Bright and Beautiful "Gradient"

Hey there sweetums! How is everyone after Thanksgiving, still in a food coma?? I had such good food AND I got 4 days off of work!! It was so awesome that I don't know if I'll remember what to do when I go back.

My husband and I actually got to go on a date! We went out to dinner at HuHot and then we did some Christmas shopping at TJ Maxx. Then I went into Ulta and my husband bought me the Be Merry Be Bright palette for my bday which is coming up on the 11th. All of you, please, feel free to shower me with gifts of polish, makeup, candy and jewelry!

Alright, finally on to what y'all came here to see - mah nails! These were SO fun, quick and easy! I started off with a base coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - White On so that I would only have to do one coat of the colors and they would really POP!

I wanted the "gradient" to be kind of rough and didn't really want it to blend so I just used the polish brushes and haphazardly added the colors to 1/3 of the nail. At the base of the nail is one of my favorite polishes, Barry M - Indigo. Then comes one of my new polishes (new to me!) Essie - Bottle Service which is a beautiful, rich, pigmented pink! Finally, I added China Glaze - Custom Kicks. This is a fabulous, creamy bright teal! I stamped over my "gradient" using Konad Black and Cheeky Jumbo Plate 9 - Wild At Heart.

If you like stamping, you seriously need to check out these Cheeky Jumbo Plates, they're freaking adorable! I only have three for now but plan to add to that eventually!

Then, of course, I had to top it all off with a coat of China Glaze - Fairy Dust. What do you think? This was one of my faves and it even lasted 4 days before I finally took it off and it still didn't have a chip in it - that's a major record for me!

You love it, don't you?? I know you do! Go ahead, comment and tell me how much you adore me and my fabulous nails!

I seriously love each and every one of you that takes the time out of their busy, crazy lives and reads my little blog, it honest-to-goodness means a lot to me!

If you're wondering why I keep putting the word "gradient" in quotations, it's because there's really nothing gradual about this gradient, it's more of a splat of colors. So now you know, your life is complete.

Mint Manis For Talia Joy

This week saw the world losing a beautiful little soul in Talia Castellano. I only discovered Talia's YouTube channel a few months ago but I was hooked from my first video. Here was a young girl at an age when most girls are intensely self-conscious, showing her beautiful face to the world even though she had lost her hair to cancer treatment. Talia taught us to be grateful for our blessings and to smile in the face of adversity.

 

 I can't count the number of times when I was playing "poor me" that her beautiful, smiling face popped into my head and knocked me right out of my funk. If she could deal with so much, so young and so gracefully, I could dang well buck up and put a smile on my face when dealing with my trivial problems.

 

I personally dealt with cancer when my stepson was diagnosed with osteosarcoma (bone cancer) at the age of 11. He is now cancer free going on 3 years but the ugly disease stole his leg. Childhood cancer is a terrifying and incredibly unfair disease that I have seen affect far too many families.

I have to admit that after reading on Talia's Facebook page that she had passed, I picked up my little baby girl that just turned 1 (I have 3 girls!) and held her so tight and cried like crazy! For the last few days, every time I tell my girls how much I love them, I get a little teary-eyed. But I don't regret that, it's one of the gifts that Talia gave to us as she left this world - thankfulness. 

 

My nails were done using 4 polishes. The base is Barry M - Mint Green. Then I added touches of Avon - Don't Be Jaded, Catrice - Jade Is Not My Name and Essie - Go Overboard.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks to Nicole from Nail Polish Wars, today bloggers and nail artists are painting their nails mint in honor of sweet, beautiful, courageous, spunky, amazing Talia Castellano!!! Please check out all of the manis in the inLinkz for more amazing manis!

 

 

Enjoy your peace little Talia - you earned it!

 

 

Bright Dot Flowers Nails

It's been a whole week since I've blogged - BAD Lindsey! But I have something here to start the week off bright. No, that's not a typo - this mani is bright and bold!

 

I decided to try out the dot flowers that I learned how to do in a video tutorial by Nicole from Young Wild and Polished! You can find that tutorial HERE!

 

I'm terrible at picking colors to go together for a man but I really like how this combo turned out! The base is two coats of Barry M - Indigo. This polish is one of my top 12 in my stash. I did a vid about my favorites on my YouTube channel and you can watch that baby here! Warning - the video is over 11 minutes long because I love to talk! The flowers were done with Sinful Colors - 24/7 and Avon Nailwear Pro+ - Sunshine.

 

What do you think - do you like them, do you??

 

 

Hopefully I will see you again on Wednesday, barring any disaster - God forbid!

Rainbow Dots Nails!

Hello Monday warriors! I hope your weekend left you well-rested and ready for the week ahead - I know mine didn't! ;)

 

Today I have something simple and cute for you - rainbow dots! The base is three coats of Essie - Lapis of Luxury. It's such a pretty blue but so sheer! Then the dots, in rainbow order are Lancôme - Miss Coquelicot, Bettina - Resort Starfish then Art Deco Yellow. The green is a Pure Ice polish that the label has fallen off of and I'm too lazy to look it up! Then for the blue we have Pure Ice - French Kiss. Up next is Barry M - Indigo (which you can hear me rave about in my top 12 polishes vid here!) And last, but not least is Illamasqua - Prosperity! This was fun and simple to do and I love the way it turned out!

 

 

I hope your Monday is as restful and relaxed as it can be!

Purple Polkadot Nails

Helloski! How is everyone's Thursday so far? My week has been a bit of ups and downs but I'm still here and that's what counts, right?

 

I've got something simple for you today! I painted a base of 2 coats of Barry M - Berry Ice Cream and then slapped on some striping tape in a diagonal line across all 5 nails. This was a LOT harder than I thought it would be! You can see that in some places the strip of dots is thinner on some fingers but I think it turned out fairly well! The dots were made using the following colors, China Glaze - Gothic Lolita, a England - Avalon, Avon Nailwear Pro + - Decadence and NYC Long Wearing - French Tip White. I got this idea from a pin I saw on Pinterest but, unfortunately, the pin was not linked back to the source and there was no watermark. What do you think of this? I kinda think anything with dots is good!

 

 

 

Also, PLEASE help me make fabulous YouTube video tutorials by answering a couple of questions and giving me your opinions HERE! I appreciate you all so much!

 

Random Hearts Mani

It's Friday, it's Friday, oh yeah, oh yeah it's Friday! Can you tell that I'm excited about it being Friday? It's been a pretty good week though, I can't complain! How have all of you been doing?

I am so proud of these nails today, they turned out so much better than I thought they would! I never have time to do freehand art so this was really a treat! I've been seeing so many cute heart manicures going around and I was getting a little jealous! Of course, all those little pictorals that show you how "easy" it is to make a perfect heart are full of bunk! I made the two little dots and then used a brush to try to drag the polish down to a point to make the perfect heart and what I ended up with was not very heart-like! So I figured out my own best method. When I first did the hearts I wasn't too impressed with them but once I added the white highlights they really came to life! I also like the randomness of them. I really have an issue with randomness. I see all those awesome dotticures where the dots are randomly placed and they are so cute but every time I try to recreate it, it turns out a hot mess! I'm pretty sure that "random" is a skill all it's own and certainly one that I haven't mastered.

The polishes used here are a base of 2 coats of China Glaze Hang Ten Toes. This is such an awesome pink, I'm really loving it! Then the hearts are made using Catrice - Twist of Lemon, Barry M - Indigo, China Glaze - I'm With The Lifegaurd and the highlights are done with NYC Long Wear - French Tip White.

Waterspotted Nails

Happy Humpday - thank goodness! I'm late so I'll just list the polishes and leave you to it! This is the waterspotted design created by Cute Polish and I had to give it a try. My experience was that it was best to use room temp, filtered water and I actually used plain rubbing alcohol in a little spray bottle! Also, I first tried this with Wet 'n Wild Black Creme and it would not spread out in the water so I switched to aEngland Camelot (which almost made me cry!) and it was easy peasy from there!

 

Polishes Used:

Finger Paints (unlabeled hot pink)

China Glaze Papaya Punch

Barry M Indigo ( this polish is amaaaaazing!)

Catrice Twist Of Lemon

aEngland Camelot (the ULTIMATE black polish!)

 

Holo Watermarble!

 Hey lovely people!! Ugh, I'm sorry I've been such a lame blogger! With work being crazy and the baby still sick, life has been super insane around here! With that said, I have a super-delicious mani to share with you today! When I put on Color Club Harp On It, the holo goodness was so awesome, I knew that I wanted to do something amazing with it. So what's a girl to do? WATERMARBLE!!! From thumb to pinkie, the colors used are: Bettina Glamour Flame, Bettina Art Deco Yellow, NYC In A Minute High Line Green, Barry M Indigo and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Acceler-Grape!

It took me forever to get the polishes to play nicely with the clear coat (which was INM Out The Door) and spread properly but I'm pretty happy with the finished product. What do you guys think? I hope to see you soon!

 

 

 

 

Barry M Ombre Watermarble

 Hello and Happy Monday! :) I got some freakin' awesome nail mail from Rachel at Phoenix Nails!! She is so stinkin' sweet and has been putting out some really cute Christmas nail art so go check her out! :)

 

Part of her amazing mail was three gorgeous Barry Ms that were on my wish list and once I had them all together, they just screamed, "MARBLE ME!" So who was I to ignore that? The three polishes were Mint Green, Berry Ice Cream and Indigo.

 

If you look closely you may notice that, starting with my thumb, each finger gets progressively lighter. What is this sorcery?? Well, I usually use white undies under my marbles so I wanted to know what would happen if I used some other polishes and this is it! For my thumb I used Sally Hansen Hard As Nails - Black Heart. The index finger is the  Barry M - Indigo, the middle finger is Berry Ice Cream, the ring finger is the Mint Green and my pinky is OPI Alpine Snow! I thought it was pretty cool how it turned out, what do you think?  

 

 

I thought these Barry Ms were great for marbling and I had no issues with spreading. I'm still trying to perfect drawing the designs in the polish but that's just practice! sorry for the tip wear, I didn't get my tips wrapped all that well! :)