Lime Accent

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I am loving those two Bleached Neons I was able to find at Big Lots, I still really wish I could have found the rest of them! Today I have Lime Accent for you, it's neon, it's lime green and it looks as though it's been bleached.

I started out with one coat of Sinful Colors Snow Me White, just to make it pop a little more, I followed that up with two coats of Lime Accent. It went on very smoothly, but it did seem to take a while to dry, so much in fact that I put a quick drying top coat over it just to speed up the process. After that dried I stamped a cool looking design on it, using stamping plate BP-50 from Born Pretty Store, and added another coat of my quick drying top coat.

I really love the way this came out, the black and lime go well together!

Checking another number off the #SBBNailChallenge with this mani, number 46 Favorite nail art technique! Stamping is by far my favorite thing to do to my nails and it's so easy anyone can master this technique with a little practice.

I'm working away at this untried pile of polish, I'll be back next week with another polish :)

Review: Born Pretty Nail Wraps

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Nail wraps, stickers, decals, whatever you want to call them are such an easy way to achieve an awesome looking mani, that looks like it took forever to do, in just a matter of minutes! I love using these types of products when I don't have time to actually paint my nails, these I can just stick on and go.

When I saw these on the Born Pretty Store's website, I had to have them, they are very cool and different looking in my opinion. They are the Shimmering Powder Color Changing Full Nail Sticker. These come in 8 different colors, I chose style M149. I love how inexpensive these are too, only $2.88 each, plus you can save an extra 10% by using code: SMBW10

I found these to be very easy to work with, just like any other nail wrap, you simply peel it off the paper, stick it to your nail and file off the excess. Since my nails were not long enough to get the full gradient effect from the wraps, I chose to alternate them by flipping them around. I think it looks really good. They also last a good while, I applied mine on a Saturday and wore them till Thursday and I only have minimal tip wear. I did apply a clear top coat and that may have helped them to last as long as they have. I feel like I could have wore them for a several more days, I just wanted a change LOL, I would get these again!

Hope you all have a great weekend! I'll be back on Monday maybe with a polish haul ;)

Review: Creative French Tip Nail Guides

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Today I have another great product from the Born Pretty Store to share with you! It's their creative french tip nail guides, these come in two styles and they are only $1.58 each. I chose style #2

I do not have nails that are quite long enough to do french manicures with, so I decided I would use these in the same manner I would striping tape.

I used China Glaze Hang-Ten Toes for my base color, applied the french tip sticker and painted over all that with a black cream. I liked the way it came out and I love the bright pink with the black, one of my favorite color combinations!

These nail guides are super sticky so you have to be 100% sure that your nail polish is completely dry before applying them or you will pull your polish off. For me these worked really well, I did not have any areas where the polish seeped under the guide and as long as my polish was completely dry they did not pull my polish off.

Another super quick post! Today is my day off and they Hubby and I are planning on going out to do a little shopping :) Hope you all are having a fantastic day! Don't forget you can save 10% off your entire order from Born Pretty Store by using code: SMBW10

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!

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!

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!

Nail Stamping with Born Pretty Plates

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I'll be honest, I really thought these fuller image plates from Born Pretty Store would turn out to be my favorite plates that I own, but it didn't work out that way. I have used these plates a few times now and I'm never quite satisfied with my results, I don't know if it's my color combos or if I'm just being too critical of my work. I do have a couple nail looks to show where I have used these plates today, I'll will continue to tinker around with these to see if I end up with better results somewhere down the road.

First up is plate BP-17 I chose this plate because I really liked the 'fan' design that two of the images have. Gorgeous, right?

For the look I used Ciate Mistress and a white cream for stamping. Please excuse the quality of the photo, I took it with my phone in terrible lighting.

Next I have plate BP-22 I really liked the image from the top left and the one on the bottom, but for my first time using this plate I went with the top left image.

For this look I used Sweet Irish Cream from The Little LacquerBean and a black cream for the stamping. I like the results of this one better than the one above.

I know it's not the plates that I'm not satisfied with because they are really good plates, the etching is just perfect on them and they both have really awesome designs, like I said before it's either my color combos that I've tried or something. I will revisit these plates in the near future though :)

If you would like to grab the plates that I've shown here or any other nail art supplies you can save 10% off your order with code: SMBW10 and as always Born Pretty Store has FREE shipping!

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 :)

Christmas Nail Ideas

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I think I am finally on the mend from this sinus/ear infection! Once I did start feeling better all I wanted to do was my nails LOL and lets just say, I should not do my nails if I'm feeling the least bit out of it.

I wanted to work on some Christmas nail designs/ideas and I knew I had some Christmas decals from Born Pretty and I figured that would be the easiest thing to do to my nails. I had a great idea in my head but I don't think that it transferred over well from my head to my nails. So the first thing I did was start out with a white base (Avon Iceberg) then I did the 'saran wrap' technique on all but my accent nail, using Cherry Merry from Duri Cosmetics. On my accent nail I added a super cute Christmas tree from the Born Pretty decals. I think my issue with this is that it's a whole lot of red and just a hint of green. I'm thinking instead of using red for my other fingers I might should have used green. What do y'all think?

This next Christmas inspired mani is a very simple subtle look that can be created using any nude polish as a base and adding a red, gold, or green glitter to the top. Here I used Shore Bet from Pure Ice for my base and Sinful Colors Gilded for my glitter. It is a beautiful red and gold mix of glitter that gives a little bit of life to the nude polish. I think this would be great for a Holiday wedding or an office party where crazy nail polish is frowned upon.

I have a couple more Christmas themed manis in mind, but not sure if I will get around to doing them before Christmas. I will try my best though :)

Now I'm off to catch up on blogs that I read, I have almost 2 weeks of catching up to do!!

Fall Nails

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Today I am sharing with you what will probably be my last Fall mani of the year, and I'm loving it. One of my favorite things about fall is when the leaves begin to change colors, I especially love Maple leaves, they are so brightly colored. Because of that fact when I seen these Maple Leaf Water Decals from Born Pretty Store I just had to have them. If you are interested in these you can save 10% with code: SMBW10  and shipping is always FREE!

After receiving these I had to decide on a base color that would look great with the leaves, I decided to go with Urban-Nights from China Glaze. It's a beautiful deep plum-purple cream that is just perfect for fall and in my opinon really helped the color of the leaf decals stand out. These decals were really easy to work with and I had no issues with them at all, like I do some decals.

Y'all know me, I can't just leave well enough alone, so I added some of It's Real 18K top coat from Sephora by OPI to give it a little something more. I really like how it turned out, but my camera just could not capture how pretty it really was in person.

Do y'all like doing the Photo-a-Day challenges? Well I've never done one and I've always wanted to, so I found a few for the month of December and pulled prompts from each of them and made up my own little challenge. If you are interested in doing it, I have it posted over on my Instagram. Let me know in the comments if you will be doing it too :)

Cow Nails

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Today I'm sharing one of the cutest nail looks I've done in a while, cow nails! I have to admit I have a slight obsession with baby Holsteins, I think they are one of the cutest things ever. When I saw this plate I thought the design in the middle would make an excellent cow print. The plate is from Born Pretty Store, I love their plates, always great quality and work very well.

I am so in love with the result that I got! I painted all my nails with Avon Gel Finish Iceberg and then on my ring fingers I took Duri's Jamberry and painted about half of them. Then I took a dotting tool to make the eyes and the nostrils. For the rest of my nails I used the stamping plate to create the cow print. I also used the very edge of the image and my stamper to apply a few spots to my ring fingers too, so the would look more cow like.

Super cute, right? I can now mark #11 Animal Print off of the #SBBNailChallenge list!

Hope you're having a great weekend!

Multicolored Stamping

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Today I am checking off another number from the SBBNailChallenge, 26 Stamping! This stamping is different from other stamping manis I have done, I used 3 colors instead of my usual one. The colors I chose to use were Essence Break Through, Revlon Wild Strawberry and Pink Ice Mint Crush. For my base color I used Avon's Gel Finish polish in Iceberg. I'm hoping it won't begin to crack on my nails like other white polishes tend to do.

The plate I used is another one from Born Pretty Store, it's the Elegant Lace Bow Knot Pattern QA59. As with all the plates that I have received from there, it's great quality and has endless possibilities! If you are like me and want all of their stamping plates you can save 10% on your order by using coupon code: SMBW10

For how I done this multicolored stamping I have provided a picture tutorial :)

Here is the completed mani after clean up! I really like the way this came out and is something I will do again in the future!

You can take part in the SBBNailChallenge too, just tag your post with SBBNailChallenge or your Instagram photos with #SBBNailChallenge

Tomorrow I think I'll have an Empties post for you guys. I've been hoarding my trash for a while now LOL Hope you all have a great day!

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

Camo Nail Fail

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So about a month ago I received these Camouflage Water Decals from Born Pretty Store, I was so excited to try them out and even had a pretty good idea of what I was going to do with them. I gathered up all my supplies and got to work, I didn't get very far before I ran into an issue. I have used several water decals and they are usually very easy to use, these I just could not get them to work. I followed all the instructions, clean and polish the nails, remove film from decal, put it in water, apply to nail, soak up excess water, blow dry.

They would not adhere to my nails to save my life. First time I did it, I did have on base coat, so I took that off and tried again and it still did not work.

I would not recommend these particular decals, but their other decals have worked great for me. If anyone has any suggestions on how to make these work I would love to hear them :)

 As always if you do make a purchase from Born Pretty Store they do have free shipping and you can save 10% with the coupon code: SMBW10