On the Mehndi

My friend Chris is currently en route to Las Vegas from Chennai, India, and with him, he carries 6 beautiful, super awesome Indian Nail Polishes!!!! (for me!) So today's manicure is dedicated to him! I decided to do mehndi nail art today, mehndi is a form of henna skin decoration generally done on the hands and feet of Indian women for wedding celebrations and festivals . I have always loved the look of mehndi designs, and thought it'd be a lovely nail art design. For my nails, I scoured the web for different designs, and chose parts of each design for the different nails.

I used American Apparel California Trooper as a base, with 2 coats of butter LONDON Crumpet on top. For the mehndi design, I used Zoya Dea. Topped everything off with 2 coats of Seche Vite top coat. I'm also trying a new base coat out, it was given to me at the CosmoProf show by Nubar, it's called Nubar Foundation. I'm super curious to see how it holds up! :)

And here are the awesome polishes that are coming to me!! :)

Lotus Herbals Colour Dew Nail Lacquer

Nubar Foundation was given to me for consideration by the manufacturer.

201 POSTS AND COUNTING....

You have to click directly on this picture to get a better view of these nails.

The base acrylic that I used on these nails is called black and white ball from sparklesnailproducts.com.

These are my sister in laws nails. She is 9 mos. pregnant. She isn't finding out if it's a boy or a girl until the baby is born. So that is the story behind the one pink flower and one blue flower nail. Once she has the baby we can just change one of the nails! haha

These nails were a complete accident. We were going for something completely different and they just ended up like this. This is a perfect example of what happens when you have a crazy nail tech and a crazy client in the same room!

This is opi gel polish in black onyx. I painted a little "corset" pattern on the nails. It's kind of hard to see in the picture but it turned out very cute!

This is white acrylic with cotton candy art glitter faded at the top. I added 3d flowers on the ring fingers. Very summery :)

This is acrylic. I painted the black and white lines with a striping brush.

This is a 3d skull on the ring fingers that I made with acrylic.

This is a color fade with acrylic and then I handpainted a cheetah print. meeeow!

Essence Colour & Go: Underwater

Underwater with Essence

Hi guys! For today I have one of those 'from the vault' posts, I found out I had this swatch lying around, so I thought I'd share! This pretty bright blue nail polish makes me desperately long for a good swim, on a tropical island (while pretending to be Brooke Shields).

It's pretty, bright, especially on a sunny day. In the shade it's definitely more flat-looking. Application was very good, you'd expect a crappy tiny brush, judging on the tiny bottle, but boy I was wrong. It isn't as wide as the famous OPI brush, but still wider than most. It does need three coats for complete coverage, but it dries fast! The only thing that bugs me though, is the finish, it's a bit frosty, so hellooo brush strokes. I'm not sure how I feel about frosts all together though, it seems to be a bit outdated if you ask me.

Essence Colour & Go

Essence's Underwater belongs to their Colour & Go line, these cost €1.25 ($1,60) for 5ml. But if you're lucky enough to live in the States, these will only cost you €0,80 ($0.99 ) each, hmmm interesting!

Between a Rockabilly and a Hard Place

Today was another totally awesome day!! It was the last exhausting day of CosmoProf, and I got to meet celebrity manicurist Elle, from Barielle, Hannah and the gang from Nails Magazine, and I got the chance to hang out and chat with Michelle of All Lacquered Up for most of the day, which ended in some super tasty In N Out and a mad dash to the airport so Michelle could get to her flight on time! :) All in all, a great day!

Today's nails remind me of 'Rockabilly' style, with the cheetah print and red combination. I think I've been listening to Imelda May too much lately. You should check her out, she's amazing, my favorite is 'Big Bag Handsome Man'. These are going to be hard to remove, I like them so much!! :)

I used American Apparel California Trooper as a base, with butterLONDON Crumpet for the 'blobs', outlined in MAC Showy, with Nubar Sexy Red for the moon. Topped everything off with 2 coats of Seche Vite top coat.

WOOT!! :)

Sympathy For the Devil

Woo! Day two of COSMOPROF and again, I'm worrrrrn out! Lots to see, people to talk to, and tons of walking! It was a GREAT day though, I had the pleasure and unique opportunity to meet Zoya Reyzis, founder and creator of Zoya Nail Polish! She was SO amazing to talk to, and it was so awesome to hear about her life, why and how she developed the Zoya product line, and how the names of the polishes came about! Did you know that when Zoya first started the line, she named all the polishes for famous women in history?! How amazing is that? I'm a true history nerd, so that makes me like Zoya even more! (is that possible?!) (check out after today's post for more Cosmoprof/Zoya!)

Today's manicure is different on both hands, so you get TWO pictures!! I did an angel vs. devil theme! I think my favorite part is the toenail polish on both of them, blue for the angel, and red glitter for the devil! (though it's hard to see on the devil) My seche got cloudy and weird, so the finish looks horrible on these, I need to get a new bottle instead of refilling the old, I'll do it tomorrow.

I used Sally Hansen Professional Lavender Cloud as a base for the angel nails, American Apparel Rose Bowl mixed with American Apparel California Trooper for the cherub legs, shaded with the same mixture, only with more American Apparel Rose Bowl. For the toenails, I used Orly Snowcone. For the wings, I used a mixture of Sally Hansen Professional Lavender Cloud, Orly Snowcone, and American Apparel Factory Grey on the outline, and the same mixture with more Sally Hansen Professional Lavender Cloud for the shading. For the halo, I used American Apparel Manila, and for the glow, I used Dare to Wear Black Yoke. For the devil hand, I used American Apparel Hassid as a base, with China Glaze Salsa for the devil legs, and Milani Melt Down for the tail, pitchfork, and toenails. :-D Topped it all off with Seche Vite top coat.

Ok... now for COSMOPROF stuff!

Zoya and I

I also got to meet Erin, one of the Zoya polish fairies!!

Orly Cosmic FX Collection- AMAZING!!

ORLY 'Tis the Season Collection- LOVE Winter Wonderland and Meet Me Under the Mistletoe!

New China Glaze – Anchors Away!  (I'm in love, seriously) Set 1:

Set 2:

China Glaze Awakening- Halloween collection- Zombie Zest, Ick-a-Body and Mummy May I

Color Club's new collection– Untamed Luxury...

Covered in Diamonds might be a solution to your Sally Hansen Buried Treasure search!!

Color Club Halloween Sets- Betwiched and Cast a Spell

And since they might not all be new, (not sure) but I was totally unaware of their awesome collections:

L.A. Girl DISCO- brights that GLOW under a blacklight!!

L.A. Girl METAL

L.A. Girl Rock Star - awesome glitters!

L.A. Girl Urban Style Matte

Hopefully I can get more pictures, etc tomorrow! :)

New Eyeko polishes

Hi there! Eyeko came out with two new polishes called Rain and Saucy and they were kind enough to send me some for review. I actually wore Saucy yesterday but didn't get around to posting it so I'm showing you both today.

If you read my blog regularly you might have noticed I'm not really a red fan and I hate to swoon over a polish I received for review like this because it seems disingenuous but this really is the perfect red. It actually made my heart skip a beat when I opened the package. It's THAT beautiful! I may have found a HG red creme; something I never expected to find because red is just not me. Judge for yourself...

 Hi left hand!

*Swoon* Isn't it gorgeous?! I know other bloggers said it was a one-coater for them but I definitely needed two coats to get it nice and even. Not that I mind though, I'm not fond of one-coaters anyway. I always do a second coat with polishes like that unless I want to layer it.

I really enjoyed wearing this polish as it is but still couldn't leave it alone so yesterday afternoon I stamped it with a patern from an Essence plate to give it a bit of an Asian look. I can't tell you the number for the plate because I bought four different plates and they were only marked #1 and #2. This one had a #1 on it but because I had two different #1 plates I named this one #1A.

I'm really happy with how this turned out! It made me want to dress my hair up with chopsticks and eat Chinese food. Which of course I did. I made Kung Pao chicken for diner. Yum!

Today I'm wearing Rain. A blue-toned grey with a secret silver shimmer that is visible in the bottle but not so much on my nails. Weird because I've seen pictures from other that clearly show the subtle shimmer.

I had a bit more trouble with this one. Not horrible but like most pastels and lighter colours it has a tendency to get goopy so after the second coat I added a couple of drops of thinner to fix that.

Because I love my new nubbins so much and the Konad full-nail plates finally fit, I decided to stamp this one with a patern from plate M74. I've never been able to use this plate because it annoys me when slanted paterns don't cover half my nails but now they do.

I might keep this on for more than one day but if not I have a lilac-purple-white plaid mani planned for tomorrow.

Thanks for looking!

Oh and if you hate me for writing this post in English only, feel free to yell at me in the comments. It's too hot to translate posts right now and I always have to cut half off my posts to prevent the dreaded wall 'o text when I write them bilingual so I'm giving English-only a try. It might even be permanent depending on your much or how little I get yelled at.

Eyeko is sold for  £3.50 a piece at www.eyeko.com but you can also buy sets. Check out their site for more info.

Bridal nails

2 tone glitter acrylic extension with white fluff florals n strings of blings n pearls!

I love it! Do you? :)

Bridal nails

2 tone glitter acrylic extension with white fluff florals n strings of blings n pearls!

I love it! Do you? :)

Cute puff embossed laces!

Baby pink and white puff laces on black gloss gel tips!

Just look at how glossy the black gel tips are! Wooot! These are sculptured gel extensions.

The laces totally soften the black tips n made them really girly n sweet! :D

Cute puff embossed laces!

Baby pink and white puff laces on black gloss gel tips!

Just look at how glossy the black gel tips are! Wooot! These are sculptured gel extensions.

The laces totally soften the black tips n made them really girly n sweet! :D