Jamberry – City Lights

Okay, these Jamberry wraps had me intimidated but it was actually so easy and took less time than a regular session of me painting my nails… plus zero dry time on the wraps really helped since I have a new baby!

This one is City Lights!

They lasted and lasted… after the 2 week mark I just wanted them off for a change but they probably would have gone another week!

Here they were after 2 weeks:

If you’d like to try them, all you need is a blow dryer to seal the wrap, a file to file the end off, and scissors to trim the wraps.

You can use one sheet for 2 mainicures and pedicures! One manicure left so many strips for later on:

You can buy them here!

https://hollycotta.jamberry.com

They sell 8-free polishes too!

OPI – Man of La Mancha over black

I always thought OPI Man of La Mancha and La Boheme were amazing on their own but since I’m going to Vegas, I wanted to put something pink over black… so this magic happened!
Man of La Mancha over black!

Experiment with Hard Candy Sky and Seche Premiere Colour base/top

Since the Seche Premiere Colour system lasted so long for me, I decided to try a regular polish between the base and topcoat.

Let’s see how long it lasts!

I ❤️ Hard Candy Sky!

OPI – Black Spotted

I have had Black Spotted for a few years and never tried it, so I finally opened it! 

I’ve never posted a pedicure here before, but I had to do this quickly as my little sweetie pie napped… Didn’t have time to do toes and nails!

I started with half neon yellow and half neon pink, then I applied it on top.

The awesome neon colors are from the China Glaze Lite Brites. Whip It Good (yellow) and Lip Smackin’ Good (pink). Love these colors!

The tag on the Black Spotted bottle says to use a very thin layer. 

It came out looking pretty cool, but not the round spots that I expected after looking at other swatches online. I will be playing with this one again to figure it out.

When you have a 2 year old, you don’t have a lot of time to re-do your nails! You’re lucky to get to do them in the first place. 🙂

Piggy Polish – Tic Tac Toes Over China Glaze – Refreshmint

I know you’ve seen this one before, but how can you see it too much? 🙂

Refreshmint, 2 coats – No streaks or bubbles, its just so perfect!

I used it for a base because Tic Tac Toes is a little on the sheer side. Plus I thought it would help it look more minty for New Year’s Eve.

This one wasn’t swatched enough in the polish world in my opinion. I’m not sure how so many people missed out on it. Its too pretty! No hidden shimmer, you can see the sparkly shimmer in any light.

Speaking of that, I’ll keep apologizing for the light in these swatches until I get a perfect swatching spot in our new home. Hopefully I’ll figure that out by Spring at least? 🙂

Happy New Year! 2012 was way too crazy for me, so I’m really looking forward to enjoying 2013.

Octoberfranken…

What do you get when you take Orly Rock Solid and pour in a bunch of China Glaze Hawaiian Punch, NYX Maroon, and Spoiled Cougar Attack?

Isn’t it pretty? When I got Rock Solid, I was bummed that it was just gray and not brown at all, so I thought I’d make it burgundy with some NYX Maroon. Then it was too purple and I wanted it a little pinker, so I added the China Glaze Hawaiian Punch. Then I remembered I wanted brown in the first place and dumped the Spoiled Cougar Attack in. haha!

Now I have a full bottle of this awesomeness!

Honeymoon!!

I’m in Hawaii!! And finally took off my french tips that were getting all screwed up anyway.

I made this franken before the wedding… RBL Poco a Poco was too light so I added China Glaze IX, Nicole by OPI You’re An Angel, and OPI Gouda Gouda Two Shoes and made this gorgeousness!!

From our beach condo in Maui! Loving this view!!!!

Here’s one from our last beach condo in Kuai, although in that one we had to walk a bit out the door for this view…

China Glaze – Blue Without U and a Forever 21 Polish

First of all… I’m getting married in EIGHT days! 8 days!!
And I’m moving this weekend.

So if you try to read this from a feed reader or shimmerspark.com, it might choke sometime over the next day or so. It means my server is either on a moving truck or its taking a while to set it up with my new IP in a new place to get it back online. I didn’t disappear. 🙂 I’ll make sure all of these posts are imported to the wordpress.com version of my blog that is always online, although some of the images won’t show temporarily anyway because they are on my server! haha

Anyway, onto the swatching!

I did a quick swatch of Blue Without U before, but my MUA friend Gemma sent me this gorgeous polish from Forever 21 because it reminded her of my wedding color palette, and they looked so similar!

They are both this really shimmery baby blue with specks of other colors all through it.

This is what happens when you put them over black! How crazy is that? Blue Without U turns pink and the Forever 21 polish turns bronze! I did them on alternating nails in case they were going to look so similar you’d need both sides to compare to, but what happened was definitely nothing like that.

I wish I could tell you how to get this Forever 21 polish, but I can’t. When she sent it, I tried looking it up by the SKU number and got absolutely nowhere. And since they don’t have names, how can you ever search for them on swap sites or ebay, or blog sales, etc!?

In case you do know a way, here is the label for you! 🙂

If you like Blue Without U, I’ll post an excerpt from the blog post about this one swatched alone, over black, and over white:
Here it is by itself on the index and middle fingers, over white on the ring finger, and over black on the pinky – Its almost kind of ugly by itself, but over white it is a really pretty blue… and over black, all you can see is the pink!

Okay… well, I’M SO EXCITED about my wedding next week!!
If you don’t hear from me for a few weeks, other than announcing the Spring Giveaway Winners, its because I’ll be on my honeymoon!!! Hawaii here we come, and we couldn’t need it more than right NOW when we are running around like chickens with our heads cut off trying to finish 100 wedding details with all of these wedding vendors AND packing and moving in together!
xoxo

Dollish Polish – Cold Winds Are Rising

This is from one of the awesome franken designers on etsy. I couldn’t pass up a grayish blue jelly with pretty blue and silver sparkles in it!

There are also some larger hex glitters in a really pretty darker blue that really stand out when they land on your nail among the other smaller blue and silver particles.

I put it over Color Club – Take Me To Your Chateau this time. I actually saw myself in the mirror after and thought it was too smurfy blue with that underneath. Next time I’ll try putting it over a white and a light gray. I’ll swatch it again when I do!

Here is the base color so you can see how it made it so blue instead of more of the grayish color like the polish is…

I know, my nails are SO short right now… so much envelope-making and other wedding crafts have torn up my nails lately!

China Glaze – Ahoy over Duri Night – Before Christmas

I love the way Ahoy looks but its too bright for me, so I layered it over a darker jelly-ish color that had gold glitter in it.

Its awesome because the gold glitter just shines through as a bright sparkle along with the pink glass flecks that are in Ahoy!

This was Duri – Night Before Christmas by itself…

Goodbye GFC :(

        

Damn them, this sucks! Here are some other options for us!

First of all, to keep up with your blogs, NetVibes has always been what I use! I love it to death!

http://www.netvibes.com

You can customize it, but here is a screen shot of mine…

(Sorry to those on the left there who have a few unread… I’m still catching up from my trip!)

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As for other ways we can “follow” each other and host giveaways, etc, here are some that I found and added a friend widget to on my sidebar. Let’s see which one takes off the most?

Are there others that you think are good? If so, let me know!

HelloCotton has a friend widget now too! Look on my right sidebar:
Join shimmerspark.com on Hellocotton

NetworkedBlogs – See friend widget on my right sidebar:
Follow this blog on NetworkedBlogs

FriendFeed – Also has a widget, on my right sidebar:

Linky Followers – See widget on my right sidebar:
This one is a lot like GFC only with even more options! I’m liking it…
http://www.linkyfollowers.com

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Here are other social networking sites I am on. Do any of these have widgets yet?

   


        

Nail Foils – My video of trying it for the first time!

It was so much easier than I thought, I love this stuff so much!

Again, this was the swatch for this:

My Valentine's Nails! Cherry O's nail foils!

Okay this was my first time using nail foils so I made a video! I didn’t get to edit/upload yet but I wanted to at least show the swatches for now.

Aren’t they neato? I think I love nail foils!

I started with China Glaze – Long Kiss, because it was a similar red to put underneath. (I hear you do that in case there are “bald spots”.)

It looked so similar to Heart of Africa to me, but when I looked really super closely, Long Kiss was more of a warm-toned shade and Heart of Africa was more of a wine-toned shade. Very similar though, see?

I even love the adhesive that comes with nail foils! When you layer it on, it looks so UV, like purple and blue and oil-slick-ish.

I got the foil and adhesive from dollarnailart.com. (Careful, its addicting!)

Have a Happy Valentine’s Day! I can’t wait to eat some chocolate cake. 🙂

China Glaze Crystal Ball over You Move Me

When I was going to visit family, I thought the brown tone looked weird with my gray shirt, so I grabbed my trusty Crystal Ball and layered it on top.

Whenever something looks a little weird, I put Crystal Ball on it, and it becomes amazing! haha

China Glaze Magnetix – You Move Me

I think this is the first time where I got a package with nail polish and sat down immediately to do a mani so I could wear it *right now*!

I have other magnetic polishes but the fact that its a China Glaze just made me so excited! And of course, I had to get You Move Me, to add to my other 20 something browns. 🙂

When I first saw it, I was like awww, its a light goldish brown with silver glittery wisps to it, and I only like dark browns… but after the magnet did its magic, the parts around the shape got really really dark brown, so its so perfect!!

I used the star magnet obviously, but look at how the magnet comes! 3 designs in one magnet.

While I was doing this, I accidentally used the stripes part of the U shape on accident and re-did that one, but the stripes were amaaaaazingly sharp! If you used a red with the stripes, you’d have perfect candy cane nails that easily.

I did each nail one at a time because the magnet really pulls on the right parts when the polish is still really wet. I noticed a thicker wet coat makes a sharper star too. When I put my top coat on, I kind of dragged a little too much on my middle nail there, but the lines it leaves that are the lighter color are so gorgeous to look at, almost like its 3D and changes at different angles. And it isn’t bronzey at all, its dark brown and light latte brown. Ahh, I love this stuff. I also got Instant Chemistry so I’ll swatch that soon too.

I definitely recommend these, you have to try at least one to see how pretty it looks in real life when you move it around in different lighting.

Ozotic Pro 505 vs 506

These can be hard to tell apart because I found there is only one flash angle where they differ.

They look the same to me at most angles. Here is 506 on index and ring, 505 on middle and pinky (over black, of course!):

(Bottle is 505)

Here are the two in the bottle… 506 on top, 505 on the bottom:

But this is the reason why 505 is my favorite! I prefer the greenish blue flash in the 505 over the midnight blue flash in the 506.

I’m holding the 505 in this picture so you can really see that gorgeous teal-ish flash toward the top of the bottle and on my middle nail:

So it just depends on what shade of blue you prefer if you can’t decide between the two of these. 🙂

5 Pink Fine-Particle Holos Over Black Comparison

I did only one coat of each, in case you like really rich fine particles for stamping!

Also, I think finer particles have the biggest rainbow effect.

This is the order:
Thumb – Golden Rose 108, Index – Sally Hansen Prisms Pink Rose Diamond, Middle – s-he stylezone 427, Ring – Catherine Arley 666, Pinky – Nfu Oh 064

 

In this one you can really see how the Nfu Oh is the richest and has a huge rainbow effect!

Aside from loving the rainbow effect, I think my Golden Rose 108 is my prettiest darker shade of pink and the s-he 427 is the prettiest baby pink.

Merry Midnight over Goin My Way!

This turned out SO cool! I layered 2 coats of OPI – Merry Midnight over 2 coats of China Glaze – Goin My Way.

I like how the brown underneath counteracts how bluish Merry Midnight can be.

Out of direct light you can see more of the flakies.

Peppermint Tips!

Oh, I had SUCH high hopes for using the Bundle Monster plate BM 220!

As soon as I got it, I couldn’t wait until winter to use it. I ended up making quite a mess instead of the cute little peppermint tips I kept dreaming up. haha!

I did a coat of white first, then put some red over it (Rimmel Rapid Ruby) and stamped with the Konad white, so that the red would show through the gaps. It just didn’t show up as cleanly as I thought it would. Then I tried to go back over the messed up spots with white. When I tried to clean up the smile line with the brush, the red started kind of bleeding out of the bottom too, so I finished it up with the white line.

It was still a mess so I thought putting a coat of the Sally Hansen Diamonds would help since its just clear glass fleck and might smooth it out a little?

Ugh, I hope to be able to do this again and have it look like a lot less of a mess. 🙂

Nails for my New Orleans trip! :)

This took forever, but I love how it ended up! I wish it was sunnier so I could get a better picture, but here it is for now…

This is a layer of OPI – Black Onyx, a layer of Nicole by OPI – Nicole’s Nickel, a stripe of Black Onyx on the top corner with OPI – Sanguine on top of that black stripe, then the bow stamped with Konad white!

I also put the Shellac base coat first, then at the end I did the Shellac top coat and cured it 2x so that this will last… hopefully at least a week and a half or 2? 🙂

I love that Konad bow plate, I need to use it more often. It is m7.

(I’m adding a black with silver glitter nail art striping polish to the Halloween Giveaway, I thought it would be a good one to go with those!)