Holographic Louboutin

Whenever I manage to grow my nails out a little, I’ll accidentally smack something like the edge of a table or a wall, and break all my hard work off my hands >: But I’ve been trying to take better care of them, and I finally got them long enough to do a Louboutin manicure! Except they are a little too long for my taste at this point, haha. But I wanted to do this, because you like can’t claim long nail cred until you can pull off a Louboutin manicure, okay.

Hand modelling attempt #32324

The Girl on Fire

Yaling and I bought tickets to the midnight premiere of The Hunger Games. I more or less set myself on fire.

Base is butter LONDON’s The Black Knight. I dabbed Nicole Orna-Ment for Each Other (bleargh, OPI and its sister companies have the DUMBEST polish names) and Julep Oscar on to make the flames. Then I added Essie Shine of the Times over that and slapped topcoat over it that did nothing to even it out. Then I went into a dark movie theatre where nobody could see my nails anyway.

Barielle Elle’s Spell

I had the greatest manicure idea the other day but I discovered that I don’t have any bright red polishes with an opaque creme finish. The one I used here is some unbranded ten-year-old chemical-laden polish I took from my mom, who got it as a gift in a set that also had some gross frosty neutral shades. I hope it doesn’t stain my nails. (edit: it did. -__-) It was too sheer for my original idea, more like a jelly, so I put two coats of Barielle Elle’s Spell, a dark red jelly with the flakies that flash orange/green/gold. My nails took forever to fully dry and there’s shrinkage around the tips; I’m gonna blame the red polish. I should probably get rid of it.

Pastel Green for Spring

Hi, Yaling here!

This past week has been oh so dreary and sad with the rain and cloudy skies. So in order to brighten up my mood I’ve decided to go back to a classic color for the spring! Can you guess what it is from looking at the picture below?

I will say, I adore all the colors from the China Glaze’s Up and Away! Collection, I do wish I had enough money to buy everything! However I will just soothe my soul with owning a few colors from there such as this lovely color, Re-Fresh Mint! Which is also the color of my lovely nails in the picture above!

Isn’t it just lovely? Every time I look down at my nails it makes me squeal in excitement! Now all I need to do is to get my nails to cooperate with me and grow to a size which looks reasonably nice on my fingers. Unfortunately I was not blessed with lovely nail beds like many other bloggers out there.

Until next time~~

Julep Maven February Golden Mystery Box!

I signed up for the Julep Maven boxes for a little bit because they were having a sale where the introductory boxes were one cent (how could I say no?), and forgot to skip a month so I ended up cancelling because I could see this happening quite often I was sent the box for February, and it turns out that I won a Golden Mystery Box, which contained one of every item from each box, and a basecoat. Julep polishes are 4-free and retail for $14 per 8ml/.27 fl oz bottle. Pretty pricey, but the monthly Maven boxes usually include at least $40 worth of products for $19.99 and free shipping.

Here’s a picture of the box, which I snapped on my iPod as quickly as I could so I could eat the chocolate, which was shaped like an Academy Award with the Julep flower logo on the base.

What exactly was inside:
Nail polishes
- Elizabeth, a superdark purpley blue with some shimmer that doesn’t really show up. This was in the It Girl box.
- Glenn, a metallic red. This was in the American Beauty box.
- Marisa, a shimmery cobalt blue. There’s a hint of purple/green multichrome in the bottle, but it doesn’t actually show up on the nail. This was in the Boho Glam box.
- Meryl, a medium neutral grey creme. It’s darker than Zoya Dove but lighter and warmer than Essence Movie Star. This was in the Classic with a Twist box.
- Oscar, a clear base with two different sizes of gold glitter, and was included in all the February boxes.
- Rachel, a warm shimmery copper with a metallic finish. It has a slight blackened-edge thing going on, which is pretty cool. This was included in the It Girl box.
- Viola, an almost-black warm purple creme. It looks to be a dead-on dupe for Urban Decay’s Apocalypse. This was in the Bombshell box.
Topcoat for Hair, which was in the Bombshell and Classic with a Twist boxes.
Cuticle Oil, which was in the American Beauty and Boho Glam boxes.
Base coat
Bar of dark chocolate

Here are some quick nail wheel swatches and bottle closeups; I haven’t decided which ones I want to keep yet. Most of them aren’t really my style (which is why I have no comparisons! ), but then again I’ve been getting bored of wearing the same general stuff over and over so maybe I need to broaden my horizons a bit, haha. The formula was easy to work with, a bit watery but not a big deal. Except for Oscar. That shade was thick and goopy, and shaking the bottle didn’t help much.

L-R: Glenn, Rachel, Oscar, Meryl, Viola, Elizabeth, Marisa

Gradient with Cult Nails Captivated

It’s been so disgustingly hot lately! @___@ On Friday, the power went out at my house and didn’t come back on until yesterday night. This has happened every summer for the past three years. unforgivable.

To cool myself off (because doing my nails clearly has an effect on the temperature), I decided to apply a glitter gradient manicure using Cult Nails Captivated, which I recently bought when Maria, the founder of Cult Nails, found a few more bottles of the previously sold out, limited edition color and put them up for sale. There were fewer than ten bottles left and I’m so glad I was lucky enough to grab one. It’s a coral jelly filled with gold glitter. Super summery!

This is the first gradient manicure I’ve done without using a sponge, so it didn’t come out perfectly. After applying Captivated, I covered my entire nail with Urban Decay Love Light (from their Summer of Love collection) and Sinful Colors Pinky Glitter to make the color transitions more smooth.

In hindsight, I probably should have used Love Light as a base instead of putting it on top; it sort of washed out the brightness of Captivated, which you can see when you look at the bottle and compare it to my nails.