Sally Hansen Salon Effects - Stud-io Time

Howdy, folks!  I can't believe October is almost gone.  It just got here, didn't it?  You wouldn't know it's October by the temperatures were still getting here in AZ.  I can only hope that by Halloween our highs will only be in the high 80s.  :::crossing fingers:::  The evenings here are pretty gorgeous though.  I definitely have nothing to complain about when it comes to that.  Right now its 71 degrees out.  It's the perfect weather to have dinner out on the patio of a restaurant, which I did last night with several of my girl friends.  It was quite lovely.

So I have bought several of these Salon Effects kits and have never tried using them until a couple of weeks ago.  I don't know what it was about them, but I think I thought they wouldn't work and I wasn't ready to flush what I spent on them down the drain so quickly.  Well, I finally sucked it up and decided I would finally give them a try.  I bought this set at Ulta for half off about 8 months ago!  I opened the box and was ready to get down to business when I realize one of the sets of strips was missing.  The box is supposed to included 2 sealed packets of the various sized nail polish strips- one for your right hand and one for the left.  It's also supposed to have an orange stick and a small nail file.  This box had the orange stick and one set of the nail strips.  I was robbed!!!  Lesson reluctantly learned.  If you see these on clearance, check the box to make sure everything is there before you buy or be a sucker like me.

Because of the above, I decided to still use what I bought and came up with an accent nail mani using the Stud-io Time strips on every other nail, alternating with OPI's Sanguine.  I'm not going to go into the application process because you can watch a fantastic video instead, if you would like: Nail Strip Application Tutorial.

I wasn't sure what to expect with these nail polish strips, but they turned out to be pretty cool.  There was some very obvious lifting that occurred immediately on only my thumb nail near the cuticle line  (I think I should have watched the tutorial first!).  No matter how hard I pressed down on it, it kept popping up.  Even still, it wasn't really a problem - it didn't get snagged in anything and pretty much stayed the same degree of separated the entire time I had them on, which was about 4 days.

Here's how to make the best of half of a box of nail polish strips:

You can really see the lifting up of the strip on my thumb in this one. :(

What do you think?  Have you ever tried nail polish strips before?  If you have what was your experience?  Any tricks or tips for flawless application?

Until next time.  ☺

OPI GoldenEye is GORGEOUS!

Hello folks!  I couldn't wait to put up some pictures of GoldenEye from the recently released OPI James Bond Collection because it is to die for.  I grew up watching James Bond movies on the TV with my dad so I was super excited when I found out there was going to be a nail polish line inspired by Bond.  And then to have that line be by OPI?  Swoon! The whole collection is pretty darn awesome, but this one is the one that grabbed me.  Let me tell you, I received many compliments on this polish and I could not stop looking at my own nails for the couple of days I had it on.  It's just ridiculously ah-mah-zing.  I have never seen a gold polish that can even hold a candle to this one.  The color is so saturated that is makes your nails look like they have been covered in sparkly gold leaf!

For these photos I used a base of Bonder, 3 coats of Goldeneye and a top coat of SV.  I noticed that the polish would seem to apply a little bit more sparse as I got to the top of the nail with the brush so I ended up having to splat some polish at the top first and then I would dip again and start application again from bottom to top.  A fourth coat probably wouldn't have hurt as it dried very well.

Here is GoldenEye - which I have been calling Goldfinger for the last 2 weeks (Gee, I wonder why).  Oops!

So what do you think of this shimmery sparkly golden goodness?  Gotta have it?

Until next time!!  ☺

China Glaze Electric Beat Dot Mani

I'm really digging the whole dot manicure thing and trying to get the most out of all the nail polish I have and my tools.  The payoff is so good for such little effort.

I had picked up China Glaze Electric Beat at Sally's because it was on clearance and loved it so much, I couldn't bear to take it off, but at the same time I was getting bored.  So I figured the best was to get some freshness and added longevity to Electric Beat was to go dot.

I used Electric Beat as my base.

such a preeeetty blue!

Then picked out a few colors in my stash that I thought would compliment it. 

OPI DS Coronation, Revlon Blue Lagoon, CG Electric Beat, Butter London Victoriana

I used a piece of foil and folded it in half to make it a little more stiff and dropped a pool of the first color I was going to use, which was Blue Lagoon.  I dotted all my nails using the same polish keeping in mind the design I wanted and then let dry.  I keep a cotton ball with acetone on it in the corner of my foil to wipe the tips of my dotting tools so that they don't get globby.  If the pool of polish starts to dry, I just drop another little pool on the foil.  I noticed that applying the dots with the "side" of the tool vs straight down on the tip seems to be more effective in getting a nice dot shape.

Then I switched to Victoriana and finally Coronation.  I let everything dry completely before apply a topped of SV.  

Hope you like it.  

Until next time.  ☺

The Muppets Collection by OPI! Swatches inside!

The Blogoswatchathon continues! The Muppets Collection by OPI was much anticipated by myself and many other polish addicts and they did not disappoint. In this blog, these are what I thought were the nicest and the best value for the bunch. Now, you must know I pay for all my polishes and OPI polishes are not cheap, so I bought a mini-4pack and 2 individual full size colors in order to get the most bang for my buck. I was really happy with all of them and a couple that I didn’t think were going to be that great (Designer…DeBetter and Wocka! Wocka!) turned out to be quite stunning.
I used my typical 3 coat application with a top coat of SV on all. This is especially important for the glitters like Rainbow Connection and Excuse Moi!. Most of my swatches are done after 1 day of wear, so you will see on a couple of them there is slight wear in the tips, like in the Warm and Fozzy swatches.
Here we go!

Wocka! Wocka! - This was, like I said, a pleasant surprise. It is a beautiful pinkish red that was worked so well with my skin tone. It’s simple, but beautiful and the application was smoooooth.

Excuse Moi is more of a jelly polish with multi colored “party” glitter floating in a vibrant pink base. This was lovely, playful and fun to wear.  Excuse the thumb chip.  :(

Designer…De Better. I thought this was going to be bo-ring! But I was really quite surprised at what a pretty delicate color this is. It is so shimmer and has the smallest micro specks of a peachy-copperish color. Love it.

Warm and Fozzie - what a stunner. Obviously, I liked it so much I couldn’t narrow down my swatches because I felt like each captures a little more of it’s beauty. While the base is Fozzie fur brown, there is also flecks of gold, green and even some pink! Preeetty!

Rainbow Connection - How fun is this? I layered Rainbow Connection over China Glaze Millenium, which I think worked out very well. I do have to say it is very much like all the other rainbow glitters I’ve seen that have come out in the past year or too by various companies from the frugal to the expensive, but I was happy to add it to my collection because….because… I do not own Deborah Lippman’s Happy Birthday! Sniffle, Sniffle. L

Meep Meep Meep is another one of those tough to shoot colors. The camera can’t figure it out, but I sure as hell tried to capture it as best as I could. I think the nicest thing about this one is the flakies that are floating around. It makes this one more interesting than you would expect when you really take a good look at it. Is is flakie shimmery goodness in a bottle. This one also went very nicely with my skin tone.

Thank you, OPI!

Until next time...