Bacon Mani

So, some of you may know that I love bacon.
I've made chocolate-covered bacon.


I've made bacon fudge and bacon chocolate chip cookies, too, but I don't think I got any pictures of those.

For Halloween 2007, I made my own bacon costume out of foam, velcro, and paint. Uhh, pardon my messy room here.


Here I am dressed as bacon with my friend Marcy.


SO, naturally, when a friend suggested I try a bacon mani, I had to do it. It's not great, and this was actually my second attempt, but it's decent. :)
I used OPI Oh to be 25 Again, Zoya Dea, NYC Polyester Pink Creme, NYC Mulberry Street, and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On. Enjoy!

Randomness!

I did some swatching and photographing today. Why is it that every time I have the time and inclination to do this it looks like this outside?



Where is the SUN?!?!

Also, here's something I've been withholding from my readers. When I was out of town last weekend, I went in an Icing, and found the black glitters set on clearance for $5. They were regularly $16! So I snapped those right up! I'm going to wear one a day every workday this week and post the results next weekend.
These are five different colors of glitter in a sheer black base. Whee. Here's a rather terrible picture of the set.


So, we have a special needs cat. He LOVES me. I am his favorite human EVAR. It's okay, I love him too. However, he really, REALLY needed some attention as I was painting my nails today. I finally became amused enough to try to get pictures. They're cool because he was moving around so much he looks like a ghost kitty in some of these!




This is when he finally just flopped down on me.


And here he is GLARING at me! Demanding attention! Needy cat!

Nail of the day... with flakies

Man. I thought about swatching all the polishes I won from Chromatic Misadventures' blog giveaway today. But I overdid it last night and me and my hangover didn't feel like painting my nails over and over.

I DID grab the Street Wear "Tar" she sent and the Colorama flaky topcoat in "Ruby Rays" and came up with something even JJ thinks is awesome.

MAN, I remember seeing those Colorama polishes and never bought them when they were actually being sold. I didn't know about the joy of flakies back then! DAMMIT! If only I'd known!!

Here is what I used:


Look at the flaky goodness in the bottle:


And when you put the two together you get this! It's awesome! The flakies switch from red to orange to yellow to green, depending on the angle and the lighting. It's like having nails OF FIRE.

Mood polish!

FINALLY! I got my pictures uploaded and now I'm totally going to spam you with pictures of Claire's Mood Polish. This polish is pretty sensitive to temperature, and each polish had a "cold" color and a "hot" color. What happened with me was that the color on my nailbed tended to be the "hot" color, while my tips would be the "cold" color. Instant funky french manicure! I thought it was pretty cool. :)



There are five colors in this collection:
Wild/Calm - A pink/purple with lots of shimmer, and my personal favorite of the bunch
Innocent/Daring - Grey/beige-ish-mustard-ish-yellow-ish.. I don't think there is a person alive who would look good wearing that ugly ass beige/mustard yellow color.
Peaceful/Confident - Teal/Blue. Pretty enough, but the color change was extremely subtle.
Fabulous/Funky - Magenta/Neon Pink. This was wayyy more neon than I was expecting!
Happy/Earthy - Green/Neon Yellow. This one was BRIGHT. I mean, like, highlighter bright.

I took a few photos of each. Enjoy the picspam!

Wild/Calm - purple is the "cold" color and pink is the "hot" color.






Innocent/Daring. YECH.








Peaceful/Confident. I had a fairly hard time trying to photograph this one.








Fabulous/Funky. In the first pic, you can see where I dipped my pointer finger and middle finger in cold water to try to make the color difference really visible. This one was also difficult to photograph.









EDIT. I totally forgot to add the Happy/Earthy photos. OOPS! Here you go:

Claire's!

Sooo... I've been wearing Claire's mood polishes all week this week. I've been withholding pictures until I've worn them all. Post to follow, probably Saturday since I will be out doing the happy hour thing tomorrow after work. :)

BUT! When I last ventured to Claire's, there was a whole bunch of stuff on clearance AND there was scented nail polish. I had to buy! Buy! BUY! I'm such a sucker.

Here's what I got.
First up, I got two of the scented polishes, in Bubble Gum and Cotton Candy. Cotton Candy is better scented than Bubble Gum. They are both sheer glitter polishes, with small and large hexagonal glitters. I can't remember how many coats I used in my swatches -- it was either three or four. These would probably be good for layering, but who knows how that would effect the scent.

Here's Bubble Gum:


And here's Cotton Candy:


I also picked up these two polishes on clearance. They had a thing going on where all of their clearance stuff was 50% off the lowest price, so I got both of these for $1 or so.

Rockstar (which reminds me vaguely of the Orly Foil FX stuff, but less shiny):


And Hollywood, which is an AWESOME silver/white with small silver glitter and larger holographic glitter. I love this! I need to layer it over something.



Furthermore, I will be doing a blog giveaway. It is written. I think I'll go for it when I hit 75 followers. But I'm buying stuff now to be given away once I hit that mark. Maybe before. I got my package from Chromatic Misadventures today, and feel the need to pay it forward. Details to follow.

Four randoms and some news

Hey! I actually won a blog giveaway today! WOO HOO! I never win anything! But I DID win Chromatic Misadventure's giveaway! Go check out her blog!

I HAVEN'T HAD STREET WEAR POLISH SINCE HIGH SCHOOL! I'M SO EXCITED I MIGHT POOP! Hee hee.

Anywho, I'm trying to drag out posts of the swatches I did Sunday. I actually broke down and bought all five of the Claire's mood polishes (I liked the first one so much, I had to go back and get the rest. It's a problem. Really.), but I'm wearing one polish a day every day this week, so I won't have pictures and a post until Friday or Saturday.

So I'll just drag out my unposted pictures for as long as I can. Which should be about a week. :) These are four polishes I picked up at Sally Beauty Supply. Mostly on sale! Mostly...

I picked up ANOTHER of the Orly Sweets at Sally. I really do fail at not buying. Anyway, I got Pixy Stix. Lately, I am really digging Orly's formula. I am so not an OPI girl. Give me Orly and China Glaze, dammit! OPI chips too easily and is too expensive and, frankly, boring (at least most of the time, although they do have their moments).

Anyway, here's Pixy Stix. It's a bright pink that leans a little coral or salmon. This is two coats. Someone with more skills probably coulda gotten away with one.


And here's an older (last year?) Orly I picked up -- Prince Charming. It's a very dark taupe. Almost brown, but greyed out enough to be called taupe. Also two coats.


I also picked up the only polish from China Glaze's Up and Away collection that I felt I NEEDED. Light as Air. It's a very pale lavender, and while I have a similar color, it's Essie (Lilacism, to be precise). I freaking hate Essie's streaky ass polishes, and crappy brushes, and $8 price tag. I will never buy another Essie. As God is my witness. Light as Air is similar, applies better, and is WAY cheaper. I need to do a comparison. I have several polishes I want to compare. Maybe next weekend.


Last, I picked up (on clearance!) a Nina Ultra Pro in Viva La Velvet. This is a bright, nearly pink, red metallic. I LOVE this type of red on me. I foresee myself using this a lot around Christmas time. This one also applied nicely, two coats.

Whoa!

I hit 50 followers! I feel like I should do the customary 50 follower giveaway, but I don't need to spend anymore right now, and I don't feel like I should give away used nail polish. Hrmmm.... what to do?


THANKS, everyone, for following me! :)

No buy FAIL

Yeeeeah, I fell HARD off that no-buy wagon. Well, sorta hard. I fell anyway. At least what I bought was cheap! Super cheap! Dollar Tree cheap!

I spent a great deal of time today swatching, but I'll not post it all today.

What I will post are the goodies I picked up at Dollar Tree. Enjoy!

Maybelline - Touch of Taupe. This is a light taupe. I don't believe I have a taupe this light (well, I do now). It applied nicely in two coats.


Then I picked up two Sally Hansen Salons. The first one is "Stormy Blue," which is a slate blue that is nearly gunmetal gray. It's just okay. The formula was alright. This is two coats.


Then we have Arabian Night. I showed you this on my jacked up feet, but here it is on my hand. For the life of me, I could not pick up this color or the shimmer accurately. I'd describe this as a blurple (not quite blue, not quite purple) with gold shimmer in it. This really is a super awesome color. You may want to click on it to see the larger version.


Then we have Maybelline Salon Expert in Riveting Ruby. It's a red jelly with what looked like gold shimmer in the bottle. The gold does not show up on the nail, though. It's still pretty. I'll probably wear this on my toes soon.


Last is NYC Metallic Nail Glossies in Molten Metal. This is a really pretty foil-y pewter color. I really like this a lot! It's almost as shiny and blingy as the Orly FoilFX colors, but not quite. Still, this was part of a Dollar Tree 2-pack, and is well worth the 50 cents I paid for it.