Christmas Mani #2

   I would've wanted to put in as much effort in my second Christmas mani as in my first one, but I didn't have much time. I've also been so exhausted lately, so for my second Christmas mani I chose to keep it simple: two coats of The Face Shop RD 301 and two coats of 24K Crystal Teal Glass (the flakies one. Yes, apparently it has a name).

   And this is the result.

 

   This is with flash:

   With flash it doesn't look so Christmas-y, as the flakes become orange and gold, making it look more like a Chinese New Year mani than a Christmas mani. Actually, even without the flash it doesn't look so Christmas-y to me either, since the flakes flash blue and green instead of just green.

   But it doesn't matter. It's cheery enough for me :)

Christmas In Our Hearts and On My Nails

   I don't know about you, but these past few years, Christmas has ceased to excite me. Like any kid, I used to be so excited about Christmas - wrapping presents, getting presents, staying up for Santa, setting up the tree, etc. But now that I'm an adult, Christmas countdowns make me feel claustrophobic, carols make me want to throw up... you get the picture. The only thing I've been excited about is receiving my Christmas bonus.

   But I guess, now that there's a child in our home, Christmas is festive and bright again, something to look forward to. And you know I'm excited about something when I dress my nails for it.

   Ta-dah! My first Christmas mani!

   It doesn't look so nice and Christmas-y in the picture and it's just so frustrating being unable to capture its Christmassyness. It looks like a kindergartner drew red and green vertical stripes across my nails. But in person, I swear to Santa Claus, it looks like Christmas wrapping paper.

   I started by applying 24K Winter Sky as the base; it just doesn't show. I should have done three coats, methinks.

no flash

with flash

   And then the stripes with these babies. They're some brand-less polishes I picked up in Divisoria. Though the colors weren't so appealing, I couldn't resist trying out new polish, and at 4Php each, I didn't really lose anything. Plus, seriously, they looked like little babies in an orphanage just crying out to be adopted. So I did.

   The green polish looks more teal-ish here.

   And finally, 24K flakies that flash green and gold, which I could never capture. I tried but they just wouldn't appear on camera. 

 
   This is just the first Christmas mani. There will be more, especially since Christmas vacay is just two weeks away! You have been warned! haha :))

   (I do admit this first Christmas mani kinda sucks. haha :)) Oh well. :)

(Edit: my students and a colleague told me they actually liked my nails. That's surprising considering I thought my first attempt at doing a Christmas mani sucked. Yay for trying!)

My Stash So Far

 Think this is a lot?

Think again. This is only half of a container. I'm not yet that much of a polish addict, but I'm getting there.

 

 

NYX Sexy Plum + Dorothy

   After the Tinkerbell disaster, I just wanted to slap on some cream polish on my nails and be done with it. Frost, shimmer and glitter polishes are a bitch to remove. Then I realized I didn't have many cream polishes, and I don't feel like wearing the ones I did have. In any case, these days I haven't been able to leave my polishes alone; I always feel the need to add some glitter polish or do nail art.

   So I wore this instead. NYX Sexy Plum (aka eggplant nails) + NYX Dorothy.

   I have a confession to make though. Pictured above is how my nails look right now, after I retouched them. But this morning, my nails looked like this.

aka morning-after nails?

    Yes, I have a bad habit of doing my nails right before I sleep, or at most, an hour before. So in the morning I always end up with hair-and-bedsheet-marked nails. I can't help it, doing my nails relaxes me and helps me fall asleep at night. Sigh. Time to break bad habits.

 

Tinkerbell-inspired Mani aka Nail Art Fail

   The other day I was more stressed than ever (I'm not exaggerating. I've been so stressed I broke out in hives, which made me stress out more. I'm on steroids as I write this. And on top of that, I'm not allowed to eat processed food, chocolate, cured meat, which are basically what I live on, so I'm even more stressed now.), and as you can all guess, Keep Calm and Paint Your Nails is the motto I live by.

   So I did. And as I was feeling more stressed than normal, I dared to do nail art. Initially I wanted to do a Christmas mani even though these past few years Christmas just always succeeds in stressing me out (there's the S word again.). Anyway, I didn't have the right colors - I don't have the right shade of Christmas green although I did buy recently Winter Sky by 24K, a sheer white frost with gold shimmer.

   And then I saw this gold Konad polish (I'll post about "my" Konads soon) and this olive green frost with gold shimmer by Kelly, and I got an idea.

   I came up with this.

   I know, I'm sorry. I hope your eyes are insured. I didn't take it off right away because I was still trying to decide whether I liked it or not, but my mom decided for me. "It's ugly! Ugly! Take it off! Your nails look dirty!" she insisted.

   I wanted to make it look all wood nymph-y or Tinkerbell-y but my nails ended up looking like a fairy climbed out of a moss-covered well with her nails. Moss would've been good actually, but this looks like pus. Like fairy nails but with some sort of an infection. I should've stopped with the gold polish, I think.

OPI Grape Set Match

   I finally got to wear OPI Grape Set Match from the Serena Williams Collection. I know I said I'd wear last week's Pink Wednesday mani for a week, but I got bored with it. Plus I was getting really stressed out with work and I know I'm stressed out when I get this urge to paint my nails. Seriously. Last semester, during hell week for teachers (aka the one, two weeks before finals week) I was daydreaming of painting my nails while teaching in class.

   So anyway, here it is finally. And I'm glad I chose to change into this color. Looking at it makes me happy.

   The first picture was taken at a weird angle, I know, but it's just so hard to capture its shine and color because of all the micro glitter. 

  The photos were taken right after I applied the polish. Look at it; hardly any mess to clean after. I thank OPI's idiot-proof brush. (Except that little smudge on my palm. Ok, maybe not so idiot-proof)

   This color is just so happy and lively it makes me want to bust a move every time I look at my nails. I don't know if it's because dark purples go so well with my skin tone or if Grape Set Match is simply fabulous in itself.

Pink Wednesday - Stamp Succes!

It's still Wednesday in other parts of the worlds so this still counts, right?

No, you're not dreaming, those are really MY nails and yes, I used stamp art on them, and yes, I did it MYSELF. I just have to emphasize that because it's a fact that I suck at art. I am conquering my art-idiot self!

It's still far from perfect, but they do look pretty decent for a stamping newbie. And I'm so proud of it I think I'll wear it for a week!

I was hoping to use as base a pink polish that looks more pink than the one I have on - San San Tea Rose. But it was the only pink I have that's light enough to make the black (Calar) stand out. For the stamp I used Konad stamping plate S9.

I wasn't really planning to do a Pink Wednesday mani since I've been so busy these days, but the mani I had on chipped so I was forced to change it, so I thought, I might as well do a Pink Wed.

This was what I was wearing:

This is obviously the practice mani.

And I was so nervous at first. I was planning to stamp just the nails on my left hand but after seeing and liking the result, I got the courage to do my right hand as well. And it looked even better, I think.

Left hand

Right hand

I'm right-handed so it's really surprising that my left hand exceeded expectations. Maybe I'm like Rafael Nadal when it comes to nails - writes with right hand, kicks ass with left hand. Or maybe I was just lucky. I think it's the latter. :)

 

The Search for Mystery Pink Begins

   My niece celebrated her first birthday last Sunday. And since she is our superstar, the apple of our eyes, the family pet, the theme of her party was Princess. Do I even have to tell what the theme color was? Okay, fine, here's a clue: it starts with P and rhymes with ink.

   I was thinking of getting a princess-y mani but I was so busy the days before the party. The closest I could get to following the theme was this:

   I can't tell you the brand and name of the polish because I don't know them. I got my mani from a salon and I did try to find out what the brand was, but it's nothing I recognized. I just remembered that it was Epsa-something (or was it Epspa?) and the shade was 112. I figure it's Asian, as Etude House and The Face Shop assign number codes to their polishes as well and they're both Asian, Korean to be specific.

   I can't tell you either about the formula and the application because, as I have mentioned, a nail technician applied it, not I.

   The color was perfect; it went with my outfit. Plus I was starting to think that pinks don't look good on me, until I found this. It was like finding true love. What's disappointing was it started to chip just a couple of days after application. :(

 

Her Royal Highness was not amused.

"Off with its head!"

    Neither was I. I want that exact same shade of fushcia fucshia fush oh wtf hot pink! I shall find you, True Love Pink!

 

Late Post - First Day of School (Work)

   There's a reason I haven't posted in a loooong time: I started work two weeks ago and as I mentioned in my previous post, I now work full time in Ateneo.Today is Saturday but I woke up at 7:30 am, panicked for a whole minute that I was already running late (my first class starts at 8:30), then realized I didn't have work today. Sheesh.

   Anyway, here's what I wore on the first day of school.

two coats

   NYX Purple Ink. Formula is great, application is easy, and it lasted the whole week. At first I thought it would be similar to OPI Grape Set Match but I think this is darker. I haven't tried the latter yet so I'm not sure.

   My cuticles look horrible, I know! I misplaced my beloved Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream and I don't want to buy a new one yet in case I find it. But, yeah, my cuticles are suffering so maybe I should buy already. :|

Blah

   As the title suggests, I'm not feeling very glittery today. I don't know if it's just the quarter life crisis, the knowledge that I'm going back to work in a few days (and starting next semester, which is next week, I work full time, meaning 6 classes in Ateneo alone. That's a lot.), the crazy Manila weather, or the fact that I'm down with cramps.

   I actually wanted to cheer myself up by wearing some glitter or flakes polish, but the last time I wore glitter (last week's Pink Wednesday mani, which I failed to blog about) I regretted it the moment I had to use two cotton balls soaked in polish remover just for one nail.

   So I decided to wear this instead.

With flash. I regret not cleaning it up before taking a photo. Forgive me.

   I don't know how to describe the color. It's a cream periwinkle? bluish-purple (blurple)?

No flash. Still looks bluish, right?

   Application is okay (two coats) and the color is pretty despite it being unidentifiable, but right after I finished painting my nails I noticed some bubbles forming. And no, I wasn't painting my nails in front of the fan.



   It's one of the Kelly polishes I bought in Bangkok. In the pictures it looks more blue than purple but when I bought it it looked purple to me. Or maybe I really should have my eyes checked.

  It's raining now. I'll end this and go mope in a corner.

Eeeeekkkk!

   I've been wearing this mani for a week!

   I wanted to do another Halloween mani but my niece wouldn't let me. She's now starting to walk/run and it's just impossible for me to sit still for at least ten minutes. That also explains the lack of posts. I'm writing this as her mom gives her a bath.

   Left with no choice, I decided to wear a polish from Cutex's Halloween collection (It was actually released months ago, but it's perfect for Halloween so I'm calling it that.)

   This is Under a Spell. It's a lovely blue matte.

It's matte, I promise.

 And like I said, I've worn this for a week and there's still no chipping. Plus it dries fast, making it the perfect polish for Babysitter Marvi.

   I also have the green one in this collection, Spooktacular, and it's also one of my favoritest polishes ever. When Marielle takes her afternoon nap later I'll probably change into this polish.

   I love mattes! 

I love you, too.

Trick or Treat!

   Happy Halloween! My niece went trick-or-treating for the first time yesterday. It's only the 22nd, I know, but the homeowners association of my grandma's village scheduled it yesterday.  Maybe because Filipinos go back to their hometowns and thus are away on Halloween? Or maybe so that the children can go trick-or-treating in other villages on Halloween itself?

greedy brats

   Whatever. This just means I can celebrate Halloween twice. And by celebrate I mean wear two different Halloween manis!

Spot the awesome Halloween mani!

   For my first Halloween mani, I used the black Calar polish I bought in Bangkok last week as the base for all of my nails except for the ring fingernail. And I must say I am impressed. When I go back to Bangkok I'll definitely buy more Calar polishes.

So how do you pronounce "Calar"?

    And for my ring fingernail I used Elianto Orange Red. I think it's misnamed though. I don't see any red. Do you?

   And then I topped it with my new discovery: 24k nail polish.

I'm in love

   I've never tried this brand before, but when I saw these two polishes, I grabbed them right away. They reminded me of Nfu-Oh polishes, which, unfortunately, I have none of. So I bought them, hoping they wouldn't disappoint.

   I used the orange one (they were nameless). It did not disappoint.

no flash

   It was light years away from disappointing.

with flash

   The flakes flash green and orange at the same time, my camera just can't capture it. Believe me, I tried.


   Each 24K bottle costs only 38php, making it even more awesome for a teacher  cheapskate like me.

   Oh and my niece won the Scariest Costume award. :) She wasn't scary at all, but other kids were dressed up in non-scary costumes like princess, fairy, pumpkin, etc.

   So, any ideas for my next Halloween mani?