So I've been gone quite a while...

Hi there!  So, I've fallen out of the polish world because of some hefty life demands: 2 young boys in soccer, recent promo to HR Mgr, and enrollment into a Master's degree program.  I'm quite a busy girl, and something has to give, so my nail polish, along with my other crafty pursuits, have taken a back seat.

But I finally took the time to do my nails.  I mean, to really DO my nails.  Of course I've slapped some paint on them, but nothing really blog-worthy.  So yesterday, when I was supposed to be doing homework, I sat down and did this:

So lovely!  Although my striping could definitely use some improvement, it's not too shabby.  I love my mani, and I hope to be able to keep my nails nice and long for a while...I've been paying more attention to them and have been slathering on the nail cream and cuticle oil lately, and I think that's why they've stopped breaking so often.  

I'm so happy with my cute nails!  I'm going to have to keep carving out some time for them...

Memorial Day Nails

I got a 4-day weekend, and Memorial Day is on Monday.  I so appreciate the sacrifices of the men and the women in the military, and those who died in serving our country are heroes in my book.  So when I went to paint my nails, I wanted a tribute to our fallen soldiers:

My striping definitely needs more practice, but I think it came out rather nice, and definitely patriotic.

  

As you enjoy your holiday weekend, please take a moment to remember those who have made our freedom possible!

Coming Up Roses!

I love Pinterest!  I have a board where I pin all of the fantastic mani's I admire called "Must-Do Mani's", and I hoard tons of ideas there...sometimes I even do a mani based on one.  Like last night!

I really have a hard time doing my nails for work.  I have to be professional, but I can't stand just plain nails.  Thus my dilemma.  So, THIS MANI by Pshiiit! seemed to be just the answer.  Plain pink, but with a cute and artsy rose accent nail.  Loved it!

Here's my version:

I used Zoya "Lara" for the main pink, and "Sweet" and "Purity" for accents on the rose over a background of "Raven".  The leaves were NOPI "Lime Light" and Sinful Colors "Innocent".  All topped with Seche Vite.

I need to invest in some nail art brushes.  I currently use some cheapo ones I got at Walmart, and it's really hard to control where the polish goes.  Plus, the bristles get hard and don't brush the polish on nicely.  But I think this came out pretty cute anyway!!! :-)

More Magic from Ruby Wing

So the warm weekends scream "outside" to me.  And I had so much fun with my Ruby Wing mani from last week, that I just had to do another.  And I wanted some nail art too!

Here's "Moon Stone" with a little daisy action:

No Sun:

 A lovely pale sky blue.  Perfect for daisies!

In the Sun:

Don't know why my skin color is so different, but check out that polish change!  What a perfect dark lavender!  I can't decide which I like better!

I LOVE MAGIC!! :-)

Catching Up

At the beginning of March, my manager left on maternity leave, and I am now both her and me at work, so I have been VERY busy.  The reason you care is because it leaves me exhausted at the end of the day, and unable to do my nails, much less post about them.  As of Friday, my face has broken out in stress-induced hives, so I am taking the hint, and slowing down, and doing my nails! :-)

Here's my current mani, featuring Ruby Wing color-changing polishes.  It makes me smile to see the color change, and forces me to leave the house to see it, since it changes color in the sun.  The color change is pretty quick, and is triggered by UV rays.  Pretty cool!!

"Birdie" (yellow) and "Gypsy" (mint), before the sun.  Super-cute, springy mani, right?

This took 3 coats to get completely opaque.  Topped with Poshe.

The same mani, but in the sun:

LOVE this color combo too!  So fun!

Here's a side-by-side comparison:

Here are some exciting past mani's I did since my last post:

Black-tipped French with Lacquistry's pretty pastel glitter bomb "Chick-a-dee doo-da".  LOVE this polish!!

Color Club "Halo-graphic".  Gorgeousness!!!

OK, you're all caught up.  :-)

Late St. Patty's Day Mani

I haven't had much time to do my nails, so I really don't have much to post about.  I did do a green mani for St. Patty's Day, though!

My standard leopard-spots-with-a-toothpick accent nail.  This is a rare pic of my right hand since the ring finger on my left hand broke and is now an odd-ball nub.  It's banned from being in pics until it grows out to an acceptable length ;-)

Playing with Polishes

I have finally made it a priority to get my polish hoard collection set up in my upstairs bedroom, so now it's so much easier to play with them.  This should mean y'all will be seeing a lot more pretty nails around here.  

While I was at it, I figured I should re-sort them, since I was overflowing in some drawers:

The ones in the plastic are my Indies!  Mostly my first love Lacquistry (over 50!), but KB Shimmer and Pretty & Polished also have a pretty strong showing.  I sort by colors, and I re-distributed my polishes to fill up that empty drawer a little more, so I'm content for now.

I'm a sucker for unique polishes, and the China Glaze Tranzitions lines appeal to my love for "magic" effects. These polishes change colors when you apply top coat, which isn't really practical since you can't top coat the entire mani.  But it sounds so fun, I caved and bought 3 of the colors: Modify Me, Split Perso-nail-ity, and Duplicity.  I found this You-Tube video, and was inspired:

This is 1 coat each of Modify Me (blue) & Split Perso-nail-ity (pink) applied diagonally on the nail.  I used NYC "Grand Central Station" as the top coat, which made the dark areas.  It was really fun to watch it change, but it seemed a little streaky to me when all was said and done.  I do love the colors, though!  

On an un-related note, my step daughter has been asking me to do her nails, and we finally had some down time to figure something out.  The poor thing bites her cuticles & nails, and she had acrylics taken off last month, so it took some prep to get the nails looking decent.  But she had the cutest idea, and we picked out the polish to make this:

How cute is this?  I likey, I likey!  This was the first time I did nail art on someone other than myself and it was definitely a different experience.  Not too bad, but I felt like I was applying everything backwards.  She was very happy, and that's all that matters ;-)

Where Has January Gone?!?!

Sorry to have been MIA, but over the holidays we moved, got the kids settled in a new school, and did I mention we moved?  I hate moving!!  

Anyway, I've not had very much time to play with polish lately, but here are the mani's I managed to eek out.  Please don't mind that these are all cell phone pics...I seem to have mis-placed my camera's charger among the dozen or so boxes that still need to be unpacked.

Chirality's holo skittles for the New Year! 

Zoya Feifei & Lael 

This is my current mani!  KB Shimmer "Toucan Touch This" with Zoya for flower accents.  This gorgeously bright polish has been calling to me for a couple of weeks now...probably because of all the grey skies and rain we've been having here lately...this Cali girl needs her sun!! 

We're more settled in, and my awesome hubby made me a little polishing nook area in our huge master bedroom, so I'm planning on getting my polish on a lot more often!  Thanks for sticking around!

Quicky with Zoya "Aurora" & "Storm"

I've been super-busy with the Holiday craziness and our impending move.  I cleaned off my Christmas nails and did a simple mani with a couple of my new Zoyas, but haven't had a chance to show you till today:

This is "Storm" and "Aurora" at about 2 days old, and after tons of packing.  And they are much more beautiful IRL.  I <3 Zoya!!

I can't wait till I'm settled in the new place and can finally do my nails!

Lacquistry's "Wonderland of Sand"

I've had this mani on the entire work week since December 17, but just realized I haven't posted about it.  Anyway, I got an awesome bunch of Lacquistry polishes from her Winter/Holiday collection, and "Wonderland of Sand" seems to the the perfectly quintessential Christmas-y glitter polish.

I also used Zoya's "Sarah" (red) and "Ivanka" (green).  It was super-pretty all week at work, and it wore like iron!  It's much more sparkly in real life.  I used 2 coats of WLOS, topped with a coat of Gelous, and finished with Seche Vite.  BTW, I do have a layer of glue under that accent nail, so removal should be a breeze!  Christmas perfection!

If you've never tried a Lacquistry, GO NOW!!  At the time of this posting, she still has polishes stocked in her Etsy shop HERE.  Check out swatches on her FB Page, too.  Jenna's the BEST when it comes to gorgeous glitter bombs!  

White Flag

I'm disappointed to say that I am officially admitting defeat, and withdrawing from Iced Lacquer's 12 days of Christmas Challenge.  My mom was just diagnosed with skin cancer (although her prognosis is very good), my moving-in date was moved up by 3 weeks, and all the Christmas shopping and festivities are just not leaving much time for challenge mani's.

I feel really bad, but I just had to take the pressure of these timelines off my plate.  I will definitely still be doing holiday-themed mani's, although just not at the challenge's pace.

Well, that's it for now.  I've cut down my nails, and I'll need to do something for the up-coming week.  Keep on admiring the other participants' creations, though! :-)

XOXO Alexis Leigh

Purple Castle

It's All About the Polish

A Ginger's Nail

The Polished Mommy

Robyn Loves Nails

Teen Polish Junkie

Mari522 (on Instagram)

Day 5 - 12 Days of Christmas: Holly/Wreaths

My Day 5 post is only 1 day behind!  Here's Iced Lacquer's 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Challenge:

 

I decided to do holly nails inspired by THIS CUTE POLISH VIDEO.  You'll see I changed it a bit, and did red gems instead of dots for berries.  

Who knew holly leaves were such a biotch to paint?!?  I had to re-do these leaves 3 times!  I was trying to use a small paintbrush, but I ended up using a good ol' toothpick to finally get the job done ;-)

I used China Glaze "Merry Berry" and Sinful Colors "Last Chance" & "Snow Me White".  I like  how this manicure came out, and I think it's pretty festive! :-)

Check out the other challenge peeps and our hostess Iced Lacquer!

XOXO Alexis Leigh
Purple Castle
It's All About the Polish
A Ginger's Nail
The Polished Mommy
Robyn Loves Nails
Teen Polish Junkie
Mari522 (on Instagram)

Day 4: 12 Days of Christmas: Candy Canes!

OK, this challenge is kicking my rear!! I just found out our escrow will close sooner than I had thought, so now we'll be moving next month, which means that packing & planning is in over-drive around here!  I'm going to have to nub the nails pretty soon to protect them from becoming victims of some painful misfortune with all of the manual labor ahead :-/

But in the meantime, here are Day 4's nails:

Candy canes made with stripers.  I'm not so impressed with my green striper because the polish was pretty thin, but the red was awesome!  I still need practice with my striping, but I always think I'm getting better :-)

OK, gotta go and get Day 5 done! :-)

Day 3, 12 Days of Christmas: Snowflakes!

Yesterday was my birthday, and my super-crazy family took me out for a really fun dinner after work, so now I'm a day behind on my challenge...but it was totally worth it! ;-)

For this challenge, I went ahead and scoured my stamping plates and found 3 plates with snowflake designs on it.  I busted out Zoya "Song" and "Raven", and stamped it with my go-to stamping polish, Pure Ice "Silver Mercedes".  

"Song" is sooo amazing!  It's such a gorgeous blue, and it's so shimmery!  Get it.  So proud of myself for not getting behind on my challenge! ;-)

Check out the other challenge peeps and our hostess Iced Lacquer!

XOXO Alexis Leigh
Purple Castle
It's All About the Polish
A Ginger's Nail
The Polished Mommy
Robyn Loves Nails
Teen Polish Junkie
Mari522 (on Instagram)

Day 2: 12 Days of Christmas Challenge: Green

Day 2 of the 12 Days of Christmas Challenge is "Green".  I wanted to do a glitter, so I looked through my Indie stash, and found one by my absolute FAVORITE Indie Lacquistry with green glitter in it.  I really wanted to use red nails as the undies, but Day 1 was red, so I figured I could use silver as a base color again.

I LOVE the red nail!!  The glitter makes it look super Christmas-y, and now I regret not doing the undies red, or at least green!   And just what is this mystery Lacquistry polish?

It's one of her Halloween polishes "Witches Warts"!  I think it's got the potential for a very festive life after Halloween, don't you?

Check out the other cool peeps doing the challenge with me, and be sure to visit our hostess with the mostest, Iced Lacquer!

XOXO Alexis Leigh
Purple Castle
It's All About the Polish
A Ginger's Nail
The Polished Mommy
Robyn Loves Nails
Teen Polish Junkie
Mari522 (on Instagram)

Day 1: 12 Days of Christmas Challenge

OK, so I did pretty well on my first nail art challenge with the Halloween Challenge in October, but it got kinda hairy towards the end.  So when I saw a 12 Days of Christmas Nail Art Challenge posted by Iced Lacquer, I was intrigued.  It's not an every-day challenge, but it's more structured than the last challenge I did, which is helpful for a procrastinator like me :-).

So, I wasn't sure I wanted to commit to this challenge, but I remembered that the last challenge really, well, challenged my creativity, and I even tried out some new techniques.  It's good to kinda get forced outside of my comfort zone :-)

Day 1 is "Red".  Easy enough.  But it's for the holidays, so what's a girl to do?  Stamp!!

With flash:

This is Zoya "Trixie" (silver), "Sarah" (red), and "Raven" (black - duh!).  I used a Bundle Monster stamp that I think looks like poinsettias.  This is my first time using "Sarah", and she is beautiful!  Very sparkly in real life, which you can't see in the pics.  I was nervous about doing the french tips on top of the pattern, since I couldn't use acetone to clean up any wonky edges, but I think it turned out pretty good! :-D

Check out the other participants too!

XOXOAlexisLeigh

Purple Castle

It's All About the Polish

A Ginger's Nail

Robyn Loves Nails

The Polished Momy

Teen Polish Junkie

Ninja Polish Real Gold Top Coats

I did a pretty simple Zoya mani at the beginning of the work week.  Just "Kelly" grey with a "Raven" black accent nail.  After 4 days, it had held up so well throughout the week that I wanted to extend it for just a little longer.  So I added my new Ninja Polish REAL gold top coats to spice them up:

On Kelly, I added "He Went to Jarred", a 12K White Gold Flake topcoat.  On Raven, I added "The Midas Touch", a 24K Yellow Gold Flake topcoat.  These top coats are also a great bargain at $15 per bottle, as opposed to the $30 price tag I've seen on some other brands' gold flake top coat.  So I basically got 2 for one! And I LOVE white gold!

Very cool, Ninja Polish, very cool! 

Color Changing Garnet Really Changes Color!!

I don't care that Thanksgiving is over, and people are now in Winter mode, it's still Autumn to me!  I don't like seeing the Christmas decorations in November, and I'm holding out until December.  

So I wanted a mani that screams "Autumn" with all the colors of the changing leaves.  Enter the awesomeness that is "Color Changing Garnet" from Ninja Polish:

Isn't it absolutely breath-taking?  I used a base of China Glaze "Call of the Wild", then 2 coats of "CCG", then "COTW" for some quick tips.  For the accent nail, I used a leaf-shaped hole punch in painter's tape, then put the tape on the nail to make the leaf shape.  Because my nails are so curved, it wouldn't sit quite right, so it looks a little off-kilter, but still leaf-like! :-)

But look how the colors change!

Green:

Bronze-y Gold:

Garnet:

The color changes between the last 2 are much more apparent in real life.  It's so cool, like magic, and I just keep tilting my nails all day long to see the colors shift.  Very, very fantabulous, and all the colors of fall!!

Unfortunately, "Color Changing Garnet" is out of stock as of the date of this post, but you can get notified when it's back by signing up for an email.  I've ordered from Ninja Polish several times, and they are absolutely fantastic!  

Thanksgiving Watermarble Turkey!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I was happy with my previous mani, but I had to do something for Turkey Day!  I wanted to do a turkey, but I knew my skills still need some refining.  So I got the bright idea to use a watermarble for the tail feathers.

After 5 tries to get the marbling just right, my right hand actually came out better than my left: 

 Here's my left hand.  This turkey is a little plump, and his feathers are wonky!

Here's the right again:

And again:

I love this little guy!  I used Sinful Colors "Big Daddy" (orange) & "Pull Over" (yellow) and China Glaze "Red Satin" and "Call of the Wild".  I made the turkey with dotting tools.  

I'm so thankful for my family and friends, especially my husband and my 2 wonderful little boys.  I hope you take a moment today to think about what you're thankful for! 

Blingy, Aqua, Leopard-y French Mani

Today I was browsing through my Must-Do-Mani Pinterest board for inspiration, and THIS ONE by "Pretty Nails by Mal" caught my eye.  I've been in the mood for some holographic bling, and I haven't tried my China Glaze "I'm Not Lion" yet, so this seemed like the perfect time.

So here's "INL", in the sun: 

It's actually much more bling-y in life.  Love it!

 So I was inspired by the aqua & cheetah print, and I came up with this:

If this looks somewhat familiar, that's because I did a similar mani HERE, but I really liked it, so here it is again ;-).  This is Island Girl "Aloha Girl" on the tips, and China Glaze "Mahogany Magic" and "Liquid Leather" for the cheetah spots.   I think it's cute like this!