Halloween 2010 + Mini Haul

I did my nails at the beginning of October and never got around to posting it! Whoops! These pictures were taken when my nails were already starting to get worn out (and on a cold day... so my hands were dry!) Nothing special, just black, orange and quite polish along with some stickers floating around my box.

Mini Haul at Sally's

I wanted to do some green and purple halloween nails last week but realized I don't have the right kind of green that I had imagined. So... off to Sally Beauty Supply with my sister. 

Picked up this "Green with Envy" color by Orly (love the rubber grippy handle!), a little sparkley nail polish, and some nail files. The big grey one is a replacement for the other one I've been using. I'm not actually sure how often you need to replace nail files but my other one is "gross" so I figured that's as good a reason as any to buy another $1.50 file. The skinny one should come in handy for filing the little edge that always shows up underneath my fingernail after I'm done shaping. 

That's all for now! Time to wrap lumpia then do my new halloween nails. I bought some glow-in-the dark nail polish too, so that ought to be fun.

Bad Matte.

These nails hold the record of having the shortest wear span. You know the China Glaze Matte Top Coat I mentioned in my last haul? Not so good, even on top of non-top-coat nail polish. Booooo. They were pretty for the whole 24 hours I had them on, but they also chipped intensely within those 24 hours. Unacceptable, so they had to go. I wasn't a big fan of the matte look anyway... the non-shine was kind of freaking me out. And this week I'm rockin' some plain frenchies as the replacement.

What I used

• Base coat as usual
• Red: Wet n Wild 414A-- 2 coats
• Stickers: ??? Leftovers from sticker sheets I have in my box.
• Top coat: China Glaze Matte Magic -- 2 coats. Thumbs down.

Merry Christmas 2009!

I did a supah christmas theme this week. :)

From left to right: Christmas bow, stocking, present, gingerbread man, candy cane, reindeer (my sister's favorite), snowman, santa, holly, christmas tree.

These took a long time to do, but luckily I've discovered that if you play video games in between coats it can really make the time go by.

Used a LOT of stuff for this one. Here we go.

What I used: (in the order they were applied)

• Base coat - the usual
  
• Gold Dots: Sally Girl Nail Color "#812070" -- 1 coat
• Sparkles:  Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Nail Color in "09 Disco Ball" -- little bit on each nail
  
• Snowflake Stickers: From a pack I bought on eBay. "Professional Nail Sticker" Sinyemei. Cut with a scissors and then applied to the edges of my nails. 
  
• Gold Color: Savvy Nail Lacquer in "Golden Honey 627088" -- 1 stripe across the tip
• White Stripe: OPI Nail Lacquer in "Alpine Snow" -- applied with a toothpick
• Red Stripe: Wet n Wild Nail Color in "Red Red" -- applied with a toothpick
• Green Stripe: China Glaze Nail Lacquer with Hardeners in "718 Watermelon Rind 80226" -- 3 coats across the tips
• Stickers!!! My Favorite part! Cina Nail Creations "Holiday Cheer 133879" and the snowman is from another sheet I got on eBay. 
• Top Coat - the usual -- 2-3 coats.

I love them! They're so busy and crazy, they're awesome.

What I learned:

•  It's difficult to find a green color that I will use for the rest of the year. There are plenty of Christmas greens out there but I didn't want to buy something I'd only use once, so I'm glad I found this China Glaze Watermelon Rind. It's fun and sparkly and should be useful for other nail designs. It's a lot more translucent than I was expecting so it took more coats than expected to make it look solid, but I like it. 
• I had my first experience with using a real nail file that my sister bought as part of a present for my birthday earlier this month. I've been using some little files that were 99 cents for about 10 files? (what seems like a million, I keep finding more) at a grocery store. Thought they were fine, but then this new file from Body Shop is fabulous and gold and makes filing SO smooth and easy and FAST. Who would have thought? Anyway, I'm sold, and I love using the "real" kind of nail file. Yay my sister!

Merry Christmas everyone!