Darker Valentine

Valentine's Day is tomorrow, and today will probably be the last of my mini series of Valentine's Day manicures. Andy and I have plans to make some homemade ravioli (with spinach, ricotta, and Italian sausage inside) which probably won't leave much time for my hands to be painted. Toxic nail polish in delicious homemade food doesn't sound too appetizing.

Today I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Cinna-Snap as the base. Holy cow is that color sexy. It's such a deep, dark, almost bronzed red. Definitely a one-coater, and a hell of a job to clean up in the cuticle area. I then layered on some Chunky Holo Scarlet. Topping it all off is Synergy from L.A. Girl's Glitter Addict collection. I had plans to do some stamping, but I'm really pleased with all these glittering combinations lately.

A Happy, Provocative, Uninhibited Good Time

My title is describing a rave.

Have you ever been to a rave? It's full of bright colors, bright lights and bright music. Sure, you're surrounded by a lot of people who are probably on drugs, whether that be ecstacy, alcohol or some sort of psychadelic, but honestly, if you like the music, none of that matters. I've been to lots of raves, mostly when I lived in California, and I always had fun. If you hate electronic dance music, you would hate them, unless of course you went for the drugs, in which case you would love them...and everyone that goes to them. Either way, they're a pretty fun experience, and I'm glad I got the chance to go to some amazing ones.

One of the best I've ever been to was the Electric Daisy Carnival in Los Angeles. It has since been moved to Las Vegas due to safety issues at the Colosseum, but it was amazing the two years I went. It was by far the brightest rave I've ever been to, and rightly so, being in the middle of summer and selling some of the highest number of music tickets in history. To honor the awesome times I had there with some awesome people, and to honor the names of the polishes used for this manicure, here's Happy Go Lucky (China Glaze), Uninhibited, and Provocative (L.A. Girl).

Looking back, I should've stopped with Provocative on top of Happy Go Lucky, but it just didn't look like enough at the time, so Uninhibited joined. It's certainly not bad, but maybe too busy now. That's raves for ya though!

Birthday, Christmas and New Year Haul

The end of the year is always full of some serious celebration for me. With a birthday right before Christmas, Christmas itself, and all the celebration and hangovers that accompany New Year's Eve, there's a lot to be happy about. In addition, I have gifts and presents to celebrate over that I know you all will also appreciate. Of course, I recieved some lovely non-nail gifts and love from my family and friends that are also reason to celebrate, but since this is a nail blog, I'll just share those with you today.

Get ready...it's picture heavy!

First up, these are the gifts my sister gave me. She understands nail polish more than anyone I personally know, so you can only imagine my joy opening her gifts. She gave me tools:

...dotting tools

...striping brushes

...and a glass nail file.

She gave me the Butter London Dressing Table duo, Black Knight and Tart with a Heart. Unfortunately, the dressing table suffered a fatility during the 17-hour car ride, so it won't be making an appearance in today's shots.

She gave me some amazing nail art brushes I've never heard of, but definitely want more of. The formula on all of these is great, and only requires one coat. That's practically unheard of with brighter striping shades. All of these are from a company called Color Madric. They're all sort of metallic, not matte as their bottles seem to indicate.

Shown here is Design Yellow, Green, Ocean Blue, and Hologram Glitter.

Hologram Glitter really is holographic, as I tried to capture here.

Shown here are the metallics from the Metal-licious collection of Color Madric brushes. These colors are Am-Ore, Platinum Rush, Lead to Riches, Metal-Licious, Iron I Lovely, and Gold Digger.

These all appear metallic, as their collection's name suggests.

She gave me part of L.A. Girl Glitter Addict collection, including the elusive Uninhibited I've been craving since I saw Rie from Nails and Noms use it.

Shown here are Uninhibited, Jostle, Animate, and Celebrate.

A few days after getting these, we stopped by a random Rite Aid to get Andy some contact solution, and I saw a glittering display of five more colors from the collection!

I added Eutopia, Nostalgic, Purge (a new nail polish name favorite in my book), Synergy, and Provocative to my infant collection.

Now it's a glittering grand collection!

She gave me some polishes we had talked about over the phone. These are randoms I mentioned liking that she had cheap access to out there in So-Cal.

Shown here is Sea Gurl from ORLY, Good Witch? from China Glaze, Cleopatra also from China Glaze, Glass Slipper from Sally Hansen Diamond Strength (one I actually snagged for myself), Lady Luck from Sally Hansen Gem Crush and January from Julep. She didn't like that color on her, so I took it off her hands. To top this load of polishes off is the amazing Load from Illamasqua. Look at it back there. Beautifully raunchy.

Rounding out my sister's amazing gifts is my first bottle...or bottles rather...of Seche Vite.

Look at this monstrosity! It's so much top coat, I don't even know what to do with it! 4 ounces!

So that's it from her...but fear not, my haul has not ended! She did an unbelievable job of making my Christmas gifts a thrill to open. Thanks Sisser, I love you!

I mentioned in Sapphire that Andy's mom's trainer, Robbie really hooked me up with some amazing CND products. Here they are!

She included in my bag of goodies some nail care items including some tasty CND Solar Oil (a cuticle conditioner), Scentsations lotion minis in Sparkling Champagne and Clementine & Mistletoe. They smell awesome! There are also several samples of CND's Spamanicure hand lotions, in Citrus Soothing Creme and Almond Hydrating Lotion. I absolutely love the smell of the almond lotion. Finally, there are a few nail buffers, showing their support for breast cancer research with the words "Nail Community Cares" written on them.

She also included some amazing colors, including Smoochie (#518), Sapphire Sparkle (#561), Plum Truffle Sparkle Effect (#586), and Plum Truffle Colour (#585).  You've seen Sapphire Sparkle already in Sapphire.

Thank you again Robbie, I love everything!

Last but not least! We have the polishes I bought myself.

You've already seen the Urban Outfitters collection I picked up here, but here's a few more shots of those beautiful bottles.

I also snagged the entire Finger Paints Special Effects collection today at Sally's!

 Not much to look at when they're in the bottles, but I'm sure you've seen them used by other ladies. My favorite shots are from Jen at The PolishAholic, from this post showing each on its own, and this post showing them all layered together. Oh many these are going to be fun to play with!

So that's it. Can you feel my excitement through the screen? It's radiating!

New Year's Eve Nails

A little late in the day to post this, but this is what I'm wearing tonight. We're going dancing in Hillcrest at Eden. Should be a fabulous time!

I used Zoya's Ginessa as the pearly white. Here you can see it before adding the embellishments.

Then I stamped with Black on Black from Sinful Colors. The plate was Konad's m64.

Finally, I glittered it up with Uninhibited from L.A. Girl, the Glitter Addict collection. By the way, I stopped by a Rite Aid last night for non-nail related business, and stumbled upon an entire display of these awesome polishes. I picked up a bunch, so in addition to the ones my sister gave me for Christmas, my collection is young, but large! If you live near a Rite Aid, see what you can grab, because these all rock.