Full Sets At School :)

OMG you guys, I've been such a bad blogger!!!! Ironically, it's because I've been super busy with school- I've been taking the manicuring course at Paris Beauty College in Concord, CA and I haven't been able to finish my fall challenge or blog at all! Here are a couple of pictures of the acrylic full sets I've been doing at school the last few weeks. I don't know if I'll have a chance to blog again before school is over but I'm trying to continue to snap pictures if I can! 

This set is my hand model Chrissy's hands. She gets almond shaped nails because she's a vet tech and she wears gloves and has to pick up kitties by their necks and such. She loves 3D nail art of course and got tiny white bows on a few of her nails and clusters of multi colored half pearls on the rest. 

These are DUCK FEET nails. My first set of duck feet actually on someone else. In the beginning of school, I did a full set of duck feet on myself, but these were much better. Also, the girl that got these nails was going to homecoming that weekend so it made it super fun for me to do. I used forms instead of glue on nail tips to get this flared out look.

These are just fun two toned funky french acrylics with cut out stars embedded in the acrylic. I finally had to bring my drill to school because I think I'm getting RSI from hand filing. Sad, but it's so much fun doing acrylics at school. 

That's all for now, you guys, so hope I can get back to blogging once my busy busy schedule dies down a bit! 

Kawaii Nails for Fanime

Fanime is today and tomorrow in San Jose and my gf/hand model Chrissy asked me to do light purple rounded kawaii nails to match her Espeon costume! I did clear acrylics and just painted on French tips in a light lavender color, added some purple 3D acrylic bows, glitter, rhinestones and some metallic pearls. Ohhh la la.

Huge Post: Haul, Swatches, Reviews... (Pic Heavy)

This is OPI's "Crown Me Already" from the Miss Universe Collection (the silver and large hex glitter). And the blue is "Across The Universe " by Deborah Lippmann.

OK let's start with 'Crown Me Already': I'm not sure if it was just this bottle, it's my friend Megan's and she ordered it online and she said when she recieved it a little bit had leaked out a bit. Not sure if it was a little think because of the insane amount of glitter, or because of the leak, but it was pretty hard to apply, and seemed to PUSH more polish out of the bottle each time I put the brush back in. I love the glitter, love the sparkle, but it was pretty hard to smooth out the texture, even with Seche Vite top coat. I also used a toothpick to push the large hexagon glitters around to keep my cuticle line clean looking.

"Across the Universe" is a dream glitter polish. It only took 2 medium coats to opaque and despite it being loaded with hexagons, it went on smooth, and had a jelly-like finish. It was smoothed out instantly with only one coat of Seche Vite. This is also Megan's polish. I got to swatch these while dog-sitting her super awesome golden retriever, Lady. Hey Megan!

YAY 3D acrylic! I'll go into details about that further down the page, as this is a swatch review for Essie's "Raise Awareness". It's Essie's breast cancer awareness pink and it is a lil tricky. I did read another review of this polish saying it was streaky and it is. I feel like when I'm painting tips it's even streakier vs. whole nail application. So this is two coats. I love the color, it would be less streaky with 3 coats, but I don't like to have heavy looking tips. I think that this polish would be less streaky in 3-4 months as it ages and becomes a little thicker.

Here is my pink nail drill I just got yesterday from Beauties Factory. Check it out here. I got it for about $25, and actually this is my replacement drill for the one I just got last month and BROKE. Now for this review I would like to make it clear that I BROKE the drill the first time. It did not come malfunctioning. Good news: the BF pink drill has a one year warranty, and this one was sent to me for $10 fee and I got to keep my other drill, it's cable, and drill bits. As for it's power: it goes up to 20,000 RPM (super fast and powerful) but so far I haven't had to use it at it's max speed; it does the job on medium. I've successfully filed a nail I had to put on today, and carved out the moon tips from my squared off nails. It did a fine job, my tips are sharp and more defined that with my previous battery powered drill. See above, the moon tips in my Essie "Raise Awareness" pictures. The only down side I have seen with this drill so far: it gets pretty warm in my hand after long use, and once it has overheated and slowed down. I turned it off for about 5 minutes, and was able to use it just fine again. I would reccomend this to any beginners for use on home acrylic application. And these are my acrylic brushes that I got JUST for doing 3D kawaii japanese nail art!!! and this 12 color set of acrylic powder. The colors are pretty random, but I'm not too picky about that right now these are just for practicing 3D stuff. I only paid about $2.50 for the 5 brush set (free shipping) and $6 or so for the acrylics also free shipping. It only took about 2 weeks to get here from China, and they are good enough quality to do a few little bows and flowers.

The website is here and it's insanely cheap for decent quality nail stuff like rhinestones, glitter, etc. So you should DEFINITELY check it out. Free shipping from China to US and came in a super decent amount of time. The comtainer that the acrylics came it was a little dusty (as shown) but I just dusted it off with a paper towel after I saw how yuck it was in the photo. None of it was spilled in shipping, but it was just a little dusty with powder. The brushes are super cute and the bristles are a nice soft sable hair for acrylic application, and they clean as well as my expensive ones from Sally's.



Well, if anyone read this whole thing, kudos to you, and I hope this was helpful for someone!