Some NOTDs: Konad, Muppets OPIs, etc

1 coat of OPI Going Gonzo! over 3 coats OPI Road House Blues

OPI Warm and Fozzie. 3 coats, very interesting multicolored foil.

1 coat of OPI Rainbow Connection over 3 coats of Orly Le Chateau. Rainbow connection takes some dabbing to get the amount of glitter you want. Orly Le Chateau is a very deep blue jellyish creme. It basically looks black after a couple of coats. It's opaque in 2 coats, but I usually use 3 coats for everything.
m57 over Ulta Acid Wash. Acid wash is a light blue with gold duochrome. The gold is prevalent on my nails irl and the result is a color that isn't quite gold or silver.

OPI Skull and Glossbones alone. I forget if this is 3 or 4 coats. It was a bit goopy to apply, but the color is beautiful.
With Konad and Out the Door Northern Lights
Orly Roccoco A-go-go. 3 coats, opaque in 2. Excellent formula, but it's not as cool on the nails as it is in the bottle. Still very lovely
OPI Wocka Wocka! 3 coats, but it's opaque in 2. It's a nice red, but nothing special.
Wocka Wocka! with Orly Prisma Gloss Gold on top.
Orly Androgynie. I used 3 coats. Very pretty black jelly with silver and gold glitter and multicolored hexes. I like it, but the bottle has to be closed and shaken up throughout the application.

Orly Androgynie close-up



Orly Fowl Play. 4 coats. It looks identical to OPI Merry Midnight, in the bottle, but for some reason I prefer the OPI.

NOTD: Holographic Taxicab

Hello, it's been a really long time since I last posted anything. I assure you that I'm working on a few projects, but for now I hope you'll settle for a NOTD of mine from a few weeks ago that was inspired by yellow taxicabs. I used one of the Bundle Monster plates and my Konad black polish over China Glaze It's My Turn. I'm not usually a fan of gold polishes, but this one actually looks decent against my skin. I attempted to show off the holo, but the lighting in my room's been getting worse.

Anyways, that's all for now. I have a couple palettes swatched already, but I haven't labeled them. I'll be trying to post some pictures of a couple of the holiday items within the next few days at least so you guys have something to look at while I find the time to swatch them. I had swatches of the Orly Cosmic FX polishes, but I didn't really like how they turned out. I'm currently trying to decide if I want to reswatch what I have left or post the ones I have (or not post them at all)

Alice in Wonderland semi-inspired NOTD

"`Would you tell me,' said Alice, a little timidly, `why you are painting those roses?'

Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, `Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a red rose-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know. So you see, Miss, we're doing our best, afore she comes, to--' At this moment Five, who had been anxiously looking across the garden, called out `The Queen! The Queen!' and the three gardeners instantly threw themselves flat upon their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps, and Alice looked round, eager to see the Queen. "

--Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

I was originally not planning on doing a themed mani, but my excitement to go see the movie got the better of me. (Unfortunately, my last two attempts to go see this movie have been thwarted, but I'll see it eventually) My original plan was to do a manicure with the 4 playing card suites on my fingers and then a white/red rose on my thumbs, but apparently no such Konad plate exists with spades, clubs, and diamonds..so I ended up doing red roses over white polish. I used the Wine Red Konad Special polish and the large rose pattern from plate m13 over OPI Fit For a Queensland to create this manicure.

Fit For a Queensland was semi-difficult to work with, but not terrible due the the pro-wide brush. It took me 4 coats to smooth out the patchiness and streakiness of the polish, but I feel like I'm fairly happy with the results. (I say 4 coats, but I've found that I tend to use more coats than I've heard other people say they use on other polishes, so it's possible that individual results would vary) It's a nice white/ivory color with fairly subtle pink glowiness in it. Then again I got my particular bottle at Ulta on Clearance in a 2 pack with My Big Break for $5 a while back, so my love for this polish may be slightly biased.

Trial 2-Creating a Gradient Mani Using a Sponge and Regular Polish- A KOTD with Orly Gumdrop and Snowcone

A few months back, I posted a tutorial on how to do an easy gradient using a sponge and the Konad special polishes. I speculated that you could probably do the same thing with regular polishes, but I didn't know this for sure. I was feeling like experimenting this weekend so I gave it a try using 2 polishes from Orly's Sweet collection (Snowcone and Gumdrop). I actually had to run 2 trials for this, as the first time I attempted it, I tried to use China Glaze Fairy Dust to give it that extra sparkle. Unfortunately, 2 coats were required to get the amount of sparkle I wanted..add Seche Vite on top of that to try to dry it all down and it was a super thick disaster that I kept smudging. More on the experimentation after the pictures though.
Here's another picture in the sun
Indoors, natural lighting
Thumb
Indoor lighting, Thumb night of mani...cleanup was hard on my cuticles.
Right hand, indoor natural lighting...my hand's unnaturally red here, but it was the only pic I could take that was nonblurry. I like the gradient better on the right hand anyways. The gradient's a bit stronger rl anyways..but my camera's not the best. It's old..still does the job most of the time though.
Anyways, back to the technicalities of the experimentation. I discovered 2 things the first time around ..that a stamped gradient would work with regular polish... and that a makeup sponge would also work as a tool to do so. Basically, anything with small, fairly uniform holes will work, though a sponge that's appearance is too smooth may be difficult. The one I used for that first attempt had a similar texture to that of the Sonia Kashuk blending sponge. I did find that it took way more time/polish than I had remembered it taking with the Konad special polishes and the sponges that came with my kit. The second time around I gave it a try with a sponge from the kit. It was easier and a bit faster. However, the sponges that came with my Konad kit didn't hold up particularly well using regular polish, and still took longer than the Konad polish. I think this is because Konad special polishes are thicker and more pigmented than regular polish. The dry time also differs by a bit, so you can get more polish onto the nail before you have to reswatch it onto the plate and refill the sponge. The faster dry time of regular polish makes the polish on the sponge somewhat tacky (sticky) after a while, so I had a bit of an issue with bits of the sponge coming off onto my nail and having to pick them out carefully with a pair of tweezers. I also changed the way I smoothed out the gradient a bit. I used smudge fixer to smooth it out initially before topcoating it the first time before the Konad. The final mani was topcoated with Out the Door Northern lights; a nice holographic top coat.

I highly prefer using Out the Door for Konads vs any of my other topcoats. Its thinner texture makes it much easier to quickly coat over a Konad without smudging it after allowing a few minutes for the pattern to set. It's also great because it won't shrink up like Seche does with multiple coats.

Also, if you read my tutorial, you might notice that my cleanup on this mani is significantly better than the one there. I totally have to thank MeganChair for her AMAZING cleanup tutorial. A few things to note about the tutorial:
1. It will still work if you don't use Pure Acetone, but it's much harder to do. Pure Acetone is quick and easy. Pure acetone is, however, really drying. For something like this, I recommend cleaning up as much as you can around the cuticles with a qtip and nail polish remover, then cleaning the gap and areas closest to your nails with a brush and pure acetone.
2. Pure Acetone will eat through the ecoTools Eye Shader brush, albeit slowly. It's made with synthetic fiber, which doesn't hold up well with something as caustic as acetone.
3. Be very careful with acetone..it can eat through plastic and finishes on furniture if you spill it. I had a mishap with my bottle and it started eating through my UDPP bottle and my computer mouse before I managed to clean it up.

Happy Chinese/ Lunar New Year! New Year's Konad and OPI Alice in Wonderand

Happy New Year Ladies! Here is my New Year's NOTD: China Glaze 2030 over Essie Love, Beverly Hills XX. There was no tiger plate, but I tried...lol. I'll apologize in advance for the flipped pictures..blogspot is freaking out on me..and refuses to upload them properly.

Today I have for you the other 2 polishes I bought from OPI's Alice in Wonderland Collection. First up is Mad as a Hatter. This took 4 coats to be fully opaque and was still bumpy after 2 coats of Poshe. I don't like this polish at all..it looks like a New Year's Eve party threw up on my nails...and not in a good way. Despite being a glitter polish, this one just doesn't shine.

2nd is Absolutely Alice. It's not so sparkly here, but really only because my camera couldn't handle the glare from this in sunlight. It's a beautiful polish, way shinier than China Glaze Dorothy Who? and although they're similar in that they're both blue glitter polishes, Absolutely Alice is much nicer to me. It's a vibrant blue glitter with a lot of gold sprinkled throughout vs the silver in Dorothy Who? and just gorgeous. It looks totally bah until you topcoat it though...as you'll see below. This is 3 coats, 2 coats of Poshe..and still kinda bumpy after it, but not too bad.

Despite the bad lighting in the following pictures, these are here to show you the quirks. This is what it looked like freshly Topcoated...nice and shiny
This is what it looks like before the topcoat. Note that it's dull and boring and kind of ugly...
I'm not sure if this had to do with my topcoat or not, but I've heard this happen to a few people with both Absolutely Alice and Mad as a Hatter..but they have the tendency to pop off in full pieces...Anyways..that's all for now..I did finish taking stash pics of my polishes, but I did also just order some Elizabeth Ardens, so I'll wait to post those after I get them...I will not be posting polish stash with my makeup stash however as the polish stash alone was over 100 pictures.

A few NOTDs

I apologize for my complete lack of makeup related updates...the weather here has been absolutely awful and there's been almost no sun for weeks, except for a brief peek from time to time which tends to fill my room with a brief flash of blinding light before disappearing again. (It's far too brief for me to do much). Anyways, what little light I get I have been using to slowly take stash pics (which is going much more slowly than anticipated also because I can't seem to get enough polish) Anyways, here's most of my NOTDs since my last posting (I figured that posting a few at a time is easier than doing this day by day, but let me know what you guys think)

I'm going to go in reverse order. Here's what I have on right now; OPI Brand New Skates. This has been in my untrieds since my nail polish stash numbered at like 15 polishes. (basically since this holiday collection was released) I had a mini of this and since mini OPIs are harder to use than the full sized ones, I went ahead and bought a full size of this on Monday. I love gray np so it wasn't a huge dive for me. Anyways, this is actually day 3. I'm testing out a new base coat and so far, so good. I have very minimal tip wear on only 3 fingers..and I am VERY tough on my hands. The formula of this is definitely on the sheer side. This is 4 thin coats, though 3 was decently opaque as well. Brand new skates is a gunmetal gray with what I'd like to think of as gold microflakies. In dim lighting the gold doesn't show up much, but once the sun hits it, the gold shines beautifully. It's definitely a really pretty color.
Next up we have Misa Sorry Just Can't Help it. For some reason every picture I took in natural lighting came out really blue. It really doesn't look like this at all. It's a warm purple cream that's opaque in 2 thin coats (If you prefer doing thick coats, you can probably get this in 1) I did 3 coats out of habit though.
I konaded over it, and this picture is taken in really warm lighting but this picture is more accurate, though the actual color is just a touch cooler than this. This is China Glaze OMG konaded over Misa Sorry Just Can't Help It, with Out the Door Nothern Lights Silver Holographic top coat over it.
Lastly I have Sally Hansen Hi-Def. Hi-def is a great lime green that just glows like it's lit from within. (must be the liquid crystals). There's 3 pics of this just for fun, and to show how well it brings out the green in Zero's eyes. This polish is definitely on the sheer side. This was also 3 coats.


Anyways, that's all for now. Hopefully the sun will come out again soon and I can get a real post in for you guys.

NARS Doucers de Paris (Pleasures of Paris) palette and Christmas NOTD

Merry Xmas everyone! Today I have swatches of the NARS Doucers de Paris palette or the Pleasures of Paris palette. This palette contains 6 shades (Nepal, and retails for $50 on NARS's site or at Saks. Of the 3 6 pan eyeshadow palettes NARS put out this year, this one's my favorite.

Nepal is a bronzed peach shade
Violetta is a very nice smooth matte grayed light purple
Demon Lover is a dark matte purple
Fez is a beautiful bronze
Abyssinia is a smooth beige color
Cordura is a deep brown with gold shimmer


I also did my nails for the holidays. I woke up after the sun had gone down yesterday, so here's my mani on day 2 yet again. It's China Glaze 2030 over Zoya Isla (3 coats)

Tutorial: Quick Gradient polish and Konad Stamping

Woohoo! 50th post on here (that number seems a bit odd to me, but that's the count blogspot is giving me. Anyways, Babybubblz requested I do a Konad tutorial, so today I'm writing out a quick tutorial (with pictures) regarding Konads, using today's NOTD as an example.
This is today's NOTD. My inspiration for this was the colors of autumn leaves...unfortunately, Konad doesn't see, to have a leaf design..just lots of flowers. The result reminds me more of Chinese New Year.
This is what I used for this endeavor; Base coat, Top coat, a white polish (I used ORLY White Tips), and 4 konad special polishes (you can use less, for the gradient I suspect that normal polishes would work), a plastic plate, a sponge, a konad plate, scraper, and stamp.
1. Since I don't feel like redoing my nails right now, I did this tutorial using a plastic plate. First, apply your favorite base coat. This will help your polish last longer and prevent staining. After this dries, apply the white polish to your nails. This will help the colors stand out more, and should prevent any staining if you're using the special polishes.
2. After the white polish dries, swatch the colors you will be using on a plastic plate next to each other. I used 3 polishes for this, but I'm sure you can get away with any 2 colors you want. I used the special polishes that came with the salon set, but I think regular polishes might work as well for this, particularly ones that are easily opaque in 1 or 2 coats.
3. Press your sponge onto the plate to pick up the color.
For the sponge, I know Konad makes packs of sponges from the catalog that came with my salon kit, but I'm not sure where you'd get them as wowsocool.com and OCnailart don't sell these packs (They do sell Konad Sponge Nail art kits, but I don't think the mini kits come with a lot of sponges). The sponges in the kit feel a lot like some packing foam, so maybe you can use those.
4. Dab the sponge onto your nails. You may have to repeat steps 2-4 until you get your desired opacity. (particularly if you aren't using special polishes) The result will look kind of texturized, as so..not a big deal...we'll be fixing this with the next step. Unfortunately I neglected to wait for the white polish to dry completely before doing the sponge art, so it messed up the results just a bit.
Here's what it basically looks like with a white base under the colors:
Here's what it looks like without the base; the colors over a base look more vibrant.
You don't have to let this dry all the way.
5. Take your favorite top coat and apply it over the gradient. Use it to blend the colors together. (You can see how it became kind of messy since I didn't let the white dry all the way..so the rest of this tutorial I will use the one without the base)
white base:
No base:
6. Clean up the area around your nails with a q-tip and remover. Voila! you're done creating a cool, easy to do gradient. It doesn't take much longer than a regular mani.

That concludes the gradient portion of the tutorial. One thing to watch out for when doing this is: dab gently...dabbing harder transfers color more easily, but you're more likely to get it all over your cuticles like I did.

If you want to put a pattern on top of this like I did, here's what you do:

1. Pick any design you desire. I used a design from plate m5.
2. Swatch the special polish of your choice over the design
3. Scrape off the excess polish with your scraper. I prefer the plastic scrapers. They don't scratch up the plate as much and leave the right amount of polish remaining. (sorry, blurry pic)
You don't have to perfectly scrape away all of the polish...streaks are fine as long as they aren't thick.
4. Pick up the design with your stamp. To do this, simply press the rubber stamp down on the design quickly after scraping. Speed is key for this since the polish will dry fairly quickly, making it hard to pick up the full design if you're slow. The easiest way I've found to do this is after applying the special polish to the plate, I scrape off the excess polish with my left (nondominant) hand, then follow by pressing the stamp down with my right (dominant). I also really like the double ended stamper. The smaller end is great for picking up partial designs, which gives you more things you can do with a plate.
5. Transfer the design onto your nail with a a gentle rolling motion. Unlike the last step, you don't need to do this that quickly. Take your time to line up the design where you want it. (Don't take TOO long though or the design will set on the stamp).

6. Let the design set a bit by waiting a few minutes, then lock the design in with your favorite top coat. Apply the top coat quickly to your nail, don't go over the same brush stroke twice. If you go over the same area more than 1x, you have a good chance of smudging the pattern. This was also the reason why it was easy to use top coat to blend the gradient in the above tutorial. Instead, if you feel that your application of the top coat was uneven, go over it a 2nd time after the first coat of TC has dried.

That concludes the stamping portion of my tutorial. One of the things I really like to do before stamping is apply a layer of top coat between whatever polish I'm using and the design. It helps the layers beneath dry faster, ensuring that I'm less likely to mess up what I've already done. The 2nd reason why I do this is because If I mess up stamping the design, I don't have to start over. What I do is I wet a qtip with remover, and use it to gently remove the pattern from the nail. This way I don't take any of what I'm stamping over away and can just stamp on top of it. This does take away the shine already on my nail, but since I use top coat to lock the design onto my nail, this doesn't become an issue. I hope you enjoyed this tutorial.