Julep Marion

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Hello everyone, hope you all are staying safe and warm! We had another round of snow yesterday that brought us around 3 inches and we are expecting yet another round tonight into tomorrow that is said to bring us anywhere from 2-8 inches. I've heard so many conflicting reports of what we are supposed to get, so I guess I'll just figure it out for myself once the storm is over :/

In polish news....... I want to share with you my first ever Julep polish, Marion. I found her at TJ Maxx sometime last year and finally got around to trying her out. Marion is a gorgeous teal green color with some shimmer, has a great formula as well, in my swatches I only applied one coat, yep just one! It dried really fast to which we all know is a huge plus. The only thing that I didn't like about it, is that it stained my nails. I'm not going to place all the blame on Marion just yet, because I'm still trying out  my home made peel off base and that may be to blame for the staining. I'll try Marion out again at some point using a regular base and see how that goes. 

Isn't she gorgeous?! I do wish that the sun would have been out better to help capture the nice shimmer that is in this polish. I wanted to set it off a little more so I did end up adding Salon Perfect Cosmic Dust on top. Of course I was not able to capture all the glittery goodness of that polish since the sun was not out. I can say for sure though that Cosmic Dust is an exact dupe for China Glaze Fairy Dust!

And last but not least in Technology news...... I finally have a new computer!!!! YAY!! I was originally looking for an All-in-One, but my computer savvy friend cautioned me to stay away from them, and after doing some research of my own on them I did come to the conclusion to stick with a tower CPU. I ended up getting a Dell Inspiron 3847, it has all the bells and whistles I was looking for in a computer with the exception of a webcam, but I can buy one to go on it or just keep using my iPhone when I Skype family. But now I can finally get back to blogging and not have to worry about it crashing while I'm working and not have to worry about it working at a snails pace LOL.

It is taking me a little getting used to, I've been using the same computer with Windows XP on it for the last 10 years!

Out with the old:

And in with the new:

Since I'll be snowed in for the next couple of days, I'll have time to learn how to work Windows 8.1 Hopefully LOL

OPI In the Cable Car-Pool Lane & Stamping

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A few weeks ago I received a stamper and scrapper set from Born Pretty Store and I was excited when I received it cause it's one of those squishy marshmallowy kinds, I have been nothing but disappointed with it. I first tried using it as soon as I got it and could not get it to work right, I tried different polishes, different plates with no better luck. I seen on Instagram another lady had one of these exact same stampers, so I asked her about it, she said I needed to 'prime' it. I headed to Google to see how to do that and found some tutorials and did what it said to do. The first time I attempted to use it after I primed it, it worked great, the next time I go to try and use it, it would not work for me. So I give up if anyone has any tips on how to make this stamper work please leave them in the comments, I would be ever so grateful!

In any case I did finish out my mani using my other stamper on all my fingers with the exception of my little finger. I used OPI's In the Cable Car-Pool Lane and stamped it with Metallic Yellow from KleanColor. The plate I used was the Kaleidoscope Designs Plate from Born Pretty Store that I reviewed earlier this month. I LOVE this plate, it is one that you should add to your collection!

On a better note, I get to start computer shopping very soon, so hopefully I will be able to find one that I like and will be able to get back to reading everyone's blogs and back blogging on a regular basis! If any one has any good computer suggestions leave them in the comments :) I think I've settle on an All-in-One, I just don't know which one LOL

Hope you all enjoy your weekend and stay safe and warm, we are looking at another round of snow or ice tomorrow :(

Avon Radiant and Born Pretty Decals

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Happy Thursday to you, I hope everyone is staying warm! In my neck of the woods, the good old mountains of NC, it was -4 and with the wind factored in, it felt like -23, a great day to just stay indoors!

My mani today really needed to be photographed outside, but there was no way I was going out there so I just headed to the window! I used Radiant from Avon's Cosmic Collection on all my fingers but one, and on that one I used a Lizard Print nail decal from Born Pretty Store. 

As with all of Avon's Cosmic polishes, Radiant is a very nice scattered effect holographic polish and is a very pretty light gold color. Applied smoothly and dried very quickly, always a plus! The Lizard Print nail decals also worked amazingly, I cut out the decal I wanted, stuck it down in some water and then slid it off the paper and right on to my nail. I have found that using a paper towel, or some kind of tissue, to soak up the excess water makes them stick a lot better, even if the packaging does not say to do that. The only thing I didn't like about the decals was that they do not look the same in person as they do online. Online they appear to be mostly gold, in person they are more of an olive green.

I felt like using the decals on all my nails would be a bit much for my liking, I really like the way it came out just using one of them for an accent nail.

These decals are currently available in four different designs and only $2.15 each. You can use coupon code SMBW10 to save an extra 10% off you order and as always Born Pretty Store offers FREE shipping!

Don't Let The Dead Bite

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Happy Valentine's Day!

Today I am wearing a very Valentine-sy looking nail polish with a not so Valentine-sy name, Don't Let The Dead Bite from China Glaze, this polish was from their 2014 Halloween Apocalypse of Color Collection. I snagged this up last weekend for $1.75 when Sally Beauty was having an extra 50% off their clearance merchandise sale!

Don't Let The Dead Bite has a nude pink jelly base with pink and red glitters. In my swatches I applied 3 coats, each coat dried really fast, I'm talking by the time I finished my right hand my left hand was dry and ready for the next coat! In my first coat my glitters were a little sparse, but with each layer I applied I was able to build them up. This polish reminds me a lot of It's a Trap-Eze from China Glaze's Cirque du Soleil: World's Away Collection, jelly base chocked full of glitter!

I also tried making my own peel off base to use with glitter polishes like this one. So far I've had no issues with it trying to peel off so that's a good thing. I'll discuss it more in another post after I've had more time to try it out and see if it going to be something worth passing on ;)

I hope you all have a great Valentine's Day and rest of the weekend!

Valentine's Day Nails

Blogging from my phone today cause I wanted to show y'all my nail look that I had created for my anniversary and Valentine's Day, our anniversary is 4 days before. I am so happy with the way this came out! When I first got ready to do my nails I had picked out one stamping plate and two nail polishes, I ended up using three stamping plates and four nail polishes. 

The polishes I used were Jamberry and Raspberry Sorbet from Duri Cosmetics, Snow Me White from Sinful Colors and Mer-Magical from Pure Ice. The plates I used were plate F11 from Born Pretty Store; it's one of those French tip plates, Mash-48 I'm pretty sure I got this off Amazon and the last plate is also from Born Pretty Store it is plate number QA91. 

I used Raspberry Sorbet as my base color, I love these Duri polishes they dry super duper fast! On my ring finger I used the LOVE image from QA91 I made a 4 square checkerboard pattern using Jamberry and Snow Me White on the image, scraped it and then stamped it. I used the same technique for all the stamping in this nail look. I took the French tip plate and used the heart pattern and stamped my middle finger and also my thumb. After stamping I felt like there was too much 'blank' space between the stamp and the other part of my nail, so I filled that space in with Mer-Magical for a little bit of sparkle. For my little and index finger I used the Mash plate and stamped heart clusters. 

I am seriously so in love with how this turned out! I don't think I have ever used more than one stamping plate for one nail look, but now that I have I will do that more often. 

I hope y'all enjoyed this as much as I did!  Have a great rest of the weekend :)

Stamping Fun

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Hey Y'all, happy February! Today I'm gonna show you this really awesome plate that I received from Born Pretty Store, it is the Kaleidoscope Designs plate!

I love that you get 21 different designs on one plate, which means endless nail looks! I have used this plate a couple of times now and I think my results have been fairly good. On the first design I'll be showing you down below I did get some excess polish picked up on the stamp and it got transferred on to my nail, I fully think this was due to operator error and not anything to do with the plate.

For the first look I did with this plate I used Avon Metallic Effects Jade Reflection for my base and stamped using a black creme polish. The image I used is in the last row, second image from the left. You can see on my middle finger where the excess polish transferred over, I'm thinking I didn't scrape the plate good enough that time. In any case it made for a pretty design.

For the second look I used Maybelline Color Show Shock Wave for my base. I am in love with this color, it reminds me of the blue that you see on some Toyota trucks! For my stamping I used Celeb City from Sally Hansen. The design I used is also on the last row, last image on that row. For this look I was inspired from the snow that we had yesterday. The design, to me, sorta looks like snow flakes. I did have a little mess up on my index finger, I didn't get my full nail covered on the first try so I went back in and messed it up trying to double stamp.

Overall I'm really liking this plate and I will playing around with it more in the near future! You can get this plate for only $5.99 and save 10% off that price with coupon code: SMBW10! And as always Born Pretty has FREE shipping!

I would also like to take a minute and apologize for not blogging and keeping up with y'alls blogs on a regular basis! I have been out of town a lot lately and the computer that I use to blog on is 12 years old and becoming difficult to work with. It is so slow and sometimes takes forever to pull up web pages and open programs. Sometimes it will just stop responding while I'm in the middle of something. If you know anything about RAM, most computers now days come with 4GB of RAM, mine only has 1GB! So needless to say I get very frustrated with it and I just don't want to mess with it LOL Hopefully though in a few months I will be able to get a new one and be back to blogging and reading blogs smoothly :)

Hope you all have a wonderful Tuesday!