H: Hello Kitty Manicure

Hey ladies!

It's time for "H" of the ABC challenge. How do you wear Hello Kitty when you are over the age of 35 and not look like a total fool? Discretely. Tastefully. Somehow in a luxe material. I think?

Well, I got a bunch of gold Hello Kitty nail decorations free with a dotting tool kit from Amazon. I really love gold and grey together so I did a simple mani with Color Club's Muse-ing, a dark grey cream polish. I picked a dark grey for high contrast and the gold warms up the grey nicely. Don't ya think?

There's only one picture today, because my camera's battery is almost dead and I don't have time to wait for it to charge.

So who does construction labor with a full on manicure? Crazy moi, that's who.

Progression of the bedroom....

After we tore up the carpet we had a little set back. We found some water damage in the back of the room and on the side. We suspect there must have been a waterbed in this room back in the 80's that leaked.  If you look to the left of the top picture, you can see we repaired the damage. The water had made the floor sink and bow about an inch downwards. The nails were not going to be able to grab on to the plywood underneath so we used liquid floor leveler to make the floor flat again. Kind of like a base coat ridge filler here in the nail world. We stopped construction because we had to wait a full 24 hours for the leveler to dry. The red tank is a compressor used to power the hammer.

Above is a sneak peak at what the new floors will look like. The black stuff is tar paper, for protection against moisture.

So that's it for today. Don't forget to check out the other ladies in this challenge.

Finger Paints - Cupcake Heaven

Happy Saturday out there!

This weekend I have a really nice pastel to show you. New this spring from Finger Paints is Cupcake Heaven.  Such a beautiful blue teal, I can't seem to stop buying this type of color.  Cupcake Heaven is brighter and more blue than China Glaze's For Audrey, if you need a comparison.  Today I paired it with a copper glitter also from Finger Paints, called Fall of Surprises.

Below is two coats of Cupcake Heaven by itself.  I didn't have any issues formula wise on this but it did dry with my vertical ridges showing and my ridges aren't that deep.  Probably need to remember to wear a ridge filling base coat with this one next time.

I got my bottle at Sally's and now I don't remember the price, plus I think in the last couple of weeks they raised all prices for nail polish.  China Glaze I saw is now $6.49 a bottle if your not a club member.  Oh and the new Finger Paints spring collection comes with a bunch of matching fish eggs - bead thing-y-s.  I skipped out on those.

Side note: Have you seen the new Orly bottles?  I should have taken a picture... oh well.  I hate the new font, looks cheap and they got rid of their signature "O". Bad!  I'm glad they kept the new rubber caps though.

Here's how the room is coming along:

PULL up the carpet!!!

Remove tack board and about 1000 staples with crow bar and screwdriver!  Talk about tedious!  Vacuum up dust, dirt and debris...

This is the entry to my bedroom, which is also the front door, "foyer", not much of one, but it is/was tiled with slate. There's hubby chiseling away to remove the stone and concrete underneath.  What a dirty and messy job. The removal of slate took 6 hours alone, for such a small space, maybe only 25 square feet. Hubby said, "We will see if hard work builds character". After a long day of hammering away, he concluded, "It does not."

If your just now tuning in, click back post by post to see how this all started.

Next we put down new hardwood floors!  I will post again on Wednesday with the ABC challenge hosted by Kimber at Lacquer Korner.  We are working on letter "H".  See you then!

G: Grape Juice by China Glaze

Letter "G" this week is represented by Grape Juice by China Glaze.  My husband picked out this polish... I would have never gotten this on my own.  It's not too bad, Grape Juice is a sheer, but super sparkly purple shimmer.  I think this might be good to layer over a bright blue creme polish... Anyhow, this is my first time wearing it and today I'm just posting a simple swatch.

I picked up a couple of new Revlon glitters from Walgreens a couple of weeks ago and decided to test them out on Grape juice..... only the big glitters stood out, the small glitters just got lost in the shimmer.  Oh well, fail.....

Below left to right is Hearts of Gold Fx, it has holographic heart glitter suspended in micro gold glitter.  In the middle is Celestial Fx which has holographic star, moon, and diamond glitter in micro holo and silver glitter.
Last is Grape Juice.  The Revlons were $5.99 each.

Here is how the room is coming along.

Here is two coats of Benjamin Moore's Ballet White.  I still have to paint the trim in oil, but I was thinking I should wait for the window sills to be fixed.  Next we rip out the nasty carpet!!  More to come!

F: Fish Braid Manicure

It's Wednesday again.  Time for "F" of the ABC challenge; F: for Fish braid mani.  Today's post is picture heavy so I'm going to stick to just this topic.  This was my first attempt at fish braiding. It wasn't too hard to do and turned out well.  I'll be doing this again in the future, with better colors.

Left Hand.

Right Hand.

I only did three nails because I ran out of nail polish strips.  Just as well, because I started to get tired...

So, how did I do this?

First I painted two coats of nail polish onto a plastic page protector and waited three hours for them to dry.
I used Color Club Style Icon (red), Revlon's Jaded Night (green), and Sinful Colors, Black on Black.

Then scraped up the rectangles of dried paint.  See?  They are like vinyl sheets.

Cut them into strips.

Applied one coat of base coat, then start placing the strips onto the nail in a braiding pattern, alternating the different colors.

Trim off the excess with a cuticle trimmer.
Clean up the cuticles with a brush and acetone.
Slap on a thick coat of top coat.
Viola! See below.

I used American Classics, Gelous base coat, and INM Out the Door top coat for this.

I'm so glad I finally got a chance to do this!  It was fun and the lines are nice and crisp.  I am pretty bad at nail art, so this technique is much easier for me to do.  I found out about this technique, I think from Sammasaurus at Nailasaurus....a long time ago... I'm too lazy to search for the link.

I love how this challenge is only once a week!  I've been enjoying just painting my nails and not taking photos every other day, for now. I'm going to go and see what the rest of the ladies in the challenge are up to!

Thanks for stopping by!!!

E: Edie, Color Club

Happy Wednesday!  Time for E: of the ABC challenge and I have Edie, from the Pop-tastic collection, last summer?  Poor Edie sat in my untried pile for months and it shouldn't have because it is really bright and pretty, almost neon green.  The formula is nice and creamy too.  Color Club really makes some nice polishes.

This is two easy coats, topped with Jelly Pop top coat.  Which I heard by the way, is now discontinued...  I am really disappointed to hear this.  I love this top coat and now I can't find it anywhere. Did anyone else hear about this?

Below is Edie under incandescent lighting.. mostly indoors it can look like a teal.

My bedroom is slowly coming along, I don't have pictures... I'll post them next time.  It has been so dark and cloudy here I don't have good pictures of the new color.

Until next time!

D: Dirty Berry by Catrice

Hey there!  D is today's ABC Challenge and I'm showing a swatch of Dirty Berry by Catrice.  DB is another bottle I got in a swap with Criminal Nails!  Catrice is not available in the US, so this is extra special to me.  This light purple polish has some micro holo glitter in it.  However, it's not a very strong holo, and tends to only show up in super bright sunlight, which we hardly are getting these days... cold, dark, winter.  Although the last two days have been unseasonable warm, but today it's really cloudy and going to thunderstorm with tornado watch... so I might lose power. UGH!  Oh and the temperature is going to drop 30 degrees so now we can all get sick from the wide temperature swings. Nice~!

Anyhow here is two coats of Catrice, DB.

Also, I went up to Sally's the other day and picked up this bottle of Rush top coat on a whim.  It was on sale for $3.99 for one whole ounce!  I've only tried this top coat once but what I can say so far, is that it dries to touch in one minute and after 10 minutes I was able to go about my business. Impressive!  This might become one of my top coats that will be in regular rotation.

There's a smaller bottle, but this one was on sale, so that's why I got it.  Since the bottle is big, the brush is really long and weird to work with.  I probably just need to get accustom to using it.  Lastly the formula is a bit runny so I got top coat all over the place and had to do a second cuticle clean up. Ooops.  Now that I know that, the next time I use this top coat, I'll just be more careful.

Below are the ingredients.  I think ingredients are important.  Whenever I see a cosmetic review (same goes with food) and the ingredients are left out, I say in my brain, "minus 5 points out of 10"!  I can not completely evaluate a product without knowing what's in it.  With nail polish I just look for the big four, DBP, toulene, formaldehyde and camphor... no big deal, since most nail polishes are big three or four free these days anyways. With skin products however, I do look for petroleum based products, sodium lauryl sulfate and synthetic perfumes, mostly, and will avoid those. I look for other stuff too, but those are the basics.

Here's how the room is coming along.  Take two steps backwards.  We painted one coat of Benjamin Moore's Cream Silk and it turned out to be a very light yellow, lemony yellow.... At the first brush stroke I knew I didn't like it.  My husband said, well just paint one wall and see.  So we ended up painting the entire room, and spent two days evaluating it.  Oh boy, we could not convince ourselves to like it.  So one day of labor and $100 worth of paint down the drain, not literally, just figuratively.

Below is the paint chip, second to the top, Cream Silk.  I thought it would be a warm white, not a light lemon color.... so we shall see. Benjamin Moore has 140 different shades of white to choose from so its a daunting task, to say the least.

Well that's it for today.  Next I'll show you what color we ended up with.

Essence Twilight Breaking Dawn - Alice.....

I'm not into vampire movies or shows, but I do like a good vampy polish and I do like Essence.  I got this bottle in a swap with Criminal Nails! Special editions from Essence are released in such limited amounts in the US, that I was really excited to get this in the mail.  I did a quick swatch of number 02 Alice Had a Vision - Again.  Alice is a purple jelly with purple and green micro glitter.  Two super easy coats and it is dark yet sparkly!

I wish I knew who Alice is but I don't. I did try to watch Twilight when it first came out but I was so bored I couldn't make it through the first half.... sorry Twilight fans out there..... I have to say the only vampire movie that I really enjoyed was Interview with the Vampire, with Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt and the very young Kirsten Dunst.

Well, here is how the bedroom is coming along.  We cleaned all the walls and the ceiling.  Then repaired all the holes and dings (there were a lot) with joint compound, sanded and painted one coat of primer.  Whew!  It was a lot of work just getting this far.  This took three days.  What took so long?  Repairing walls is just like icing a cake and painting nails, it takes two coats of joint compound for a smooth finish after sanding.  I never knew this before and found out by watching some videos on the internet.  I used to only apply one coat of compound, sand then prime.  Instead, this time one coat, wait 24 hours, the apply the second coat, wait 24 hours, then sand, then prime. It makes all the difference in the world!

After primer.

Painting the ceiling.  Look how gray and dingy!

If you just tuned in and want to see before pics just click back one post.

That's what I have so far.  See you Wednesday when we do letter D!