Nail Fail: Needle Marble

How do you lovely ladies like the new look of my blog!?  The new logo was designed by the super talented Sarah from Chalkboard Nails! She's very sweet :)  The rest of the color change was my doing...I haven't decided if I'm going to keep it like that or hand it back over to Sarah to play with.  What do you guys think??

Anywho, onto the (fail) nails! After I saw Jackie from Adventures in Acetone put up this fabulous needle marbling mani for a Cult Nails contest, I instantly decided I wanted to try it.  Hers turned out SO beautiful I was like "psh I can do that."  Not.  Haha.

I used this tutorial from Liquid Jelly.

I decided to use a white base, China Glaze White on White and then marble ORLY Fowl Play.  I thought that the lovely flakes in Fowl Play would show up, but sadly they did not.

There's a few nails I DO like, but since they were so inconsistent and I really kind of hate the color combination (sadly since Fowl Play is one of my faves) I consider the whole mani a fail.  I think maybe if I would've used a black base....or Fowl Play as the base and maybe a silver on top, it would've been better.  Meh.  We'll see if I try this again, haha.

Have you guys tried needle marbling?  It's less effort than water marble, which is why it appealed to me :)

<3 Whitney

P.S. I'm going out of town for some training for work for a week tomorrow!  I'll have my laptop, so hopefully I can update, but I may not have much time.  We'll seee!

Excuse Moi, I have another Muppet's OPI for you!

Oh dear, did I seriously not ever post this mani?  I'm so bad, hah.  I just noticed it was on the top of my list and I've been ignoring it all this time.  I'm pretty sure I did this around Christmas time...

Anywhoooooooo this is three coats of OPI Excuse Moi, a pretty, bright pink and silver glitter polish from the OPI Muppets Collection:

Dang, back when I had nubbins.  Although they've gotten back to that recently 'cause I've had a lot of breaks :(

I really loved this glitter, but it was a B to clean up!  As you can see from the pictures, I still have glitter everywhere lol.  It's jam packed with fine pink glitter, but it's also got a decent amount of holographic silver glitter, you can see in my thumb pic that in the light it shows a whole bunch of colors!  I'm in love.  Definitely my favorite from the collection.

Did you guys pick up Excuse Moi?!

<3 Whit

Pink Wednesday! Color Club Hot. Like. Lava.

Woo I'm so bad at keeping up with Pink Wednesday, but it just so happens I had a pink swatch for this week!

Sooo I thought since I had such luck with the Color Club Cold Metal from the Foil'd collection, that I'd reach into my "selling" pile and use Hot Like Lava. 

I don't often do that, but I haven't had much traffic to the blog sale page lately, and I'd been eying it in the basket for a while so I thought I'd try it. 

This is two coats of Hot Like Lava:

Overall, I loved the application and the formula...but I just don't know how I feel about metallics/foils.  I loved the blue, but I think I'll put this back on the sale page as used 1x.  It is a pretty color, I just don't see myself wearing it, and I still do a decent amount of clean up and the metals don't clean up as well as creams.  SO if any of you ladies have been looking for this (or any of the other CC foils), check out my blog sale, hah.  I hear they're good for stamping, which almost makes me want to keep them...but I don't do that too often either, since I'm so bad at it :)

Did you guys pick up the Foil'd collection?

<3 Whitney

Beaker says: Meep Meep Meep!

Do I really need to tell you guys that my favorite Muppets are Bunsen and Beaker?  Hah!  Look how cute they are doing science and stuff:

Oh and I don't wear T-shirts, much to the disappointment of the BF, but I ran into this shirt while googling Bunsen and Beaker, and if anyone wants to buy it for me....I'd totally wear it.  Just sayin' :D  Okay...it's on clearance.  I'm going to buy it for myself.  Hahaha.  Yay!

ANYWHO nail polish.  Oh yes.  I've had Meep Meep Meep on my toes for a while but I decided to bust it out on my fingers for a slightly more professional work-look than I've been sporting lately.  Here we go:

Only two pictures?  Seriously, what was I thinking.  And I'm so so sorry, but I can't remember how many coats this is--but I'd put money on two.  Meep Meep Meep is a lovely dark pink/fuschia polish with pink flakes/shimmer/glitter.  I don't really know what it is, but it's got an awesome sheen to it that I love!  It's quite dark indoor and in artificial lighting (as seen above) but it brightens up to a lovely pink in the sun!  This is one of my favorites from the Muppets collection, actually, even though it's not super unique.

I have ONE polish left that I need from the Muppets collection...and I believe it's Wocka Wocka.  Do you guys have them all?  Did you like the collection?

<3 Whitney

More frankens!

Ohh dear what a busy week I had last week!

I finally got our guest bedroom set up with all of my polish things because I got tired of taking up the BF's man cave and living room.  I bought a desk and put it together all by myself and filled it with frankening supplies and polish related goodies!

The boyfriend and I also decided to start volunteering for the Make a Wish foundation, so we had a (long) meeting for that, too.  He did it in Ohio and asked if I'd like to do it with him here and I said sure because who doesn't need to do something nice for others sometimes?

Then I had guests come down and visit this weekend!  My nails have been BARE for like 5 days.  Ugh!  And I broke two...sad story.

Anywho, I thought I'd show you guys the rest of the frankens I made for my first "collection" I'm calling Transition Metals.  Because...they're named after transition metals (I = nerd).  I'm super excited for this because I've been making frankens for a while and I love it!  I was hoping to get to the point where I can sell them on Etsy or something, but I'm not sure what reaction I will get.

I mean, I can't be the only nerdy nail-polish enthusiast who will be as excited as I am about elemental names, haha.  So here's the next couple I've made.

First up: Fool's Gold

I wish I had painted my nails with this on a day it was sunny!  This is three coats of Fool's Gold in artificial lighting and I just couldn't capture the vibrant gold glitter that's in this polish!  It's a metallic gold based polish with various sized gold and holographic gold glitters!  I'm not into golds, usually, but this is one of my favorites.  And it's appropriately named after the 79th element: gold!

Next up: Iron Man-ia

Iron Man-ia is a red jelly based polish that consists of both fine red and gold glitter and large holographic gold hex glitter.  It needs three coats to become opaque, but there's a decent amount of glitter, so if you were using it as a layering polish, one coat would probably do.  Named for iron, the 26th element, and a little bit of comic book nerdiness as well :)

Next up, going a different route other than glitter: Manganese, Please!

Manganese, Please, is a dark teal based polish that has a slight duochrome aspect to it.  In certain light it goes from dark purple to teal to blue, but it's a lot more subtle than Co-Balt of Lightning that I showed you the other day!  It's got a bit of a shimmer to it, but it clings to the ridges in your nail...I think I've got a bit of an iron deficiency and you can really see the vertical ridges in my nails in the second picture.  You can also see where I messed up on my ring finger...but let's not focus too much on that!  I used three coats for this picture.  Manganese is the 25th element. 

Last up is "Can I buy you a Zinc?"

Holos show your ridges very well, too apparently!  Can I Buy You a Zinc? is a dusty green/gray holo.  This is another one I had to do photograph in artificial lighting, but would do better in the sun.  Inside it definitely has a more gray tone to it, but outdoors it's very obviously green.  I was going for a brighter green polish here, but I ended up liking this one a lot anyway!  This one only needs two coats for full opaqueness.  Can I Buy you a Zinc is named after Zinc, the 30th element.

I have one more in this "collection" called Copper-nicus (which I named after copper before I realized one of the obscure elements is called Copernicium, hah!  Oh well), which I haven't got around to swatching yet.  It's a copper looking color on it's own, but it's a red metallic duochrome over black.  Very pretty!  I'll show you guys later :)

So what do you guys think?  I'd like some feedback on these!

I know I've talked a lot in this entry, sorry!  BUT someone last post commented when I asked for help thinking of element-related names that I should post pictures of the polishes I made to better help them think of names.  Welllll, I'm going about it a bit differently.  All of the elements that I knew what colors/finishes I wanted them to have, I've pretty much either made or planned.  Now I'm trying to think of names for the rest first and then plan after, hah.  I don't know if it's a bit backwards or not, but oh well!

I still have the ones I listed in the first franken post I need help with, but here's a few more:

51 - Antimony
34 - Selenium
24 - Chromium
77 - Iridium
74 - Tungsten

Thanks for reading guys, I know this was long!

<3 Whitney

Frankennnn!

So I still haven't got an e-mail response from my giveaway winner katiebug!  Girl, send me your address!  :)

BUT that's not what this update is about.  I want to show you ladies a fraken polish I made recently that I like a lot!  I've been frankening up a storm, which is why I haven't updated lately. 

So here's the big surprise: I'm making element themed polishes!  Hopefully when I get things worked out I'll put them on Etsy.  I've got a decent amount made and I'm super excited about the nerdiness of them all ;)

Here's a preview of one!  It's called "Co-Balt of Lightning" :

Co-balt of Lightning is a duochrome polish that changes from teal to blue to navy to purple depending on the lighting.  All of the pictures shown above are with one coat of polish over black in window lighting.  It goes on pretty smooth and one coat is definitely all you need over a dark polish!  You may need to zoom in to see all the colors, I just couldn't capture them with my camera!

So what do you ladies think?

I'll probably give some away to bloggers in the future to review!  But in the mean time, I'm having a hard time coming up with names!

So here's what I'm going to do.  For each franken post I do I'll list a couple of elements that I don't have names for, and if you think of a name, send me an e-mail (Estyles.ww@gmail.com), and if I choose the name you thought of, I'll send you a bottle of the franken when I make it!  Here are a few elements I'm struggling with:

22 - Titanium
31 - Gallium
38 - Strontium
48 - Cadmium
64 - Gadolinium
88 - Radium

Thanks ladies :)

<3 Whitney

2012 Giveaway WINNER!!

Weee!  I have a winner to announce for my 2012 Giveaway!

Congratulations katiebug!  You win Zoya Jem and Anja, 4 softlips, and a midi Linziclip!

She has 48 hours to respond to my e-mail or else a new winner will be chosen!

<3 Whitney

P.S. I'll be updating soon, no worries!  And I have a super huge super great surprise when I hit 500 followers!  So tell your friends ;)

Julep Vanessssaaa!

Hey pretties :)

For being a Julep maven, I don't do many Julep reviews.  I loved my first box, but everything since then has been sub par for me :-/  I skipped this month, but I'm still in the program to see if anything exciting comes up!  Are any of you in the program?  I actually haven't even tried the past few polishes I've received yet, hah!

But here's one for you!  I wanted to do a mani that I knew for sure wouldn't stain my nails pink or yellow, so I decided to wear ORLY Au Champagne under Julep Vanessa, here's how it turned out:

Vanessa is a pretty white holo glitter.  You can see all of the colors a lot better in the bottle rather than on my nails in this picture.  My only qualms with this polish was that it was kind of thick to apply.  And I don't know if it's because of it's thickness, but it made the bottle appear to not be filled all of the way.  Check out the second picture....this has only been used once, it shouldn't be that low.  I think it's just so thick and stuck to the lid and brush, meh.  I don't have any thinner, but when I get some I'll have to add it to this polish first!

Did any of you mavens get Vanessa in your past boxes?  Did you like it?  Was yours as thick as mine?  Let me know!

<3 Whitney

L'Oreal Paris Blue Marine

Soo a week or so ago, while the BF was still in Ohio and I had to come back here for work (boo), I was feelin' lonely and lazy and decided to go get myself a pizza from Kroger.

So here I am...looking like a total cliche "single-girl-from-a-romantic-comedy-movie" carrying around (carrying...I did not get a cart) a take-and-bake Donato's Pizza, a 2-Liter bottle of Hawaiian Punch, and a box of cookies...when suddenly I decide to take a stroll through the beauty products.  I added some Maybelline liquid eyeliner (which I'll have to review later because it was so bad) to my lonely-pile, and then something turquoise and shiny caught my eye!  Oooh!  And on clearance too :)  

That's how I stumbled upon L'Oreal Paris Blue Marine.

Check out the pictures, I bet you wouldn't be able to pass up this clearance polish, either!

Nowww these pictures are a little more green than I think the polish actually is.  In reality, it's a teal-blue metallic that flashes little bits of blue, green, and silver shimmer.  It's a want-to-be duochrome and appears anywhere from teal to dark blue, depending on the lighting, but I wouldn't call it a full duo-chrome. 

It went on nicely--I actually don't have any other L'Oreal Paris polishes to compare this one to.  And I believe that these pictures are of 3 coats of polish.  I liked it, but it was kind of a disappointment to how it appears in the bottle.  And I mean, I guess it looks the same...I don't know what I was expecting.  It just looks so pretty in the bottle and it ended up a little less pretty on my nails, hah!

Have you guys tried this polish?  I'd love to hear what you thought about it!

<3 Whitney

Zoya Kissy Review! :-*

Sooo I totally forgot I'd picked this polish up when I was out Christmas shopping!

I remember seeing Zoya's Gems and Jewels promos and really liked all the colors, but since I hate paying shipping, I was super excited to see these in a beauty store in Ohio! I really didn't have any other polishes with bar glitter so I picked up Kissy to try.

Nowwww Zoya kind of describes this polish as a "red" but I think on the nail, it's definitely more pink, but I'll let you ladies decide:

Okayyy soo this looks kind of reddish...I still claim it's pink lol

Wow!  I really was impressed for my first bar glitter polish.  It went on relatively easily, but needed 3 coats to be opaque.  I really liked that the bar glitter incorporated yellow, green, orange, and red, all into the polish.  It was really pretty!

My only issue with this polish was that the bar glitters can extend over the edge of your nail and they try kind of sharp.  Sooo you either have to clean up really well, trim them, or maneuver them with the brush so they don't hang off.  It also is a SUPER top coat eater!  I put a coat of my normal top coat on, and you couldn't even tell!  Zoom in on the second picture...it really IS that rough.

Now I didn't use Seche Vite or Poshe, so it may be able to be smoothed over with those...or even Gelous (which I've never tried), but I didn't leave this on long enough to try.  As you can see, I forgot I hadn't taken pictures of it and started taking it off before I realized, which is why there are only 2 fingers in the pictures haha.

Did you guys like the polishes from the Gem and Jewels collection?  Did any of them eat your top coat too??

<3 Whitney

P.S. Want a chance to win 2 Zoya polishes?  Don't forget to enter my giveaway!