Flounder

Today I have for you a gorgeous polish from Once Upon a Polish called Flounder. I showed you all some bottle shots the other day when I received it in the mail and I couldn't resist trying it out!
I decided to layer it over Orly Sweet Peacock (a stunning metallic blue foil).

Truth be told, this is truly one of the best glitter polishes I have worked with! It went on beautifully in just one coat and wasn't at all gloopy or hard to place! You should have seen me when I was applying it. I kept saying things like "Oh my gosh! No way!Holy crap!"....yeah, I was hilarious.
Also, this was extremely difficult to photograph. This glitter catches every. bit. of. light. Amazing!

Leave it to the thumb picture! My camera seems to enjoy taking detail shots only of my thumb. But yes, this is fairly accurate to how it looks on my nail- particularly the very vivid part at the tip of the nail.

I'm sure this would be just as gorgeous on its own. It is in a slightly blue tinted base from what I could tell so perhaps I will try Flounder on its own next time!

If you would like to check out the Once Upon a Polish Etsy shop, click here. Also, the Facebook page can be found here. There are so many more polishes I want! But I'm on a no buy for a while, so I will content myself with window shopping and drooling for now!

I hope you enjoyed! Thanks for reading!

-Amanda

Devious Fairies

So I'm trying out the "schedule" feature on blogger and hoping this post publishes itself at the right time!

Happy Mother's Day to All of the mommas out there! Enjoy your day! My family and I are taking mom out to the Melting Pot- a delicious amazing place with fondue and mmmm. It's a surprise for her, so by the time this is posted, we'll be enjoying our meal!

Well, I recently received some gorgeous polishes from Whimsical Ideas by Pam. I had a difficult time picking which one I would like to use first! It was late at night, I was half asleep already, and decided to do my nails...who does that?! Anyway, I'm a sucker for anything fairy related, so naturally, I reach for that one. I had a dark purple polish nearby as well, so for whatever reason, my sleepy mind decided I should layer I Believe in Fairies over this lovely deep purple (Ulta Devious). Here is what resulted:

Mmmm how pretty and sparkly! I love how you can see the different colors in this! I had no idea there were so many in the polish!

Blurry picture to show the sparkle!

I love how I Believe in Fairies gives Devious a frosted glow!

Lovely! I will say that although I am surprised greatly by the different glitters and colors evident over a dark polish, I very much want to try I Believe in Fairies on its own next time. I know it'll look like a completely different polish!

I do apologize for the lack of bottle pictures in this one. I completely spaced on taking them!

Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed!
-Amanda

More Nail Mail

I had a long and busy day at work today. It was gorgeous outside and I hardly was able to enjoy it! Yet, when I came home, there in the mailbox were some gorgeous lovelies to behold! I HAD to share these!

This post is even more picture heavy than my last one. Oh goodness!

First up are my darlings from Elixir Lacquer. Recently, they had a restock of Bad Kitty and this is a polish I have desperately wanted since I saw a swatch for the first time. I had caught wind of the fact that this might be the last restock of Bad Kitty for quite a while. PLUS, there was a sale on all Elixir Lacquer polishes! All signs pointed to YES-BUY SOME POLISH! I wish I had gotten a few others but I had to limit myself.
In the end, I decided on Bad Kitty and With a K.

With a K & Bad Kitty

How pretty?!

With a K macro

Bad Kitty macro

Next, we have the one polish I purchased from DandyNails. It's called Funhouse and it's beautiful!

Funhouse with a lovely business card!

Macro goodness of Funhouse!

Next, we have my order of one polish from Once Upon a Polish. I truly had such a difficult time choosing just one from this store when she went live with a restock! In the end I chose Flounder (yes, that's right! It's inspired by Flounder from The Little Mermaid). When I opened my package, this is what I saw!

How gorgeous is this?! Love fun touches like this!

 Opening it further! I love the business card! And look what I found when I flipped it over!

Thank you, Kimberly for your personal touches! (and gorgeous polishes!)

Here is Flounder!

Makes me so happy!

Oh these colors are gorgeous together!

Lastly, I received my order from Pam at Whimsical Ideas by Pam. 

I LOVE the packaging!

So pretty! Seuss, I Believe in Fairies, Saturday Morning Cartoons, & Hatched

I love the cards that everyone is adding in their with their shipments! I feel like it adds a little something extra to it all. This is also included:

I am so very happy with these purchases! I cannot wait to use these!

Also, I think my mom and sister were just as excited to see these lovely polishes...they've already put dibs on the ones they want to use first! I think they're being converted into Lacquerheads too!

Thank you for reading. I hope you enjoyed!

-Amanda

Nail Mail

So, remember how I said I had been bad...and purchased a lot of new polish?
Well...it's starting to come in the mail and I kind of wanted to share some with you. Truthfully, I feel really guilty for having purchased as much as I have...but I seriously have like nothing left on my indie polish wish lists now. Also, I think I'm indie'd out now too. I'm placing myself on a serious no-buy...honestly, I don't need to purchase anymore for quite a while!

Well, first up are my new lovelies from Pretty & Polished.

Bayou Blitz, Sand Art, and Hello Dolly
You already got to see Sand Art in action in my previous post here. I hopefully shall have some more "action" shots to show you in the near future.

How gorgeous are they?? So happy the sun decided to show up for literally, the split second it took to take this picture. The weather here has been horrible for taking pictures, but c'est la vie.

Second up are the polishes that came in my second Julep Cinco de Mayo Mystery Box. I received the crystal file and hand scrub that came in the first box, but different polishes.

Left to Right- Gloria, Leah, Vanessa, and Amy

I do need to address something, however. In my first Julep Cinco de Mayo Mystery Box (click to see) 3 of the 4 polishes did not have shrink wrap on them...in my excitement, I overlooked it. In retrospect, I don't know how I feel about this. It honestly skeeves me out a little....but alas, I'll still use them.

Today, I used Leah, Gloria, and Vanessa in a manicure and it is honestly a great example as to why I need to invest in a nail wheel. Ughhh is it a mess! It's wearable and I'll keep it on for a little bit, but if only I had planned my colors better! I'm so frustrated! I won't post the manicure today, but maybe once I get over my annoyance and need a filler post, I'll insert it and you can laugh at it and bring some brightness to your day!

Well, that is all for today. I'll have more nail mail soon enough.

Hope you have a wonderful day! Thanks for reading!
-Amanda

ASBMF Challenge #7- Glitter Tips

**Warning! Pic-Heavy Post!**

So, big news over here! Basically, I've been bad. Very, very bad. I went on a spree of sorts and purchased quite a bit of polish. In my defense, they've been ones I've wanted for so long and just couldn't afford to purchase!
So with that said, I have 2 AMAZING polished that I used in today's manicure.
I'm sure you've all heard of this little polish named Floam? YES! I was able to snag a bottle of this amazingness- COMPLETELY by accident. I had wandered onto Ninja Polish to simply show my sister Floam, and there it was, right in front of me- IN STOCK! You should have seen how fast my hands flew to get that baby in my cart and purchased!
The second polish is a new one made by Chelsea at Pretty & Polished called Sand Art. I was hugely surprised by how it looked. I hadn't read the fine print on the site that told me the pictures of the polish were washed out and that the colors are actually deeper. No worries, though- it's still super gorgeous!
Both Sand Art and Floam are made up of micro matte glitter and are just fabulous!

Alright, you'll see them both in action in a minute. On to the actual manicure. I wanted a base color that would go nicely with the glitters. I finally decided on Color Club Pucci-Licious. This polish is a blue-toned purple and simply gorgeous. Try as I did, however, I could not capture the right color in the pictures! It kept leaning way more blue. In real life this polish is darker and not nearly as blue.

2 coats of Pucci-Licious with no top-coat

Then, I went and used Floam and Sand Art randomly throughout the tips.

Pinky- Floam
Index- Sand Art
Middle- no idea what I did here...it looks like I accidentally layered them?

Sand Art

Macro Sand Art (sorry for the poor quality- my camera decided not to cooperate)

Macro Floam

Floam

If you'd like to purchase Floam, you can check out the Nail-Venturous Etsy Shop (currently on vacation) here. Or, head on over to Ninja Polish and sign up to receive an e-mail notification when they restock here. Or, you can check out her Facebook page here.

To purchase Sand Art, you can check out Pretty & Polished on Etsy here. She's doing a restock tomorrow!! Check out her Facebook here.

Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed

-Amanda

Julep Cinco de Mayo Mystery Box

Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness! Oh my goodness!!!
This is my first ever anything from Julep. When I saw they were doing another mystery box, with free shipping, for only $19.99....I jumped on it! ....and ordered two.....DON'T JUDGE ME! :)
I figured it's a great deal either way, and I know the things from Julep really don't disappoint....and I know I wouldn't have been able to choose product on my own because everything is lovely.
So, without further delay, this is the Julep Cinco de Mayo Mystery Box #1 (#2 didn't get here yet):

This is inside the box. Pretty orange and yellow!

The first thing I opened was this. A lovely crystal nail file!

Inside the yellow paper were these gorgeous treasures. 4 nail polishes and a mini tube of hand scrub!

 From left to right: Alicia, Demi, Taylor, and Emma. I am so excited about these! I've wanted Julep polishes for so long, and wow! I'm so pleased with these!

 All of my new lovelies together!
I seriously cannot wait for my other box to get here. I wonder if they'll be different or the same. Either way, it's alright with me!

Have any of you used Julep products? What are your thoughts on them?

Thanks for reading!

-Amanda

ASBMF Challenge #6- Ombre

On to the sixth challenge! I can't believe I'm moving along so quickly now!
So an ombre design means staying with one color and simply doing a gradient with it. It can be done one of two ways. You can do a gradient on each nail with different sponging techniques, or you can do what I did. I chose to go from light to dark on one hand. Take a look:

I chose the color blue with which to do my ombre. I just love blue. I really thought I had more blue options to choose from, but what you see are what worked best together. My pointer and middle finger look like the same color in this picture, but in real life, they look nothing alike. I had to use my flash and it skewed some of the colors, but I think you get the idea. Also, fun fact of the day, the color on my index finger (Zoya Breezi) is my new favorite color. I had gotten it back in December when Zoya was doing all of their amazing flash promotions and never used it! It's amazing. If you don't have it and you love blues/teals- get it!

Here is another shot of the ombre:

Lastly, here is what I used to accomplish this fun look:

(From left to right- Orly Bonder (as base), Seche Vite (topcoat), NYX Girls Blue Ink (it's a jelly!), Zoya Breezi, Zoya Yummy, Orly Snowcone, and Nubar Blue Hydrangea


Hope you enjoyed,
Thanks for reading!