Saturday, September 24, 2011

Nail of the Week + Stranger Tides swatch!

Wow, I am fail. It takes me two weeks, and all I come back with is a long-overdue swatch and a sort of fail nail art? (I also did not buy any nail polishes. A lot of my money has been going to coffee.)

Anyways! I didn't have enough time last week to do a nail art, I just used some nail treatments on my nails. For a science project that is required for graduation, I'll be testing the effects of Toluene (one of the Big 3 chemicals in nail polish) on insects. What's the purpose of that?

... I do not know. But what could be better than being around nail polish, and poking roly-polys with a stick? Exactly.

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My nails for the past week. A bit of tip wear because it was a day or two after I first did the design before I could take the picture.

I followed the tutorial off of this tutorial with a few major differences.

I used a sponge brush to apply Sinful Colors This Is It, then drew the flower design (although my friend remarked that it resembled a cracked egg) with my pink striper brush, and went over that with my black striper.

I didn't add the cheetah print marks because I don't really care for animal patterns. I also didn't put gold glitter in the center of the flowers, partially because I was lazy and also because I forgot. Overall though, I liked the effect :)

Here is my swatch for the week (since I have not bought anything over the weekend, you'll have to live with just a swatch. OPI Stranger Tides from the Pirates of the Caribbean collection.

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I should have warned you that it was a swatch that I hadn't cleaned up my nails yet in. I'm sorry. (I'm also sorry that my watermarks and stuff kind of suck. I edit my pictures with the free picnik on Flickr, and I just pick a random color for the border and fade the Rakuzen.)

I'm working on a new design right now, so I'll post that soon hopefully.







Monday, September 5, 2011

Happy Labor Day + nail haul

Happy Labor Day!

I had the day off, so I went with my family to take my sister back to college and go to the mall.

I was very sad to find out that BeautyFirst had closed. They always had some kind of good sale going on, so yeah.

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On the bright side, I went to Trade Secret and bought this. Seche Restore. My Seche Vite topcoat is getting a bit too thick and gooey, and I have a couple of older nail polishes that need to be restored to a thinner consistency so that I can use them. I'm really happy (except I paid $10 for it and then, as I was walking out, noticed one that was marked for cheaper. :\)

This is kind of a beauty post, too. I also bought this Hello Kitty clutch from Sephora. Originally marked $25, it was on sale for $10.

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I'd almost had my mom buy it for me online over the summer, but eventually gave up because I couldn't justify spending $25 on a clutch that probably wouldn't get too much use. So I was overjoyed that it went on sale.

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And also, I received my fimo nail art in the mail! There's 50 assorted flakes, with flowers, Hello Kitty (can you tell that I'm a freak for HK?), and a lot of random stuff. And 100 slices of bunny. And a new roll of a white butterfly. I'm so geeked; trying to think of a nail design.

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I had some nails from last week, but it wasn't anything too fancy and it chipped after a day, so I didn't get any pictures. Just Super Junior written in Korean with white polish over pink nail polish (in retrospect, I ought to have used sapphire blue.)

I didn't pick up any OPI products because I'm still getting a list together for my salon supplier so that it will be cheaper. I love you, OPI, but I don't have the kind of cash to shell out $8.50 for every bottle.