its not like I was at an all female feminist poetry rally against Misogynist companies. I was just bored.

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