 | Hidey ho! Another day, another challenge! Today in the 33DC we are doing Tribals. Can you hear me groaning from there? Yeah, I almost hate tribal designs. They're up there with those ikat designs in that I just don't dig 'em. They can be cool, and I actually kind of liked the ones I did today, but you can bet if I'm not doing them for a challenge, I'm just not doing them period. |
The Digit-al Dozen Domination!
- Sunday, September 29, 2013
- By Missy
- 0 Comments
As you may know - I am a very very proud member of The Digit-al Dozen.
We recently went GLOBALZ!
We now have a full blog and social media set up to connect with people and share some tips, tutorials and lots of fun things.
I think you'll find it a great companion to our own monthly challenge posts, and you can also read about all of our members and lots more!
Click the banner below to go to our blog and you can find tons of ways to follow us from there!
Let's get spooky with some glowing skulls and screaming queens!
- Sunday, September 29, 2013
- By Missy
- 0 Comments
 | It may not quite be October yet, but around here Halloween is almost every day. I missed a lot of the Halloween fun last year during my "hiatus", so I am pumped to do double time this year. Yesterday I showed you the amazing new fall collection from Chirality, Nails From the Crypt - and today I am showing you two of its polishes with some "art" |
Chirality Presents - Nails From the Crypt! Ooooooh! Ahhhhhh!
- Saturday, September 28, 2013
- By Missy
- 0 Comments
 | Hey homies! Chirality is at it again with an amazing fall collection, titled: Nails From the Crypt! How awesome is that name?! My favorite part about this collection is that there are 5 polishes and 5 different finishes! There is a holo, a jelly, a shimmer, a glitter and a creamy shimmer(?) - what do people call those? Either way - something for everyone! |
So before we get started I should bring to your attention that these photos are square format. I thought I would try it out since lately it seems like everything is squarely formatted. But it's pretty difficult to get your whole hand in a square frame, and it seems weird looking a little. So this is an even more special post in that it's probably the only one that will show square photos!
It's an LE Post! The only one of it's kind!
Chirality - (S)creme Queen
Chirality - Devil's Night
Chirality - Cropsy
Chirality - The Stuff
Chirality - I Got a Rock
I Got a Rock. Hahaha!! I assume this references It's The Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. This polish is an amazing brown holo with a slight purple lean. I put it next to a milk chocolate brown holo I had and it definitely seemed purple in comparison, but on the nail it looks like a gorgeous brown.
The holo in this is very good, but I always have the damnedest time getting the holo to show for me under my lighting setup! This is two coats of I Got a Rock with no top coat.
This is a rich and creamy choice for fall....I love brown holos so so so much lately, so this is a hugely welcome addition to my collection!
So creamy and dreamy.
Cropsy - Have you heard of the legend of Cropsy? He's some weird boogeyman urban legend who stalks the woods with an axe...its kind of like one of those stories you hear around campfires and what not. This polish is based on the character of the same legend from the movie The Burning. THIS Cropsy is less scary - a gorgeous yellow sheer base with red and yellow glitters. There are circles, hex's, shards, micros - its a great array of campfire wonder.
I paired Cropsy up over (S)creme Queen - this is just one coat and top coat. It's glitter packed!
As you can see by the big circles, no problems keeping those on the brush at all. This polish will slightly alter your base color as its tinted yellow, but since I put it over a fairly dark base, its not very noticeable here.
And matte? Holy heavens! So perfectly harvest-like.
Devil's Night - A classic name for the night before Halloween. There are so many names for the nights leading up to and following Halloween - but this is my favorite. Coincidentally, this is also my favorite of the collection. A stunning dark eggplant leaning brown with blurple shimmer. Obvious shimmer.
I can hardly describe the base. Simply put, it's Raven-esque. Dark and deep and intriguing. Is it brown? Purple? Burgundy? Black? Whatever it is, it is Noir at its best.
This is 2 coats of Devil's Night, no top coat. Has a great shine and a smooth finish and application. That shimmer...the minute I unwrapped this, I am certain I let out a small gasp of wonder.
And matte its just becomes so mysterious. It does seem to lose a bit of its allure when mattified, sometimes thats the case. But I think it still looks equally beautiful and understated - and VAMPY.
Micro flakies!! See why I'm so in love? This polish won me over so much in fact that it currently resides on my sidebar as a "Gnarly Need"!
(S)creme Queen - what a fantastic name! A throwback to the days of old Horror B-Movies and the legendary Scream Queens. This polish runs more jelly than creme, but with full opacity at 3 coats, let's split the diff and call it a crelly.
At first coat this polish comes off pure grape jelly. But after 3 coats you are left with this insanely glossy blood on your hands. The best kind of blood on your hands! This is pure Autumn into Winter polish right here. Formula was immaculate.
This is NO top coat ya'll! I mean, I can (S)creme it louder, but do I have to!?!
If you are careful I think you may be able to pull this off in two coats even. I swatched this twice on accident, and the first time I did 3, but these pictures I only did two.
The Stuff - classic horror. I haven't even seen this movie, but I need to. I need to spend some time really digging through the horror parts of my Netflix queue. I have so much in there I feel I'll never see it all. And horror is my jam. It's almost all I watch. Anyway - this is a fun polish - its a medium lavender with copper microglitters! I love copper glitter!
You'd think an awesome lavender polish with copper glitter would be enough right....but then Amanda went and made it matte! MATTE! You know how this pulls at my heart strings.
It's actually more of a rubber finish, which is even better, I prefer color polish to dry like this and not flat matte. This is 2 coats with no top coat. It's like wearing a latex costume.
And I threw a top coat on to show you how nicely she shines up. Not bad for something named after Goo!
So there you have the new Chirality Fall/Halloween collection.
Chirality has really made a name for themselves, not only in the polish world, but also as a couple of really awesome people who have a wicked love for creepy, horrifying things - just like me.
I love building relationships with people like Amanda and Jason of Chirality - and if you have yet to buy from their line, now is really the time.
Well not NOW, but on Monday.
September 30th this collection will be launching, so make sure you get in line for it...I guarantee you will be sad if you miss these.
The thing to note here is that Chirality is really known for awesome holos and glitterbombs - so to see them doing jellies, cremes and shimmers is amazing! First go out, they nailed it!
They're all amazing, but for those of us who can't buy all the polishes, there are definitely some stand-outs here you cannot ignore!
I've also got a bonus nail art to show you tomorrow featuring a couple of these polishes!
 | 33 Day Challenge - today is Tape! Sometimes it gets hard to think of new ways to do a tape mani - and I give it up to the people who can really get intricate and ingenius with it. I usually choose to go the easier, less amount of tape, less psychotic overdose of impatience route... |
For this tape mani I am using 2 of my new matte polishes from Mentality.
During one of our random afternoon conversations, Miss Debbie Crumpet mentioned I should check these out. Next thing I knew I had like 7 of them in my shopping cart. I picked a bunch of awesome, rich fall tones too, so expect to see those throughout this season/challenge.
This was super super basic. I just threw on a base coat, in this case I used Butter London Nail Foundation to give a slight tint and then when it was dry I put on my tapes in criss-cross pattern formation.
Then I just did a loose/messy gradient using the two matte polishes, Resilience and Hope, they are easy one coaters so this was pretty snappy - but I think I sponged down colors about 3 times before I pulled the tape up.
I also took pictures of this glossy but I thought this way looked so much better that I just threw them away.
This is with no top coat at all - and I think the texture of the matte and the ridges from the tape give it a pretty interesting appearance.
Here are the prompts for the challenge - jump in and catch up if you wanna! Or just start on the next one! You can go HERE to join the group and chime in on the conversation/get the gallery codes.
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Hey dudes!
Special post alert!!
Last week Laura of Ruby White Tips told me she was being interviewed by Nail It! Magazine and would I be interested in having some of the product shots I did for her Breaking Bad collection be in the article? Of course!
Well I had to re-do them without the copyright stuff and I threw in a manicure using all of the polishes as well, and they put it in!
So go check out the feature on Ruby White Tips -
the picture will take you to the giveaway page to enter to win part of the collection, and then from there you can read her Interview!
Todays theme for the 33DC is 'Most Used Color'
Sometimes on these prompts you have to draw your own conclusions, so this could be a shade, or a specific polish? Why not both!?
So I dug through my keyword list, which is not 100% accurate because sometimes I can't fit everything in there I would like - but I found that my most used polish was Zoya Dovima, and my most used color was Pink.
So I took Dovima and I paired it with one of my favorite pinks, Nicole by OPI Still Into Pink, which also happens to be the same finish, a sparkly matte.
I've also used a MoYou London plate for this mani - Pro Collection 04.
I've also used a MoYou London plate for this mani - Pro Collection 04.
I only used these two polishes, even for the stamping. I wanted to keep the finishes all matching. But you can definitely see how the pink changes when its stamped over black. Most polishes stamp poorly over black though so I was expecting this, I like it, even if it didn't really match the accent nail!
Pretty straightforward - both the roses and the cameo design are off of the same plate - and the mani was finished using Out the Door Top Coat.
Here are the prompts for the challenge so you can see whats coming next:
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 | Hellooooo! It's time for a new challenge! Today kicks off the 33DC created by my dear Debbie and hosted over at Crumpets Nail Tarts. It's a 33 Day Challenge but it only runs Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so it's sweet for those of us not trying to have a heart attack posting massive nail art every single day. The prompts are pretty cool, too. |
Here is the prompt list, and like I said, this runs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays:
So for todays manicure, Dots, I used American Apparel polishes in Cotton and Lopez Canyon and the Aqua by Bettina, which I won in a rad giveaway by Nory of Fierce Makeup and Nails.
I took this idea from Sarah of Chalkboard Nails, I loved the color palette she used and since I have always wanted to do this random sized dotticure, why not now!? I did change it up and not do all the colors on all the nails like she did, but rather more of a skittle style with an accent. And matte, always matte!
The base here is American Apparel Cotton, which I'd always thought was just straight up white, but it's not! It's actually an off white, kind of like OPI My Vampire is Buff, but less buff. Loved it!
Then I dotted Lopez Canyon on pinky, black polish on middle and Aqua on index finger. I used the backside of a paintbrush that had a thickish handle for the large dots, and then I used standard dotting tools for the other dots.
Then on the ring finger I did a combination of all the colors, just dotting a couple of dots of each color as I was using that shade and then at the end going back in and filling in where needed.
Then seal with a quick dry top coat, give it a couple minutes and go over with a matte top coat (also American Apparel) - so what do you think?
While dots are not my go to, I always love this style on others, so I'm very glad I did it now, I liked it alot, especially this color scheme, so thanks to Sarah for such a great source of inspiration!!
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Put Your Dupes Up: Purple and Gold Edition
- Sunday, September 22, 2013
- By Missy
- 0 Comments
 | Remember when I used to post Put Your Dupes Up?! It's been awhile - I have a few coming up, and that includes today! It even has a fancy new look to fit the blog. Let's see what we have in the ring! |
Todays PYDU is not a winner take all comparison but instead a look at some purple hued polishes with gold(ish) shimmers. There are quite a few on the market these days, and I thought I'd show you 5 I pulled out of storage recently and how they differ, as well as relate.
Here are todays contenders:
Ulta - Lav-Ish
Zoya - Zara
Pure Ice - Purple Reign
Nails Inc - Clifford Street
Pure Ice - Taxi
As you can see - they are all super different.
Ulta Lav-Ish is a taupe/lavender with a gold shimmer.
Zoya Zara is a truer lavender with yellowish/pink shimmer.
Pure Ice Purple Reign is a plum with golden shimmer.
Nails Inc Clifford Street is a dark dusty purple with gold shimmer.
Pure Ice Taxi is the only one that flashes a more green shimmer than gold, and has a violet base.
All of these swatched at 2 coats, with the exception of Clifford Street which was just one coat.
So if you think you don't need em all, you're wrong.
Unless you just don't like purple, in which case, we can still be friends!
