25th birthday cupcake nails

I've been wanting to do cupcakes for awhile and decided that between Valentines Day and my birthday on the 17th, these were a good bet! And since I had a bit of patience on working with something new, I went for it.

They're OK, I don't love nor hate them. Pretty neutral about it honestly, though I do wish I had used tiny dots for the sprinkles instead of using a toothpick for lined sprinkles. Kinda thought I should have made the cherries a hair bigger but oh well!!



Didn't use a base color hence why the cupcakes don't seem to go all the way up to the cuticle.

Used the following:

• Cupcake stripes: China Glaze Chocodisac & ELF Nude
• Icing: White striper brush
• Cherry: Wet N Wild Red
• Sprinkles: Orly Elsabeths Rose & China Glaze Sunshine Pop

Red + Gold glitter + accent nail

Used the following for this mani, forgot to get bottle pics:

• ELF: Cherry Bomb
• Orly: Sashay my Way

Also Konad's special white stamping polish for the accent nail. I was originally going to stamp all my nails but suddenly got lazy. I actually wasn't going to post this because I ended up being lazy on cleaning up and making the edges look nice. Some of the glitters had gotten near my cuticle and made it awkward to clean up. Oh well. ELF polishes are generally also difficult to get to smooth out properly and look nice around the edges.

Red and black color blocking funky french tips

• Maybelline - Onyx Rush
• Maybelline - Racy Red
• China Glaze - Ruby Pumps

This was fun! I used striping tape on the top of the blocks and in between them, took some careful brush strokes to make sure I didn't go over the thin tape. But it looks nice, and I like it! Sometimes I think I don't wear red enough.

This mani kinda reminds me of Cruella Deville from 101 Dalmations though. Just needs some white, I think, haha.

I hope to get one of my other cameras going soon, I think they take better photos. My current Sony is the newest but it seems to take some what crappy macros. :/ *pout* I don't know what it is, but the lighting did not want to play nice with this mani. It makes the red seem sort of washed out, it's not. :/

My not so festive holiday water marbling

I didn't take too many pictures of this one. I wasn't 100% pleased with it, but it turned out better than my previous attempts. One of the greens I used by Color Club was more of a gray green, which dampered my attempt at making it more festive and holiday themed. I don't absolutely hate it though. My patience wore very thin while I was doing it, I spent 4 hours marbling and had to take it off a few times do to messing up. (Turning the fan off probably would have helped, but I digress.)

At least I didn't use glitter this time which will make it a breeze to remove, haha. :) It's still an interesting color combo. The green gray Color Club does not have a color label so I have no idea what that is. The red was also a Color Club, unlabeled. *Came from a set from TJ Maxx mind you* The lime green was from Pure Ice, and it's one of my favorites for marbling. That brand does particularly well with marbling if you stick to the creams. (Spreads really fast/easy.)

Whoo for smearing it with top coat. :/

On my ring finger, that's what happens if you put on a top coat
while there's still a drop of water on your nail , haha.

Cirque Du Soleil China Glaze swatches

I did not use a top coat for these.

Shew, lord, this post is going to take me forever to finish. I just did swatches of 3 different new China Glaze's, took a ton of pics, now I have to upload and edit. Hope you guys enjoy them!

When I first started trying to swatch these babies, in my mind, I thought it was a good idea to swatch with a black and white polish as a base. That pretty much absolutely did not work out at all. Which I suppose is a good thing since I had to re-do a few fingers anyway, since two out of the three polishes were pretty difficult to work with.

First up is It's a trap-eze! In my blog post. This was by far, the easiest to work with. Though it NEEDS 3 layers. One layer is terrible and see through, two is ok, three is perfect. Four if you really want to do 4 coats is preferably IMO, but I'll stick to the usual 3 when I decide to wear it.

Yeah i realize this pic isn't 100% perfectly aligned, my patience was wearing thin lol! Please ignore my yellow nails, seche ridge filling base coat stained them i think.

Whirled away over red, silver, and light pink--no top coat and NO base on my pinky,

contrary to the damn yellow coloring the seche ridgefiller gave me for some reason...

This polish is a HUGE freaking pain. Seriously. You can't get anything where you want it, really takes some effort. Took me a lil effort to get the few white glitters I did manage to snag. It's also a very thick formula, and as you can see on the pink base nail (ring finger) it's goopy because I had to drop the glitters on sporadically. Still a neat look, similiar to Sticks N Stones. I was so interested in it because basically no mainstream brands have done things like this up until China Glaze came around. Perhaps with some practice I'll get the hang of this one. Does make me wish I had some Seche Vite though..

And here we have last but not least, Get Carried Away:

My swatches aren't the greatest I know, but I hope they help someone. This polish is another 3 coater, possibly four. Dries relatively fast, wish I had went a bit thicker with the first coat. But there you have it. You don't really need a base with this one either, as it looks really terrible layered over a lot of colors. (I tried pink and silver for curiousity. Ew.)

Halloween funky french blood splatter

I had been wanting to do this for awhile. Even with the nude color you can still some what see yellow on my nails which is what I hate about this. I love how it turned out I just wish my nails weren't yellowed. :-(

I actually bought a cream red specifically to do this. Classy mani combined with Halloween, what isn't to love about this?

I cleaned up quite a bit with acetone but due to the mess splatter nails makes it's not perfect. Not to mention red is notoriously evil for staining skin ugh.

Bonus picture! Didn't get a whole lot of pics of this mani
but these were my Frankenstein nails I did.