ABC Challenge: "U"

Hello all!  I hope you all had a great weekend!  I had off this weekend (which is rare) but I ended up with some sort of bug and so did my little baby boy.  We are doing much better now which is good!

So for the Alphabet Challenge we are getting to some more difficult letters..at least for my collection.  I do not own a single polish that starts with the letter U.  I really wanted to try to be creative on this one and I thought of one of my favorite family movies, Up.  Now I am not big on nail art as I just am not good at it.  So I was trying to figure out if there was something I could do with that without being too complicated.  I thought of trying to do something that resembles the sky.  I picked out two blue polishes which were Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Blue-Away and than Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure (CSM) in The Sky's the Limit.  If even has the word Sky in it which we generally look up when we look at the sky.  (Am a reaching a bit here?).  

So, with these two colors, I wanted to try something I had not tried before.  I did a Saran manicure.  You can go to Nailed It for a good tutorial on this.  If anyone would like me to post a tutorial here, let me know and I would be happy to do it.  This is actually very easy!  I really love how it turned out with the exception of my not so stellar clean up.  Plus, I waited to photograph it and actually broke a piece of my pinkie nail off which is why there is a chip.  

Also on a side note, check your clearance bins at Walgreen's!  I found the CSM polish for $3 and it is normally almost $8!

What do you think of this technique?  

ABC Challenge: S and T

Hello again!  Well I don't know about you but I am glad the weekend is here!  I usually bartend on the weekends and I happen to have this weekend off.  I've had a looonng week!  Today I have for you the letters S and T...or is it T and S?  I started off with OPI Thanks a Windmillion and I topped it with Cover Band's Sticks and Stones.  This used to be a very hard to obtain polish as it was always out of stock but I just checked over at Ninja Polish and it looks like it is currently in stock!  It is said to be a dupe for Lynnderella's Connect the Dots however it is a little different.  It is the same idea though.

I hope you all enjoy your weekend!  I am going to be doing things like mowing the lawn, folding laundry, etc.  I will hopefully also enjoy some time outside.  It's supposed to be gorgeous out tomorrow, and laundry can always wait, right?!

Again, have a good weekend everyone! 

Amy

Makeup Haul! 1st time...maybe last time?

Hello lovely people!  Something you may not know about me is I am not only a nail polish lover, but I love makeup too!  I've actually been into makeup a lot longer than I've been into nail polish, but nail polish has definitely taken over and it is my number one beauty-related love.  MUA (MakeUp Academy) is a UK brand and they were recently having a sale.  I believe the sale was 30% off PLUS free shipping including free shipping to the US.  First off, their products are already extremely affordable but something about the free shipping was what gave me the push!  I had heard good things about the eye shadows so I figured what the heck!  When it comes to makeup, I am definitely an eye person.  I love eye shadow and eye liner.  I am very much drawn to colorful eye shadows but I am mostly a neutral girl.  Most of the time I save the colors for my nails! :)

When I named my blog, I actually named it Polish and Such for the exact reason that I thought I would maybe someday want to include other beauty related things.  Here is my first one.  I just took pics of the things I ordered.  The grand total on all of this was under $20!!! Crazy, right?!!

Let me know your opinions on this post.  I was thinking about doing a Naked palette comparison/possible dupe on a future post if that would be something of interest.  Or would you rather I stick to just nail polish??

I am pretty sure this eyebrow pencil is not going to work.  I love the brush on the end but it is just so dark!  I have pretty dark eyebrows but I tried this and it made me look crazy and just doesn't seem like the consistency an eyebrow pencil should be.  It is actually creamy.  Maybe I can utilize it as an eye shadow base.  

This shade doesn't have a name.  It just just number 2.  I like it from what I tried.  It is creamy.  Also blends out well if you like using your lipstick as a blush.  

Just a general sum-up of the eye shadows, they are mostly very good and pigmented.  A couple of the more sparkly ones are pretty chalky.  I haven't actually used these on yet but I'm looking forward to doing so.  

Again, I would love to hear your thoughts on this kind of post.  

ABC Challenge: "R"

Today I bring to you the letter R in the Alphabet Challenge.  I've said this before, but I love this challenge!  I have brought out so many polishes that I would probably never even think about.  And this one is a gorgeous polish!  I picked Revlon Royal Cloak for this one.  It is a purple with some small flakies in it.  Unfortunately this was a limited edition polish so I don't believe you can get it at the drugstore anymore.  But you could probably try Amazon or eBay.

This was tough to get color accurate photos.  It is not as blue as it is showing up. But this is pretty close.  It is an extremely gloomy day here and I could not get good lighting.  But, I have been told that purple is very tricky to photograph.  

ABC Challenge: "Q"

I haven't posted anything for a few days here and I feel a little behind on the challenge.  This week we are doing Q, R, S and T.  I haven't posted anything yet as my little 8-month-old boy had minor surgery on Monday.  I took some time off of work and blogging to make sure he got all of my attention.  It's pretty amazing how fast kids can bounce back from things!

So for the letter Q, I went with what might be my favorite polish of all time!  The reason I say this is this...in the past, I have heard the question, 'if you could only wear one polish the rest of your life, what would it be?'.  This polish would be my choice.  Why you might ask?  Well it's a neutral and I love neutrals!  But it's a neutral with a little something added.  It has this slightly holographic, silver shimmer to it which amps it up a tad.  So in my eyes, it is a polish that is "work appropriate" but also elegant and even has a little edge to it.  Plus, the formula is amazing!

So this is Butter London All Hail the Queen.  Yes, I know it does't technically start with a Q, but it has a Q in it and that Q happens to start the longest word in the title of the polish so I'm going with it!  

ABC Challenge: "P"

Here we are at the letter P.  This is going to be a short post.  I picked Color Club Pucci-licious which is a gorgeous neon purple.  I used two coats with one coat of NYC Grand Central Station.  Application was smooth.  It does dry kind of matte as it is a neon but top coat takes care of that if you don't like that look!  It was sooooooo hard to photograph and get color accurate photos.  The last photo is actually with my iPhone as it actually photographed it pretty close to true color.  Look at how different they look!!!  

Have a good weekend everyone!

ABC Challenge: "O"

We are on the letter O for the Alphabet Challenge.  I don't have very many polishes that start with the letter O.  I have a few oranges but I just wasn't feeling orange for this one.  I actually picked the non-orange polish I have, put it on, took pictures, edited the pictures...and I just was not happy with it.  Then when I was getting ready to put together the blog post with the mani that I wasn't crazy about, a little light bulb went off in my head....Ombre!  I have done this in the past although not on the blog and I really love it.  I decided to go with blues for this.

Now for an ombre, there is a method where you take one color that is on the darker side and you custom mix each nail using white.  So lets say you took a vampy red.  This would be your darkest color.  Then you'd take some of that vampy red and add a little bit of white to it on some sort of mixing surface.  Then for the next nail do the same with a little more white.  Then you continue making it more pale until you get the desired color for each nail.  This probably makes a more true ombre.

The way I did it was I picked a dark blue and a light blue, and then I picked the rest of the in-between colors that I thought fit in.  Onto the photos!

If you are wondering, the colors I used were Hard Candy Sky, Essie Bikini so Teeny, Sally Girl Epic, Essie Mezmerised, and China Glaze First Mate.

What do you think about this type of manicure?