Snowfetti Sandwich

I distinctly remember trying to make a wintery jelly sandwich this same time last year. It was right after the holidays, early 2013, and I tried probably 4 different white jelly sandwiches (all of which were complete fails and they never made it to the blog)!  But in the last year I’ve accumulated a few (ahem) new polishes… so let’s try it again!

I wanted my jelly sandwich to be white, shimmery, and with some slight multi-colored glitter effect to look like snowflakes.  Let’s see what I came up with…

It has many layers (8 layers to be exact), but I love it!  I will call this my snowfetti sandwich.  It also pairs perfectly with the winter weather advisory that we’re having in upstate NY right now!

Here’s what I’m wearing…

♥ Sally Hansen Maximum Strength (one coat) as my base coat

♥ OPI Alpine Snow (one coat) as my white base color

♥ Funky Fingers Jawbreaker (one coat) for some colored glitter w/a creamy base

♥ Wet n Wild Megalast Break The Ice as a sheer white topper (three coats)

♥ OPI Lights of Emerald City (one coat) for some fun square glitter on top

♥ Seche Vite topcoat (one coat)

I just love Lights of Emerald City by OPI!  It’s probably my favorite glitter topper ever!  My boyfriend’s mom got it for me for my birthday over the summer and I’ve worn it three times so far on the blog.  The square glitters in there are so unique, and the fact they’re white helps soften them so they blend perfectly into your manis.  I hope OPI keeps making glitters like this one!

A quick FYI… the January Nail Art Ideas Linkup themes are coming out real soon!  So keep your eyes peeled for the announcement!  The January N.A.I.L. linkup will start Jan 5th 2014.   

Giant sized seche vite!!!!!!

I have this inherent need to hoard things that I use regularly.  Like shampoo, qtips, sandwich baggies for my lunch…..  these are all things that I use everyday.  I like to have good inventory on hand because whenever I get low on one of them it seriously stresses me out!  Seche vite topcoat falls into that category too.  So I recently made a smart purchase that will ensure me a steady supply of my holy grail topcoat.  Check out my gigantic salon-sized bottle of seche vite!!

I found this item on amazon and it was around $15 with shipping included.  It comes with a standard-size bottle of seche that contains the normal 1/2 ounce.  It also comes with a ginormous 4 ounce re-fill bottle and a funnel.   Because it has 4 and 1/2 oz it’s basically like buying 9 bottles of seche at once.  And for $15USD…. not bad at all!!!!!!!!  Here’s the contents of the box…

Instead of using the new little bottle of seche that came in the set, I decided to fill my old empty bottle.  Hoarding tendencies forced me to keep the new bottle for later.  🙂  When re-filling your seche you’re supposed to use the funnel that came with the set.  There were no instructions to indicate this, but it was a good assumption I think.    The funnel has a little line etched in it, so I figured that’s where I’m supposed to snip off the tip with scissors.  Well, that didn’t work, as you can see below.  The seche would not flow through!  I guess the formula is thick, so you’d need a bigger hole.  So I snipped it a little lower- still no luck.  I did this 3 or 4 times til the funnel was a blunt nub.  It was pointless!  The most that I got out of it was the one drip as seen in my pic.  LOL!  I ended up throwing away my funnel thing, and just poured the seche directly into the smaller bottle, which worked fine. 

Here’s the amazon listing if you are interested in buying a mammoth sized bottle of your own.   When I bought it a few weeks ago it was  $14.95 and free shipping, but now it looks like it’s $13.95 plus $5 shipping… but if you poke around maybe you can find a better deal online?  If you happen to invest in a salon-sized kit like this I’d also recommend some Seche Restore thinner too, as seche tends to thicken up over time.  I hated spending money on my Restore when I initially bought it…. it was the principle of it.  Like why should I have to buy a topcoat AND a thinner to go along with it??  But I’ve had the bottle for about a year now and it proved to be a good investment.  I have freshened up me and my mom’s seche bottles, as well as used it as a thinner for our goopy old bottles of lacquer.  I still have about a third of the bottle left which isn’t bad considering it serves two of us.

 So are you jealous of me and my ginormous seche?  Or do you have another fave topcoat that you use?

Butterfly Wings

I had a lot of free time last night and sat down with my box of very old polishes that I never use.  I rummaged through them and tried out all my spring-iest colors.  The AVON Retro Rose floored me!  In the bottle it looked matronly, but once applied it morphed into this stunning peachy pink with gold shimmer!  I sponged on some Sinful Colors Lagoon which is a sheer orange shimmer.  This polish must be very old- check out the retro bottle in my bottom pic!  The peach and orange looked great together and then it hit me- MONARCH WINGS!  Yes!  Time for me to try out butterfly nails!

Butterfly wing nails have been one of my favorite looks ever since I got interested in nail art.  They’re breathtaking and have been on my to-do list for a while.  I’m so glad I finally tackled this project last nite.  I guess I just needed the perfect base color to inspire me!

I used some black wet n wild polish and a sephora nail art brush to freehand the black wing outline.  The design was very forgiving… I didn’t even have to wipe it off and start all over again –  you girls know what I’m talking about, right?  Here’s the list of polishes and tools that I used….

I love it.  It will break my heart to have to take it off once it starts chipping!  And in case you are wondering… yes, that IS snow in the background of my pics.  We got another bad storm last night in NY.  Will it ever be spring?  Probably not.

Ruffle Nail Art

I’m so excited about this nail art technique called Ruffle Nails! Every nail fanatic needs to try this- it’s easy and has lots of wow factor.  All you need to do is grab your favorite polish shades and a dotting tool (or bobby pins) to make some over-lapping rows of dots (it helps to use the largest tool you can find so the dots aren’t too small).  If you’d like to see a step-by step tutorial here’s a great one by Chalkboard Nails.  Now that I’ve discovered ruffles- I’ve got all these ideas swimming around in my head- neon ruffles, rainbow ruffles, black n white ruffles…  I want to try them all!

My first attempt came out much so better than I expected!  I casually worked on this design while sitting on the couch and I honestly didn’t try too hard.   I figured I’d end up taking it off with polish remover and then give it a real go later.  Well, I couldn’t believe how cute my test mani came out so I took some pics!  I used some of my favorite green and purple polishes here… and I think the matte topcoat really pulled it together nicely.  The variety of colors and the satin finish made my fingertips look like fimo clay! ↓

I went with a cool color combo of blue, pink and grey for my second design. ↓

One thing I like about the ruffle technique is that it’s so easy, you can even do a great job on your ‘other’ hand!  I’m right-handed so my left hand nail art usually looks good, and my right-hand comes out how should I say… non-photogenic? LOL.   Well, not with ruffles!    Try it out for yourself and let me know your results!

♥ Mood struck polish as my base (teal)

♥ Wet n wild I Need a Refresh-Mint (light green)

♥ Revlon Charming (light purple)

♥ OPI Dutch ‘Ya Just Love OPI (dark purple)

♥ Orly Gumdrop (light teal)

♥ MASH Matte Topcoat

♥ Orly Faint Of Heart as my base (grey)

♥ China Glaze First Mate (navy blue)

♥ Revlon Blue Slate (medium grey/blue)

♥ China Glaze Dance Baby (pink)

♥ Orly Kiss The Bride (light pink)

♥ Seche Vite Topcoat

Butler Please

I was recently at Sephora hovering around the nail polish display and I discovered the most beautiful blue I’ve ever seen- Illamasqua Cameo.  I tested it out and I fell in love with it, but I could not justify spending $14.00 on one bottle of polish!  Craftynail is way too thrifty for that!  So I hit up the nearest beauty supply store to find myself a cheaper dupe.  I came across Essie Butler Please and I think I paid less than $4.00 for it with my coupon!  After getting home and applying it I realized it’s not at all a dupe for the pricey Illamasqua!  The Essie is much darker and dried to a blotchy semi-matte finish.  The two coats did dry quick though (which is always a bonus)… so then I taped my tips off with painters tape and added some Sephora by OPI topcoat called Only Gold For Me.  Even though the Essie formula was not my fave, there’s nothing that some sparkles and a healthy topcoat of Seche Vite can’t fix!   I really love the regal look of this gold and royal blue together!   Apparently so does my mom- she came over tonight and asked me to paint her nails this color too… so now we are nail twinny twins!

Easy Valentine’s Day Nails

I had the idea to put regular stickers on my nails since it sounded like a super-easy way to get a cute effect for Valentine’s Day.  So I started rummaging through my sticker box (poke fun if you want, but I love my sticker box)!  It’s the same one I’ve had since I was a kid and I’ve amassed quite a collection.  My faves include my original E.T. stickers from when the movie first came out… and my cute Rainbow Brite stickers from the 80’s!  I have a lot of heart stickers too so I decided on these red foil hearts.  Then I picked a girly pink polish and started painting!

I used 3 coats of Sephora by OPI I’m Wired and then placed the sticker on my ring finger.  I didn’t know if the Seche Vite topcoat would bead up on the foil sticker or not- so I used a thin coat of Orly Bonder on my ring finger to create a nice sticky surface on top of the heart. Then I applied my Seche to lock it all down.

These Valentine’s Day themed nails are so quick and easy!  You could put more stickers on if you want, but after I placed the one down I felt like it would be enough.  <I’ve noticed that if I’ve ever ignored my instincts in the past… that I’ve gone on to muff up the manicure.>  So always trust your gut and have some fun with your stickers!