Something Old & Something(s) New

Hello, dolls!

It's almost the weekend, get excited!!  The mani I have to share with you today is one that I did late Monday night.  I was super sleepy, but felt deserving of a pampering haha.  I pulled out an "untried" and used it with some new polishes that I bought in a recent haul...

 Colors Used: Daisy Nail Lacquer - White Diamond, Savina - Blue For You, Sally Hansen - Mermaid's Tale

Can you tell which one is the SH?  Even tho navy blues are usually saved for Fall and Winter, I decided to rock it anyway.  I've had Mermaid's Tale since the begining of Spring and never tried it.  Which is a shame because it's so dang pretty!

 

 white Diamond and Blue For You are new buys.  I like white diamond because it's thick and opaque.  2 thin coats and it was good to go :)  Blue For You is interesting.  In these photos it leans towards blue, while on my phone's camera it looks very green.  In person... I'd say it looks like mint and turquoise had a gorgeous baby.  There is a down side *sigh*.  Like most Savina's that I've tried/own, this beauty is super streaky. I was a little surprised during application because it looks so thick and opaque on the brush (it was the deciding factor when I purchased it).  I did 3 thin-ish coats.

I used my handy dandy striping brush for the design on my ring finger (Julep mystery polish was used for the navy blue)...

Clean-up isn't great but I really liked the way these photographed!  Wandering what happened to my thumb shot?  I forgot that I hadn't photographed this mani and started my removal process lol.  Would have been a shame not to have gotten these ;)

I hope you all are having a fantabulous week!

Until next time!

Stef <3

Step Into Summer - Skittle

Howdy, howdy, howdy!

Quick post today.  This is my interpretation of "Skittles" for the Step Into Summer Challenge.  Seeing as this challenge is summer themed, I busted out some neons...

 Colors Used (L to R from thumb): China Glaze - Pool Party, Cosmetic Arts - Explosive, Savina - Power Up, Lush Lacquer - Clowning Around, Color Club - Mrs. Robinson

I started with a white base on all of my nails, then I layered on my neon polishes.

I'm pretty sure they all got 3 coats, for opacity and smoothness.  Clowning Around was 2 coats (I really need to give this pretty a break lol).  I topped all of my nails with Hard Candy's matte topcoat.

Seeing as Summer is around the corner, I posed with my sunglasses for the occasion ;)

Be sure to check out all of the fun mani's below !

Until next time!

Stef <3

Church Mani: Heavenly With Frosting

Jello!  How are we all doing today?

I am feeling very unproductive and bored at the moment :\  I missed church rehearsal on Thursday night because I caught a stomach bug from one of the kids at work.  That meant that I couldn't sing with the choir this morning, so no church for me :(

I still did a mani for the occasion tho, to brighten my mood a bit.  Of course it had to go terribly wrong lol.  I'll show you the pics first and then explain...

Colors Used: Essie - Blanc, Savina - Heavenly, O.P.I. - Pirouette My Whistle

I took a ridiculous amount of photos and these are the only 2 that came out halfway decent.  I love my new phone and absolutely abhor the camera that came with it!!  I am going out when I get paid next Friday and buying myself a camera because I have been so unhappy with the photos in my last few posts.  The color isn't quite right, the flash is too bright.  It didn't pick up the glitter properly at all... *sigh* my ranting is now finished lol.

I applied 1 coat of Blanc because Heavenly is so sheer.  2 coats of Heavenly and then a sort of glitter gradient from the base up.  It is really subtle and pretty in person, I swear! Lol.

For those of you who may have missed it, I am having a giveaway for getting up to 25 followers!  You can submit you entries through the rafflecopter widget that's on the blog post :)  Contest ends on Friday, so start submiting!

Until next time!

Stef <3

Think Pink... A Subdued Finale ;)

Hey there!  I hope everyone is having a pleasant weekend :)  I'm on the run here so this post is going to be short(ish) and sweet hahaha...

It's my last day of "Think Pink" week and I thought I'd do something a little mellow/simple (because quite frankly I am OVER wearing pink! lol).  So here it is...

 Colors Used: Confetti - Heartthrob, Savina - Heavenly

Simple and sweet (with a heart on the important finger teehee...)

I applied 3 coats of Heartthrob and then used a dotting tool to dab out the heart.  I went back with a striping brush and acetone to clean up the edges of the heart and ta-da!  I topped it off with one coat of Out The Door.

And the big-un...

A little boring?  Maybe, but sometimes boring is exactly what I need to restart my creative juices :)

That's all for now I suppose.  I'll have another haul to post in the upcoming days and a story to go along with it, woohoo!!  Haha...

Until next time!

Stef <3

Church Mani: Think Pink!

Good afternoon/evening y'all!  It has been a crazy-busy weekend, one of those where I feel like I need another weekend to recuperate from this one lol.

I have some news.  Not great, not horrible.  Maybe a little bit interesting / exciting.  I have decided to challenge myself this week and do only pink mani's! *gasp!*  I know... I have shocked / disgusted myself with this idea, which is why it's great :D  I plan on producing the most horrifically girly pink mani's that I can manage and rock them out (in public!) for the entire week.

Seeing as it's Sunday and technically the start of the new week I figured why not start now?  Buuuuutttt church mani day is supposed to be fairly simple so here is what I came up with...

Colors used: Sinful Colors - Snow Me White, Sally Hasnsen - French White Creme, JLB - 06, Savina - Heavenly, Confetti - Heartthrob, China Glaze - Love Letters

With flash and without (indoor)

The reason why I used two different whites for the tips is that I haven't found the perfect white polish yet.  Sinful Colors is almost perfect in one coat, with just some slight streaking, but it's super thick.  The Sally Hansen is really thin and requires almost 3 coats to be opaque.  So I used one coat Sinful first and then applied one coast of Sally to cover up any bald spots.  I then used my dotting tools to create the different sized dots and voila... mani!

That's all there is for today folks!  I will have my polish hauls from the last 2 weeks up with tomorrows mani and then for Tuesday I will show you how I store my pretties :D  I hope you're weekend has been wonderful and blessed!

Until next time!

Stef <3

A Neon Skittles Mani

Hello hello! :D  Yesterday was such a crazy day!!  Between going to the bank, shopping for a car, purchasing a car, going back to the bank aaaaaannnndd we had a singing gig in the evening... I'm pooped!  We did end up getting a car that's within our budget and we're really pleased with it, so it's a great thing.  Downside... I had no time yesterday to do any chores!  So I'll have to keep this post brief... again... the second day in a row... I'm sorry :(

For today's mani, I wanted to play with the neons in my collection...

Colors Used: Love & Beauty - Orange, Cosmetic Arts - Explosive, Savina - Power Up, Ulta - Blue Streak (not a neon), Sinful Color - Dream On

I really don't have much to say about this mani.  It's very bright and fun, which is why I decided to do it in the first place haha.  I will say, if you've never used neon polishes before, they are thick and can be tricky to work with (the Savina is a bear!).  

So yea... I guess that's it... because I'm super lame and have to go be domesticated and stuff lol.

Until next time!

Stef <3

A Monochromatic Mani (aka Ombre :P)

Good day to you nail art / polish lovers!  It's almost the weekend as much as I love my time off, the next few days are going to be busy and hectic.. bleh.

Well, for today's mani I decided to do a full ombre look (I did a frenchie ombre that you can view here if you'd like :) ).  I love the color grey... a lot!  And grey scale nails just sounded like a great idea, so here they are haha...

 These are my favorite grey's in my collection.  I really like the ombre look, I think it's very fun!  There is another technique that I want to try out where you just use one color polish and add drops of black or white to change the shade. 

Here are the colors used...

Rimmel - Black Satin, Charlotte Russe - Smolder, Julep - Meryl, Confetti - Lonesome Dove, O.P.I. - Skull & Glossbones

Of course, I can't just leave plain polish on my fingers.  I need some pizazz!  Lol so I added my go to glimmer on top.  You know what it is I'm sure...

 China Glaze - Fairy Dust

It's my favorite, what can I say?  It's just so sparkly!!

As a side note, I've had a couple of friends ask me about my manicure techniques.  While I'm still learning myself, I have found some of the tips at Nails by Kayla Shevonne to be quite helpful!  Her "Manicuring 101" series is pretty awesome :)

So that's my post for today... unless you are curious about my recent polish haul ;)  It's after the jump!