Lisa Frank Nails!

Sooo... I totally ripped this off from another nail blogger, and I feel I must give credit where credit is due. It's due here:
http://kroniclesofakonader.blogspot.com/2010/08/neon-and-leoparda-match-made-in-heaven.html

SO, what I did was.. I painted my nails with a white base. I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Whirlwind White. Then I freehanded the stripes using CHG Towel Boy Toy, CHG Pool Party, Essie Funky Limelights, and CHG Flying Dragon. Then I Konaded on top using the leopard print Konad plate. Someone on either my Twitter or Facebook suggested I add unicorns and glitter to make it a TRUE Lisa Frank experience. Well, since I don't have the mad skilllllz necessary to do unicorns, I topped it off with a couple of coats of Cover Girl City Lights.

And I got...


THIS:


I LOVED IT! I actually wore this for a few days before removing.

Nail Art!

Here is some nail art I did recently.


I keep seeing these strawberry nails everywhere, so I decided to do this myself.
I used China Glaze Cherry Pie for the berries, OPI Jade is the new Black for the leaves, and I dotted on black and white with a toothpick for the seeds. I REALLY liked how this turned out. :)



And this is some stamping I did in preparation for a fun weekend. Sadly, this chipped like... three hours later. :( China Glaze OMG stamped with Konad Special Polish in Black with the arrows and stars design from a Bundle Monster plate.

Happy Fourth of July!

Also, happy 10-days-til-my-birthday! If I'd been born in France, my birthday would be a holiday.

So, here's my July 4th manicure. I wore this to a get-together my husband and I went to last night. We came home with a new kitten. I'm a sucker for baby animals. Our other two cats are... lukewarm towards the new kitty, at best. But we're working on it. We have sweet kitties, so I feel sure that with some patience we'll have them all hanging out together in no time!

Oh wait, I was gonna show you a manicure. Here you go! I used Zoya Blair for the red, unnamed Goldie blue for the blue, and I stamped the stripes from one of the Bundle Monster plates and the stars from another Bundle Monster plate using Sally Hansen Whirlwind White. I had to go back over the stripes with my Art Deco nail art polish in white, because the Sally Hansen wasn't opaque enough.


And check this out. This is OPI No Room for the Blues, which I found on clearance at Trade Secret. ALL of the bottles were marked with this price. I had to ask the cashier, "So, how much is this nail polish... REALLY?" (By the way, it was $4.99.) I should try to sell this on eBay for like $75. I mean, it was ORIGINALLY $120, so clearly $75 is a deal, right?!



And because I can't resist... here's a picture of our new baby. I've yet to choose a name. I really like Jezebel. I also like Dobby because she reminds me of a house elf, and the other HP house elves had stupid names. Also, Dobby was awesome. :)

Recent Fauxnadicures

Wow, Fauxnadicures totally gets the red squiggle underliney thing.

So, I've been having a ton of fun stamping lately since I ordered the Bundle Monster plates. I really prefer the full-nail stamps. I do hate that the Bundle Monster full nail stamps are so narrow. I have fairly narrow nails, but they don't cover my entire nail width. I bet these things would be really horrible for the ladies with wider nail beds than mine. STILL, I've been stamping away. Here are some of my recent looks. I'd tell you what plate the images came from, but I'm way too lazy to go look. However, all of the stamps came from the Bundle Monster plates, and not my Konad or other Fauxnad plates.

Here is Essie Splash of Grenadine with Konad Violet Pearl on top.


China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy with Konad Special Polish in Black. This one got me a LOT of comments. The neon-y-ness of Flip Flop Fantasy is really hard to capture in photos, but this was BRIGHT.


This was OPI Who The Shrek are You with Konad Violet Pearl for the checkerboard tip pattern. This was my first attempt ever at stamping tips, and let me say... it is NOT easy to get it straight. My right hand was pretty crooked, but I wore it anyway. My pointer finger was a casualty of my job.


This is Essie Lapis of Luxury with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Whirlwind White for the stamp. I think I'm going to have to break down and buy the special Konad white polish because I cannot find a white that stamps decently to save my life.


I didn't have adequate sunlight to capture this one, and it was very, very subtle, but I liked it. It reminded me of, say, curtains in a funeral home. LOL. The base is Rimmel Hard Edged stamped with Nina Ultra Pro in Viva La Velvet.


This is what I'm wearing today and I LOVE IT. It may be my favorite one yet. Then again, I love the color combination of aqua and dark brown. This is a base of Orly Gumdrop stamped with Kleancolor in Dark Brown. OH... Kleancolor. I had no idea where to get this stuff, but I went to an asian beauty supply store close to my house, and they had a TON of it for $1 apiece. This is some GOOD STUFF. I actually have another post planned about my trip to the asian beauty supply. :)

Pics!

I'm behind on posting pics here... AGAIN. I just don't feel like doing anything lately. I think it's mostly post-wedding blahs.

I broke down and ordered the Bundle Monster plates. They've been hugely popular on the nail blogs lately, and I had to jump on that bandwagon. Also, way cheaper than Konad. I've been stamping every night lately. :) You can get the plates here. BUT... I haven't uploaded any of those pictures yet, so you'll have to make do with plain ol' nail polish pictures.

And another thing... I don't use makeupalley.com. I mean, I have an account there. But the site's interface is horrible nearly to the point of being unusable, in my opinion, so I've logged in maybe a grand total of five times. Seriously, the site looks like it's still in the early days of the interwebs -- have they not redesigned since 1998? There's better technology now. You should use it. I've never posted there. Whew. Just had to get that off my chest.

Here is one of the mini Essie's I got in the $5 clearance set from last fall. Pink Parka. Okay. I LOVE THIS COLOR! It's bright but not neon. I can't wait to wear this again and stamp all over it. Then again, I love hot pink and black together. I always have. In my mind, 1989 never ended.


This is China Glaze Something Sweet, which I picked up on a whim, I guess. I didn't have a good pale pink. Now I do. Unfortunately, this polish did not hold up to the rigors of my job. Check out my thumb. This also happened on my right pointer finger, but I didn't take a picture of that hand.


And last but not least, we have Zoya Ivanka. This is another one from the Sparkle collection. I like it, but not as much as I like Charla.



I have only three more unblogged pictures. I'll try to post them tomorrow, and then get to uploadin' the ones I haven't yet. It's a three day weekend! Maybe I can do some swatching. :)

One! Two! Three! Three Polishes! Ha ha ha!

I was channeling The Count. You'll have to excuse me.

I just had an involved discussion with the cashier at my friendly neighborhood Rite Aid about nail polish. I love it when I can randomly inform strangers of my obsession. I told her all about Hidden Treasure and the Zoya polish exchange. I feel like I fulfilled my civic duty for today.

So on to the polishes!

This is a CHI polish I picked up at Ulta. It's a blue/green duochrome called Hot Ring Illusion Around Saturn. This polish is the hotness! I'd never bought a CHI polish before, but I remember seeing this collection when it came out. I sort of wish I'd picked up all of them then because this is awesome!


This is a Del Sol polish called Rock Star. It's a sheer blue glitter. I think I screwed up here because I applied four coats to make it opaque and then barely got any color change at all in the sun. :/
This is in the shade:


And in the sun. You can KIND OF see where it's turning more green, but it's really pretty unnoticeable.


And another in the sun.


The least sparkly of the Zoya Sparkle collection: Nidhi. I don't usually go for tomato reds, but I really liked this polish. The gold sparkle is unique. I got bored with it, though, and konaded over it with a sheer gold polish. Don't ask me what plate I used, because I'm way too lazy right now to look and see. :)


And another!



I actually have no more pictures uploaded, so I guess tomorrow I'll have to upload some more. It's cool having a photo backlog because it makes churning out posts easier. :)

What a crazy week!!

I have been so busy this week, I haven't had time to do anything with this blog. And the thing is, looking back on the week, I have no idea what took up all my time. It just seems like I've been going, going, going!

First, I have mailed out five packages from my destashing post. It is now updated and current, as far as what I have left. Please go check it out here: http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/2010/04/destashing.html

Secondly, I am keeping an Excel spreadsheet of all the entries in my giveaway. I've discovered some new blogs this way -- it's pretty cool! If you haven't entered, go here:
http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/2010/04/giveaway.html

THIRD, I ordered some stuff from Urban Decay's Friends-and-Family 30% off sale. If you haven't shopped it yet, it ends Monday. Use code 1SFNF. I ordered a couple of things that were on clearance. Clearance + 30% off = dirt cheap. I got the Apocalyptic nail kit (of course), which appears to be gone now. I also got the Hall of Fame set. I'm debating placing another order to get their new nail set, but I'm not sold on the colors in it. Maybe I'll just wait til it goes on clearance... :D

Anywho, now that all that's been said... I actually do have some pictures to post. Oh yeah, and I chopped my nails off. After trying to get them to be long and pointy, I decided that I actually hate the way that looks, and shorter and squarer is just easier to deal with. So now they're just barely past my fingertips -- you'll see in the following pictures. :)

First of all, remember how I said I got that black glitter set at Icing for $5? I actually hate these polishes. The first coat is super sheer. The second coat drags and leaves bald spots. The third coat has to be really thick in order to cover up the mayhem left by the first and second coats. Then you have to deal with glitter removal, which I'm starting to really hate. Like, it's not even worth it to me to wear glitters because I hate removing them so much. Even with the cotton balls+tin foil trick, it's just a pain.

So I only ever wore three of these. Maybe I'll wear the other two one day, but I'm going to go ahead and post what I've got because I have a feeling that'll be a long time from now, if ever.


First up is the purple glitter, which I immediately gouged the hell out of by removing a power supply from a computer at work. This one is really pretty.


Then I wore... yellow? I guess? Or is that gold? Or a very light lime-green? It's sort of an ambiguous color.


Then blue, which I actually really liked, too.


The two remaining ones are orange and green (teal?), and yeah. Maybe one day. But not today.

This is China Glaze Strawberry Fields. I saw this on someone (a blogger, not IRL) recently and realized I had to have this polish! I couldn't seem to get a decent picture of it, but it's really pretty. I approve. I really like the tiny gold glass-flecks in it -- it makes it a very unique pink, in my opinion.


This was another of the Butter London polishes I got. It's called Teddy Boy, and it's a brownish-pinkish-mauvish color. I really liked this. However, those bottles suck. I found the application to be really difficult because of the way the cap is shaped. Then I read somewhere that they've changed their bottles (and obviously, the ones I got so dirt cheap were the old bottles... dammit). Maybe one day when I feel like shelling out too much money for nail polish, I'll try some of the newer ones. I just don't really like the idea of paying more than $10 or so for a bottle of polish. I've done it, but it's very rare for me. I am lemming Chanel's Illusion D'Or right now, though, and that's WAY more than I care to spend on polish, ever.


This was a polish I picked up at Sally's. It's Finger Paints "Magenta Mood." It's a pretty, foil-y, glitter-y magenta. Actually, it seemed to go back and forth between bright red and magenta. In certain lights, it looked magenta. In others, red.


I decided to do some fauxnading last weekend, and did this using China Glaze Light as Air for the base, and China Glaze Grape Pop for the stamping. I used a fauxnad plate that doesn't have a plate number, but these were just flowery. This is the last manicure I did before I chopped my nails off.


This was the first mani I did after chopping my nails off. This is China Glaze Grape Pop with Colorama Sonic Sunset (holy crap, I am loving the Colorama flakies!) on top. Later this day, I got my Urban Decay order in the mail, so I have only been wearing those colors since then. :)

Nails of the last three days

Man, I've been so busy at work lately and then so tired when I get home that I don't want to take the time to upload pictures and post them. So, my apologies for not being on top of this!

I have just about abandoned Seche Vite in favor of Poshe topcoat. I started suffering from the dreaded tip shrinkage (that sounds dirty but isn't). It's when you use Seche Vite as your topcoat and within hours you can see the tips of your nails. It grabs the polish underneath the topcoat and shrinks it. Meh. Poshe doesn't dry as quickly, but it doesn't shrink either.

But anyway!

Here were my nails on Tuesday, March 16. I used Wet N Wild Morbid. I really dig this color. It's almost black, but has enough green shimmer to be interesting. I cannot remember if the reason you can see the tips of my nails is because of shrinkage or if it's because I've been really hard on my hands this week. My new job is much more hands-on than my last job and I come home nearly every day with the tips worn.




This was my St. Patrick's Day mani, which sounded much cooler in my head. I used China Glaze Emerald Sparkle and stamped the houndstooth Konad design on top using Orly solid gold. Then I threw some tacky nail stickers on my ring finger. It was festive. :D


Today I used the second polish I got from the Orly Sweet collection -- Gumdrop. I LOVE this color. I was expecting it to be much more green, but it's a really pretty turquoise. I would like to do a side-by-side comparison of this with China Glaze For Audrey. Maybe Sunday I'll spend some time comparing polishes and taking pictures.

I've been using Orly Bonder lately as my basecoat. This was done using Bonder, two coats of Gumdrop (although the formula on this is freaking awesome -- I probably could have just done one coat), and a coat of Poshe on top. Let me tell you, I was HARD on my hands today. I was moving stuff around and opening up computers and was just generally rough on my nails today. I just knew that this was going to chip or wear off, but I took this photo at the end of the day, after I got home, and had barely any wear at all. You can see a minor ding and minimal tip wear, but nothing major. Good stuff!

Nails of the Now

I was feeling inspired by the slew of Valentine's Day manis I've seen lately, so I decided to come home and do my own thing.

I used NYC Polyester Pink Creme as the base and used Konad special polish in black and Love My Nails in red for the stamping.

I used lace from plate M57 and hearts from plate M3.

I also added some white dots using my Art Deco nail art polish.

It's not perfect, but I like how it turned out. :)

Nails of the Now

I finally busted out with the houndstooth. :)

This is Konad special polish in black over China Glaze DV8. I love it! I hate that cleanup is so brutal, though, when you use the black special polish on a full-nail design. Imma be cleaning black off my cuticles for DAYS.

Four Pinks

I usually think of pink as being boring, so I don't buy a whole lot of it. Lately, I have been on the lookout for interesting pinks. I grabbed one on clearance at CVS, two on clearance at Sally and one regular price at Rite Aid.

So, here's the pinksplosion:

This is Sally Girl "It's So U." I freaking hate text speak. I felt like a moron typing out that polish name. This is too sheer (I used three coats in the photo), but it's a pretty color. It's a super sheer purply-pink with a blue flash of iridescence in it.


This is Sally Girl "Get Out!" I love this color! It's a nearly salmon pink with that "glass fleck" finish to it. It's sparkly without being glittery. This is a pink I would wear. Also three coats and there's still visible nail line. These Sally Girl polishes are very sheer, but I only paid .79 for them, so there you go.


This is the one I picked up on clearance at CVS. Man, CVS had some really awesome makeup clearance sales going on last week. This is Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine in Gleaming. It's a bright magenta-red with some shimmer in it. I would also wear this pink. :) Two coats!


THIS... is a Jesse's Girl polish I picked up at Rite Aid. I've never bought that brand before (I've also never seen it except for at the Rite Aid by my house). I've ALSO never worn neons before. This was a bright ass neon pink. It dried fairly matte and was sort of gloppy after it dried. It wasn't anything a good topcoat couldn't fix, but be forewarned. This also went sort of orangey on my nail, despite being bright ass neon pink in the bottle.
This is outside:


And this is inside:



I also did a konadicure over the bright ass pink, but ended up removing it because it didn't come out as I expected. I used the Konad special polishes in black, silver, and violet pearl.
This is inside:


And this is outside:

Nails of the Now

So last night, the glitter was chipping away at my creation from yesterday, so I decided to remove it and just paint my nails with OPI DS Reserve, which is what I wore to work today.

Friday I got paid, so I splurged a little on two new Konad plates and special polish in Violet Pearl. :) I got the package today! Woot!

So I came home and did this to my nails, using plate M63. I actually wanted the houndstooth, but thought this design would be prettier over pink. Also, the boyfriend voted for this design over houndstooth.



Wednesday I'm off work again, and I have an interesting idea for a design. I've had a lot going on lately, but will try to catch up on some frivolity (Read: nail polish) on Wednesday. :)

It needed something more...

So I kept looking at my nails and thinking they needed something else. So, I took my silver glitter Art Deco nail art polish and put some silver glitter on the tips. I like it. :)

A couple of recent polish jobs

I went to Sally the other day and was checking out the clearance rack. I found a 2-pack of Orly Enchanted Forest and Prisma Gloss Gold. It was marked $3.99, but it rang up at $1.99! Score! So then I had to try them both out, of course. I really like Enchanted Forest. I don't own any green cremes, I don't believe, and I only own one other dark green polish. The prisma gloss was pretty, too, and it dried super fast. I just don't like having to shake it up to get the glitter particles to disperse. And the glitter could be more dense. Just sayin. :)
Here's what I did. This is two coats of Enchanted Forest with two coats of Prisma Gloss:


Another cool thing I recently got was a set of Fauxnad plates. They are much cheaper than Konad, but I don't like the designs as much. The Konad designs seem sharper, somehow. BUT, there are a lot of pretty little floral designs on these, and for the price, they're just fine. :) So this morning I woke up, painted my nails with Orly Goth, and then used one of the Sally Hansen Chrome nail polish pens to Konad. Those Sally Hansen pens SUCK. Man, I wanted the Sally Hansen Chromes back, but not like this! I cannot even get my nails painted at all with the brush on that pen. I can, however, polish a nail stamping plate! I put roses on my thumbs and little heart... things... on the rest of my fingers.

Nails of the Day

I've swatched what Jill sent me. Some may need to be reswatched, since the sun didn't really want to cooperate today. It's sunny, now it's cloudy.. ehhh... I'll be posting those over the next few days.

So, after I did all that, I decided to do a real manicure.
So I painted my nails with the mini of OPI My Chihuahua Bites that Jill sent.
On top of that, I stamped the leopard print using Konad special polish in black.
Then I filled in some of the spots using a teeny paintbrush using China Glaze For Audrey.

I LOVE IT. Seriously, this is staying on til at least Wednesday (which will be my next day off work).



Also, I pulled out my real camera last night to help with photographing. Man, why haven't I been using this? My "real" camera is one of these. It's one of those that's halfway between a point-and-shoot and a SLR. I am NOT a photographer (just know enough to be dangerous), but this camera does a much, much better job in Macro than my cute little red Nikon I've been using. For reference, this is my little Nikon.

Tonight's Nails

Yeesh! Tonight has been a nail catastrophe! First, I had to remove all that Mad as a Hatter I put on last night and it was a PAIN. I have the pure acetone tub with bristles from Target that works pretty well, except that it leaves tiny flecks of glitter all over my hands. So I got rid of all that.

Then I decided to repaint my toenails since it'd been, oh, three weeks or so since the last time I gave my toes any attention. They're ugly, they don't count. I put China Glaze DV8 on 'em and they are still ugly, but at least the color is nice. :)

Then I decided to do a non-animal print Konad. My first attempt gave me four decent nails and six duds. So I redid those six. Some of them are still a little crooked, but I'm leaving it!

This is NYC In a New York Color Minute (geesh that's a long name) in Mulberry Street with Konad Special Polish in black on top. I like this... or I would, if it weren't crooked. And I don't usually do nudes, but this reminds me of a bra -- nude with black lace. I'm also a little disturbed that I wanted my nails to look like a bra. :) This is also pre-cleanup (you can still see a little stamp overlap on my pinky) and I'm not sure when, exactly, I smudged my middle finger.

Current nails

Today's Konad was a bit harder than yesterday's and I'm not sure why. I think the white polish I used as a base caused some problems, but I'm not sure why. It was Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On. As you can see, I was a little messy. Not bad for my second day doing it, ever. I swear next time I'll move on from the animal prints.. :)