Sunny Side Up under the Harvest Moon

Happy Friday everybody! It's finally sunny out today! The only downside is that I now have no excuse for my photography >.<

For today's mani I wanted to do something NOT blue. I went as far away from blue as I could. Literally, I picked the opposite color on the color wheel. Orange!

Art lesson of the day: Orange and blue are complimentary colors, which in color theory means that when mixed in the proper proportion, they produce a neutral color (grey, white, or black). In terms of design, because the range of colors that were available throughout most of the history of art were limited, many artists today still use a traditional set of complimentary pairs as shown on a color wheel (ex. blue and orange, red and green, yellow and purple). Now everyone hand in your papers.

I love orange even though it usually looks weird on me since I am super pale. I mean beyond pale. I'm pretty sure if I encountered a vampire it wouldn't want my blood because it would think I was already tapped out. This orange however managed to somehow make me look almost tan. Figures it would take a neon.

Direct sunlight shot for color accuracy and cause I like sparkly things.

Polishes used:

• Sinful Colors base coat / Seche Vite top coat
• Wet n' Wild Sunny Side Up
• China Glaze Harvest Moon
• Red Angel stamping plate RA-113

I picked up Sunny Side Up as a total impulse buy, it was only a dollar and it was so bright and begging for attention. I had some issues with application but I think I've just been spoiled by some good one coaters lately. First two coats were super streaky and runny but after a third it settled down and behaved though I still had some visible nail line. I figured hey, stamping will hide that! Any excuse to play with plates I haven't used yet. I haven't given Harvest Moon any real show time for some reason but I love it. It is my first real foil polish and the only one of the Hunger Games collection I ended up getting. The Sally's here has such a sad inventory otherwise I would have brought home quite a few from that collection. Please ignore the tip wear in the pictures because it is totally my fault for not wrapping my tips before using top coat. I am so very bad at remembering that!

Overall I am loving how this turned out, especially when the Harvest Moon catches the sun. I think aside from the stamping mess on the sides of my fingers this was the neatest I have ever painted my nails to date. I was all proud of myself at 1am sitting in the kitchen but the dogs just didn't get it. What proud moments have you guys had?

AMG Another Award!

Before I start this, I just thought I'd show you all yesterday's mani with a matte coat. You all know I can never leave well enough alone, you really should have expected this :P Ignore my dry cuticles from swimming (yes, I totally splashed around all like "amg you guys I'm a mermaid look at mah nails!") and also the piece of cat fur. I shoo'd him off the window sill but the little furball wormed his way in there anyhow. Crafty felines *shakes fist*

Now on to the exciting news! Super sweet Hema at Rainbow Nails has tagged me for more awards! **super secret squirrel jump cut**

Mermaid Magic

Hi everyone! This post is kind of pic spammy, so I will save you all with a magical cut at some point. I'm not going to tell you when, it will be a surprise. Keep you on your toes.

Since I first saw the mermaid nails trend I knew I wanted to do it, it was just a matter of time before I collected the right colors. Now that those are in my collection, along with a good stamp, the time was right. Stamping may or may not have detracted from this look but I like it both ways so of course I'll show you both. First up, I'll show you the end product.

SURPRISE JUMP FOR MORE PICS!

Interior Inspiration

It's a Monday. Gross.

For today I had no idea what I was going to do. I had new colors I wanted to play with but I wasn't sure what direction that was gonna head in. In the true spirit of procrastination, I spent a ridiculous amount of time staring at Pinterest instead of doing anything productive. I wandered into my best friend's interior design folder full of adorable gray and yellow things and as fate would have it, I had both of those in my pile of new shiny things. It was this bedroom set that caught my eye and served as inspiration. I totally had the classiest nails at the gym, I'm pretty sure the chick on the elliptical next to me was jealous. That or my headphones were too loud. Let's go with jealous.

Polishes used:

• Sinful Colors base coat / Seche Vite top coat
• Sinful Colors Firefly
• Essie Master Plan
• Essie Blanc
• Red Angel stamping plate RA-109

Pardon the dark pictures, it's still been rather rainy here the past few days. The gray showed up accurately but Firefly isn't that dark. It has a lighter tone to it in person that I'm sure someone else has swatched much more accurately than I was able to capture. I just googled it for you all cause I'm cool like that, the swatch here at Polish Fixation is much closer. These were actually my first half moons, I like them more than I expected to. I think I was just scared of the paper reinforcers since I still harbor terrible mental scarring from the days before I learned about quick dry top coat. So much polish was wasted to the scotch tape monster back then. What kind of stuff did you guys do that you look back at now and shake your head at?

(I just noticed I hit 40 followers! Thank you all so much for reading!!!)

Avengers Assemble!

Happy Friday everybody! I am all kinds of comic nerd excited for the Avengers movie later tonight, so of course I made some nails to show you all.

After the responsible spending of tax return money was over (it kinda hurt), I had some change left over that wasn't quite enough for something big so I went polish shopping. Without even realizing it I had gotten a red creme that I desperately needed and a nice gold color. IRON MAN COLORS!

BUT WAIT, THERE'S MORE! Call now and we'll double the offer Of course after a day of that I couldn't leave it alone and so I added the Avengers logo to it. I have to say I'm proud of myself on this one, I used polish instead of acrylic paint.

No old lady fingers AND a damn good picture (by my standards anyway)!

Polishes used:

• Sinful Colors base coat / Seche Vite top coat
• Sinful Colors Ruby Ruby
• Sinful Colors This Is It

I am really happy with a lot of things about this mani. You can't see in the pics cause I forgot to take a different angle to show it, but the circle goes all the way around like it should. I needed a good red creme and I totally found it, two coats and Ruby Ruby was a gorgeous classic red. I've never been big on reds but I think this one looks nice on me. This Is It turned out to be better than I expected and a lovely yellow toned gold that I wish I had around for my Hunger Games nails. To top it all off, I think I found a better spot in the house for picture taking AND some very helpful advice led me to not having old lady fingers! I'm kind of proud of that first shot with the Avengers logo, it almost looks like I know what I'm doing haha. Now to work on those clean up skills  >.<

There is only one thing that went wrong for me with this mani and it was the bottom of a Seche Vite bottle that gave me weird shrinkage at the top of the nail by the cuticle. I've never seen it do that before and I was all like wtf Seche. I have a new bottle waiting for me but I feel bad not using all of the product in the first bottle. For those of you who use SV, do you finish a whole bottle or do you abandon it early?

The Hungry Asian 3 Year Anniversary Giveaway

Hey guys, if you haven't already seen it you should check out the amazing giveway at The Hungry Asian to celebrate her blog's three year anniversary! If you are a fan of glitter, you will love her custom polishes in her Etsy shop, right here! I have been lusting after Pony Purple and a few others for a while now. I dare you to find a more perfect Rarity purple glitter. It has pony right in the name, people, it was meant to be! Anyhow there are quite a few amazing prizes along with her custom polishes including some Zoya stunners, so go look!

Orly Snowcone Stamping

Happy Wednesday everybody! I hope you are all having a good week so far. I am currently having major withdrawal after the first Guild Wars 2 beta weekend ended and I can't wait for Friday so I can play again!

This week I got some super awesome stamping plates from Red Angel. I already love them more than the ones that came with my stamper and I had no problem fitting the full nail images onto my fatty nails :P I did notice my scraper seemed to do a lot more damage to these plates so after some trial and error (on my photo hand of course because I never do anything the smart way haha) I switched to using an old discount club credit card type card and it seemed to work out much better. I got a cleaner image on my stamper that way and it was a LOT easier to clean off at the end since it was just plastic. So a thank you to Jenni from Gold Speck Nails since that is where I picked up the card trick.

I'm sure you guys are sick of seeing this blue but I am not responsible for the following colors. Blame my husband, he picked them. Well, actually he picked blue and gray but none of my gray polishes wanted to play nice with the stamper so it turned to blue and black. Also I was curious what Green Ocean looked like on a lighter blue. More photography experiments happened too. Take a look!

Before stamping. The camera really didn't want to show the teal tones it had going.

Fancy art shot. /golf clap

CLICK ME! An attempt at a macro shot.

Polishes used:

• Sinful Colors base coat / Seche Vite top coat
• Orly Snowcone
• Sinful Colors Green Ocean
• Kiss Nail Art striper in black
• Red Angel stamping plate RA-103

I like how these turned out and since I also managed to get my hands on some matte top coat (awwww yeah, it's on!) they may stay around for a while. I think I may also be kind of sort of getting better at the photography part of this, I do apologize for the macro shots of my (not so) old lady fingers. I have no idea why they get so weirdly wrinkled, I guess my moisturizer is just not strong enough? I'm not old, fingers, stop making me look bad! For some reason my camera hated the weird kind of teal thing these had going on from the coat of Green Ocean. I'm not sure if it's because I did this at night or what but I'll keep testing, it really has a nice sheen to it in person. Either way I'm happy with them. There are so many images in this set of stamps I got that I hardly know where to begin but I know I want to try them all! Do you guys have a favorite stamp image?