On a Trip with a Rockstar Pink DVD

Good morning my lovelies! For your viewing pleasure today I have a lovely purple manicure with pink glitter french tips. I've had every one of these colors for a few months now, but I'm so happy I finally got around to using them. As you can probably see, there was some shrinkage from the time I painted them last night to the time I took the photos this morning.

Wet n Wild Megalast "On A Trip", Sally Hansen HD "DVD", and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear "Rockstar Pink".

The base color is "On A Trip" from Wet n Wild's Megalast collection. It's a purple creme. Their Megalast collection has what Wet n Wild calls a Manicurve Pro Brush. It's very wide and flat. From what I've read on other blogs I think I'm in the minority, but I really like the wide brushes, and at the very least I prefer my polish has a flat brush versus a round brush. The Wet n Wild Megalast collection is available at most retail stores for $1.99.

On top of the purple base I put "DVD" from Sally Hansen's HD collection. It's a metallic purple with blue shimmer. I loved the color the second I saw it in the bottle, but when I got home and swatched it, it turned out to be very, very sheer. As it turns out, pretty much the whole HD collection works best as layering polishes. I've seen some manicures on other blogs where they are layered over black, and they all look wonderful. What I like about layering it over the "On A Trip" is that they're the same shade of purple, so I get that wonderful bottle color in the opaque I'm looking for. I got this one at Walgreens. It's been awhile, but I think it was $6.

I couldn't resist the urge to add some glitter, so I did french tips with "Rockstar Pink" from Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear. It's a lot of pink glitter, with a little bit of purple, red, blue and gold glitter. You can buy this one just about anywhere for $1.99 as well.

Kleancolor "Firework" over Nicole by OPI "Iceberg Lotus"

Happy Memorial Day!

This week's manicure features what I call "messy glitter french tips." Not messy in a bad way, but on purpose. The random nature of the glitter is perfect for free-handing the french tips without using french tip guide stickers.

The base coat is called "Iceberg Lotus" from Nicole by OPI. It's a gorgeous teal shimmer, but it took three coats for full opacity. Luckily it dried quickly. It also has a hint of duochrome in it. Some lights bring out a bluish/purple color, but I couldn't get that to photograph. If I recall correctly, I bought this one at CVS. I have a few other polishes in the metallic turquoise/teal family, and several polishes in shades of metallic blue. What can I say, they're my favorite colors. :)

For the glitter tips I used "Firework" by Kleancolor. It has a clear base with red, gold and turquoise hex glitter, as well as small gold square glitter. This glitter looks great over SO MANY nail polish colors. Kleancolor isn't sold in my area, so I purchased this in a set of other Kleancolor polishes from an eBay seller. I think "Firework" is one of the best ones from the set.

Nicole by OPI "Iceberg Lotus" and Kleancolor "Firework". You can kind of see the duochrome of the Iceberg Lotus in this picture.

Of course, to make it smooth over the glitter I have two coats of Seche Vite on top. Altogether that makes 8 coats of polish at the glitter tips! (Two coats of base, three of the turquoise, one thick coat of glitter, and two of topcoat.) Something I've read about in other blogs and have noticed myself is that the Seche Vite causes some shrinkage of the polish. Not every polish, but definitely glitter polishes. With this manicure it's really obvious on my pinky. I haven't had a problem putting it over cremes.

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!

Welcome!

Welcome to my nail blog! I'm an amateur nail polish addict, and my fascination grows every day. Hopefully my nail polish skills will increase along with my blogging skills. :) My plan is to talk about polishes in all price ranges, and show you my own personal manicures. I promise to get more interesting as I get more experienced!

Last Friday I gave myself a glitter French manicure.

I used Essie "Trophy Wife" for the base color, with Sinful Colors "Nail Junkie" for the glitter tips. The gold line is metallic tape strips you can buy from eBay.

This was only my second attempt at a French Manicure. I'm not very good at painting the French tips freehand, so I have to use the guide stickers. The first time I tried a couple of months ago I thought the polish was dry, but apparently it wasn't, and the guide stickers ruined my polish. :(  I was much happier with this attempt.

Next week I'm planning on a Valentine's manicure... I can't wait!