Black/Silver Shatter

Hey babes,

I have 3 more black shatter and 6 more silver shatters on hand right now. First come first serve. Email valerie.gmh@gmail.com for details.

OPI Shatter Collection 2011

Email me if interested!

Oooohhhh Aaaahhhhh

Morning! I wanted to let you all know, which I forgot to mention in my last post, that I will not be posting daily, for now. Things are still just so busy with work and family. Summer seems to be craziest. Anyways, I will try and at least post every other day.

I had gone to Five Below a few weeks ago and saw some Mood Struck, mood changing polishes, and picked a few out. This is one of them. I'm so impressed with it! Even in the bottle you could see the bright turquoise shimmer. I couldn't wait to try it. The application was amazing, and you could still see all the shimmer on the nail.

Here it is with just 2 coats

Then I headed into the bathroom, so I could show you all the magic :)

Then I ran cold water over my pointer and middle finger. This is where the Ooooohhhh and Aaaahhhh comes into play. This just might be my fave mood polish. I love both colors so much!

 Then I ran cold water over them all. 

China Glaze Crackle Metals - Swatches & Review

What's up kids?! Dying to get your eyeballs on the new China Glaze Crackle Metals?

Well, feast your head orbs on my swatches and review at reviews.thedailynailblog.com!!

Roses & Springtime

Miss Mary came over on Wednesday to change her nail design before going for her Genting trip today. She brought He Laoshi along too! (He laoshi's my ex-colleague who was my partner when I was teaching in my previous school. A really nice lady. (: )

I showed them my nail mags and they had a hard time deciding! Spoilt for choice. Hahha. I did He Laoshi's nails first. She picked a nail design from the magazine and I tried to replicate it. Was quite disappointed with the pictures. It doesn't do justice to the design! Looks A LOT better in real life. My Canon camera was flat, so I had to use the Olympus one.

 

He Laoshi wanted this particular shade of pink polish, so she brought it from along with her. It's from TheFaceShop, not the usual OPI range that I use. But the application was still manageable. I was quite worried at first because some of my faceshop polishes became rather streaky after a while. But it turned out well. (: On the index and ring fingers, I covered half of the nail with black acrylic paint by painting it diagonally to give a contrast with the pink. I then swirled roses with pink and white. On the middle finger, I created a half moon design before swirling roses with black and white. On the thumb and pinkie, I just swirled roses as the nails on her thumb were rather short. I painted the leaves with green acrylic paint before lining the "partitions" with my silver striper polish.

Miss Mary couldn't design what to do! She said, "Okay I choose this colour. You can do anything you want!" The colour she chose was 'Who The Shrek Are You' from OPI's Shrek Collection. It's a really nice shade of green, that is striking yet not flourescent kinda striking. A very pleasant shade of green in fact. It's one of my favourites too!

Since the polish was rather striking, I decided on drawing white flowers for her with acrylic paint before outlining it with black acrylic paint. Lastly, I added random swirls and dots to make it look more natural. I was really happy with the end product! Miss Mary showed off to He Laoshi and said, "You see! My nails longer... can draw nicer lor.." Hahaha..

They were so cute! Miss Mary suggested holding my name card and doing free advertising for me. See the gimmicks they came up with.

 

I sure had a fun time painting their nails. It was a night of laughter. That's how manicure sessions should be - light hearted and relaxed. (:

Morning guys!!! I'm BACK!!!!

Alright, well let me just start by saying, thank you all so much for your sweet comments, and emails that I received. I don't want you guys to worry, everyone in my family is doing good. I just had some issues that I needed to deal with. You all really are so amazing and sweet, thank you guys again!! As much as it killed me to be away, it was something that I needed to do. I'm back though, and I hope I never have to go away again, lol. I missed you guys!! If you emailed me, pelase just give me some time to get back to you. I am starting to now, but I have just a tad over 100 emails, lol, so it might be a few days :)  Oh and I have tried to go back and respond to your comments, but blogger for some reason, won't let me. Each time I write something, and click 'Submit' it just keeps asking me to sign in again :(

Okay, lets just get back to normal now, and pretend that little time away never happened....deal??
Here is a funky french I did. I had a mostly black outfit on, and just wanted something fun on my tips :)

I started with 2 thick coats of China Glaze He's Going In Circles and then added China Glaze Jolly Holly for the tips.

The Daily Nail: Reviews!

Hey y'all! I know there are some new readers out there, so I wanted to let all of you lovely nail fiends like myself know that there is also a Review section of The Daily Nail! I know that some of you already know this, but lately, I've been posting more stuff, so there is more to look at! :-D

Now, I know that my nails or cuticles aren't as amazing as the infamous Scrangie, Michelle of All Lacquered Up, or Kelly of Vampy Varnish, but I wanted to focus on stuff like whether the polishes are good for nail art or Konad as well as just nail color, which is something that I found myself wondering when I first started getting into the blogging and serious nail polish hoarding. :-D

Hope that you like what you see, and if you have any suggestions that you'd like to see, please feel free to comment and let me know! :)

You can find the reviews/swatches at http://reviews.thedailynailblog.com!

-M

Swirl Roses

I invited my ex-colleague, who is also my mum's very close friend, Miss Mary, over to my place the other day to get her nails done. She has a really nice nail bed that's long - exactly what I need to practice nail art. Hence, she brought her OPI Polish over and I did a manicure and pedicure for her f.o.c.

I used OPI's Planks A Lot from the latest Pirate's Collection for the base, before swirling the roses with white and purple acrylic paint. I added the leaves with dark green acrylic paint before adding details with light green acrylic paint to give it more depth.

I really liked the outcome of it because it was a vast improvement as compared to the first time I tried swirling roses. Practice makes perfect eh? (:

Miss Mary has a habit of painting the exact same thing for her hands and her feet. Hence, I created a matching set for her toes. Felt bad cause boyfriend dropped by my place and was waiting for me to finish. Miss Mary was so afraid that I'd just forget about her toes. Hahaha.

Tadah! I'm happy with the end product. How about you? How would you rate the design?

Miss Mary will be coming by again on Wednesday to change her design. Stay tuned! (:

Surf's Up, Dude!

My first time in a MAC store EVER was in January 2005, and it was at the Pro Store here in Las Vegas - before I even moved here! I even remember my first eyeshadow that I purchased - Melody! My love affair began way back then, and since, my collection has grown to a ridiculous amount - over 70 full-sized pigments, 5 15-pan palettes full, quads galore, almost every color of fluidliner, and pencils, paints, lipglosses, glasses, sticks, etc. galore. It's a tad ridiculous, honestly. I'm a makeup hoarder, though I've gotten much better about passing up most or all of a new collection, even if it's LE, because generally I have a color that is so close that the layperson wouldn't be able to tell the difference, or because it's merely a repromote in different packaging. :-D (I do fall for them on occasion - can we say Wonder Woman Ruby Woo?!) Needless to say, I fell for the new Surf Baby collection, taking home Short Shorts e/s (I'm forever on the hunt for a Pollen dupe - my fav MAC e/s ever), Surf the Ocean pigment stack, Hangin' Loose nail polish, and Surf Baby! Cheek powder with the amazing gold hibiscus flower on it. The only thing I'm not loving is the pigment stack - SO difficult to work with!! (Was the gold supposed to be mousse-like?)

Anyway, because I LOVE the colors of the packaging and the hibiscus in this collection, I HAD to do a nail design based off it! :) Hope you like it!!

I used American Apparel Cotton as a base, with Lotus Herbals in Code Orange for the stripe as well as the hibiscus on the ring finger. For the yellow I used CND Bicycle Yellow, and for the grey/taupe, I used Essie Chinchilly. For the gold on the hibiscus, I used China Glaze Hi-tek. Topped everything off with two coats of Seche Vite top coat.

READY FOR THE BEACH NAILS SUMMER 2011

Woooo hoooo just 2 weeks away from the IBS Las Vegas show. Can't wait to learn some new techniques and purchase some new fun nail stuff!
I created a 3d coconut tree on the thumb and then capped over it with clear. I used beach theme fimo clay from kennickkreations.com on the other nails.

These nails were inspired by an amazing nail tech Nidia Casas. You can view some of her work at nailsbynidia.com

These are reggae inspired.

2 of my favorite things: animal print, and fimo clay dots from oaktreedollshouseminiatures.com










The lighter purple on these nails is a new color I just purchased from the inm collection long ago and far away.