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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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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magnetic nail polish!

It is a real shame that this stuff is so expensive and pretty hard to find. I'm not sure if it will become a big trend, but I absolutley love it. I haven't bought a bottle because I'm too cheap, so I just go to sephora and do them there. 16$ a bottle is entirely too much money to pay for one nail polish, now.. I know I wouldn't have said anything like that a year ago when I had money to burn! They do have a brand called LCN thagt makes it in several different colors, but until then I will be stuck with Nails inc. Sephora is currently out of the green :( but the purple is nice! (can't you tell my cheap ass took the photos at the sephora lol)

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Daily Manicure: 7/16/11

While walking around Friday in NYC, I stumbled upon llamasqua's Poke ( a slightly muted but beautiful purple w shimmer) in a Sephora in Chelsea. I decided to paint over my blue shatter and white, because I had had it on for more than a day, and as I said in my last post, I didn't like how the white got distorted.

Aside from the fact that my ghetto ass didn't buy anything from Sephora and simply did a whole manicure, it actually came out half decent. Usually tester polishes are clumpy, and this one was bit clumpy also, but for the circumstances, I wanted to share the color and swatch. These are $14 dollars a bottle, so be prepared to hand over a larger chunk of change for these.

I also want to add that while at Sephora, I noticed that they have brought out red, turqouise and navy blue "blasted" shatter colors. They also have come out with new lines of nail stickers similar to their other ones called "nail bling", some of them have sparkles and lines and are clear at the same time, so you can paint your nails then put them on for a really cool design. They now have loose glitter in several colors, and NAIL ART PENS. I didn't get a chance to write down all of the prices of each new item, but its a fairly new thing, so go to Sephora ASAP to check it out. They probably range from $6-10, maybe even more. Also, if I were a betting woman I would put my money that they aren't the best quality, especially the stickers. The girl I babysit tried the nail pen, and actually it looked really cool, so I'll have to get one and draw obscene images for you guys.

Thanks for reading

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My favorite Manicure: Sephora L16 & Wild about Shimmer

I was killing time at Sephora when I saw a BEAUTIFUL cobalt blue sample with micro Gold glitter on top. After asking every employee at the store with no avail, I figured out that it was the combination of the Sephora mini nail polish L16, a beautiful cobalt bright blue, with Wild about Shimmer, which is OPI for Sephora. Its a clear polish with micro glitter. Basically it almost looks like turquoise stone with Gold pieces in it. LOVE IT

I just wish I had taken better photos for you. meh

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OPI-I'm not really a Waitress

SO I have heard this color all over, supposed to be one of the biggest OPI colors. When I came across the bottle, I thought to myself that it reminded me of Sephora by OPI (go figure) curve-acious. The red tone and Glitter looked EXACTLY like the Sephora bottle I own (and would wear over and over and over two summers ago). So here are some day-shots of I'm not really a waitress. I think its a lovely color, perhaps too strong for my skin tone, plus I definitely out-wore a dupe of this two summers ago, when I was all about the Sephora polishes.

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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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