Never paint your nails when you're sick...

Wow. You know how sometimes you have a great idea, and yet the execution of it just totally fails? Yea. This was one of those days. I blame the cold medicines and the plague. I didn't bother cleaning these up much because I just wasn't gonna keep them on.

First, I painted my nails with two coats of Love My Nails white, hoping to get the move vibrance out of my rainbows, then taped around my nail like you would for a water marble. I was planning to have gorgeous rainbow gradients, topped with some sort of black pattern.

Best laid plans, I guess. I was feeling lazy, so I just sort of estimated where the color should go on the sponge. I kinda overshot, so I barely had any purple and I had no red/pink at all. Bleah. Worse, when I pulled the tape off I had white edges!!

This isn't awful, I know, but it really isn't at all what I was going for. I said to heck with it and decided to try something different on my right hand...

... except apparently, something different in this case was something hideously ugly. I figured I'd dab the color onto the nail somewhat randomly, then paint over it with black. But... no. This was ugly enough I couldn't wait to remove it.

It makes a fun blog post, though. See, all those times I tell you to have fun with it, because it's only nail polish? I mean it!

At least I like what I did afterwards. But you'll have to wait til tomorrow to see what that is! I know, I'm such a tease...

So come back tomorrow. Today's nails are a total Cinderella story!

Stupid plague...

See my disclosure statement for more information.

CND Green Scene

Happy Monday, everyone! I hope yours is better than mine... I'm missing a funeral because I'm sick. Oh yea, it's loads of fun in the Layniefingers house! But even though I have the plague, I couldn't help but show you the newest polish I got in the mail!

The lovely folks at CND were kind enough to send me a bottle of Green Scene, and it's absolutely perfect for St. Patrick's day! This green is rich and opaque- you're looking at one coat!

This polish applied so beautifully. It's buttery smooth, and practically applies itself! I'm sure you could do two coats for maximum coverage, but I found one coat was perfect!

I love the color, as well. It's the perfect kelly green, warm and mid-toned, not too dark and not too light. If I were going to design a basic green polish this would totally be it!

Once I'm feeling a bit less like death, I'll experiment with stamping it, or stamping on it. But for the moment, all I want to do is to curl up in a ball and sleep til I'm not sick anymore.

I can try, right?

Green Scene retails for $9 and is available at cnd.com.

EDIT:  I got energetic earlier and decided to test out how well Green Scene would stamp. Turns out it stamps beautifully... look at that butterfly! It's rich and opaque, and absolutely gorgeous!

This is definitely a new favorite of mine...

Polish was provided by the manufacturer for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Magnetix Polish

Magnetix polish with two magnets.

I am so excited! Last night, my family and I were out running some errands and I decided to stop off at Rite Aid to see if they had any fun new nail goodies. Talk about a score, I found a display of magnetic nail polishes!

They weren't too horribly expensive, either. The Magnetix polishes are $7.99 each, and come with two magnets! I was excited about that, since it seems most magnetic polishes either come with one magnet or make you buy the magnet separately!

The polishes come in a plastic box, and the display was on the bottom shelf. I could easily have missed it if I wasn't specifically keeping an eye out for interesting polishes! Unfortunately, I didn't notice how many colors there were, but I saw quite a few, including gold, silver, green, blue, deep pink, and a sort of putty brown color. They all had the same two magnets, so you can't get more patterns by buying more than one bottle.

Still, the patterns are nice enough. The magnets are somewhat flexible too, which let me sort of bend the magnet around my finger, so tht the magnetic field reached more of my nail instead of sitting right on top.

One strange thing, at least to me: the bottle shape is downright bizarre! While the bottom of the bottle is round, the top is triangular, and slants off to the left! It's sort of like a Nicole by OPI bottle, if you turned it to the side and the top was triangular. I don't know, it's weird!

It doesn't affect the polish inside, though, and it wasn't hard to hold or anything. I just find the shape weird. Maybe it's interesting instead. Whatever.

The big question for me was would it work. I've been dying to get some magnetic polish, but I didn't want to spend $20 on a bottle, I'm just too poor for that. I can deal with $8, even if it is a bit more than I'd like to spend, but I would be heartbroken if it didn't work. Thankfully I wasn't disappointed...

  

So, the final verdict? This stuff is kind of tricky to use, but it's absolutely gorgeous. It can be worn as a normal polish, worn with the magnetic stripes, stamped over a different polish... (yes, it stamps like a dream!)

Take a few minutes to get used to using the magnets, though. If you use too little polish and you won't see stripes, and if you use too much you won't see the stripes. Expect to have to redo a few nails, or do like I did and just live with it, since it's pretty no matter what you do to it! I'll let the rest of the pics speak for themselves...

What are your thoughts about magnetic nail polish? Are you itching to rock the trend, or is it leaving you bored and waiting for the next big thing? Leave me a comment and let me know what you think!

Yay for finding inexpensive magnetic polish!

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Review- Mont Bleu crystal glass nail file & tweezers

I recently got a chance to review items from Mont Bleu, and let me just say how excited I am to have had the opportunity! The people I dealt with were super nice, and the quality of the items couldn't be better!

Let's start with my video review of things. (Sorry about the refocusing sound, I'm getting used to a new setup.)

 

Not bad, eh? I think they're absolutely gorgeous! They also work like a dream, which is the more important part of the deal for me. Overall, I can't say enough good about these items!

So, if you're looking for a glass nail file (or maybe for some absolutely gorgeous hair accessories, or rhinestone-encrusted goodies!) take a few minutes to browse through the Mont Bleu website. You just might find the file of your dreams there!

Items were provided by the manufacturer for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Nail Art Using the Heavy Petal Collection from Jessica

You know, life is strange sometimes. There have been times where I was almost obsessed with a polish collection, eagerly waiting for it to be released only to find that once they were in my hands, I wasn't all that inspired by them. Then there's the opposite, which is what happened to me with the Heavy Petal collection from Jessica Cosmetics.

Honestly, when I looked at the collection images I wasn't all that impressed. Woo, pink. Woo, lavender. I'm usually not all that into the "safe" colors. But then something interesting happened...

I was sent this collection to review, to experiment with and to write about, and once I had the polishes in my hand, I realized that hey... these polishes are pretty darned exciting! I decided to skip the usual review type of thing and do what I like best- I was going to play with these!

I decided to experiment with two similar nail designs, only switching up the colors. I started out with Witchy Wisteria on my left hand and Geranium Gypsy on my right. Now, I'd like for you to ignore the bit of drag towards my cuticles because I'm kinda not the best at polishing my nails. But the crazy thing is that both of these polishes are one-coaters (if you're more skilled than I am)! That's always a good thing, right? But there's more...

Look closely at this photo of Witchy Wistera, and you'll see that it's a deep, rich red-based purple with copper sparkle in it! Go ahead, enlarge the photo to the right because it is so worth it!!

I absolutely LOVE this polish. There's a warmth to it that just draws me in. I'm sold... this polish is flat-out amazing. It applies beautifully... I honestly have nothing bad to say about this one!

Then there's Geranium Gypsy. I'm not quite as fond of this one on its own, simply because it's a foil and it tends to accentuate every little flaw in your nails. Believe me, with all the health issues I have, my nails have some pretty annoying flaws!

Still, if you're into metallic foil polishes, this one is a stunner. The lilac color is beautiful, and it applies well. I didn't notice tons of brush marks either, which is always a plus.

For the record? Brush marks make Laynie a very cranky blogger.

Once I had my base colors on, I decided to experiment with stamping with this collection. Again, these polishes performed beautifully!

On my left hand, I chose to stamp with Geranium Gypsy and Hotter Than Hibiscus, the pink counterpart to Geranium Gypsy's lilac. I then added dots of Born to Pansy, a sheer milky lilac with intense blue shimmer. I used the image plates from my new Salon Express stamping kit.

Once all that was done, I felt the need to add some colorful dots in the flower centers. I went back to the China Glaze Electropop collection and mixed some custom colors for the centers.

As you can see, the foils stamp amazingly well. I love how metallic they look...  They were a joy to stamp with. Born to Pansy is fascinating on the deep polish, because in some lights it's almost invisible. Then, as I move my hands, the light catches on the blue shimmer and it's as if I suddenly have ghost dots appearing on my nails! Super fun.

I'm not quite as happy with my right hand, but it's still cute. I went for the opposite effect on this one- dark polish stamped onto a light base. I used Witchy Wisteria and Dased Dahlia to stamp flowers, and then did dots with the Dased Dahlia to fill in the empty space. I added the mixed-Electropop floral centers on this hand too, to tie the two hands together.

Honestly, I much prefer the darker base, but I tend to be a bit of a drama queen that way. Still, I'm happy with how this manicure turned out. Now, if only I could get my poor cuticles in better shape... *grin*

Now, all I need to do is to figure out what design I'm going to do on my nails next! Ahhh, first world problems, how I love you! :D

Til next time!

Polishes were provided by the manufacturer for consideration.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Viva la Nails Giveaway!

How would you like to win a box full of nail art supplies? If you're anything like me, you'd love to! (And since you're reading this, odds are you're probably at least a little bit like me.)

Enter Viva la Nails! They're having a sweet little contest to celebrate Mother's Day, and one lucky person will win a gift pack worth £29.95! (That's almost $50 in US money!) The gift pack includes water decals, nail wraps, rhinestones, glitter and more! Pretty exciting... I know I'd love to find that in my mailbox!

I know what you're thinking. Yea, but what's the catch? There isn't one. It's open internationally, and all you have to do is leave a comment telling how your mother has inspired you, then make a tweet. It's seriously easy...

But you've got to act fast if you want to win. This contest is only open til March 12, 2012, so you'd better get right on it. Hop on over to the Viva la Nails blog for full details and get started! You can't win if you don't enter, right?

Information was provided by the manufacturer.

See my disclosure statement for more information.

Even MOAR dots!

Ahhh, raise your hand if you knew I was going to add to the dots. I didn't even wait 10 minutes before hitting post before getting my polishes out. Yea, I have no self-control.

Still, I think it turned out pretty cute. I showed my husband the before and after pics, and he likes the dots-in-dots best. He thinks there's more energy to them. Personally, I think they're just more fun this way!

Adding the smaller dots was really easy. I pulled out the three colors I'd used in the gradient along with the mid-sized dotting tool and my palette. I added a drop of lavender, put a few dots here and there, then repeated with the pink and the blue. Once I'd done all three colors, I went back and filled in any leftover dots with whatever color I thought would work best.

It was pretty random, and went really quickly. I'm enjoying the look a lot... every time I see my nails, I grin. The only thing that would make this even better would be some glitter, but even I think that would be a bit much. At least... for now. ;)

I have to admit, though... now that I've figured out an easy way to do gradients I may be doing LOTS of them! I have so many ideas bouncing around in my mind!

So what do you think? Is this a design you'd wear? Leave me a comment and tell me how you'd style this, or how you'd change it!

Why yes, I think I AM losing my mind... how kind of you to notice!

See my disclosure statement for more information.