Welcome Back! Almond Acrylics in Fall Colors

Hello, my darlings! I am back and super excited to be blogging again. After nail school I went through a tremulous move back to Oakland and wasn't able to blog for a while. So here's my first set back: an almond shaped acrylic set with three base colors: OPI Don't Pretzel My Buttons, Essie School of Hard Rocks and  OPI Over the Taupe. I added a 1mm rhinestone to the DPMB and SHR and on the OTT I did 3 slashes of Sally Hansen Complete Manicure in Gilty Pleasure and a black art polish. I'm going to try really hard to blog more often- I've missed all of you and thank you so much for visiting during my hiatus!! See you soonsies <3 

Fall Nail Art Challenge Day 3: Fall Gradient

Well, I picked two colors that I thought were suitable for fall: Mink Muffs by Essie, a cool chalky light brown, and Meet Me On The Star Ferry by OPI, a brown purple shimmer. I painted on two coats of Mink Muffs and then used a makeup sponge to dab MMOTSF on the tips and working toward the nail bed. Even though it is a purple brown shimmer, it came out looking a little gold and I'm pleased with the end result.

Fall Nail Art Challenge: Day 2 Autumn Leaves

This one was so tough! I thought I had a stamp that had maple leaves, but I guess I just have the almond shaped ones from BM-19. I tried to make the leaves stamp change colors but I guess I'm not that advanced at stamping yet. I painted on OPIs Bling Dynasty (über pretty gold) and then in a bottle cap mixed neon orange and Bling Dynasty/green and Bling Dynasty) to make the gold turn colors a bit but stay the same kinda shimmery metallic. I lightly with a dry brush tapped random spots on the nail with my orange and green mixtures to give it an antiquey, messy feel.

Then stamped on the leaves in an old Sinful Colors black that's gone thick.

::phew!:: a lot of retries, and finally Day 2 is over!

Fall Nail Art Challenge Day 1: Metallic

First day of TinRoofNails Fall Nail Art Challenge Week is Metallics. I used The One That Got Away from OPI's Katy Perry Mini Set. It's a really bright purply red pink metallic with micro shimmer. I really like it but it was kinda streaky to apply. Was opaque in just three coats and dried fairly fast. This is my first published stamping attempt. I got a 2 stamping sets as a birthday present to myself. One being the first Bundle Monster set and the other was the 2012 BM Collection. I used the paisley design from BM-315 to do this design in a silver polish. I wanted to do black, but I didn't know if it would show up as bright on top of this red. The One That Got Away looked MUCH darker in the bottle and this was the first time I've swatched it; that's why I thought it'd be good for this 7-day Fall Nail Art Challenge. But hey, it's fall enough for me. Especially since it still feels like summer outside.See? It does look darker in the bottle than on my nails. ;)

First Mani of 2012!

I'm going to see how long I can keep my fake nails off so I can blog more! I painted on 2 coats of Essie's "Mink Muffs" as a base coat. A super creamy greyish brown creme that I love! On top of that I took a striped brush dipped in OPI "I Brake For Manicures" and made six lines in groups of threes coming from the edge of the nail in. I wanted to add a little bit of shimmer so I also drew on lines of OPI "Meet Me At The Star Ferry", a pinkish brown shimmer that looks really nice paired with Mink Muffs.

Gold and brown new years mani

This is the sequel to yesterday's swatch of Bling Dyanasty by OPI. On top of the gold base color, I took the largest dotting tool I had to add random large chocolate brown (OPIs I Brake For Manicures) circles all over the nail. I filled in the empty spaces with the smaller end of the same dotting tool. I let this dry, and it looked cool by itself (sorry no pic!) then went over it with a thin coat of top coat to adhere tiny gold hexagons. I used a dotting tool dipped in top coat to individually place a single hexagon in the center of each large brown dot. On my accent ring nail, I placed a row of gold hexagons along the nail/cuticle line. It takes two coats of Seche Vite to encase the hexagons completely to a smooth finish, but shown is just with one coat. Hopefully I'll have time to squeeze in another new years inspired mani; this one is cute, but not blingy enough to ring in 2012!

OPIs Bling Dynasty Swatch

I had to chop off my nails because I broke two of them! But I got to swatch a new color that I got for Christmas. It's OPI's Bling Dynasty. A rich golden shimmer. I used two coats here, but should have used a third. I really like it but I'm always skeptical of metallics and shimmers because they come out streaky often times. This only had minor streakage due to shaky cold fingers, I suppose. But looks festive for the holidays. My favorite now of all my golds.

OPI I Brake For Manicures Swatch

Merry Christmas everyone! I got a couple of polishes from my boyfriends stepmom today, one of them being OPIs I Brake For Manicures. I had time after my nap navidad to swatch it for you guys because it's a really interesting color but I'm not sure the pictures do it justice. It's a creamy dark grey/brown/purple that goes on smooth and opaque in just two coats. I love it. It's from the Touring America Collection which I loved almost every color of. It's a new shade for me, and perfect for winter! I'm glad I'm on a break from acrylics so I could easily swatch this on my natural nails!

I hope you can see the complex hue combo in this color- might add a sunlight pic later on. Thanks, Diane!

Do any of you guys have this color? What do you think of it?

Merry Xmas, followers!

Pink Flowers, Rhinestones, and Pink Striping Tape

So I've been meaning to upload this, I couldn't find my camera USB cable thing for a few days. These are Chrissy's nails, my lovely hand model. She thankfully gets her nails done for my blog when I don't want to do mine or when I have poop nails that need to be filled. :) I painted her nails white (she's always trying to paint them white and I always talk her out of it!). I then used a medium dotting tool to make drag-petal flowers with Essie Raise Awareness (light baby pink) and OPI Elepthantastic Pink. I put tiny purple and blue rhinestones onto the middle of the flowers. For her accent nail, I left the base white, and when dried, I used my new pink metallic striping tape to make a lil fishnet-esque grid. I laid down the striping tape where I wanted it and then used clippers to cut the tape off where the nail ended. I topped with top coat and was pleased with the design. I only put one layer of top coat on, as she had somewhere to go and she did not upkeep with more top coat at her house. She later told me that the pink striping tape had shed it's color! She sent me a picture on my phone of her stripes still intact, but the pink had rubbed off to a dull grey/silver!~!! I would post this picture, but it was on my phone and I am lazy. I will retry this design with more top coat to see if I have the same problem, and also add this to my earlier review of my nail haul post.

  I have 10 colors to try, so far, this is the only one I've used, and I'm very worried that it won't hold, because it's soo cute! Has anyone used striping tape like this? Or how would you use it?

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!

Black and Brown Herringbone

Finally! I have found a design I like for OPI's Meet Me On The Star Ferry! It looks like a beautiful color, but my skin is too tan for it. I have always wanted to paint on a herringbone pattern because I knew it would be easy, but I always forget!! I love this design and the colors and I will def be posting more herringbone designs now. Maybe with a gradient color change for the background.

Pink Wednesday: Stripes and Zebra Stripes

I'm really running out of pinks for Pink Wednesdays because all my pinks are hot or bright pinks and they all show up the same or really similar in pictures! This is OPIs Elephantastic Pink that Chrissy keeps leaving at my house. I painted my nails white, then a big bold stripe of pink diagonally, then I painted on zebras and out lined the pink with more black and added the stripes. I'm really proud of myself for taking my time on the straight stripes. Sometimes when I work too fast, I make them uneven and they look really bad, but this is good enough for me. Happy Pink Wednesday! and go to http://www.onwednesdayswewearpink.com to join us!

Stolen: Sweet Memories

Literally, I stole this out of my boyfriend's mom's room. (I'll put it back where I found it.) But it was just too pretty for me not to try it on. It's OPI's "Sweet Memories" Ahhhh its such a soft pretty pale white-pink. I had to put on almost 4 coats to have it cover up the remnants of my purple glitter tips from 2 weeks ago.

It's so pretty I want want WANT this exact polish for my self. It's so pretty I did a swatch, and I never post swatches!

Pink Poodles for Pink Wednesday!

I'm in my hometown of Pleasanton, CA where my boyfriend and I are dogsitting his mom's very cute poodle, Jake. So I decided to do a poodle silhouette nail design in honor of Jake (even though he's a boy). I used OPI's Aphrodite's Pink Nightie, which is a little streaky, but it's a dainty and very feminine pink, so it's nice with the poodles.

Also, hi Julie! I just had coffee with you! <3

This is Jake. I can't believe he actually was standing still for a second.

Roses are... Pink

Happy Birthday, Chrissy! These design was created for Chrissy for her birthday party which was yesterday... she wanted the nails to have roses to match her birthday dress. I was kind of scared to paint on roses but I do like a challenge. They turned out quite pretty, and I think Chrissy was pleased with the outcome. I'd let everyone know what they colors we used for it but she brought over her own polish and I didnt get a chance to write down which ones they were but I'll just credit it to OPI and fill it in later.

Yay.