Jessica Fall 2012- Spicy Dream

Holy wow. Can I just say I'm in love with the Spicy Dream collection from Jessica? Seriously, I cannot even begin to tell you how much I love these polishes.

When I saw the flyer for this collection, I have to admit my first thought was, "Meh." Gee, more browns and bronzes. Yippee. That only lasted til I opened the box containing these sweet polishes, though, because even in the box I could see the texture that these polishes have! There are two creme polishes, a shimmer, and three gorgeous glitters.

Let's look at the cremes first. Crimson Tattoo is a red so deep it almost looks brown. This is my kind of red...rich and lush and dark. It makes me think of fall, and maybe of steamy activities better left to the imagination! ;)

Brown Sugar is a creme brown that's well named- it's the brown of brown sugar, like the gingerbread cookies that appear every winter. Both of these polishes are gorgeous on their own, but they make amazing bases for the glitters... but we'll get to those.

Next is the single shimmer of the collection- Cinnamon Kiss. This color? Omg. There are no words. This is the color that I bought and rebought for years, loving the deep red and the gorgeous shimmer. It's not terribly unique, but it sure is gorgeous. The first car I bought using my own money was this color!

I actually wore this color first, and loved the way it looks against my pale skin. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of it. I'm scatterbrained, apparently. It's gorgeous, but I made the mistake of applying it right before a bath, and soaked a bit too long. I don't know WHAT I was thinking!!

My favorite polishes of this collection are definitely the glitters, though. When I opened the box, I saw these and actually squealed in delight! The glitter in these is so incredibly fine that they're almost a foil finish. It was really difficult for me to figure out what to call these!

Champagne Bubbles is a very pale, almost white glitter, and I haven't tried it on the nail yet. Gingersnap is a golden/silver-leaning polish, and Pumpkin Delight is more bronzey/red.  Gingersnap and Pumpkin Delight both have a duochromey, color-changing feel to them that's really difficult for me to describe.

So, instead of wear these as they are, I knew I needed to layer these. I paired Crimson Tattoo with Pumpkin Delight, and let me just say that I am absolutely in awe of the finished look.

See what I mean about the color? It's so dimensional, and it looks simply magical on. I've gotten compliments wearing this too, people asking just what I'm wearing because they can't stop looking! It felt good to share the Jessica love!

If it will stop raining for a bit, I'll try to get outside and show you what this looks like in sunlight. It's definitely worth looking at. It's been so hard to photograph!

Since it's 3am, I'll go ahead and show you the rest of the photos and hopefully get to bed. But I had to share this with you... these colors are simply magical!

The Spicy Dream collection was provided by the brand for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Some sketchbook pages and an update

I worked on this page for quite a while over a span
of weeks. I think I'm happy with it? Maybe...

Whew, this last week or so has been a rough one. I'm not sure why, totally, but I think I may be fighting with a cold. When I get sick, the fibro pain tends to intensify, and I end up not good for much. I haven't even been journaling much, and my nails have been bare for two weeks or more. So sad.

So, in the interest of forcing myself out of my shell and writing a bit, I wanted to share a couple of images from my sketchbooks. This first one is in my tiny notebook, only 4" x 5.5".

I'd started out with the profile in the corner. I've been trying to learn how to draw pretty female faces, as I've written about before. This was an exercise in patience, as it took a lot of tweaking, erasing and redoing to come up with the finished sketch. Overall, though, I think she's a pretty one, and I actually really like the band in her hair. Small victories, yes?

Then there was this. I'm very interested in hand-lettering things, interesting ways to create letters. I found some interesting fonts (are they still fonts when they're hand-lettered?) in a book, so I sat down and played with them. It was fun.

Sorry it's been so quiet here. I'm hoping that when the weather cools off, I'll feel more like myself again. This summer has been a tough one, as usual.

I look forward to fall.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

A muted, fall design

Today's nail is something more simple, something less flashy than I usually wear. (I know, I know, but I don't ALWAYS wear super-bright neon glitter and spangles!) I was thinking of fall- sweaters, falling leaves, and the general feeling I get around the holidays.

This was a very simple design to do. I started out by mentally dividing the nail into two diagonal sections. I painted the bottom half in Zoya Noot, a deep rich grey creme color that I absolutely love. Then I painted the top section with Zoya Rekha, a deep burgundy creme. Both colors are from the Zoya Designer Collection for fall 2012.

I loved the two colors side-by-side, but I wanted to accent where they came together. To do this, I painted Jessica Wing It in connected swooshes across the join. Jessica Wing It is a lovely incredibly muted creme color from the Awakening Collection that accented the two base colors beautifully.

I liked the nail at that point, but felt it needed something else. At that point I reached for Zoya Elisa, a bright metallic red from the Diva Collection that really pops against the dark creme base colors. Unfortunately, this was the hardest thing to capture! My camera did not like the combination, so the photos I'm showing are the best I got from two sessions! Ah well... it happens.

I finished everything off with a coat of ProFX quick dry topcoat. My bottle is starting to get goopy, and thinning it isn't working so well. I think it's about time for a new bottle. Still, it's lasted nicely!

I'm really liking this combination of colors. I may have to wear something similar to this on my own nails soon!

What do you think? Would you wear this? Leave me a comment, tell me what you'd change on this one.

Polishes were provided by the brands for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Blue Dots Everywhere

Whee, I have more nail art for you! This one is deceptively-simple looking. It's easy to do, though, and I love the end result!

I started out with a base coat of Zoya Song. It's a gorgeous color, deep, rich, and metallic royal blue! Once that was done I was strongly tempted to leave it like this.

But no, I had plans for this. Once Song was dry, I painted the tip half of the nail in a slant using Jessica Sky High. It's a light-to-medium blue creme that looked gorgeous next to Song! To tie the two together, I added a stripe of Zoya FeiFei between the two.

The sparkling effect of FeiFei looked really nice between Song and Sky High, but I felt like the junction needed something else. So, I added a stripe of Jessica Barely Blueberry over FeiFei, so that there was a nice transition between them of light, dark, light, dark. Then I added a coat of Jordana Glitter in Lunar Lights over the lightest blue stripe, because you know I have a thing for glitter. :D


Don't get me wrong, I could have left it just like that. It would have been beautiful, but I wanted more. So, I pulled out my basic black and white nail art polishes (my white was White Canvas from Milani, and the black was a striper from the Dollar Tree) and added contrasting dots- white on the dark blue and black on the light blue.

I feel like the end result is whimsical and silly, but still not too overdone. (It takes a LOT for me to consider something overdone...) I love the big round dots, even if I do wish they'd been more consistent. I need more practice, clearly! But overall I think this could be a really fun look!

You could also do this look in any set of colors you like. I can see this with various purples, or monochrome in shades of grey. You could even do this with contrasting colors! (Note to self, do one of these in blue and orange...)

So what do you think? Cute, or junk? Leave me a comment and let me know!

Polishes were provided by the brands for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Nail Art Doodling Summer 2012- Glitter Madness

It's been a while, but I've finally got some new nail art to share with you! I've gotten several new collections recently that seemed like they would play very nicely together. So one day I pulled them all out, grabbed some full coverage nail tips and started playing.

The image to the right gives you a hint of what's coming up. I had so much fun making these, and I've got some designs I'm absolutely in love with! So, first we've got a design I called Glitter Madness!

I started out with Zoya's Diva collection. This set has some absolutely gorgeous metallic jewel tones that I really needed to see together. I chose a very long nail tip for this one so I'd have lots of room to play. From top to bottom I used: Elisa (red), Suri (purple), Song (blue), and Ray (green). I then added dots of a greyed-out blue, but realized I wanted more oomph for the nail

Enter the Jordana Glitter Specialty Nail Polishes. I'm a bit late to the party with these, but holy WOW are these polishes amazing. The day I got the collection I ended up painting all my nails with a different glitter and just watching them sparkle. This collection was basically made for me, and I am so in love with it!

Getting back to the Glitter Madness, I went over each section with a corresponding glitter. I added Red Flash over Elisa, Magenta Magic over Suri, Blue Bash over Song, and Green Glitz over Ray. This took the nail from gorgeous to magically glam. I still wanted some definition between the colors, though.

Thankfully, Jessica Custom Nail Colour had just the color I wanted. I didn't want white, because that seemed like it would be too stark against the deep rich colors I had going. Instead, I went with Barely Blueberry from the Gelato Mio Collection. This color is a very pale, very cool blue, just barely blue but still with enough color to not seem shockingly out of place with the rest of what was happening on the nail.

With the separating dots, I didn't want a precise line of equally-spaced, evenly sized dots. Instead, I wanted a slightly meandering, wobbly line. You know, if a leprechaun with a peg leg got drunk, stepped in paint, then staggered all over my nail!

Wait. That just sounds wrong. Forget I said that. :D

I then added a coat of ProFX Quick Dry Top Coat to protect everything and smooth things out. I have to say, I am in LOVE with this look. I just wish my nails were long enough to wear it! The various glitter polishes have multiple sizes of glitter in them so there's a ton of sparkle, and the deeper toned base colors show through underneath.

It's just a crazy sparkly, intensely colorful look that makes me giggle when I think about it! This satisfies my inner magpie, and makes me want more more more. It's definitely my style of nail art...

But my question is this- what do you think of it? Is this something you'd wear? Would you tweak this to fit your own style, or does this design call to your inner diva? Let me know in the comments!

Polishes were provided by the brands for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

More Sketchbook Goodness

My first two coptic stitched books!

I have yet another new addiction. I've admired handmade books for years, knowing that eventually I would get into it. Apparently, it's finally time and I have been overwhelmed with the need to make books!

I started with a simple book bound with duct tape, then made a larger art journal and a smaller one bound only by glue and paper. I wanted to move on to larger, more complex and beautiful bindings. I did some googling, spent a few hours on YouTube, and finally came up with a plan.

I called it Another Test because I wanted
to see how it holds up to every day use.

I started out with rather common supplies- white printer paper, glue sticks and cereal boxes. I used heavy thread to bind it, then realized I didn't like that and ripped it out to start over. Eventually I used rich brown embroidery thread to bind it, and liked the results (finally, after 3 tries!). I colored the covers with sharpie markers and called it done.

I'm really happy with this one. It opens flat so I can get all the way to the edges of the paper, which makes me very happy! I glued two sheets of cereal box together for each cover, then wrapped those in regular printer paper. They're nice and strong, and make fantastic drawing surfaces.

Overall, this is a fantastic travel journal! It's 4.25" x 5.5" and fits perfectly into my purse. It opens well, stays closed when I want it to, and is wonderful for jotting down things I need to buy, or ideas I want to try, or quick sketches. I'll definitely be making more of these!

So far I've used it lots for sketching. I've been trying to learn how to draw better hair. I want to be able to draw more varieties of hair, rather than just straight or wavy blowing-in-the-breeze. To help with this, I've found several artists that inspire me and have been copying their style. Once I'm comfortable with it, I'll work on incorporating it into my own drawings!

This book will be filled with things that make me happy!

This next book was a total spur-of-the-moment thing, although I absolutely love it! We were walking through the Dollar Tree (yes, the same trip where I bought the nail goodies!) when I found a pack of brightly-colored index cards! I've been seriously obsessed with bright colors for ages now, so when I saw those I knew they needed to become a tiny book!

This book is seriously small: it's 2.5" x 3". I've been adding lots of media to the pages- some have been painted, some have colored pencils as a base. Some have napkin scrapbook paper covering the whole page! So, I'm doodling my way through this one.

I did do a quick sketch in this one, experimenting with drawing curly hair my way. It's... somewhat less than successful, but I won't complain too much. :D

Overall, I'm having a wonderful time exploring this new hobby! But don't worry, I've got a new set of nail art experiments to share with you as soon as I can get them photographed!

Til next time!

There's something zen-like about stitching a book binding.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

CND Shellac Giveaway by Nail Polish Canada

I really love letting you guys know about awesome giveaways. This one is especially awesome- you could win an entire lifetime's worth of CND Shellac!

Ok, it's actually only 25 years' worth, but still, I'm not complaining. The winner of this giveaway will receive 33 bottles of CND Shellac, 5 bottles of basecoat, 5 bottles of topcoat, a 36 watt UV lamp, and scrubfresh!

I don't know about you, but I am definitely entering. I would go nuts trying to decide which color to wear first...

Want to know what this looks like? (I know I did...) Thankfully, the kind folks at NailPolishCanada included a photo to let you see what you'll be getting if you win!

So what are you waiting for? Scoot on over to NailPolishCanada and enter! This giveaway is only open to residents of the US and Canada.

Iinformation was provided by NailPolishCanada.com.

See my disclosure statement for more information.