Love & Beauty Olive

Here's a polish I purchased a while ago, and am unfortunately just now wearing - Olive by Love & Beauty.

Olive is a ton of olive shimmer packed in a smokey base. I absolutely love this. It's vampy and antique-y and murky and still really pretty! It reminds me of moss. My pictures are not the greatest as shimmer/glitter tends to freak my camera out a bit, but I think you get the gist of it. It also gave me some lobster claws, so sorry about that!

Olive is a bit on the thin side, but not hard to work with. I used three coats to cover bald spots, but the coats dried quickly so it wasn't too inconvenient.

I love the Love & Beauty/LA Girl polishes. The price point is perfect, and they have a wide variety of unique shades.

Galaxy Nails!

I'm up to day 19 of The Challenge, and that means galaxies!

All of the polishes I used: Street Wear Mmoody, 17 Glitter Top Coat, Love & Beauty Charcoal, China Glaze Cheers to You, ManGlaze Mayo, Orly Galaxy Girl, China Glaze White Cap, Love & Beauty Light Green, and Essense Choose Me! Phew!

I started out with two coats of Charcoal by Love & Beauty. If I was wearing this alone, I would have done three because there are some bald spots. Charcoal is, as you can see, a black base with silver micro-glitter. Application was smooth, and it dried decently fast. It does dry to a gritty texture, so top coat is a must. My biggest issue with these Love & Beauty polishes are their names. Charcoal? Really? Charcoal is just plain black! Graphite would have been slightly more appropriate, as that actually has somewhat of a sheen to it. Come on Love & Beauty, put more than two seconds of thought into your nail polish names!

And there's the final product! They are not totally perfect, but I think they look pretty nice. The shooting star on my index finger is a bit too prominent, but I adore the one on my ring finger. Doing these galaxy nails was so fun, and far less time consuming than you'd think (especially considering the amount of polishes that go into creating this look). My coworkers liked 'em, and they could tell what I was going for. And if the general public can tell these are space-based, then I'd call it a success. And I do have to say, a camera can not really pick up the beauty of these bad boys. Do some for yourself and see what I mean!

I was too lazy to take process photos, but I'll break it down into steps:
1. Paint base color. Ideally something dark and shimmery.
2. Sponge on white in cloud-like manner.
3. Add an iridescent color on top of the white to tone it down. I used Mmoody, Choose Me!, and Light Green for this, alternating on each nail.
4. Add a darker iridescent color to parts of the "clouds" that are too bright. This is where Galaxy Girl came in handy.
5. Add shooting stars with a silver or a glitter or a silvery glitter.
6. Use more white to add stars. It's pretty cute if you add some twinkling stars to the mix.
7. Cover said stars with a glitter to tone them down. Cue White Cap.
8. Add as many glitter polishes as you can find. This is where I used two coats of 17's Glitter Top Coat. I wish I had Sally Hansen's Hidden Treasure (or similar polish) because the flakies add some great dimension.
9. Add some top coat and tada! The universe has exploded on your nails.

If, like me, you are a visual person, here are the tutorials I followed when doing my galaxy nails: Here Comes The Sun's video tutorial, and Rebecca's photo tutorial.

With that, I am off to "space out" (heh!) to It's Always Sunny and fall asleep!

"Delicate" Nails

First, I have some good news. Well, good for me anyway. I won the 400 follower giveaway over at The Phalanges Files! How awesome! I have never won a giveaway before, and I am beyond excited. I can't wait to try out all the goodies.

I'm halfway through the 31 Day Challenge! Number 15 is delicate print. Uhhh what does that even mean?! I had a tough time with this one. I spent a lot of time pouring over blogs and searching the nail art tag on Tumblr. Eventually I stumbled across this photo, and thought, Well I guess that kinda looks delicate?

First I applied a couple coats of Peony by Love & Beauty. Under the fluorescent lights of Forever 21, this looked like a shimmery champagne, which I thought was pretty chic. As it turns out, it leans way more pink than I anticipated. I still like it though, so I guess it turned out okay. Application was a pain. It's kinda thick, and hard to control. It also bubbled a lot. The second photo is soft, I know, but I think it shows the shimmery quality of it nicely.

I used OPI's Thanks So Muchness! as the secondary color for this. Mad as a Hatter and Absolutely Alice grabbed all the attention from the Alice collection (rightfully so), but I think the reds of the collection are gorgeous! This is a really lovely shimmery red, that is a one coat-er! I used hole reinforcements to create the curve for the larger half moon look. The polka dots are Mayo by Man Glaze, and the gold studs were sent to me from Nicole at Top to Toe.

This look didn't turn out perfectly, but I'm pretty pleased with it. One thing I enjoy about this challenge is that I force myself to do things I normally wouldn't. I would have never created a look like this, without the prompt of the challenge. It's not a very "me" look, but it is nice to break away from routine and challenge myself. I'm not sure that I'd ever look at a mani like this and think, Oh look how delicate that looks! But at least it's cute?

I do want to apologize for posting photos with my cuticles in such horrid condition! This is the worst they've looked in a while. I promise I just globbed moisturizer on, so hopefully they'll be looking better shortly.

Brown & Blue Polka Dots

I'm on to the patterns portion of the 31 Day Challenge. Day 11 is polka dots. I chose Seafoam by Love & Beauty and Miss Mole by Gosh.

Seafoam is a frosty light blue. It's very late 90s/early 2000s. It seems like something Buffy or the cast of Popular would wear. I found it at Forever 21 recently, and it called out to me from under the flourescent lights. I love it. Even though it's kinda dated, and the nail blogging world pretty much collectively hates frosts, I love them because they're dated. They remind me of middle school and Lip Smackers and choker necklaces. Seafoam applies pretty easily. With two coats it's lookin' good. Except for my index finger, I know. I bumped it and it smudged, and since I was gonna put dots on top, I said fuck it. $2.80 well spent.

Miss Mole is, as of now, one of my favorite polishes!  The wonderful Nicole at Top to Toe sent this to me. This gal is a one coater! She also applies so smoothly. Plus, she reminds me of delicious warm drinks like coffee and hot cocoa. It's a very chic autumn color, and I imagine myself reaching for it a lot this season.

I love the way these colors interact with each other, but... I don't know... I'm just not feelin' it. It doesn't look so bad in the photos, but I'm just not in love with it. I think I'd like it more if the dots were smaller. It was my first time using the dotting tool Lindsay at Nailtopia sent me, and I must say, it went pretty well, despite they're size. I'll have to experiment more, as I do love polka dot nails in general.

And on that note, in honor of the greatest show ever created, I present some screen caps of Popular. If you haven't seen this show, do yourself a favor, and see it! Most people have no idea what I'm talking about when I bring the show up (perhaps it was cancelled after only two seasons because I was the only viewer!), but seriously, people, one of my favorite shows of all time!

Good night!

Love & Beauty Brick

I watched the John Waters film "Cry-Baby" last night, and was inspired by all the '50s campy goodness to do some red vixen nails. I had recently purchased a new red by Love & Beauty called Brick, and here it is!

 

Brick is a red jelly base, with red and gold flakies scattered throughout. Very pretty! As you can see, it looks quite different in the bottle than it does on the nail. I had a hard time photographing this nail varnish - the gold does show up better on the nail than it seems in the photos. It's not as noticeable as it is in the bottle, but the gold does give the polish nice dimension. The application was smooth. I used two coats, and one coat of Seche Vite.

Now, back to "Cry-Baby" and some fun inspiration photos. I love the character Wanda Woodward, played by Traci Lords. Here's a shitton of pictures of her!

 

 

Love her! Love John Waters! What's your favorite John Waters film?

American Apparel Office & Love & Beauty Light Green

Last night, I got together with a friend I hadn't seen in a while. We went to a raw and vegan restaurant, where I got a super good taco salad. When I got home, I relaxed and painted my nails while watching "That 70s Show".

Here's Forever 21's brand of nail polish, Love & Beauty (which looks like it's by the L.A. Girl people) over American Apparel's Office. The F21 polish only has the name "Light Green" on it.

 As you can see, Light Green is a green base, with small green glitter, and larger flakes of glitter. The flakes shine red, orange, yellow, and green. The application was smooth, and I used two coats. For $2.80, I can't complain. It looks cool, and it went on nicely. I haven't tried it by itself yet, and I haven't done much of anything but sleep while it's on, so we'll see what it wears like.

I just wish the stupid sun would come out, so I can get better pictures of it. I took tons of photos, and none of them came out too well. Oh, the joys of winter in Minnesota.

My goal for the future is to get my cuticles in better shape, and to also stop picking at the sides of my nails. Which is going to be incredibly difficult, as I've done it as long as I can remember. It's a nervous habit, a bored habit, an I-have-nothing-better-to-do habit... It doesn't really bother me when I look at my hands, but looking at these photos, I realize just how disgusting my hands do look. Ugh.