My Valentines Day Manicure!!

Hi guys happy Friday and Happy Valentines Day!!! If you have a valentines of course. I don't have one but that's okay. 

I just a simple manicure since between school, weather, and work life has been crazy!! We have about four feet of snow outside right now since yesterday's storm. My car was buried, I am so blessed that my mom and dad cleaned it off for me this morning. Thanks mom and dad!!! 

So for my manicure I went with Essie's Peach Daiquiri. Two coats will get you to opacity. I love the formula on this polish too, it's not too thin and clean up is easy. 

The. I wanted to add something more. I picked up a polish from Salon Perfect called Hearts a Flutter. It's one of there new special effects top coats. 

It consists of small pink micro glitter and giant gold hearts. 

I just used it on my accent nail. It was a little hard to get out the good hearts, I definitely had to fish for them. But they were easy to place. 

Once it was all dry I topped it off with Seche Vite! I'm not a huge fan of valentines day but I don't mind having cute nails! 

I hoped you guys enjoyed this, and I'll talk to you all soon! 

<3 Nicole

Valentines inspired polish options!

Good Morning guys!! Guess what? Its snowing...AGAIN!! I swear we loose the snow then it comes back ten fold.

Did you know that Valentines Day is only 9 days away? I don't particularly like Valentines day, I just never have, maybe its because I haven't had a proper valentine, but you know, I am my own darn valentine! Plus who can pass up 75% off candy the next day?

But what I don't mind is  sporting a Valentines day manicure on the day. So in case you needed to know of some polishes that were V-day inspired, or just looking for new color to wear, or even in need of some inspiration, I have complied some options.

Lets take a look!!

The first polish I have to show you is OPI Charged Up Cherry, its a bright pink/fuchsia polish that isn't that sickly sweet light pink everyone associates with Valentines Day, its kind of on the darker spectrum.

Next up we have my absolute favorite red polish of all time, China Glaze Cranberry Splash. I know this came out in a Christmas Collection but it does scream love and romance to me! 

How about a polish that's name is as sweet as the polish looks, here is Queen Cupcake from Funky Fingers. I don't believe that you can get this polish anymore, but I would say use it as inspiration to find a color just like maybe?

If you want a polish that is the big 3 free and from a company that is pretty awesome, check out Zoya's Flora!

In this photo from 2012 I have it paired with a glitter that is also great for Valentines Day! Its called You Glitter Be Good To Me, from OPI! If you don't have this glitter or can't get to then OPI's Excuse Moi from the Muppet's Collection is another pink glitter that is awesome.

Here is another winner from OPI; Love is a Racket from the Serena Williams Collection.

Here I used it in a french manicure design from two years ago. Its a amazingly beautiful glass fleck polish. You can't tell here which is also when you can tell that my camera sucked. Anyhow this makes me want to wear it for this Valentines Day... We'll see! I also love the little white hearts I stamped on! (That was one of my first attempts at stamping ever!)

Lastly we have one last red polish. This one you know from one of my recent post. Its Wet 'n' Wild's Heatwave.

Now that we have normal polish choices covered, I also chose two texture polishes that are very much appropriate for the big love holiday!

From the Julie G. Frosted Gumdrop Collection we have Hot Cinnamon and Crushed Candy!

These will add just a bit more sparkle to your holiday! Plus the names I think are just adorable for this time of the year!!


Wow! That was a mouthful! I hope you guys enjoyed this post and maybe it did give you some inspiration for colors or polishes to use if you own them! I will talk to you all soon!
<3 Nicole

Hello!!! How 'bout some stampin'?

Good evening! It has been a week since my last post! How naughty of me! I've been desperately trying to keep on a every other day schedule and god life keeps getting in the way!

Anyway how was your Valentines? Mine was ok no flowers or candy but I  did my taxes, and  getting a decent refund so life is good! I just wish the money would get here!

In other news I am going to Florida in June! I am so pumped to get out of New York for almost two weeks! I will have pre published post for the time that I'm away and I plan on upping my Internet plan on my phone so I can stay in contact on Twitter and such.

Today I bring you the manicure I wore on Valentines Day. Or we'll a variation of it. On valentines day I actually wore China Glaze Cranberry Splash and Bundle Monster Plate 311. For the  base color in the photos below I used one of Julie G's new polishes that are available at Rite Aid right now!

The name of this beauty is called YOU-niverse ! When I saw it I wanted it immediately due to the amazing duo chrome in the bottle! The duo chrome does show up on the nail but it is super hard to photograph. It's more muffled on the nail then when concentrated in the bottle but still pretty none the less. I don't tend to gravitate towards bronze-y polishes like this one but it suits my skin tone nicely.

Two to three coats of YOUniverse is all you need to get the polish opaque. I got quite a few compliments on this color so you should too!

I figure this was a manicure that if your not a fan of all the fancy pinks and reds and whites on Valentines day this was a way to be that little something different.

For the stamp itself I used my Wet 'n' Wild, Black crème,  I bought back ups of this polish only to see that they are thinner then I thought, but I guess I'll have to let them sit out to get a little thicker.

So on to the photos:

These are taken with three coats of YOUniverse, and top coat in natural light.

All in all I think this is a nice departure from all the other stamping manicures I've tried out. I never thought that it would look this cool! I hope you guys go out and grab a bottle of YOUniverse at Rite Aid and maybe if you want to get into stamping some Bundle Monster Plates!

Have a great night!
<3 Nicole!

Sugary Sweet for Valentines Day!

Good Morning!

Today I bring you another Valentines Day nail art manicure!

I have always wanted to try ' Sugar Spun' Nails. I had seen a few other bloggers try it out and I thought that is nifty how it really looks like threads of sugar over their nails! So sitting on the couch one day surfing Instagram as I do on occasion ( ok who doesn't do that?) I saw that one of the Instagramers I follow ( sorry I don't remember who) had done some sugar spun nails for this past NY Fashion Week.

I was sort of in a funk on what to do for another nail art manicure since I wanted to have some leading up until V-day, and this was just the thing I needed.

First off if you are not a fan of bright colors for Valentines Day or your Anti Valentines then maybe this isn't for you or you can do it in colors that suit your current mood!

For my base color I decided to finally try out Cover Girl Stay Brilliant Nail Lacquer in Vio-last. Vio-last is a vibrant purple crème, it is absolutely fantastic and I will have swatches and a review up of it soon! I have to say it comes pretty close to my all time favorite purple!


Once my two coats of Vio-last was dry I quickly YouTubed a how to on 'Sugar Spun' nails just to make sure I had it right on what I was doing. For the 'Sugar' part I used Nicole By OPI Still Into Pink, which is new to their core collection. I'll have separate swatches of that up too!

Basically the concept of 'Sugar Spun' Nails is to let the polish you are using to create the sugar get sticky and thick enough so when you take a toothpick to it, it creates  strings that you drag over your nail and you do this over and over until you get the desired look you want. You are limitless on the amount of colors you can use!

I found while doing this is that one little puddle of polish will help you cover one nail maybe two if your nail beds are small. But after a while the polish dries up or gets too goopy to make anymore strings, so do expect to use a little polish to accomplish this look.

One note to take is after dragging the sugar pieces on to your nail make sure you let them dry well and I don't mean just a few minutes, some of the more bumpy parts will still be squishy and if your not careful you will push them down. As you can see I did that to my ring finger slightly down the center where the polish had built up.

The feel of my nails after letting my sugar pieces dry, was very textured and bumpy, so if your a fan of smooth nails its not going to happen here. These photos are taken after one coat of top coat and in natural light. I do have a little tip wear since I took these the day after I did them. For the few days I did wear them, they wore pretty well.

So if you want to be all sugared up for Valentines Day then this manicure is right up your ally!

Hope you guys enjoyed and I'll talk to you soon!
<3 Nicole.

Valentines Day Balloons!

Good Morning! How is everyone today? If your in the northeast then you know we are being slammed by a winter storm called Nemo! To think I was just getting used to the whole brown grass thing and now this!

Today I bring you the first of my Valentines Day inspired manicures. I'm usually not a proponent of Valentines Day, the whole holiday just always seems so hyped up more than it is. I guess that's what working in retail does to you, it makes you bitter. My store had Valentines candy and stuff out in January, like literally the week after New Years. Its sort of sickening, I apologize to those of you whole love the holiday, its just my take on it.

But alas I still like doing holiday themed manicures and Valentines day doesn't get an exception. Today I have some balloons to show you. I initially wanted to do something along the line of the conversation hearts that we see all the time, sadly my nails are too small to do them on and be able to write all the little sayings on them. Taking the colorful heart part of the idea I made some balloons. There kind of cartoonish but that's the whole point of it really.

I started off with three coats of OPI I Think In Pink from the 2012 BCA duo. Its kind of a perfect pale pastel pink. The only thing I have a problem with is how any coats you need to make it opaque, the polish is a crème/jelly so its a little tricky.

Once my three coats were dry I grabbed China Glaze Wicked Style, Hard Candy Sky, and Hard Candy Splendid. Basically a darker pink, a sky blue and a yellow. I drew hearts free hand with my nail art brush; alternating colors on each fingers. Once they were dry I went around with a smaller nail art brush and my black nail polish (Wet 'n' Wild Black Crème) and outlined the hearts and drew on their strings.

I let it all dry and finished it off with my top coat.

The lighting is a bit different with these photos. My dad had purchased a mini fluorescent lamp to help replace the one that stopped working in the kitchen above our sink, but it didn't work so I took it and now it helps me do manicures in the living room when I want to sit and used the coffee table.

So these photos have the fluorescent light shining at them and I have to say it helped make the photos come out nicely on my iPhone camera. I only have one other complaint about this manicure, hearts are super hard to do on the opposite hand! I didn't have this manicure on for long since my left hand looked so bad.

If you are more adventurous in nail art and are more skilled at recreating it on your opposite hand then by all means rock this manicure!

I hope you enjoyed this and I'll talk to you guys on Sunday with another Valentines manicure!
<3 Nicole.

Valentines Day Manicure!

Happy Valentines Day everyone!!!!

I hope you all are getting to spend it with the one you love even if its your cat!

I came up with this design after posting my Simple Valentines Day French Manicure, I loved having a french manicure but the red was too bright for me, so to tone it down I started with Aquadellic as my tips. I was fairly pleased with it too, most of them are all the same length and I didn't mess it up. So to make it Valentines Day-esque, I stamped two different heart designs from the Salon Express Kit. For the stamps I used Love is a Racket! I do love this color for stamping and my toes, it has such pretty red glitter flakies throughout that just give it that right sparkle!

At this point I thought I was done, topping it off with a coat of SH Insta Dry Top Coat and SV to even it out.

Here is what I came up with!

Okay I love this design the way it was... but I couldn't help myself so I added one coat of Finger Paints Twisted, from the Special Effects Collection. I did take pictures but you can't see the flakies since they are not on a dark background. Which is fine but trust me its so pretty in person.

Now that I have practice my french manicure skills I think wearing one every so often will become a regular thing! French Friday's perhaps? Who knows.

I hope you all enjoyed this manicure. I can't wait to show you stuff from my shopping haul on Thursday! Talk to you all very soon!

Nicole

Simple V-day French manicure design!

As Valentines Day nears I am starting to hate it more and more. I have never been a huge fan of the holiday. Being diabetic, there is not much choice when it comes to a box of chocolates. Walk though Walmart the other day not a single box of sugar free chocolates, so I'm left craving chocolate but come home empty handed. :(

So to get me out of my mood, painting my nails always helps! I have had this idea in my head for sometime now, at least the last week. It turned out nice but I would like my nails to be a tad bit longer when I decide to fully wear a french manicure. Last night I broke a nail and I am now back to semi-nubs. I had to file them down quite a bit. :( but now they are all the same shape and size so I guess that's the upside!

I recently got a Serena Glam Slam Duo from TJMaxx for...wait for it... $6.00!! We have these wear I work ( well the most recent ones anyway) and they run $14.99. This was one of the first ones that Serena Williams released I believe and it came with Love is a Racket, which is a bright red shimmer that is just stunning in the bottle, and Pros and Bronze and goldish bronze color with tons of shimmer, I swear I saw lime green shimmer and that just made love it even more!

Love is a Racket is a little to bright for my finger tips after using it in this manicure, but I plan on using it for stamping and for my toes for the summer! It is however one of the perfect Valentines Day reds out there!

Here is what I came up with! Click the read more to see the pictures!

Valentines Day Nail Art !

Hey!

Happy Thursday! The weekend is almost here, not that I get much of a weekend because I practically work every weekend! Hopefully that will stop soon!

Today I have the first of what I hope to be 3 Valentines Day inspired nail art. I am hoping to have two more up next week!

Valentines day is not all pinks, reds, and whites, you've seen those candy hearts that have those messages on them? They are blue and green and orange and yellow as well! So For this I sort of took that idea and made it my own.