OPI Lincoln Park After Dark Suede...Ruffian!

Hello pretties.

Sorry for the delay in posts, I was out of town for business all last week!  BUT I spent last weekend swatching a ton of polishes and editing photos so I could update in the evenings from my hotel, but the internet turned out to be something like $14 bucks a day, which I refused to spend, haha.  But now I'm back!

I've got a mani to show you that I did with Lincoln Park After Dark Suede, which is much prettier than I expected.  I first put down two coats of OPI Glamour Game, a pretty gold with slight glitter flecks, and added a coat of LPAD suede as a ruffian.  I was super psyched to get pictures of this right away, but I only got two pics before my camera died and I couldn't find my camera charger, so some of them are from my iPhone.

 

 

I really liked LPAD suede.  I have OPI Ink Suede, which I've only used once and had a really hard time with, so I was kind of reluctant to try another suede.  BUT, I looked up some tips for mattes and suedes and I think I must have just been trying to apply it too slowly.  Since they dry so quickly, you have to be quick in your application.  They are pretty opaque and go on usually in one coat, but I could still kind of see the gold underneath the first coat, so I added a second after the first coat had dried. 

I don't think I'd be opposed to owning more suedes now that I had much better luck with LPAD!  What suedes are your fav? 

<3 Whitney

Franken #2 -- Firework! + Wedding Ruffian

Sorry for being MIA the past few days!  I had a few updates scheduled up through last Wednesday but then I just got busy and didn't have time to finish up the rest of the week!  One of my best friends, Dustin, got married yesterday!  I was in the wedding on the groom's side so since Thursday I've pretty much been doing wedding stuff.  My first franken was actually made to compliment my dress.  However, I didn't think it was good enough, so I added some more glitter to it and darkened it up! I called the new one "Firework."

For the wedding I wore it as a ruffian on my fingers and toes!  Here are a few pics:

Sorry for the blur, I didn't notice when I took the picture.  It looks a bit better in person!  But I tried the ruffian on my toes!

Firework ruffian!  With ORLY Shine as the base :)

I really liked it and got a lot of compliments!  I hope since I did the ruffian with a coat of Posche in between the silver and purple that it'll be easier to get the glitter off! 

I added holo silver glitter to my franken so it shines really nice in the sun, but you can't really tell very well in my pictures.  I'm bad at holo pictures!

Well I hope you all had a great weekend!  I'll be out of town tomorrow and Tuesday but I should be able to update anyway :)

<3 Whitney

Blue Iguana Ruffian!

So I decided to do my nails again before going out dancing with my ladiesss! 

I've been wanting to try China Glaze's Blue Iguana for a while and thought I'd make it interesting with another ruffian since I LOVED how it turned out before with 108 Degrees!

I definitely love the pink more than the blue...and I super struggled with this manicure this time.  I've been real shaky lately, so I made more of a mess than last time and the silver was a bit hard to clean up as my remover brush just spread sparkles all over my fingers rather than removed them...OH well!  I still think it looks neat:

You can kind of see the sparkle everywhere!  But anyway, how I did this was I used my Sally Hansen Thickening Base Coat, covered with 2 coats of ORLY Shine, topped that with Seche Vite (in case I messed up the blue), then I had to do 3 coats of China Glaze Blue Iguana from their Island Escape Collection and then another top coat of SV!  Whew! 

I somehow made some of Blue Iguana coats thinner than the others, which is why I had to do three coats to even them out.  It was runnier than I expected, but still a pretty good formula.  I also thought it'd be a shade darker, but it's all good! Overall I'm pretty happy with it.  I'll post outdoor sunny pictures sometime tomorrow or Sunday as the sun's already goin' down here in Ohio.  I wrapped the tips so hopefully it stays a few days!  I could probably dot some red on the silver and make it into a Memorial Day manicure :)  Maybe I'll do that for Sunday!! 

The verdict is I like it!  

I also want to mention that I tried Sally Hansen's Gel Cuticle Remover:

So far I've used it twice and I love it!  It's got Jojoba extra, antioxidant Kiwi Extract and Wheat Protein so it can smooth, nourish, and moisturize your cuticles all at once.  It makes it easier to push them back, it doesn't necessarily remove them.  I thought I'd try this instead of cutting my cuticles and I don't think I'll go back :)  You just put on a thin strip for a few mins, push your cuticles back, and wash it off!  Voila!  It says not to use more than twice a week, and so far I've done it once a week and it seems to work well the whole week.  Have you tried this?

Well loves, have a GREAT Memorial Day Weekend! 

<3 Whitney

Pink Wednesday! My first Butter London!

Sooo it's Pink Wednesday again!  Horray!

I've been really busy and also kind of sick the past few days, which is why I've been MIA, but I'm back for pink!  It was sunny on Monday, so I took some outdoor pics of my ruffian (ORLY Shine + China Glaze 108 Degrees), this is 3 days of wear, but I think it still looks pretty good!!  After these pics is my Butter London review:

I was sad to take it off.  But that's okay! On to something new.

Today I decided to try the Butter London polish I bought the other day: Teddy Girl.  I did not like it.  The color is okay I suppose, since these pastels almost whites are in style right now (did you see the new Cosmo?  They have an article about it!), but the formula was pretty awful.  I'm glad I used a coupon and did not pay the full $15 for this polish. 

I don't know if it was just the color that made the formula so bad for me, or if all Butter London's are like that.  It was very watery and runny and I had a hard time covering the nail equally.  I basically had to slop it on and spend forever doing clean-up.  Not to mention I was super shaky today for some reason.  My right hand is hideously bad, the left I spent much more time on, so hopefully it looks okay enough for the blog.

I guess it doesn't look too terrible in pics, but I had the worst time with this color...it kept running into the sides of my nail and I couldn't get it out.  This is three coats.

I might put some glitter on top of it to spruce it up tomorrow.

How have you guys done with Butter London?  I was severely disappointed, I hope it works out better for you!!

<3 Whti

Pink Ruffian!

Oh. My. Gosh. Guys.  I could not be more in love with the manicure I just did.  AH!  So like I said in my post a little while ago, I looked all day for matte polishes because I wanted to try a ruffian manicure.  I didn't find any so I'm like, screw it, I'll just rock a bright shiny colored one.

So I took ORLY's "Shine" as the metallic base (non-frost, which I love), and China Glaze's 108 degrees and here's what I came up with...sorry sort of picture heavy.  I literally took 20+ pictures and couldn't decide which ones to use.

I'm impressed with how good this pic came out...and it's inside!

Up close, super flash.  This is what the pink actually looks like, though!

Ahh, I LOVE it.  I could've been more patient and taken more time to clean up and smooth my lines, but this was my first ruffian and I'm pretty satisfied with how I did.  If it's sunny maybe I'll do pics again tomorrow.

What do you think?  Have you tried the ruffian before?

I got tagged for the Kreativ Blogger award...but I'm going to wait until tomorrow to do that.  Also if you look back a few posts I had a reader survey...you should fill it out!

<3 Whitney