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.

Wet 'n' Wild 8 Pan Eyeshadow Palettes

Last weekend I picked up the 3 new 8 pan Wet 'n' Wild eyeshadow palettes at my local Walgreens. They retail for $4.99 and are a great value for the money. For the most part I like them, despite generally being a total brand whore, but Wet 'n' Wild has always been one of those exceptions for me; the quality is always great.


First up is the beautifully neutral toned Comfort Zone. The quality on this one is nice; it's soft and pigmented and delightful to apply. I do feel like the left side of the palette is too warm for my taste, but I love the green side of the palette (minus the ugly warm brown duochrome shade)

The second palette is Petal Pusher, the purple toned palette in the new collection. Again, one side is cooler toned than the other. The cooler toned left side is far less pigmented than the other. I had a bit of trouble applying the lid shade without packing it on, and even then it didn't show up too well. I haven't applied the right side yet, but it swatched pretty nicely. I would say that this is the least pigmented of the 3 palettes, which is a bit dissapointing to me because I'm fond of purple eyeshadows.

The last palette; Blue Had Me at Hello is the most pigmented of the 3 palettes, and oddly enough my favorite. I'm wearing the right side of the palette today, and it applied smoothly and coordinated perfectly. The silver shade is also the most amazing silver I've come across. I feel like this palette is worth it for that shade alone if nothing else. I am a little bummed that they shoved two black shades in this palette that are nearly identical; the glitter in the right side of the palette falls off pretty much immediately leaving it identical to the other black shade. The blue on the left side is also black based; making it come off as nearly black on my lids. I really wish that the creative team at Wet 'n' Wild had seen fit to put a different shades in here, but I'm still happy with the palette overall.

The last thing I have for you ladies today is my manicure for the day; China Glaze Cracked Concrete over ORLY Cashmere Cardigan. It's not my favorite combination, but it works I guess.

Nail Polish Stash Part 4- Essies and Orlys

Today's set of stash photos are of my Essie and Orly polishes... sadly I think that my Essies tend to stay untried for really long periods of time. I'm not entirely sure why, but they just seem to stick around in my untrieds drawer the longest...I've only tried maybe 7 of them so far...anyways...enjoy the bottle pics, and let me know if you want to see anything swatched/worn.

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.

Great finds at Ross, TJ Maxx and Rite Aid, OPI Merry Midnight and ORLY Pixie Dust

I went to Ross today and found a couple of great Color Club sets for $7.99 each. I got the Glitter Vixen Set, which contains a set of 7 glitter polishes, and the Dance with the Musique collection.

The colors in the Glitter Vixen Set are:
Sex Symbol- Silver glitter
Magic Attraction- Silver Holographic glitter
Sultry Diva- gold glitter
Art of Seduction- red glitter
Sexy Siren- blue glitter
Object of Envy- green glitter
Tru Passion- lightish purple glitter
All of these colors are basically different colored glitters in a clear base

The colors in the Dance with the Musque set are :
Feel the Beat- shimmery red-orange
Velvet Rope- pink based red with slight gold microshimmer throughout
Slow Jam- maroon, coppery microshimmer
Electronica- blue based purple with violet-pink shimmer throughout. I totally bought this set because of this color alone..though the other colors in the set are nice
Groove Thang- black based purple with purple shimmer
After Hours- Dark grey with silver shimmer throughout
and a clear topcoat

From TJ Maxx I picked up a Barielle Nail brightener for $3.99, which appears to be a sheer white pearlescent polish in the bottle, as well as 2 Essie polishes for $4 each in Looking for Love and Great expectations. Then I went next door to Rite ait where they had these cutte little snowman polishes for the holidays. I picked one up in a gold color with holographic shimmer in it, and amangenta-purple one with lots of holographic glitter in it for $1.99 each.


I also have a couple NOTD swatches for you guys...First up is Today's NOTD which is ORLY Pixie Dust. It's a nice, slightly bluish grey that looks a lot like a creme with a lot of silver microglitter dispersed throughout it. I'm pretty happy with the color and application of this one.
The picture below is a bit warm...The second one was my NOTD from a couple days ago. This one's OPI MErry Midnight, which is a nice dark violet color with a lot of lighter violet flakies in it. This polish is beautiful and no camera comes close to doing this color justice...

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.