Haulin' it - OPPA bargain styyyle!

Y - I - K - E - S!!!!!!!!!!! 

I thiiink it's safe to say I've become a bit of a beauty addict... 

And I am going to enter a plea of insanity under the defense: THE BLOGGER MADE ME DO IT!

My dear nail blogger buddy, Liesl of Liesl Loves Pretty Things has been true to her "resolution" of sorts to branch out into more beauty and fashion posts this year.  And I'm clearly loving - & influenced by them!  ;)

I have to mention, I've wanted white aviators for years now, but typically, they're of course metal frames with the actual nosepieces. Which get firmly tangled in my hair. So when I saw these, I was exstatic!!! They're not bad at all for $1 sunglasses! I hope they have more because I would like to pick up a backup or two in case these break. :)

e.l.f. is a brand that was not even on my radar at all really, until Liesl started showing us so many of their wonderful and affordable products!  I was definitely intrigued, but had never seen them in my area.  Then one day on a rare stop at my local K-Mart (in hopes of scoring the much-posted-about clearance Essie polishes), much to my dismay and pleasant surprise, what had appeared in the revamped beauty section but e.l.f. products?!  And as if that wasn't enough, our Wal-Mart got a square aisle display shortly thereafter!  So I umm... went hog wild.

1) e.l.f. Professional Total Face Brush - $1, Wal-Mart

2) e.l.f. Eyeshadow "C" Brush - $3, K-mart

3) Plastic aviator sunglasses - $1, Target dollar section!

4) OPI Don't Bossa Nova Me Around - ?? (roomie brought it home for me just today!)

5) Burt's Bees Herbal Blemish Stick -$8.49, Walgreens

6) e.l.f. Smudge Brush - $1, Wal-Mart

7) e.l.f. Small Angled Brush - $3, K-mart

8) e.l.f. Concealer Brush - $1, Target

9) Burt's Bees Hydrating Lip Balm - $2.99, Target

10) Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter in Red Velvet, - $5, K-mart

11) Woven plastic zipper clutch - $1, Target dollar section!

12) e.l.f. Long Lasting Lustrous Eyeshadow in purple - $3, K-mart

13) e.l.f. High Definition Undereye Setting Powder - $3, K-mart

14) L'Oreal Infallible 24-hr eyeshadow in Sultry Smoke - $7.99, K-Mart

15) L'Oreal Carbon Black Pencil Perfect eyeliner - $3.99, K-Mart

16) L'Oreal Voluminous Million Lashes Excess - $8.99, K-Mart

17) L'Oreal Infallible 24-hr eyeshadow in Endless Sea - $3.99, K-Mart (they were having a buy one, get one 1/2 off deal on L'Oreal eye products, so I splurged and got some fun & dramatic new stuff!)

All of that for just a HAIR under $50!!!!  In the words of Vector from Despicable Me: "OH YEAH!"  :D 

I realized just a moment ago that it would've been more appropriate to include the L.A. Girl Sand Blast polish (Sands of Time, GREAT sub for Zoya Tomoko!) I picked up today at our Thrifty White drugstore, and the Cover Girl polish (Salt Water Taffy) that was also BOGO half off at Walgreens -- INSTEAD of the OPI since that is clearly not bargain, nor drugstore, but I was just sooo excited to finally have DBNMA that I threw it in my arrangement!  Oh well!
Also not shown here are the e.l.f. blotting sheets I grabbed at Target last weekend.  Just used one this afternoon and they work very well on my extra-oily teenager-like skin. :P  ...I'm 28. -_-
Oh, hence why I decided to give the Burt's Bees blemish rollerball a try!  I've tried every other  over-the-counter product, so why not?!  Some people might find the very strong herbal scent repulsive, but I rather like it.  It's got tea tree oil, juniper oil, willow bark, and a whole lotta alcohol! ...which I did not realize when I bought it, hence the BURN, but I can handle that.  Especially since it does in fact seem to be helping zits heal/disappear faster!

So far, I'm absolutely, positively pleased as punch with all of my purchases!  All of the L'Oreal eye products are fabulous - I use the mascara & liner almost every day, and I did play with the colors when I had a flexible amount of time to get ready for the day. ;)  Oh and they really DO wear all day... not 24 hours, by any means, but I got a good 12 hours out of the below look I did with Tarte Amazonian Clay primer as a base, and using Cover Girl and Victoria's Secret neutrals to temper the boldness of the colors.  LOVED it!  And I feel it came out pretty well considering my limited knowledge when it comes to all things beauty-related.

So there you have it, folks!  My first insane infusion of beauty products and well, this would've been posted on Saturday in the fashion of Liesl's "Happy Caturday" beauty posts, but I was multitasking and doing other things while writing this.  And now it's Sunday!  I guess that IS  how the days of the week go!  LOL  Yup, overtired goofiness is settin' in.  :)

Have a fabulous remainder of your weekend, and if you want to know more about any of the items shown here, feel free to leave a comment.  I read & respond to all of them!

My favorite kind of cake!! ...maybe.

Honestly, I don't even remember how I stumbled upon Hare Polish or Llarowe, but I know it was towards the very beginning of my obsession with indies and well, the rest is history!  Here we have (for the 2nd time on this blog; 1st time here) Hare Polish's Let Them Eat...What?  :D

Despite the newbie blogger quality of the aforementioned post, I do urge you to check it out in lieu of the fact that my 1-year blogiversary recently passed, and this polish was among those first few posts, so it felt quite serendipitous to show it again now.  It's rather cool to look back and see what I've learned about nail blogging over a year (mostly relating to nail care and nail photography)!

No, you do not need to rush to the phone and make an eye doctor appointment!!  I almost sent this photo to the sad, black "recycle" bin of doom, but decided the lovely ethereal quality made it worthy of keeping and yes, even being shown on the blog!  

This is two coats of LTEW and two of Revlon Parfumerie China Flower, with a simple gradient-ish thing of butter LONDON West End Wonderland, all topped - carefully - with Seche Vite.

Hare Polishes are typically replete with glitter and somehow still manage to be decently smooth to the touch, which is a big part of why I love them, but this one is just a HARE less smooth. ;)

Ah!  Here we go - your 20/20 vision has been restored!! hehe  Like I said the first time around, there is just something about LTEW that I absolutely love... it is bold yet demure at the same time.  Those coral-y, orange-y red matte glitters sure do POP (and are 90% of what drew me to this polish), but it's not totally in your face because they're tempered by the slightly shimmery off-white crelly base and its pastel pink, white, and gold glitters in various shapes and sizes.  You can see just what I mean by taking a gander at the bottle below!

This was actually my Easter mani!  Didn't plan it or anything, and errrm... it certainly did not match my outfit (plum ruffly tank, black cardigan, and a cream skirt with black lace print chevrons), but I feel that the HARE makes it all okay! ;)  And it really is just such a beautiful polish that I love this mani in spite of my affinity for matching my outfit to my polish.  Yes, I usually do it that way, not the other way around like most normal people!  Oh and of course I was thrilled to find I had THE  perfect match to those coral-y red glitters!  I honestly am feeling like all the Parfumerie polishes have the same scent (strange, fruity, with the occasional hint of what the name actually IS), but I really don't care.  The color is fun and bright and I'm thinking summer pedi for sure!  :)  

"And NOW (*insert dramatic movie theater preview voice here)... coming soon to a blog near you:"  more Bear Pawlishes!!!  Hot off the mail truck this afternoon!  ♥

Disclaimer: Holo Back Girl is pulling deceptively purple here!  Much more fuchsia IRL!!

Challenge mani #2: Sparkles

Well well, the challenge & I meet again!  And again, I was not entirely sure what to make of the theme for today...  I mean, obviously, glitter, but since this is an ART challenge, I couldn't really just do a bunch of glitter skittles & call it good...

I immediately settled on using some Shimmer Polish since I'd recently acquired Leslie & Julie from yet another Pinterest sale.  Gosh I love those things!  They're like the garage sales of the polish world! hehe  

For the rest of the nails, I had two different ideas & ended up going with the one I thought  I could execute the best. ;)  So without further ado:

I give you Shimmer Julie as an accent, coupled with Revlon Parfumerie Wild Violets (which I FINALLY procured just yesterday at Target in the biggest "city" - roughly 15,000 people - near my hometown), and of course the requisite "sparkles."  P.S. I also scored Autumn Spice and China Flower, but they'll have to continue to hold their caps & wait in the wings for their debut on Must.Stash. ;)

Knowing 2 coats of Julie would be a pain to remove - although I probably should've done 3, I decided to forego a base coat and apply a medium layer of Elmer's glue straight outta the bottle & directly to the nail in hopes that I can use an orangewood stick to "scoot" it all off like I've seen in various tutorials.  I'll keep you posted on whether or not it works.  I'm thinking not, because it didn't even start lifting in the shower this morning.  So I must be doing something wrong, or I need to break down & buy Nail Pattern Boldness's Glitter A Peel!

The OTHER HAND.  Nope, no nail art sparkles, just a smattering of Set in Stones.
...ain't nobody got time for that!

Anyhoo, I used my recently acquired Duri Rejuvacote for the base on my other 8 nails.  It dries to quite a smooth & glossy finish, and I'm starting to wonder if that's why my new Zoyas and now this Revlon did not behave very nicely on the first coat... Lots of pulling and streaking and general unevenness.  The second coat however, righted all previous wrongs and wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles; I had no polish acne!  So either this scented stuff cures faster or I just had a rare good polish night. :D

Most of the time, WV looks darn near black on the nail (as you see in most of my photos), but this is the beauty that lies beneath!!  Oh, and the blurred out accent shows its many fine rainbow glitters. :)

Speaking of the scent, for me it was rather sweet & fresh with a hint of fruity, a bit strong for the first few hours and then I went to bed and I kept noticing it while trying to fall asleep.  I could still smell it at work today after adding Rejuvacote as a top coat, but much more muted.  Now (24 hrs later) it's completely gone.  I'm super excited to discover the scents of the other two I got!  Of course I've read other blogger's descriptions at length, but it's a different story to experience something for yourself. 

Ok, so I suppose I should actually talk a bit about why/how I did this mani for the challenge! lol  Umm the first thing that came to mind were the cartooned "sparkles" you see when light hits something shiny, or for example, the glint in someone's eye.  So using dotting tools and Pure Ice Silver Mercedes, I drew the body of the sparkles and then hex by hex, I added my ever so useful Essie Set in Stones.  Voila!  It didn't look as fabulous as I'd envisioned, and I couldn't get my camera + daylight bulb combo to actually make them sparkle and capture it, but oh well.  I do like it enough to show you, and that's saying something!

Goodnight my dear readers!  Sleep well!! :)

Another lacquer first, and some random fun

Ahhh...what a great Saturday! :-D  I hope all of you lovely ladies had a good day too.  As I mentioned at the end of yesterday's post, I met my sister, brother-in-law, and their 3 kids (ages 6, 4 3/4, & 3) at a pretty darn great indoor water park in Grand Forks, ND.  We've been there a few times now.  So, we spent a few hours there, ran some errands (I resisted going into Sally Beauty AND two lovely polishes I spotted at Target - YAY me!), and then got Caribou and spent an hour or so at a fabulous park by the river.

I planned my mani around my swimsuit colors, and I must say, it turned out exactly as I hoped and I think it looked pretty sweet.  I was hoping to add a tish of Silly Lily's Pacific Fantasy before the Seche Vite, but after my mishap in the car, I decided to quit while I was still somewhat ahead.

What was the mishap, you might ask?  Well, I wanted to make sure my first layer of Revlon Royal plus the thick, gooey Milani Teal glitter had ample time to dry, so I decided to finish my mani in the morning.  Of course I didn't leave myself enough time, so what did I do?  Finish it while I was driving.  Yes, this is highly unrecommended BUT, the road to Grand Forks is extremely straight and boring!  SO, I finished the top layer of Royal on my left hand, and as I went to move the bottle to the other hand . . . well, I'm not entirely sure what happened or how, but it ended with my hand slimed full of polish and some of it on my seat and middle console.  YIKES!!!  Unbelievably, it wasn't as bad as it could've been.  But I could only wipe my hand off on a napkin, and I'm sure you can imagine the blue stain that Royal left all over my palm!  Didn't have any remover with, so I was like, I guess I'll be looking like a Smurf for the rest of the day!  How embarrassing.  I was going to take a picture of the carnage, but never got around to it.  The story has a happy ending though: did you know chlorinated water takes nail polish residue off?!  :-D  YAY!!!!  Smurf-be-gone!

Okay, again, enough with the jabba jabba - I will give you the pics!  As I'm sure you lacquerheads have ascertained by now, I did a jelly sandwich!!  My very first one. :-D  So without further ado:

One coat of Revlon Royal
I would say it's more of a translucent, "thin" polish versus a jelly, but it gives the same effect

Add the goopy Milani Teal (which is actually medium-sized blue, green , and silver hexes)

And add another coat of Revlon Royal *NOT in a moving vehicle.
I decided to try an Essie-esque shot ;-)

Hehe!  Here you can see a partial fingerprint in Royal - evidence of the "mishap."

Oh, and don't forget a heavy coat or two of Seche Vite!  That really creates the deep, "squishy" jelly look,  IMO.

I took these post-waterpark, so I must say I was very impressed that I didn't have any major gouges, cracks, or chips (well, one on my right ring finger), what with all the going down waterslides, navigating the extra-coarse grit floor/pool surrounds, and getting in & out of tubes countless times.  Just that darn tip shrinkage, courtesy of Seche Vite.  Ugggh.  Such a love-hate relationship.

Now for the other "things" that made today great:

Haley, sister-in-law
Jayla, niece (my sister Amanda's daughter)
Jacob, stepbrother (married to Haley)

Kyle, nephew (Jayla & Brea's big bro)
Jason, brother-in-law (dad to all 3)

Brea, niece
She just got done kissing & hugging the dragon that she named: Dragon

Caribou Hazelnut Mocha with biscotti pieces (passable attempt at replicating their bomb-diggity Biscotti Mocha)

SUSHI!  And I love me some "fresh" ginger slices!

Thanks for stopping by and taking a stroll through my fun Saturday! :-D  I hope you had a wonderful day as well!

NAIL MAIL!!! ...and the mani that's been waiting for it. :-)

Happy weekend, everyone!!  Ahhh do I ever love Friday nights!!  Even though I'm sitting at home doing nothing (other than reading blogs and looking at polish swatches on Google Images), I love the feeling of having two whole work-free days stretching out before me like the pages of an open book. :-)

Today was a pretty important occasion (in the life of a new blogger) as you can probably tell from the title of this post. I received my very first ever nail mail from a blogger friend. :-D
Essie from iHeartPrettyPolish sent me the wonderful, undeserved gift of her bottle of Essie Sand Tropez - a polish I've been ogling every time I go into Wal-Mart or Kmart as I keep seeing manicures that use a nude base, which I did not have up until this point.  Included in the bubble mailer envelope was a BEAUTIFUL, unexpected surprise: Julep Trina.  I have no idea how she could've known this, as I'm just starting to discover I have a thing for vampy, shimmery, glittery purples, and especially duochromes!! :-D  So imagine my surprise when I pulled that beauty out of the bag!  I already have a mani idea (inspired by my shower curtain, of all things!) that I will do as soon as the mani I'm showing you today wears to the point of being unacceptable.  As I said in my original post, part of my goal is to provide info about the wear time you may expect from a polish.  So here are the day 1 photos:

Super fun dot/gradient mani! Looking at this now though, I'm horrified at the polish I somehow left on my cuticles.  I swear I touched up before I took these pics, so I don't know how I missed it. :-/ Embarrassing!

Got a 'lil carried away on the pinkie! Whoops.

This is my favorite one. :-) So happy with how it turned out!

I decided I had to take a pic with my Lia Sophia rings since they match the color scheme so perfectly!

Other thumb. Also very nice.

The one - the ONLY: ESSIE SAND TROPEZ!!

And I had to get a good bottle shot of this one too. I'd been wanting a purty orange glass fleck ever since I saw China Glaze Riveting.  So I was very happy to stumble upon W 'n W's 9-0-2-1-Orange! Only $1.69, babyyy!

I just realized I posted manis inspired by other bloggers (and ironically, the same blogger two posts in a row!  Oh well.  See Chalkboard Nails' version here if you'd like. :-)  I sure wish I had long nail beds like hers!!
http://www.chalkboardnails.com/2012/06/gradient-dot-manicure.html


What I used:

L-R: Revlon Base, Essie Sand Tropez, Revlon Royal, Kleancolor Orange Metallic, Wet 'N Wild 9-0-2-1-Orange, and SV

I did one coat of the quick dry base, which I am fairly certain I will be replacing with a different brand as this one is getting so gloopy and stringy every time I take the brush out of the bottle.  I mean, I realize base coat is in part supposed to help the polish stick to your nails, but this formula is just kinda "ick."  So I'd like to see what else is out there.  

Ok, so base coat (I get off-topic quickly!) - then two coats of Sand Tropez which I soooo badly wanted to get good pics of before the nail art, but I had some bubbling issues (could've been from over agitation as I hopped up and down when I got the package, and/or the fact that I was so eager to get this beaut on my nails that I didn't allow proper drying time between coats).  Pretty smooth application though a tad streaky, it evens itself out very well!  Mmm, love it!

Also due to this eagerness, I forgot I'd intended to do an accent nail of just solid 9-0-2-1-Orange, so I ended up painting two coats of that over one coat of Sand Tropez on my ring fingers.  Oh well, it was probably good undies for it, as the orange has a jelly base. :-)

I then proceeded to scrounge up "dotting tools" . . .a.k.a. the clicker end of a retractable pen, and the lead tip of a pencil. ;-)  Rock what ya got, right?  I used Revlon Royal first, and then the Kleancolor, just trying to make the dots random and different sizes.  You can see the baby dots in Royal on my pinkie. 

Then of course I finished everything off with a medium coat of Seche Vite.  THERE YOU HAVE IT, FOLKS!  

I couldn't stop staring at my nails today.  Finally doing this mani made me happy...and it happens to remind me of one of my favorite movies, Finding Nemo.  The orange and the blue: Marlin/Nemo, and Dory. :-D  And of course, the fact that the dots look like bubbles:

Thank you for reading, and if you made it to the end of this LOOOONG post, you deserve a gold star!!!