To Infinity and Beyond!

 Today I have a polish from an awesome indie brand named Different Dimension! This is named To Infinity and Beyond and if you don't already know, it's based off of the character Buzz Lightyear from the Disney movie Toy Story! So I obviously needed it.

It's a glitter topper that has these amazing white squares, medium neon green hexes along with smaller neon green hexes, with some more green more iridescent small round glitters. And then small round purple glitters with medium purple hexes in a clear base. (Whew!) It's the perfect representation of the character!

PLUS! It GLOWS in the dark! Yeah. If you weren't already tempted to buy it, you should now. It's pretty densely packed also. The above swatches are with one coat painted straight on (some fingers needed the dabble method) and all the glitter shapes were pretty much at the top but I did have to do a little fishing with the large green hexes and the white squares. But not too much difficulty!

I'll have to insert a picture of it glowing because I forgot to take one when I wore it! The base is two coats of China Glaze Pelican Gray :)

Happy Memorial Day!

So it's Memorial Day in the U.S.A to commemorate fallen soldiers who served in the U.S Armed Forces! 'MERICA!

And of course the holidays means an excuse for some nail art!

On my index and middle fingers I started with China Glaze Hey Sailor, a perfect true red color. And I just free handed the stripes with a white striper polish. 

On my ring and pinky I painted two coats of OPI I Saw... You Saw... We Saw...Warsaw and then stamped over it using an image from the Winstonia plates, I used 107! (they're fabulous by the way)

I used an old bottle of Sally Hansen White On because I heard/read before somewhere once that old thick nail polishes could work well for stamping (since I don't own any special Konad polishes.) It didn't turn out AS sharp as I wanted to though and that's probably because it was so gloopy! 

But I'm still happy with the results:)

Next time I'll try with a different white I have! Anybody have any suggestions for an opaque stamping white?

It's been raining on and off also today.. it stopped for a few minutes so I could take these photos and now the sun is full blown out! Oh well.

Thanks for reading! Time to fire up the grill now. Hope everyone is having a great Memorial Day :)

Lion in the Sage

Quick post! Just a simple mani today. Two easy coats of O.P.I Thanks A Windmillion, a very pretty dusty sage colour with an amazing formula.

Accent finger is China Glaze I'm Not Lion. My favorite glitter. It goes great with any polish.. I LOVE it.

Happy Sunday! :)

Are You Jelly of The Highlight of My Summer?

Despite the mostly negative reviews of the new China Glaze Sunsational Collection, I bought two of them anyway! I chose one from the jelly and one from the creme. 

Are You Jelly? is a purple shade from the jelly side. I purchased this one because it seemed to be one of the colors that was the least problematic (and c'mon... I couldn't deny that name) and I must agree! It behaves like a typical jelly, and here you see 4 coats to get to an opacity I like. I probably could have gone with three but my first two coats weren't careful enough.

So if you're a fan of jellies this one is definitely for you! It's sheer but definitely buildable. 

Highlight of My Summer is the most perfect, obnoxiously bright (not necessarily neon..?) MINT. Seeing that combo I was sold. Unfortunately all reviews of this formula are true. BLAH. Something about this creme/bright/pastel almost neon makes the formula so weird and chalk like, just as I read described. First two thin coats were streaky and the third leveled it out. Without top coat this would look like a weird matte/chalk mess. BUT I found a little solution. On my thumb I put down a base of a white nail polish and which made me only require two coats of HOMS. Which made me relieved and now I don't regret the purchase! So I would definitely go with a white base!

So. Bright. Ah! It's a shame the formula isn't better because this color (and the name) is to die for! I might be picking up more of the colors from the collection now that I know white undies will help the disastrous creme formula.

Thanks for reading! :)

China Glaze Hologlam

I was definitely one of those people who was SUPER excited to hear that China Glaze releasing a new HOLOGRAPHIC collection! I started on my nail collecting game a little late and unfortunately missed out on a lot of awesome collections, the OMG CG collection being one.

When I saw swatches online. Mannnnn I was disappointed! What happened to the strong holographic that was in the previous collection? And they did have a lot of blue tones so a lot of 'em weren't very unique in my eyes.

But wait! I pushed past that and purchased these two! And I sure did change my mind! They are definitely very subtle compared to the old collection and even compared to other holographic collections by other brands (Color Club Halo Hues being one that most people compare them to).. and I actually liked it! I found myself really liking the not so strong holo in them. This post will be slightly picture heavy! So here are my two picks: 

When Stars Collide, a super pretty purple color that's more reddish based. Which I really like because most of my purples are blue based!

I swear this polish looks so good on it's own. I could be doing the most awkward hand pose and this polish would find a way to make my hands look good!

 Above is a photo in the shade! At  first I thought "meh" with this color because I thought it clashed with my skin tone but I actually really like it. A lot. Can you tell? I would definitely recommend this one! It's two easy coats and all of these photos include top coat. If you're worried about your ridges showing any (which they do a bit on my finger nails) I'd definitely go with a ridge filler base coat/ aqua base.

Strap On Your Moonboots: A dark navy blueish color that is pretty in the sun and in the shade! The holo is strong in this one.

 Above photo in the shade! Again, two easy coats with top coat. But this could almost be opaque in one with a steady hand and a medium/thick coat.

After these two I decided I do like this collection! But not all of them. I for sure want to pick up Infra-Red also. Thanks for reading!

Indulging with Mimosas

Today I am wearing a shade from the China Glaze Avant Garden collection.

Mimosa's Before Mani's (p.s has anybody figured out why they spelled it that way..?)

It's a really pretty shade of peach and a little on the darker side of the spectrum. (In my eyes it leans a little towards a pink salmon color too) It also has this gorgeous gold shimmer in it that my camera failed to pick up for the most part. You can see it in the close up photo above on my index finger and middle the most!

I wanted to spice it up and I first I started stamping with Color Club Cosmic Fate, but then OPI DS Indulgence was next to it and I said "I wonder if this stamps well?!" And boy it did! I wish you could see more of the sparkle in these photos!

Winstonia Plate 111 (aka those suns everybody always uses)

Annd another photo because I can! Look at those suns. I call this combo, Indulging with Mimosas!

Thanks for reading ^___^

Hang Ten Toes

From the 2012 China Glaze Summer Neon collection.

A little old but I'll still post about it :)

I only have a few colors from the collection itself but this is one of my favorites! Opaque in two easy coats which surprised me for a neon. And it's this super pretty bright pink color that leans blue and it has shimmer in it!

 No undies were used ;)

Galaxy Nails!

A few weeks ago for a challenge in nail art April, I attempted Galaxy nails for the first time!

I was a little nervous trying them at first because whenever I watched people doing it, it looked like so much work and despite that there's came out well! Whenever I do nail art I'm usually not that fortunate haha.

This is definitely one of those techniques that it's a mess, but you have to learn how to make it a pretty mess. It's not perfect but I think I did pretty well for my first try! 

Oh and it requires a ton of colors (at least for me). I used:

Wet n Wild Black creme (base)

OPI I Saw..U Saw...We Saw..Warsaw

OPI Tomorrow Never Dies

Unnamed white color by LA Colors

Unnamed pink color by LA Colors

 Sally Hansen Sun Kissed

China Glaze Fairy Dust on top

I personally like my index fingers and pinky the most (despite the smudged star :p) I might try this again with a warmer colored galaxy! And in my opinion those little twinkles people add just don't work for me. So I just did the little dots! Might leave that out next time. Thanks for reading :)

Flirty Bogotá Blackberry

One of the manis I sported this week was all O.P.I colours.

For the index accent I used O.P.I In A Flirtationship, which I read somewhere that this was an ULTA exclusive shade and a dupe for Excuse a Moi by O.P.I. ULTA throws me off sometimes like that!

And for the rest of my finger nails I used two easy coats of Bogotá Blackberry a super gorgeous wine color. I originally just purchased this for the name, because my paternal grandpa is from Bogota. I ended up loving the color too! Bonus!

Above is an amazing (not) macro shot so you can see the glitters up close! There are multi-colored glitters in like green, red, silver, blue, and orange, and they're in a light pink base! Dried a little matte and gritty but two coats of top coat smoothed that right out!

Thanks for reading :)

Big Sur + Gradient

A few weeks ago I volunteered for the Big Sur International Marathon! Volunteers always get a super cool t-shirt with a graphic of the race course on the front. And they say nail inspiration is everywhere so of course I had to make a little somethin!

I went off the gradient in the background because you can never go wrong with a blue and purple gradient! Plus they're my favorite colours :)

Colours I used L-R: 

• China Glaze Dandy Lyin' Around,
• China Glaze Sunday Funday, 
• China Glaze Seaspray,
• unnamed purple from L.A Colors, 
• China Glaze Tart-y for the Party!

I started with the white shimmery base for a little extra umph. And the reason I have both a dark and light blue, and dark and light purple is because I didn't have any exact colour to match the ones on the shirt. 

I used about equal parts of the lighter and the darker colour and it came out pretty darn close, if not spot on to the shirt! I was pleased!

The expo was really fun also, seeing so many from literally all over the world to come to a race! Lord knows I can't run but it was still fun to be in that type of environment. I was surprised to see a lot of Bostonians there! Especially after what happened there. A lot of them were doing the Big Sur marathon also. Two marathons in less than two weeks?! My goodness.

Wet n' Wild Gray's Anatomy

I guess this will be logged as my first post ever. I do not even know where to begin! Haha!

So right here is a swatch of Wet n' Wild's "Gray's Anatomy" an awesome purple/grey/green duochrome (or triochrome, I guess!) with a hint of shimmer in it. It was a little hard to capture the green in photos, but you can see it on the first photo on my index finger and a little in the second on the left halves of my nails!

I really love this colour.. it reminds me of being in space or something. Or an oil slick. Not really similar comparisons haha but all I know is that I am in love with it!

I heard this a good dupe for Deborah Lippmann's "Wicked Game" which I do not own, but from other pictures it seems to be spot on!

I do own a colour by O.P.I which seems to be the same. I have the bottle called "See You Next Summer" but apparently it was renamed and re-released in the Katy Perry collection and called "Not Like The Movies" No wonder I couldn't find swatches! I will have to make a comparison post for those two later on :)

Just gettin the feel of this blog so posts won't be too picture heavy... YET.

I also have a nails Instagram where I post more frequently for the time being. Check it out! @reinovate

Thanks for reading!

Do you prefer the spelling grey or gray? I prefer grey!