Beauty Tips for Women: Taupe Manicure

Posted on September 26, 2013 by admin

Looking for a nice taupe color then let me suggest Nicole OPI – My Jay Or The Highway! from their Modern Family collection. I saw this polish in the store and it didn’t call to me at all until I saw a manicure using the color and just fell in love with it.

Here is my simple and quick manicure using this polish.

My Jay Or The Highway! is a lovely cream taupe/nude color. The formula was very nice. It applied very smoothly and with two coats reached opacity. For my ring finger I decided to using Color Club – Beyond. Beyond is an amazing black holographic polish. I used two coats. I tried to capture the holographic effect put simply couldn’t do it justice.

Although I liked the manicure just fine with the accent finger I wanted to add something so I decided to try my hand at a french tip using Beyond. I did it freehand and it didn’t come out to bad. But I defiantly have to work on my freehand technique.

Overall, loved how the manicure came out. The manicure is a nice transition for fall.

I definitely recommend My Jay Or The Highway! plus Beyond and give both polishes 4 brains.

Beauty Tips for Women: Mermaid Tale Inspired Manicure

Posted on September 15, 2013 by admin

I recently picked up some neon and glitter polish from Milani that called an ocean / mermaid feel to them when placed in combination. The colors are Milani Neon Fresh Teal, Milani Neon Blue Dude, and Milani Teal (glitter polish). I decided I wanted to try a Mermaid Tale or Mermaid Scales manicure.

I totally forgot to take pictures of the polish and plates involved. It simply has been just one of those weeks.

Since the two polishes are neon colors I decided to do a basecoat of white polish. I did a gradient using Fresh Teal and Blue Dude on thumb, index, and pinky. Middle finger got a coat of Fresh Teal and ring finger got a coat of Blue Dude. I did this because I wanted to see if there would be a difference in the way the glitter polish would look on each color (there was no difference at all). I was a bit torn between the two images I had for scales. I could either use Winstonia W111, which has a large scales image, or Cheeky plate B, which has a smaller scales image. I decided to try the look out on my left hand before committing to a final look.

I wasn’t thrilled the way Winstonia W111 looked when compared to Cheeky’s image. The scales effect I was looking for was achieved more with the image from Cheeky.

Below is a series of photos of the completed manicure. Unfortunately the gradient effect was lost under the stamping. I only did two coats of the gradient thinking that would be enough but clearly to make it pop under the stamping I would have needed more coats.

Overall I loved the final results. I’m totally in love with Milani Teal; it is an amazing glitter polish. The way it shifts under light between the teal, blue and silver glitters is beautiful. I’m still on the fence with Fresh Teal and Blue Dude. When compared to other neon colors they just don’t pop. Another con is that they both stained my nails horribly. Setting aside those two things, it turned out great.

Beauty Tips for Women: Recreation of Hearts, Stars & Splatter Manicure by elleandish

Posted on September 7, 2013 by admin

One of my favorite nail art ladies on youtube is elleandish. She has some very lovely manicures and wonderful “do it yourself” tips for nail art. She did a nail tutorial called Hearts, Stars & Splatter; I fell in love with the design of the manicure and color combination. Here is a link to go check it out and while your there follow her: http://youtu.be/_8tA_J5t-JQ

I decided to recreate the look. Unfortunately I didn’t have all the polishes she had to create the look, so I would have to make do with what I have.

Here are the polishes I used to make the look: (from left to right)
China Glaze – For Audrey
Venique – Wingtip White
Hard Candy – Black Tie Optional
Cover Girl – Disco Dazzle
Essence – Icy Princess
Poshe – fast dry topcoat
Venique – basecoat (not shown)
Konad – Black (not shown)
Konad – White (not shown)

The stamping plates I used are: (from left to right)
Born Pretty Plate – KD3
Bundle Monster – BM311
Bundle Monster – BM303
Plus my Born Pretty plastic blade scrapper and Konad stamper.

I started off with my basecoat, then two coats of For Audrey and Wingtip White. I did only one coat of Icy Princess since the silver glitter was going over it. Unfortunately my silver glitter was not “chunky” like the one used by elleandish.

I had some major issues stamping with my Konad white; it was coming out very light no matter which way I scrapped. It is very noticeable on my thumb where the double stamping was happening. For the hearts stamp I decided to stamp with Wingtip White and had a better outcome. I topped everything off with Poshe.