Ruby White Tips Peekaboo

Hey everyone, I just wanted to take a short break from the nail art challenges to show you a beautiful polish for a good cause. I actually wore this a couple of weeks ago, but I never got around to posting.

This is Peekaboo by Ruby White Tips, a sheer pinky purpley color packed with holographic micro glitter. I had a difficult time photographing the sparkle, but it's there in real life.

 

This polish has a fantastic formula. Somehow, even as packed with glitter as it is, it is not gloopy at all! It is a bit sheer, I used 3 coats, but that makes it great for layering over other colors, too!

Closeups to show the sparkle a little better.

Peekaboo is a beautiful polish for a cause that I love. HALF of all profits made from this polish are donated to help save the bats, specifically going to Batworld Sanctuary. You probably don't know this about me, but I LOVE bats, they one of my favorite animals (a close second to my favorite animal - the giraffe), they are just go cute and sweet, and snuggle each other when they sleep *awww*.

Ruby White Tips are all 3-free, and completely cruelty free. Be sure to check out Ruby White Tips for Peekaboo and all of her other gorgeous polishes (more swatches and reviews coming soon!) on Etsy and Facebook

Til next time!
-Kara

Lucky 13 Lacquer Life Is Short And You Are Hot

Welcome back, and happy Thursday! Today I have a gorgeous Indie polish to show you, that does has double duty WOW factor for me. One, it's beautiful! Two, it appeals to my nerd-girl side. Yes, in case you didn't know, I'm a nerd-girl, and when I discovered that Lucky 13 Lacquer had a whole line of Doctor Who themed polishes, a collection called The Last Of The Time Lords, I couldn't get to their site fast enough, I just HAD to have them! The one I have for you today is a lovely one called Life Is Short And You Are Hot, one of my favorite lines from one of my favorite episodes: "Blink!"!

 

LiSaYaH is a magenta jelly polish filled with tiny magenta glitters and medium holographic magenta hexes.

 

You could wear this polish so many ways, probably the most popular way is over white or pink, or layered over itself in 3-4 coats, and all of those would be amazing, but I wanted to do something different, so here is is over blue! This is 1 coat of LiSaYaH over Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure The Sky's The Limit.

Here is the bottle, so you can see the color my nails were before adding LiSaYaH

 

The formula on this polish was fabulous, I had no problems with application and the glitter went on very evenly as you can see

Close up!

This polish is so versatile! Here are some other amazing options for layers Life Is Short And You Are Hot. From left to right, this is one coat over Zoya Monica (a dark purple), Zoya Carey (a light gray), China Glaze Liquid Leather (black), SH CSM The Sky's the Limit (which is what I'm wearing above), and a surprise winner, over SoFlaJo Going Down? (yellow). What can't you wear this over?

Lucky 13 Lacquers are all hand-mixed as well as 100% 3-free, vegan, and cruelty free. You can pick up your own Life Is Short And You Are Hot, as well as check out the rest of the Last Of The Time Lords collection at Lucky 13's website here.

Don't forget to enter my GIVEAWAY! It ends Feb 24!

Til next time!
-Kara

Pretty in Pink

Welcome back everyone! I hadn't done any stamping in a while, so I thought I'd give it a go! Luckily, this is the "Month of Untrieds", so it really helped narrow down my options for me.

For this look I used an unnamed pink Miss Sporty I got from a friend in the UK. This is a very pretty color, but very sheer. This is 4 coats, and there is still very visible nail line. I then used Bundle Monster plate BM-213 and Zoya Lara for the images, and to add a little pizazz, I used my dotting tool to add gems to the accent nail. Everything is topped with a generous coat of Seche Vite.

I love the way this turned out, I just wish the base color was more opaque. Perhaps I'll wear some undies next time :)

Til next time!
-Kara

Day 8: Gradient

Happy Black Friday everyone! I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving, and to my international friends, a happy Thursday! I am now officially done Christmas shopping, so I feel pretty good about that!

Can you believe it's already Day 8 of the 10-Day Challenge? Where has this month gone? Day 8 is Gradients. I had such a hard time with this challenge. I practiced for over a week, and had just convinced myself that I was incapable of doing gradients when it worked! I was so happy with the outcome that I had to wear it a second day - not the mani I had planned for Thanksgiving, but I couldn't bring myself to remove it!

For this I used Zoya Arizona and Zoya Lo. I think it looks like a sunset :)
By the way, if you are planning on trying a gradient, be warned - cleanup is ridiculous. I swear half my hand was stained orange!

The next Challenge is Water Marble - another pain to clean up, I'm sure. I'd better start practicing, as this is another technique I haven't tried before.

Make sure to check out everyone else's gradients.

-Kara

Orly Miss Conduct

Not much going on with me today, so I'm going to just jump right in!

Today's mani is so fun, I didn't think I would love this polish as much as I do! Orly Miss Conduct is a magenta polish with gorgeous scattered holo - so fun! I actaully painted this on my nails last night, and wore it all day today. I got so many complements on it! Then tonight, I decided it needed a little something extra. Check it out!

Orly Miss Conduct

This is 2 coats of Orly Miss Conduct stamped with Konad's special black stamping polish using my Vivid Lacquer stamping plate V001. I cannot tell you how much I love this plate! The full nail images are HUGE, so they actually fit my large nails! Check out my other post featuring the Vivid Lacquer plate here.

Here's a macro so you can see the beautiful scattered holo in Miss Conduct. Gorgeous, isn't it?
B thought so too, she snatched the bottle off of the desk and managed to get it open, and poured half the bottle out all over the carpet. Yay.

-Kara

The Velvet Manicure

Today I have something very special manicure for you. Not only is it Pink Wednesday, but this is my very first try at the newly popular Velvet Manicure.  And not only is it pink and velvet, it is also budget friendly! Yay! I'm sure you've heard of the expensive brand that sells the tiny containers of crushed velvet and microbeads for fish-egg manicures (you can see I'm doing my very best not to write their name, nor their copyrighted term for the fish-egg). Anywho, instead of buying that tiny bottle of very expensive crushed velvet, head on over to your local craft store and pick up some flocking powder. Flocking powder comes in tons of colors and it's cheap. I got mine from ebay, $2 for an ounce.

So here it is, my first velvet mani!

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri

I was originally going to use OPI Mod About You, but decided that if it was just going to be "glue" for the flocking powder, I'd use something cheap. I used two coats of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Pink Blink, and it ended up being a perfect match for the color of my flocking powder! While the second coat was still wet, I firmly placed my finger in a bowl of flocking powder, then pressed it into the nail. Voila! Easy!

Here are some more pictures!

Velvet Manicure

Close up

This mani is a hit around my house tonight, I like it - it's so different, and I feel very high fashion - and both kids love it - it's so soft! It's also very durable. it has lasted through dinner, bathtime and bed for the kids no problem. I was afraid that getting it wet would mess it up, but it dries perfectly. This is a surprisingly no-fuss mani.

What do you think of the Velvet Manicure trend? Will you be trying this yourself?

-Kara

On Wednesdays we wear pink

Welcome to my very first Pink Wednesday! In my excitement, I *may* have gone overboard, but, oh well :)

I want to apologize in advance for the state of my cuticles, I've been working in the garage for the last two days and it's really reeking havoc on them.

Anyway, here it is:

Pink french tips

Pink Wednesday nails

This is two coats of OPI Mod About You, the tips are Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Presto Pink, Sally Girl In Love on the accent nails - it's hard to tell in the pictures, but this is a pink glitter, all topped with Seche Vite.

Hope you enjoyed my first Pink Wednesday! I certainly loved doing it.

What’s your favorite pink polish?

-Kara

Nail Fail!

Well, I'm not off to a great start today! My youngest is getting sick, and was up really late. I didn't have a lot of time to plan my mani. I knew I wanted to use something from my untried stash, so I grabbed OPI Mod About You, a nice pale pink. I expected this polish to be very sheer and need many coats to achieve opacity, but it was surprisingly opaque after one coat, but I used two just to be sure. I wanted to do something soft and simple, so I pulled out the Konad stamper and plate m63. I couldn't decide between using Nails Inc Bruton Street or China Glaze For Audrey as my accent color, so I did both!

This is where the FAIL comes in. Apparently, while my plate LOOKED clean, it still had traces of black in it, and it messed up the color, that and Bruton Street was a little too sheer for stamping. Anyway, the effect left something to be desired. So, I cleaned up the plate again and brushed on For Audrey, flipped the image and stamped again. No time to start over - bed was calling me!

So, without further ado. The Nail Fail.

OPI Mod About You

Oh well, sometimes you just gotta try, right? Lesson learned. Hopefully next time it'll turn out better.

-Kara