More Nail Art! Featuring Julep Parker

Hellloooo!

So I've had this on hold for a while...honestly I kind of forgot about this until I saved my previous polka dot post in my nail art file and saw it there!

It was more of a spring polish post rather than summer, but I still like it!  I finally found a Julep color that I really liked: a bright orange called Parker!  I believe I used 2 coats for this mani, and it went on surprisingly well.  A lot of people don't like the Julep brush, but every once in a while it works great for me!

I don't have many pics but I'll show you ladies anyawy!

At the time I really liked it, but looking back, I probably should've used dotting tools rather than the nail art brush I used!  I stamped the flower using a born pretty plate and then did some yellow dots using China Glaze Happy Go Lucky.  I told you girls I loved polka dots!

Too bad everyone at work thought I was wearing orange and white to support the University of Tennessee.  Silly people, Ohio State all the way ;)  I just like orange!  And boy do they ALL like orange down here! 

I think I'm going to try stamping more often...maybe for my 4th of July mani along with my U.S.A-mericium polish :) 

Hope you guys enjoyed my messy polka dots!

<3 Whitney

Giveaway Winner + Pool Party Polka Dot Nails!

Helllooooo!  I'm back to blogging, horray!

First of all, I'd like to congratulate my GFC follower Tavern Direct Blog for winning my Scünci Hot Streak giveaway!! Horray!  She has 48 hours to respond before another winner is chosen!

Nowwww I'd like to show you some nail art I did this weekend for a pool party we had :)  I got the idea of the polka dots from DIY Polish & More. Super cute idea!

Om nom nom!  I love polka dots!  I think I will probably do this with every color combination I can think of, hahaha.  I've already got another in mind! 

Anywhooo I started off with a base of 2 coats of China Glaze Papaya Punch with 2 coats of OPI Strawberry Margarita as my accent nail!  Then I just used those two colors along with Sinful Colors White Creme and my different sized dotting tools to make the dots!  Voila! Easy peasy and it didn't take very long, either!  I thought they were perfect for summer and I'm leaving them on as long as physically possible, hahaha.

Hope you like!

<3 Whitney

Orange, It's Obvious!!

Sooo if you followed me last summer you should know that my favorite color polish to bust out when it's sunny is ORANGE!  I became a bit obsessed with it last year and ended up buying a ton of orange polishes, so I was super psyched that orange was part of Essie's spring collection! 

Check out Orange, It's Obvious!

Orange It's Obvious is a very saturated, bright orange cream.  I love the Essie formula and brush, it's never been runny for me and is always super easy to apply, this polish not being any different!  If you zoom in on the pictures you can see that in the bottle it's slightly more neon than it appears on the nail--it dries just a shade darker, which is okay. 

Overall, I loved it--Orange It's Obvious is opaque in two coats and is a perfect bright orange I'm going to save for summer, rather than spring!  You can tell it'd look better with a tan rather than my pasty white hands :) So give me a few more months of laying out and I'll be wearing this again!

Did you ladies get any polishes from Essie's new spring line?

<3 Whitney

31 Day Challenge, Day 2! Sinful Colors Cloud 9

Okay, so contrary to popular belief (most likely from my lack of posting), I DID do Day 2 of this challenge ON Day 2, howeverrr I just didn't get around to posting it since I couldn't take pictures at night!

And thennnnn I didn't post the next day 'cause I'm lazy....

SO here it is finally, Day 2!  Oranges!

I gave The Boyfriend a choice of three oranges I hadn't tried from my collection and he chose Sinful Colors Cloud 9:

It wasn't ultra bright out when I took these, but you can still see that even with three coats there's quite a bit of visible nail line.  Meh.  I liked the consistency of the polish, it goes on great and cleans up decently well, but it just wasn't opaque enough for me.  I almost painted white under it but on a whim I thought I'd see how it went without it.  It doesn't matter too much, though, 'cause I lost a bit of my tan and this bright transparent orange just looked strange on my hands.  Have any of you guys tried this polish?  I think I'll definitely keep it in the collection, I'll just try and remind myself to put something under it!

OH And I said I'd let you know how it went with the no chip 10-day Sally Hansen polish from my Day 1 post...it did NOT go well.  The same day I painted my nails I closed my hand in the freezer door and chipped a tiny piece off my thumb and pointer fingers and it went all downhill from there.  A huge chunk came off at work the next morning and by lunchtime it all came peeling off in sheets.  It might've had something to do with the base and top coat I used, because I know with Zoya you can only use certain base coats or it chips easily...but I don't know!  This combo I use works with other polishes, but whatev. 

Welllllllll I've already got my Day 3 polish done since I did it TODAY, so hopefully I can keep kind of better on track with this!

Anyone else still doing this challenge??

Another Essie Summer Polish: Meet Me at Sunset + KleanColor Glitter

I recently bought a few Essie polishes from Traci at The TraceFace Philes!  She has a GREAT blog sale going on (and blog), so definitely check her out if you're lemming for some polishes!

One of the polishes I got from her blog sale was Essie's Meet me at Sunset.  I kept seeing this when I went to buy Braziliant and I really liked it!  It's a lovely dark orange cream polish:

Yum!

I think this is a perfect color for the end of summer/beginning of fall transition.  I feel like I could draw on a jack-o-lantern face and it'd be perfect for Halloween :)  I did really like it, especially because it went on opaque in only 2 coats!  Yum!

I don't know why I've been on such an orange kick lately, but I'm so drawn to it when I would normally be drawn to pinks!  Weird!

Anyhow, I ordered some KleanColors polishes from BeautyJoint for only $1.75 each and they came the other day!  I was eager to try them out so I added Chunky Holo Black on top of Meet me at Sunset and I was surprised how well I liked this combination:

My infamous RIGHT hand! *gasp!* My mom wanted to take pictures lol

 I keep my cuticles looking much nicer on my left hand haha...my right is fug.

Up close of the glitters

I added 2 coats of the KleanColor glitter over the Essie polish.  You can see on my thumb that there is a lot of glitter on the end of my thumb rather than near my cuticle.  I would've spread them out more by waiting in between coats, but I wanted to try it out asap!  I thought these colors went pretty well together even though I've seen Chunky Holo Black used mostly with darker colors.  I really liked the different sized glitters and really the only downside was the smell...KleanColors have a weirder smell than normal polish, I think! 

Overall, LOVED the Essie and was pretty happy with the KleanColor.  I'm more excited to try it over darker polishes this fall, though--do you guys have any KleanColors? Do they smell weird to you?

Thanks for reading!

<3 Whitney

Another BRIGHT Orange! Papaya Punch! + Another Attempt at Turquoise Crackle

Hey ladies!  I got a lovely sampler package sent to me by China Glaze this weekend consisting of Papaya Punch, Fault Line (Crackle), and Rosita:

Fault Line

Rosita

Sorry for the stock photos, it's dark here now and I'm too lazy to photograph them haha.  Anywho, since I already have Papaya Punch and Fault Line, I will be adding those to prizes for future giveaways!  Horray!

However, I realized when I received it that I still haven't reviewed Papaya Punch and since I'm super into oranges right now, I figured I'd try it out. 

Papaya Punch is a lovely bright orange cream polish from China Glaze's Island Escape Collection released earlier this year! Check out the (many, whoops) pics below:

Outdoor, sun

Outdoor, sun

Outdoor, shade

Outdoor, sun

Outdoor, shade

Up-close color

I love this shade.  Seriously, I didn't know how great it was until I put it on.  I'm glad I waited until I was a bit more tan.  I loved Essie Braziliant, but I moved that to my feet and have been wearing this as a mani for a few days now!  The formula is great and I love one and two coater polishes.  All the pictures above are shown with two coats.

I tried to again use the OPI turquoise shatter with this orange because I'm now obsessed with teal and orange together.  It didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, probably because I put Posche top coat on the Papaya Punch.  So I tried to just paint another coat of Papaya Punch over it today and then did the shatter, still didn't turn out as I'd hoped:

Eh overall I still like the color combo, but I'm still not super happy with the turquoise shatter.  I wish it broke up as well as the black has for me!

Did you guys pick up Papaya Punch earlier when the IE was released?  Any of you have better luck with turquoise shatter? Let me know!

<3 Whitney

Braziliant + Turquoise Crackle

Hey allll!  I did a guest post on Opal Steven's Blog today on crackle polishes, please go check it out!! 

Also, I just wanted to show you real quick my semi-crackle fail with OPI's Turquoise Shatter over Essie Braziliant:

My infamous right hand since the left looked like poop

Eh.  I think it was a good idea because I love the colors together, but I must've used too thick of a coat of turquoise shatter because I wasn't really satisfied with how much it crackled.  I wanted to see more orange!!  Overall I really liked the turquoise color, though, and I'll definitely be using it again!  I'll probably take this off tonight and re-do something else :)

Also, I briefly mentioned that yesterday I broke part of my pointer finger nail on my left hand and used the krazy-glue method of keeping it on.  It actually worked really well and I smoothed it out and everything but after showering and working with my hands a bit this morning it kind of went to hell and I broke the rest of it off :-/  I'm really bummed.  I don't want to trim all my nails down!  We'll see how it looks when I file it off later.  Ugh!


Well ladies, have a wonderful Saturday night...I'm going to spend it happily on the couch with The Boyfriend since this is the first Saturday night he's had off in months!  Horray!


<3 Whitney

Orange-ya Glad it's the Weekend?! Braziliant!

Okay my title is corny, I know.  Oh well :)  But YAY 150 followers!!

I've been desperately searching (and waiting) for Essie Braziliant ever since I heard about it at the end of April.  The whole Summer 2011 collection looks fabulous, actually, and I'm not usually into oranges but when I saw this swatched I HAD to have it. 

I finally found it at Target today and while I resisted buying anything at both Ulta AND Sally's, when I caught a glimpse in the store, my lack of self control took over and I bought it.  Wee! Then I came home and immediately took off my leopard mani and put on this orange.  Check it out!

A bit shiny from the Butter London remover...weird!

Ugh..I broke this nail today, apparently I didn't file it well.  I had to super glue the left side together haha woops

Love love love!  Braziliant is an obnoxiously loud orange and in the bottle you can see just a glimpse of pink shimmery undertones.  It doesn't translate as well to the nail, though, which is fine by me 'cause I was lookin for strictly orange here!  It's pretty opaque, but I still used three coats.  I used two coats of ORLY Ridge Filler first and I don't think I let it dry long enough which made me have some issues when applying this.  I don't know if there's some trick to it or something. Maybe I should've only used one coat of Ridge Filler.  Regardless, it turned out okay after cleaning up a bit!  I loved this color enough I even wrapped my tips 'cause I'm probably going to wear it a few days while I lay out at the pool!

Anywho, here's a quick photo of what I've picked up over the past several days:

Essie Braziliant, OPI Turquoise Shatter, Two Wet n Wild Craze Colors, and Wet n Wilds Mermaids Cove Collection Polishes in Waves of Enchantment and Diving for Pearls....and some remover!

I picked up the Wet n Wilds at CVS on clearance and buy 1 get one 50% off so it was only a few bucks for all those!

I think that's all for tonight, then! 

<3 Whitney

P.S. Have any of you watched My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding on TLC?  It's fascinating, hahaha!  I've never seen dresses this gigantic in my entire life.

Life Changes....and Zoya Sunshine Collection: Rica!

This is going to be a two in one entry.  I don't know if it'll always be like this, but that's okay.

I've decided to change some things in my life.  I haven't been as happy as I should lately.  I don't know if I even have legitimate reasons for being unhappy, but I don't always let things go, which is maybe why I've been a bit down.  There are also a lot of things changing soon that I don't want to throw me off.  So I made a list of things to do everyday to keep my spirits up and motivate me.

The non-personal ones include cleaning for 30 mins a day (since cleanliness makes me happy), doing yoga for 30 mins a day (since exercise makes you happy), and to try something new. There's a lot of other stuff on my list but since this is a beauty blog and not a life story blog, we're going to go along with the trying something new part on here.  I'd like to tell you what I decide to try everyday, so I think that'll be a short blurb from now on.

TODAY I went with something make-up related and decided to try the new Covergirl NatureLuxe Silk Foundation:

I tried it in...I forget, I'll have to check when I get home from school :)

I'm not used to wearing liquid foundation, but I really liked it.  It went on pretty sheer, but it seriously went on like silk.  My face was super smooth after putting it on!  It definitely doesn't cake on like some other liquid foundations, but it also didn't cover everything up.  I don't really know how you're supposed to do your whole face make up, honestly.  I don't even always wear foundation, so I don't know if you're supposed to do foundation and concealer or what...I guess its personal preference. 

But yeah, I felt like I could still see a few spots I wanted more coverage on, so I put bronzer on top of it and was pretty satisfied.  I guess I should also mention that  my mom got this for free to try from BzzAgent and she gave it to me to try, so the color I tried may not be the exact color I'd buy for myself.  Eh, it probably is...I'm pretty pasty.   It looks like on their website that they have 16 different shades. 

Overall I really like how light it goes on, how it covered up a bit of the redness I had this morning, and how smooth my face felt after.  You can also seem to put it on effectively with either your hands or a sponge/brush.  It's like $9-$12 which is cheaper than my mineral make up, but won't last as long.  I may start wearing this in the summer!


Now, what I was normally going to post about...I tried one of my new Zoya polishes last night!!  This is Rica from their Sunshine Collection.  It looked pinkish/peach in the bottle but I think I'd definitely classify this now as an orange:

Sparklesss! This is outside in overcast lighting, prob the most accurate photo color-wise

Inside, pretty good idea of the orangeyness.

This pic makes it look a little dark, the color is lighter

Even though I was initially disappointed that it wasn't more pink, I really like it.  I actually did 4 coats of this one because I lost track, but you could probably do three!  It's supposed to be sunny this weekend so hopefully I can try more of these awesome polishes and get some good pictures for you guys! 

Hopefully this wasn't too long of a post.  Let me know if you've tried the NatureLuxe foundation or this polish, I want to hear about it!!

Have a good one,
<3 Whitney