THERE'S NO PLACE LIKE . . . . . . . . DALLAS????

Today I'm rocking China Glaze - Ruby Pumps. A gorgeous color with tons of red glitter in it. Glitter is your friend, people! :) Anyway since I am heading out of town I decided to do a little experiment. I am going to see how well my manicure will last.

First of all I removed my artificial nails last night. Then I did a base coat of Orly - Bonder. I love the nasty, yellowish color this stuff is in the bottle for some reason. I then applied 3 coats of China Glaze - Ruby Pumps and then a thick coat of Poshe Super-Fast Drying Top Coat, my personal favorite choice for top coats. I am curious to see if this will last through my vacation and with how much wear and tear. I also applied the same things to my toes as well, hey it's not often that they match!

WHAT I USED:

INSIDE PICTURES:

OUTSIDE PICTURES:

AND MY RUBY PUMPS TOES:

LIPPMANN SUPERSTAR FRANKEN

Yesterday while checking out e-polishblog Katee had posted pictures of Lippmann's Limited Holiday Collection. I was admiring Superstar, you know the really cool looking one with the copper glitter chunks in it, the one that is $15.00, oh yeah and it is sold out, you know that one. Any one of those reasons alone was good enough to make a request at Never Too Much Glitter's Weblog. Just yesterday I requested that she try to franken Lippmann's Superstar. For those of you who don't know, she is a Franken Genius! To my surprise this morning, she granted my request and even had pictures up already! That's service, folks :) She did a great job of it too. With a different size/shape glitter it could be a perfect match, which I still think doesn't take away from how close she came. The best part - it cost her 10 cents to make! So for those of you on a budget or who don't like spending over $10 bucks for one bottle of nail polish (ME!!) check her blog out. She has detailed, very easy to follow instructions for making your very own Superstar franken.

You can check out the pictures of the original on e-polishblog for comparisons.

Photo is property of Nevertoomuchglitter

THANKSGIVING

I will be traveling to Texas over the Thanksgiving holiday to visit my mother. My mother is currently working in another part of Texas and we are meeting half way in Dallas. Since we will be in a hotel I think it will be a fairly busy time so I am not going to promise any new posts. I am seriously thinking about getting one of those fish pedicures though, I looked up a salon in Dallas that does them, so you never know!! I hope everyone has a great time with their families for Thanksgiving!

NAIL VENUS MAGAZINE

Nail Venus magazine is one of many Japanese magazines dedicated to nail art. These magazines are literally page after page of nails and nail art. I finally found a site where I can view these magazines in full, but I can't embed any of the images from them on here, so I will just have to provide the links. These were just a couple of the nails that really stood out to me.

The first link is a page that has REAL diamonds on this lady's tips! I don't know if that is really what you are buying (it is in another language) or if they are referring to diamond "strength", but it sure looks like the diamonds are for your nails! Either way what girl wouldn't like this? Can you imagine having money like that??

DIAMOND NAILS LINK

This next link is just some purple nails that I really liked and I might try to imitate the look for you guys later. The nails on the page I am referring to are the large image nails on the left side of the page.

PURPLE NAILS LINK

The third link I have is for some plaid nails. What really impressed me about these is that the magazine shows you how to make the plaid design. I never would have thought that this plaid design was done by hand. The directions make it seem fairly simple, however I don't know how simple it would be doing it on your own hands. I might give this plaid design a shot in the near future though. It kind of looks Christmasey to me!

PLAID NAILS LINK

The last link I have for you is totally not nail related. I was shocked though when I saw this ad. From what I can tell it is for a diet "item" of some sort. They have before, during and after pics of two girls, and I don't know if it is just me, but the after pics these girls look way to skinny! There is so much space in between their little thighs and their little knobby knees just look so sad. I don't know if that is the popular look over there, but it seems even more drastic than the standards that Hollywood has, and I thought that was pretty extreme.

SKINNY GIRLS LINK

I would love to hear what you guys think about the links that I put up. What do you think about the plaid nails, do you think it is something you might try? Love to hear from you guys, it makes a blog so much more interesting :)

NUBAR NAIL ART CONTEST

Calling All Cosmetologists and Nail Technicians: Nubar is having a nail art contest, I put a little of their information below:

Celebrate the holidays with nubar “The Healthy Alternative For Beautiful Nails” contest this December. Enjoy showcasing your developed talents and have some fun too. Winning designs will be featured in upcoming news letters and on the nubar website with your name and salon name credit. What a great way to expand your business.
The competition which takes place during the month of December is open to Cosmetologists and Nail Technicians.

Unfortunately it is only open to Nail Tech students, Nail Techs and Cosmetologists, but in case any read this blog I thought you might like this info. Please click here for all the rules and the prize amounts and how to enter.

SOME COOL LINKS

Came across a few things that I thought I would link for you guys:

FIRST - Darren Garnick, a blogger for the Boston Herald, who I posted about yesterday, has an update on the fish pedicure. It was recently banned in the state of New Hampshire. I am adding the link for his story on it being banned, and also another link that has the salons/states that it is still legal in.



FISH PEDICURE BANNED

LIST OF LEGAL FISH PEDICURE SALONS/STATES



The third link that I have for you is sort of related to Darren, you might remember his first post that we were made aware of was the Pro Obama nail art. I have come across, on one of my favorite pass the time blogs, You Know You Dead Azz Wrong, a picture of some Obama nail art that is on another level! lol


OBAMA NAIL ART


Enjoy my Polish Peeps!

SALLY'S HAUL - AGAIN

While visiting one of my favorite nail polish blogs, Nail Juice, I saw a very hot konadicure! For the base color she used China Glaze - 2Nite from the OMG! Collection. This color is pure hotness (please click here to be directed to the pictures on Nail Juice I am referring to)! I left a message in her comments section that I had to go get it - today!

So true to my word, at lunch I hightailed it over to Sally's Beauty Supply. As I stated earlier they are having a great sale going on, buy two China Glaze polishes get one free, plus if you have their discount card, which I do, it comes to $3.25 a bottle, so really with the one bottle free that comes to a total of $2.17 A BOTTLE - - - for China Glaze! Don't know how long this sale will last, but if you have a Sally's close by I would recommend picking up some China Glaze.

However, when I got to Sally's they did not have this color. But I picked up 6 colors that I previously didn't have. Some are kind of boring because I needed just some basic colors for some of my nail art designs. I purchased:

Platinum Silver (a silver shimmer)

White on White (white creme)

Solar Power (bright yellow shimmer)

Liquid Leather (black creme)

Sexy Silhouette (magenta shimmer)

Ruby Pumps (red glitter)

This is the second Sally's I have been too that has been sold out of that new Christmas collection green glitter that just came out! Bummer man!

I still had one more option to get my 2Nite shade, there is another little beauty supply store, so I headed over there. Yes! They had it, but they wanted $6.99 for it (see how good that $2.17 looks now?!)!

I also picked up China Glaze - Crystal ball, a maroon with silver/holo glitter, and this one was $5.99 - darn you Sally's!

I also picked up a new Kiss! art brush and some little storage vials from Cinapro for my nail art supplies.

All in all - another good nail polish trip!

NEVER TOO MUCH GLITTER

My fellow blogger, over at Never Too Much Glitter, just posted some new nail art she did..........and well, just take a look:

To me it looks like Autumn Candy! This wonderful lady does almost a new franken polish every day! She has done a tutorial on how to franken almost any color out of using a basic four colors. Not to mention that her nail art is exceptional as well. She just did some corn nail art that was too cute for words!

If you haven't already done so, check her out! You can be directed to her site by either clicking her link on my list of favorite blogs or simply click here, either way you don't want to miss out on what she has to offer.

SALLY'S HAUL

I got some cool new nail art stuff at Sally's over this past weekend.

First are these cool foil heart shapes. These can be used inlaid in artificial nails, which makes for a really cool look, in my opinion. They can be used on top of the nail as well.

Here is an example of nails that have been "inlaid" from Viv Simmonds over at Vivid Nails. With the exception of the roses, all of the colors, glitters and nail art items are completely covered by the acrylic or gel, so your nails always look this way with no polish and they have a very smooth finish. Viv has lots of great pics of nails that she does, please take a look at her blog for more examples of her work.

(Above picture is property of Viv Simmonds at Vivid Nails)

Silver Bouillons, these can be used in alot of different ways and can make some intricate looking nail art!

These came as one package. From l to r: Gold Glitter, Foil Tinsel, Small Gold Bouillon, Gold & Silver Foil Hearts.

Sally's has just recently started selling China Glaze fingernail polish for those of you who didn't know. They were having a sale, buy two get one free! I also have a Sally's discount card too, which makes the price around $3.00 each, so I got 3 bottles of China Glaze for $6.00 - can you top that? lol The colors I purchased were: Flying Dragon (swatch's of this coming soon), Turned Up Turquoise & Frostbite. I must admit I was most excited about T.U.T., but after I tried all the colors on I was most impressed with Frostbite (which can be seen in my Christmas Nails Post here. ) All in all I think it was a pretty good haul.

I took my 6 yr old son with me before he had to be at a birthday party, talk about the last place he wanted to be! But he was pretty well behaved, and he sure does love when the girls in the store fawn all over him! His favorite color was Frostbite, he said because it was like frosting you bite - how I love kids ways of thinking!

CHRISTMAS NAILS

Well last night I got a creative streak in me and did a couple of different Christmas nail art designs. I think these turned out really cute, too! I have several pics to show you so I'm gonna cut the typing short on this post and get right to the pics:

Thumb:

OPI - Vodka & Caviar, Colorama - Ruby Rays, Green NAP, Round Multi Colored Glitter, Foil Star

Index Finger:

OPI - Vodka & Caviar, Sinful Colors - San Francisco, Foil "tinsel" type nail art laid in single file lines down nail

Middle Finger:

China Glaze - Frostbite, White NAP, Round Gem Stones, Round foil glitter, used some of the "tinsel" type pieces to accentuate the lines of the snowflakes and add some more bling. This is so pretty in real life. My second favorite I did.

Ring Finger:

OPI - Vodka & Caviar, Green NAP, Round silver glitter used to make the ribbon on the present, a bow shaped gem stone. This one was really hard to capture! Come on Santa I need that new camera!

Pinky Finger:

China Glaze - Frostbite, White & Black NAP, round foil glitter (3 gold for buttons, 2 blue for eyes, and three red to line the top hat) This one is my favorite of the bunch!

Whole Hand:

Nail Polish I Used:

In the picture below, if you look at the second jar from the left, it has the "tinsel" type nail art I described above using.

Merry Christmas ! ! !