Guilty Pleasures - 37 Color Water Marble

Yeah, I wore 37 colors at once.  Let me explain...

I am part of a monthly Bunco group, and this month it was my turn to host.  My theme was "guilty pleasures," so we had scorecards with things like Jake Gyllenhaal, fried chicken, Britney Spears CDs and fruity cocktails on them.  We had Cheetos and some delicious cupcakes and mini corn dogs.  We had a REALLY delicious cocktail with marshmallow vodka, creme de cacoa and cream soda.  While I was thinking about MY guilty pleasures, of COURSE nail polish came to mind immediately.  So it got me thinking... how many different colors could I wear at once, and how would I put them on?

I thought about a patchwork mani, but I eventually settled on a water marble.  With experimenting with colors, it took me a couple of hours to finish this, but it was worth it - people loved it!

I had several turn out the way I've wanted my others to turn out.  I used distilled water this time and it seemed to help with getting the polishes to spread much more than I've ever gotten them to do before.  I was surprised how much I like the glitter nail and that China Glaze Riveting turned coral, and it was fun getting to know which of my polishes work best and ideas for new color combos.

 

 

The colors I used, from left to right:

 

Pinkie: Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Bronze Pink, Revlon Matte Ruby Ribbon, OPI I'm Suzi & I'm a Chocoholic, Sinful Colors Bare
Ring: CoverGirl Nailslicks Starry Blue, Revlon Color Illusion Purple Twilight, Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Rock-a-bye, Revlon Perfectly Plum, CoverGirl Nailslicks Wild Plum
Middle: Ulta High Roller, Pure Ice Silver Mercedes, China Glaze Swing Baby, Pure Ice Iced Copper
Pointer: Pure Ice Splash, Sally Hansen HD DVD, Sinful Colors Cinderella, Pure Ice All Night Long, Ulta Bam-blue-zled
Thumb: LA Colors White, OPI Skull & Glossbones, Sinful Colors Black on Black

Thumb: Revlon Double Truffle, OPI Wooden Shoe Like to Know, Wet N Wild Cocoa Shimma (This one turned out pretty crappy, so no close up shot)
Pointer: Sinful Colors Bare, Sally Hansen HD Byte, Pure Ice Super Star, Zoya Jacy
Middle: Pure Ice Oh Baby!, Sinful Colors Frenzy, Ulta After Party, Sally Hansen Gem Crush Glitz Gal
Ring: Sally Hansen HD Resolution, Ulta Limelight, OPI Jade is the New Black, Ulta Jaded, Piggy Polish Envy
Pinkie: China Glaze Riveting, Ulta High Roller

Happy Hunger Games Day!

As this post publishes at it's schedule time of 12 AM, I'll be sitting in a packed theater watching a midnight show of The Hunger Games.  SO EXCITED!  In honor of the occasion and my acquisition of one of the best polishes I've ever seen, here is another Hunger Games mani using the China Glaze Capitol Colours polishes.

I wanted to use Riveting and Stone Cold.  There are some absolutely fabulous Hunger Games manis out there today - check some of them out on my Pinterest nail board!  I was so impressed and would have loved to do something fancy, but I'm just nowhere near as good at freehanding as many of these ladies.  I decided to do a funky french mani, and then I decided to use my zig zag scissors instead of doing a straight line.

After I'd painted them, I put on a coat of Seche Vite to seal it before mattifying.  Here are a few shots of this one shiny.  I didn't love it, honestly I like Stone Cold how it comes out of the bottle with it's soft matte finish. It's one of my favorite polishes ever, and on Monday I'll have a few swatches of it on it's own.

Next I applied a coat of Essie Matte About You to transform it.

I don't love it as much as I'd hoped I would.  Because the Riveting was applied over the darker polish, it is a tiny bit spotty and darker than when it's on it's own.  When it was shiny it wasn't as visible, but after I applied the matte it didn't look as gorgeous as it does on it's own with a matte topcoat.

I'll be wearing this tonight to the movie, but I'm not sure how long I'll keep it on after that!

Have you ever done nails inspired by a book or movie?  Will you be seeing The Hunger Games this weekend?

China Glaze Capitol Colours Mani + Bonus Haul

I have been coveting just about every polish in the China Glaze Capitol Colours collection since I found out about them (you can see amazing swatches of all the colors at Vampy Varnish).  I seriously want to own all of them, but the three I've most had my eye on are Riveting, Agro & Stone Cold.  When I was walking at the mall with Danny yesterday I noticed a display in Hot Topic - the colors had arrived!  I didn't buy there because they're $1-2 more than at Sally Beauty Supply, so today I stopped by there to see if they had them in.  They only had a few - but they did have Agro & Riveting!  I also picked up Luxe & Lush.  I may stop back at Hot Topic later this week to see, I think they did have Stone Cold in, and that one is so unique I really want to get my hands on it.

When I got home, I was trying to decide what to do and I was thinking about a mani I'd seen in the last few days with a stripe pattern.  I first saw a design like this a couple of months ago at Nailside, and I'd tried it once before.  My first thought was to do Riveting under black, but then I started looking at my swatches of Riveting & Agro together and decided to do a full on Hunger Games mani!

One of the things I was dying to try with Riveting was a matte topcoat.  Sam at Fashion Polish featured this the other day and it was so gorgeous!  I decided to top this mani off with Essie Matte About You and... wow.  I LOVE it!  I feel like it's muted and a little gritty and beautiful and perfect to go with The Hunger Games.

I also went and had my nails filled today and re-shaped.  They're shorter than they were before, and I went to a different salon on the recommendation of a few friends.  I am so much happier with them - she spent a lot of time on the detail, filing them down after she'd put the acrylic on and making it so that they were not thick and bulky.  She also gave me the square shape I wanted.  From now on, I'll be going to Happy Nails!  It's a little more expensive, but it's worth it for the quality!

I also stopped at Rite Aid today just to browse, and came across a heck of a deal.  This is my haul:

I got all of these for under $7!  They were all 75% off.  I'd looked at the Sally Hansen HD polishes before, but I hadn't wanted to spend the money.  Well, for under $2 each I decided how could I not?  I picked up the other two on a whim because they were super cheap - I think the Wet N Wild one only came out to around 25 cents.  Usually when the polishes are so discounted I have no interest in the colors, so this was a fun find!

Multicolor Crackle

I recently got a couple of new crackle polishes, and I'd seen the idea of a multicolored base under crackle several places and thought it would be cool to try.

The polishes I used for the base coat were Sinful Savage, Sinful Dream On, Piggy Polish Envy and the orange is Neon Pumpkin, which is a Nail Art Pen from Nubar.  The topcoat is Sally Hansen Ink Spill.

This was a really fun mani, and it lasted a few days.  The clear topcoat really made it pop since the Sinful polishes were matte - I didn't know before recently that most neon polishes come out matte - and the crackle also comes out somewhat matte.  I like the look a lot better with shine!