Nail of the Day: Seafoam Green Shimmer

I had two polishes on my hand that I thought were okay but nothing spectacular. Zoya Wednesday is nice but kinda dull, well dull for me as I like bright nails. I had seen pictures of Orly Sparkling Garbage and loved the color. I couldn’t find it in stores so I ordered it online. When I got I was disappointed that it wasn’t an opaque halo polish. I then noticed Zoya Wednesday and had an Ah Ha moment. I love the result and I think it brings out the best in both polishes.

So now what you were waiting for, some pictures.

The polishes used:

The nail look:

Sparkling Garbage by itself:

The pictures don’t do the halo aspect justice so you’ll just have to trust me how pretty this is. 😉

Nail of the Day: Blue and Glitter

Here is another addition of Nail of the Day. This nothing fancy but I wanted to show you. I started off with Butter London Keks. I hated how it looked. This was a difficult polish to work with, weirdly thick and applied very unevenly. After two coats the polish looked lumpy on my nails. It also dried to a weird half matte finish. That wasn’t too big of a deal because a shiny top coat can take care of that. But overall I just didn’t like how this color look. I needed to fix this and what better way to improve a polish you don’t like? That’s right, GLITTER!!! So I added Butter London Lovely Jubbly on the tips. Here is the final results.

Here are the colors I used.

So that’s my look. Once I added the glitter I liked the blue much better. Hope you like it too.

Book and Beauty: “Code Name Verity” and

Time for another Book and Beauty. I really loved this book, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein so I had to have another Book and Beauty to share it with everyone.

The Book:. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein

Plot: This book is set in WWII England and is a story of a friendship between two women. One is a pilot and the other is an officer. When the book opens up one of the women has been captured by the Nazis and is being kept alive to write everything she knows about the British war plan. To find out more about this book click here.

Why I loved it: This book is just amazing! I was thinking one night that I was happy that I was about to go to bed so I could read the book and spend more time with these characters. Then I was sad because I had finished the book the day before. This book is so good, and has the awards to prove it, and it is nice to read about strong women that don’t need a man to save them. Also it was fascinating to find out what role women had in WWII.

Read if you like: Another favorite of mine is another book set in WWII, The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak. You can’t go wrong with a book that is narrated by Death. Click here for information.

Where I got the book: I checked this book out from my public library, which is why the book is so shiny as it has the protective cover on the book.

The Beauty:

Here is my nail look. I used SinfulShine with Gel Tech in Come Hither as the base color on all nails and on the accent nail I used Essie in Shake Your $$ Maker as the leaves. I didn’t realize that this color was so sheer which is why I have these ugly brown leaves. That will teach me to use a color I haven’t swatches before in nail art. I then used my pink and green stripers to accent the colors.

This is my first time using a SinfulShine with Gel Tech nail polish (got it free in my Influenster VoxBox) and I am impressed. For $3.99 this polish covered and lasted just as well as my more expensive nail polish. I was so impressed I went to Walgreens, where they are exclusively right now, and picked up two more colors.

So that is another segment of Book and Beauty. If you have read this book let me know what you think.

Book and Beauty: “The Mystery of Mercy Close” and Zoya Tinsley

So when I first started writing this blog I also planned to keep a blog on the books I read. Unfortunately I was in a horrendous reading funk where none of the books I tried to read kept my interest. Needless to say nothing has happened on the other blog. As a librarian reader’s advisory, finding the right book for the right person, is very important to me. So I’ve been trying to think of a way to combine my two loves and I think I got it. I can show the polish I have on my nails and talk about a book that I’m currently reading or have liked. So welcome to Book and Beauty!

The book is The Mystery of Mercy Close by Marian Keyes. This is the fifth book in the Walsh Sister series but don’t let that put you off because you do not need to read the other books in the series to enjoy this book. Click here for more information about the book.

Plot: Helen Walsh is an out of work private detective, who has to move back in with her parents after losing her home to foreclosure. On the worst day of her life an ex comes to her with a job offer, find the missing member of the reunited boy band Laddz (think New Kids on the Block), Wayne. Helen is on a deadline to find what happened Wayne before the reunion concerts.

Why I’m liking it: What seems like a light fluffy read is really a much deeper look into the life of a person suffering from clinical depression. Helen is driven to find Wayne as it keeps her mind busy so she can’t think about the consuming darkness trying to overtake her.

Helen is also a great main character. Funny and sarcastic, she has a shovel list of things that she would like to hit with shovels. I can definitely relate.

Read if you like: The tone of the book reminded me of the Spellman Files series by Lisa Lutz and Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. So if you like those books I highly recommend this one.

Now on to the beauty. I am wearing Tinsley from Zoya. See I do own other polishes beside Julep. 😉 This polish is a base of pink coral with gold and pink micro glitter. So not a holo polish but it looks like it. I’m obsessed with the polish! I love the peaches, coral, and oranges in this polish. And since it is not a holographic foil polish it doesn’t show how horribly uneven my nails are, which is part of the reason I haven’t done a nail of the day look in a while.

On my nails is two coats of polish.

So that is my first Book and Beauty. Let me know if you liked it and would like to see more.

Nail of the Day: Simple Art Deco

So I saw The Great Gatsby movie the other weekend and ever since then I’ve been obsessed with Art Deco. No matter if you like the book or not, I would see it for the gorgeous makeup! I guess that is a sign that you might have a problem with makeup when you spend 2.5 hours in a movie admiring the makeup and not Leo. Though have no fear I noticed that he looked great in this movie too. 😉

I saw a lot of great Art Deco nail looks but I wanted something simple that I could do on both hands myself. I started with 2 coats of Alice. I then painted a stripe of Zelda going one way across the tip and then did the same with Millie going in the opposite direction. I really like how this turned out, minus that my hands are a mess. Zelda and Millie applied perfectly and I can’t wait to use them again. Zelda is such an awesome color. I’m not usually a fan of foil polishes but this one is great. I love how it picks up the other colors on the nail. Alice applied okay, not great but I’ve applied worse.

Also, sorry the pictures are blurry. I think the shininess of Zelda was throwing off my camera.

Here are the swatches of the polishes that I used.

Hope you enjoy this look!

Nail of the Day: Aqua Sparkle

I got Denver in a recent Julep Maven Secret Store. If you are wondering what the Secret Store is, it is special discounted stuff for people that got that month’s Julep Maven box.

I thought Denver was such a great Spring color that I had to wear it. I also had to have an accent nail with my new favorite glitter polish, Paris. Denver wasn’t that great of a polish, which was super disappointing. This took 3 coats to fully cover the nail and it got gloppier with each coat, which means the application got messier and messier. I was painting my cousin’s nails at the same time so I don’t know if that had anything to do with that, but this could use a dose of polish thinner.

So here’s the nail look. Sorry for the bad picture and the fact my cuticles are so messy. My polish chipped before I get a better picture. I’m super hard on my nails at work so this is not necessarily the polish’s fault as every polish brand I use does this.

And because one bad picture is not enough, here is a horrible swatch picture of Denver. I thought the picture was in focused when I took it but that tooth brush in the background must have been way more interesting to my camera.

Hopefully the next Nail of the Day post will have better pictures but I hope you like it nonetheless.

Nail of the day: Apple and Stripes

My goal before the end of the month was to use all the polishes in my April Julep Maven box. I liked the stripes I did last week that I thought it would be perfect for an accent nail and best part I used all the colors in my box that I haven’t used yet. Well, I didn’t use the Rock Candy polish but I’ll just say that was an extra.

So here it is.

I put two coats of Mackenzie on all fingers except for my nail finger. I probably should have used 3 coats as this is a thin polish and I can see my nail in spots. On my ring finger I put 2 coats of Simone and then stripped it with Eden, Janel, Ally, and Mackenzie.

I hope you like it!

Nail of the Day: Bright Stripes

I saw a technique to get striped nails without a striper polish. Instead you use dental flossers! This look sounded too interesting not to try. If you are interested watch this video. I thought this look would be perfect for the bright colors I got in this month’s Julep Maven box.

Not really happy on how it turned put. I think I probably should have used a dark color to balance the look out more. Also the neon polishes dried really quickly so I had to put a lot of polish of the flosser and that just made it little too clumpy. Oh well. Thought I would share with you anyway.

These are the colors that I used. I started with 2 coats of Abbie and then used the other polishes as the stripes.

And here are my “stripers”.

This is a messy technique so have some polish remover and Q-tips ready for clean up. I still have 4 more polishes I haven’t used in my April Maven box so I have to think of something good for those. I’ll be sure to share with you when I do.

Nail Look of the Day: April 7, 2013

So here’s another edition of Nail Look. I saw this on Ipsy’s Facebook page and I thought that this seemed like an easy look to do. So without further ado, here’s the look.

Here are the polishes that I used. I have two coats of Julep Lena on my fingers and two coats of Zoya Cho, probably should have done three, on my index finger. Julep Ally, Zoya Zara and the black stripper was used in the nail art. I have to say that Lena is amazing! It covered perfectly in one coat!! I did use use two coats in the look just to make sure everything was properly covered.

Hope you like this look!

Holiday Nails: Easter edition

I love to do nail looks for the holidays. Probably because it is the only holiday decorating that I do. So here is my nail look for Easter. The inspiration was first from cutepolish’s Easter nail video. You can look at the video by clicking on this link Cutepolish Easter nails. Then I was seeing all these cute nail art looks with bunnies on Pinterest so I knew I had to add bunnies to the looks.

These are the polishes that I used and you get to see what I put on my thumb.

This set is the Julep polishes that I used. These were used as the base coat for all the fingers, except the pinky. In order from left to right the colors are Ava, Simone, Blake, and Shenae.

This set is the Essie and Zoya polishes I used. From left to right I used Zoya Purity and Arizona and Essie Turquoise & Caicos. I have no idea what the Sephora by OPI color is called but I used it on my pinky as the base coat.

This set is the stripper polishes that I used but none of them have names. I also used a green one but I couldn’t find it when I went to take the picture of the bottles.

There was a causality to the look. When I went to put Blake back in the box it crack open and polish started oozing out. Sad day as it was my first Julep add-on in my first Maven box. The picture below is the aftermath.

So that is my Easter look. I hope you liked it!