November 6, 2012

KB Shimmer Swatches 3

by Andrea • Indie Polish Swatches • Tags: , , , , , , , ,

I purchased a few KB Shimmer polishes from my wishlist this week and I’m so in LOVE with them!  I had to try them all on this morning, so I have swatches of all three.  They all applied very smoothly and evenly, and I didn’t have to go fishing for glitter.  (Unfortunately my nails are now super short… ugh.  I had two bad breaks and had to cut them all down.)

Anyway… on to the swatches.  Each manicure is 3 coats of polish with 1 thick coat of Seche Vite top coat, which is the best for taming glitters in my opinion.

This is Don’t Teal Anyone… my favorite of the lot.  The color combo is so awesome and the blue gel base has great coverage.  I have this on both hands right now and plan to leave on for a few days.

KB Shimmer Don't Teal Anyone Swatch

KB Shimmer Don't Teal Anyone Swatch

This is Oh Splat!  I’ve had an obsession lately with polishes that have a white base and different colored glitters.  Of all the ones I’ve tried lately, this is my new favorite.  I feel like I say that every time I try one, but I swear this is the one!  LOL  Again, the base had very even coverage.  It was pretty opaque with just two coats, but I applied 3 coats in all of these swatches just for consistency.

KB Shimmer Oh Splat! SwatchKB Shimmer Oh Splat! Swatch

And this is Toucan Touch This.  The green base in this polish was much more sheer than the others, but it also applied great.  It has another great color combo.  Next time I might try adding this on top of another color to see what it would look like.

KB Shimmer Toucan Touch This SwatchKB Shimmer Toucan Touch This Swatch

November 6, 2012

Polish Days MAN-icure: Camouflage Nails 7

by Andrea • Nail Art • Tags: , , ,

This is my manicure for the Polish Days “MAN-icure” theme for Movember.  This is a tribute to the special man in my life who I reconnected with last winter after almost 20 years… my 7th grade crush and sports car driving super hero!  He spent 7 years in the Marines and served in the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.  While serving our country, he traveled the world and had experiences and made sacrifices that I can’t even try to comprehend.  He jokingly challenged me to do a camo manicure one night while we were talking on the phone, so this one is for him.  XOXO

To achieve this look I started with two coats of a neutral tan color, and then with a dotting tool I randomly applied brown, green and black shapes on the nail.  The colors that I used were OPI Did You ‘Ear About Van Gogh, China Glaze Ingrid, LA Colors Voodoo, and OPI Black Onyx.  I then topped it off with Essie Matte About You for a nice matte finish.

Chickettes.com Camouflage Nails

Camouflage Nails

November 3, 2012

Emily de Molly – It’s Complicated 2

by Andrea • Indie Polish Swatches • Tags: , , , ,

I’m in love with all of the swatches over at Emily de Molly’s Etsy store.  I found this brand a while ago and decided to purchase a bottle to try out before I buy more.  Now I’m wishing I had bought more because I paid a lot of money to have this shipped to the states from Australia, and it took almost 2 months to get here because of customs.  She did warn me that it would take that long, and I was totally cool with it.  I figured I would forget about it and have a surprise in the mail one day… but I didn’t forget.  I eagerly checked my mail every day hoping it would arrive.  The good news is that it looks like Llarowe is going to start carrying this brand, so hopefully it will be easier to get in the states.

Here are my swatches of It’s Complicated.  This polish has a white base and is filled with small purple and silver hexes, large black hexes and some triangular shapes.  There may be more in here that I didn’t notice too.  I love the formula and the way it applied.

Emily de Molly - It's ComplicatedEmily de Molly - It's Complicated

November 1, 2012

China Glaze Smoke and Ashes 0

by Andrea • Nail Lacquer Swatches • Tags: , , , ,

This is another China Glaze that I just picked up, Smoke and Ashes from the Hunger Games collection.  In the few swatches that I saw  it looked like the shimmery flecks were silver/grey, but they’re actually green.  The swatches below show two coats of this polish with one coat of Seche Vite on top.  I actually got great coverage with just one coat, and didn’t really need the second coat.  I wore this for a few days and really liked it.  I apologize that my fingers look a little icky in the photos though… I did a messy job when polishing and had to do a lot of cleanup with acetone and forgot to moisturize before taking the pics.

China Glaze Smoke & AshesChina Glaze Smoke & Ashes Swatch

November 1, 2012

China Glaze Fifth Avenue 1

by Andrea • Nail Lacquer Swatches • Tags: , , , ,

I recently purchased several China Glaze polishes that were on sale. I’ve heard from many people that the Romantique collection is great for stamping, so I grabbed several shades from that collection. Below are swatches of Fifth Avenue, which is a lovely dusty rose color. I stamped it with Passion and BM314 stamping plate from the 2012 BM plate collection. I’m actually having some problems with these plates and am talking with BM about getting a replacement set. The impressions in my plates seem to be too shallow and I’m having a hard time picking up images. This is one of the good ones of the bunch, and you can see that the stamp quality isn’t great. In person it doesn’t look horrible, but you can really see the imperfections when it’s magnified.

China Glaze Fifth Avenue stamped w PassionChina Glaze Fifth Avenue stamped w PassionChina Glaze Fifth AvenueChina Glaze Fifth Avenue

November 1, 2012

October 2012 at Chickettes.com 3

by Andrea • Nail Art • Tags:

I noticed that a couple of my favorite blogs post photo collages to recap their month of posts and thought it was a super cute idea.  I headed over to getLoupe.com to create my own, which you can see below.  Wow, October was a busy month for me!  It’s so cool to see all of my photos grouped together like this.  :)

October 30, 2012

Colorful Laser Beam Manicure 2

by Andrea • Nail Art • Tags: , , ,

I’ve been wanting to try this since I saw it on Pinterest.  The inspiration comes from Nail Stories.  For this mani I used different colored nail stripers to paint stripes, applied three strips of tape to each nail in different patterns, and then painted a coat of black over top.  I think I’ll try this again soon since I like how it turned out.

Colorful Laser Beam ManicureColorful Laser Beam Manicure

 

October 25, 2012

Rubik’s Cube Nails 4

by Andrea • Nail Art • Tags: , ,

I wanted to try something colorful and fun tonight, so I went for a Rubik’s cube inspired look.  I started with a white base, painted on black stripes with a striping brush, and then filled in the colored spaces with a dotting tool.  I topped it off with two thick coats of Seche Vite to smooth it out.  I think it turned out pretty cute.  Now if only I could figure out how to actually solve a Rubik’s cube!

I cut my nails down today.  I think I actually like this length, it’s very manageable.  The nail on my middle finger has a really terrible rip in it and it ripped even worse while I was gardening today.  It’s ripped more than half way across now and it’s really low and painful.  So I patched it up again with a teabag, nail glue and gave it a nice strong gel base.  Hopefully it holds for a while so I can grow it out.

Rubik's Cube NailsRubik's Cube NailsRubik's Cube Nails

October 25, 2012

Sinful Colors – Cinderella Floral Manicure 1

by Andrea • Nail Art, Nail Lacquer Swatches • Tags: , , , ,

I took advantage of the sale going on at Walgreens right now – Sinful Colors polishes for $0.99 each.  I purchased three shades of blue, which are all featured in this manicure.  The light blue is Cinderella, which has a real pretty subtle pink shimmer to it.  I wasn’t able to capture the pink shimmer in the photos unfortunately.  The color on the accent finger is called Kissy and it’s a dark teal with a glittery finish.  And then I stamped the floral pattern using Bundle Monster plate BM323 with Sinful Colors “Gorgeous”.  I love the softness of this.

Soft blue floral manicure with Sinful colorsSoft blue floral manicure with Sinful colorsSoft blue floral manicure with Sinful colors

October 23, 2012

Burberry Nails 1

by Andrea • Uncategorized • Tags: ,

I attempted a Burberry type pattern on my nails tonight, but the lines turned out a little chunkier than intended.  In my opinion, only my thumb looks semi-decent.  I also had a hard time photographing this to show the contrast between the white and tan colors.  I might attempt this pattern again but with a darker tan as the base and perhaps using nail art tape for thinner lines.

Burberry Nail Design

This is a quick pic in my dark living room vs. the light box.  It shows a little more contrast.

Burberry Nail Art
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