easter floral

as promised, here's my second easter mani (the one i actually wore on easter day)! what can i say, i love easter!

base color: nail enamel n

white stamping: jordana white

yellow dots: revlon colorstay buttercup

 pink dots: mix of jordana white + wet 'n wild wild shine red red

image plate: mash 46

i didn't really like this stamping when i first did it, but it definitely grew on me the longer i had it on my nails. it's kinda cutesy, but perfect for easter.

i didn't have a pale pink creme, so i got creative and just mixed white and red! how's that for saving a couple bucks?

another 100 yen store polish

this is the purple version of this polish, called nail enamel n. what a snooze of a name. but a pretty polish nonetheless!

3 coats nail enamel n

i only have one picture for you guys today. . . . sorry :S. all the other pics i took before i stamped over it were crap. but at least i got this one pretty one! look at all that silver and gold shimmer. i had to do 3 coats for opacity, but they were thin so it was still easy to work with and dried fast.

come back tomorrow to see the stamping i did over this! a little teaser: it's another easter mani!

rise & shine & glitter

guess what i woke up to this morning? tons of snow outside my window! that's probably not so weird to some of you, but for nashville, it's pretty darn unusual. of course it would snow on a saturday, when i don't have to teach at school anyway. why couldn't it snow yesterday??

2 coats sinful rise and shine + 1 coat ac-ned-37

ahh, this manicure totally feels like me. green with gold and green duochrome glitter. perfect. you can see in this last picture the color shift from gold to emerald green. sooo pretty :). i wish i'd bought another one of these glitter polishes when i was in japan last christmas. . . .

if you're loving this glitter topcoat as much as i am, try sinful pinky glitter. it has very similar glitter in it, although i think it flashes more colors than just gold and green. but i think it's a pretty fair substitute. enjoy your saturday, and may your fingernails be covered in glitter~!

christmas glitterbomb

i wasn't feeling the red and green thing this christmas, so i chose gold and glitter instead.

1 coat revlon gold coin + 1 coat ac nail enamel d 23 + 1 coat pure ice the family jewels

ac nail enamel d 23 is a polish i got from the japanese 100 yen store that (i think) is a dupe for china glaze techno. and the family jewels is a polish i just picked up recently. it has gold glitter and gold holographic diamond glitter in a clear base. it's pretty dense on its own, but it was a little hard to fish the diamond glitter out. but still, this was lots of fun to look at :).

even though i loved this manicure, it was a royal pain to remove. i'm really missing my normal acetone remover these days :S. regular just isn't the same. . . . ah well, it's all worth it, right?

look what i found (and made~!)

a super random post for today. when i started this blogging endeavor, i swore i wouldn't be one of those blogs that posts a couple of polish swatches with tons of other random pics that doesn't have anything to do with anything. i promise i won't make a habit out of it :P.

anyways, look what i found while digging through my (vastly disorganized) closet yesterday!!

figlia paris purple 2

i found my oldest polish's long lost sibling! it fell out of a shoe (of all things) and my eyes almost bugged out of my head. isn't it beautiful? when i first found it, it was all dried up and stuck to the sides, but i added a lot of polish thinner, and now there's more than half a bottle! score!

and in other randomness, my silk robe imitation manicure is still going strong (as is my love for macarons)-

i just made these key lime macarons yesterday and i love them. macaron-making has been an obsession and hobby of mine for a couple of years now. i just think the pastel colors and the shape are so adorable, and i love that you can make them in pretty much any flavor you want.

if there's any interest in how to make these, i'd be happy to share! wouldn't "manicures and macarons" have been the cutest blog name?? oh well, too late now :P.

POLISH DAYS: sentimental

would you like to see the oldest and weirdest polish in my entire collection?

2 coats figlia paris yellow 3 over 1 coat pale gray franken

pink flash

orange/gold duochrome

random holo glitter~

this is an old polish from the japanese 100 yen store that i bought (i think) as a freshman in high school. . . . so 2002? 2003? somewhere around there. it doesn't have a name, just yellow 3 (written in japanese, of course). on paper, it sounds like a hot mess: a sheer yellow-ish green base with a hot pink/magenta/orange/copper/gold duochrome flash, and a smattering of holographic glitter thrown in just for giggles. apparently my 14 year old self had very odd taste. she also didn't know about layering sheer polishes over opaque ones, so i'm sure this looked awful and made my nails look stained.

i guess i really liked this polish, because half of the bottle is gone. i had forgotten all about this poor little guy, until i randomly discovered it about a year ago in an old purse. weird. if i remember correctly, i also had a lavender version that was gorgeous. same pink/gold duochrome flash and holo glitter. i wish i had that one to show you.

so what do you think of my sentimental polish? i like it, mainly because it's old and because it's from japan (i'm a little biased :P). if you're particularly taken with the look of this polish, i'm guessing you could recreate a similar feel using these polishes-

opi sit under the apple tree, sally hansen diamond strength brilliant blush, claire's glitter top coat