Polka dot dreams with Cult Nails Feel Me Up

In the three months that I've even bothered to keep track of my lemmings I am already feeling like I'll never acquire them all. But! I will say this... I have always heard good things about Cult Nails and after my first visit to their webpage I knew I needed to join the Cult! 

My chance was finally here when Cult Nails had a replay of the $5 sale that was originally a promotion/thank you from them reaching five thousand Facebook fans a little while back. Congrats again! What an accomplishment and endorsement of your product, wow!! 

I saw that they were going to include colors that sold out the first time and while some of the Cult Nails colors that I've been lusting after are either discontinued or haven't made it back into stock, I still had plenty of lovelies to choose from! 

I must say that originally Feel Me Up wasn't on my list to buy. I mean, I am always in search of my perfect yellow and I've been wrong before so I figured eh, maybe another day. But then a day or two before the sale I happened to be on my Instagram scrolling through the feed when I saw MartaWarmuz's Instagram picture of her mani with Feel Me Up. I knew instantly that I needed this yellow... and that it might just be THE ONE! 

Let me just say... I was NOT disappointed with my last minute addition! The formula is amazing, it cleans up easily, dries quickly and does so with a beautiful ultra shiny gloss finish.

Now, for those of you that are yellow enthusiasts you know they are usually streaky or require 4 million coats... NOT THIS BABY!! As you can see in my photo I did three coats. Honestly, it was fine in 2, but the 2nd coat for me had a couple tiny spots of bleh and that was most likely due to my crappy painting skills. So yeah, a 2 coat opaque yellow... I'm dreaming right? Somebody smack me, quick!

While I loved, loved, loooooved this yellow, I had horrible insomnia and was convinced that maybe I should do something on it... ya know since I wasn't doing anything else. The problem with a beautiful polish is that sometimes the beauty alone makes it nearly impossible to choose something that will accompany it in such a way that they don't compete. 

L to R: Julep - Anne, piCture pOlish - Abyss, Revlon - Passionate Pink, Cult Nails - Feel Me Up
baby food jar lid palette and MASH dotting tools

I sat contemplating for at least half an hour. I pulled out nearly a dozen different polishes for at least a dozen different ideas. I just couldn't get the feeling of rightness until I looked at my dotting tools... BAM! Epiphany... random polka dots!

I hope you enjoyed my bright and cheery insomnia driven polka dot mani! 

xo,

Has insomnia driven any of you to do something crazy? I know this isn't my first time...

Polka Dot or Not?

I have been noticing several polka dot mani's all over the web in the past few weeks and thought that I might try my hand at a little dotting fun!  I tend to be an out of the box kinda girl,.  Ya know, color outside lines and try to live on the wild side.  Polka dots always seemed so "prim and proper" to me. I felt like if I had polka dots then I would also need a cup of tea to go with my mani.  LOL

I started playing around with the idea of coming up with some sort of polka dot mani and when I got my dotting tools from Amazon I figured, why not just try something?  After some time playing around with my new toys I began to love dotting.  Still not quite sold on the straight polka dot on all five fingers but there is definitely some fun to be had with dotting! 

I did a mani a while ago with just my ring fingers dotted and I liked that just fine but, I needed to take it a step further.  I hope you like what I came up with.  The first couple of pics are of some cute flowers that I did using the dotting tools.  The alternate colors on my left and right had made it interesting, I think.  The second set of images is more of an art deco dotting mani.  Let me know what you think!

Pointillism... not just for canvas!!!

I love all things art!  I love all things rainbow!  I love all things mani!  Put them all together and you get my attempt at a really artistic nail design.  After several hours spent trying to get a stamp mani done that I liked, I gave up and just started playing with polish.  It's nail play time like this that I usually do some of my best manicures.  I knew I wanted to do something super interesting and something using a rainbow color set.  I started by choosing my polish palette.  This is by far largest number of polishes that I have used on one mani to this date.

From Left to Right: OPI - An Affair in Red Square; Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Sun Kissed; Ulta - Sun-Sational; Sinful Colors - HD Nails; China Glaze - Sexy in the City; Wet n Wild FastDry - Buffy the Violet Slayer; Sinful Colors - Snow Me White.  I also used my MASH Dotting Tool Set.

This mani evolved by accident ... I was chatting with E via Skype all the while dotting away.  I think my husband and I even went to grab dinner in the middle of the process!  At any rate, I think what I came up with was pretty cool though! (excuse the shiny shiny cuticles lol I forgot I had oiled up when I took the pics)

So, there ya have it, my attempt at a pointillism mani.  I don't think it will be my last!  

Warm Weather Cool Colors

China Glaze Reggae to Riches

The weather is breaking here in the mid-west and although I love my deep dark moody polish, I have been really trying to step out of my box and get ready for spring and summer in style!  I would be lying if I said it was easy to step outside of my comfort zone!  IT IS NOT!  I am a true creature of habit even when it comes to my nail polish.  I was starting to find that even though I was buying polishes with different names, they began to all look very similar! What I had was blacks, blues, grays and silvers all just a shade different than the next.  Don't get me wrong, I will always be a lover of a good dark nail, but I have begun to see the error of my ways and hope to join the mainstream form of thought. When the sun comes out its time to brighten things up a bit!  So here goes nothing…

Why not start with a pink color?  LOL!  It may not seem like a big step to some, but I am so far from a pink girl its not funny!  I looked around the store for a while before I came across my first out of character purchase… Reggae to Riches by China Glaze!  I will say that I thought the color was ok in the bottle but the name really did something to me; I love reggae music and that was enough to make me want to buy it!  Good thing I did because I LOVE it… just in case you didn't get that the first time… I LOVE A PINK POLISH!!!!  (well that’s what I thought anyway)  I say that because this polish really is an awesome flip-flop of sorts! In some light it looks really pink and then in some light it looks really fuchsia and as a bonus you also get a bit of blue and purple in this duo-chrome! 

I started my polish with a nice coat of Beauty Secrets Hardener as a base coat.  I love this stuff!  It is fairly inexpensive and can be purchased at any Sally Beauty Supply.  It is thick enough to act as a nice ridge filler and it leaves a really nice smooth finish and holds polish really well.  I can keep a manicure for over a week when I use this polish.  Let me clarify that I take care of kids and a pet and cook and do dishes throughout the week so to keep a mani for week is a nice plus!

Reggae to Riches can be purchased for $5.99 ($4.99 if you have a Sally's Club Card) at Sally Beauty Supply.  I applied two coats of the polish... the first coat was pretty thin and then the second coat was a bit thicker.  I really didn't have too much trouble with streaking or thin spots.  The polish goes on pretty evenly and with my base coat it was really smooth and velvety.  I love easy polish and this really was an easy polish!  

The final step on my mani was to add a little pop with the white polka dots.  For this step I used L.A Colors white nail art liner.   Honestly, I found this polish for about $1.50 at a random Dollar General.  I know it doesn't sound too glamorous but some of the best deals on polish can be found at these types of stores.  When it comes to nail art, I would rather spend my money on a nice bottle of polish and be a little more frugal when it comes to nail art supplies.  Using a super small dotting tool I dotted my ring finger.  With a final coat of Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri Anti-Chip Top Coat, I had achieved my look!