Breast Cancer Manicure!

Hello! How are you all? I'm doing okay on my end, lots of stuff going on as this fall season gets going, parties, visiting with my new niece and my work load at my job has picked up more since we are a man down in the office until further notice. I have been pulling six to seven day shifts in a row. Sadly they are not in the same pay period so no extra money to be had in my wallet :(

These six-seven day stretches really wear me out and by the time I have a spare minute blogging is not the first thing that comes to mind, although I have been taking pictures of manicures that I've done and some swatches, so now that I actually have a spare minute I'm trying to get a few post pre-published to help me out. I feel like I've been in a slump lately with blogging since work is killing me, but with the Holiday seasons creeping up on us I want to get back in the game.

And the way to get back into the game is to post my Breast Cancer Awareness manicure that I did back a couple weeks ago for a fundraiser my supervisor started two years ago!

I don't personally have anyone in my family who suffers from Breast Cancer or any Cancer for that matter, thank god but I do know people at my job outside my job that includes customers and even friends of fellow bloggers who have had to battle this awful disease.

So for this manicure I used the most appropriate polishes I could find/owned and that was the OPI Breast Cancer Duo, and last years Essie Breast Cancer polishes.

I started out with two coats of Zoya Flora, a nice dusty pink color that would help contrast the nail art I wanted to create. Flora is a lovely pink polish that like with most pastel pinks is a little streaky on first coat but by the second coat its pretty opaque. It has this almost jelly like finish two it but its more on the creme side. It dries kind of dull so a top coat is needed to wake it up.

Then on my left hand I created a pink ribbon using Essie's Raise Awareness, with the small end of a dotting tool. On my right hand I couldn't re-create the pink ribbon so I took the Glitter from the OPI Duo and covered my ring finger in about three coats of it over flora!

Essie Raise Awareness is probably my favorite pastel pink that I own, its not streaky at all and its just a fun girly pink color. The Glitter from the OPI Duo, (which the name escapes me) but I think its You Glitter Be Good To Me, is pale pink round glitter with darker pink small hex glitter mixed in. You can wear this glitter by itself with about three coats for full coverage, but just remember how much a pain in the butt glitter is to remove! Unless you use the foil method of course!

With Flash

In The Natural sunlight, this was taken in the early am.

My right hand with flash

Now these pictures were taken after a day of wear so please forgive me for the slight tip wear. My coat has been a mix of Orly Sec n Dry and Sally Hansen Insta Dry. My Base is Orly Bonder. I Hope you enjoyed this post and stay tuned for more.

<3 Nicole

A couple of dotticures!

Hello!

Hope you all had a fantastic weekend! The weather here in good ole New York was half crappy half amazing. Saturday it stormed and sunday it was filled with plentiful sunshine. It's also forcasted to be sunny and fall like for the rest of the week!

So for today's post I thought I would bring you two manicures where I finally incorporated some simple dots. Who doesn'tl love dots. I miss doing nail art, I stopped because life wasn't allowing me the time to do it :( but now I have some time so I want to get back into it.

The first 'dotticure' was one I wore the other day but then had to change the next day because one of my dots smeared off even tho the mani was supposedly dry!

I used Essie's Raise Awareness as my base color and then used Sinful Colors To create the dots. I love this red from Sinful not only is it bright but it's also a jelly polish which is great for those jelly sandwiches us nail addicts love to do. I think this manicure would be perfect for valentines day next year or you could substitute the red dots for a darker pink and you can have a great manicure for October for Breast Cancer Awareness! I know I'll be showing you what I wear since I have a fundraising bake sale in the beginning of the month!


The next manicure is the one I am currently rocking as I am writing this post. For this one I used China Glazes Hang Ten Toes and for my accent nail I used Sinful Colors Rainstorm. Then I alternated the dots, using Rainstorm over the pink and Hang Ten Toes over Rainstorm. I will do a proper swatch of Rainstorm soon. You actually could get away with one coat of Rainstorm it's just that pretty!

Ok on to the pictures!

My very first Essie Polishes!

Hi everyone! Hope all is well!

Today for once I didn't have to get up at the butt crack of dawn to go to work, I love having a Saturday off! What is even better is work is kind enough to give me next Saturday off too! Apparently the customer service gods are shining on me :)

Today I bring you my very first ever Essie Polishes! I have always love the brand, always ogled at them in drugstore when they started showing up there, but at $8 a pop I couldn't justify buying one, when $8 can buy me like 5 of a more cheaper drugstore brand polish. Maybe its the bottle size that is intimidating to me, I mean I have walked into beauty supply stores before and walked out with an OPI Polish and there about 50 cents to a dollar more, so why have I waited so long???

 Yup I dragged my mom out of the house at 11:30 this morning solely to go to Big Lots to find some discount polishes since the rumours are flying around that you can find some really decent polishes there now. The only thing I don't like about Big Lots or as my mother kept referring to it as "Odd Lots" is that not all of them have the same items, and some store won't get the overstock that another store does. With all intentions full steam ahead I went in and prayed I would be one of the lucky ones.

The outcome of my trip? FAIL! Not really any polishes at all! A few sets of obscure Revlon Colors that weren't that appealing and a few of the Sally Hansen Nail Pens but no huge bins of discount make up items to dig through :( I became a sad panda.

So I dragged my mom down the road to the next shopping plaza where I knew I would be somewhat successful. Its got a Sally's, Five Below, TJ Maxx and Kohl's, Walmart, Rue 21. One of these places or more were bound to have some polish I want. Now I know I said I was on a 'No Buy' but looking at the calender I did a successful month of no buys, I actually started July 15th. but didn't start talking about it till almost the 1st of August. Today is the 18th so exactly one month and 3 days!

Although I probably will go on another month of no buy now since I bought a few. That's what I do at least. Well unless the new L.E. Maybeline Fall Fashion Week Polishes come out....

Anyway enough rambling! On to the polish. These are the two beauties I picked up at TJ Maxx!

These are Raise Awareness (pastel pink) and Infatuation (darker pink)!. I believe they are in the salon bottles since the caps have a large lower case E on them and the names are on the bottom and they don't have the Essie name in the white label like we see in drug stores today. I snagged these lovelies for $3.29 a piece! Score!

Here is the manicure I created with them!

Pretty self explanatory, I think every nail polish lover and blogger has done a manicure like this. Each color is two coats both reach perfect opacity. When I got Raise Awareness I thought like every other pastel pink it would be streaky but it was not at all, and no brush drag either. Infatuation is like a nice berry pink that I don't have in my collection from any one else! These pictures were taken in sunlight with a top coat. Oh and I used my new base coat today too! How many of you use Orly Bonder??

Okay so that is for this post! I do think I will be buying more Essie in the future, my Walgreen's has pretty much a full stock of all the colors and I desperately want Marshmallow, and Penny Talk!

Talk to you all soon!
Nicole!