Foxy Paws - Shady Love

Hi guys! Hope you all had a great week! We just had our second winter storm here in North Carolina (Our first time seing more than an inch of snow in over a decade), so I'm playing with polish and practicing some nail art this week, while being cooped up in the house, lol. 

I figured since Valentine's Day is coming up, I would share a "love-themed" polish with you guys.

This is Foxy Paws "Shady Love." This is a black jelly polish with different sized hot pink, matte hex glitters. *I won this polish in a giveaway on Foxy Paws' Instagram a few months ago.*

This polish is opaque in two coats, but I always add an extra coat, just for good measure.

As always, I topped it off with one coat of HK Girl topcoat. *Seriously, it's the best topcoat around!*

I'm wearing two coats of OPI "Kiss Me On My Tulips" on my accent nail.

I added a little black heart using acrylic paint. Although, it looks more like a Mickey Mouse, but I swear it's not, lol. That little heart might look simple, but it took me eight tries to get it to look this good! Thank God I used acrylic paint, because I was able to just wipe it off and try again until I had it looking like I wanted it to.

*I love how I can see my reflection in my manicure, lol. Thanks, HK Girl!*

I am a huge fan of pink and black together, and Foxy Paws really made it work well in this polish. I'm so glad that I won it, otherwise I might not have known the awesomeness that is Foxy Paws Polish!

Hope you all have a great Valentine's Day, and get all the chocolate & flowers you deserve! My Valentine's are my little girls, so I will be enjoying my day with them. I'd like to think that my husband would surprise me, but the likelihood of that happening is pretty slim, so all of you better eat an extra piece of chocolate just for me!

Salon Perfect Holographic - Silver Screen

Hi guys! I hope you're all having a great week so far!

Today, I'd like to show you all a Salon Perfect Holographic polish. I won the entire collection in an Instagram giveaway held by Salon Perfect last year, and decided to pull them out since I hadn't really used them much yet.

This one is called "Silver Screen." I love the color choices in this collection, but I have to say, the holographic *or lack thereof* effect was a little disappointing! Of course, I haven't really found a mainstream brand whose holographic could stand against a lot of the Indie polishes out there.

Either way, though, this polish is very pretty...

I decided to pull out some of my glitters, since I've been on a glitter placement trip, lately. Maybe it was because it was around 3am when I was adding the glitters, or maybe I'm just a little crooked *hehe*, because you can clearly see that my lines aren't straight, lol

But, I still really like how the accent nail turned out! 

There wasn't much sun around, since we had just gotten an inch of snow the night before, and it was still very overcast, but I tried to get some shots to show the holographic effect.

This is two coats, with one coat of HK Girl Glisten & Glow topcoat.

As I said before, the holo effect in this polish really isn't the strongest I've ever seen.

All-in-all, I like this polish. I just wish the holo was a bit stronger because, well, who doesn't love a good holographic polish? At least the formula was pretty awesome. That kinda made up for the lack of holo. *For me, anyway lol*

Hope you all are having an awesome week, so far! 

Happy polishing, and I'll see y'all again soon! <3

Bipolar Ramblings, CCL, and Nail Art

For those of you who don't know, I am bipolar, and pretty much live in a bubble. I have no friends, and I don't work. If I get to leave the house, it's usually for an appointment of some kind. I currently do not have a phone. I have an ADHD 7-year-old, who I am a single parent of (even though I am married), who has been through a lot over the past year. I'm trying to help her simply deal. And my 2-year-old is in the midst of some kind of "stage" where she wants nothing to do with me. She only wants her dad. I am lonely, I am depressed, and I've been back & forth between manic & depressive for days, now. Don't be surprised to see posts from me every once in a while where I babble, just as I'm doing now. As I said: I am lonely. And hey, it's my blog for a reason, right?

Now, I know my blog isn't the greatest thing around. I don't have a computer, and do everything from an iPad. And there's only so much you can do from an iPad. BUT, I am slowly but surely learning new things, and just kinda feelin' my way around. My photos still suck, though. My brand new camera turned out to be a hunk of junk (that happens when you buy off of craigslist.com sometimes), and every single light in my house sucks. I can't afford to build a light box, so if I want to get decent photos, I have to be out in the sun. Which doesn't come out around here much, these days. Which tends to work fine for me, I think. Considering the limited equipment I have, I like to think that my photos are pretty decent. This works fine for swatch photos.

The only opportunities that I get to do my nails are late at night when my kids are in bed, and when the husband is settled. I literally sacrifice sleep to do my nails. So, in order to show you guys some nail art, I have to suffer through the terrible lighting. Unfortunately, so do you, lol. I hope to improve in the future. (It's a goal!) But I wanted to show y'all some nail art, dangit! So, please forgive these awful photos.

I've been stuck in a rut for several months, now. This manic-depressive shit sucks. I stopped taking care of myself (not eating right, not taking my vitamins, not drinking my water), and my poor nails have suffered. I haven't attempted any serious nail art since Halloween, and I've just been so down lately, that I decided that I finally wanted to play with my nails. It's the one thing I seem to be able to get right most of the time. 

So, I started with a nice, blank canvas. A couple coats o'white, coat of topcoat, take a break & let 'em dry! :)

2 healthy coats of SinfulColors "Snow Me White" *pre-cleanup, sorry!*

Now is as good a time as any to publicly admit that I only do nail art on my left hand, 9 out of 10 times. Hell, sometimes I don't even bother polishing both hands. (Don't judge me.) So, while my polish dried on my ONE hand, I got out everything I needed, lol.

I had decided to do a Valentine gradient, then go from there. I had seen a post on Facebook where someone had used a peel-off base coat to protect their skin when doing a gradient, to save from having to do some hellish cleanup. So, of course, I decided to try it!

Now, I know a lot of people just use plain Elmer's glue as a peel-off base. But that never worked for me. So, I was so tickled when my good friend, Cameo sent me a bottle of Cameo Colours Lacquers' "Take It Off!" Peel-Off Base Coat. It works great for me. I've even got a little stash of some previous nail art, because when it peels off perfectly, it's just a tiny little work of art, lol! *Is it weird that I've saved some? Lol* I usually only use mine as a base coat in warmer weather, though. It just works better for me when the air is warmer. But it worked PERFECT for easily cleaning up my gradient mess!

It didn't take too long to dry enough for me to start my gradient; maybe 10 minutes.

I really detest every single light in my house.....

And I still don't think I'm using PicsArt right when trying to add my watermark. But, hey...I'm gettin' there!

How cool is that?! The messiest part peeled right off! I only had a little bit of cleaning to do around my cuticles!

I added some China Glaze "Fairy Dust" to try to mask some of the little imperfections from the sponge, and from cleaning up my cuticles.

Added a coat of HK Girl topcoat...

I messed my thumb up, but was able to hide it with a stud & some rhinestones, strategically placed. :)

I practiced some glitter placement on my accent nail, and this was the final outcome...

Blurred to show off the sparkle :)

I still need LOTS of practice doing glitter placement, but I enjoy it. It relaxes me, believe it or not. And that's coming from someone who tends to have very little patience sometimes.

Haha. My poor Stubby still looks cute together with her sisters! *hee hee*

I know this post has been all over the place, but I hope the three of you who read my posts will still come back & read again, lol. If you're bipolar, then you'll understand, lol. If you're not, maybe you'll get a giggle out of it. You never know unless ya read it, anyway!