Flossed Fillies

What's the most fun a person with a nail art hobby can have spending an evening with her best friend who likes wearing that nail art on her nails? Wandering around Hobby Lobby going, "What can we put on our nails?" We started in the scrapbooking section, and found a nice selection of stickers that will find their way into manicures over the course of the next few weeks. I'm also going to find out how well embossing powder holds up on a fingernail, because we bought a few glorious colors. I picked up some awesome brushes in the model kit section that I'm going to have to devote another blog post to later.

Then we saw some string, and I had an idea that turned out to be worthy of the lightbulb-over-the-head depiction if I were in a cartoon. We hit the embroidery floss aisle.

You know how when you're putting a new design to nail, it seldom lives up to the mental image you're basing it on? This is NOT one of those times. This actually came out, if anything, better than I was hoping for. Okay, I can't build up to it any more, I have to show you a picture.

Is that not amazing? I know you want to know how it was done, because that's the first question I've got from every single person who has seen a picture of this this morning. First, let me tell you there was a LOT of trial and error involved. I've never seen another nail art blogger use embroidery floss, and figuring out the best way to do this was involved trying a lot of tedious ways first. This beauty took over four hours, not including the time to pick the colour of polish we wanted to use with it. I'm fairly sure I could do it again in under two, though. Once I've tried it a few more times and made sure I've figured out the best balance between ease, speed, and pretty, I'll work up some sort of tutorial on it. But for now, here's an overview of what we finally ended up doing.

We took a heavy duty piece of plastic (a freezer ziploc bag) and first I put down two layers of Seche Vite in 10 blobby circles. Then I took the variegated embroidery floss, and cut a section of it from the darkest point in the variegation to the lightest. I cut that into five fairly equal lengths. Then, starting at the lighter end of each section, I cut five pieces a little less than an inch wide, and set them out on my table like this:

(lightest section) ----------     ---------     -----------    ----------    -----------
(next lightest)      ----------     ---------     -----------    ----------    -----------

Until I had five horizontal rows and five vertical ones set out. Each vertical row would be put onto one nail. Now, embroidery floss comes in six strands twisted loosely together. How many strands in each shade row you use would depend on the length of the nails you're putting it on. For Vicki's nails, we ended up using four strands of each color, giving her 20 strands on each nail. So I separated those out first, so each of my columns was set up with four strands of each five shades, ready to go.

Back to the plastic, I did each nail transfer sticker (the two layers of top coat we've already done) one at a time for this section. I used a top coat that wasn't quick dry for this one, and brushed a single layer onto it. Then I picked up the four strands in the lightest shade section and put it into the wet topcoat. I used an orange stick to line them up neatly next to each other, and once those were straight and untwisted and sitting nicely, I went onto the next shade. This was actually quite fun and calming once I got into the rhythm of it. I just kept going light to dark on each clear blob of polish on my plastic until I had five done, then I cut enough  floss to make another set of five and did it again! I think next time I might want to only cut two or three nails' worth of floss at a time, because I kept finding myself accidentally sweeping some of the fifth column into my lap while I was working. :)

Once the floss transfers were all dry and ready to go, I peeled them carefully up from the plastic. I cut one side straight, and laid it on Vicki's dry nail and pressed it down to see how side it would need to be for that nail, and then picked it up, cut it to size, and rounded the corners a bit. Lay a thin layer of topcoat on her nails, center it carefully and press it down. I used an orange stick to push the side edges down into the topcoat. Then for security, we took Seche Vite and just dotted in a frame all around the edge of the floss, and again used an orange stick to squish it down and make sure it was secure. Repeat ten times, check the edges to make sure no stray threads are sticking up (add a touch more topcoat if there are) and voila!

I wouldn't recommend adding topcoat over the whole thing - it darkens the color of the floss and dulls the shine by a great deal. Vicki worried about washing her hands with this manicure, but I reminded her that the floss is just cotton and getting it wet won't hurt it. A gentle wash with soap and water shouldn't damage this mani at all, though I wouldn't try scrubbing! :)

It's a Girly Giveaway!

As you can tell from previous posts, I'm all about the nail art. I do, however, subscribe to a few blogs that aren't, or aren't exclusively, about nail art. One of the very few completely non-nail variety that I enjoy is Girly Do's. I'm *not* a girly girl (when I was younger, I always wore shorts under my skirts because even if I liked the swishy skirt feeling, it wasn't going to stop me from climbing fences and trees and doing gymnastics! :) but I do have very long, straight hair (it goes down to my waist) and my daughter has very thick, wavy hair just past her shoulders. So hair styles, especially different braids, are always of interest to me. And Girly Do's is an excellent blog with easy-to-understand tutorials, some done by the author's daughter herself! (My Brianna -loves- watching those!)

Having done the obligatory introduction (yes, I feel obliged to say something nice about blogs I'm posting giveaways for, but that doesn't mean I ever say anything I don't honestly feel!) here's why I'm writing a post about it: she's having a giveaway! Specifically, a Hello Kitty giveaway. There are two prizes, a stacked bow and a headband, and while I'm not an HK-lover myself, my daughter (the unnatural combination of Princess Barbie and Wednesday Addams that she is...and she somehow makes that work!) actually likes Hello Kitty a lot. And if I were to win the giveaway, and Bri decides she's over that phase (if she's running goth that month rather than pink and ruffles, she might!) then I've also got three or four people in my birthday exchange group that are HK fanatics. ^_^

But you don't care about who I might give the prize to if I win it...you want to know where to go see it yourself! You know the routine - click on the pic!

Nail Mail: When Friendly Fire IS!

Earlier this month I made an order on EvilBay from two of the many many Hong Kong suppliers of cheap nail art supplies. I wasn't expecting to see the packages start hitting my mailbox in as little as two weeks! This was what I waiting for me when I got home Monday afternoon:

I love fountain pens (I learned calligraphy years ago), and I can't wait to get some acrylic paint to start drawing with them on my nails. The straight swatching sticks I'm going to use for just that - swatching my polish stash (I ordered three packs of 50, since I'm only just over 100 polishes at the moment, but only two have come in so far) and the circle tips I'll be using to test nail art designs before applying them to my nails. Orange sticks, of course, are an obvious need.

My daughter decided to test out the swatching rounds while I was at work.

Do I have an awesome eight-year-old (t-minus eight days and counting!) or what? That's Nubar Greener for the base, and Primark Beauty neon pink on top.

The greatest nail mail of all, however, was coming home Tuesday to find these goodies in my post!

Once upon a time, an old girlfriend of mine (old in the sense that she's not my girlfriend any longer, not old in age, since she's ten years younger than me!) fell in love with a guy from Scotland. He voyaged across the pond to woo her, I conducted their wedding ceremony, and as soon as their paperwork was in order, she joined him in the land of haggis and deep fried Snickers. So when I found a polish I was lemming was only available in the UK, I immediately called her up (for values of "calling" that equal "sending a private message on Facebook") and asked if it was available in her town, and if so, would she buy me a bottle? She told me she'd gotten ahold of it and asked for my address, and I've been waiting to hear how much the final total with shipping was...I assumed her life had gotten busy and she hadn't had a chance to make it to the post office yet. Totally stunned to receive this lovely little gift pack! That two, count them, two! bottles of Max Factor Fantasy Fire there, along with a lovely handmade Lush soap and a nice little selection of Milka. All presented to you by the lovely Avery, doing her impersonation of Vanna White. (Yes, it's my daughter's doll. She insisted that Avery wanted to show off the pretties. :)

Since I still have a bottle of Fantasy Fire (that I actually paid for!) on its way to me from a member of Facebook's Polish-aholics Anonymous who got her hands on a few and offered them up on the group, that will make three little bottles of this gem in my possession! Obviously at least one of them will go into a giveaway at some point, whether a blog giveaway or as part of my birthday exchange group (I'll need to check if any of those ladies have it on their wishlists! :)

Between the FF in transit and the nail art supplies I have winging their way from Hong Kong, who knows what tomorrow's mail may bring!

It's not the girl on fire...

...but there's definitely some kind of glowing embers on my nails today!

I wasn't sure ahead of time how much of the underwear would show through, so there's two different blacks and two different reds under there, and there's both yellow and orange underneath the flakie on my thumb. The fire is Barielle Elle's Spell, of course, two coats on each nail.

Underneath that great red flakie jelly, on the other hand, differs a bit. on my center two nails, I started with China Glaze Salsa, taped diagonally, and added Sinful Colors Secret Admirer. On the index and pinky  nails, I started with China Glaze Go Crazy Red and topped it with Liquid Leather.

Underneath my thumb's Elle's Spell is one half China Glaze Riveting and one half Sinful Colors This Is It. I was surprised to see just how much those yellow and orange bases make the red of Elle's Spell really pop!

Elle's Spell is the only Barielle my teeny tiny polish stash contains (barely 100 bottles if you're not counting top and base coats), but I'd love to have more. They've got some gorgeous colors out there I'd love to try. I really need to learn how to best use jellies, though. I should probably use more coats of thinner layers; I have a tendency to want to use thick coats for flakies and glitters, to maximize the sparkle, but that didn't work so well with a jelly formula. This is clearly my problem, though, and not the polish's formula, because I've had the same problem with every jelly I've used thus far. I love the way they feel, though, and I'm definitely going to learn to master this wonderful texture!

Week 13 - Ruffian Mani

I'm also going to double-up and call this my make-up mani for week 6 - Half-Moon Mani. (I started this challenge on week 7.) Mainly because I sucked badly enough at doing two nails with half-moons, I don't want to make myself try it on all ten! ^_^

I googled images for "ruffian mani" and I got two different types: one that has curves that follow your cuticle at the base of the nail...

...and another that has half-moons at the base and a corresponding french tip at the top.

Personally, I don't particularly like the Ruffian look, either way, but hey, I'm committed to this challenge! While I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do, my husband asked what I was doing. I told him, and he asked if I had any orange/brown colors. I pulled them all out, and then he asked, "Where's that bright metallic blue you used before?" I knew immediately that he meant China Glaze Frostbite, because he commented on it the last time I used it. So he held up a bunch of my metallic oranges and browns against the blue bottle, and decided on China Glaze Harvest Moon, and told me to use those two colors. It's not like I had anything better planned, so that's what I went with...and here was the result:

I took advantage of the rare occasion my nails are freshly painted during the daytime (I usually do my nails late in the evening, because I'm very much a night owl) and went outside to snap these in the sunlight. I also took some in indirect sunlight inside, but they all came out a wee bit blurry, and I thought the direct sunlight ones give a more accurate depiction of the colors.

inside, indirect sunlight, no flash

See? My camera didn't want to focus as well inside today for some reason. Anyway, I learned a few things from this. One? I don't freehand curves well enough to suit my nitpickiness, and two, shimmer polish is actually even harder to clean-up than glitter!! (Not the actual removal, of course, because we all know glitter's tenaciousness when it comes to that, but cleaning up the edges while keeping the polish intact...that's actually more difficult with shimmer.) The shimmer particles are just way too tiny to clean up easily, and it ends up with a sheer glitter sheen all around the edges of your cuticles, which you can see much more clearly in the slightly-blurry indoor picture. It's not at all obvious in real life, of course, but it's very annoying to me.

I don't particularly like this manicure, but I'm not calling it a fail, either. It's a satisfactory representation of this week's challenge...I just don't like the ruffian pattern. The colors, at least, are awesome together, and I can definitely stand to have this on my nails for a few days. ^_^ One of my co-workers asked me last week if I change my nail polish every day! ::giggle:: Well, I know a lot of nail polish aficionados who do, but no, I usually do mine about twice a week. Sometimes three if I either don't like what I'm wearing or get inspired and can't wait to try a new idea. But seriously, every day?? Where on earth did she get that idea?

For the challenge I'm following, it's a bit complicated. LizMarie started it on Polish-aholics Anonymous, but didn't post it on her blog. So Jenna Froggy posted the challenge on her blog, so you can find the listing where I did, here. Next week: stripes! :)

Giveaways are great!

Samantha at Asa Nisi Masa has hit 200 followers! Congratulations! And to celebrate, she's giving stuff to us! :)

Just click on the pic to get to her giveaway, but be sure to spend some time browsing the archives if you aren't already a follower. :)

Neon Glow Beams

Different people react differently to crises. Some people panic, some people don't know what to do but will follow directions, and some people automatically react to adrenaline with a cool and clear head. I'm one of the latter. So when my husband called yesterday to tell me I needed to get home right away, he was calling 911 because he was having chest pains and felt like he was about to pass out, I went straight into action. (He turned out to be okay, thankfully, though he needs to get a primary care physician to find out what caused it, but everything was functioning fine and they did the EKG, X-ray, and blood workup to verify he was not having a cardiac event, and had not had one in the last 72 hours. A paramedic friend of mine, after discussing his full history with me, said that it's probably stable angina, which isn't life-threatening, but will need to be seen by a doctor and possibly treated.)

I shut down my computer, grabbed my coat, stopped to tell my supervisor why I was leaving, and headed straight out. Drove at the maximum safe speed I could drive in the rain, called my best friend on the way to let her know what was happening because she would need to watch the kids if I had to go to the hospital with him, and the paramedics were packing up when I got there. He wasn't in danger, but they wanted him to go to the hospital, either with them or with me, to get fully checked out. So I sent him on in the ambulance, called my friend (who said her boss had said she could leave right away) and got her on the way to my place to watch the kids, explained to the kids what was going on, posted on facebook to let my family know what was happening, grabbed some water, hit the bathroom, and I was ready to drive out to the hospital as soon as my bestest friend showed up. Sat with Chris 'til the tests were done, got home, got some dinner...and about an hour after we got home, I crashed. I panic AFTER the emergency is over.

So, needing something to make sure I didn't sit there thinking about all the things that could have happened and working up into a panic attack? I did my nails. <3

And the award goes to...

As you know, I've been super busy the past few weeks, so I'm playing catch up. I was given a few blog awards over the past month (why, I'm sure I don't know, as there's not all that much here to love yet!) so I spent some time today going through all my blog subscriptions and picking out five that I honestly felt deserved what each of these awards represents. I tried not to duplicate, though there are a few that I listed for two awards, and I mean each of these honestly.

Though I will admit I only went through the first half of the alphabet in my Google Reader! So if your blog name starts with N or later, it's not that I don't love your blog, too - it's just that I subscribe to a LOT of blogs! Also, for the most part I didn't contemplate blogs with over 1000 followers (though with the drop off of GFC use, these numbers might be less than accurate!) These are blogs that I think deserve more attention, and that some of you might not have seen yet, and I was *picky*...and I also did a search for "award" on each blog to make sure they haven't already received this award, to the best of my ability.

Though I'll admit, the number of "you" is pretty low, but if some of you I tagged come check out your awards, and then browse through some of the others I've awarded, that'll still do the job. If even one person finds a new blog they love enough to follow, my work here is done. :)

That said, this is a loooong post, so the awards are after the cut:

The Long Awaited Hunger Games - GIVEAWAY!

Yep, that collection of nail polish that every nail blogger has been talking about for months is out and about these days, and Holly and Polish is giving you a chance to get your own...for free! She's giving away a set of the entire collection to one lucky follower.

But it's ending soon! So click on the picture and check it out, and spend some time browsing her archives while you're there. She does some nail art, and has lots of excellent swatches.

It's a Blogaversary Giveaway!

I just love net-created words. They're so emotive. "Blogaversary" feels very filling in the mouth. But enough enuncive ramblings from the autistic in the corner...you came here to read about the prezzies! Pointless Cafe is having a giveaway to celebrate her one-year Blogaversary.

That's right, butter London is sponsoring this giveaway and together they're giving out to one lucky polishette a bottle of Knackered, AND a two-bottle set of Top and Tails! Click on the picture to check out the giveaway, and spend some time browsing through the archives if you're not already a follower, because they're well worth your time!

Week 12 - Skittle

You may remember that I mentioned I had won a nail art contest? Sally Beauty sent me the mini collection of Sally Girl Spring Collection: Cherry, Orange, Banana, Lime, Coconut, and Grape. Since this week's challenge theme was skittle, I thought what better time to use them? Presenting my Spring Skittle mani:

I started with Banana on my left-hand pinky, and proceeded down the rainbow spectrum across my hands. Lime, Coconut, Grape, and Cherry on my left hand, then Orange, Banana, and then Lime, Coconut, and Grape again on my right hand. I decided to add color-coordinated sparkly topcoats to my thumbs and index fingers, so Zoya Chloe was added to the Lime on my left hand, and Essie A Cut Above on top of the Cherry. On my right hand, China Glaze Electrify was the topper for Orange, and Luxe and Lush sparkles over Coconut.

Here's a closer look at the left hand. I have no idea what happened to my middle finger. Nothing was put on that nail except Sally Hansen Miracle Cure, two coats of Coconut, and Seche Vite, so your guess is as good as mine how that pattern showed up, but I decided it was pretty, so I kept it. :)

The obligatory closer look at the right hand comes next...

I love that Luxe and Lush. It looks like little ice chips on that pale blue. And of course I'm totally in love with Electrify. After I came back from my camping trip, I had an extremely chipped manicure, but I was too exhausted on Sunday to do my nails. (In fact, I crashed on the couch around 4:30pm, went to bed around 2am, and got up at 6:30am to get ready for work. I woke up from time to time in between, but I pretty much slept most of that time!) So I had to rush to clean up my nails this morning, and after removing the remnants of my weekend polish, I did a 15-minute manicure which consisted of base coat, two coats of China Glaze Riveting, and a coat of Electrify on my ring fingers. A coat of Seche Vite and I was off getting ready for work. I got a lot of compliments on it, even though I felt sort of naked since I didn't even take the time to do clean-up!

Obviously, I did get my China Glaze Capitol Colors Collection in the nail mail last week, but I didn't manage to get a decent picture of it. For some reason, in each picture, some of the polishes were color-correct, and some were waaaay off. And in each lighting I used, a different set of polishes came out good and bad! I'll try again later this week to take pictures of all the nail mail I got last week, but for now, I'm headed off to bed. Again! :)

Week 11 - St. Patrick's Day

So this is a little belated - I actually did this manicure back on March 12th, but my family just took our first camping trip this weekend, and I was busy most of the week beforehand either with crazy load at work or planning that trip to try and make sure our first attempt at camping went as smoothly as it could. (Which, given that it was a first camping trip, was closer to a gravel road than glass. But fun was had by all, once the actual trip to get there was over, and both children have declared camping to be "awesome!" so I'm satisfied. :)

As for this manicure, I was quite excited the first day I wore it. I had the first random person compliment my nails! Y'all see them, and my co-workers see them, but nobody else has mentioned them...but on Wednesday a student came in to talk about the IRB process and how to submit her paperwork, and as she was leaving, she said, "By the way, I really like your nails! They're very festive!"

And actually, over the course of the day, three more people would give me the exact same comment on my nails. "They're festive!" In almost the exact same tone of voice, even! So, without further delay, I present to you my FESTIVE St. Patrick's Day manicure! (Which didn't actually survive to St. Patty's Day, but we'll let that one go...)

I didn't manage to record what polishes I used for this one (I did mention I was crazy busy last week, right? I did two manicures that didn't even get photographed, I'm sad to say.) but I'll see what I can do to recall. The base coat was two coats of Milani Whitest White. I'm not sure which Nubar I used for the green french tips, but most likely Greener. It's too dark to have been Reclaim, I think. The silver glitter on the two middle fingers is Essie Set in Stones, and the gold glitter on the index and pinkie is probably Sinful Colors All About You. There's some type of effect coat over the top of the fingers, but I don't remember what and I can't tell by looking at the pictures. The Irish flag was done with Nubar Forest and China Glaze Coral Star.
When I topcoated it, the Milani white spread onto the green, which is why it looks so much lighter than Forest should be.

The one thing I look at this manicure and think I should correct for the future? I need to remember to do my art so that it's right-side up when I'm showing it to other people, not when I'm looking at my own hand! It would be much easier to photograph that way, too! ^_^

Mommy Does Her Nails Giveaway

Mommy Does Her Nails is always an enjoyable read, and she's having a giveaway to celebrate 100 followers!

Click on the picture to check out her giveaway, and if you're not already a follower, take the time to check out her archive, because it's well worth the read.

The Giveaway Lifestyle is having a Giveaway!

Yep, that's right - our source for information on hundreds of awesome giveaways is now giving away lots of cool stuff to celebrate her own 1000 followers.

Just click on the picture to join the party! :)

Dark Side of Beauty Anniversary Giveaway

The Dark Side of Beauty is having a giveaway for her one year anniversary, with two great prizes! Check this out:

Just click on the picture to enter! :)

It's a Triple G

I am lacking creativity today. Deal with the blog title. It stands for Gnarly Gnails Giveaway, actually. Woohoo, yay for creative titling. ^_^

Seriously, though, Gnarly Gnails is having a 100-follower giveaway and she's giving out to one special (read: randomly chosen ;) reader three different CND Sparkle effects: Jade, Sapphire, and Raspberry. So click on the picture and head on over to enter her giveaway and have fun reading! :)

"Inspired By" + a bonus mani

Kitties26 from More Nail Polish is having a giveaway/contest in celebration of her 2-year Blogiversary. But she didn't want to just give away stuff, she wanted us to put forth some effort to enter. So she wanted to see nail art where we were inspired by something. Not only that, but there are three prizes on offer. First prize will be awarded to the winning nail art as judged by a "panel of judges" - basically her husband, mom, and various family members. :) Winners for prizes two and three will be chosen randomly, one from Australian entries (where she lives), and one from international entries. Each winner gets THREE bottles of Lynderella nail polish! WOW! First prize is She Lived in a Swamp, Happy HoloDaze, and Gotta Love Brains. The randomly-chosen Australian winner will receive Thank Blue, All Hallow’s Eve, and Cauldron Drippings, and the international winner will find Mercury’s Rainbow, Bibbitty Bobbity Boo Blue, and One Nutty Fruitcake in their mail! Entries must be received by 11:59 pm on Sunday, March 11. (ANY 11:59 anywhere in the world. :) Click here to go to the giveaway post.

First, here's the picture I used as my inspiration:

This gorgeous photograph is copyright by Edward Thomas. If you click on the picture, it will take you to his website to see more of his amazing work. In the meantime, here's my approximation of this beautiful scene:

I have a tree on both thumbs, but the one on my right hand is necessarily not as pretty as this one, since I'm right-handed. :) I started with a base of one coat of Cinderella to give a nice sky background if any showed through the sponged "leaves", and added a sheer pearl and another sheer sparkle blue. Then I sponged on four different greens on the bottom half of my nails, and then two yellows and two oranges on the top half. Finally, I sponged just a touch of brown in the green areas, then used two different browns to draw the tree with a detail brush and a verrrry thin dotting tool. I actually used the spun sugar technique for the thinnest branches! Here are all the polishes that went into this!

Well, my subject line mentioned a bonus manicure. You may remember that I showed you a manicure I did for my friend Vicki back on February 29. Believe it or not, until today she'd only experienced minor tip wear! So she called me this morning and asked if she could come by and get her nails did. ^_^ I apologize for taking the pictures before we did the clean-up, but here's what ended up on her nails today.

All the nails have a base of one coat of Sinful Colors Exotic Green with one coat of Girly Bits Street Magic over it. The french tips are two coats of Sinful Colors All About You. The thumb has one coat of All About You topped with one coat of Essie Shine of the Times, so it has some gorgeous color changing at different angles. I was amazed at how different Street Magic looks over a light green than it does over black! It was full-out emerald over black. Here it just added a subtle green shimmer, which was gorgeous and perfect for this manicure, but verrrrrry different!

I need to get a table that's suitable for doing nail art on. Currently I do my own manicures sitting at this computer desk. ::grin:: Yes, that means I have my polish bottles cluttered up on one side, my keyboard pushed back toward my monitor, and just all around tiny space. Mind, it's my most comfortable space, but still. Not exactly designed for the purpose I'm putting it to. It's only exacerbated when trying to do Vicki's nails, because we use a corner of the dining room table, which doesn't work well. So I started looking up narrow tables that might be useful for doing a manicure on, at a not-too-expensive price! I think I'm going to ask on my Facebook group what everybody else uses. How about you?

Skittle Into Greener Pastures

Before we get into the prettiness that is my green skittled nails today, can I just say something? I love St. Patrick's Day as much as the next Irish-Cherokee girl. Believe me, you'll hear me rocking my Irish accent a lot next week. But seriously, people, a quarter of my wardrobe is green! (I'd have to say half is black & brown, nearly every day I'm wearing something either black or brown, and adding a color to it, mostly green, a lot of red, and the occasional jewel tone blue or purple.) So you know, every time I put green somewhere on my nails as early as a month before St. Patrick's Day, you do not have to tell me how I'm celebrating it early, or it's "perfect for St. Patty's", or any variation along those lines. Seriously, I first started hearing it back on February 15 when I had that green taped mani. It was the day after Valentine's Day, peoples. I was not thinking about all things Irish yet! I've had three other manis (including today's) since then that featured green somewhere in it. Every. Single. Time. My. Co-workers. Tell. Me. It's. Great. For. St. Patrick's. Day. Every person (like 5 people in my office check out my nails regularly), every manicure with green, since February 15. That adds UP and I'm annoyed by it, since I won't start wearing SPD nails til NEXT WEEK!

::deeeeep breath::

Okay, you can relax. I'm done ranting now. :) I just needed to say that somewhere, 'cause you know, I'm not saying it to the co-workers who are cooing over how cute my nail polish is! ::LOL::

On to what you came here for! My skittles! As you saw earlier this week, I got some awesome green Nubar in my nail mail. When I got home from work on Wednesday, I had the creme of the crop waiting for me! I had the most adorable package from Girly Bits in the mail!

Look at this. I took way too many pictures in as many angles as I could to catch the colour change on this baby. I'll just share a few to spare you. :)


And here's what I put on my nails! From thumb to pinky, in order, this is Nubar Forest, Girly Bits Street Magic, Nubar Reclaim, 2010, and Nubar Greener. Street Magic and 2010 were two coats each over two coats of NYC Black Lace Creme. The other three were three coats each.

Now, you've got to see the colour changes the Street Magic and 2010 go through. This first picture shows the way the colours look most of the time. Street Magic is this rich, deep emerald over the black, and 2010 tends to waver between red/copper/yellow when looking straight at them.

However, I did manage to catch some good pictures of the depth of color change through the angles. Check this out!



And a bonus mani for you! My daughter Brianna did her nails yesterday, and here's what she did! I think she picked up on the accent nail effect. :)