Funky Black French Tips

This weekend I did a fun and funky French Tip manicure. I used two inexpensive polishes, too. As usual I started with a clear base coat, then I applied two coats of Wet n Wild fastdry "Teal Or No Teal". Once they were dry I put on my tip guide stickers and applied one coast of Wet n Wild fastdry "Ebony Hates Chris" to the tips. Then I topped it off with my NEW Seche Vite fast dry top coat. The "Teal Or No Teal" has gorgeous metallic shimmer!

Wet n Wild fastdry "Ebony Hates Chris" and Wet n Wild fastdry "Teal Or No Teal". 

A short and sweet blog post this week, folks!

Tape manicures are easy!

So this week I decided to do an angled contrast manicure using Scotch Tape. This was my first time using Scotch tape as part of my manicure, and it was easy! After my clear base coat, I put on a layer of Wet n Wild "Haze of Love", and after it was good and dry I angled pieces of Scotch Tape across the back half of my fingernails. Then I topped the remaining section with "Shine of the Times", from the Essie Luxeffects collection. Then I removed the tape and finished with my Sally Hansen top coat. I'm very happy with the finished manicure!

Wet n Wild "Haze of Love" & Essie "Shine of the Times".

Let me tell you how impressed I am with the "Haze of Love" from Wet n Wild! It's from their Megalast line. What you see in the first picture is only ONE COAT of nail polish. It's kind of a thick coat, but still! The day I bought this color I also bought another Wet n Wild Megalast called "On a Trip", a purple creme color. I hope it's just as good. The polishes in the Megalast line also have a new "Manicurve Pro" brushes, which I think I liked. If all the colors in the line are as good as the "Haze of Love" they are a great value. They retail for about $2 or less.

I bought the Essie "Shine of the Times" last month, and the effect is just wonderful! It's got these gorgeous color-shifting holographic flakies in it. I should have used it sooner. Essie is a bit pricier and retails for about $8.

Luck O' The Irish!

Does everyone have their green ready for St. Patrick's Day? I'm not sure what I'm wearing on Saturday yet, but I know how my fingernails will be dressed. For my St. Patrick's Day manicure I went for the gold, and added just a little green:

It's very subtle and understated, but I think it might be my favorite manicure so far. The gold is "Bite Me!" from Pure Ice ($1.99 at WalMart), and the green tape strips I bought on ebay. At the same time I bought the gold I also purchased a green from Pure Ice, called "Tease Me", because I was thinking about doing gold with green tips or green with gold tips, but I'm satisfied with my end result. I topped it off with my Sally Hansen Quick Dry top coat, but it always leaves air bubbles in my polish, which you can see if you look closely. One of these days I'm going to have to try the Seche Vite Dry Fast top coat that people rave about.

I've have several recently purchased glitter top coats that I can't wait to try out... maybe next week! All in good time, I guess. Also, I've decided what my least favorite part of manicures are: removing the old polish! Such a pain, and the aforementioned glitters are the worst!

Glitter!

Well, I just did a really quick manicure this week. Both my kids were sick this weekend, and there just wasn't much time to paint my nails. I combined one of my recent purchases with an older glitter I had never gotten around to using. I have a yellow base from Sally Hansen's HD line, called "Hue" with a coat of Bon Bon's long turquoise glitter over it. I couldn't find a name on the Bon Bon's bottle. The Sally Hansen HD line used to be widely available, but I think they are from last season and no longer available in smaller stores. I found mine at Ulta. 


I went to Ulta intending to find a high-end polish that I liked, but I ended up buying two cheaper polishes because I also bought a trial size of some Philosophy's "Hope In A Jar" moisturizer ($15 for the trial/travel size!!) that I've heard such good things about.


I also got a new organizer for my manicure stuff. I had been storing them in a tote for cleaning supplies, but as you can see, my collection was growing too big:

It was important that I get something portable. Sometimes I like to take my stuff to a friend's house for manicure night. I ended up with a Neatnix "toolbox" that I found at Archiver's. It's also available from Amazon. I have plenty of room for more now!