Gold and Black Glitter Tips + Cross

I, admittedly a little tipsy, decided last night at 2 am, I was going to drill out my blue green glitter tips off my left hand and replace them with any color combo of my twin bro's picking. He was staying over at our place and was watching TV as I did my nails. He said black and gold so I used my new black hexagons on top of an old acrylic mix from last year that was Martha Stewart's Copper fine glitter and clear acrylic. I dumped a bunch of black hexs into the mix and applied it to my tips.

After shaping and buffing, I applied the black hexs to my index finger in the form of a cross. The center is a small silver rhinestones, with larger black rhinestones on the edges of the lines. I really like this and will probably try again is different colors later on.

 You can see my  thumb here without topcoat because I accidentally forgot my thumb, but thought I'd take a pic anyways for educational purposes. This is what it looks like buffed and before top coat. It looks a little cloudy.

Here's the interesting part of this post: One day, while looking in my black star cut out pot, I discovered a cut out heart. I dumped it out onto a piece of paper and rifled through it. I found about 30 cut out hearts with almost as many center cuts in there! It was enough for my to throw into its own empty container and save for  a rainy day. :) Bonus glitter!

Red and Black Bunny Set - RIGHT Hand

Yay! I finally got to do a set of bunny nails!! I decided it was time to do my right hand over because they were empty for a few weeks! And I'm so glad I did because they turned out pretty snazzy for applying with my left (non-dominant) hand!!

On my middle finger, I put a bunch of 1.5 mm red rhinestones on because my black stars were not encased deep enough in clear acrylic and when I was filing my nails, I shaved off half of the large cutout star :-/

Here's all the stuff I used in this set ^^

My glitter mix was clear acrylic, red hexagons, silver tinsel glitter by Martha Steward in Sterling, and black fine glitter also by Martha Stewart in Onyx.

(My NYE 2010/11 nails were this mix minus red hexagons.)

Aaaand here's my bunny heads and stars in the cap waiting to be placed on my nail. :)

Blue & Green Iridescent Glitter Star Acrylics (underside pic! yikes!)

 Ahhhh... finally my challenge is over and now it's time to get movin' on projects I've been neglecting; I have a few birthday presents to knock out and I have to start working on Christmas! (lol sorry to those who don't think farrrrr ahead, but the week before Halloween = it's Christmas time.)

I used a hot pink acrylic mixed with clear to make my nail bed color. I call it "Pinky Promise", I drilled out the area closest to the cuticle and only applied the pink there. It's really hard to see it in the pictures because of the lighting but the idea was to have it look REALLY pink at the very  base of the nail. See picture below:

For the tips, I drilled out the smile line and filed off the thick layer of clear acrylic I'd been painting on during this whole challenge (ew it was sooo stained and gross). Filled the tips with a mix of the Martha Stewart Iridescent Collection fine glitter and glitter stars, encased in clear, and shaped and buffed smooth. 

I'm going to eventually post this method for tip-fill and back-fill but most of my followers don't use acrylic (and if I'm wrong PLEASE correct me  Where the acrylic girls at!) 

This shot is just a "front"? view of my nails to show you how thick/thin they are with my actual nail + acrylic + glitter + stars + top acrylic + top coat. 

WARNING   WARNING   WARNING   WARNING   WARNING   WARNING

KINDA GROSS PICTURE COMING UP...

I'm only posting this shot because my twin bro and my boyfriend saw the undersides of my nails last night and were appalled to see that I'd had my acrylics on for SO LONG (Aug 30th - today) that the tips I originally glued on had grown out completely and all that was left was my natural nails underneath and you can see them EWWW! 

Does this make sense? Look at this picture:

Ew! those are my hella long and gross natural nails! They just have acrylic on top-- And the middle one is still yellowish from when I attempted water marbling during the challenge and it got green under my nail....

For the record I am removing these acrylics, cutting my natural nails, and reapplying a fresh set in about a week. But I had to show you my dirty little secret :(

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!