Collective Nail Polish Haul

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Since I've been working I've been able to splurge a little more on random nail polishes more often, so today I have a nice little collective haul for y'all!

We'll start off with some polishes that I bought from Beauty By Krystal's Blog Sale. I seen she had Essence polishes on there so I snagged some of them up quickly, since I can not find them in my area. I got Aquatix Bay, Under the Sea, A Lovely Secret, Enchanted Fairy and Can't Cheat on me. I'd never heard of Orchid polish so I grabbed the one that caught my eye, Funky Monkey. The last two I got were both from Sinful Colors, Petal Be The Day and Prized Plume.

I picked up a few polishes from work too, 2 Broadway Nails regular polishes; Easter Annie and Sour Apple. Also picked up another one of the Gel Strong polishes for 'testing' purposes ;) in the color Where's Nemo.

At work we got a display for the Wet N Wild 2015 Silver Lake collection, but I don't think that the correct products are in it, because the polish I picked out of it, Bubblegum Pop appears to have been around for a while. In any case it's still pretty and I will wear it proudly. Found this Sinful Colors polish at Big Lots, it's Love Sprinkles, way to cute to pass up!

Also at Big Lots I finally found two of the Bleached Neons from Maybelline, Lime Accent and Bleached in Peach! I wish I could have found the rest of the set, but I'm happy with the 2 I was able to add to my collection.

I also did a little China Glaze shopping on Amazon, always find great polish deals on there! I got Hang-Ten toes, Beach Cruise-r, Ahoy and Flirty Tankini. I got all these for about $4.50 each, not a bad deal! Of course these are not true to color since they are pink toned and neon for the most part.

I can not remember if I have hauled these or not, but they are from Avon's Electric Shades collection for 2015; Hottie, Suacy, Reckless and Vibe. If these cooperate, they would make a beautiful water marble!

Found these cool Nail Edge Guides from Kiss and pump bottle at Walmart! I want to get another one of these to put regular nail polish remover in, so I'll quit using so much pure acetone on my nails.

Needless to say my untried pile is full again! Is there any polishes that y'all would like to see more than others? If so let me know and I'll move them up!

Hopefully I'll be back in the next day or so with a nail look using the Kiss Nail Guides ;)

Sinful Colors Thimbleberry

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Happy first day of April, I swear I feel like March just began and now it's gone! Anywho, today I have a springy nail look for you using Thimbleberry from Sinful Colors and some stamping plates from Born Pretty Store.

Let's take a closer look at the products I used; As mentioned above Thimbleberry from Sinful Colors, Black Heart from Sally Hansen, Iceberg from Avon's Gel Finish line, Born Pretty stamping plate BP-54, how cute are those little owls, and BP-50 I originally chose this plate because I really liked the heart pattern. You'll see below I used neither one of those images for this nail look.

When I was deciding what image(s) I wanted to use from these plates the flower in the center of BP-54 kept jumping out at me so I went with that one and attempted to make decals out of it. It worked really well, it was just very time consuming and the decal ended up being to big for my ring finger, but worked perfectly on my thumb. Next time I know to use a smaller image for decals! Once I got my flower decals made I found myself being drawn to the BP-50 plate by the leafy image on the top left, I thought leaves would tie in good with flowers, so I just went for it.

I'm quite please with the way it all came out, even the little hiccup I had with the decal being to big for my finger. I had thought about adding some Salon Perfect Cosmic Dust, but I didn't want to go overboard LOL

Have you ever made homemade decals from nail stamping plates?

The plates I used in this nail look are currently $2.99 on Born Pretty's website, you can save an additional 10% by using coupon code: SMBW10

Update on my job, I'm still loving it! It's more responsibility than I've ever had at a job and I was just kinda thrown into it. The last person that held that position said it took them 3 months before they were closing the store on their own, and I've only been there just a little over a week and was left to close the store on my own last night. I didn't have any major issues, so I'm gonna say it went pretty well ;) It helps to have such nice and helpful co-workers though!

Hope you all enjoy your day! Hope you are having some great spring weather!

Collective Nail Polish Haul & Update

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Where is this year going? I can't believe it is already March! Today I wanted to share a nail polish haul with y'all and an update as well.

My polish haul is a collective one from the past month or so, so let's start with that ;)

First up I finally found the NYC Strip Me Off base coat, I picked two of these up, but conveniently lost one last week when I went out of town. I also picked up a few Sinful Colors polishes, Ring the Belini, which I posted about already, Zest of Times (Rite Aid) and Thimbleberry (Big Lots). I purchased one of the new polishes from Avon, Reckless, I swatched it and based off the swatch I was not too thrilled with the formula but will give it another try. Lastly in this photo I picked up December to Remember from China Glaze while Sally's was having their additional 50% off Clearance sale. I have used this polish and really loved it, such a beautiful shade of blue with light pink reflects!

Found a couple more polishes at Sally's! Orly Steal the Spotlight and Finger Paints In the Monet. Lastly I found some polishes that I've wanted since they came out, but didn't want to pay what the stores were asking for them, but luckily for me Big Lots had some of them the last couple of times I was there! I'm talking about the Revlon Parfumerie polishes, I picked up Lavender Soap, Wintermint, African Tea Rose and Apricot Nectar. I could not get over how good African Tea Rose smelt, I was quite amazed that once the polish was on my  nails and fully dry, that it did not smell like nail polish at all! The scent was noticeable for the next few days, but only when I had my hands near my nose and it was  not an over powering smell. I hope the other three smell just as good!

And now for my update; I finally found a job, Thank God!! It is a retail setting so it's already going much better than the job I found last year. I'm still trying to work out a blogging schedule that will fit in with my job schedule as well as my Avon schedule and everything else that I need/want to do. Right now I'm thinking about posting on Monday's, Wednesday's and Friday's. I should have 2 days off each week that will allow me to get posts wrote and then I can schedule them to post. I think once I get a new routine set things will fall in to place :)

I've also reached a goal on my blog, today's post is post number 500!

Hope you all enjoy your Monday!

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!

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!

Red & Green Christmas Nails

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One more quick Christmas Nail idea! I did use some Christmas decals that I received from Born Pretty Store, but you can do this mani with out them.

To start off I applied Avon Iceberg for my base. My first thought was to do a water marble, talked myself out of that, then I thought I'll do a fan brush mani, talked myself out of that one too. In the end I decided I would do a dotticure. I used China Glaze Running in Circles and Ruby Pumps for my dots. I really loved how this turned out, but I really wanted to use some more of the Christmas decals, so I added a snowman and Santa to a couple of my nails.

The decals worked great, had no issues with them at all. I think they are super cute and are the perfect add on to a Christmas nail look. My dots show through the snowman a little bit, but that's okay with me. 

If you want to grab these decals to use next Christmas or any other decals, you can save 10% on your order by using code: SMBW10 and as always Born Pretty has FREE shipping!

Hope you all enjoy your weekend! I'm heading out of town to visit with my family the only chance I have before Christmas :)

Waterfall Nails

I wanted to do a Thanksgiving themed mani, but didn't want to do turkeys, so I thought I would try out a new technique and do Waterfall Nails! I like the way these came out! I've had a few people tell me that they look like flames and I've had a couple tell me they look like Turkey tails :)

Waterfall nails is a super easy technique to do and is something that I will do again in the future. I'm thinking white nails with Neon 'falls'!

For this look I used Avon's Gel Finish polish in Mudslide for my base and used Sinful Colors Clementine, Revlon Delicious, Mark's Saffron and a Yellow for my 'falls'.

I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Anyone go out and hit the Black Friday sales today?

Tomorrow I'll be back with a super cute nail look :)

Blue and White Water Marble

If you follow me on Instagram you may have seen this nail art sample I was working on. 

Well I got it finished up, but had to leave out the silver, Which was Sally Hansen Celeb City. It did not want to be water marble friendly. I also had to take out Maybelline's Frozen Over, it did not work well either. 

So that left me with Frostbite from China Glaze and Iceberg from Avon's Gel Finish line. These two worked very well for marbling! I absolutely love the way it came out!

If you haven't noticed I'm on a water marble kick LOL

Hope you all have a great day and thanks for stopping by :)

Cosmic Water Marble

Super short post today, I wanted to share with you my favorite mani I've done this month, a water marble! I used 2 of Avon's Cosmic polishes, Eclipse and Super Nova. These are classified as holographic polishes, more on the scattered side than linear. 

These polishes worked so much better than I expected for marbling, I didn't even put down a base color and it still came out opaque and vibrant!

The only issue I did run into was that I should have got fresh water before I started on my second hand. It came out with the colors mixed up a little bit. These seem to spread out really well and do not dry quickly in the water. 

This is going to be my Holographic mani for the #SBBNailChallenge

See, super short post ;) Hope you all have a great day!

Chevrons

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Knocking another number off the #SBBNailChallenge with Chevrons! I purchased some chevron nail vinyls from The Little LacquerBean a few weeks ago, so I thought now would be a good time to try them out. I have never used nail vinyls before, only stripping tape and nail decals. I feel these are pretty much the same concept as stripping tape, but a lot better quality, thicker and more durable. The nail vinyls worked great for me, I was even able to stick them to my nail then re-position them and they still stuck to my nail. I do think I should have waited for my base color to dry a little more before I stuck them on, but for my first try I think I did a pretty good job.

I also have got into this phase, shall we say, that if I am stamping my nails or in this case using the vinyls, I don't want all my nails looking the same so changing up the way I placed the vinyls I was able to create a different look for each nail!

The polishes I used were both from Avon, the white is Iceberg from the Gel Finish line and the silver is Moonbeam from the Cosmic Collection.

Woo Hoo! I have completed 4 of the 54 prompts. Looks like I need to try out the right side LOL

Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

Empties

I'm a week later on my empties post than I had planned. I had the opportunity to go spend a week with my family, so I jumped on it. This will be the first empties post I have done since May so let's just get right in to it!

I mostly had hair stuff, so we'll check that out first. I finished up Avon Advance Techniques Restoring Shampoo and Conditioner, not anything special about it, didn't notice any changes in my hair, will not repurchase. Next is Suave's Humectant Moisture Shampoo, I liked this it smells nice and seems to give my hair a little moisture and it's inexpensive, would probably repurchase. I also finally finished off the Suave Moroccan Infusion Shampoo, love the way it smells! As with all Suave products I would probably repurchase just because it's inexpensive. Tresemme Flawless Curls Mousse, I liked this and it's affordable, would likely purchase again but right now I want to try out some gels and cream products for my curls. Suave Touchable Finish hair spray, used to be my all time favorite, but I fell in love with an old favorite in September while at the beach, so I probably will not be repurchasing this product. My new/old favorite hairspray Rave! I used to use this stuff all the time back in middle and high school, picked up a travel size while at the beach and fell back in love with it. Obviously will be repurchasing this. Finished off another bottle of Garnier Fructis Sleek & Shine Moroccan Sleek Oil Treatment, love this stuff on the days that I wear my hair in it's naturally curly state, gives it the extra hydration it craves, will repurchase. Lastly in the hair care empties I have some Dove Oxygen Moisture Shampoo and Conditioner, I received these samples from PinchMe back in the summer, best I can remember I really liked these products and they smell amazing, may purchase in the future.

I also had a few face items. Two packs of Epielle facial cleansing tissues, I get these at Big Lots for $1 a pack, they work well and are in my budget. I have already repurchased some back ups. ELF makeup mist and set is my favorite setting spray. I tend to use this more often when I wear a full coverage foundation, I would repurchase. Love the L'Oreal Hydrafresh toner, this is the second bottle I have finished! Have already repurchased. The last face product I finished off is Avon Elements Moisture boost, love this as a spring and summer moisturizer, but now that it is fall my face feels like it needs some extra moisture, so I would repurchase this but for spring and summer use.

Lastly nail and hand items: Onyx professional acetone remover, something that I will repurchase over and over LOL Also finished up a bottle of equate regular polish remover. Lastly I finished off my Sugar Lemon hand sanitizer from Bath & Body Works, I love lemon scents so I have to repurchase this!

What products have you been finishing off?
Do y'all enjoy these empty posts?

Avon Starlight

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Happy November!

Today I am checking off another number on the SBB Nail Challenge, number 4 Green. I am using a polish that I had bought a while ago and it just got pushed to the back of my unworn drawer, Avon Starlight from their Cosmic Collection.

This is a gorgeous greenish-yellow holographic polish. Unfortunately I did not have any sun to photograph this in, so I just used my flashlight on my phone as my light source. In the light it does tend to look more green than yellow.

Even as pretty as this was on it's own, I just couldn't leave it be, as you see in the photo. So I added some chevron stamps to it using a plate that I received for review from Born Pretty Store. I love the stamping plates from there, they are always great quality, work well and come in a wide variety of designs. The plate that I used was the Zebra Stripes Love Pattern QA91. It is a great plate and lots of potential manicures in it and at a price of only $2.99, you can't beat that! Plus you can save an extra 10% with coupon code SMBW10
This plate would also be great to use for Valentine's day!

I hope you all enjoy your weekend! We are getting a first snow of season today, it does not seem to be as big a deal as the weather man made it out to be, but it sure is cold LOL

Empties: May 2014

I so meant to get this up on Friday but never got around too it, it was hubby's birthday :)

I have been hoarding my trash for a few months now, so I thought it was about time to do another empties post.

As you can see the majority of it was hair products, then we have the little family of nail polish removers.

Suave touchable finish is my all time favorite hair spray and I rarely if ever buy anything but it. I tend to only use this when I wear my hair in it's naturally curly state, it helps to hold my style while not leaving my hair feeling all crunchy.

Avon's Advanced Techniques Moroccan Argon  Oil shampoo was nothing spectacular, neither was the Suave Moroccan oil shampoo. Probably would not bother with buying either one of them again. Once I finish my current bottle of Suave Moroccan shampoo I will be on the hunt for another inexpensive shampoo. If you know any good ones leave them in the comments.

The Volumizing mousse is pretty good, I alternate between it and all the other mousse's and curly hair products I have. My Mother-in-Law picks this up for me when she visits Sally's Beauty.

Lastly I have my little family of nail polish removers, I have no clue where these have been hiding LOL. I also think it's funny that all 3 are a different kind, obviously I have no preference of polish removers.

What products have you used up recently or this month?

Tomorrow I plan to be back with a TIOT manicure that I am so in love with, been looking at my nails all weekend :)

Hope you enjoy the rest of your day. I'm gonna go squeeze in watching an episode of Pretty Little Liars before hubby gets up! Anyone else watch that? I watched one episode of it on Netflix and now I'm kind of hooked.

Favorites: May 2014

It has been a while since I've done a Favorites post, February was actually the last one. Within those few months I have found a few new favorites I wanted to share with you, a few are old rediscovered favorites.

We'll start with my new favorite hair product, L'Oreal Sleek It Iron Straight Heat Spray. I got this in my Ulta Haul earlier this year. It seems to shorten my straightening time and really keeps the frizz at bay, the thing I like most about it is you can feel it conditioning your hair while you are styling it. Leaves my hair feel so soft and smooth. Will be purchasing again once I use this one up!

Up next are a few skin/body products. I have been using my Perlier Volcanic Thermal Scrub about once a week to get my skin looking soft and smooth for spring/summer. I love this stuff, it is a little harsh, but not so much that it bothers me. I have also been loving my Udderly Smooth hand cream that I picked up at the Dollar Tree a while back. Hands down the best hand cream I've ever used, does not leave my hands feeling greasy at all and really makes them feel soft. I love my Gud Body Butter in Floral Cherrynova, smells so amazing and provides my skin with a lot of moisture leaving it feeling super soft and smooth. My last skin favorite is one that I've had for a while, the Julep Glycolic Hand Scrub. It got pushed back and hid on my shelf, but it leaves your hands so soft, a nice weekly treatment :)

I had quite a few new eye favorites this time around. The Rimmel Scandaleyes eyeliner is amazing, I can do my makeup in the morning and not have to worry about my eyeliner fading or smudging! For the past few months I have found my self grabbing the same 4 eyeshadows; ELF Jumbo Eyeshadow Stick in Little Miss Thing, Avon Cream Shadows in Champagne and Hazelnut and Avon Glazewear Diamonds in Mauved Metal. I have also switched my eye primer to Primed and Ready Eye Primer from Prestige works amazing! I had to throw in my Maybelline One by One Volume Express mascara, love this stuff so much!

For Face favorites I have one new and one old. My new favorite is Maybelline Dream Smooth Mousse Foundation, best foundation I have found for my normal to dry skin. My old favorite is NYC's Sunny Bronzer, perfect shade for my fair skin and it's super affordable.

I have two fragrances that I can't quit using, both from Bath & Body Works. Coconut Water that I picked up last fall at one of their big sales. I have also been loving French Lavender & Honey, went ahead and bought a back up of it!

I do believe that is it for my Favorites! What are some of the products you are currently loving?

Essie's I'm Addicted & Avon's Plum Illusion + Life Update

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Y'all this week has been a crazy one! First my nails then if you're still around I'll tell you all about it. 

Today I wanted to give Essie's I'm Addicted another try cause it is such a gorgeous color. I'm going to call this a neon sky blue! I decided to pair it with Avon's crackle polish called Plum Illusion for two reasons; one get two unworns out of the way at one time and secondly because of a mani I seen over on Lizzy's blog!

I used two coats of I'm Addicted and I feel that gave me pretty good coverage. Clean up was easy too and did not seem to stain my fingers and they dry time on this was pretty good too, around five minutes. On thing I didn't really like about it was the application was a little streaky and I had some dragging of the polish issues. The second coat did even out the streaky from the first coat

Next I tried re-creating the mani I mentioned above using striping tape. I think it came out quite nice and I think it is such a unique way to use crackle polish!

Okay if you stuck around that must mean you are interested in hearing about my week, yay :)

On Tuesday afternoon I got a phone call about the job I applied to and it turned out that I got the job. I was really excited about it, but also really nervous. On Tuesday evening I stepped out on our back porch to talk with my Father in Law and when I went to go back inside my foot snagged a little piece of wood that was sticking up and I got a good sized splinter stuck in my foot so deep that it required a trip to the ER, a shot to numb my foot and a tetanus shot!! Wednesday I went to my job and pretty much hated every minute of it. The guys I had to work with were super nice, but it was so hot and dusty in there, by the end of the day my clothes felt like I had got caught in a rain shower, there was so much dust stuck to my sweaty face it felt like sandpaper, I was smothering from all the dust and physically ill from the heat. I came home in tears called the next day and told them I would not be back. Now before you judge me, I don't mind getting out and working or getting dirty while doing it, but if it's gonna make me physically ill I just don't think it is worth it. So now I am back on the hunt for something else in a better environment. Preferably retail cause I'm good at that.

I hope you all had a great week and hope you have an even better weekend :)

I'm going to spend my weekend (hopefully) getting some blog post together for next week!