St.Patty's Day Pot Of Gold Water Marble Manicure!

As I attempt to write this blog, I keep distracting myself with random outbursts of laughter. I didn't notice this until now, but the water marble portion of this manicure reminds me of a couch my mom had in our living room when I was growing up. It's a pretty design and color scheme for a manicure, but a couch? Not so much. It makes me wonder what my mom was thinking when she bought it!? Love you mom :)

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March is an awesome month for me and not just because I happen to have a birthday this month. St. Patrick's Day is this month and it brings back some fond childhood memories. Being that I have quite a bit of Irish in me, my grandparents always embraced our Irish heritage. It was common to see Irish flags around their house and my grandfather sipping on Guinness while playing Irish music. I loved it. One of my fondest memories is singing Irish lullaby's with my grandfather as a little girl. I'd crawl onto his lap and together we would sing for hours on end and I knew every song word for word. I loved to hear my grandpa sing. Sometimes I would just sit there and watch him, mesmerized at how soothing his voice was. His voice was perfect and for some reason, I always liked the slight hint of Guinness on his breath.

 I went off on a tangent. Back to nail talk.

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So, when March comes around, I always enjoy embracing my Irish heritage by doing a manicure that celebrates it and St. Patricks Day! It also helps that my favorite color is green. It's like a win, win for me! So here's the water marble that I came up with.

Love this! This is what I like to  call an accidental masterpiece, if I may. I forgot that I had already done a St.Patty's Day water marble manicure on my YouTube, so I decided instead of removing the design I'd just add a little more to it; make it a little more Irish-like. So, I added a little pot of gold. Cute, right?!

Polish Used For Water Marble:

Ulta 'Dance Teal Dawn'

Sinful 'Innocent'

Sinful 'HD Nails

*All of these nail polishes were untried. Yay!*

Products Used For Pot Of Gold:

Black acrylic paint

ChG '24 Karat'

Gold glitter pieces

If you'd like to see how I did this manicure, you check out my YouTube video below :)

I hope you enjoyed this manicure and I'll see ya in the next post!

-Amanda

A Girlie Vintage Floral Manicure!

How often do you do a manicure and fall absolutely in love with it? Not just like it, but LOVE it?!  I'm quite hard on myself when it comes to my manicures and I feel like there is always room for improvment no matter what. I am quick to point out any flaws in my application and/or design but this one I oogled over for days. DAYS! Very rarely can I completely ignore the minor mishaps and admire the manicure in it's entirety. This one was one of those; where I couldn't stop staring at it kind of a thing.  This vintage floral design has been running rampit all over YouTube. Some people's interpretation of vintage is different, but this is my take.

Polishes Used:

*ChG 'Designer Satin'

*ChG 'For Audrey' (accent nail color)

Girly, pink and fun! Just the way I like it! Until the next post... :)

-Amanda

MoDiddie's Must Have: Essie 'Pink-A-Boo'

Hi guys! This absolutely phenominal nail polish I am swooning about today has prompted a new blog idea. This was the first time I had ever layed eyes on a polish and thought, "I need to blog about this!" This sparked the idea to do a "MoDiddie's Must Have" series where I will do random posts about a nail polish that I am really loving. So here is the first post: Essie's 'Pink-A-Boo'.

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I was at Target gathering up some house hold necessities and as usual on my way to check out I casually made my way towards the nail polish section just to "check it out". I never just "check it out" but it's great verbiage to convince hubby that I have no intentions of buying anything. That is, until I get there, see something I love and tell him why it's so important that I have this/these polishes. Does anyone else do this? Poor hubby never complains; I think he's grown use to this kind of behavior from me. LOL

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Ok, I won't keep you guys waiting. This is what I stumbled upon; this delicate pink. I generally pass on these types of colors because they are so dupable and common but this one.. this one is different.

I struggled majorly trying to get a good picture of the pink and blue sparkles in this polish. The pink showed up, but the blue is shy apparently. It has a slight duochrome to it, but nothing too obnoxious which I like because I am not too much of a fan of duochromes. The application was fairly easy and I was able to get total opaqueness in three coats. Here are a few pictures I took trying to capture it's true beauty. Like I said, I struggled getting a decent picture that shows the flecks of pink and blue but just know, in real life this polish is amazing!

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This picture was taken in the shade. You can see the blue flecks faintly in the bottle.

 This is in direct sunlight :) My neighbors probably thought I was crazy pacing around my front yard taking pictures of my hands! LOL

 This is the best picture I got as far as showing the flecks of color. Here you can see the loads of pink flecks in this! Gorgeous, right?! Nothing like I own and so pretty!

As usual, I can never leave a plain manicure alone. I dusted off my Konad stuff and started stamping. I originally was going to record it and post it on YouTube, but it didn't go as planned.

For the stamping I used Pure Ice 'Outrageous' and the zebra design on plate M57.

Essie 'Pink-A-Boo' is part of the Resort 2012 collection. There are several gorgeous polishes from that collection so I'm sure I'll be back to snag some more! I hope you enjoyed this post and I will catch ya in the next one!

-Amanda

Hollister Nails?

           These last couple of days I have been unmotivated when it came to painting my nails. With over 300 polishes in my stash, no matter how long I sat there and stared at them, none of them were appealing to me! So for the first time in two years, I went two days with naked nails! All I wore was Rimmel base coat on and I actually really liked it. It was a nice break I guess you could say. This morning I woke up, and like a smoker fiends their morning cigarette, I was beyond ready to paint my nails again. Colette (MySimpleLittlePleasures) posted a video a few days ago declaring March a month for her to use her untrieds. So I'm jumping on that bandwagon. That is what I decided to do today. Every manicure this month is going to include atleast one polish that I have yet to wear. This is what I came up with today! Something simple, but pretty and for some reason it reminds me of Hollister.

I bought this bottle of Rimmel white nail polish expecting it to be a normal bottle of polish! Boy was I in for a suprise. You should have seen my face the first time I opened it and went to paint my entire nail! LOL! Although not what I expected, it was a nice suprise! This little striper brush came in handy for this manicure! It's lovely for intricate details and such!

This manicure was pretty basic. The first polish I used was the untried; Finger Paints 'Artist's Azure' which is a lovely shimmery dark blue. I painted my tips with that color. Then I used the Rimmel striper polish and created a white line under the blue. On my accent nail I used China Glaze 'Velvet Bow' and a dotting tool and created a simple heart which I then lined in white with that same Rimmel polish. I sealed in it with Seche Vite and boom! Thats it! Simple right?!

While writting this blog, I happened to glance up and look into my closet, Here is why this manicure oddly reminded me of Hollister. LOL! It's super similar to a Hollister shirt I own! :) Same color scheme any way.

So, that is all. One more polish I can take off my untrieds list! I hope you enjoyed this manicure and I will talk to you in the next post!

-Amanda

February 2012 Haul Swatches!

February was a fun month to haul in. So many fun collections out and lot's of sales too! Those two are the main ingredients for a successful and exciting month of hauls. So, here are the swatches of the polish I hauled in the month of February. Enjoy!

The magnetic polishes and I are not friends right now. I tried to swatch the colors magnetized and not magnetized. As you can tell, I am aweful at using that magnet. I will say though, that I am not the only one complaining about this. Other people have complained about the strength of the China Glaze magnet, so maybe I'll give these another try and just try another brand. :) So, thats all. I will talk to you all in the next blog!

-Amanda

The Ultimate Spring Time Manicure; Splatter Paint Nail Art!

Spring is right around the corner, so why not celebrate with a nice bright, cheerful manicure; a splatter paint manicure!? I fumbled with the idea of using regular nail polish for this manicure, however with the potential of polish being flown around, it was in my furnitures best interest to use washable acrylics for this nail art :) My husband was thankful for that since I've ruined our kitchen table and computer desk with nail polish, acetone AND thinner in the last year or so.

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The base color is actual nail polish; Sinful Colors 'Snow Me White' and then the acrylic paints I used for the splatters are:

*Craft Smart- Lime Green

*Craft Smart- Pure Pumpkin

*Apple Barrel- Bright Magenta

*Delta Creative- Azure Blue

The brush I used is just a striper type brush. Similiar to one that would come in a striper polish.

I added water to the thick acrylic paint, dipped the brush into the paint and flicked the paint onto my nails. Once I was happy with the look of my nail after each color, I waited until it was completely dry before moving on to the next color. I did this for all four paints. Then I applied my topcoat and this is what the final manicure looks like! It's been a bit rainy out, so excuse my poor lighting. One was taken indoor and the other was taken outside. I hope you enjoy!

You can check out the video of me doing this manicure on YouTube. As soon as I upload that video, I will link it here! I will see you guys in the next post!

-Amanda

Gradient Dotticure Manicure and *Update* :)

This week has been nutso! Completely crazy! I went from having tons of free time to having very little. As some of you who follow my YouTube video may know, I recently moved.. as in a few days ago. The new semester also started at my college so between packing up the old house, unpacking at the new house, going to school and handling my wifely duties, I have had little to no time to do my nails. I actually wore one manicure for seven days straight! That never happends!

 Since I finally am getting nestled into the new house and things are settling down a bit I figured I'd take a breather and update my blog. Because I haven't done my nails in a bit, I wanted to share with you a dotticure I did a month or so ago. It came out a tad messy, but I am still smitten with it! :) I hope you enjoy this manicure, and as soon as I get my nail area put up (all my polishes and racks are sitting on the floor!! *sad face*) and in order, I'll be whippin up new manicures I'm sure daily! LOL See ya in the next post!

-Amanda

Polishes Used:

China Glaze- First Mate

China Glaze- Secret Peri-Winkle

Ghina Glaze- Light As Air

Pure Ice-

Sinful- Snow Me White

Sinful- Black On Black