Base: OPI Smitten with Mittens

Glitter: China Glaze Twinkle Lights

(Natural light)

Hi everyone!  I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving if you celebrated.  I certainly did and we have lots of tasty leftovers.  Now that Thanksgiving is over I am excited to start doing some holiday and winter nail designs.  My first one is a fairly easy glitter gradient.  I freehanded this but next time I think I will sponge the glitter on so I can get a less dense fade to the base color.  My base color is the somewhat HTF OPI Smitten with Mittens.  I was lucky enough to snag this polish on a dusty hunt.  It was from OPI's 2009 Holiday Wishes collection.  The glitter I used for the tips is China Glaze Twinkle Lights, another color from this year's holiday collection, Let It Snow.  It has gold, green and red glitter in it, but the gold dominates.

 OPI Smitten with Mittens, ChG Twinkle Lights

(Natural light, overcast)

 OPI Smitten with Mittens, ChG Twinkle Lights

(Direct sunlight)

 OPI Smitten with Mittens, ChG Twinkle Lights

(Intentionally blurred to show sparkle)

OPI Smitten with Mittens, ChG Twinkle Lights

(Macro) 

Do you do holiday mani's in December?  If anyone has any requests for me please feel free to comment on my Facebook page (can be found in the sidebar) or email me!

 Nfu-Oh 49, China Glaze Velvet Bow

  Nfu-Oh 49, China Glaze Velvet Bow

  Nfu-Oh 49, China Glaze Velvet Bow

  Nfu-Oh 49, China Glaze Velvet Bow

Orly Fowl Play (indoors, artificial light)

Hello, readers! Today I have a more simple NOTD for you... I'm wearing 3 coats of Orly Fowl Play. FP was part of Orly's Birds of a Feather collection released this fall. It is a beautiful deep purple jelly with reddish orange flakies in it. It also has some glitters that flash blue and green, and a smaller silvery shimmer. It is a dupe for a more HTF OPI polish called Merry Midnight. I don't own that polish, but I am sure glad I grabbed this one! Be sure to check out the macro shot of it at the end of this post. Also, please excuse my slightly hair color stained hands... it has been busy at work and that is one of the hazards of being a hair stylist!

Orly Fowl Play (indoors, flash)

Orly Fowl Play (macro, flash)

You are gonna want to click this one to enlarge it guys, the depth in this polish is awesome!

Base color: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Coco-a-Go-Go

Dots: China Glaze Cross Iron 360, CND Gold Chrome, CND Copper Chrome

Hello again!  I loved the fall colors that I used for my last mani so much that I decided to use them again for my next one.  I picked up some dotting tools from the beauty supply a couple weeks ago and had not tried them out yet, so I decided to play around with them!  I was very happy with how this turned out.  The dotting tools are really easy to use. I can't wait to try them out for other designs.

 

 The set of 5 dotting tools I got.

 

Base color: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Coco-a-Go-Go

Dots: China Glaze Cross Iron 360, CND Gold Chrome, CND Copper Chrome

 Base colors: China Glaze Cross Iron 360, Sally Hansen Coco-a-Go-Go

Stamp colors: SH CAGG, CND Gold Chrome, CND Copper Chrome

BM plates 19 and 04

(indoors, artificial light, no flash) 

Today I wanted to do one of my first seasonal manicures.  I am really looking forward to cooking (and then eating!!) Thanksgiving dinner with Mr. Sparkles next week, so I wanted to do something inspired by that.  I used some leaf designs from my Bundle Monster plates.

The orange nails with the brown stamp were done using one of the full nail designs on the BM19 plate.  The accent nails were stamped several times with a 3 leaf design from BM04.  I used both CND Copper Chrome and Gold Chrome for those, which are great to stamp with.

 Base colors: China Glaze Cross Iron 360, Sally Hansen Coco-a-Go-Go

Stamp colors: SH CAGG, CND Gold Chrome, CND Copper Chrome

BM plates 19 and 04

(photo taken with flash)

Base colors: China Glaze Cross Iron 360, Sally Hansen Coco-a-Go-Go

Stamp colors: SH CAGG, CND Gold Chrome, CND Copper Chrome

BM plates 19 and 04

(indoors, artificial light, no flash) 

I hope these nails get you into the Thanksgiving spirit!  What is your favorite part of the holiday?

My current polish stash and storage.

Hello everyone!  Just wanted to share with you my polish workspace.  Mr. Sparkles was sweet and thoughtful enough to set up a whole table for me to use for cosmetic purposes.  He also helped me build a custom, free-standing polish rack.  We were inspired by a YouTube video tutorial by TheEasyDIY. (The video can be found .)

After watching the video we decided to completely customize the design.  We began by counting my polishes. (67... more than I thought I had!!)  Next we measured the tallest bottles, so we could decide what the height of each shelf should be.  Then we measured the widest bottles, to decide how wide each shelf should be.  Pictured below is a plan we made in order to be sure we got the most use out of the single sheet of foam board.  Lastly, we added some feet to ensure stability.



I am super happy with how it turned out.  It is very nice to have all my polishes lined up and be able to see all the colors.  I will soon run out of space on it though... I guess we will just have to build another!

How do you all store your polishes?  How big is your stash?

Zoya Ivanka (Indoors, artificial light, no flash)

Hello, Readers!  Today I want to share a new polish I received in the mail a couple days ago.  Zoya ran an awesome promo on Halloween where they gave everyone 2 free polishes, you only had to pay shipping.  How could I resist taking advantage of that!!  The polishes that I picked up were Pippa, a yellow cream, and Ivanka, an emerald green glass fleck.  Ivanka is from Zoya's Sparkle Collection, which also included Charla, Mimi, Alegra, Nidhi, and Gilda.  I already have Charla, and now that I have Ivanka I realized how much I *love* this finish!  It has the sparkle of a glitter polish, with a MUCH easier removal.  The first picture is most accurate of Ivanka's color, IMO.

I also picked up a bottle of Remove+ with my order, since I've been wanting to try it out, and I have read so many rave reviews.  After trying it for myself, I'm a convert.  It has a lavender scent to it, and when it dries down on my hand it doesn't even smell like I just used polish remover!  I'm amazed.  It's also non-drying.  I tried to make a homemade version of this stuff that involves adding glycerine to regular acetone, but as far as I'm concerned, it doesn't measure up.

Zoya products can be purchased on Zoya.com.  A polish retails for $8 and the 8oz bottle of Remove+ retails for $9.99.

On to the pictures!

Base: OPI DS Glow
Stamp color: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Coco-a-Go-Go
Plate: M57

Good Morning, everyone!  Today I have my mani from yesterday to show you. It was my favorite, animal print!  I have loved animal prints for a loooong time, and that fact was actually what made me decide to get the Konad/Bundle Monster stamping stuff.  I was in love with all these cute zebra and leopard mani's I saw everyone doing with the M57 plate.  I was interested in the other designs as well, but the leopard print is certainly what pushed me over the edge.
 

When I first ordered the stamping stuff I was a little nervous!  I had read about people ordering and being so frustrated by them that they tried once and never used them again.  I tend to be very picky about things like that too, so I was really worried that if the designs weren't placed perfectly I would also become easily frustrated by the whole thing.  Once I got the stuff in the mail (I ordered all mine from ) I gave it a try... I was pleasantly surprised at how easy I found it.  Now, I am certainly still working on my skills.  There are tricks that I am trying to learn, such as turning the stamp horizontally and stamping twice on my thumb nails when the design is not wide enough to cover my whole nail.

Anyway, for these nails I used an OPI DS polish called Glow.  It is a really pretty golden-copper foil.  Its very sparkly, and covered well enough for me in 2 coats.  Removal was much easier than a glitter polish, so it is a great alternative to that.  I love this color for fall.
 

My stamping polish was Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Coco-a-Go-Go which is one of their new fall shades.  It is a nice chocolate brown color with bronze shimmer to it.  I bought this specifically to use for stamping, since I had heard most Insta-Dri polishes are good for that, and I am happy with how it worked.
 

The rest of the photos after the jump! 

 (Indoors, Flash)

Base: 2 coats of OPI Roadhouse Blues

Stamp: Color Club Worth The Risque

Plates: BM14, BM20, BM21

Hello Readers!  This is my first blog post and I am so excited to be starting up this new endeavor.

A bit of background about me: I'm 27, and live with my fiancé and our 2 kitties.  I work at a salon as a hairstylist in Houston, TX.  I have always been interested in hair, makeup and nails.  Lately I have been feeling very inspired by all this awesome nail art I see on other people's blogs (some of my favorites are Chalkboard Nails, Nailside, Chloe's Nails, Canadian Nail Fanatic, and Let Them Have Polish) and around the message boards on Makeup Alley.  I decided I wanted to join in on this fun and hopefully inspire some people with my own nail art!  I also want to continue to improve upon my skills, and learn new techniques.