American Apparel - Mac Arthur Park, Trenchcoat, California Trooper

APPLICATION: Formula was a little thick, but smooth
COATS: 1
TOPCOAT?: Yes - Beauty Secrets Fast Dry
SOURCE: American Apparel
COMMENTS: I walked into an American Apparel store (first time ever!) last week and while they didn't have all the new colors in, I managed to get a few of them as well as some older ones. Back to my favorite quick and easy nail art - dots!

Mac Arthur Park:

Trenchcoat:

 California Trooper (tiny single dot accent)

ABOP Franken - Light Teal Holo

APPLICATION: Smooth
COATS: 2
TOPCOAT?: Yes - Beauty Secrets Fast Dry
SOURCE: Holo polish was a grey holo (#108) from Golden Rose. I added some blue and green (can't remember which ones, sorry.)
COMMENTS: I've wanted China Glaze - DV8 for a while as I find it the most attractive of the OMG polish collection. I still don't have it, and a while ago decided to make my own version. I wasn't successful, but do like the result! Plus, I ended up with more than one grey-ish holo from Golden Rose, so I feel this was put to good use. This green franken was also made from it.
Photos taken with flash to show the teeny tiny bit of "holo-ness" in the polish.

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri - Quick Sand

APPLICATION: A little lumpy as the polish is quite thick.
COATS: 2
TOPCOAT?: Yes - Beauty Secrets Fast Dry
SOURCE: CVS
COMMENTS: This polish is a nice neutral and looked intriguing in the bottle since it has little silver specks/shimmer in it. The silver doesn't show on the nail but rather adds some texture to the color. I love that this color is super subtle on my nails - from afar it almost blends into the color of my fingertips.

Got a long overdue trim...

As much as I liked my nails really long, they just were too long to be practical anymore. I took them down a bit, with a nail file. I haven't been doing anything special to them since my surgery in mid-August. I stopped taking Biotin back then.

Here they are after the filing to cut down the length - you can't see it because of the curvature of my nails, but the corners are sharp since I filed straight across. I sat outdoors to file since I was generating quite a bit of nail dust!

I accidentally scraped the nail file over my thumb nail as you can see in the photo below. I leave the surface of my nails alone - no buffing or anything. 

And after final filing with the finer side if the file and adding some curve to the corners. They're ready for a quick wash and scrub followed by lotion and on to the next mani!

Nyx Girls - Mushroom Glitter, Buzz Worthy

APPLICATION: Smooth
COATS: 3
TOPCOAT?: Yes - 1 coat of Quick Slicker
SOURCE: Beauty supply store
COMMENTS:  Buzz Worthy was the first of these two that I purchased. Obviously I like it a lot because I mistakenly bought it again! I especially like it because it's a warmer color that goes well with my skin. I got Mushroom Glitter later, and since I couldn't decide which to wear first, I decided to wear them both - and I think it works. 3 coats were necessary, but each coat dried quickly. These are gorgeous foil-ish glitters, and boy are they shiny!
Index and ring fingers = Mushroom Glitter
Middle and pinky fingers = Buzz Worthy

UP NEXT: Something neutral

Rub-on transfers are not all created equal

COMMENTS: When I used a new set of rub-ons on my Nyx - Perfect Grey mani the next day, I realized that I'd picked a batch that didn't work well for nail art. These were thicker - more like stickers. They also had some sort of glue on them - not alot, but enough to make the rub-on process less fun. Here is the finished product. I had to use two coats of topcoat because of the thickness of these.

This is the pack they came from. These are all pretty, but too thick. Purchased at Joanne Fabric & Crafts:

And here is the pack that contributed the little green butterflies and flowers (bottom left) to my first rub-on mani. Nice and thin and tranfered easily and completely - a pleasure to work with. Also purchased at Joanne :

And the pack below contributed the days, months, and little green heart. Nice and thin and easy to work with as well. Purchased at Big Lots:

So, I learned a lesson. I need to really try to gage the thickness of the rub-on transfers before purchasing - especially since I don't do any scrapbooking or card making!

UP NEXT: Something blingy

Nyx Girls - Perfect Grey

APPLICATION: Smooth
COATS: 2
TOPCOAT?: Yes - Beauty Secrets Fast Finish
SOURCE: Beauty supply store
COMMENTS: This is the color that picked up my mood on Thursday night when I was feeling down and had just put on a combination that made me feel worse. Such  a lovely calm grey... sigh...  No cleanup.

UP NEXT: Rub-on stickers - the not so nice ones...

Kleancolor - Golden Nightmare, Wet N Wild - Tipsy

APPLICATION: Smooth
COATS: 1 of each
TOPCOAT?: Yes
SOURCE: Beauty supply store and Rite Aid respectively
COMMENTS: This mani didn't last even 30 minutes on me. While I loved that the Kleancolor base took just one coat, I'd been feeling down that day, and this made me feel even gloomier. So after taking photos, I took it all off (a rarity for me - but that tells you how yucky my mood was) and moved on to the grey in the next post. With the grey on, I went to bed feeling so much better. Color therapy works!

UP NEXT: Something grey

Fingerpaints - Paper Mache (and fun from the craft store)

APPLICATION: A little thick, but smooth
COATS: 2
TOPCOAT?: Yes, Beauty Secrets Fast Dry
SOURCE: Sally Beauty Supply
COMMENTS: I certainly didn't plan to do a plain white mani - that would have been too stark. I've seen a few other bloggers do "newsprint" manis, and like the look of the print on the nails. I have no newsprint, so came up with my own version using rub-ons from the craft store (normally used for scrapbooking). I applied the quick dry topcoat after Paper mache, and when dry enough, rubbed the words/portions of words on, then some images.  Followed the rub-ons with a coat of INM Northern Lights - silver for a bit of sparkle, and finally a layer of topcoat. I love it! So simple but so awesome!

UP NEXT: Something black

Zoya - Dea

APPLICATION: Smooth
COATS: 2
TOPCOAT?: No
SOURCE: www.zoya.com during their recent buy 1 get 1 free sale
COMMENTS: This is one of those colors that is easy on the eyes because it looks so rich and creamy ( like milk chocolate?) Works well as a neutral. This totally needs some nail art - something whit or cream-colored thrown in... but I don't feel like doing any tonight...
Btw, the bubbles in the mani are from my basecoat, not from this polish.

UP NEXT: Something white

Followup - nail supply store glitter frankening (large photos)

I recently decided to try out two glitters. The first has primarily flashes of blue and green in a mostly grey base. It looks really cool!

However, once the grey stuff hit clear nailpolish, it seemed to dissolve in it. I tried to salvage it by adding holo glitter, which sank to the bottom, but this is basically a franken fail. The glitter may work for sprinkling/dipping, but I haven't tried that yet.

The second glitter is chock full of silver and multi-colored sparklies. It looks holographic to me because of the prismatic effect you see when the container is moved from side to side.

So here is what went into my franken from the last post as well as two new similar frankens:

L to R: Ulta - Devious, Holo glitter, clear nailpolish, Love My Nails - Dazzling (this is to keep the glitter suspended. Any polish with glitter suspended in it, such as Wet n Wild - Hallucinate, should do)

Below are the three frankens I created:

#1: My first of  these frankens, has lots of glitter and clear and purple polish at about a 2:1 ratio
#2: Attempting a jelly - lots of glitter, much more clear, a bit of LMN Dazzling, a few drops of purple
#3: Jelly-ish - Mostly LMN Dazzling, a little clear, a few drops of purple, less glitter, two drops of black

Photos below are of two coats of each. The batch on the left have two coats of topcoat, and on the right, no topcoat.

Here they are again.

I like them all! Which of the three is your favorite?