Essie Stylenomics Collection Don't Sweater It With Stripes!!

I got a few bottles from the new Fall 2012 Essie Collection and today I have a beautiful neutral brown to show you all.

This beauty is "Don't Sweater It" - layered here over China Glaze Platinum Silver. I used striping tape to create the lines.

Although the color came out SLIGHTLY darker than I expected, it is a beautiful Fall color and it is very opaque (Above is just one coat over my CG base!)

I think this photo is not as color-accurate as the first, but I wanted to show you how creamy the formula is. It almost has a grayish purple tint to it, so it's not just your average brown.

What do you think of this color? Perfect for the Fall, or what!

a-England King Arthur French Tip Manicure

Today I have some very simple nail art for you. I decided to try King Arthur out on its own and it was so beautiful that I couldn't bear to put anything over it!

King Arthur is an A England polish. It is described a "tungsten, steel gray with subtle diamond shimmer." And it really does have a lovely shimmer, but it is hard to see unless you are in direct light.

Here I have a simple black line (Sinful Colors Black on Black) to make it an elegant French manicure.

With the black tip, it looks like I have a matte top coat on the King Arthur, but that is just the formula of the shimmer! I think it looks pretty elegant.

And since I am incapable of making straight lines, I achieved this style using regular Scotch tape.

Houndstooth Stamping With Essie As Good As Gold (Fail)

Today's manicure was easily the most frustrating experience I have had in weeks!

I started with a black base (Sinful Colors Black on Black) and wanted to stamp using my new Essie Metallics Good as Gold - and I had to redo it four times and it STILL doesn't look perfect!

But here's the thing - Good as Gold happens to be PERFECT for stamping. It is completely opaque in one coat. But it dries so incredible quickly that by the time my stamper reached my nail, it was partially dry!

So I just decided to rush as much as possible and made a decent amount of mistakes. As you can see below, I stamped my pointer finger the wrong way!

Still, I couldn't bear to keep this incredible color from you guys, so I decided to photograph it anyway.

Liebster Blog Award!

Hey everyone -

I am so pleased to say that I have been nominated for the Liebster Blog Award, which celebrates bloggers with less than 200 followers. I was going to hold off on making this post, but I was nominated not one but THREE times by adore-a-polish, polish my mind, and laqueerisa (thank you so much, I feel loved!) so I figured I should just go ahead and post! It is long so I figured I should break it up, but check out after the jump if you would like to see!

CMYK Striped Nails.. (Aka Primary Color Manicure?)

I'm really not sure what to call this manicure - but my mom has been complaining about needing new printer ink for some time and I just love the colors that printer cartridges have. CMYK stands for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black for those of you who are not computer savvy. And I know that color isn't cyan, but I do love it especially paired with these two.

I made this manicure using striping tape and painting very thin strokes with the polish. Colors used are OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls as a base, China Glaze Designer Satin, China Glaze Electric Pineapple, and Sinful Colors Savage.

I think I did a particularly flawless job on my thumb so I had to include it!

What do you think of my printer ink nails? Love it or hate it?

Stamping With Deviantly Daring (China Glaze Luster Chromes Collection)

As soon as I saw this post on Lucy's Stash, I knew I had to try a stamping manicure with the China Glaze Luster Chromes. I chose to layer a houndstooth design (from the new Bundle Monster plates!) over Essie Bobbing for Baubles, a creamy navy blue, with China Glaze Deviantly Daring.

I have been on such a "subtle stamping" kick lately, and I love the way this came out! It was so hard to photograph though.

Well, I don't have much else to say about it, haha. Leave some love in the comments.

My New A-England Polishes: Avalon with King Arthur Stamping

My a-England nail polishes finally arrived in the mail and I could not be more excited! I got two polishes from the Mythicals collection during the recent sale - Avalon and King Arthur.

I started with Avalon, a cool-toned purple shimmer with an incredibly royal looking shine!
I then stamped with my new Bundle Monster plate, King Arthur, which is another cool toned color, a dark steel gray with a shimmer as well.
I topped it all off with Matte-ly in Love by Hard Candy.

I know this stamp is being so overused right now but I totally love it. I love how subtle the stamp came out.

What do you think of this nail art?

Hard Candy Beetle Swatch (Photo Heavy)

I know I promised more nail art and I have been doing a lot of swatches lately, but today I was in Walmart and I came across a brand I'd heard about but never tried, called Hard Candy, so I picked up a few colors, including today's swatch and an incredible matte top coat which I will be showing off soon ;)
Here is three coats of "Beetle" - the name kind of put me off but I couldn't resist the color!

What a gem! This shimmery multichrome looks purple at first, but in the light it becomes a prism of purple, orange, yellow, and green!

Let's take a look at the bottle -

It actually came with this silly little heart shaped ring on the bottle. But it was too small to fit any of my fingers, so I took it off.

Look at the edges of this bottle! Beautiful.

The formula was easy to work with, but the brush was a tad small for my liking. I think it would have been fine with two coats, but I wanted another just to be sure. I think the multichrome would be stronger with a black base coat though.

Just starting to look greenish gold here -

And here is another shot of that beautiful spectrum. I wanted to take pictures outside but it is pouring so my lightbox was the best I could do.

Isn't is just so pretty? And it was only four dollars. Exclusively at Walmart.

Half Moon Dotted Manicure!

Well, originally it was going to be half moons. But I decided to just dot up the whole nail. Here is OPI Skull and Glossbones as a base, and Essie Bobbing for Baubles and an orange Sinful Colors that I totally forgot the name of and am too lazy to go check!

I think it looks rather festive! Even though my dots aren't exactly even. And technically, that essie color is a navy blue but it always seems to look black to me.

Here is a lovely macro of my thumb - I know I need to practice more even dots!

Bohemian Luster Chrome Deviantly Daring Swatch

This is the second polish I purchased from the China Glaze Bohemian Luster Chrome collection. It is called Deviantly Daring and it is a beautiful blue-teal shimmery duochrome.

As I mentioned in my earlier post today, the duochrome of the polishes in this collection appear MUCH stronger in the bottle, which is unfortunate. But this is a beautiful color so I purchased it anyway. This is two coats without topcoat.

I found this color to be a lot more opaque than Rare and Radiant. This would be more likely to work for stamping in my opinion.

I also did try to stamp on top of this manicure, but the photos did not translate well!

This is using another new Bundle Monster plate and China Glaze Platinum Silver. It was a very subtle but nice effect.

It's a shame because I really did like the way it looked in person, it was very shimmery and pretty!

What do you think of this color? Worth buying even though the duochrome is practically invisible? ;)

Bohemian Luster Chrome Rare and Radiant Swatch and Stamping!

This weekend, my mother and I went nail polish shopping and found the new Bohemian Luster Chrome collection by China Glaze and picked up a couple. Today I will be showing you "Rare and Radiant", which is certainly radiant but anything but rare! I don't own Chanel Peridot or OPI Just Spotted the Lizard but CG has definitely made a dupe of them.

It is a beautiful multi-chrome gold with a blueish green tint. Here is two layers with no top coat.

As you can see, the multichrome is much stronger in the bottle than on the nail, which unfortunately is true for almost every bottle in this collection, from what I could tell. It would be stronger over black but I decided to skip that.

Now, since this is a dupe, I would definitely say to save your money if you already own one of the two polishes I mentioned above (Chanel or OPI.) But, if you do not own any of those colors, this is the one you want to buy because it is definitely the cheapest brand out of all three (for me, CG is usually around 5 dollars.)

I topped my manicure off with a stamp from BM 301 with Sinful Colors Black on Black, and I love how it turned out.

Also, do you guys like my manicures over white instead of black? I decided to switch out the paper in my light box to see if it would come out any better. ;) Let me know what you think!