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!

Missing!

You guys! I am really SO sad! I know that I haven't blogged since school started, and I seriously miss it and all of you.  College has just taken such a toll on me!  My nails are still there, I'm still buying polish, and I still paint them-but not nearly as much as I was able to before.  Anyways, I just wanted to give y'all an update to let y'all know that I haven't forgotten about my blog! I will be back! Hopefully soon!

 

Love y'all! XOXO

-Victoria

 

I just had to post this little bonus pic. I have already gotten so much crap about it on facebook from my friends, so I thought I would share it with y'all. This was me and my brother when I was about to leave home to move in at college...can you say BABY?! Haha.  

 

 

Did You Know About Didgeridoo?

Hey y'all!  I don't feel right to post about my OPI Germany Collection haul just yet because I don't have all of the pictures I would like and what not.  So I'll hold off on that for now.  Instead, I'm posting about a retired OPI color from the 2007 Australian Collection.  (At least I think that's the right year..I tried doing some good blogger research.)  The color is called Didgeridoo Your Nails?  I don't think I ever would have known about this color if it wasn't for the OPI App that I have on my iPhone.  It is a REALLY awesome app. in the fact that it has a tab that lists the entire collection of OPI!  And I mean EVERY color they've ever released.  And listed next to the name is whether it's retired or not.  So, I scrolled down the list and wrote down every single retired color so that I could later google some and see if I could still purchase them.  I've been able to purchase several retired colors from amazon.com-one of them being Didgeridoo Your Nails?  It is a really pretty pink shimmer and sometimes looks like it has sort of yellow shimmery undertone.  Y'all-I'm so bad at describing polish!  Haha.  My mom is laughing at me just trying to figure out how to explain the color of this one.  So don't hold me to my word!  Plus, you'll probably look at the pictures and be like "This girl does not know what she is talking about."  Haha.  The formula was great and I didn't have any problems with it.  If anything, it was a little runny, so I just put less polish on the brush than I normally did. It covered fine in two coats, but when I woke up this morning I put on a third just because I wanted to see how deep I could get the color.  Here is how it looks:

Sunlight

With flash under artificial light



no flash under artificial light

name shot

with flash, artificial light



in shade with flash

In shade, natural light

So I know that all of these pictures in different lights make this polish look completely different in every aspect.  I'm going to try to start posting just pictures of the polish outside in natural light.  I feel like the color is way more accurate then. 

Have you ever heard of this polish?  How many retired OPI colors do you own?  What is your favorite retired color?  Let me know!

XOXO

Victoria