Loreal Paris! Rainy Piccadilly!

Good morning!

For those of us on the east coast I'm sure many are preparing for the Nor'easter that is headed our way! Here in upstate we are expecting rain and maybe that dreaded 'S' word!

Today's polish is then very fitting for the type of weather we are about to receive, it is another Loreal Paris polish from their British collection. It is called (and this is one of my favorite names) Rainy Piccadilly!

For those who are not familiar with Piccadilly Square it is sort of Like New York's Time Square.

This polish is a stunning dusty navy blue creme. It is pretty much how we would picture a rainy day in a bottle.

I was originally on the fence about this polish. I didn't initially want to get this polish since I am not a huge fan of dark blue polishes. As soon as I saw it in real life I thought I had to try it, I thought maybe it would be close to Sinful Color's Rainstorm but it isn't its darker and dusty-er. Rainstorm which will be on the blog eventually is more dirty looking if that's even possible.

The formula on Rainy Piccadilly is okay, standard for a creme polish. I know I probably sound like a broken record right now saying that the first coat was streaky. It was beyond streaky, very patchy and it created a lot of bald spots. I seriously considered taking it off because I thought it was going to be too difficult to work with. Upon the third coat it seemed to even it self out and become opaque.

Clean up was the usual, the bits of my cuticles that touched the polish did have slight staining, if I had taken more time with my old angled brush I use to clean up with I could have probably gotten rid of it. My worst fear though was that this polish was going to stain my nails! I kept thinking back to a story my bestie told me when she tried Pacific Blue from Sally Hansen, and how it stained her nails and she even used a white polish underneath. By now I was regretting not putting undies on my nails!

I wore this polish for three days straight, and no major problems until of course I was at work on Saturday morning and a chipped my middle finger on my photographing hand and now have a nub. :(
Since Saturday was so busy I did see a lot of tip wear but the first two days were pretty good.


Now I've been trying a different type of base coat when apply my polishes lately, Alaina over at The Little Canvas tweeted that she had been using a matte top coat as a base coat and her polishes haven't been chipping. Now I had been using Orly Bonder every single time and my polish  has chipped but not as bad as it was before I used Bonder, but still I would love to make it through one night of work without any chips. So I decided to try it, I used my NY Color matte top coat and it worked amazing!

I definitely recommend it if you are having trouble with chipping, and the best thing is, is that NY Color Matte top coat only about two bucks! Talk about affordable!

So when it came time to remove Rainy Piccadilly I prayed to the nail gods that my fingers nails would not be blue. Here is where I think maybe the base coat had a hand in it, my nails came out clean as a whistle. So after all that worrying, I had no need to be.

I think if you are a lover of blue polish and lovely creme finish than maybe Rainy Piccadilly is a polish that should join your polish family!

Talk to you all soon! Nicole

Glitter Jelly Sandwich time! Glitter Jelly Sandwich time..

Like the title? Yeah me trying to be clever....Anywho, Hello!!!

Hope you all are having a good Saturday, its still raining here in good ole New York. Lucky me had to walk through a tremendous downpour just to get from my car to my front door... which has no awning or gutters so its like walking through a waterfall. Needless to say I got an unneeded second shower today!

Today I bring you another bright happy manicure. A jelly sandwich! Jelly sandwiches are so easy to do! You take a jelly polish, put on one to two layers of it, let it dry, add one coat of your favorite multi colored glitter polish or just some sort of glitter polish in general and then add one more thin coat of your jelly polish and TA DA you have a jelly sandwich.

Now you could save your self some time and buy the polishes that already have all the ingredients together and all you have to do is apply two to three coats of it. I personally wish I had more of those types. I don't own many jelly polishes myself in fact I think I only own one or two. Oh and if your curious as to what a jelly polish is, it is a polish that you can still see through/ or  see your visible nail line even after three coats.

Today's jelly sandwich consist of two coats of Sinful Colors Scandal. Now I bought Scandal way before all the Sinful Colors Hullabaloo. Now while I don't support what they did in any sense, it was just down right wrong, I'm still going to use the polishes I have... Since I'm on that no buy....

After I applied Scandal's first two coats and let dry, I then applied one coat of Confetti Polish in Tasmanian Devil. This polish is a good dupe for all those other rainbow glitter polishes out there and its fairly cheap too. I got mine from CVS but I don't remember how much it was, check with your local retailer to get the exact price for your area.

Once Tasmanian Devil was dry I applied one more thin coat over top to give the 'suspended' look. If I may say that it came out nicely.

 This first picture was taken with the flash on my camera, it only happened because the sun that peeked out right when I was ready to take pictures dashed away behind the clouds. :(

This is by far my favorite picture of the three in this post. It's in the natural cloudy light and it definitely shows the glitter suspended in the polish well. Plus the glitter is nicely defined in this picture too, you can see some of the individual colors.

Lastly this picture was taken under artificial light, a huge thanks to the overhead light of the stove for participating!

Okay so I hope you enjoyed this post and I believe by Monday this mani will be history, I'm assuming its going to peel off just like my last two did... grr.. don't even get me started on it. But by Monday I think the next sprinkles polish is in line to be posted!

Talk to you all then!
Nicole

OPI Pink Friday, With a bit of stamping and some explaining.

Hello! Happy Friday! I hope that your weekend will be sunnier than mine! The forecast is for it to rain all day today and into tomorrow morning. Sunday will be a nice day but I have to work that night so I won't be doing to much :(

So I feel like a Starburst, you know how in the Starburst candy commercials they call them a contradiction... yeah that's how I feel lately. I know I said I was going to do the Summer Challenge... I don't think that its going to pan out :( and I know I said I would continue with the Sprinkles collection from Nails Inc, I have two more of those to swatch still. So I feel like a contradiction saying one thing then doing another...

I don't like contradictions or people who present them... but I guess I could say its being  hypocritical right? I hate that too. Anyway I'm sorry and I thank all of you for who take time to read my blog and dealing with my randomness. I think that's just how it might go for a little while until I get myself organized better.

Okay so enough of the pity party for one in the paragraphs above, I DO have some exciting news to announce! My Nails. My Polish has hit 100 followers on Twitter!!! When I saw that last night I got super excited! I told my mom about my little blogs land mark and she just went.."ohhh". Its okay she doesn't follow the whole social media thing and how important it is to bloggers like us! Anyway though a HUGE thank you to everyone who follows!

Now if I could get 100 likes on my Facebook Page??? Could we see that happen? Maybe even 10 likes as a more realistic goal right now. My little page only has two likes :(

Okay okay so on to the polish, that's why you all came here for right?

So today I am going to show you a fun bright manicure that I hope will melt away the rainy blues.

I started with 3 coats of OPI Pink Friday from the Nicki Minaj Collection. I have the mini version of this polish but I might have to get the Nicole by OPI version from the Kardashian collection.

I then stamped some pretty flowers  using Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme And Pure Ice Superstar from the Salon Express Stamping Kit. I seriously need to get either the Shany 2012 plates on Amazon or The Bundle Monster 2012 plates or the Cheeky ones, Which do you prefer??

Pink Friday is such a pretty baby pink color. The first coat was a little streaky and if your not careful you definitely get brush drag, but that could also be from the tiny little OPI brush. Upon Second coat I had opacity but it was still a little streaky so I went for a third. I am definitely going to say that Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme and Superstar from Pure Ice are my go to drug store stamping polishes. I have never had a problem with Black Creme and this was the first time using Superstar for a white stamp.

So that's it for this Friday post. I hope you enjoyed it! Don't forget to hit the BECOME A FAN button at the top of the blog to like my Facebook page!

Thanks so much and talk to you soon!
Nicole