Happy Mardi Gras!

Happy Sunday, y'all! Hope everyone had a good weekend. Today I have my Mardi Gras mani to show y'all. 

I literally did this in 15 minutes before we ran out the door to head to the city! This is why my middle finger is a little bald in spots--it only has one coat of OPI's Purple With A Purpose. My pointer finger is Essie's Mojito Madness with purple rhinestone accents. My ring finger is two coats of China Glaze's Glitter All The Way (which is a perfect Mardi Gras color!) It has a lot of purple, green, and gold glitter with a little bit of red too. I was really tempted to buy another bottle when they went on sale at Sally's the other day! I mean, what are the chances that there will be any other polishes so close? Also, for only two coats it has really good coverage! And on my pinky is also Purple With A Purpose and I made a Mardi Gras bead using my dotting tool and OPI's The It Color and Mojito Madness.



My precious Delta resting her head on my Mardi Gras tutu

Awesome fun with good friends and family!

Mardi Gras 2013 was a success! I am so proud to call New Orleans home. There was a lot of good food, alcohol, company, and beads! There were more of us then the group picture above, but we never got one of us all together. I love when the whole family gets to come into town.

Anyways, what did y'all think of these nails? Do you own Glitter All The Way? And did it ever occur to you that it looked like Mardi Gras in a bottle?

XOXO,

Victoria

Birthday Cupcake Nails!

Hey guys! I know that the cupcake nails have been done a million different ways but I've always wanted to try them because they're just so darn cute! So I decided that that's what I'd do for my birthday on February 7th.

If you saw my last post, you know that I started with two coats of Essie's Bikini So Teeny.  Here are the next steps:

2.) OPI's Gargantuan Green Grape about halfway down nail (no special brush)

3.) Sinful Colors pink striping polish to make little lines on top of the green

4.) OPI's Alpine Snow to dab 'icing' on top the cupcakes. They basically look like little clouds. (again, no special brush used)

5.) Add a red cherry on top. I used a dotting tool with China Glaze's Red Alert. 

6.) Add sprinkles in your choice of colors with dotting tool. 

And there you have it! So simple! I got many compliments on these. 

Have you ever tried your own version of cupcake nails? Did you find it fairly simple? Let me know!

XOXO, 

Victoria 

Bonus Picture! I didn't do my nails special for Valentine's day but I did paint my RA's nails for the occasion. Tiny metallic hearts on top of Butter London's Trout Pout. Cute?

Bikini So Teeny

Hey y'all! Quick post because I accidentally deleted this one the first time...now I'm annoyed! Haha. Basically, this is the first part to my birthday nails that were a two-day process. This is two coats of Essie's Bikini So Teeny. The formula was a little bit runny but I was able to work with it-and who cares because the finished product is so pretty?! It has a great shimmer that I just wasn't able to capture in any of my pictures. 

Own any colors similar to this one? What do you think?

XOXO,

Victoria

DS Extravagance

 Hey guys! This is OPI's DS Extravagance. I am in love with this color! I can't remember if I bought it off of amazon.com or if I picked it up in Ulta. There really is no explanation for it. The formula is perfect. The holo is perfect. The color is perfect. This was two coats and it was completely opaque. I believe this is the third Designer Series color I own from OPI. If you don't own any, I must say, they really are worth the little bit of extra money they cost. 

Do you own any DS polishes? Which are your favorites? 

XOXO,

Victoria

A Butterfly Moment

Good morning! This is A Butterfly Moment from the OPI Mariah Carey Collection.  I originally was not going to buy this polish.  I had only picked up two other colors from the collection. But I thought it could be a great neutral.  I'm so glad that I ended up purchasing it! Of course, it leans more toward pink then nude but I still think it can work as a neutral. This was two coats, application was not a problem at all and although it looked a little bit frosty in the bottle, it doesn't look that way on the nail. From what I can tell there are also hints of gold in this polish, too. 

Do you all own any of the Mariah Carey polishes? Have y'all tried the Liquid Sand? I'm skeptical as to whether or not I would like the texture on my nails! 

XOXO,

Victoria

On Her Majesty's STINKY Service!

Hey y'all! Hope everyone is doing well. I have here an OPI color from the Skyfall collection. This one is On Her Majesty's Secret Service. You may have noticed the title to this post...that's right, I said it! This polish absolutely REEKS! I was painting my nails in my dorm room and started smelling what seemed to be a skunk. I started freaking out and badgering my roommate about where the smell could be coming from. I guess I just didn't think a polish could possibly smell that bad! But low and behold...I got a whiff of the polish straight out the bottle and you'd think they captured a skunk inside. I don't know why this is but I did look it up online and saw that other people were saying the same thing. 

Anyways, the color is lovely! The application and everything was great. I only needed two coats, but I feel like if you aren't careful you could end up with a lot of bald spots with this one. 

Do y'all own this one? Did you have the same stinkin' problem? What's your favorite Skyfall color? Do you own The Man With The Golden Gun (in the special gold bottle)? Leave me a comment!

XOXO,

Victoria

Manicure Addict Having a Giveaway!

You guys! Katherine over at Manicure Addict is having a giveaway.  There will be two winners: The first winner will choose their seven favorite colors from the Nicole by OPI Modern Family Collection and the second winner will receive the remaining seven colors. Follow the link below to enter! You have eight different ways to enter.

http://www.manicureaddict.com/2013/02/nopi-modern-family-collection-review.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+ManicureAddict+%28Manicure+Addict%29

Superbowl Nails!

Hey guys! This was my really simple Superbowl mani for this year. I didn't go all out or anything because my Saints didn't make it in! I chose to do pink and brown because I know those colors generally look cute together. 

I used two coats of Teddy Girl by Butter London. I probably could have used a third but I knew they wouldn't dry before I went to bed. I always have trouble working with pastel colors! On my accent finger I used two coats of OPI's Suzi Loves Cowboys as a base for the football design.  For the laces I just used a white striper polish.  I was keeping it simple, stupid. Haha. This mani was actually more of a hit than I thought it would be. Yay!

Who were you rooting for in the Superbowl? Did you do anything fancy with your nails? Do you have trouble with light/pastel colors being streaky? 

XOXO,

Victoria

Back-Tracking!

Okay so in the next couple of posts I'm going to be doing a little bit of back-tracking so that I can show y'all some of my manicures that y'all have missed since I haven't been blogging. Forgive me if they aren't in chronological order. 

These were my nails for New Year's. This is two coats of OPI's Pompeii Purple with accents of Optical Illusion by China Glaze.  Basically all I did with Optical Illusion is started with a lot of polish at the tip and then drug some of it about halfway down my nail with the brush. I came back and added more to the tips because I wanted Optical Illusion to build and become opaque the closer it got to the ends of my nails. I really liked how this turned out. 

Hope y'all liked these! Have you ever tried anything like this? Let me know in a comment!

XOXO,

Victoria

Fishwife Racing Stripe

Hello! I didn't think I'd be back so soon, but it turns out that I have nothing going on this Friday night and I thought I'd share my manicure with y'all. I painted these last night and thought they were quite flashy. They would be much prettier in the sun but unfortunately we haven't had much of that lately. The weather has been complete crap. 

On with the mani:

I started out with two coats of Fishwife by Butter London. I purchased this color along with a couple others back in September and had never gotten around to swatching it. It is a holographic bluish/green and very pretty! It's not a very heavy holographic, or at least it looks that way to me because I haven't seen them in the sunlight. The formula is wonderful! It's not too runny and it doesn't glob up. There are not streaks to be had, either! I forgot to take pictures of just Fishwife before I started adding to it, so here is the only picture I have where you can see Fishwife by itself. 

I felt that I would get bored with just Fishwife so I decided to go with a nice little racing stripe right down the middle of my nail in Turned Up Turquoise by China Glaze.  I was trying to pick a color that I felt would compliment Fishwife and TUT was the only color I had here at college with me that did the job. Turned Up Turquoise is a neon so it dried really quick and was also matte finish. I did two coats per stripe.  

As if that wasn't enough, I bordered the turquoise stripe with silver glitter stripes. To me, this took away from Fishwife all together, but it was too late to undo anything. Now my nails are just really loud and obnoxious. Haha. Pictures shall we?

Side view (trying to capture the little bit of Fishwife that is left to be seen)

So as y'all can tell from the pictures, Fishwife and the silver glitter stripes just pretty much blend into each other.  All in all this manicure was super simple! After I finished it made me wonder why I don't do this kind of simple design more often. Again, I apologize for not having any pictures of this in the natural light!

So..what do y'all think? Would you guys rock this or is too loud for your liking? Would you have chosen another color for the 'racing stripe'? 

XOXO,

Victoria

Newsworthy!

Hey y'all! I know I haven't blogged since school started, but something happened last week that I just HAVE to tell y'all about! I've recently gotten a twitter, so naturally I followed some of my favorite polish/beauty companies.  I noticed that Butter London tweeted about having a competition and the winner would win the Spring 2013 Sweetie Shop Collection.  I thought that I might as well give it a shot--afterall, I've been pining over a few of those colors! They asked how we liked to accesorize our manicure and to hashtag our tweet with #butteredUp.  I made a quick PicStitch to put things into perspective:

 

I submitted the following two pictures, which I blogged about over the summer, with the caption "With rings! & buildings! Haha."  I just loved how everything in the picture matched so perfectly. 

 

Low and behold, I got a notification on my phone saying that they had mentioned me in their tweet.  I knew it just couldn't be!  But sure enough, two other girls and I won the whole Sweetie Shop Collection.  I was sooo happy! I never win anything!

 

I'll have to post whenever they come in the mail! I hope all of my followers are doing well! I miss not being able to blog because of school. One of the RA's in my dorm comes to visit every Thursday so I can do her nails.  So I think it's safe to say that I'm still painting nails; for myself and other people! In October I painted nails at my little cousin's "Spa-themed" birthday party. They loved it. There was hardly enough glitter and rhinestones to go around! Haha. And I think that for Spring break I'll be visiting my family in Tennessee. Y'all know what that means...a trip to The Cosmetic Market! Hopefully by then they won't be sold out of OPI's Euro Centrale collection.  I NEED to get my hands on those colors! Anyways, that's it for now! I have to get back to school things :(

 

Leave me comments! I want to know what y'all have been up to! Have y'all gotten any of the Butter London Sweetie Shop colors? OPI Euro Centrale colors? What is/are your favorite(s) colors?

 

XOXO

Victoria

 

P.S.-I'm going to try and update some of my tabs. I definitely need to update my collection tab, as it has grown considerably!