Wednesday 14 December 2011

Hey lovelies! I've had less time than originally planned, but I'm still going to be posting more than I was (no posts in two months was full of fail). I thought I'd make at least one post before driving 12 hours to NYC tomorrow! Super excited to find an Ulta!! I have to limit myself though LOL. My budget for the 3-4 day trip is about $60, not including hotel and food. Polish is so much cheaper in the States though! And there are so many brands we don't have here. You lucky ducks don't know how good you have it!
So this is my NOTW. Sally Hansen Purple Pizzaz with a layer of OPI Rainbow Connection. I was originally going to do a jelly sandwich (attempted on my ring ringer) but decided I didn't like it. I mattified it and left the rest as they were. LOVE Rainbow Connection over this purple!!

<3Oreo

Friday 9 December 2011

Ode to Fingers (Also, I'm Still Alive!)

ALSO, HOLY CRAP NEW FOLLOWERS.
Hi you guys! You came at a bad time! Where the heck did you come from? XD

I'm not going to say I'm a horrible blogger, because it's my party and I can cry if i want t--uh, well, you know. Stuff.

My semester at school really picked up, and I had a hard time finding time/motivation to sit down and write blog posts. I even stopped taking pictures of manicures I've been doing for other people :o
BUT FEAR NOT! I have folders upon folders on my desktop just BURSTING with pictures. Some of them even have subfolders.

As I'm writing this, I only have one paper left to write for the semester. Thanks to a good (academic) partner and the most amazing prof ever, this last paper is practically writing itself. I feel really good about it! It's due Monday the 12th, and then I have a whole month of Holiday Cheer to blog my little heart out! The plan is to blast through as many of these posts as I can before January 9th when I go back to classes. That might mean multiple posts a day, some days with no posts, or strings of days with posts all crammed together. I'm super excited :D

For now, here are a few pictures to tide you over until I finish this paper!
This was OPI The "It" Color base, and Swimsuit... Nailed It! for stamping. The more I looked at my nails, the more I knew they needed a little something extra.

I pulled out my bottle of Swimsuit... Nailed It! again and added some Fingers-patented funky french tips! Usually I fail at tips, but the oddly flat OPI brush made it a lot easier. 

And just for lulz, here's a picture of my cat being adorable while sleeping. You'd never know she's a furry evil bitch. She recently lost three pounds and seems to be showing off her new ability to kick herself in the face with her back paw. Toe fluff!

So, lovelies, how have you been? New lovelies, do you enjoy the tl;dr or are you just here for the pics?
Much <3, Oreo

Wednesday 5 October 2011

Autism Awareness


October is Autism Awareness Month! I was going to just paint my nails the color of the awareness ribbon, but the ribbon looks like this. It didn't look easy, but neither is autism, so I gave it a go :) I used Sally Hansen White On, China Glaze Lemon Fizz and For Audrey, Clairns 221 Golden Red, and ACO Electric Chic. My pinky looks ridiculously curved. I promise it doesn't look like that in person. I don't know what happened there. Also, this is about as close as I can get to my lens without it being blurry-- even on macro setting. I may have to ask for a nicer camera for Christmas o.o

<3Oreo

Sunday 2 October 2011

Summer lovin', had me a blast~

SO. I had an interesting week. Did you?
I had a major nasty-butt headache that lasted about 3 days and wouldn't go away for more than a few hours. Fortunately it went away yesterday long enough for me to conduct an interview for class and then be treated to supper afterwards, but it's threatening to come back today to accompany my brand spankin' new sore throat! 5 more days until Thanksgiving weekend and I can run home to my momma and some chicken soup... and turkey dinner... OH AND MY NAIL MAIL FROM Fingers!!! It has been impatiently waiting on my kitchen table at home for WEEKS.

So last week was void of posts because somehow, don't ask me how, people have started catching me on campus and booking appointments to come get their nails done. If I post open invitations and leave my door open, nobody shows up. Elite clientele list it is! XD So yeah, between coursework, the never-ending headache and the fairly steady stream of appointments (out of nowhere), no posts. I have come to terms with the fact that I update about once a week... I don't like it, but that's how it is for now I guess. I'm trying to update more! I guess if I have more to add during the week, I will. If these appointments keep up, I should be blogging every Tuesday and Thursday night (those afternoons fill up with appointments). This is crazy.

So in keeping with what I said about relevant manicures, here's one I did as an experiment and also to use my Layla Magneffect polish that I picked up in mid August(!!!!), before I saw them on any other blogs. And now that I'm getting around to posting it, of course, they're all over the place :P


This is OPI Houston We Have A Purple (2 coats), then a coat of Sally Girl umm... I can't find a name. 812011? The blue and purple glitter in a clear base, anyway. (have you guys noticed that the Sally Girl polishes changed their bottle ink from that scratchy textured stuff to plain white/offwhite?) Then a third coat of HWHAP. The purple was more purple and less blue in person, as always. It looked to me what China Glaze Flying Dragon should look like if it dried to bottle color (and was jelly, and had bigger glitter). I got bored at some point and mattified my middle finger, then got bored again and added shiny polka dots.


As for the Layla (08 Velvet Groove), I was completely against buying it. I ooh and aah'd over the display, and over the employee's nails they were swatched on, but at $16 a bottle they were way above what I'm willing to pay for a bottle of nail polish. My mother, being the hypocritic enabler she is (you have WAY TOO MUCH nail polish! You're never going to use all that! OhmyGOSH you HAVE to buy this one it's SO PRETTY. :P), decided that she wanted a magnetic manicure and gave me a choice of colors she liked to pick from. And then my mother, Mrs You Need To Go On A No-Buy, bought me a $16 bottle of nail polish because it was neat. And then she wonders why/how I have so much nail polish. I told her about Deborah Lippmann and Chanel. She just about crashed the car. XD 


Yay bad lighting! I really need to figure out something for taking pictures after dark. This, before you panic, is NOT MY HAND. This is one of my friends who came over. You don't leave my room with naked nails LOL. She had a really hard time picking out colors, but she finally settled on one hand in OPI The One That Got Away with a Layla accent nail....


And Wet'n'Wild Teal Of Fortune with a Layla accent on the other hand. Light green stamping in an attempt to unify the colors a bit. The more I use Teal Of Fortune, the deeper in love with it I fall. It just looks so pretty with EVERYTHING stamped over it. I stamped a deep purple over it on Tuesday, and it was gorgeous. Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of that. I spent half the week chasing people down on campus with my camera because I kept forgetting to take pictures LOL. Side note with the Layla polishes... if you mess up, for the love of all things chocolate, do NOT just re-paint over the nail and try again. You have to take it off and restart. When you layer it, the magnet tries to pull through ALL the metallic pigments, and it looks terrible.

Mmm I think that's enough for one day :P
<3Oreo

Tuesday 20 September 2011

NOTW Again!!

This is so pretty. I can't stop looking at my nails. I hadn't stamped in a while, so I kind of got in the mood to show off to people who didn't see my nails last year XD


Orly's Fantasea with Nail Art Diva in Tulip Pink stamped on. When I first painted my nails, I had no idea what to do with the color. I stared at it for two full hours before deciding that a pale pink would look best. I didn't think I had one that would work, but sure enough, I do! This picture shows the multicolor flashes in Fantasea, but I hate how the stamp went so crooked on my ring finger... so, my right hand makes another appearance!


Fantasea is an odd duck. The best description I can come up with is "purple-pink-copper". People always think that description SOUNDS like a butt ugly color, but then they see my nails and they love it! I'm really glad I had a light pink to stamp with. I'm not sure it would have looked good with any other color =/

I might even call this a subtle look ;)
Oreo<3

Monday 19 September 2011

Naughty Camera

So like I said, I moved. I've been using my mom's sweet FancyPants Canon all summer, but I figured my old Canon PowerShot A510 with its whopping 3.2 megapixels wouldn't be THAT bad... 


Right, so, as I was saying... what? This picture was taken with the, erm, model standing on a chair and me standing on my bed, holding her hand about four inches from the light bulb. Rimmel 60 seconds #615 Night Before (which absolutely GLOWS. One of the most gorgeous purples I own. I've seen swatches of a similar green by them and I've been stalking my drug stores for it but no luck yet) with Zoya Apple sponged on top. Deep purples with light greens are such an awkwardly gorgeous combo XD I love them. Anyway we felt like spicing up her manicure a bit so we added a rhinestone.  I don't understand why this picture came out so dark. The two we took right before came out almost entirely black!


This is the manicure I was talking about when I said it lasted through moving, unloading, unpacking and cleaning (two rooms)! Yay house colors lol. I actually liked the ones where the stamp went on crooked better! Clairns Golden Red and Konad Special Black. High noon with my hand in the brightest corner of my window to make it take a normal looking picture.


I finally got the flash working for this one! China Glaze Flying Dragon with Tree Hugger tips and green Art Deco striper. My  thumb came out the best for the wavy tip look I was going for, but by the time I got a picture I was semi satisfied with, my thumb was chipping so bad :(
HOWEVER, I finally noticed my camera must have fallen against something in my bag, because it was on a setting called "Tv". No idea why I didn't bother checking the setting before! I guess I just got so used to ignoring settings on my moms camera. So apparently the tv setting makes it compensate to take pictures of... bright tvs? Who wants to take pictures of their tv screen?

Also, I finally broke down and bought some pure acetone and a small angled paint brush to help with cleanup. Usually I just hop in the shower after I'm done painting my nails and the extra stuff on my skin comes right off, but sometimes I do such a sloppy job on my cuticles that it bothers me to the point where I have to take it off mid week.  Speaking of Sally's, not sure if anyone else has noticed, but mine had a bunch of polishes labeled LAST CHANCE and discounted to $1.99! I grabbed Light My Tiki, In Awe Of Amber and Lemon Fizz. They were sold out of Solar Power :( and another color from the reds section, I can't remember what it was called. Tempest was also discounted, but I already have that one so I didn't get it.

While I was at Sally's picking that up, I hit up the dollar store and found some tiny little beads to use! I never buy loose glitter to use on my nails because glitter is the herpes of the craft world. I was staying in my friends room this weekend and we bought some glittery foam to cut shapes out of for her wall, and I woke up with glitter in my hair the next day. I'd rather not have that stuff all over my DORM CARPET and in my top coat etc XD But I found some tiny colored bead-type things in with the glitter this time, so I'm excited to use those. They look just like the ones I've seen other people using, although maybe not all exactly uniform in size. Oh well :)

There was a Winners next to the Sally's and dollar store, so I decided to pop in and investigate a rumor that you can find Nubar polishes there. I have decided that you might be able to, since I picked up a bottle of Nubar cuticle oil for $5(!), but I didn't see any polishes. I DID pick up an 8-pack of Art Club glitter stripers for $13 though, so it all worked out!

I've gotten so far behind in things I want to show you guys and tell you about since I've been trying to get through some backlogged posts before I post the new stuff, but I've decided that between my frustration with blogger at the moment and the neverending supply of old pics, I'm going to try to update a little more with RELEVANT things like the Sally's sale before I end up posting something like "so this is Light My Tiki, I bought it in a great sale at Sally's umm... two years ago..." >.>

Hopefully this long winded post will get my butt in gear lol :)
<3Oreo

Saturday 10 September 2011

Took A Beating

Hi loves. I moved!

My nails (not these ones) survived packing, loading two jettas, driving 2 hours away, unpacking, putting things away, then helping a friend move in, unpacking and putting away HER stuff, and putting together a tv stand all by ourselves. TANK. I touched up the tipwear on them but they had more by the time the week ended. I'll post those tomorrow or something.

THESE beauties survived almost TWO WEEKS (!) of working with car parts in a warehouse. No chips. (just tipwear)



This was a base color of Wet'n'Wild Teal Of Fortune, tips in Sally Hansen HD Laser, and the glitter line was NOPI Brilliant Idea (which people on the internet seem to not like to wear by itself). I squished it into place with a rubber cuticle pusher I randomly have that came in a kit with some rhinestones or something. I was testing out Orly's Polishield which an extremely nice Sally's employee gave me a mini bottle of. I've been using it here and there all summer (with non-stamping manicures, because it does streak) and I'm pretty much in love. I might have to buy a full bottle of it when this one runs out. I've never had a manicure chip while using it, even with the lowest quality polishes I have, for the full week I usually wear them. :-o

This was the best color picture I could get, in the corner of the basement with a lamp sporting a black lamp shade. You can see the purple flashes in the tips, and the bottom was a lot greener than any of the pictures are picking up. It was like wearing the city of Atlantis on my nails. :D

So what do you think of the whole me being lazy and linking to other places for swatches thing? Other people do such a better job than me XD I'm getting better at application though!
<3Oreo

Friday 2 September 2011

ACTUAL NOTW!

So this is pretty amazing guys. This is what's on my nails RIGHT NOW. I've never done this before XD

I know, I know. Terrible picture. I took this when Irene was unleashing her unholy PMS on my area, so I had to make do. This is OPI's Skull & Glossbones, with China Glaze Shower Together and Tree Hugger, and some random sparkly yellow L.A Colors. I was debating adding dots in Essie Jamaica Me Crazy and ChG Flying Dragon, but everyone in my house agreed they thought I should just leave it be. I could go into some artsy BS about it being the sun, trees and water struggling against the giant grey hurricane's forces and all that jazz, but really, I just wanted my nails grey and the other colors jumped out at me from the pile in front of me :P This mani got mixed reviews. Everyone liked different aspects of it and disliked others. I like it. I wouldn't do it again in these colors though.

<3Oreo

Wednesday 31 August 2011

Amazing Awesomeness (sans soleil)

So every time I upload pictures via Blogger, it messes with them. Either it won't upload them or  they don't resize nicely or they throw my text into center-align... Today, it decided to upload them sideways. I really give up trying to fight with it. I need to find a new way to upload pics though, because this is making me not even want to post anything (as you may have noticed). ANYWAY.
Pics!


This is Sinful Colors Nail Junkie (LOVE the name) with one thin coat of China Glaze Watermelon Rind on top. It was AMAZING. I wore it for two weeks. TWO. Weeks! Unfortunately, during that time there was some drama and I got abducted by a(n amazingly awesometastical) friend to get me out of the house for a week, and of course I didn't bring my camera. When I got back home, the sun was playing hide and seek :( So there are no sun shots which is terrible. 



Yes I filed my nails as soon as this came off. Somehow they were getting really... crooked O.o So here are some good pictures of what Nail Junkie looks like (I also found it gooey, but I only did 3 coats and it was opaque enough for me) and here is a good swatch of Watermelon Rind. I know it's easier for you guys if I just get good swatches and shiz myself, but I'm not a huge fan of swatches/swatching... I figure there are loads of other blogs pretty much dedicated to swatching, so I might as well spread some love and link to them. Is that bad? I don't know. Someone tell me if it is :(

So I noticed that this, while it was sparkling pink and orange in the sun, completely and utterly killed my need for China Glaze's Atlantis. They're not the same (Atlantis is far more blue and the glitter is a little more sparse), but it's close enough for me :) I'm super excited about that.

<3Oreo
(THREE followers! :D)

Thursday 25 August 2011

This little blog o' mine...

...has TWO WHOLE FOLLOWERS! I see you both! Hi! :D

In celebration, here is some shameless love-spreading for a giveaway I'm entering. It ends TONIGHT so you guys should go check it out. Right now.


This is Chloe, and she really wants you to go check out this blog. Also, cats are amazing :D Surprise kitty picture! BOOM!
clickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclickyclicky and spread some love to Liz at Liquid Jelly, who is celebrating her 500th follower! Do it for Chloe!

Birthday Haul & Optical Mixing Fail

 First off, I WON A GIVEAWAY. WOO. My first ever giveaway :D Many many thanks to the lovely Fingers (who is also having a blog sale)! Super excited about that :D

So. I figured I'd follow up my birthday mani with some pics of what I spent some birthday moolah on (despite my birthday now being a month ago LOL).
I'm not sure how I failed to realise that the one drug store chain I never visit in town was the one with the BEST SELECTION, carrying brands that I thought I couldn't get here. However, this has been rectified. First trip:


You know what the *best* part of that trip was?



I hate how the sale stickers are a bright, unsightly orange... like being on sale is a BAD THING! Look at those beauties. My first OPIs, half price. My first Sinful Colors. My first Milanis (my mother actually slipped BOTH of them into my basket). My first LA Colors. And see those tiny little tubes on the end? Those were discounted down to 99 cents per pack of two (which also came with a stamping plate)!! I went back the next day after trying them out with my Konad plates, and got 4 more. They work beautifully, they're 99 cents and they come with themed plates! The only downside is that the plates were meant to be used with some sort of machine type system, and most of the designs are in two or three parts on the plate. But really, $0.99 for 2 nail colors and a plate, WHO CARES. I can just brush up on my alignment skills :D

And now for some nail art, because there needs to be some of that:

It kind of failed. It kind of didn't. Really depends how you define "failed".
First off, you know it's time to file your nails when they're too long for the stamping design LOL.  This is L'Oreal Yellow Seahorse as a base color, and Konad Special Purple on top. Yellow Seahorse is a nice warm yellow with gold fleck glitter (?) that sometimes shows a tiny bit of orangey-pinkish, but that could just be weird lighting on my end. Normally I'm not a huge fan of yellows, but this one was *super pretty*.
TOO BAD YOU CAN'T TELL. I covered it up too much! :( Plus, after I don't know how many years of art classes, I totally forgot about optical mixing. For those unsure of what that is, it's when your eye blends colors together to create new colors. Wiki article here on pointilism which made use of the effect, and also this guy, "Lucas", a portrait by Chuck Close. Chuck has some phenomenal work involving optical mixing with portraits.
ANYWAY. I was going for high contrast, and thought that purple and yellow would contrast well. I was right. However, because of the colors and *especially* because of the stamping design I chose, the colors blended and just looked brown (or, as it was repeatedly pointed out, my nails looked like popcorn). Not sure how I feel about that. But anyway, here it is in all its glory :)

I've spent about 4 hours, no joke, getting more and more frustrated with the pictures on here. Anyone else have that problem? I've given up trying to left-align my text, it seems like a lost cause. Photobucket apparently hates Blogger, so that doesn't work. :(


<3Oreo

Monday 15 August 2011

Birthday Mani

**Please ignore the text being all centered and stuff. It refuses to align nicely**

So I had a huge internal debate at work today between posting this mani from my birthday weekend, or the AWESOME AMAZINGNESS that happened last night. I have decided to save the awesome amazingness until Wednesday, because we didn't have any nice sun today and I really want good pictures of this.

I tend to try to use all my new polishes in my next mani after I get them, so this was quite the blingy weekend. I had just picked out some new art deco stripers (first ones!) and this amazing purple jelly, and then my mom came home and surprised me with a chunky holo glitter she picked up on clearance!   *.*  oooshiney
I believe her exact words were, "even if you never wear it, IT'S JUST SO PRETTY IN THE BOTTLE."

Side note about my mother here. She loves brown. She loves nice, safe browns. I'm working together with my 73 year old grandmother (who is ALL ABOUT the sparkles and rhinestones) to shame her out of her comfort zone. We've made excellent progress this summer :D. So it's really funny when she brings me home a bottle of some funky color, all excited about it LOL

Anyway, on to the sparkles: 


Most color accurate


Not bad for something I threw on in the morning at work, eh? That purple jelly goodness with pink/purple and blue flecks is Revlon's Grape Fizz. I was avoiding it for the longest time because, honestly, I'm not a fan of my nails smelling like grape cough medicine... but WOW. I think the colors make up for the grapey-ness. The small silver sparkles are just art deco silver sparkles... BUT THAT ACCENT FINGER. That chunky hexagonal holographic sparkly attention-getter. LOOK AT IT. Nicole's Winter Glitterland. ON CLEARANCE, ladies and gentlemen. 

As soon as I was done putting this on, the stock order came in and I spent the rest of the day putting away car parts. It held up pretty darn well (just some tip wear) considering my top coat was still wet! I got some dings in my right hand, but the glitter tips covered everything up beautifully ;)

Saturday 13 August 2011

First Post! Mint Chocolate and an Introduction

This is probably going to be a long one, so feel free to scroll down to the pictures if you don't care why I'm here :P

I didn't really decide to start a blog on my own. My friends, bless them, informed me that I was going to be starting a YouTube channel so that they could replicate my nails. I wasn't all too thrilled with the idea, since I'm not one to sit still and focus all my attention on my nails... I fiddle with them while talking to people, watching tv, listening to music, etc. The hassle of setting up a video camera for a manicure seemed like a pain in the butt, and I wasn't hot on the idea of being on camera to the internet at large. On the first weekend of July I had just about exhausted the nail art video supply, and followed a link to someone's blog for more creative ideas. WELL. I've been missing OUT. 

It started with a blog that I can't for the life of me remember, who linked to FingersPolishMania and Scrangie and LetThemHavePolish and suddenly I was hooked, spending all my free time browsing what we have come to term "nail porn". The creativity some people have! It sure hauled me out of my rut! It also started putting a dent in my bank account LOL. My friends, not to miss an opportunity, pointed out that a blog means no video cameras. I was much more comfortable with this idea. Plus, I kind of felt bad not sharing my ideas when I was getting ideas from everyone else!

Hmm, what else. I started getting into nail art at the very end of last summer. I didn't *really* start getting into it until about November of 2010 when I started scouring YouTube for ideas, and found Konad. At the end of the last school year, I had a bunch of students admit they'd been secretly stalking my nails all semester because they loved my designs (which was both flattering and kind of creepy. But mostly flattering). I view each manicure as an experiment. They don't always turn out the greatest, the straightest, the cleanest or the prettiest, but at least each one teaches me something new for next time! "Never say oops. Always say 'ah, interesting!'"

The look of this place is going to change as I fiddle with stuff. I'm still tweaking, but I find the options rather overwhelming so I kind of have to be in the mood to go fiddle with them. Mind you, I'm only starting this blog for my friends who don't want to miss out on any of my nail designs, so I doubt it matters at this point XD. I have an incredible backlog of pictures to post, but I have come to realise that all my old pictures are *crap* quality. They weren't taken all fancy and pro for a blog, they were taken as documentation of what I did for future reference x.x SO. I will be trying to go back and re-do a lot of my old manicures to get nice pictures! Since that takes time, however, I'll only be doing that when I have the time/patience/motivation. Right now is not that time. I'll be trying to post every 2-3 days. (I want to be posting every day right now! But if I do that, I'm scared I'll run out of decent backlogged pictures O.O)

On to today's post!
Normally I'm not a fan of fall colors, but Fingers is so into fall colors and subtle designs that I caught the Brown Bug. Seeing as it was still mid summer at the time, I didn't want to go full on fall... so I settled for a mint green and chocolate brown combo :)


Revlon Minted and China Glaze Unplugged. I did the lines with a small brush and tried to do the dots with a dotting tool, but the one I had wasn't big enough for the dots I was trying to make. I ended up just LOADING the brush and sort of trying to drip it onto the nail. It worked alright, not great. The lines went kind of funky, but I was rushing because it was getting close to suppertime and my stuff was spread out on the dining table XD


Yes, I really am *that* pale

My right hand failed so miserably that I just ended up completely filing in the gaps, painting large circles and in general being sloppy as a pig having a bath. I even had to touch up the index finger because the brown got too wide, but I went too far "fixing" it. I also apparently forgot top coat on the middle finger. I was getting really impatient at this point, on top of trying to do detail with my non-dominant hand. I don't plan on including my right hand often, but this one just failed so bad it ended up being funny XD. Plus it ended up being a neat variant (or would be neat, if someone with more skill tried it)

What do you think? This seems like it'll be fun :D Hopefully lots of people will want their nails done when I move back to school in a few weeks so that I have lots more to post! *hinthint*