China Glaze Sci-Fi

I thought I had posted on this one before, but I couldn't find the post. So, here it is.

China Glaze "Sci-Fi" is a metallic purple. Its from the 2009 Khrome collection which is a bunch of crome metallic colors. I actually thought it was more of a gray until I started playing around with the color and toppers and the lavender really came out.

Its a one coater, except that it tends to drag if you don't paint really fast and then let it fully dry.  >.<  So paint each nail fast, and don't go back to it until its fully dry, even if you miss a spot. If you do, you will see what happened to my middle fingernail. Not a killer, but if i weren't planning on layering this later in the week, I would add a second coat to that nail.

The color looks gray on my hands. Maybe its because its cloudy (snow is rolling in and by the time this post goes live Monday morning we should have at least an inch on the ground. It can pull off a metallic silver almost gunmetal color if you don't have gray next to it. It would be excellent for people that want a neutral that love wearing purples. Its just a Hint of color.

Disclaimer, I bought this myself. I got it online at a discount store (TonyNail) over the summer. It might be a bit hard to find since its a little older. But since it is in a discount site, I am guessing it might not be *that* hard to find.

Different DImension "I've Been an Angel All Year"

Sorry this is a little later in the day than usual, I haven't found my nail polish groove again. But I wanted to share my Christmas manicure. Well I might swap colors since I have another polish I haven't tried out yet, but as of right now, this is what I will be wearing tomorrow.

And even though its Christmas Eve, its just another day in our house. The husband is at work, we are dropping off food for LINK's Christmas Eve dinner. Link is the Lawrence Interdenominational Nutrition Kitchen. Its housed by the church directly across the street from the homeless shelter, and our church usually is responsible to serve 4 times a year, as well as helping with the holidays. This year we are doing Christmas Eve dinner.

Anyway onto the nails!

"I've been an Angel All Year" is a milky white base with white, silver, and blue (matte and sparkly) glitters. Its pretty, and not totally "Christmas" so I can wear it all winter. Funnily enough my other seasonal collection color IS totally christmas (red and green glitter bomb) so if I end up with another post this week sporting holiday nails, you all know why.

Also, sorry for the cuticles, i ran out of orange oil and its not coming until the post Christmas clearance at Sally's. And I bumped my nails so there is a dent in the middle finger. I don't mind it, so its staying.

Like, love it? Want some more of it? I bought this from Different Dimension's etsy shop. As of this post she had a 20% off code (good until the 26th), so you can get your own for 20% off $8.50. She also has the option for overnight shipping including Saturday delivery if you NEED this for a New Year's party.

Now I am off to be domestic and super crafty awesome mommy (or at least to hand out cookie bribes and turn on Charlie Brown Christmas Special). I hope you all have a great holiday!

Painting Salt Dough Ornaments with nail polish

What do you do with those colors that you get that turn out to be a bad color for your skin tone, crappy formula, etc?

Here is one simple solution. Salt dough ornaments! Its Christmas Break here. That means no preschool and no autism resources for our area.

First make up a batch of salt dough. There are cooking recipes and non cooking recipes. I went with the easiest recipe I could find (i.e. no cooking)

Salt dough recipe:
1 cup salt
2 cups all purpose flour
1 cup warm water

Mix flour and salt with a fork. Slowly add in water and mix into a dough. I used my hands at this point for mixing. Knead the dough for 5 minutes or until its a good consistency. You can roll this out and cut with cookie cutters. (We did ours free hand because I am awesome like that)

Bake at 200 for 2-3 hours. (I upped the oven to 325, the bottoms were slightly brown.)

Now once they are dry you can paint them.

You will want something over the table. I brought out part of the recycle bin (cereal box) and opened it up to cover most of the table. A paper plate will also work.

I was accompanied by a 2 year old and a 4 year old.

I regretted the nail polish as medium choice once we all started going. Especially since a few of the polishes I had pulled out to use up were from before 2006 and not 3 Free. If you haven't whiffed one of those lately, whew its STRONG!

But I used up one polish completely that was over 10 years old and with thinner it was still clumpy and streaky, and most of a green that looked terrible on me. And even a bit of the yellow that stained my nails. Overall I am quite happy.

So were my helpers. Even though the 2 year old won't pose, at least he helped paint!

The 2 year old kept painting everything red so we added a heart to the angel.

This was meant to be a giant heart, the back side she pained all green and said was a leaf. This side was decorated with Christmas Lights.

Top row (L to R) was a sun, then the baby Jesus, then candy cane. The baby Jesus we had to mix colors to get a brownish tan. Then his face was painted red several times by the resident red painter i.e. 2 year old. Eventually I said ok.
Middle row was a holiday tree, wreath, candy canes.
Bottom row was heart/Love, a doughnut with sprinkles. Glitter wreath with holly and one last candy cane.

In case yo are curious what sort of 'browning' a higher oven temp with do, the bottom right candy cane is flipped over to show the 'browned' side. Its very light.

I added some spare yarn and hung these on the tree. Happy Holidays!

Blog hiatus

Hey ladies!

I will be taking a bit of a blog break. For one, my nails have been bare. I even sliced part of one on the blade of a food processor. Don't worry it was off, I just assembling it. My hand is fine. I have a chip in the nail.

Secondly, I have been busy, busy prepping for my upcoming surgery.  That means cleaning the house, finding people to come in and help out, writing up a menu, and even freezer meals. If people are interested I can share the recipes I am making this week. They are all going to be freezer to crockpot meals for ease of preparation.

I will update when I get a chance. 

Ginger + Liz Heart Breaker

Random health issues will be posted at the end of this post.  First on to the polish!

Ginger + Liz is a three free, vegan nail polish line aimed for 'trendsetters.' If you pay attention to the polishes I like, well they aren't so trendy. More classic with the occasional fun glitter bomb. They are also, IMO one of the more pricey nail polish lines and harder to find in person.

Anyway, I is a bright purple with a wee bit of shimmer in the light. Not a normal shade for me,as I tend to more pinks. Ginger + Liz tries to play this color up as a more conservative shade compared to most of their neon shades.

 This is a cool color, but in direct sunlight it almost looks pink. There is a visible nail line though. I didn't notice it until I was editing photos. So make sure to do a third coat if it bothers you. I don't know what was going on, but my camera freaked out on me in that photo. It was even in manual mode, so I don't know how to fix that. But kapow! Color!

 This photo was done in the shade to show more how the color. Its a little more purple, and even my skin color is a bit more accurate. I think the sun reflecting on the shimmer really made it look different in the sun.

Purples really aren't my color. I love them until I wear them. They make me look more pale and make my hands look funky colors. So I probably won't wear this unless its layered under another color. I didn't paint my other hand, or even keep it on for the 24 hours I usually like to wear polish just to see how it wears. Nothing wrong with the polish itself, just not a good color for me.

Ginger + Liz can be bought on their website or at Urbanoutfitters.com. It retails for $12 for a full size bottle.

Now for the health update. This might get a little gross. I will attempt to stick with medical terms though. In less than 2 weeks I will be having a tonsillectomy AND a septoplasty. At age 30. Yeesh.

I went into see an ENT (ear, nose, throat doctor) about my tonsilloliths and chronic upper respiratory infections (sinitus, tonsilitis, AND otitis media I hit all the areas he specialized in). Turns out the septum in my nose (the flesh between the two holes) is not in the middle. This is very typical and its usually not straight in the middle, but one of my nostrils is about 80% closed. That means its harder for my body to clean out the stuff in my nasal area, leading to infections and well a month of torture for me. So I get to plan for 2 weeks of my life to literally not do anything while I recover from a throat job and a nose job (nose job is all internal so it will look the same). I will get a schedule of friends/family that can help come in and play with the kids, do some cooking, cleaning, etc. while I heal. And then I get to hope I don't have complications. A big cause of complications is doing too much too soon. I plan to do as little as possible. And eat a TON of popsicles. Yay for frozen clear liquids!

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.