Cupcakes for Monday

Still taking a nail break of my own, but I have a 4 year old that BEGGED for some nail art.

I know, it should be pumpkin pie, but what can I say. Sometimes you just need cupcakes. Especially if you are 4 and you see mommy looking at nail art manicures on Pinterest.

We did a skittles manicure with colors she liked. Then white frosting was applied to the tips. After it dried I added sprinkles with the tip of a size 4 knitting needle. My dotting tool disappeared.

In case you are curious as to any of the colors, I will ID them.

Thumb: Booty Babe Hella Baloo
Pointer: Essie Mint Candy Apple
Middle: Zoya Lolly (matte!)
Ring: Sinful colors Unicorn (FYI this color stains! Use a blocking base coat or wear less than 24 hours.)
Pinky: Dare T. Wear Strip-Tease
Frosting: Orly Dayglow

P.S. My nails are still peeling and terrible. I keep trimming/filing and doing treatments. I am going into see a doctor tomorrow to discuss some health issues (like the fact that a 30 year old woman should have had her tonsils taken out back in the 80s *sigh*) and bring up the nails. My nails have never been really strong or nice, but this is crazy.

China Glaze High Hopes

This will be a down and dirty post. I have been hauling kids all over town to evaluation appointments as well as dealing with wonderful health dilemmas of my own. Hopefully an appointment next Tuesday will answer a LOT of my questions and solve a bunch of my health issues.

On to the polish!

China Glaze High Hopes is from the Spring 2010 Up and Away collection. Its a nice bright coral creme. Not a neon though, so if you love bright colors but neons are a bit much, this color is great. It looked a lot more 'red' with white and brighter light.

 Depending on length of your nails, you will need 2-3 coats. There was still visible nail line at 2 coats, so a 3rd for longer nails or those with really white tips. Application was nice. China Glaze does tend to have thinner formulas for their cremes. I like it, but it is a bit different than many brand's cremes and will probably need an extra coat because of it.

The third photo was comparing it with a different pink and it was a flop photo since the focus is off, BUT I wanted to show the color with a coral pink shirt I own. High Hopes is pretty much this same pink/coral shade but with a bit more intensity to the color. This wasn't in as intense light as the first photos, plus a more muted background help the color seem a little less intense.

The color is a lot brighter than the bottle though. The bottle was the same shade as my shirt in the 3rd photo. The polish is clearly more intense.

I bought this polish and all opinions are my own. You can find China Glaze at many beauty retailers and for super discount prices several places on the internet. I tend to buy mine online because I can get bottles for around $3-3.50 while at Sallys its about twice that price.

LynBDesigns Zero

Zero from LynBDesigns is from the Nightmare Before Christmas collection. If you have been living under a rock, Nightmare Before Christmas an animated cartoon that shows what happens if  Halloween Town ran Christmas instead of the North Pole.  Zero is the dog of the main character and he is a little ghost dog with a red nose.

Zero is a milky white base with big hearts, medium black hexes, white rectangle polishes, tiny red flecks, and a few sheer large hearts.

You can get full coverage in 3 coats. To get sufficient glitter coverage for me (I love my glitter) I needed 2 coats over a base. I tried this with some colored bases, but by the time I had as much glitter as I wanted the base color was pretty well hidden. Also, you will be fishing for bigger glitters if you want more of them. To me that is part of life with big glitter polishes. I didn't end up fishing too much though.

 I ended up wearing this over Orly's Dayglow. This is 2 coats of Zero over 2 coats of Orly Dayglow. The ring finger used to have a contrast color with Zero over it, but that didn't work out, so I quickly replicated the other nails. And as you can see I bumped it and got a couple of creases before it was totally dry. No worries though, I got my regular wear from the polish. I do tend to change my color every couple of days, so its not extended wear, but it did well for me. Nothing that my usual base/top coat couldn't handle. 

Also using white as the base means you can't see the white bar glitter or the clear hearts. They are both there. In fact you can't see it probably but there is even a clear heart on one of these finger. Its like where's waldo for nail polish. :-P

Disclaimer, I bought all polishes used in this manicure and all opinions are my own.You can buy Zero from LynBDesigns on Etsy. Follow her on Facebook for special promos and discount codes.  Orly can be bought at most beauty suppliers. This white came in the summer neon collection. As you can probably tell by now its one of my faves under glitter polishes.

Orly Nailtrition

Do you have cracked, splitting, sand looking nails? Me too. I have done one week of treatment and as of this post I am smack dab in the middle of week 2. Yeah!

Here is After 1 week:

All I can say is it really works. Its strange it didn't seem like my nails were growing but they are longer. It sort of seems like the nail is attached to the skin farther down on my finger which is good. Makes the nails less stubbins. I do have a bit of cracking on two nails that I will file down, but I am still pleased when the results I got. The strange yellowish looking stuff is where the skin is attached to the nail and it doesn't look as yellow in person. But its new growth IMO.

See the before shot (lighting slightly different sorry!) This was actually on day 2 of the treatment.

Amazing right? I am happy enough with the one week treatment that after swatching up a storm (ok only 2 colors) and wearing a couple of colors for 24 hours, I decided I wanted to do a second week as was recommended.

The hangnails were not affected by the treatment though, dang it! I need to use cuticle oil more.

Pros: strengthens nails!
Cons: Smudges/chips easy. See day 2, I already had bumps and smudges. I didn't have any problems with peeling off though.

I will post again after the second week!

Disclaimer, I purchased this product and all opinions are my own. You can buy this online or at beauty stores like Sally's or Ulta.

Lancome Mystery polish

Ready for a no-name mystery polish mani? Here it is! This is Lancome mystery in a warm gray shade. Its not on Lancome's website, and the bottle shape is different. Its a mini size (8ml).

I got it in a blog sale mystery box, so it likely is an older bottle style or possibly was part of a kit/set since it a small size.

Its shown with a freebie mini from Kawaii Nail Lacquer on the ring finger. I didn't realize the Kawaii was so orange and black until it was on the nail. The orange glitters change to red plus there are purple to blue holo glitters so it can be deceiving at certain angles. I thought it would be more rainbow of a glitter, its not. Its nice, but felt a little Halloween to me. If it wasn't the week after Halloween I wouldn't think Halloween so hard.

 Above is in the shade and morning sun. Its also after 24 hours of wear. It wore really well considering I didn't wrap the tips. Oops!

 Here are the bottle shots. Looking at this photo I don't know why I didn't think the Kawaii would be orange, black and white. Sometimes I just don't really think before applying polish.

Disclosure: I buy all my polishes. The Lancome is one of those random not made anymore things. You can buy other colors online or in select department stores. The Kawaii was a freebie with purchase. She runs specials like this on occasion. Check out her Facebook page for flash sales and deal alerts.

Pomegranate Nail Lacquer Autumnesque

Still got the sickies around here. Boo. But I got the replacement part for the carpet cleaner so I have been a busy little bee cleaning house today. Yay! And I have been wearing s SUPER pretty color too.

Autumnesque by Pomegranate Nail Laquer is a mauve shade with gold shimmer in it. The website calls is 'copper' but clearly they are using that term loosely since I call it pink. Its more of a brown autumnal shade of rose pink IMO. 

It is a thinner formula than some, but not lacking in pigment. This was 2 coats and I might have even pulled off only 1 coat on short nails. One thing I have to say (mostly to myself) is wrap the tips. I did not, and the top coat shrunk the polish a little and there is little lines of white sticking out the end on several fingers.

If this brand is unfamiliar, its because its pretty small still and semi-indie at this point. Their polish is: made in the USA;"4-free" - Contain NO toluene, formaldehyde, dibutyl phthalate (DBP) or camphor; and not tested on animals. So lots of good things there. The formula reminded me a lot of Zoya (which is 5 free, so a similar idea). The only thing I did not like was the brush. It was very thin. It took me 5 or 6 strokes to do the width of my thumb and middle finger nails. I guess it would be great for children's nails or people with really tiny nails. If you have really big ones though, the brush size might be annoying to you.

On the pinky finger I have Burning Leaves from LynBDesigns (freebie for the month of October with large purchase woot woot!) I used some thick top coat to tame the gritty glitter. I actually didn't like burning leaves on Autumnesque as much as I thought I would. Burning leaves is a gold/orange glitter bomb and it didn't go as well with the pink of Autumnesque as I initially expected. Not bad enough to remove the polish and try again, but I won't repeat the combo. A more true gold would look better than the orange and gold IMO. Then again you all might love the combination.

Disclaimer, I bought all polishes my self (technically Burning Leaves was a freebie with purchase, but I was not sent polish to review). All opinions are my own. If you want to try these polishes Pomegranate Nail Lacquer retails for $9 for a full size bottle and can be bought at http://www.pomegranatelacquer.com/ It is also part of their holiday Gift Set, which I want even though I have the color. See their website for more locations. LynBDesigns retails for $8.50 and while this polish cannot be bought, you can buy other polishes from her in her etsy store.

LynBDesigns The Man with Two Hearts

I missed a post last week and this one is late. Sorry! We have had all the joys of viral pink eye for our 2 year old and Lysol wipes on ALL the things and washing all bedding every day to prevent everyone else from getting it. Now that we are mostly recovered AND my week long nail treatment ended I decided to swatch.
'The Man with Two Hearts' from LynBDesigns is part of her "The Doctor is in" collection. Its a red glitter with small square glitters and two shades of red heart glitters. The hearts hide in multiple layers of the glitter since they are the same shade.  I did my thumb with two layers of THwTH below. I topped it with a generous layer of P.D. Quick Top coat by Butter London since it dried a little gritty textured. The rough glitter texture was not as noticeable with only one layer, so when used as a topper any top coat will work. If you layer this up use a top coat specific for thirsty glitter or thick layers of good quality top coats. For a super smooth finish you might want a second thicker layer of top coat, but I was happy with just one.

The color was ok on its own, but I decided I wanted to try it over a red. The red was of course OPI's The Color of Minnie. Its my favorite red and I can't find one that I love as much on my hands. So here is one coat of TMwTH over red.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE it as a topper. I didn't fish for heart glitters, so they were pretty sparse and I only ended up with one on the nails. You can't see them as well on the thumb photo (at top) but there were two in there. It was party because I applied thicker coats using more of a dab method. The fingers I just brushed the glitter on leaving thinner layers of polish.

This was a thinner formula than the Medusa Cascade I previously reviewed. I believe Medusa Cascade uses more of a gel base polish and The Man with Two Hearts was more of a regular polish base, if that makes any sense.  So for me Medusa Cascade really wanted to be dabbed on, but this can be brushed on easily. Your mileage may vary, but this was my experience.

I think I just found my performance manicure. I have a solo (for 2 measures and 1 beat haha!) in John Rutter's Gloria this Christmas Season. We are supposed to wear holiday outfits. Of course that means Diva red.

Disclaimer: All polishes are bought by me and all opinions are my own. LynBDesigns retails for $8.50 for a full size bottle including shipping. Check her out on Etsy. OPI retails for $8.50 and can be found at select salons including JCPenny Salons among others. Find a reputable retailers on opi.com.