Inktober Day 21: Treasure

Get ready for the most glittering look of this year's Inktober. Last year I did hand-placed glitter for the "expensive" look. I did a little bit of that for "treasure" this year, around the edges of the opal stones. Then I literally put jewelry on my nails...real treasure! I believe the jewelry is from Born Pretty Store.

Inktober Day 21 - Treasure

This look required a lot of layering, mostly of some flakies I still have in my drawers by Finger Paints (Flecked, Asylum, Twisted, and Motley), as well as additional sparkle and color including Sapphire Sparkle (CND), Saint (Zoya), and OPI shades Black Onyx and My Silk Tie. It got THICK and probably would've taken literal hours to come close to drying. Good thing I have another look to complete!

Wedding for the Weekend

I apologize for not posting yesterday. There's been a huge swarm of events engulfing my life recently, and I just didn't have the time to post.

I did however create two manicures, which you'll get to enjoy today. One was on my own nails, while the other was for a newly married friend, Barbara. This weekend I painted her nails for the gorgeous and perfect wedding to her new husband Ron. I offered to help set up the wedding when some important family matters came up with their original wedding planner and my good friend Chloe. So with wedding beauty and planning came little time for posts.

I had to rush to do my nails the morning before preparation began, so I chose a simple manicure with a new color to my collection, Dutch Tulips (OPI). On a side note, I made an unbelievable discovery on Friday when we stumbled upon a nail supply store in Denver called Mile High Nail Supply. With a patient boyfriend in tow, I quickly bought up seven new OPI shades, all for $3.75 each. If you're reading Nailed It on Instagram, you've already seen my excitement in the form of this framed up pic:

Dutch Tulips is the non-metallic red, though it actually is a bit more pink in life. It's stunning. I can't stand it.

So with little time, I slapped on two coats of that and then added some dainty little dots.

Barbara had her own idea for a manicure after she saw Mixed Mama's Valentine's Day manicure on Pinterest. We got together about a week beforehand to discuss the polish choices and the details of what I'd be doing on the day of the wedding, and she chose Pink Imagination (Finger Paints) as the base for her heart manicure.

Appropriately, she wanted the heart on her left hand's ring finger. It turned out beautifully, and the wedding even more so. After vows, rings and kisses were exchanged, the fun began and we danced and laughed all night. Those two are going to have a wonderful life together! Congratulations to the happy newly weds!

As an added bonus, here's a picture of Barbara with her beauty team: Anne and I. Anne worked tirelessly all day to not only do the bride's hair (which you can see is amazing), but also her bridesmaids.

Pyramid Flaked

An unusually frustrating feeling occurs when you have so many ideas flurrying about in your head, and can't decide which one to pick and ultimately apply to your nails. It's like walking into a candy store and being told you can only have one piece of one flavor. The decisions weigh so heavily on you that you eventually cave under the pressure, and pick up the first piece that you can grab. In the end, you're not thrilled with it, but the sweet taste is too distracting to care.

Faced with such a dilemma last night, I wound up with this cluster of colors. I chose the black base (Black Platinum from Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure) because I didn't want to use the solid black you see paired with flakies on almost every Googled image of "flakies". (I wish I had used a solid though.) The pyramid shape filled with Twisted (Finger Paints) is something I've been envisioning for the past few days, but it was only while I was applying my base coat that I decided to use flakies instead of my original idea. I won't say what that idea was yet, because I'm sure in the next few days I'll use that still. Ultimately, this is what I came up with, indecision be damned!

Holo Glitter & Flakie Extraordinaire!

Last night I had only one piece of this manicure in mind...the flakies. I collected all five of the Finger Paints Effects polishes, and hadn't used them yet. I could've put them over black, but who hasn't seen that? (If you haven't, you need to look at blogs more.) So, inspired by my good friend Jen who I got to see today, I chose purple. Originally, all I wanted to add to the purple (Grape Pop, China Glaze) was one of the flakies, Twisted. As I was pulling Twisted out of the drawer, I grabbed Asylum instead, and thought that too belonged on the purple. One thing led to another, and after an hour of polishing, I created this agglomeration of glitter, holographics and sweeping joy. 

Heh...overboard? I just couldn't stop myself! So the final tally for polish usage came out to be five (not including my base and top coats). The holographic stripe is Hologram Glitter by Color Madric, and the black is Bad Chick from Sinful Colors. Both are striping polishes with the itty bitty skinny brushes. I can't get enough of those and dotting tools lately. My poor stamps are feeling a little neglected I'm sure. Don't worry guys, I'll get back to you.

Birthday, Christmas and New Year Haul

The end of the year is always full of some serious celebration for me. With a birthday right before Christmas, Christmas itself, and all the celebration and hangovers that accompany New Year's Eve, there's a lot to be happy about. In addition, I have gifts and presents to celebrate over that I know you all will also appreciate. Of course, I recieved some lovely non-nail gifts and love from my family and friends that are also reason to celebrate, but since this is a nail blog, I'll just share those with you today.

Get ready...it's picture heavy!

First up, these are the gifts my sister gave me. She understands nail polish more than anyone I personally know, so you can only imagine my joy opening her gifts. She gave me tools:

...dotting tools

...striping brushes

...and a glass nail file.

She gave me the Butter London Dressing Table duo, Black Knight and Tart with a Heart. Unfortunately, the dressing table suffered a fatility during the 17-hour car ride, so it won't be making an appearance in today's shots.

She gave me some amazing nail art brushes I've never heard of, but definitely want more of. The formula on all of these is great, and only requires one coat. That's practically unheard of with brighter striping shades. All of these are from a company called Color Madric. They're all sort of metallic, not matte as their bottles seem to indicate.

Shown here is Design Yellow, Green, Ocean Blue, and Hologram Glitter.

Hologram Glitter really is holographic, as I tried to capture here.

Shown here are the metallics from the Metal-licious collection of Color Madric brushes. These colors are Am-Ore, Platinum Rush, Lead to Riches, Metal-Licious, Iron I Lovely, and Gold Digger.

These all appear metallic, as their collection's name suggests.

She gave me part of L.A. Girl Glitter Addict collection, including the elusive Uninhibited I've been craving since I saw Rie from Nails and Noms use it.

Shown here are Uninhibited, Jostle, Animate, and Celebrate.

A few days after getting these, we stopped by a random Rite Aid to get Andy some contact solution, and I saw a glittering display of five more colors from the collection!

I added Eutopia, Nostalgic, Purge (a new nail polish name favorite in my book), Synergy, and Provocative to my infant collection.

Now it's a glittering grand collection!

She gave me some polishes we had talked about over the phone. These are randoms I mentioned liking that she had cheap access to out there in So-Cal.

Shown here is Sea Gurl from ORLY, Good Witch? from China Glaze, Cleopatra also from China Glaze, Glass Slipper from Sally Hansen Diamond Strength (one I actually snagged for myself), Lady Luck from Sally Hansen Gem Crush and January from Julep. She didn't like that color on her, so I took it off her hands. To top this load of polishes off is the amazing Load from Illamasqua. Look at it back there. Beautifully raunchy.

Rounding out my sister's amazing gifts is my first bottle...or bottles rather...of Seche Vite.

Look at this monstrosity! It's so much top coat, I don't even know what to do with it! 4 ounces!

So that's it from her...but fear not, my haul has not ended! She did an unbelievable job of making my Christmas gifts a thrill to open. Thanks Sisser, I love you!

I mentioned in Sapphire that Andy's mom's trainer, Robbie really hooked me up with some amazing CND products. Here they are!

She included in my bag of goodies some nail care items including some tasty CND Solar Oil (a cuticle conditioner), Scentsations lotion minis in Sparkling Champagne and Clementine & Mistletoe. They smell awesome! There are also several samples of CND's Spamanicure hand lotions, in Citrus Soothing Creme and Almond Hydrating Lotion. I absolutely love the smell of the almond lotion. Finally, there are a few nail buffers, showing their support for breast cancer research with the words "Nail Community Cares" written on them.

She also included some amazing colors, including Smoochie (#518), Sapphire Sparkle (#561), Plum Truffle Sparkle Effect (#586), and Plum Truffle Colour (#585).  You've seen Sapphire Sparkle already in Sapphire.

Thank you again Robbie, I love everything!

Last but not least! We have the polishes I bought myself.

You've already seen the Urban Outfitters collection I picked up here, but here's a few more shots of those beautiful bottles.

I also snagged the entire Finger Paints Special Effects collection today at Sally's!

 Not much to look at when they're in the bottles, but I'm sure you've seen them used by other ladies. My favorite shots are from Jen at The PolishAholic, from this post showing each on its own, and this post showing them all layered together. Oh many these are going to be fun to play with!

So that's it. Can you feel my excitement through the screen? It's radiating!