Twinsie Tuesday, Seasonal Gradient

Good morning friends! I hope everyone is having a good week so far. I've been so busy at work lately that I haven't had much energy to do any blogging. BUT, this is Twinsie Tuesday, and I will always make time/energy for that! 

Today's prompt is Seasonal Gradient. This could be interpreted a lot of ways... but after seeing The Base Coat's Instagram post of a gradient using Zoya Carter and Arabella, I KNEW I had to do something similar. But I needed seasonal... automatically my mind went to wintry blues and silvers. 

For this manicure I started with 2 coats of Zoya Pixie Dust in Nyx, a lovely light silvery blue. Then I sponged on Zoya Pixie Dust in Sunshine, the most amazing deep navy blue Pixie you've ever seen, at the base of my nail. On some of the nails I got more Sunshine than I wanted, so I just sponged on more Nyx until I was happy. Gradients with Pixie Dusts are SO MUCH MORE FORGIVING than gradients with cream polish. Oh my goodness. Especially with these two, because they both have the same silvery glitter base... they just blend together seamlessly. 

Of course I had to throw some topcoat on there just to see what happened. Holy sparkles batman! 

Pixie Dust's can be kind of hard to get smooth and glossy. Any textured polish is for that matter, probably because they are designed to be textured. But if you use the right stuff you get amazing payout. For this ultra shiny and sparkly look I added 2 coats of ACI Gelous from Sally's and 1 coat of HK Girl Topcoat by Glisten and Glow. Wowza! They look like they're set in resin or something. Isn't it incredible? I've been wearing these since Sunday night and I love them. I am being very careful while driving though, it's been sunny and we all know how distracting glitter can be in the sun. No more car accidents for this girl for a long long LONG time please. 

So what do you think? Have you tried a gradient with Zoya Pixie Dust? Trust me, you really should! Find 2 that have a similar base glitter color and go for it. Do you like the matte or glossy finish better? I love them both, but my heart has to choose the glossy if I had to pick one.

Zoya nail polish can be purchased at Ulta, www.zoya.com, and many salons across the US. I get most of mine from the website, and I'm not ashamed to say that I own almost all of the Pixie Dusts. They are by far my favorite textured polishes out there today.  

I hope you all enjoyed this mani as much as I did! Be sure to check out the other Twinsie Tuesday Bloggers! Links to their blogs are below! 

Talk to you soon! 

~casey

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

Alaina at The Little Canvas

Amanda at Amandalandish

Amber at Nails Like Lace

Anna at Going to the Showing

Anne at Grape Fizz Nails

Casey at CaseyLane Loves Polish

Chelsea at Nailed Blog

ChiChi at I'm Just Me...ChiChi

Elizabeth at Did My Nails

Erin at Paint Those Piggies

Heather at Peace, Love, & Polish

Kelly at Tuxarina

Lakeisha at Refined and Polished

Maribeth at Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite

Marisa at Polish Obsession

Rachel at Top Coat It

Róisín at Cuti-CLUE-les

Stephanie at A Little Polish

Tiffany at Polished To Precision

Traci at DrinkCitra

Arabella & Tomoko, Show Us Your Heart

Good morning polished friends! I hope everyone is having a great week! :)

I'll warn you now, this is a picture heavy post. But I can't help myself sometimes. And macros of PixieDust polishes make me so so happy. Hopefully they make you happy too.

Today's manicure is something that I posted on Instagram a couple of days ago. The lovely Mrs Lochness and Ethereal Lacquer paired up to do a contest called #showusyourheart. The only rules were that you had to incorporate a heart into your design, and you had to say something nice about someone in your comments. Well, I had to enter. I don't really care about winning (although it would be awesome) but I am a big fan of positivity and being encouraging to others, especially in my little nail art community. No, not everyone does great manis every time... but even manis that don't look spectacular take a lot of time and effort. Plus it takes guts to post this stuff on the Internet. So we should be building each other up, always. 

For my something nice about someone I chose the lovely Elena from Ecklipsed by Color. You should go check her out, she's on Instagram and has a great blog. Elena is always so positive and encouraging no matter what is going on in her life, I admire that a lot in a person. I just had to call her out for it! Go check her out, you won't be sorry! (plus she's got an drool worthy indie collection... it makes me swoon...)

I wasn't feeling like doing anything too complex, so I kept it simple with some Zoya PixieDusts. The base for this mani is 2 coats of Zoya Arabella. Arabella is a rich fuchsia pink (straight from Zoya.com) and I agree. It's a rich, deep, beautiful pink. And sparkles... oh my. You know how I feel about these PixieDust polishes and how I rave about Zoya's ability to somehow capture texture, matte, sparkle, and shine, all in one bottle. It's baffling. Once Arabella dried I took a nail art brush and painted hearts on my ring fingers and thumbs in Tomoko. Tomoko is a beautiful silvery gold. I'm not sure I'll ever wear this by itself, but I love using in it manicures for nail art. I'm just not a huge fan of gold on my own nails by itself.

Full Sun

Full Sun

Full Sun Macro

Full Sun Macro

Natural Light, Shade

Natural Light, Shade

Light Box

Light Box

Light Box, close up of my thumb. She felt left out. :) 

What do you think? I really love this one. I wore it for a few days, I just couldn't take it off. PixieDust polishes are so great for nail art. It's crazy but they level out into each other, so you don't even miss having a topcoat to smooth things out. 

Zoya nail polish can be purchased on their website here, in some salon retailers, and in some Ulta stores. 

You should also check out Mrs Lochness on Instagram. Her swatches and nail art are AMAZING. 

Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed these as much as I did! 

~casey

**The polishes in the post were purchased by me for my own personal use.**

Zoya Carter

Good morning! I hope everyone is having a good week so far. We're almost to the weekend, and it's a 3 day weekend for some of us. I'm pretty excited. We've got big plans to do nothing, which is our favorite thing to do. I'm sure I'll paint my nails, probably half a dozen times... you know how it is. 

Today I have one of the fall 2013 Zoya PixieDust polishes. I LOVE these textures. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Zoya has the texture down perfect. They've got the sparkle, matte, and texture all balanced out perfectly. 

Zoya describes Carter as royal purple, I think that's pretty accurate. It's really unique, in different lights the base looks like dark purple and sometimes dark blue. The glitter in this is more pink, and it really brightens the whole look. Then there's the sparkle.... ugh. If you are following my Instagram you saw the video I posted of it last night. If you're not following my Instagram, please go check it out and follow me. 

There isn't much to say about Carter, I'll let the polish speak for itself. The light box pictures are the most color accurate to real life, but really it's very hard to capture it's beauty. Sorry, I love taking macro pictures of these textures. 

Light Box

Light Box Macro

Light Box Macro

I took a blurry one just to show the sparkle. I love this stuff.

Natural Light (Shade)

The sun was setting when I went to get dinner so I had to snap a pic, of course.

This is 3 coats of Carter with no top coat. 

What do you think? I have to say, if you like sparkly polish and you like purple, you NEED Carter in your life. 

Zoya polishes can be purchased on their website and in some Ulta stores.

**The polish in this post was purchased by me for my own personal use.** 

Zoya Stevie...

Hello everyone! I hope you're all having a good week so far! 

Today I have an awesome polish to share with you. Zoya PixieDusts are by far my favorite of the textured polishes out right now. They got the formula just right in my opinion; the texture is sandy but not too rough and the finish is matte but also incredibly sparkly. I haven't really mastered catching them on camera, but trust me, they are amazing. 

A couple of weeks ago I placed my largest (and most expensive) polish order ever, and of course it was from Zoya.com. I'm just so in love with the Pixies and Zoyas in general lately. So, I ordered Stevie and Miranda from the summer PixieDust collection and the entire fall Pixie Dust Collection. I also ordered Josie, Neely, Storm, and Hope. So prepare yourself to see lots of Zoya over the next few weeks. :) 

So first up is Stevie. Zoya describes Stevie as a violet sparkle with silver sparkle, but I think it's closer to lavender. To me its a nice, light, soft purple. I wore this color for a couple of days and loved it. 

I put this over my usual OPI Nail Envy Matte base coat. Zoya says to use no base coat, but I can't do it. Nail Envy has been so good for my nails, I can't go without it. I've heard they dry faster without base, but I'm okay with waiting. This is 3 thin coats. With PixieDusts make sure you let them dry in between coats, and the full effect doesn't show up until it's totally dry. 

Sorry this post is a little picture heavy. I've got light box and sun pictures for you. 

First the light box pictures. 

And here it is in the sun

I highly HIGHLY recommend the Zoya PixieDusts. Stevie is the 4th one I've tried and I've loved every single one. They apply like a dream and wear incredibly well. If you're a fan of textured polish and sparkle, you need at least one of them in your life. 

Let me know what you think of this polish. Do you have any PixieDusts? Are they your favorite too???

Happy polishing!

~casey

OPI Bond Girls, Pussy Galore

Happy Friday everyone! Fridays really are the best aren't they? Even if you don't have plans, there's just something about knowing it's Friday that makes the day a little better. I think this weekend my Mikey and I are going to the local county fair. We always go to stroll the midway, mainly to people watch. And we look at all of the exibits because we're dorky and it's air conditioned in there. But this year we are also going to the tractor pulls! I am a total geeky redneck and love that stuff. Before Mike and I started dating (14 years ago this Sunday... aproximately...) I never liked anything like that. I liked car shows, but mostly because I'm a sucker for pretty colors. But now I'm kind of a car girl, mostly MOPARs because that is what my hubby loves and it's rubbed off on me. We go to the local dirt track a couple of times a year, watch NASCAR every week, and watch shows like Fast n Loud and Auto Auctions. And tractor pulls rank right up there with my favorites. 

Tonights post is a swatch of OPI's Pussy Galore. The OPI Liquid Sand polishes are my second favorite textures, right behind Zoya PixieDust. When they released the Bond Girls collection I was intrigued, but not head over heels for any of them. But after seeing a few swatches I knew I had to have Solitaire and Pussy Galore. I don't know that I'd ever wear this as a full mani because it looks a little too frosty to me, but it's pretty and I can see myself reaching for it for accent nail art. Plus, lets just be honest. If someone asks me what polish I'm wearing answering with "Oh this is Pussy Galore" would feel a little strange... even though it's named after a Bond Girl.

Pussy Galore is a nice, soft, pearly pink. It's almost a matte frost if that makes any sense. What I couldn't pick up in the pictures is the fabulous hot pink glitter that is in here. No matter how hard I tried, my camera just couldn't handle it. If you're in a beauty store and see this, check out the bottle and the swatch nail. It's really much prettier in person. Overall I really liked the polish, the formula is fantastic and opaque in 2 coats. But I don't think I'll wear it much. It's not my kind of color to wear. 

Let me know what you all think! Do you like this polish? Are you loving the texture trend as much as I am? 

Happy polishing!

~casey

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

OPI Solitaire...

Hi everyone! I hope you’re having a nice Sunday evening. We are doing the usual, getting caught up on TV and laundry for the week.

Tonight’s post is a quick swatch of one of the OPI Liquid Sand polishes from the Bond Girls Collection. OPI Liquid Sands are their take on texture. From what I’ve seen they aren’t really sticking to any particular texture, each set that they’ve released has been a bit different in finish. Overall I haven’t been super impressed, but a few have caught my eye. Solitaire is one of those polishes.

When I first started seeing swatches of this I knew I wanted it. It’s unique in my collection, normally I don’t like pearly sheen white but with the little silver glitters it’s really lovely. I don’t know that I’ll ever wear it as a full manicure because I’m not crazy about it on my skin tone. But it will be great for nail art and accent nails.

So on to the pictures.

And of course a macro to show the teeny silver glitters.

I hope you all have a happy Monday!

Happy polishing!

~casey

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