Champagne and Checkers Nails

Last week was dreary and cloudy and not spring like at all in the Bay Area so I decided to wear some sparkles to bring me a little extra happy since the weather was clearly not delivering!

So I broke out my sparkles! This baby is Painted Polish Blinded By Bubbly and man it is totally blingy and amazing!







Blinded By Bubbly is your typical microglitter. Takes about 3-4 coats for to be fully opaque. For this application I did the sponge effect, where you take a make up sponge and you apply a coat of the glitter to the makeup sponge and then apply it to the nail. It ends up being a more dense glitter effect on the nail, but then the glitter is EXTRA top coat hungry.

And can I just take a minute to talk about liquid latex? I've used my bottle of Ellagee Lickity Split several times now and I think I might be doing something wrong. When I remove it, it leaves a layer of the polish (albeit very thin/small) behind. The layer isn't stuck to the skin, but it is still connected to the mani and does still require clean up (and being that this was a glitter mani, that was a lot of clean up because extra glitter is rough to remove!). Which makes me wonder why I use it in the first place?! Am I doing something wrong? Do I need to apply more liquid latex? I remove from one side of the tip of my nail to the other, should I be removing from the cuticle instead? Send me your tips, I'd love to hear them!



And because I can't leave a mani alone for too long, I broke out my UberChic plate U-01 and stamped this checkered look using my Rica Blackout polish (the best black stamping polish in my opinion!).





So what do you think of this look? It's simple but sparkly and did bring me a bit of happiness. Do you have any advice for me and my liquid latex? I'm rather sad I can't get it to work very well for me!

Hawaiian Sunset Gradient with BPS Stamping

Happy Friday everyone! I'm so ready for this three day weekend after suffering through a terrible migraine for a good portion of the week, I'm ready to kick back and relax finally.

I got my new KBShimmer polishes in the mail Wednesday, but was too ill to play with them until last night! First off, so excited with what I got, after receiving a birthday gift certificate and holding on to it I used it all on the summer bleached neons! I got Bahama Drama, Leggo My Mango, For Sail By Owner, In Yacht Water, Sarong Place, Sarong Time and What Are Your Wading For? I also got three of their new mani shots, which I intend to use very soon!

Anyway, let's get to the first creation using these shall we? I showed these too my husband when I finished and he promptly said, "It looks like a calendar of Hawaii, let's go to Hawaii!" He's too funny!



I started with a base of Bahama Drama, the very first KBShimmer neon I knew I needed. It is a gorgeous creamy coral neon that is so bright! Formula wise, I found it to be on the thick side. It was a little streaky by the first coat, but the second coat covered it all up for the most part. Since I knew I was going to gradient the nails, I decided not to do a third coat, but normally I probably would have. The polish dried pretty quickly though, and was a satin almost rubber like finish without top coat!



So after my two coats of Bahama Drama dried, I took out Sarong Place, Sarong Time which is a beautiful magenta-leaning purple neon polish and applied it and Bahama Drama to a make up sponge and applied the gradient. I topped off the gradient with my new favorite gradient topper: Spectraflair 35 Top Coat by Spectraflair4U and then set off to add some bold stamping to the look!

*Press Sample*

I had gotten behind on some of my Born Pretty Store reviews, admittedly, so I broke out one of my nail stamping plates provided for review and decided to go to town with it! I chose this plate specifically for that bamboo looking image I used on my nails with a sunset-esque look just like this in mind.



This plate is the Born Pretty Store Plate BP-18 and I had zero issues with it! Now that I look at it again, those feathers look like they would be an awesome stamping design as well, looking forward to trying that in the future too! This plate retails for $2.99, but you can use my Born Pretty Store discount code of TRAH10 to save 10 percent off your purchase (on items not already discounted). I've been pretty pleased with the nail stamping plates I've tried from them, and they keep releasing new images all the time.

To stamp with I broke out Rica Blackout, my most favorite black stamping polish. It is opaque, not gooey and easy to work with! And as you can tell the results are stunning!



So what do you think of this look? It definitely makes me want to go back on vacation that is for sure! I think it is super happy and a great way to break in the KBShimmer Neons I just purchased! Hope you all have a fantastic three day weekend ahead of you!