31 Day Challenge (v.2!) Day 6: Violet Nails!

Morning Ladies! I really hope this post makes sense, since I'm running on maybe 90 minutes of sleep and am still on my first cup of coffee. :)

First of all, If you haven't entered my giveaway, DO EET!!! Also, my special guest today will be "Random Cat Hair", and since he snuck into some of my pictures without my knowledge, he asks that you admire him and just kinda chuckle at his sneakiness.

Today's challenge was Violet/Purple nails, which meant that I was incredibly indecisive and didn't actually decide what I was doing until the very last second. I had actually planned on doing a checkerboard mani for these, but for some reason I really wanted to play with my dotting tools, so I went with a multi-purple mermaid scale dotticure instead. This is my first time attempting this design, and I'm fairly pleased with how it turned out. My ring finger is less than stellar, but since it's not noticable IRL, I didn't bother re-doing it. Not that I want you guys to have to see manicure wonkiness, but this mani was time consuming and by the time I was done there was no way I was re-doing anything that wasn't glaringly obvious! It was a lot of fun though, and I'll definitely be trying this with different colors in the future.

For this mani I started with a base of Color Show Iced Queen, a lovely soft yet vibrant lilac purple. hen I added the dots in a straight line using China Glaze VIII and Grape Juice, Petites Mystical, Essence Break Through and Iced Queen again. The trick here is to dot in between the row above where you're currently dotting, creating a fish-scale type effect. The hardest part was keeping my darned dots centered between the dots. I'm not good at much around 2 am, and that's when I chose to do my dotting, so a few of the lines are dotted like I just finished a plethora of jager bombs. ;)

I also don't know why my camera has decided that it really must make my hands look so lobstery, but okay. I'd rather have lobster hands and color accurate photos I suppose.

And now, without further adieu, I give you.....*drumroll please!* VIOLET NAILS (co-starring Random Cat Hair!)!!

Did you spot Random Cat Hair? That guy is a show-off, I swear.  He lives to try and sneak into my photos.

Anyway, this didn't turn out half bad for a last minute change in mani plan and my first attempt at mermaid nails sans stamping. Would you rock this look?

Our next challenge will be Black and White Nails on Friday. I'm excited about that one since it's rare that I wear either color these days!

Don't forget to check out the rest of the Varnished Vixens Violet Manis! I guarantee they rock!

-Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner
-Kat at Hooked On Polish
-Diana at Nails By Diana
-Aly at Wonderland Beauty
-Meredith at Perfectly Polished
-Nicole at The Color Republic
-Kate at The Painted Pony Nails
-Cee at Absolutely Cee
-Sam at Polished Art
-Nail Narcotics
-Nicole at Nicole Gets Nailed
-Shelby at Shelby's Swatches
-Stephanie Louise at All Things Beautiful
-Mixed Mama
-Joanna @ Sweet Polish of Mine
-Patty Greenberg
-Liz and Lisa @ Lozlosa 
-Mari at Nailista
-Greta at How Was Your Day?
-Miss L at Beauty by Miss L 
-Gini at Sassy Paints 
-Chameleon Stampede 
-Pam at Nail-E-Glance
-Me, Myself, and Polish 
- Robin Sparkles 

Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing!!
-Kimber

Glittah!!! Jordana Celebration!

Hello ladies! I hope you're all enjoying your weekend. It's been a lovely weekend here at the Korner thus far. Hubby did a shift trade with someone at work so he had Saturday off this weekend. It was so nice to have a break from chasing the baby a day early! And, even though I currently hate the state of my poor nails (if you missed it, I am down to super duper short nubbins due to a run in with the toaster oven after I took down my length. And the skin that was hidden under my nails is obviously center stage now and it's dry and ragged, as are my cuticles. Living in the desert does nothing for my skin. I could live in a flippin' vat of Burt's Bees cuticle balm and Solar Oil and my cuticles would still be dry!), I had today to play around with some unused polish and my Mash plates. I love my Mash plates, but I can only use them when I have super nubbins since the images are so tiny. Yay for having an upside to having to take my nails down to the quick. Well that and it gets rid of that wonky curling at the sides and corners of my nails and they grow in normally for awhile.

But let's get to the polish, shall we?

A few weeks ago I took a trip to KMart to see if they had the Jordana Glitters. I had seen them on Let Them Have Polish and had been lemming them hard. I just didn't know where to get them. For some reason New Mexico just isn't polish friendly. Stores that carry certain brands all over the nation don't carry them here. It's weird. And irritating! But lucky for me I found Jordana polishes only 15 minutes away from my house. Not only did I pick up every glitter they had in stock, but I also picked up a couple of Jordana colors. If you haven't checked out Jordana yet, you really should. The glitters alone are just gorgeous. They seem to be mostly dupes of Milani glitters, but some are absolute stand outs.

For this mani I chose to use Jordana Celebration, a beautiful mix of Lavender microglitter and round glitter in a clear base. This baby is a serious glitter bomb! It's so densely packed with glitter that it's actually pretty much opaque in 2 easy coats. It's also a dupe of Milani Lavender Fizz.  I chose to pair Celebration with Petites Purple Passion, which isn't purple at all, but a bright Pink Jelly. I love to pair contrasting colors when I'm playing with glitters.

Details:
1 coat OPI Nail Envy Matte
2 coats Petites Purple Passion
1 coat Seche Vite
1 coat Jordana Celebration
1 coat Gelous
1 coat Seche Vite

My camera freaked out over this glitter. These pics aren't entirely color accurate (darn purples!), but they're close.

I am definitely in love with this girl! So beautiful. So many layering possibilities! I wore this combination for 3 days with no chipping and only minor tip wear. Out of all the glitters I've worn, this one received the most compliments. I even had a man (not my hubs, lol. It was actually the store manager at my local CVS. He knows me from my polish hauls and because my sister is their head Pharmacist) tell me it was pretty!

Formula:
I have zero complaints about this pretty. For being such a densely packed glitter, it flowed smoothly with no glopping or chunking up.  It was just thin enough to make it easy to control, but thick enough to stay right where you put it. I despise clean up with glitter, so that's important to me. This is a very thirsty glitter, so if you like your glitters to be smooth I would use a coat of Gelous, Glitter Tamer, or a very thick top coat before you use a quick dry. I used a coat of Gelous and it was still a little bit textured, but I don't mind that. Sometimes I'll wear glitter without top coat just so I can run my fingertips over it. I'm big on texture. :)

Application:
Awesome formula makes for easy application, and this girl was no exception. This glitter flowed smoothly and stayed right where I wanted it to. Since it's so densely packed, there's no need to fish for glitter or placing glitters manually. I had no issues with the glitter clumping up either, which is a pet peeve of mine.

These glitters are fast becoming my faves, and if you're a glitter fan, these babies are worth picking up.  They're perfect if you haven't managed to pick up the Milani glitters or would like a cheaper alternative. Of course, they're not all Milani dupes..There are some real standouts that I cannot wait to share with you. I'm really hoping that my local K Mart gets the rest of these glitters in soon. I'll certainly be stalking them until they do. Until then, I have my 5 to hold me over. 

Jordana Nail Polish retails for $1.99 and is available at K Mart stores or online at Jordana Cosmetics.


Have an awesome Sunday and thanks for stopping by!

Happy Polishing!
-Kimber

Petites Electric Indigo & Sally Hansen HD DVD

Hi guys! Hope you're enjoying your weekend and are gearing up for Superbowl Sunday!

Today I have a fabulous little polish to share with you. I love Petites polish. It's inexpensive yet their colors are stunning, the formula is awesome and the wear is excellent. I picked up this color, Electric Indigo, last week while out grocery shopping. For $1.29, this polish is amazing! I have been dying to wear this color since I picked it up. It's an absolutely gorgeous periwinkle blue, which is one of my very fave blues. It is frosty, but I've never minded frosts as long as the formula is decent. I also had a layering combo in mind for this, so I broke it out this past week ahead of my older untrieds. First, let me show you Electric Indigo by herself:

I can't tell you how much I am in love with this color! The formula on this baby was fairly decent. It does start off pretty sheer and streaky but builds nicely. Since it is so frosty it does have some visible brush strokes, but I think it's worth it for such a gorgeous color. I wore this color alone for the first day since I just fell so deeply in love with it.

My original plan was to layer Sally Hansen's DVD from the HD collection over Electric Indigo, since EI is a great match for the blue in DVD.  I finally managed to layer it on the second day, but begrudgingly! I am glad I did though! This combo is so pretty! The multichrome glass fleck in DVD really shines over Electric Indigo, and the flashes of pink, purple, and blue are actually very strong in person. My pictures don't do this combo justice at all!

Love! I was sad when I had to take this combo off. This was my first time using DVD for an actual mani, having only swatched it over black previously. While it is amazing over black, I really prefer it over Electric Indigo. I imagine this is what DVD would look like on her own if she wasn't so sheer.

Have a great Superbowl Sunday!

Happy Polishing!
-Kimber

Petite's Daze and Mermaid Tails

Hi guys! I seem to be recovering from the evil stomach bug! Yay! I swear, if this year continues on the path it's been headed down, I'll be in the looney bin by March. Ugh!  But enough whining, onto the polish!

Today I have a really awesome little drugstore polish to share with you, Petites Daze. Daze is a bright yellow based green glitter/foil that caught my eye on a trip to Wal Mart awhile back. There were a ton of newer petites colors (newer to me at least, wal mart usually only has a handful of petites colors out here), so I picked up as many as I could. At $1.29 a pop, I figured even if I hated them, they were worth it. Daze is certainly the standout among the Petites colors I picked up, being the only bright color and one of the 2 that isn't a creme. I still couldn't tell you if it's a glitter or a foil, since it has glittery particles suspended in a sheer green base, but is very foil-like. I'll call it a Gloil. Close enough, right? Anyway, check out this dazzling little beauty!

Taken in lightbox - sorry for weird lighting! I think it's time for a new daylight bulb!

I love this green! It does cast a bit of a yellow glow on my cuticles, but it's such a fun color that I'm willing to overlook a little cuticle jaundice.  Formula on this was much better than I had expected. It did need 3 coats to look somewhat even, and as with any glitter it left it's fair share of glittery residue on my fingertips (I maintain it's festive), but it went on smoothly and stayed where I told it to. Wear wasn't too shabby either. I wore this alone for a day without any tip wear or chipping. Of course, since it's such a bright and shimmer color, I had to play with it a bit. I decided to  add a sponged gradient using Essence Choose Me, then double stamped using both Essence Choose Me and Pure Ice Silver Mercedes. I topped that off with a quick coat of Pure Ice Heartbreaker and some SV and voila! Mermaid Mani!

I don't think it came out half bad! Some of the stamping smudged a bit, but I also stamped directly onto the sponged polish - limited time frame and impatience on my part. :(

First, my Left Hand:

And my rarely seen Right Hand! Funny, lately when I stamp my right hand comes out better than my left!

I had a blast working on this mani. What do you guys think?

Hope you're all having a fabulous Friday!

Happy Polishing
-Kimber

31 Day Challenge, Day 10: Gradient Nails!

I just finished messing around with my stupid heater. A few hours ago I noticed that my house was really cold despite having cranked the heater. Low and behold! My heater wasn't freaking igniting! What fun! It took dismantling the damn thing and cleaning the ever loving hell out of the filter to fix it. Then, my daughter exorcist vomited all across my living room. My husband is a saint and is currently cleaning that one up, since I will hurl up *my* guts if I encounter that much vomit. Yikes. What a night. But, lets get to the nails!

I had originally planned a bright, sunshiny gradient for today, but I was itching to play with Zoya Tao, so I chose a more fall appropriate (not that I follow trends - I tend to use whatever polish strikes my fancy) combination, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out.

For this mani, I used Zoya Tao as my base, and Petites Hazel (a little known gem in my opinion!) for the sponging.

First, indoors with natural lighting:

 

And in sunlight:

Both hands at once, which proves I'm not cheating and just doing one hand!

And a crappy macro shot (I need a new camera!)

What do you think? Did I pull it off? I was really pleased with the formula of Tao. My local Ulta only has a handful of Zoya polishes, and this little baby was the very first I picked up. I don't know why it has sat in my untrieds for so long. I really love this shade of gray, and Tao has some lovely subtle shimmer to it. It's actually a pretty understated color, which is unlike me, but I dig it nonetheless.  Hazel is a Petites polish, which I picked up on one of my much hated trips to Wal Mart. I detest Wal Mart and every time I go there I have to refrain from punching the living hell out of some rude asshat that either won't move out of the damned way or is just rude as all hell, and their polish selection (at least at my wally world) sucks. Its rare they get anything new, and I have most of the Pure Ice colors that I want to layer with, the SH's and the Nicoles. Anyway, Hazel was a $1.29 bargain, and it looked a little duochromey in the bottle, so I brought her home. It's a lovely coppery shimmer, with glowy red tones and it reminds me a little of autumn leaves. Another color that isn't very me, but I'm trying to branch out of my comfort zone (blues, purples and vampies).

Speaking of Wally World, I did manage to pick up Pure Ice Heartbreaker today (it's been out of stock there for a good while. Bastards! Keeping me from an awesome layering polish!), as well as a couple of the new SH Diamond strength (they re-vamped the bottle and added a few colors) and a Kardashian. I managed to be there on a day that they re-stocked their polishes, and since it's nearing Xmas, they actually have some new stock. One of the diamond strength polishes actually has flakies! Silver flakies! I'm actually planning on swatching a bit this week just to show you guys some of my recent haul buys. I don't normally swatch, but I can't wait to share some of these babies!

Tonight I'll be working on some Polka Dots to show you guys. I just received my new dotting tools, and I'm excited to use them! Polka Dots are something I'm new to, and I'm just hoping I can make this one look decent. :) Wish me luck!

Happy Polishing!
-Kimber