Halloween Nails

Good morning and happy Halloween everyone!!!!!

Today I have a quick post with this years Halloween mani. I'm not really all that into Halloween, so this is as "dressed up" as I get. 

After seeing my friend Bridget's Halloween gradient I knew what I wanted to do. These are inspired by hers. (painted-nail.blogspot.com) 

I started with 2 coats of Ulta Sun-Sational and let that dry completely. Then using the sponge technique, I sponged on OPI A Good Mandarin Is Hard To Find. After that dried I added one coat of Pipe Dream Polish She's A Thriller (The best black & white glitter out there in my opinion, circles AND hexes!!!! ) and then sealed it in with a coat of Glossy Glam topcoat. 

I'm really happy with how these turned out! They're festive without being too much for me to wear for a few days. 

Pipe Dream Polish can be purchased in their etsy store at etsy.com/shop/pipedreampolish . 

Glossy Glam can be purchased in their etsy store at etsy.com/shop/justricarda . 

I hope you all like this mani! I love it.

Have a safe and Happy Halloween!!!!

~casey

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

Dark and Difficult Times

Good morning polish friends!!! I hope everyone is having a good week so far.

Today I have a new to me indie brand called Polish TBH. I have been eyeing Chrissy's polishes on Instagram for a while. And as you all may have noticed, I love Harry Potter. So any Harry Potter themed polish jumps out to me. This one was just so pretty and so different, I had to nab it. 

Light Box

Light Box

Light Box

Full Sun

Full Sun

Isn't this beautiful? Plus the name and description of the polish sent me right over the edge. This is from her listing description: This is a darkened blue gray with a mix of holo black and charcoal glitters as well as red and green color shifting flakies. Reminiscent of the gloomy skies seen through out the Harry Potter series. The name comes from a favorite quote from Albums Dumbledore "Dark and difficult times lie ahead. Soon we must all face the choice between what is right and what is easy."

That quote is one of my favorites from the Harry Potter series. So many good life lessons in those wonderful stories. But, this is a polish blog not a "OMG I love all things HARRY POTTER!!!" blog. :) 

This color pulled gray in some light, blue in others. I had a really hard time capturing it, so I am posting it in a few different lights to try and capture the beauty. And macros to show those beautiful glitters and flakies!!! 

The formula on this polish was great, the glitter flowed well and distributed all on its own; no placement necessary. It was a bit sheer for my personal taste, but sometimes that's the price you have to pay for this amount of squishiness. 

Shown is 3 coats with 1 coat of Glossy Glam. I loved wearing this one and just couldn't stop staring at my nails. There's lots of depth and variety in there, that's my favorite thing about indie polish!!!

Polish TBH can be purchased through their Store Envy store here. 

Just Ricarda's Glossy Glam can be purchased through their Etsy store here. 

What do you all think? I love this one. 

I have a Halloween mani to show you tomorrow, can't wait! :) 

Happy Wednesday!

~casey

**All polishes in this post were purchased by me for my own personal use. Glossy Glam was purchased at a discounted blogger rate in exchange for honest reviews.**

Casey Lane Loves Hogsmeade's Honeydukes

Good morning everyone! Today I have one of the most perfect polishes ever for you! And a little lesson in polish terminology.

The beautiful Elena over at Ecklipsed By Color is one of the very sweet friends that I've made since falling into this nail community. She has a great sense of style (that I seriously envy), a great attitude, and as I've recently learned a gift for frankening polishes.

So here is the lesson part: What is the difference between and Indie and a Franken? An Indie is a polish that is hand made using suspension base, pigments, glitters, and all kinds of other magic that I can't come close to understanding. There is no magic formula or recipe out there for it, the people that make these polishes experiment and build recipes until they find the formula they like. Frankening on the other hand is mixing polishes together. You take polishes that you already have, maybe add in some glitter (like Elena did) and keep blending until you get what you want. See the difference?

Personally I've never done either, both seem daunting to me. I stick with polish as it comes and just go with with that. But the lovely Elena made me my very own special Franken, just for me. It's truly one of a kind and I love it. She told me that it is Casey in polish form, and she is totally right. How about some pictures?

Elena named my polish Casey Lane Loves Hogsmeade's Honeydukes. She knows of my deep and intense love of all things Harry Potter, so the name is perfect. 

Elena mixed colors, glitters, and love in this bottle and it turned out a lovely polish. 

And seriously, check out how adorable these labels are!

Elena successfully made the first bar glitter polish that I actually like, so another win!!!

Isn't this great? I love having this special polish that was made just for me. Its so pretty and it wore really well! 

You should all head over to Elenas blog (here) and her Instagram (here). Did I mention how awesome she is? Because she really is. I've made so many great friends through this community, it's amazing.

I hope everyone is having a good week!

Talk to you soon!

~casey

Jack-O-Lantern Nails!

Hi everyone! Today I have a "twinsie" post that I did with Alaina from The Little Canvas. Last weekend she emailed me and asked if I wanted to do some jack-o-lantern nails for Halloween and I said sure! I don't really get excited about Halloween, or any holiday really. But I do love nail art, so I was in.

Here is our side by side pic!

And here some solo shots of my mani.

For this manicure I started with a base of Wet-n-Wild The Clock Strikes Orange. Then I added stripes with OPI A Good Man-Darin Is Hard To Find. Once that was dry I used black acrylic paint to paint on the faces. For the stems I mixed together Zoya Hunter and Wet-n-Wild Test of Lime. After everything was all dry I topped it with Glossy Glam topcoat to seal it in. 

The faces weren't easy to do, but overall I'm pretty pleased with how these turned out. The day before I painted them I broke my thumb nail, so it might be MIA for a few posts. :) 

What do you all think? Do you like doing holiday themed nail art?

Be sure to check out Alaina's version of these over on her blog and Instagram!

Happy Saturday everyone!

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

Pipe Dream Polish Spam!

Hi everyone! I have a couple of Pipe Dream Polishes that I shared on my Instagram but haven't had a chance to do a blog post on, so I'm combining them into one slightly spammy post. :) 

Details after the jump!

Birthday Bash

Good morning everyone! 

Today I have a swatch of one of the polishes that the lovely Elena (check out her blog and Instagram, she's great) sent to me for my birthday. It is an indie brand called 365 Days of Color and the color is Birthday Bash. How perfect is that?!? Elena is seriously one of the most generous people I've met through this nail blog business, and I am so thankful for her friendship. And, she sends me great polish!!! 

Full Sun

Natural Light, Shade

Natural Light, Shade

Natural Light, Shade

This glitter polish is made up of a white base with shredded glitter in various colors and fine turquoise glitter. Normally I'm not a huge fan of shredded glitter, but it works in this polish. And really what is a birthday bash without a little confetti?!? Although there were a few stubborn pieces that wouldn't lay flat, I just picked those out and it was no big deal. 

This is 3 coats of Birthday Bash topped with 1 coat of Glossy glam. 

I really like this one, I can see myself pulling it out in the future anytime I've got something festive to go to. I'm glad that Elena sent me some new indie (and mainstream) brands to try for my birthday. She's branching me out and I love it! 

Birthday Bash can be purchased on 365 Days of Color's website here. 

Glossy Glam can be purchased on Just Ricarda's Etsy shop here. 

What do you all think? You can't really go wrong with glitter in a white base in my book. This one is a definite keeper!

Thanks for reading! Happy Wednesday!

~casey

**The polishes in this purchase were sent to me as a gift by a sweet sweet friend. :) **

She's a Thriller

Good morning everybody! 

Today I have another Pipe Dream Polish to show you. If you're tired of seeing these, well, I'm sorry. You are just going to have to find another nail blog to read because I'm not done with my collection and I plan to buy many many more! 

Today's polish is She's a Thriller. This polish is part of Pipe Dream's Rob Zombie Halloween collection, and it is still available! I think this type of polish can be worn anytime of the year though, so you definitely need to go buy a bottle. 

Natural Light, Shade

Natural Light, Shade

Natural Light, Sun

For this manicure I started with 2 coats of Wet-n-Wild Lavender Cream (which is really very pink, that name confuses me...) and I topped it with 1 coat (YES, that says 1 coat!) of She's a Thriller. I topped everything off with 1 coat of my favorite top coat, Glossy Glam. 

Now I know everybody and their brother has put out a black and white glitter these days. Even main stream brands are putting them out... which they should be. Black and white glitters are FANTASTIC. But this one still manages to be unique in that crowd because it mixes large circle glitters with varying sizes of hex glitters. I love the combo! It's dense but you can still see your color through the glitter. I don't think I'll ever get tired of these types of polishes. 

She's a Thriller can be purchased on Pipe Dream's Esty store here. 

Glossy Glam can be purchased on Just Ricarda's Etsy store here. 

I hope you all love this glitter topper as much as I do! I can't wait to use it more, it's going to be so versatile! 

Have a great day!

~casey

**The polishes in this post were purchased by me for my own personal use. Some of the polishes were purchased at a discounted blogger rate in exchange for an honest review.**

Sweater Stretchers

Good morning everyone! Happy Monday! I'm hoping that this will be the week that I get back into a groove with blogging. Thank you again for hanging in there with me! 

Today I have a beautiful glitter topper from Pipe Dream Polish called Sweater Stretchers. 

Sweater Stretchers is a limited edition polish that April created to raise awareness and money for breast cancer research. This polish will only be available through the month of October and $4 from every bottle purchased will be donated to The National Breast Cancer Foundation. 

Now that the serious part is over, lets see some pictures shall we? 

All of these pictures were taken in my light box. 

This is 1 coat of Sweater Stretchers over 2 coats of OPI Berlin There, Done That. I topped this all off with 1 coat of Glossy Glam. 

The base of my bottle of SS had a pink tinge to it, I'm not sure if that is intentional or not. But it wasn't enough to bother me. I just noticed that when I put it over white it turned the whole thing pink. Which is definitely not a bad thing. I just wanted to mention it. 

I think there are 5 or 6 different shades of pink in here and varying sizes of hex & square glitter. It is so pretty. And just like all of Pipe Dream Polishes, the formula was a dream. I didn't have to dig or place glitter, and it maintained "squishiness" even though the base was clear. 

Sweater Stretchers can be purchased through Pipe Dream's Esty store here. Be sure to grab your bottle before they're all out!

Glossy Glam can be purchased through Rica's Etsy store here.  

Thank you for reading! I hope you all have a great week!

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

Purple Leopard Nails

Hello everyone! Today I have a quick post with nail art. I've been doing so much swatching lately I feel like I never get in nail art. I've missed it!  

I've been wearing so much glitter lately I was craving creams. So here is what I came up with. 

For this mani I started with 2 coats of OPI Funky Dunkey. This color is so amazing, I almost couldn't stand to cover it. Once it dried I added random shaped and sized  dots in OPI Planks A Lot with my dotting tool. Then using a tiny brush I added the black detail with WetNWild Black Cream. I let it dry a while then sealed it all in with Glossy Glam. 

I love this mani. I painted it Monday night and I'm still wearing it today!!! That's like eternity for me! :) It's holding up well too thankfully. 

What do you all think? I used to dislike anything leopard print, but leopard nails are quickly becoming one of my favorites. Funny how taste changes! :) 

I hope everyone is having a great week! TGIalmostF! 

~casey

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

Cut the Lights

Good morning everyone! 

I'm so excited about today's polish that I'm just going to jump right in. Today I have Pipe Dream Polish Cut the Lights. This is from April's Rob Zombie collection. I'm sorry to say that this one is no longer available, but I do still have pretty pictures to share! So here we go. 

Full Sun

Shade

Shade

Glowing! (after about 5 minutes in the sun)

Glow glow glow.

Glowing MACRO!

Look at all of that glitter! I love that this polish looks great even when it's not glowing. Then when it is glowing, well it's just super awesome. I love that it glows purple instead of the typical green. Love it so so much. 

For this mani I used 2 coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, 2 coats of Cut the Lights, and 1 coat of Glossy Glam. 

As a side note, if you have already purchased this polish but haven't used it yet. Do yourself a favor and thin it. April recommended that to me and I thinned it quite a bit. I used my Seche Restore thinner, because I trust it to not ruin my good indie polish. I would say I used about 20 drops, maybe a little more. I just added some until it was a workable consistency. The reason it is so thick is because she packed SO MUCH glow pigment in there. And even after lots of thinning it glowed like crazy. My husband commented on how weird it was to see me walking around in the dark at night, just seeing my fingernails floating around. ;) Hehe 

Even though this isn't available anymore you really need to check out April's Etsy store. Her polish is amazing, she is super sweet, and she has amazing customer service. Seriously, go check out her store here. 

Glossy Glam can be purchased on Just Ricarda's Etsy store here. 

What do you all think? Do you love it? I love it so much, I'm gonna have to come up with some awesome Halloween nail ideas for this one. :)

I hope you all enjoyed this one! And again, thanks for sticking with me even though I've been slacking lately on the posts! 

~casey

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

Clouds In My Coffee

Good morning friends! I hope you are all having a good week so far.

Today I have a swatch of Pipe Dream Polish Clouds In My Coffee. April made this custom for a friend a while back and posted it on Instagram. The response was so good she decided to sell it in her shop, and I am SO glad that she did! I love it!

All of these pics were taken outside on an overcast day.

For this manicure I started with 2 coats of OPI Berlin There, Done That. Then I topped it off with 1 1/2 coats of Clouds In My Coffee and 1 coat of Glossy Glam to seal it all in. The formula on this glitter is great, it flows over the nail flawlessly and needs very little placement. I think any placing I had to do was due to user error. 

Clouds In My Coffee is made up of varying sizes of hex glitter in turquoise and brownish copper. It really is so so pretty, it just screams fall!

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

I hope you all enjoyed this mani as much as I did!

Thanks for reading!

~casey

Feed The Monster

Hi everyone! Long time no see!!! Sorry I haven't blogged in a while. We were on vacation from September 27th through October the 5th, and of course as soon as we got back I had a ton of stuff to do. And between training and catching up at work I ended up working 10 hour days every day.To top that off I've been under the weather too. I think its just my allergies, and I'm starting to feel better. But either way I've not been able to do much polish stuff. (which makes me very sad) 

Today I have a Pipe Dream Polish swatch to share with you. I will start this post by saying I'm really sorry that I didn't post this sooner, because this polish is no longer available. But I'm still sharing it with you because it is so pretty and it shows the greatness that is Pipe Dream. :)

Full Sun

Shade

Shade 

Full Sun

For this mani I started with 2 coats of Wet-N-Wild Black Creme. Then on my ring finger I added 2 coats of Feed the Monster. On all of the other fingers I decided to go with a glitter gradient to mix it up some. Then I topped it all off with 1 coat of Glossy Glam topcoat.

I love this glitter. It is packed with varying sizes of hex glitter in orange, pink, and silver. It is "halloweeny" but not too much. And check out the macros, see how squishy it is? You can see the layers of glitter floating around in there. All of her polishes are that way, it's fantastic. 

Pipe Dream polished can be purchased in April's Etsy store here. 

So what do you think? I really love this glitter and plan to wear it a lot this fall. 

Thank you for sticking with me even though I haven't been posting. I appreciate your patience while I get back into the swing of things. :) 

Have a great day! 

~casey

**The polishes in this post were purchased by me for my own personal use. Feed the Monster was purchased at a discounted rate in exchange for an honest review.**

Guest post from Indie500 Nails

Hi everyone! For my last day of guest posts I have the wonderful Amy from Indie500 nails! Amy and I met on Instagram and became fast friends. (well, I became fast friends.... I have a tendency to be a bit of a creep when it comes to my beloved Amy's.... aka Indie500 and McPolish. ;) ) 

Check out this fantastic mani! 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well hello, people of the internet! A big thanks to Casey for asking me to guest post while she is off in the wilds of Colorado living it up. Despite forgetting the submission deadline and having an overwhelming fear of being too awkward for the bigtime (i.e. this blog!), I really am excited to be here. Casey is one of the best banterers I know on IG and it's a pleasure to hijack her little corner of the interweb for today. Let's dive in, shall we?

Casey gave no requirements for this post, which was a veritable invitation to run absolutely amok. However, due to the aforementioned nearly forgotten deadline, I have a fairly sedate fall mani to share. As a Texan, it's a little tricky for me to get excited about the changing of the seasons as there is rarely if ever an appreciable difference in the Lone Star state. But all the cool kids seem excited about it, so I'm hopping on the bandwagon and trying to at least swatch the fall collection polishes I just *had* to have prior to ordering the holiday collections that I will likewise need :)

For this fall skittlette mani, I used Zoya Hunter as my base. Formula was exactly what you'd expect from a Zoya creme and beautiful coverage and opacity were obtained in two easy coats. For the glitter gradient on the middle finger and thumb, I used a copper glitter topper sent to me by an IG friend, one of the Face of Australia Glitterati Nail Enamels. Upon researching for this very post, I discovered it is unnamed. This sort of conundrum probably explains why I am a guest blogger as opposed to a regular blogger :) The ring finger was stamped using the leaf image from Winstonia plate 119 with Mentality Nail Polish Proper.

Well, we've made it to the end together. If you weren't deterred by my awkward, stream of consciousness rambling, er *blogging* up to this point, I'd love to have you stop by my semi-defunct blog over at indie500nails.com. And if you'd like to actually see semi regular posts, please follow me on Instagram! 

Happy Fall Y'all!
Peave, Love and Polish!

Amy aka @indie500nails

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Ok, first of all, can we agree that Amy is hilarious? This post had me giggling the entire time. Second of all, I'm big time? Really? Dude, you've got like a for real blog and over 4,000 followers on Instagram. If that's not big time I don't know what is. ;)

Amy thank you so much for helping me out and doing this mani for me! 

Everyone I hope you have enjoyed my 10 days of guest posters! I wanted to share some of my favorites with you!!! And hopefully they'll be some of your favorites now too! 

I should be back on a regular posting schedule very soon, as soon as things settle down from our vacation. 

Thanks for reading!

~casey

Guest post from McPolish

Good morning everyone! So today's guest post is from the wonderful Amy McPolish!!! Amy and I have been creeping on each other on Instagram for a while. Go check her out, her nails are amazing! 

Lets see what kind of awesomeness she came up with for my little blog. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi! I'm Amy McG aka McPolish!  I was so honored when my favorite stalker, Casey, asked me to write a guest blog post for her.  Well, a little about me.  I started painting my nails in October 2012.  It all started with a Sally Hansen magnetic polish I saw at Wal-Mart.  I was so intrigued about this crazy concept that I googled it and fell upon a nail polish blog.  Wow!  I was hooked!  I started buying up all the polish (like we all did).  Then in March 2013, I started my Instagram account (www.instagram.com/mcpolish) and got sucked into the nail art and indie polish world.  And down the rabbit hole I went...deeper and deeper.  But I love nail art and indie polish, so I wanted to share them both with you today.

For this guest post, I decided to share a skittlette mani using one of my favorite indie polish makers (and Casey's too!) Pipe Dream Polish!  These two polishes are from April's new fall line.  The gorgeous brown glitter is called "Fall Again" and I layered it over Zoya Flynn on my thumb and pointer finger.  The green polish with gold and brown glitter is called "Time in a Tapestry".  I used two coats alone over my pinky and then punched tiny heart shapes out of it to use over Flynn on my middle and ring finger.  Of course we must matte all the mani's :)

I have used homemade polish decals before by painting polish on a plastic bag then cutting out shapes and strips once it dries.  Well this time I had worn "Time in a Tapestry" with a base coat of Nail Pattern Boldness "Glitter-a-peel", which is an epic peel off base coat.  When I decided to change my mani and popped off my polish, I didn't want to waste that gorgeous glitter!  So I decided to punch some hearts out of the old polish.  Now I can wear my glitter mani's more than once!  Reduce...Recycle...Reuse! Lol!

You can find both Pipe Dream Polish and Nail Pattern Boldness on Etsy!
http://www.etsy.com/shop/pipedreampolish

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

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Amy I love this! Anyone who has followed me on here or on Instagram knows how much I love Pipe Dream Polish, so this is perfect. And I love the idea of punching shapes out of peeled off manis! Thank you so much for helping me out with a guest post! 

~casey