Purple and gold half moon.

I grabbed Orly Luxe from Sally's the other day because I've been looking for a good gold polish. I love it! It's got great coverage and shine and is perfect for using with the Konad.


I wanted to use it in a manicure so I decided I on a half moon with stripes.


I liked the outcome but I really wanted a little extra. So I added a few purple rhinestones.

Overall, it was a fun manicure and I was excited to use some of my nail art I'd ordered from eBay. I have another manicure with rhinestones and some Konads coming up. Also, went to Ulta this weekend and received an order from Sephora which equals lots of new manicures!

Not so formal French with a checkerboard.

I liked the Orly It's Up to Blue when I used it on the Liquid Vinyl for one of my previous manicures so I wanted to try it out full nail. I really love this teal and it's great coverage.

I started with a base coat, two coats of It's Up to Blue and a coat of Seche Vite. Since I didn't want to leave my manicure plain, I grabbed my OPI Honk If You Love OPI from the Roadies collection.

I wanted to test out the check pattern but didn't want to do all my nails so I opted just for an accent nail and tips on my other nails followed by a top coat.

I thought it turned out cute although I definitely need to work on taping straight. My squares are not even and that bothered me. I ended up taking the polish off and doing another manicure.

Seeing stars.

I bought this bottle of Sinful Color Let's Talk at Target because it looked to be a lovely shade of purple. When I painted my nails, it still appeared purple but when I took a picture, it kept looking blue. I even had Chris look at my nails and then the pictures to be sure I hadn't been inhaling too much acetone fumes lately.

I Googled it to see if anyone else had had the same problem and it seemed fairly common. One blogger suggested photographing the polish under bathroom light and it did seem to help. The first nail picture is in the kitchen and the second was in the bathroom.


I still liked the polish, regardless, but the blue looks very similar to the OPI blue I used in my last manicure and I don't need dupes in my inventory just yet.

After a base coat, two coats of the Sinful Color and a coat of Seche Vite, I added some sparkle with a coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Rock Star. After another coat of Seche Vite, I wanted to add something extra to my nails. So I grabbed some gold stars (just like the ones you got in kindergarten for taking a nap - I would SO ace that now!) and put them near the sides or bottom of my nails. Then I followed with a coat of Orly Liquid Vinyl and a top coat.

I liked this manicure but I didn't LIKE like it. We didn't stay together long but are definitely going to still be friends. The stars didn't stick as well as I had hoped and the end product wasn't as clean as I prefer but it was still fun to do and I will probably attempt something else with the stars in the future. Just because we broke up doesn't mean we can't still hang out!

In the beginning...

These are some of my earlier manicures. I don't have the bottles to tell you the colors but the first is a deep maroon/red over silver and the second is a dark plum/purple over silver. I guess I can't really call them "French" since the French manicure is white with pink. They need a new name. Not so formal French? Formally French?


I'm not too excited about posting pictures of my toes because, well, they're toes.

This was my first try at a not so ordinary pedicure. I did it all by hand which would be why the halves aren't equal but I still liked it and was pretty proud. This is actually the same dark plum/purple from my fingers with the same silver and then the white highlight.