Mani of the Day: Dragon Ball

I've always loved Dragon Ball Z but a few months ago my boyfriend introduced me to a fan based parody series that is almost too awesome for words. It's written and produced by a bunch of young guys who edit original video into shorted (abridged) episodes, do their own voice-overs, and make the characters really pop. DBZ Abridged is a grown up, condensed version of the original series and much to everyone's relief they cut four or five episodes of half hour power ups to a few minutes of interesting fight scene.

So last night I was watching Abridged and playing with my dotting tool on a nail wheel and it came to me! Dragon Ball nail art! It was so easy and simple and I'm really loving the results of this experiment. I've already come up with some ideas for improvement so these will be making an appearance again but until then look at these pictures.

I used:

• Butter London Trout Pout [coral/base]
• O.P.I. Flit a Bit [orange]
• Wet n Wild 9.0.2.1.Orange [orange shimmer]
• O.P.I. Smok'n In Havana [red]
• N.Y.C. Mulberry Street [beige/highlight]
• Essie Good to Go [top coat]  

The Dragon Balls. Image via DBZ Wiki

Have you ever watched Dragon Ball Z? Abridged? Who is your favourite character?

Mine is Vegeta :)

Face of the Day: Morning After

I went to bed super late last night after having a kickback with friends. I was bad and used my sleepiness as an excuse not to take off my makeup and, of course, I woke up late so I had to cover up the remainder of yesterday's face.

I have to say, Urban Decay's 'Smog' is the perfect eyeshadow to wear the morning after, It creates a neutral, effortless smokey eye when applied with a fluffy blendy brush. It's also pigmented enough to cover any mascara or eyeliner residue.

Products...

• Urban Decay 'Smog' [lid/crease]
• Urban Decay 'Half Baked' [lid]
• Urban Decay 'Hustle' [outer corner]
• Urban Decay 'Midnight Cowgirl' [inner corner]
• Urban Decay 'Skimp' [brow bone]
• NYX Le Frou Frou mascara
• MAC 'Heartless' rubbed on as a stain
• Say Yes to Carrots 'Sweet Fig' lip balm
• Unknown angled brush
• MAC 224 fluffy brush
• MAC 219SE shader brush

The Perfect Top Coat

Protecting a brand new mani is very important and no mani is complete without a top coat to protect the polish underneath, even out imperfections, and create a glossier finish. For the past few months I have been on a quest to find the perfect top coat, that perfect bottle of clear liquid that will make my nails smooth, shiny and tough enough to make it through a week of work with little chipping. I read reviews, I buy and try products but I still haven't found my holy grail. But all of the experimenting has helped me refine  what qualities I'm looking for in the perfect top coat. And now that I know what I want and I can be specific about it, I can share my findings here not only to document my progress but also in hopes that I can help someone else find their perfect top coat, even if it's not the one I would pick.

I am looking for a fast drying top coat (under 5 minutes) that is not difficult to apply, has a smooth, shiny finish (the glossier the better) and protects nails with no chips and minimal tip wear for at least five consecutive days. To some this may be quite a  tall, detailed order and to others it is very vague but the formula for a perfect top coat is completely subjective and while I will do my very best to describe the top coat in detail there really is nothing like trying it out yourself.

When posting reviews of the products I will be rating them and describing them on a few different categories which include: the time to dry, application, wear, discoloration, price, finish, and packaging.

I'm really excited about this little series, exploring new products, and just simply playing with polish. I'll be posting my first review in the next few days. Stay tuned!

Do you have a perfect top coat that you always go to? Or do you use a variety of products? Or are you on the hunt as well?

Mani of the Day: Finger Paints

For the past week or so I have been consumed by a sewing project, decorating a couple of purses I got for $5 at Icing. I'm almost done and I'm so excited with my progress so far, I have many many photos to come.

Because of my venture into sewing I haven't done anything new with my nails so I found some photos of a mani I did around Thanksgiving but never posted. I have a lot of photos I have not posted so when I'm running a little short on new material I'll be sharing those instead.

The left photo is Finger Paints Art You Wondering? with a coat or two of Seche Vite on top. The right photo is Finger Paints Easel-y Entertained with a half hearted freehand design, originally intended to be leopard print but turned out to be more floral or just abstract, SV on top of course.

I love the Finger Paints glitters and I love having shiny, sparkly, glittery nails. It can be really really difficult to pick just one which is why I like doing a different colour on each hand. I loved this mani and it lasted a full week with heavy typing for five of those days.

Contests & Giveaways!

I have spent the majority of my morning entering some really great polish giveaways put together by some awesome bloggers and I thought I'd share them with you! I love contests and am a very competitive person and although I have never won a giveaway yet, I always enter.

I present to you six great contests with some amazing prizes. They are listed by date with a link to the page where you can enter. I have also made a permanent contest page that I will update frequently.

Fingers Polish Mania's Birthday/Blogversary Giveaway Blowout! 

Ends April 30 

Prizes: Cheeky XXL plate, Cheeky plate #6, 6 Fauxnad plates (m61,m60,m56,m73,m64,m78), Cheeky starter stamping set, 7 assorted Sinful polish, 8 mini Soflajo polish from her Dragon collection

300 Super Awesome Readers Giveaway! by A Girl and Her Polish 

Ends May 5 

Open Internationally 

Prizes: Three winners will be chosen with a different prize for each: #1 Orly Dark Shadows Collection #2 Collection of 4 Jordana Glitters #3 Sinful Colors Cinderella and Revlon Whimsical

Wet N' Wild Summer Giveaway by The Nail Junkie 

Ends May 10 

Open Internationally 

Prizes: Wet n Wild Summer Mini Polish Set: 9.0.2.1.Orange, The Wonder Yellows, Sage in the City, FuchsiaRama, How I Met Your Magenta, Buffy the Violet Slayer

100 Followers Giveaway by Rainbowify Me

Ends May 3 

Prizes: Three winners will be chosen with a different prize for each: #1 Revlon: Ocean Breeze, Beach, Mad about Mango, Passion Fruit. All scented. #2 Gosh: Vanilla Ice, Golden Dragon. #3 Milani neons: Awesome Orange, Techno Red

Win It! MAC Back to Basics by Temptalia 

Ends May 9 

Open Internationally 

Prizes: MAC 188 Brush, MAC All That Glitters Eyeshado, MAC Blushbaby Blush, MAC Sketch Eyeshadow, MAC Spice Lip Pencil

350 Follower Giveaway by Karinea0a

Ends May 20 

Open Internationally 

Prizes: Hits Mari Moon Trendy, Hits Mari Moon Cutie Pie, Hits Glitter Forte Progressivo, Hits Glitter Forte Brit Pop

Slytherin House Pride

Last weekend Pottermore.com, an interactive Harry Potter site by J.K. Rowling, opened and I was so excited! I first found out about it via Angelica last year but was unable to get on the list for a beta account. The website was supposed to open to the public in January but they had some issues and delayed three months. But finally, finally I was able to join and the next day my account was set up and I got stuck in Hogwarts for the next four hours.

Pottermore is pretty awesome; you travel through key scenes in the books and can interact with the illustrations to collect items you can use later in games or to unlock new writing from J.K.R. about how she wrote the books and her creative process. I really enjoyed how some scenes were really interactive like Sorting Ceremony where you're prompted to take a quiz (none of the answers were obvious which I like) and are then sorted into one of the four houses and can begin dueling other players for house points. I was sorted into Slytherin house, and very very happy about that. Slytherin has always been my favourite house, I have a weakness for villians and Snape is my favourite character of the books.

To show some house pride and because I wanted to try another I idea, I grabbed some polish and went to work. I started with a layer of top coat so that the stamp would transfer to my nail better and in hopes that it would add some depth under the stamp to give a floating polish kind of look (Inspiration). I didn't quite achieve it with just the one coat of N.Y.C., I'm going to keep experimenting since I love that look but I think maybe Seche Vite would have been a better choice.

After that I added my silver stamp, then taped off my nail and painted green tips. I added a green cobra accent. I have only the one photo of the many that I took in the car yesterday. I meant to take more on my lunch break but most of it had chipped off from me typing. Boo hoo. I really liked this one too.

I used:

• NYC Grand Central Station | top coat
• Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Silver Sweep | silver stamp
• Rimmel Camouflage | green tips
• MASH m63 plate

Mani of the Day: Music Note Nails

Whew! That seemed to take forever but I'm finally ready to start posting again. I have a lot of content and I'm going to try to keep up with what I'm currently doing but my posts for a long time will not be in chronological order. Oh well. (=^・^=)


Today, I present the mani I just took off yesterday evening, music notes! My boyfriend and I play a lot of video games and in particular Skyrim. I have it for PC only so we have to trade back and forth when we play, so when it's his turn I usually take that as my que to clean something or do my nails to stay entertained. It was his turn so I asked him "What colour should I paint my nails?" "White." Immediately the idea popped into my head and I knew exactly which polishes and stamps I would grab.

My boyfriend recently joined a new band to do vocals and rhythm guitar so to show my support I thought I'd cover my nails with music notes. I have two M.A.S.H. stamping plates featuring music notes (m22 & m73) but I decided to 
throw in some swirlies too so I grabbed my trusty m36 plate and went to work.


I was very satisfied with the results and my boyfriend liked it too!

Finally!

I am finally over being sick!!!! I still have a nasty sounding cough but I'm two hundred times better than I was last week and work has even been okay. I guess spending a week away was good for my employee morale.

I wasn't very productive with my time off though. I either spent all my time in bed moaning like a zombie or, once I felt better, outside rollerblading around town to do errands or just for pleasure. I'm getting really comfortable with them and I've learned a couple of tricks that I am perfecting.

As far as this blog is concerned, I neglected it last week but I have spent the past two evenings working on graphics and some of the other pages. I can't wait to be finished!

I'm planning to begin posting regularly again tomorrow or the next day.

Still sick.

My boyfriend was super super sick over the weekend with this flu-type bug and it was pretty bad, I was worried about him but thankfully he's over it now...but I'm not. Whatever he had I must have caught because I'm having a hard time breathing, I'm coughing constantly and so hard sometimes I think I'll make myself throw up, my body aches and I feel feverish. Oh and I have no voice.

I tried going to bed many many times this morning and I just cannot get comfortable so instead of just laying around being useless I figured I'd work on re-doing my blog.

I posted a while ago that I was moving my beauty blog some place else and this would just be personal.... yeeah well not anymore. I'm proving how incredibly fickle I can be right now by changing my mind and going back on what I said. I have waaay too many sites to try to keep up with and quite frankly it can be a little exhausting so I'm just combining my efforts so I can share what I want, when I want, how I want and not have to feel guilty that I didn't crank out X amount of posts last week to satisfy each account.

That being said, I'm going to move all of the posts from DeadGirlGlamour back over to here as well as spice up my graphics and pretty things like that (((:

Siiick

I called out sick Thursday and Friday and spent both days plus Saturday and most of yesterday in bed taking care of us. He was much more under the weather than I and I think what he had is going to hit me soon and its going to suck...