Guest Post from A Painted Nail

Good morning everyone! Today's guest poster is the LOVELY Bridget from A Painted Nail! I met Bridget on Instagram and fell in love right away. She is super funny, sweet, and does great nails. Lets see what kind of fun mani she came up with for me today!

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Swirls, and Stars, and Glitter! Oh My!

Hello friends of Casey Lane! My name is Bridget, and I have a blog called A Painted Nail. I am so pleased to have a guest post for you all while Miss Casey is away on vacation! I did a little nail art design to share, something inspired by the lovely Casey, herself!
I met Casey on IG after her original account was deleted (boo!) and I am so glad I did. She is a wonderful person and always manages to bring a smile to my face. I wanted to do a mani that reminds me of her, bright and fun, and shiny!

Used:
Essie - Beyond Cozy
Color Club - Coral Cascade
Julep - Lexie
Essie - Mint Candy Apple
Essie - Play Date
Born Pretty Star Studs
Nail Art brush

The inspiration for this came from So Nailicious (http://sonailicious.com/swirl-nails/), which is an amazing website for lots of amazing nail art designs. I changed it up a little to suit my taste, but kept the concept pretty much the same. 

I love star studs! And the swirls! They are kinda tricky to keep evenly spaced, but I’m sure it is something that gets easier with practice.


I hope you guys liked what I came up with, and I hope Casey and her hubby have a fantastic vacation!

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I LOVE that bright and shiny and fun manicures make you think of me Bridget! :) This is incredible! I LOVE this style, I've gotta try it someday. 

Thank you again for doing this for me friend! 

~casey

Guest Post from The Little Canvas

Good morning everyone! Today's guest post is from Alaina over at The Little Canvas. Alaina was one of my first blogger friends, and she's really helped me a lot through this whole process. She's always been really patient with my questions and I just can't thank her enough! Plus, she does some great nails! 

So, lets check them out. 

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Hello there!  Alaina here from The Little Canvas!  I am so happy that I am taking over Miss Casey Lane's blog today!  I met Casey on Twitter earlier this year, and was quite impressed with how neat and perfect her nails always looked.  Due to this, I named Casey my first ever Nail Artist of the Month back in May.  If you haven't seen that post, you must click here and see it!  After she did the guest post, I started pestering her that she needed to start a blog.  Literally, I think I tweeted or sent her a text daily with a "where's your blog" or "you need to start blogging."  Thankfully, she finally listened and now is sharing her work here on Blogger.  Great decision, right??

After being asked to do a guest post here on Casey's blog, I started to think what I could possibly do.  I'm always inspired by Casey's kitchen sink manicures, especially the one she did for my blog and Tuxarina.  I decided to build off of that inspiration and create a kitchen sink manicure for this post.  The problem: I had no idea what colors to use.  This is the only reason I dislike having so many bottles of nail polish, picking out colors can take a looong time.  Casey came to my rescue though and picked out teal and pink!

Once I had my teal, pink, white, and black polishes picked out, I got to work.  Let's take a look.

Colors Used:

INM - Bikini

OPI - Can't Find My Czechbook

Hard Candy - Black Tie Optional

Orly - Liquid Vinyl

OPI - My Boyfriend Scales Walls

Kind of funky, right?  I started off with a base OPI My Boyfriend Scales walls on my ring and thumb.  No matter how this kitchen sink manicure was going to go, I knew I wanted those nails to both be white based.  I then added a black nail on my middle finger because it just looks sharp that way in my opinion.  That left my two main colors which I just slapped on the pointer and pinkie.

Then, I glared at my nails.  I had no idea what designs I was going to do where.  My mind started going crazy.  Was I going to use tape?  What nails were going to be dotted?  Could I put art on the colored nails?!  Goodness gracious, what did I get myself involved with with this manicure?!  Since I had the black and white nail, I remembered the awesome black and white matte glitter that is Black Tie Optional by Hard Candy.  I figured that this would be the best tie in with the plain colored nails.  Added the glitter, and sat back happily.

Then I got out my tape and started taping up my ring finger.  I figured you can never go wrong with a unique checkerboard.  I'm rather pleased with that nail.  No kitchen sink manicure though is complete unless there is some form of polka dots.  I first did the black nail with pink, teal, and white, and loved how it looked.  I thought it would look really neat to do the same thing on the white nail with black dots instead...kind of like a reverse nail (if that makes any sense).  To be honest, these polka dot nails were my favorite of the whole manicure.  I really feel that they both tied the manicure together.

What do you think?  Fan of the kitchen sink?  Liking the colors?

I hope that you, as well as Casey, enjoyed this manicure!  If you want to see more of my random nail art, head on over to my blog and check them out!!!  Hope to see you all soon! 

<3

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Alaina I love this!!!! Kitchen sink manis are one of my favorites, so one in my favorite colors is PERFECT! 

Thank you so much for this post! It's great!

~casey

Guest post from Tuxarina

Good morning everyone! Today's guest post is from the lovely Kelly over at Tuxarina! Kelly was the very first "nail friend" that I made. She was one of the first people to encourage me to start my own nail Instagram and then nail blog. She is super sweet and does AMAZING nails! Lets take a look!!!

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Hey guys!  I'm Kelly from Tuxarina .  I am so excited that Casey asked me to do a guest post for her.  I have gotten pretty busy lately with the 31 Day Challenge and school starting back up, but I didn't want to let Casey down as she's been such a good blogger friend!  I recently put in an order for some new Fall KB Shimmer polishes.  I loved her newest collection!  

This is Teal Another Tail.  This polish is AMAZING.  Simple as that.  I was on the fence about ordering this one, and I am so glad I did.  Its a Teal polish with a duochrome pink/purple shift to it.  There's some awesome flakies in this and a touch of holographic sparkle.  Mermaid nails.  I used two coats and it went on flawlessly.  You will get some residual shimmer, but nothing too crazy.  I added some square studs on my accent nail.  Its a look I've been loving lately.  I love that these studs are lavender, they really pop the polish out.  I purchased them from Born Pretty.  They spiced up a manicure that was amazing all on its own!

You can purchase KB Shimmer here.  A big thank you to Casey for having me on her blog today!  Shes awesome!
-Kelly 

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Ugh. I have GOT to get my hands on some KB Shimmer Polishes!!!! 

Thank you so much for this guest post Kelly! You are pretty awesome yourself! 

Everybody you need to go check out Kelly's blog and Instagram. Do you see how gorgeous her pictures are? They are always absolutely amazing!!!

I hope everyone is enjoying my week of guest posters! 

Guest post from Alysia (ahleeeshah)

Good morning everyone! So for day 1 of my 10 days of guest posts I have someone very special for you. Well, all of the guest posters I have picked out are very special. But Alysia is a very special friend to me. After I was able to find the Salon Perfect neon glitters for her she became my first nail mail buddy and has turned into a very dear friend. I just love her to bits and her nails are always amazing. You should go check out her Instagram ASAP, her glitter macros will make you drool. I promise.

So lets see what kind of amazingness she came up with for this spot.

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Hello everyone! I am Alysia (@ahleeeshah on IG) and the lovely Casey asked me to do a guest post for her. I am not nearly as good at nail art as most of the amazingly talented people (like Casey!) you see around, so I look for techniques that allow me to look impressive with the least amount of effort possible. A few years ago, someone on MakeupAlley posted a nail art technique that used rub-on scrapbooking decals that looked amazing. I've done this a few times now, and for my post I wanted to share the process with you guys because it is such an amazing way to get a great manicure while barely trying!

First off, you're going to want to paint your base color. I've chosen Essie Lilacism. With most decals, you're going to want a lighter color to really show them off. If you're painting a fresh mani for this, be sure to use a quick-dry top coat so you don't smudge anything when you rub the decals on.

For step 1, you'll need to find rub-on scrapbooking decals. You can buy them from some craft stores like Hobby Lobby, but the best selection I've found is actually on Amazon. The one warning I have with this technique is that not all rub-ons work as well as others. Unfortunately some of the prettier ones, the "glitter butterfly wings" types for example, end up being too thick to work well. The brand in the picture above tends to work the best. For step 2 you need to cut out sections roughly the size of your nails. I like to cut all 10 at once to save myself some time and to plan out what will go on which nail. In step 3 you can see that I've cut one to the right size and I've checked how it looks on the nail. In step 4, you need to peel away the backing piece of plastic from the decal. Once you've done that, you're ready to put it on the nail!

For step 5, press the decal on to your nail. You do not need to press too hard, but you'll want to rock back and forth a bit with another finger just to make sure it's fully sticking to the nail. Make sure the whole section of design comes off the plastic and on to your nail. Step 6 might look a little terrifying, but I'm just using those clippers to trim off the excess from the design. You can use whatever tool you'd like! Once you're done trimming the excess off, step 7 is to top coat it to seal everything in and make it shiny.

Here's the finished mani! I am a bit of a perfectionist, and I can do the decal application in about 15 minutes. Care to see a few of the images up close?

I am a sucker for macro pictures, guys!

I hope you all enjoyed my tutorial! Please feel free to find me on Instagram @ahleeeshah and ask me questions if you have any. If you end up trying out the technique, tag me in your pics so I can see!

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See!!! I told you guys she's good! And those macros!!!! Ugh, she kills me. She is super sweet and very talented, she really shouldn't sell herself short saying she's not good at nail art. If that isn't good nail art I don't know what is!

Thank you for this post Alysia! Love it!!!

I'm excited to show you all the other guests I have lined up and hopefully introduce you to some nail folks you might not know about.

~casey

10 days of guest posts!

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well. I'm sorry I've been kind of out of the loop lately. We are getting ready to go on a little road trip.

So, in order to keep my blog going I asked some of my very favorite bloggers and Instagrammers to write up guest posts for me! I wanted to share them with all of you. Some of these girls you've probably heard of, some you maybe haven't. But you should check them all out.

To all of you that helped me, thank you so so much! I really appreciate this!

I hope you all enjoy these posts! I should be back to semi-normal posting sometime after the 6th when we get back.

Thank you all for sticking with me!

~casey

Frozen Over Gradients

Good morning everyone! Happy Monday! Sorry I've been kind of sporatic with posting lately. I'm hoping to get back into a schedule very soon.

Today I have a Pipe Dream Polish glitter topper to show you all. I wanted to do something unique with this one, so I opted for gradients. I love a glitter gradient, they aren't difficult at all and they have a big impact. (my favorite combo)

Natural light, sun.

Light box.

Light box, macro.

Light box, macro.

For this mani I used Wet-n-Wild Blank Canvas and Teal Slowly and See. (I really don't understand the name of that one, this color is all blue, no teal...) 

I started with 2 coats of each of the colors. Then working with the bottle brush, I painted the glitter on halfway down the nail lightly, then slightly more a little ways up, etc. Glitter gradients take a little practice, but they are definitely one of the easier nail art techniques to do. After I was satisfied with my glitter I topped it all off with a coat of Glossy Glam topcoat.

Here is what April says about Frozen Over in her Etsy listing: This polish is from the Like the Weather collection - all these polishes are taken from song lyrics of songs that have a reference to the weather! 'frozen over'' is from Kate Bush's Under Ice. It is made of teal, aqua, frost white, and silver flakies in a clear base. I love this glitter. It's sparkly but not super sparkly, the blue, silver, and white combo are so nice. It's just a really pretty glitter. 

The application was easy, I didn't have to fish for any glitter and it didn't go on too thick. (that can sometimes be problematic with gradienting with glitters) And, I have to say that April has restored my faith in the mini bottle. These bottles are a nice size and the brush is actually workable, nice change from some of the mainstream brand's minis. (you know who you are...)

Pipe Dream Polish can be purchased through their Etsy store here. 

Glossy Glam can be purchased through their Etsy store here. 

What do you think? I loved this mani, it was perfect for "Mall Day" shopping on Saturday!

I hope you all enjoyed this post. 

Talk to you soon!

~casey

**All polishes in this post were purchased by me for my own personal use. I purchased them at a discounted rate in exchange for an honest review.**

Believe In Believing

Good morning everyone! Sorry I haven't posted in a few days. 

Today I have another Pipe Dream Polish for you. This is Believe In Believing from the Like The Weather Collection. (All of the polishes in this collection are named after lyrics in songs about the weather.) Believe In Believing is taken from Paula Abdul's Blowing Kisses In the Wind. 

Believe In Believing is a gorgeous blood orange base packed with glitter. I mean PACKED. It's so packed that you can hardly look directly at it for all the sparkle. (Any polish lover worth their salt will know that this is a good thing!) According to April's Etsy listing it is full of fuchsia and raspberry glitter with pink and fuchsia micro flakies. (Fuchsia... there's that word again. I don't like that word! The spelling!!!! Ugh!)

This polish feels very holiday-ish to me. It's the color of glittering cranberries.... how perfect would it be for Thanksgiving and Christmas? I love it. 

Direct sunlight.

Natural light, shade. 

Natural light, shade.

Light box.

Light box.

Light box.

See what I mean about all the glitter??? It's fantastic. This is 3 coats of Believe In Believing topped with one coat of Glossy Glam. You can see in the macros how nicely GG smooths these glitter polishes out. 

So what do you think about this polish? I love it, as I love all of April's polishes. (I think we've been over that a time or two.) This one was a bit thicker than some of the others, but that is to be expected with a polish this packed with glitter. It was thicker but it was easy to work with, I just had to be careful to use thin coats. It leveled out nicely and I had no issues. It was a complete pain to remove, but again, that's a glitter polish thing. I would be really worried that April had sold her soul to the devil if she'd made polishes this packed with glitter that glided off the nail as easy as a cream. ;) 

Pipe Dream Polish can be purchased through their Etsy store here. She just put up some Halloween lovelies that I'm getting sometime soon, I can't wait to see them and share them with you!

Glossy Glam can be purchased through their Etsy store here. Ricarda also has some great polishes in her shop along with this awesome topcoat. 

I hope you all had a great week! I'm going to try to get back on my posting schedule. 

From 9/27 to 10/5 I am going to be MIA, but I have some amazing guest posters lined up so keep an eye out for that!

Talk to you soon!

~casey

**All polishes in this post were purchased by me for my own personal use at a discounted rate in exchange for an honest review.**

Happy Birthday to me!

Good morning everyone! As you might have guessed, today is my birthday!!! My 33rd birthday to be exact. I'm not really a fan of my birthdays, not because of age either; I am adopted, that brings a set of VERY mixed emotions for me. This is a polish blog so I'm not going to go into that here. But I will say that one thing that I have been looking forward to since my last birthday is a birthday manicure. Don't ask me why, but it's just one of those things that I've REALLY been wanting to do. I guess maybe because it's the only time of the year that it's "acceptable" for a 33 year old woman to have cupcakes on her nails? No, that can't be it. My nieces have assured me that you don't "age out" of nail polish. :) I think I just wanted something cheerful on what can otherwise be a difficult day for me.

So here it is, my 33rd birthday many. :)

For most of my mani I started with a base of two coats of OPI I Theadora You, then one coat of Lush Lacquer Freckles, then another coat of I Theodora You. Love a good jelly sandwich. :) 

Then for my accent nails I started with 2 coats of OPI Planks A Lot. Then I painted half my nail with the pink (OPI Kiss Me On My Tulips). Once that dried I used a striping brush and striped on the blue. (OPI Can't Find My Czeckbook) I let that dry, then using a small brush I painted on the "frosting" with OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. I did the sprinkles with more Lush Lacquer Freckles and then sealed it all in with a coat of Glossy Glam! 

There you have it, birthday nails by yours truly! I love them, they're very cheerful which has been helpful this week. 

I hope everyone has a great day! 

~casey

**All polishes in this post were purchased by me for my own personal use.**

For the love of the jelly sandwich...

Okay I admit it, I've never been a fan of jelly polishes. For those of you that don't know, a jelly polish has a transparent consistency. On the nail it looks a bit like jelly... there's color, but it's see through, and it's kinda shiny and squishy. My first jelly was Essie Marshmallow. That was back before I realized what different types of finishes there were and I have to say I HATED that polish for the longest time. I couldn't master it... it was streaky and never built up to full opacity. I don't like being able to see my nail line so I used like 5 coats. It was just awful. So it went in the polish drawer for like a year and a half. 

Fast forward to the time in my life when I started discovering nail blogs and learning about all things nail polish. I started seeing these manis called "jelly sandwiches" and they were incredible! But I couldn't find any explination or definition of what they were. After much searching and asking stupid questions I found out that a jelly sandwich mani is simply a mani that sandwiches a glitter polish between a couple of coats of jelly. Oooooh.... that made sense. And they are great! But, I never really tried one until one fateful day a couple of weeks ago when the lovely Amy McPolish on Instagram decided to do a giveaway. (Go check out her Instagram, trust me she's amazing.) She reached 2000 followers and decided to do a giveaway with "I Love Jellies" as the theme. So, I decided to get on board and enter a few times. Now you should keep in mind that since I discovered what this jelly sandwich thing was I bought a couple more jellies but hadn't played much with them. 

When Amy posted this giveaway I decided it was time to give a few a try. I knew I had a few amazing glitters that would work well, and I've got a handy dandy macro lens for my iphone that I absolutely love. So I went to work. 

First up is OPI I Theodora You with OPI Polka.com sandwiched in between.

Second is one that I did with a base of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, then Lush Lacquer Freckles, then Essie Marshmallow. 

And last but certainly not least is my quadruple decker jelly sandwich. I used OPI Don't Burst My Bubble and OPI Lights Of Emerald City. One coat of DBMB, one coat of LOEC, one coat of DBMB, one coat of LOEC, and topped it with DBMB. This one was my favorite. 

All three of these manicures are topped with Glossy Glam from Just Ricarda on Etsy. My very favorite topcoat ever. Yeah that's right, I said it. It's hundreds of times better than Seche Vite, my former favorite quick dry topcoat. Go check out her store here, buy yourself a bottle. Trust me, you won't be sorry. All the glassy shine of Seche but without the shrinkage and scuffing/scratching. Yeah, it's that good. 

So what do you all think about jelly sandwich manicures? I love them. I'm wearing one now that I will post tomorrow. :) 

Talk to you soon!

~casey

**All polishes in this post were purchased by me for my own personal use.**

The Night's Magic

Hello polish friends!!!! Happy Monday! 

Today I have yet another Pipe Dream Polish for your viewing pleasure. I got 7 last Friday, so you'll be seeing several of these. :) 

Today's polish is The Night's Magic. This is my first polish from April's fall Like The Weather collection and it is a stunner. I fell in love with pictures of it but they really don't do it justice. I tried as best as I could to capture it's awesomeness, but trust me just go buy it. It's better in person. She's also running a $5 off $45 sale right now in her etsy store, so it's a great time to buy! 

I took my sunlight pics in the car on the way home from family dinner, so the shadows are pretty bad.. Don't worry, I wasn't driving. ;) But look at that glitter! I went a little macro crazy, but you will see why. 

Full sun. 

Light box. 

This is 3 coats of The Night's Magic with 1 coat of Just Ricarda's Glossy Glam topcoat. Isn't it amazing?!?!?! This polish is packed with holo glitter, blues, and pinks. The base is a scattered holo black as well, so the sparkle is intense. Because of the scattered holo in the base it pulls more dark gray than black.Either  way its incredible. I'll post a video on Instagram sometime today. 

I just can't seem to say enough how much I love all of these Pipe Dream polishes. And she's not paying me to say that, I would tell you if I didn't like them. They are packed with glitter that distributes easily, they build up to opacity nicely, and they level out pretty well. They are glitter polishes, so they tend to dry a bit bumpy and matte. You should always use a good topcoat, but especially with a glitter polish. (That's true with ALL glitter polishes.) My preferred topcoat is Glossy Glam. While you're on etsy buying your Pipe Dream (www.etsy.com/shop/pipedreampolish) go ahead and grab a bottle of Glossy Glam (www.etsy.com/shop/justricarda). Glossy Glam makes amazing polish look outstanding. Go check em out! 

I hope everyone has a great week! Wednesday is my birthday so I'm not sure if I'll be getting my usual daily posts in, but I'll try. 

Talk to you very soon! 

~casey

**The polishes in this post were purchased by me for my own personal use. I did receive them at a discounted blogger rate in exchange for an honest review.** 

What You Are Or What

Hello friends! Sorry for the late post, but I have to share this polish ASAP! 

Today I have Pipe Dream Polish What You Are Or What. If you've read any of my posts you know that I am a HUGE fan of Pipe Dream Polish. The formulas are great, the colors are fantastic, and the maker is super sweet. It's a winning combo. 

What You Are Or What is a deep purple/blue jelly packed full off teal, iridescent, fuchsia, and blue hex glitters. It is amazing. The formula was a little sheer, but built up nicely. That's really what you want with these polishes, because that's how you get the squishy jelly sandwich in a bottle look that we all know and love. 

Full sun. 

Natural light, shade. 

Light box. 

Look at all those squishy layers!!!! Isn't it beautiful??!? 

This is 4 thin coats of What You Are Or What topped with one coat of Glossy Glam. 

Pipe Dream Polish can be purchased on their Etsy store http://www.etsy.com/shop/pipedreampolish . 

Glossy Glam can be purchased on their Etsy store http://www.etsy.com/shop/justricarda . 

I highly recommend this polish. And Glossy Glam just brings out the best in every polish it touches. 

I hope you all enjoyed these as much as I do! 

Talk to you soon! 

~casey

**Polishes in this post were purchased by me for my own personal use at a discounted rate in exchange for an honest review.***