Minnie Mouse Nails

Hi, everyone! Sorry it's been so long. You know, I'm tired of saying sorry, so I better start posting more often. Here is my current manicure, inspired by Miss Minnie Mouse! I really wanted some simple nail art, so I went with dots. I was thinking about trying to draw her bow, but I really stink at nail art. The simpler, the better. I was inspired by Minnie's polka-dotted dress, which is red with white dots. Her shoes are yellow, and her ears/arms/etc are black, so I added one yellow and one black dot on each nail.

So what do you think? It was so easy.  I did two coats of China Glaze - Hey Sailor to start. It's my favorite red! Then, I dipped the non-brush end of an art brush in nail polish and dotted it on my nails. I did all of the dots in white first, using Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Lavender Cloud. Then, I put one dot of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mellow Yellow and one dot of American Apparel - Hassid for the black dot.

I really love this look, and I think I want to try it with different color combinations! I found many pictures of Minnie in a blue dress with a pink bow, so I might do something with that next time. I don't know why, but I'm all about Disney lately!

Thanks for reading! I hope you're having a great week!

Weird, Sleepy Nail Art

Okay, I have sleeping problems. And I take medicine for this. And the medicine makes me do weird things at night. And I always wake up with little surprises. And this isn't the first time I've tried to do my nails too late at night, after taking my medicine. BUT this is the first time I took pictures!

 Here we have China Glaze - Blue Iguana over Hard Candy - Lava. I had the Lava manicure already done, so that part looks okay! But then, I guess I decided late at night that I needed some blue "nail art" in my life. Stripes, dots, and globs. The top coat on my pinkie is a chunky holographic glitter from Forever 21.

My friends at work and my mom thought this was too funny not to blog.  As usual, click the pictures to enlarge and see the true color. What do you think of my beautiful art???

Easy Rose Nail Art!!!

Okay, so I saw THIS post on one of my favorite nail blogs, "Also Known As..." and I had to try it myself! Kellie followed THIS nail tutorial on YouTube by CutePolish, showing a very simple but very cute manicure. I'm so into floral at the moment, but who isn't? The best thing about this manicure is that anyone can do it, and you can use any polishes you have!

 I used China Glaze - For Audrey for the background. For the roses, I used Zoya - Lo as the background and China Glaze - Hey Sailor for the accents. For the leaves, I used Essie - Pretty Edgy. What do you think?

I couldn't wait to take these pictures after I finished, so please excuse any polish on my fingers! What do you think? Would you try this manicure? It was so easy- it even looks good on my right hand!

Cracked Concrete in the Sky

Hi everyone! I actually just spelled "hi" as "hy." I think I need to get more sleep.

Here is a sweeeeeet pic of China Glaze - Cracked Concrete over Hard Candy - Sky. I love this combo! The gray and blue are tonally pretty similar, so it meshes well.

What do you think of this color combination? Thanks for reading!

Broken Hearted over Totally 80's!

Hi everyone!

Just popping in to show you my Milani - Totally 80's manicure after I added some China Glaze - Broken Hearted, which is the pink crackle. I like it! Definitely has an 80's feel!

What do you think???

Blue Me Away + Pink Crackle

Hello, and happy Sunday! I'm still an hour behind. Oh, well! At least we'll get that extra hour of sun in the afternoons now!

Here's how I jazzed up my previous manicure, Sally Hansen - Blue Me Away. It was very simple- I added a coat of China Glaze Crackle Glaze - Broken Hearted, and a coat of Seche Vite on top to gloss things up.

I feel like I belong in the opening credits of Saved By the Bell or something!!! Very '80s feel to this combo, and I love it! It just makes me happy to have such bright colors on my nails.

Please feel free to post your blogs in the comments to this entry, dear followers! I'd love to follow you back, if I'm not already.

Black Mesh over Chrysanthe-mum's the Word

Hello lovely readers! Thanks to all of my new followers! If you have a blog you'd like me to follow back, please leave the link in the comments. I'd love to!

Today I don't have anything super interesting for you, just an update to my most recent manicure. This is maybe one of the best aspects of China Glaze - Black Mesh. It's perfect for spicing up a manicure after you've had it on for a few days! Chrysanthe-mum's the Word really sticks out against the black! I love this look, and I hope you do too! There's quite a bit of growth on the pinkie though, so I think I'll have to do a new look tomorrow.

It's been a busy week so far, and it just started! Hope you're having a good one.

China Glaze - Cracked Concrete and Zoya - Pippa

Hey everyone! I hope you had a great weekend!


Today I'm sharing Zoya - Pippa and China Glaze - Cracked Concrete. I do love this combo, but next time I think I'll try a lighter yellow, like Sally Hansen - Yellow Kitty. I got more attention with this manicure than I have with any recent look. I think the contrasting colors make it really stand out, and of course the crackle effect is attention-grabbing.

Cracked Concrete is a really dark gray, and Pippa is a bright sunny yellow. It's definitely a warm-toned yellow. It goes on really smoothly in three coats, which is good for a yellow! Cracked Concrete crackled just as well as the other two CG Crackles I've shown you. I tried different techniques again this time, so I have some vertical cracking, some horizontal cracking and some diagonal cracking. I like variety!

The pictures show this look on day 3, so you can see a little bit of tip wear and some little chippies around the cuticle. But not bad for three days! I don't really want to take this manicure off, so I'll probably stretch it through tomorrow!

What are your weekend plans? I'm "guest bartending" at a local bar tomorrow night as a fundraiser for Multiple Sclerosis. All tips will be donated. I'm really excited, as my mom, aunt, and other peeps will be bartending with me! My mom has MS, so the cause hits close to home. It should be a good time!

Thanks for reading! Please "Follow!"

China Glaze - Black Mesh Crackle Glaze

Hey! How's everyone doing?


So my Black Mesh came in the mail! I think it's the same as OPI - Black Shatter, but I don't have that one. I mean, they look identical so whatever. They're both black crackle polishes.

These pictures are Black Mesh over Revlon - Not So Blueberry, the polish in my last entry. I love this freaking look! NSB was the perfect color to put under a black crackle polish. It's so shimmery and bright, it just shines. Click the pictures to make them bigger!

Black Mesh is ridiculously easy to use. Just make sure you apply it over totally dry polish! I tried different techniques this time. I brushed it on diagonally on my middle finger, which I really like. I put a REALLY thin coat on my ring finger, so I got really long skinny cracks. My index finger is a thicker coat, so the black sections are more chunky. You have to put top coat on about 3 minutes after you put the crackle to seal it and give your polish some shine. Easy peasy. As you can see, I do have a little bit of tip wear. This is after three days though, so I'm okay with it.

Anyway, I stopped into Sally Beauty yesterday and they had just put out their China Glaze Crackle Polish display. I snapped up a bottle of Fault Line, the metallic purple, and I'll probably do a giveaway here on my blog when I get some more followers! So if you would be interested in that, let me know! I didn't even swatch it- it's brand spanking new.

So, not only am I a teaching assistant and a nail blogger, but I am also the proud owner of an Etsy shop! I just want to share it here because I posted a crap-ton of stuff yesterday, and I figured my readers might like to take a look. Not trying to push the shop, just sharing! Here are some earrings I just made and posted. I love them! I want to keep them! But I already have a similar pair so they're up for grabs. There are also matching rings for a lot of the earrings. So check that out here:


http://www.etsy.com/shop/robotjellyfish

Thanks for reading! I hope you're having a great week! I get to see my friend Justine today for HH, even though neither of us drink- she's 9 months pregnant!!!

China Glaze Crackle Glaze - Broken Hearted

YESSSSSSS!!!
Okay, as I mentioned in my last entry, I finally caved and just ordered some China Glaze Crackle Glaze polishes in the mail. I ordered the pink (Broken Hearted), the gray (Cracked Concrete), and the black (can't remember the name). I got them from Amazon from two different sellers, and I received the pink and gray in the mail today! I was SO excited! I've been calling my local beauty supply stores everyday asking if they got them in yet, so finally I got tired of waiting when they said they'd have them "sometime in March." Boo for waiting!

So here is my first choice of manicure! This is Broken Hearted layered over OPI - Funky Dunkey from the Shrek collection. Pink and purple are one of my very favorite color combinations, so this was a no-brainer. I tried thicker layers (ring finger) and very thin (pinkie) for mixed results. And, in my humble opinion, they all look cool! I'm loving it.

All of these pictures show two coats of Funky Dunkey (dried COMPLETELY before applying crackle), one coat of Broken Hearted, and one coat of Seche Vite. Without the Vite, the crackle has a matte finish.

What do you think? Will you get any of the Crackle Glaze polishes? I can't wait to try the gray over yellow! That's my second favorite color combo.

Have a great weekend! Thanks for reading, and please click the "Follow" button if you like my blog!

Wet & Wild - Party of Five Glitters

Hi everyone!

Here's a quick entry to show you one coat of Wet & Wild - Party of Five Glitters over my manicure from last time, China Glaze - Pelican Gray.

I think it looks pretty cool! I like just one coat, too. I added a second coat and it looked nice, but I was going for a more sparse look. This polish has five different colors of glitter, as the name suggests! Silver, red, blue, green, purple. A really nice combination! Plus, at less than $2.00 a bottle, what more can you ask for?

Hope you like it, and thanks for reading!

China Glaze - Pelican Gray

Hello there!

Here's the third and last polish I have to share from the China Glaze - Anchors Away collection! I already shared Hey Sailor and Lighthouse. This is Pelican Gray, a really perfect light gray. I have been looking for this exact color for so long, but everything I find is always too purple or too brown. So this is perfect.

However, I think I would rather wait until spring to wear this again. Everything's been so gray here weather-wise, that my nails are just bringing me down! They feel very blah, while I think they'd be awesome in the spring, when things are warming up and flowers are blooming. A nice contrast! I'm going to add a glittery top coat after I finish typing this, to jazz it up. Probably Wet & Wild - Party of Five Glitters. If it looks decent, I'll be sure to snap some pictures to share!

Somehow I got some little black speckles on my nails, which you can see if you enlarge the pictures. I guess they must be tiny air bubbles, as I didn't take a whole lot of time between the second and third coats. Sorry about that!


THANK YOU to all of my followers and commenters!!! For some reason, I still can't figure out how to reply to comments. I've been posting separate comments, and I guess I'll keep doing that for now. So don't feel offended if I don't reply to your comment! Comments make me very happy! :)

Have a great day!

Ummmmmmmmmm... no.

Okay, sometimes life doesn't turn out the way you envisioned it would. Sometimes, the same thing happens with manicures. This is one of those times.

First, let's look at the arsenal of nail polish used for my Valentine's Day manicure. Please see the picture for bottle shots of all EIGHT. Here's a list of how it went down:




1 coat Orly Bonder base coat
2 coats Sally Hansen - Lavender Cloud
2 coats China Glaze - Rainbow
1 coat Seche Vite to dry things faster

THEN I used a toothpick to pick out the following:
Red hearts - Nicole by OPI - Have a Heart
Purple hearts - Random Target nail polish
Pink hearts - LA Splash - Be Mine

THEN...
1 coat of Gelous to smooth things out
1 coat Seche Vite

Oh, and did I mention that I started this manicure at 10:30 last night? Bad idea. Let's go to the pictures.

Be Mine has white microglitter PACKED throughout, and that covered all of the red and purple hearts, which I hated. Also, everything I slopped on top totally covered the effect of Rainbow, so I really wish I had just left off those two coats! So even going to bed last night, I knew it was a disaster. I left it on just to take pictures. It was just TOO MUCH.

This morning, I woke up to BUBBLE CITY. All of the dark speckles in the pictures? Bubbles. No wonder, there were like 1000 coats of crap on my nails! Bubbles popped up EVERYWHERE, making the entire manicure totally laughable. Oh well, it just goes to show you that things don't always go as planned!

To add insult to injury, I woke up today with a pounding headache, almost certainly caused by shutting myself in a room with eight polishes for the evening. It's gone now, though, so yay! Both the manicure and the headache, that is. Sorry, but I didn't take time to clean up my cuticles or any sloppy workmanship for the pictures. I took this look off first thing, and came up with a much cleaner, more understated look that is equally Valentine-y.

I'll have the TRUE Valentine's Day manicure tomorrow! For now, enjoy this failure! I like the concept, just not the execution. Boo0000!

China Glaze - Lighthouse

Hello!!!

Here is another polish from China Glaze's "Anchors Away" collection. Yes, that name still bothers me. Should be "Aweigh," but whatever! I showed you Hey Sailor a few entries ago, and I have one more polish from the collection to show soon.

This is sparkley yellow awesomeness. I see teeny tiny pieces of greenish and orangeish glitter when the light hits this one. I really love it! I did three coats, and it's still slightly sheer. Definite VNL. But I'm really feeling the sheers lately, as you might be able to tell.

I'm super tired, and I don't have much to say! I'll have two Valentine's Day manicures to share soon! One tomorrow, and one Saturday or Sunday. I think the holiday is pretty weird, but I love the colors and the hearts and the love!

Thanks for reading! Please follow/comment/whatever! Do you have plans for Valentine's Day? Share!

China Glaze - Hey Sailor

So yes, I bought this polish based on the name. Come on! It sounds so pin-up-y and fun! And it is. It's a pretty classic red creme. Red. That's the best way to describe it. Standard, gold ol' red. And I love it! It works with my skin tone. It doesn't lean too orange or too blue. It's perfect.

China Glaze just released their "Anchors Away" collection, which has a lot of fun colors in a wide range. To be honest, the name pisses me off because shouldn't it be "Anchors Aweigh?" Whatever.

I bought two other colors from the collection, Pelican Gray and Lighthouse, so look for swatches of those soon!

In other news, last night was my 15-year 8th grade reunion. I went to a very small Catholic school, so all 20 of us were pretty close. Last night there were just six of us, but it was so fun! I took some shots of my friend Julie's nail polish, so I'll share that with you in my next post. They were awesome!!

Thanks for reading, and don't forget to click the little Follow button in the info area, because it makes me get all excited and dance around!

China Glaze - Blue Island Iced Tea

Hey everyone!

Here are some pictures of my current NOTD, China Glaze - Blue Island Iced Tea. This is one of the polishes from the 2008 collection "Bahama Blues." It was a set of six blue polishes, with a good variety of shades and finishes. I saw some swatches of this color online, and I had to have it! I just purchased it off of eBay a few weeks ago for cheap- less than $5. I'm pretty sure it's not part of China Glaze's core collection, so you'd probably have to find it on an auction site, not a retail site.

Unfortunately, it's been pretty overcast here in Baltimore! I took these pictures yesterday when the sun peeped out for a minute. By the time I uploaded them and looked at the full-size pictures, the sun was gone! I wanted to retake these because they aren't too crisp. Oh, well! One pictures shows direct sunlight, one is indirect sun.

Blue Island Iced Tea is a very light blue metallic shade. It looks silverish in some lights, but it's definitely blue. I am in love with it! I have no other shades anything close to this one. It's very unique, and I also think it transcends seasons. It's a nice icy shade for winter, but definitely fun enough for summer. This is definitely a three-coater. In the pictures, I have only two coats on my pinkie, and you can see that it looks sheer, like a watercolor. Actually, it sort of looks sheer on all my nails in the pictures, but it's opaque in person.

In non-nail polish-related news, I've been spending a lot of time "blinging out" cell phone cases and mirrors to sell on my Etsy site, robotjellyfish. I go through phases of making stuff and phases of forgetting all about it, but lately I'm on a rhinestone high. Since I have off work all month, it's a little something to keep me busy!

Christmas Manicure

I want to share my Christmas manicure with you all!

I had this planned for months- since the first time I saw swatches of China Glaze's holiday 2010 collection, "Naughty or Nice."

I started with two coats of OPI - Bling Dynasty, an "old gold," and added two coats of China Glaze - Party Hearty.

Someone said this manicure reminded them of fruitcake!