China Glaze - Budding Romance

Happy Saturday!

Today I have an olive green beauty from China Glaze's Avant Garden collection to show you! Budding Romance is a cream jelly hybrid polish, which is a totally unique, well at least to me it is.  Formula is sheer, but builds nicely; below is three coats.

If your not into bright greens this is actually a nice toned down green with yellow undertones.  I was surprised at how wearable Budding Romance is.  I'm so glad I gave this one a chance!

My bedroom is stuck in a stand still right now. Our miter saw stopped working and I had to order some parts for it, so once the saw gets repaired we can get going again.  It will probably be Christmas time before you see the finished product, so God help us.

Well that's it for now. Enjoy your weekend!

J: Jacob's Protection, Essence Twilight Series

Believe it or not, I only have three bottles of nail polish that start out with the letter J.  So this week is just a quick swatch of Jacob's Protection, from Essence Twilight Series.  JP is a black jelly polish with blue shimmer. The shimmer isn't very strong and looks black most of the time.  I have a bunch of these types of polishes, I should do a comparison post one day.  Anyhow here is two coats which were super easy to apply and dried pretty fast.

I got my bottle in a swap with the beautiful Criminal Nails.

That's it for now.  Thanks for stopping by!

Orly Green with Envy and Haul Swatches

Hey there!  I hope everyone is having a nice weekend.

I think my nails are screaming for winter to be over!  My middle and index fingers keep breaking and corners keep chipping from the dry indoor heat and frequent handwashing. So I had to file them all down and some are squoval and some are square.  Some nail website actually recommended to "limit handwashing" during winter months to prevent breakages. Really?! This is cold and flu season! I'm still going to wash my hands, my nails will just be short, so what, big deal!

Well, it is March and all the new polish collections are out!  I went over to Sally's and bought a few items.  First I'll show you a quick swatch and then my haul.

I can't seem to get enough teal this winter. Here's another one, Orly's Green with Envy. This is an old polish but a good one. It goes on sheer and milky, cloudy even. Reminds me of milk glass. It dries really glossy. If your the type that likes to skip out on top coat this one's for you!  Above is two coats with Out the Door top coat. I always wear top coat and base coats. ALWAYS.

Above is my haul.  The cashier gave me two free mini bottles of Orly argan cuticle oil. I haven't tried it yet.

Oh and the new Finger Paints collection comes with a free cocktail ring.  The bands are elastic, but it's still too big for me, even if I wear it on my thumb.  My ring finger is size 5.5, in case your wondering. If your a normal sized person, the rings will probably fit. I have to say the quality isn't too bad for a freebie. The ring is metal and the rhinestones are decent.

Below are swatches on a nail wheel, as they are, with no top coat.

Skinny Dip dries matte and has a iridescent sheen that's hard to see in this picture.

Peaceful Opposition is like a jelly sandwich in a bottle. PO is a sheer white with silver, square and hex glitter.

Itsy Bitsy Spider has a strong blue shimmer that is also hard to see.

I'm a bit disappointed in Moasic Madness and Razzle Me Dazzle me.  I thought they were black jellies with glitter, but they're not.  They kind of look messy to me.

Budding Romance has a really nice creamy formula.  I can't wait to wear that one, seems more appropriate for fall though.

Dandy Lyin Around is a white polish with a nice white, subtle iridescent shimmer to it. I have to return this one, it has a bad cap and I can't get it to close properly.  So if Sally's does not have another bottle you won't get to see this one on my hands later.

Well, that is it for now.  I will be posting my ABC challenge late next week because I have to go out of town to see my parents.  Until then... happy polishing!

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!!!