31 Day Challenge (v.2!)! Day 3: Yellow Nails!

WARNING: Whining ahead! This mani was mean and evil!

Morning Ladies! It's officially our third challenge post! Today's challenge was yellow nails, and I'll admit, yellow doesn't inspire me one bit. It doesn't help that I'm getting a cold (thank you people that work with Hubs for going to work sick and spreading your germs.), and I am a giant baby when I don't feel well.

This mani also did not want to exist. Something went wrong at every turn with this one! I did alot of swearing and threatening to burn uncooperative polish. ;) I had to apply my base color twice, since the first time as soon as I applied my SV, I managed to whack 3 fingers against the table while doing nothing more than standing up! Then, after the second try at my base color, I whacked another finger. I wasn't about to deal with this base color again though, since it has the worst formula known to man. It was like trying to apply yellow paste! Ugh! Then, after I had applied the black and was satisfied, my top coat smeared the black way more than usual. I think I'm going to start doing a coat of Gelous first when I do tape manis, since the last few times my black has smeared way too much. I've used Sinful's Black on Black for the last few tape mani's (save for my Day 1 mani); maybe that's the issue. My Wet N Wild and Orly black polishes don't seem to be as smeary. Hmmmmm.

 I used Pixel Yell-Ooh as my base color (it's one of the few yellows I own), then used striping tape for the mummy lines, and Sinful's Black on Black. I'm not pleased with this one, but like I said, I wasn't about to deal with this any more.

Anyway, I give you the mani that didn't want to be. I apologize for the smearing, but I wasn't about to re-do the whole thing after the issues I had already dealt with!

I actually really liked this IRL, since the smearing wasn't obvious. Macro mode is so unforgiving. Meh! Anyway, this looked really cool IRL. I have to try this design again sometime.

Hopefully all your yellow manis were much more cooperative!!! I can't wait to see them! I'm going to rest for an hour or so, then I'll be back to see all the awesome manis. I also have a new Color Show LE to share. It's officially the ugliest polish I own, yet it's so ugly it's pretty. :)

Don't forget to check out the Varnished Vixens Yellow Manis!

-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

Pixel Naughty Bit Nice and stamping!

Hi Ladies! This is the last post you will see with my longer nails. I lost patience yesterday and took them back down to nubbins since they were catching on everything, including the baby! I will grow them back out again, but hopefully this time they won't have the wonky corners or weird shape issues. The good thing is that I like them shorter, and I can use my Mash plates when they are this short. :)

Today I have a gorgeous dusty greyed out blue jelly from Pixel to show you, Naughty Bit Nice. I adore this color! I picked this up at Ulta awhile back, but held off on wearing it until I could figure out exactly what I wanted to do with it. I ended up taking a cue from a few other bloggers and stamping it with a deep yet dusty blue, and it turned out okay.

First, let me show you Naughty But Nice on her own:

Details:
1 coat OPI Nail Envy Matte
1 coat Instant Artificials Base Coat
3 coats Naughty Bit Nice
1 Coat Seche Vite

I love the dusty grey/blue of this polish. I wasn't expecting to love this color as much as I did, but it was a nice palette cleanser! Of course, I can't leave anything alone, so I stamped it using Ulta Into Astrono-me? and RA plate 113.  Unfortunately my Bariellet top coat did not like my stamping polish at all and left all sorts of little bubbles that I could not get rid of no matter how hard I tried, so please ignore those!  I'm looking forward to more stamping now that I have my nubs back since my nails were just a bit too long to really get a good stamp. I do like how this turned out though, and wore it for 4 days before it chipped and I removed it (as well as most of my length!)

I really do need to work on my stamping! This is only the 4th time I have actually stamped, despite having a ton of plates. I need some practice, but I think this came out ok. I can't wait to try some stamping on my shorter nails!

Thanks for stopping by!

Happy Polishing!
-Kimber

More Pink! Essence Sweet as Candy and Cloud Tips!

Hi Guys! Hope you all enjoyed your weekend!

Today I have another lovely Pink to share with You. Essence Sweet As Candy from their Colour & Go Line is a a gorgeous soft pink jelly. I did not expect to love this so much, since very light, sheer polish just isn't my thing, but it's really growing on me. I had intended to just use this as a base for some nail art, but I loved it so much that I wore it alone for a day.  So soft and pretty! This is 2 generous coats of squishy goodness over Instant Artificials:

 I just love Essence. I swear for 99 cents, those little polishes are a steal.  I do wish that my Ulta carried more than a handful of colors though. 

Formula on this girl was lovely. Perfect Jelly application. I did have a few spots of balding, but that was more my own impatience between coats. Otherwise, I can't complain at all.

I also wanted to try out some of Nailside's designs, and I thought that some little clouds would be perfect with this color. My only problem was that I used mini polishes for the silver and pink clouds, and the brushes were too small to make the strokes wide enough to cover my entire nail. So I just left them as is since I wasn't sure that adding another stroke would look ok. I kind of like how they only cover 3/4 of the tip, and for a first attempt at this design with flat, square mini brushes, it didn't turn out half bad. The perfectionist in me isn't pleased, but IRL they do look very cute and the flaws aren't as obvious, so I can live with them.  I will definitely be trying this design again.

Fun stuff! Seriously, don't laugh too hard at my attempt at clouds. I promise my next attempt will be better! And I'll take pics right away so you guys don't have to look at my tip wear.  ;)

 For my clouds I used Essence Icy Princess (Silver) and Pixel Mis-chief-ous (Pink). I'm not sure how I feel about the color combo, but it's tolerable. Hubs loves it, and that always makes me feel good. I think I'm just not used to using this much pink at one time. I adore pink, but I prefer dark, vampy colors on my nails and seeing this much pink kinda throws me off!

 And check out my cuticles! They're far from perfect, but still a vast improvement! I've been using Solar Oil for close to 2 weeks, and my cuticles are actually there and constantly improving! I may end up with pretty cuticles yet! Considering how problematic and shabby my cuticles are, and how much I tend to lose patience and just snip/gnaw at them, this is a HUGE change. I have no desire to mess with them beyond some cuticle remover, and since my products aren't at all harsh (Burt's Bees and Solar Oil), no more swelling and cracking. Yay!!!!!! Let's hope this trend continues!

Hope you're all having a decent Monday, if such a thing exists!

Happy Polishing!
-Kimber