Frugal Friday: Sinful Colors Slate

Well hello there!  I have been a little MIA lately.  My 4-year-old son started 4K this week and that has been a little bit of an adjustment, but a good one.  I just have to get a little more organized so I can get back to this whole blogging thing!

I have decided to do a series called "Frugal Fridays" where I feature a nail polish that I either got a really good deal on or that is normally inexpensive.

For my first installment of Frugal Fridays, I have chosen Sinful Colors Slate. I go this one for 99 cents when it was on sale at Walgreen's.  It is a medium gray with shimmer in it.  For the pictures below I used two coats.  The application on this one was just fine although it was pretty sheer with just the one coat.  It built up nicely though with two coats.

Let me know if you like this sort of series.  I had asked on my Facebook page and a handful of people seemed to like the idea.  I hope you have a good weekend!

Also, I encourage my fellow bloggers to join in on this series!  

ABC Challenge: "Z"

Well my polish lovers, we are at the very end of the Alphabet Challenge.  I'd like to send a huge thank you to Gosia over at Life in Color for getting this challenge going!  I have had a lot of fun doing this one and it helped me explore my collection a bit and even gave me a nudge to try to be a little creative at times.  I really loved that with this challenge I also discovered some bloggers I wasn't familiar with.  I will definitely be keeping tabs on what these ladies are up to and who knows, maybe I'll jump into another challenge again soon!

While I am sad that this challenge has come to an end, I am looking forward to being able to show you some of the new polishes I have gotten in the meantime.  Keep your eye's open for that!

For the letter Z, I again only had one polish that started with a Z (unless you count the brand Zoya).  Ironically, the Z I have IS a Zoya and she is Zuza.  This is turquoise with silver shimmer and that sort of finish that Zoya seems to do so well that almost like a foil effect.  I have several polishes from Zoya with this sort of finish.  I honestly think between all my Zoya's there is not a single one with a bad formula!  If you haven't tried them yet, be sure to be a fan of their Facebook page and even start an account with them.  They run promos very often and you can usually get something like a BOGO deal.  Okay, enough rambling....

I hope you all enjoyed seeing the post of this challenge.  I know I really enjoyed it.

ABC Challenge: "Y" You Don't Know Jacques!

Hello my lovelies!  We are getting to the very end here on the Alphabet Challenge and I have really loved doing this!  It has really motivated me to blog and also allowed me to pick polishes that I normally wouldn't have.  I have to say, I was kind of happy there were only two letters this week.  I have just been having all kind of craziness going on!  I am getting my 4 year old ready for 4K and just trying to keep up with things.

I have lots of new polishes that I hope to be posting soon too!

For the letter "Y" this was easy as it was the only polish I had that started with a Y and it is a classic favorite, OPI You Don't Know Jacques.  I love this color and it is perfect for fall!

Thanks for stopping by!  Have a good day!

Amy

ABC Challenge: "X"

So this is the letter I was dreading for the Alphabet Challenge.  I don't have any polishes that start with the letter X.  Is there such a thing even?  Then I thought, I'm going to take the easy way out.  I had picked an Xtreme (starts with X) Wear by Sally Hansen polish called Pink Satin.  Then, I thought..well heck...I could get out my striping tape and do an X on one of my nails!!!  For some reason I picked my middle finger to do this "accent" on.  Maybe subconsciously I was thinking...middle finger to you, letter X!!!

I gotta be honest, this is by far my finest work.  The color I put over my X was Essie No Place like Chrome and for whatever reason, it just didn't apply smoothly.  I have yet to try this polish on it's own but I doubt the formula is bad.  I do like the color combo but the actual outcome did not come out how I would have liked.

If I wasn't doing this challenge, I most likely wouldn't even post this.  I have many manicures that I've done that I intend to post but end up not doing so for reasons just like this!  I'm not big on editing my photos.  The most I do is crop and watermark.  So, here is is in all it's glory!

First picture is with flash

Second picture without flash.

Only two more letters left for next week.  Thanks for stopping by!

ABC Challenge: "W"

Hello my friends!  Happy Friday to you!  We are on W today for the Alphabet Challenge.  I picked Revlon Whimsical for this one.  If you don't know, Whimsical is a dupe for a Deborah Lippmann polish called Glitter in the Air.  It is a very delicate sheer blue base with pink and baby blue hexagon glitters.  I have worn this before over Sinful Colors Cinderella and it is pretty that way but today, I wanted to try something different.  I actually layered it over Revlon Peachy.  Not something that you would think to layer it over but I quite like how it turned out.  I only did one coat of Whimsical for fear of that sheer blue base building up too much on the base.  I love how delicate it looks with just one coat.

What do you think of this pair?

ABC Challenge: "V"

We sure are getting to the end of the alphabet here in the Alphabet Challenge!  I'm a little behind this week and I have to try to squeeze two more letters in after this one.  One of those letters is going to be difficult.  I'm trying to get my creative juices flowing but they aren't flowing too good.  I will come up with something though!!

Today we are featuring the letter V.  I actually had two polishes that started with the letter V and the one I decided to go with was China Glaze Velvet Bow.  I believe this is part of the holiday 2011 collection but I don't think a similar color would be too hard to find.  It is a nice vampy deep red.  I found it a little boring by itself so I spiced it up with Essie Luxeffects Pure Pearlfection.  This top coat adds so much to a manicure and I feel like I never hear about it or see anyone using it!  I love how it can transform a manicure!

Don't be surprised if you see another post from me later today so I can get caught up here.

The combo outdoors, no flash.

Velvet Bow with flash indoors.

The combo indoors, no flash (using light box)

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?