First Beauty Minions Assignment!

I recently joined a group called Beauty Minions.  It was started by Heather from My Husband Ate All My Ice Cream.  She's giving us bi-weekly assignments, a theme for us to translate into pretty much anything beauty related.  I will obviously be doing them on my nails because it's kinda my thing.  Check out the first of the Beauty Minions post to see all of the participants entries!

The first theme was 50 Shades of Grey. Now, I have never read this book so my inspiration came solely from the title. I knew right away I would do a gradient with white, grey and black. The black didn't really come out in the end but that's okay since I was just trying to get the different shades of grey.

I was planning on doing the gradient with a sponge but it just wasn't working out.  It was pulling up the polish and making too much texture. I took that all off and decided to try a technique I've seen using a fan brush instead. It was pretty messy but I love how it turned out!  I really like how you can see the brush strokes but the transition is still so smooth.

 

 

I wish now that I had taken some picture of the process but it's pretty simple.  I just put vertical stripes of white, grey and black on some plastic and then swiped the fan brush through it (vertically) a few times to blend the colors together.  I picked up quite a bit of paint on the brush so I could cover the nail in one swipe. 

 

The hardest part was finishing the side of the nail where the brush stroke ends.  At first I kept getting a bare spot. You can kinda see on the ring and pinky finger where the brush stroke stops and I had to fill it in. I also used a little thinner on my brush to help the colors run together and make it easier to work with. 

 

 

Love the look, hate the clean up!  I made a serious mess.  The side where the brush stroke started would be fairly clean but the other side tended to pool up with polish.  I had never done this before so hopefully next time I can find a way to cut back on clean up!

 

I hope you enjoyed this weeks Beauty Minion Assignment.  Go check out the other gals work here and stay tuned for a new Beauty Minions post (and hopefully some posts in between) in a couple weeks!

 

 

Tip Top Nails Review and Swatches

Finally I get a chance to write my review on Tip Top polish!  I had been wanting to try Tip Top so when I was contacted by Joan at Tip Top Nails South Africa  asking if I would like to review some of their polish I was super excited!  The only down side to this offer is that I'm now in love with Tip Top polish and I can't get it in the US. They are only available for purchase in South Africa but I believe they are trying to find a way to sell them internationally or at least in the US as well!

Here is the wonderful selection of polish I received with my awesome polish Caboodle in the background!

L-R Peach Crisp, Melting Marshmallows, Space Cadet, Fairy Dust & Solar Flare



Onto the swatches!  I did 3 very thin coats on all but 1 of these polishes.  I could have gotten away with 2 thicker coats but it has been pretty humid and I kept getting bubbles!

Peach Crisp is a dark peach creme.  This one looks more peachy in the bottle but dries a darker more orange shade.  I think apricot rather than peach when it's dry.  This polishe gave me a new appreciation for wearing orange! 

Melting Marshmallows is a light pink creme.  For me, this is the perfect baby pink.  I have a ton of pink polish but hardly ever wear them.  I've worn this one 3 times since I got it.  It's so pretty and feminine.

Space Cadet is a dark blue jelly with silver glass flecks. The name fits, it reminds me of space and I really want to use it as the base when I do my next galaxy mani.  I only did 2 coats with this one but it was perfect.  The picture does not do it justice.  In natural light it kinda glows and you can really see the blue and shimmer from the glass flecks. The down side to this one is that it does stain.  Even with a base coat I had a bit of staining but it's a dark blue, staining was not unexpected.  Just be careful with application because cleaning up your cuticles will be a pain.  Still, totally worth it!

 



Fairy Dust is a light, kinda dusty lavender.  It's the second most used polish I have from the selection. I wasn't sure if I liked it at first (I'm more into bright, bold colors) but after wearing it I decided I really do love it!  It's another very feminine color and I do so love purple.

And last, but not least there is Solar Flare.  Perfectly named in my opinion because it's a very bold and bright red-orange creme.  This one kinda made my camera freak out.  The bright orange didn't want to photograph so I had to play with the picture a bit to try to get a good representation.  It's not perfect but it's pretty close!



I can honestly say that I love this brand!  The colors are beautiful and very pigmented.  The formula is great, went on like butta.  It was easy to do thin, even coats and dried quickly.  They also have great brushes and don't smell much at all.  I can't attest to wear time because I rarely wear polish for more than a couple days.  I wash my hands a lot at work and am not able to be very easy on them so that usually ruins my mani within 1-2 days.

The only thing I could even think to gripe about was the barcode stickers on the handle of the bottle. The ink on a couple rubbed off onto my fingers and I wish the stickers were easier to peel off. Obviously that has nothing to do with the polish itself, just a observation! Oh, and as I said before, Space Cadet does stain.  Personally I don't mind much because my nails are almost always stained!

Thank you for reading! My next post will be a review about the treatments I was sent, along with some progress pictures I've already taken. So, stay tuned!  While you wait,  go check out the Tip Top Nails South Africa page on Facebook and their website Tip Top Nails where you can check out all of their colors and products.

My Very First Guest Post!

I am excited to say that Alyssa from Frugal Polish asked me to do a guest post on her blog!  She held a mini mani contest on her Facebook page for the best manicure of the day and to my surprise, I won!  I was kinda shocked honestly.  I wasn't exactly trying to do anything special, I just submitted my NOTD which was Color Clubs Fame and Fortune.  I just wanted to participate and show off what a beautiful polish it was!  She also ended up buying the polish for herself after seeing how full of awesome it was!

I'm not going to show you the mani I did for her blog here because I want you to hop over to her page too!  Check out the post I did for her blog here at Frugal Polish.

If you haven't seen Fame and Fortune here it is!  This is the mani that won me my first guest post.  If you think it looks good here in my photos then trust me, it looks 100X better in person!

This picture prompted 2 people (that i know of) to buy this polish!  What do you think?  You want it too now, don't you?!

OPI - Just Spotted the Lizard

This is my very first bottle of OPI!  I won it in a giveaway from XO, Noelle. 

I always put off buying OPI because...well because I'm broke right now!  So I usually go for the more frugal options. I figured it didn't make too much of a difference!  Now that I've tried it, I am in lust!  This polish applied so smooth and evenly.  It dried quickly, was opaque in 2 coats but I think I used 3! I love the brush, it made application very easy and the color is just fantastic.  (I've been trying to get a Peridot type dupe.)  I think I will be splurging on some more OPI polish when I get the chance.

Here is is!  Hopefully I will be able to use the camera my friend gave me soon.  I haven't been able to get a memory card for it but when I do you can expect some better pics!

 

I tried to show off the color change the best I could.  That might be easier when I get my new cam working!  This polish looks so cool in my shower, the light in there was able to let me see the blue color change in the polish.

Do you have Just Spotted the Lizard or a similar polish?  Don't you just love looking at it!?

My First Indie - Sticks & Stones

Finally got my hands on a bottle of Sticks & Stones!  It's just...just fantastic.  Let's see if I can get everything in here.  Sticks & Stones has big, medium and small white hex glitter, white bar glitter, big and small black hex glitter, big and small black SQUARE glitter (love square glitter) black bar glitter and just a hit of holographic glitter!   It looks great over all the cremes I've tried it on and on a couple jellies too!  Next time I post about this polish it will probably be in a pink jelly sandwich so stay tuned!

On with the show! Here it is over my skittle nails.  Thumb to pinkie I used Hard Candy Splendid, Unnamed pink jelly from the 99cent store, Unnamed Green jelly from Icing(sorry!), Wet&Wild Blazed and Sally Girl Chillax.  Then I topped them with Hard Candy Matte-ly In Love.

OoOoOo, Aaaaah

My sister said it reminded her of a garage floor!  I think she meant one of those kinda fancy garage floors.  My boyfriend even thought this looked cool, he really liked the bar glitter.

Do you have Sticks & Stones or any other black and white glitters?  Are you as madly in love with them as I am?

A Quick Intermission

I just discovered this blog!  I was just blog hopping and I came across it.  This gal here is into nail polish, vintage clothing & other items, sci-fi, make-up, jewelry, she makes glass beads and overall, she just seems super fun.  One of those people where you check out their blog and you totally wanna meet them!  Oh and she's a short lady like myself...actually she's shorter then I am!  I'm 5'1 and this gal is 4'11!

ANYWAY, she's having a freakin' amazing giveaway so go check her page out! Vintage Musings Of A Modern Pin-Up's Giveaway

Don't just check the giveaway out either, check out her super cute outfits.  I love the look!

And now, back to our scheduled blogging.