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 :)

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 :(

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!

Review: Kiss Complete Salon Acrylic Kit

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Today I want to share with you my thoughts on the Kiss Complete Salon Acrylic Kit. First off let me start with the reason I went out and purchased this kit; simply I just have bad nails. It seems like no matter what I do to try and help them grow, nothing helps, I end up with weak nails that break and peel like you wouldn't believe. I've tried nail hardeners, I've tried using Vitamin E oil on them, filing the ends to 'seal' them off and I've not seen any real results from any of that. I got to a point where I was just fed up with my polish peeling off because my nails were peeling so off to Walmart I went to get this kit.

I looked at a couple other kits before I made the decision to go with this one. One reason I went with the Kiss brand is because I've used one of their acrylic kits before

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!

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

Black & Yellow Stamping

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I really love how black and yellow look together so as soon as I received a bottle of Candy Color Fluoresent Polish and this really cool Cartoon Face Stamping Plate from Born Pretty Store I knew I wanted to use them together and do black stamping.

The stamping plate worked great! The etching was done really well on this plate, it allowed enough polish to settle in it so it was super easy to pick up on the stamper. I love all the cool designs on this plate and see myself using it a ton. Great investment for only $2.99

The polish, I did have a few issues with. For me it seemed a little on the thick side, nothing a little polish thinner wouldn't help, and it seemed to take a little longer than other nail polishes to dry. The wait was worth it though cause it is a really nice color. The wear time has been really good on this polish, I did them on Friday and here it is Wednesday and I have no chips at all, just a little tip wear. This polish is currently on sale for $3.46

I did get a little smudging of the lines, but that always seems to happen with me LOL I probably should have let the black dry a little bit longer before I added my top coat. And OMGosh, I should have done a better clean up job :/

As always Born Pretty offers free shipping on all orders and you can save an extra 10% with coupon code: SMBW10

I hope you all are doing well and I hope to get back in the swing of blogging when summer ends! Until then (and even after) you can keep up with me on Instagram!

Mint Mani

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Y'all I am so in love with today's mani! I was going through my drawer of unworns trying to decide what I wanted to do with my nails and I kept coming back to That's What I Mint, the last of my unworn Essence polishes, I'm a sucker for mint shades so I love this one too. I didn't want to paint them a solid color so I dug around in that drawer some more and found one of the polishes I had picked up from Rue 21 which also has mint in it's name, Mint Crush. I decided I would give these two a try together, I swear they were 'Mint' for each other! LOL see what I did there.

I started out with two coats of That's What I Mint, of course application was flawless and it had a super fast dry time. In the bottle you can see some shimmer, but it did not show up on my nails. I used Mint Crush for my stamping color and used Mash plate 42, picked that up on Amazon. Mint Crush is a fantastic polish for stamping. Next time I'm near a Rue 21 I am going to pick up some more of their polishes!

So in love with both of these colors and the cool stamping design, hubby even said it was cool looking :)

Tomorrow I think I will do an empties post so I can stop hoarding trash LOL Hope you all are having a great day and if you live in the south watch out, I've heard it might be kinda stormy :/

NOTD: Salon Perfect Bermuda Baby & KleanColor Metallic Pink

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Today I have for you Salon Perfect Bermuda Baby stamped with KleanColor Metallic Pink. The plate I used for this look I received from KKCenterHK for review and it is N.NAIL Stamping Image Stamp Template Plate SPPMB65. I love all the designs on this plate, but I chose to use the bigger lines and swirls one (the one right unter the N.Nail label). It does have a little tiny place where the etching is messed up, but it did not affect the transfer of the image to the stamper or to my nail.

I used Bermuda Baby for my base and it is a beautiful light neon blue, that my hubby picked out and brought home for me. In the bottle you can see some purple/pink shimmer, not sure if that transferred to my nail since I covered it up with a stamp. Bermuda Baby dries to a matte finish, but if you like the color but not the matte finish just apply a shiny top coat and no one will ever know the difference :)

As mentioned above I did use Metallic Pink from KleanColor to stamp with. I have found that these metallic polishes are good for stamping but you have to work fast since they dry pretty quick. 

Since I wanted this look to be completely matte I topped everything off with my NYC Matte Me Crazy top coat. I think I should have let it dry a little longer before I took the photo, because to me it still looks a little shiny. I also think this looks much better in person just because I could not get my camera or my iPhone to capture the actual color of Bermuda Baby. The photo I took with my phone (bottom image) is closer to the actual shades.

Not overly excited about this mani. I think it would have looked better with different colors. Maybe Black and Gold.

If you shop at KKCenterHK you can save 10% off your order with this coupon code: SBB2013

Review: Born Pretty Stamping Plate

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Today I have a nail look that I created using Stamping Plate Elegant Bowknot Flower Pattern QA61, that I received from the Born Pretty Store.It's one of those plates that has a lot of potential for some awesome looking manicures. It is a good quality plate for only $2.99 To me it feels exactly like a Konad or Mash plate. Since it is in an odd shape I did not have a holder to put it in when I was using it like I do with my round plates, but I was still able to use it easily. You can purchase the holders for these plates from the Born Pretty Store for only $1.99 I did not have any issues getting the images transfer from the plate to my stamper. The image stamped clear and sharp on my nails. Really pleased with this plate.

For my manicure I used two coats Avon suede finish polish in Touch of Taupe for my base color and used Klean Color metallic polish in Metallic Yellow, it's a fast drying polish, so I had to work quick. I topped it off with NYC Grand Central Station. 

I absolutely love this manicure, I think it's elegant looking. I also love how well the two colors complimented each other.

You can save 10% of your order from the Born Pretty Store by using coupon code: SMBW10