Bestie Twin Nails with Anna!

Hi everybody! I hope you're doing well today. I am so excited about today's manicure. 

A while back I met a really sweet girl named Anna on Instagram. Her first user name was omgnannerz. Truth be told her name is why I followed her, something about it made me certain I'd like her. :) Then she decided to make a "nails only" account under the name polishfrolic. Love it too. :) You really need to go check this girl out, she has got some serious talent and way too few followers. 

So, Anna and I were talking one day on kik and decided we should do some bestie twin nails. For those of you that don't know what these are, well, the name is pretty self explanatory. You get together with one of your best nail pals and come up with some coordinating manis. Everyone does these differently, but I love the way Anna and I did ours. The only rules we had were navy, roses, stripes, and some kind of glitter. The reason I like this type of twin mani is because it shows just how differently everyone interprets manis. 

So here is my mani. Last week I saw a gorgeous vintage rose mani on Instagram, kayleehazacupcakee. She did dainty little pink roses on a black background. I have no idea why I never thought to do vintage roses on a dark background, they look great! So she was my main inspiration. Her and all the new Zoya's I got last week. This mani is almost all Zoyas. Does anyone else do that? I try to use all the same brand in my manis... I don't know why, but I feel like they play better together. Plus, its Zoya. The formula is amazing... always.

Direct Sunlight

Shade

Light Box

Light Box

Light Box

Light Box Macro

First of all, I have to say I'm SUPER proud of this index finger. Anna helped me figure out how to do glitter placement from polish, and I did it! It's not perfect, but I love the way it turned out. My topcoat is so shiny it was hard to capture, but you get the idea. 

Colors Used:

Zoya - Sailor (navy blue)

Zoya - Nyx (PixieDust)

Zoya - Sooki (red)

Zoya - Yana (pink)

Zoya - Josie (dark green)

Zoya - Neely (light green)

Zoya - Blu (light blue) 

FingerPaints - Santa's Magic (glitter)

Glossy Glam topcoat

I am so in love with these nails! I used striping tape for my middle finger, dotting tools and tiny brushes for my little roses, and a tiny dotting tool and a dash of patience for my glitter framed finger. 

What do you all think? It's going to be hard for me to take this one off. I love it and I'm really proud of my work. I have a hard time with being proud of my manis, but this one I can freely admit that I did a good job and not feel like I'm being conceited. :)

Here is a pic of Anna's nails. Aren't they lovely? I love how she put her roses on top of the stripes. 

Do me a favor and go check out her Instagram here. Follow her, you won't be sorry! :) She's going to be making another appearance here on my blog very soon!

I hope you all enjoyed this post! I really enjoyed doing these nails. I need to get back into doing more nail art. I love it. 

Talk to you soon!

~casey

**All of the polishes I used for this manicure were purchased by me for my own personal use.**

Holo Galaxy Nail Art

Good morning everyone! Sorry I haven't posted in a couple of days, I took the weekend off. :) 

Today I have a little nail art for you. Saturday night we went on a double date w/ my sister & her hubby to see City of Bones. Mel & I read the book series together, so we've been pretty excited to see the movies together. She's my favorite reading partner so I always look forward to these things. 

So, I thought I should do a City of Bones inspired mani. I planned to do galaxies with runes on my accent nails, but those runes were much harder to paint than I thought they would be, so I went with all galaxies. It kind of fits I suppose. If you haven't read the books you really should, they're great. And the movie wasn't bad either. :) 

I've had the idea to use holo polishes for galaxy nails for a while, and I'm glad I tried it. The sparkle, whoa... I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Full Sun

Light Box

Light Box

Light Box

Light Box

I started with a base of Zoya Storm. It's a lovely black with holo glitter that is really almost like shards than glitter. (I have more pictures and a review of it here.) After that was completely dry I used a sponge to dab a few spots of OPI Black Onyx to black out parts of it, then I used the sponge to dab on the holo polishes to make my galaxies. I used Color Club Halo Hues in Over the Moon, Eternal Beauty, and Miss Bliss. After that I used a little bit of the black, and OPI French Quarter For Your Thoughts to tone it down a bit. I then dabbed glitters from FingerPaints Santas Magic for stars. Once I was done I topped it all off with Glossy Glam topcoat. 

Over all I am really happy with how these turned out.What do you all think? 

I'm going to try and get back on schedule this week. I've got some fun nail art and great swatches coming up for you! 

I hope you all have a happy Monday!

~casey

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

Hangin' On Like a YoYo

Good morning everyone! Happy Friday! Wake me up before you go-go, don't keep me hangin' on like a yo-yo... Yeah I've had that stuck in my head off and on since I swatched this beauty. Thanks April. ;) But really, who doesn't love a little Wham! on a Friday morning? 

Today I have a swatch and review of a super fun glitter indie polish called Hangin' On Like a YoYo by Pipe Dream Polish. April describes this polish as medium matte teal, periwinkle, yellow, and aqua glitters in a neon coral base. And she means neon coral when she says NEON coral. This one is bright and extremely fun. On my fair (pasty) skin tone this pulled a little more coral than pink, but in person it leans more pink. 

As with all of the Pipe Dream polishes that I've tried, the application is a dream. The glitters distribute evenly with no effort, the layers are easy to apply thinly so you can get that great "jelly sandwich" look. If you love bright, fun, color combos in your polishes, you NEED this one. It's fantastic. I didn't get a pic of this in full sun, but that's probably a good thing. I think all of the neon goodness might have given my camera a seizure.

Natural light, shade

Natural light, overcast

Natural light, overcast

Light box

Light box

Light box macro. Look at all the squishy layers!!!! 

This is 3 thin coats of Hangin' On Like a YoYo with one coat of Glossy Glam on top. All in all I love this polish, but I'm not sure it's something I will wear very often. While I LOVE bright polishes, I rarely wear them for any length of time. I'm not sure why, I just get tired of them after a while. No matter how awesome they are. 

What do you all think? Isn't this the perfect mix of glitters for this base? I love it. 

Pipe Dream Polish can be purchased through their Etsy store here. Her new fall collection releases today, you should go check them out! From the preview pictures I've seen, they are GORGEOUS! I'm buying them all!

Until next time! 

~casey

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

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 Hope

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

Today I have another Zoya for you all. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I haven't always loved Zoya. But thanks to a few of my fellow polishing friends I've seen the error in that. I'm not going to admit to how many Zoya's I've bought in the last month or so... but it's safe to say it's becoming one of the more prevalent brands in my collection. 

Toady's post is Hope. About a month ago I placed my biggest polish order ever, ordering the entire fall PixieDust collection and a few others that I'd been lusting after. Hope was part of that haul, and it did not disappoint. 

Zoya describes Hope as "Flashy medium violet-purple with frosty blue, red and silver colored shimmer." I don't think I could say it any better myself, except that there is quite a bit of sparkle to this polish. Maybe that's what they mean when they say "shimmer", but I say sparkle. This polish is bright without being in your face, and bold without being too much. It is much bolder in the sun than in the shade or indoors, it's one of those awesome polishes that looks completely different in different lights. I love that, it's like getting 2 for 1 in the same bottle. 

I tried to get pictures in different lights to show the difference for you. 

Direct Sun

Natural light, shade

 

Direct sun MACRO! See that sparkle??? 

Light Box

Light Box

Light Box macro

For these pictures I used 3 thin coats of hope and topped it with Glossy Glam. The application on this wasn't great, it was a little more watery and runny than I prefer. But, it was manageable, and cleanup was a cinch. My trusty ELF concealer brush and a little acetone tidied it right up. 

Zoya nail polish can be purchased from their site www.zoya.com. It can also be purchased at some salon retailers and Ulta stores. 

Let me know what you think! I love reading all of your comments!

Until next time!

~casey

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