Valentine's Art Idea 1

Sorry for the sudden absence again but life was getting a little hectic so I had to stop blogging for a bit, but as always, I kept painting my nails.
So this nail art idea came from a picture one of my friends found on facebook here. I changed some things up but feel free to do it like the original or add your own twist on it!
I used China Glaze Ruby Pumps and Champagne Kisses as my base colors, A-England Perceval for the hearts, loose glitter from Born Pretty Store, and acrylic paint for the black details. Then I decided it needed a little more and added Lynnderella Undead Red to the tips for a glitter gradient on my red nails. Ok, onto the pictures! Hope this gives someone an idea for nail art!

And, just because I can, a glitter macro!

I love Undead Red! If you want a similar glitter for a lower price, Sea Lore Arista is very similar! The glitter shapes aren't exactly the same, but the types of glitter are super similar including the holo pieces.

Hope you enjoyed the first of my nail art series, and let me know in the comments if there's something you want to see in this series or otherwise!

Janelle

Another Pink...and it's Wednesday!

I break all the rules over here at Life.Love.Nailpolish, because it's my blog and I can do what I want! But today, I'm actually posting a pink polish on a Wednesday! So I guess I can say "On [some]Wednesdays, we wear pink!" Ok, onto the rambling about the polish. Nubar Pink Lily is a very light pink creme with fine shimmer that lines up in strands. I'm terrible at descriptions. It's got shimmer like Zoya Marley. That's the best I can do. I got this in a grab bag I purchased in a Facebook group. I used 3 coats for the pictures. It was streaky on the first, but managed to get mostly evened out by the third. I've shown it without topcoat. I also have a comparison for you after the inital swatches!

It's really light! And the fine shimmer is really invisible. I just thought of a better description of the shimmer - pearly shimmer! But it still looks like a creme.

It makes me look so tan! 

Here you can see it was a bit lumpy. I'm sure topcoat would help with that. I think it may also need a 4th coat. Keep in mind that these were pretty thin coats though, so maybe I just needed to polish a little thicker and I might have been able to get away with 2 coats.

Comparison time! I compared it to 2 other light pinks in my stash, just to see how similar it was. I have China Glaze Something Sweet on my index finger and OPI Mod About You on my ring finger. I used 3 coats of each.

This pic came out a little too dark and warm, but you can clearly tell the differences between the polishes. The China Glaze and OPI have some lavender in them and are more cool-toned compared to Pink Lily.

The China Glaze and the OPI are more similar to each other than to Pink Lily. 

Verdict: No dupes of Pink Lily here, but Something Sweet and Mod About You are interchangeable.

Hope this helped at least one person! Have a marvelous day!

Happy Polishing,

Janelle

Failure Sailor

Sooooo...nail fail time! I had a costume party to attend this weekend, and I wanted to do nautical nails to match my sailor costume. Well, when you can't find any of your nail art supplies, it's pretty hard to execute the idea I had in my head..that, and my striping brush was fraying. So I bring you this nail fail!

Even my dots were uneven. And that gradient looked way worse in real life. My cleanup was sloppy, probably because I hated how this came out, but still sloppy.

Promise my cleanup didn't look this bad in real life. Oh macro, why do you hate me so? That's it for this post, and since I posted mine, why don't you tell me about your most recent nail fail in the comments?

Bonus pic: My friend took this while we were at In N Out the other night after a costume skate party.

Happy Polishing,

J

Gradient & a Mini Tutorial

So yesterday I showed you China Glaze Something Sweet...here's what I did with it! A pastel gradient!
Some of the lovely ladies in one of my polish groups were trying to figure out how to get that smooth gradient look, so I volunteered to take pics of me doing one. Before you start, be sure to have painted on your base color already and make sure it's completely dry.

Step 1: Apply your colors to the surface you're working on. I'm using all China Glaze - Kinetic Candy, Sweet Hook, and Something Sweet.

I chose to use the clear disc that comes in blank CD/DVD stacks to work on, so you can see what's at my work desk through the disc, sorry! Any plastic surface should work, just make sure you don't need it anymore! Also, using your base color as one of the shades in your gradient helps make the transition smooth.

Step 2. Use a clean end of a dotting tool (or toothpick, or bobby pin) to blend the colors together where they meet. Use a clean end for each color transition.

This pic is actually after I dabbed at the polish with my sponge, simply because I forgot to take one before.

Step 3. Dab your sponge in the polish once.

Don't dab multiple times, save all that dabbing for your nails. The sponge works like a stamp in this case, so only pick up the "image" once.

Step 4. Dab the sponge on your nail in the orientation you want your gradient to be, being sure to dab a few times slightly back and forth to help the colors blend even more.

This is obviously before cleanup, so it's a tad messy, but you can see the blending of the colors is very gradual even before topcoat.

Step 5. Cleanup and topcoat

Voila! Beautiful gradient nails! I did make some mistakes on my nails and noticed a few things, so I figured I'd share those with you in a quick list:

1. If you want the smoothest gradient, use a sponge with the smallest holes. I used Rite Aid brand cosmetic wedges.
2. Don't try to "stamp" multiple nails without redoing the polish gradient on the sponge. I tried on my pinky, and I got sponge lint stuck to it...and it wasn't smooth at all.
3. If you want the tip color (or wherever you put the brightest color) to be brighter, paint directly on the sponge. I tried this on my right hand and I still got a smooth gradient, but the blue (Kinetic Candy) stands out more.
4. Use 3 colors. I know you can barely see the purple, but if it weren't there, I don't think the pink and blue would blend as smoothly.
5. Have fun!!

Now that you sat through all that, here are some pics of the full mani!

Left hand. You can see where I jacked up my gradient on my ring finger when I tried to get a piece of debris out of my polish.

Left hand again. I did the gradient on my index at an angle, just to show you don't have to do it straight.

Right hand. One of the few times you'll see it, but just wanted to show that the blue came out much richer here when I painted directly on the sponge. You can even see a little of the purple!

Wow, that was long, but I hope you enjoyed it and if you were having trouble getting a smooth gradient before, I hope this helped!

Happy Polishing,

J

Something Sweet

I meant to post this up before the end of October, but I didn't get around to it, but it's ok, right? We should be concerned with Breast Cancer Awareness (and other cancers as well) all year round. So today I'm showing you China Glaze Something Sweet in 2 coats. Beautiful formula, thin and great flow, opaque in 2 coats.

No cleanup, I wasn't done with the mani yet.

The color is more accurate on a blue background with the flash on.

See, the yellow background washed the color out!

I've got to take pictures of what I did with this polish, but I think you'll like it! If you're looking for a pastel pink with a hint of lilac that has a beautiful formula, I don't think Something Sweet will disappoint.

Happy Polishing,

J

Another She-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named Glitter?

Yes, I bring you another Lynnderella glitter today. Why? Because they're pretty and I like them on my nails. As many have said, the drama is ridiculous, but goodness she can make a good glitter! Today's glitter is Shapeshifter. I layered it over 2 coats of China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint because originally, I was gonna layer Attitude Adjust-mint on top, but I really wanted all those shapes from Shapeshifter on my nails. So you'll only be seeing 3 of my nails today, since the PVA base coat works a little too well at removing glitter, and now I can't keep it on my nails. I promise it's still pretty though. But it needs at least 2-3 coats of topcoat to keep it smooth, so my nails were rather thick.

Look at how thick that is! And apparently my elementary skills at applying Seche Vite...I haven't used that topcoat in a while.

Look at all those pretty holo shapes!! Butterflies, hexes, big stars, little stars, diamonds, bars, squares, and even holo micro-glitter!  I could not stop staring at my nails!

Ummm, yeah. I like this. A lot. I think I got all the shapes on this nail. Who am I kidding? I'll probably use this again and a horse shape will come out the bottle! Do they make horse-shaped glitter? LOL!!

This pic is more color-accurate with the flash, so I've got another one for you to drool over.

Excuse the weird tip shrinkage. I have no idea what was happening there. You can especially see the butterfly shape here. 

Ok, I think I've posted enough pics for one post, so I'll see you around the blogosphere!

J

Lynnderella Lucky Numbers

Yeah, yeah, I know all the drama associated with this particular brand, and while fascinating, guess what? I don't care. Moving on! I wanted this particular polish because of the pinkish shimmer in the base, and I wasn't finding any other indie polishes similar to it to satisfy my lemming. I got it in the mail yesterday, and I knew I wanted to wear it right away! I didn't want to layer it over white like I've seen, just because I wanted something different for the first time I would be wearing it...so I chose gray and green. The base colors are China Glaze Recycle and Starboard. Now enjoy the pic spam!

With Flash

Hope you liked it, and I managed to get my hands on a few other Lynns, so they should be popping up on the blog eventually!

J

OPI You Callin' Me A Lyre?

Ugh...OPI is so obnoxious with it's use of punctuation in it's polish names. That's beside the point, though. Today's polish is a gorgeous, delicate pink from the recently released Ballet collection. From swatches I saw online, I thought it was a lot paler but it is pleasantly pink in person in all lighting. This is my first set of photos with short nails :(. But, I am getting used to them. I think they're kinda cute now. What do you guys think? Anywho, onto the pictures. They are all 3 coats of You Callin' Me A Lyre?.

The accent nail is 3 coats of the OPI, 1 coat of Pretty & Polished Valentino, 1 coat China Glaze Luxe and Lush, and 1 coat of NYC Starry Silver Glitter. I love how delicate the glitter looks. Click the pics to see better detail.

I feel like these pics are kinda grainy today, so sorry for that but I was in a rush to take pics. I am using flickr for pictures now, so hopefully the quality is significantly better since Blogger won't be able to distort them to it's liking. 

Happy Polishing,

J

P.S. Don't forget to enter my giveaway here!

Charcoal Goodness!

So I was in a super hurry to get supplies for cupcakes today and I had been dreaming of this mani, so I decided to do it today! It was super easy because I only needed one coat of each, and 2 coats of topcoat. Scroll down and see the magical goodness that is Concrete Catwalk topped with Some Like It Haute!

This was the only clear shot I could get with my camera. It was that sparkly!!! But please, enjoy the blurred holo goodness in the next photos!

And yes, I did file down my nails. It took forever! I keep telling myself to file them down before they get that long, but I get lazy sometimes. And I like how my nails look long, but they really aren't functional...especially for typing on my phone's keyboard. Hope you had a great Sunday!

May your nails never break,

J

Recent Hauling

Sorry about not posting yesterday but I was feeling a bit under the weather. I do, however, have some pictures of my lovely goodies! Hope you enjoy looking at them!

First up, my stamping plates. I got 4 Konad brand plates (my first official Konad brand plates!) and the MASH set of 25 that is sold on Amazon for 17.99. Cheap! If you look on top, you'll see that the MASH plate is the same as the Konad plate.

Konad plate, MASH plate.

I did this on purpose because I read a review that said that the MASH houndstooth image had an error in the engraving. I didn't see any errors but I did notice that the image on the upper right differs slightly in the pattern. I have a review coming up comparing the stamping on these plates, but I'll let you know right now - the MASH plate stamps better.

I got my order from Altered Ego cosmetics! Yay!! I ordered 5 for $10 and then the color of the week and I got one for free because of another blog! They enclosed 3 samples with my order. Swatches coming soon, but trust me, my swatches have nothing on how awesome they look.

Nail supplies I bought on evilBay. :) These were cheap though. I got 10 nail wheels, assorted striping tape, and some nail strips/decals. I guess I should do a review of those decals, huh?

My pretties!!! I love all of these, just not equally. But they are awesome. From Left to Right: Color Club Fashion Addict, China Glaze Entourage, Custom Kicks, B-Girlz, Cheers to You, Bad Kitty, Frosty (major lemming killed!), and Blue Paradise (my least fave out of these). I also scored these on evilBay for a good price with decent shipping (6.95) all from the same seller.

Last but not least, my first Kleancolors!! They are not lying when they say that these stink to high hell!! I got these at my local 99 cents and Up store for a little over a dollar a piece. My total was around 4.20 for these. Cheaper than Beauty Joint for me!! From left to right: Kiss Goodbye, Midnight Seduction, Holo Green, Sparkle Emerald (talk about a misnomer).

Hope you enjoyed my haul. Let me know if there's anything you want to see on my nails ASAP. I have swatches on a nail wheel, I just have to take better pics.

Happy Polishing,

J