First Manicure of the New Year - OPI The Show Must Go On

Happy (late) New Year! How has it been so far? Mine has been pretty good. I got a set a Burlesque minis for Christmas and the one that appealed to me the most was 'The Show Must Go On'. Its a pretty red-ish pink that shifts orange in certain ligthing. It looks gorgeous and unfortunately I wasn't able to capture how cool it really is. That's partially because I waited too long and partially because colours like this can be tricky to photograph.

I took the picture with China Glaze Peppermint Cuticle Oil since its hard to take pictures with the mini bottles. I recommend checking your Sally's clearance section; I found tons of discounted polishes at mine, especially ones from holiday collections. I also picked up this cuticle oil since they had a whole container full of them for .99 cents each. I actually really like it and the peppermint smell is nice.

On an entirely different subject...I have some cute pictures to show you! When I asked my boyfriend Chase what he wanted for Christmas the only thing he said he wanted was a kitten. So I got him one. He is so cute but don't let that fool you...he's a troublemaker as well! It was nearly impossible to take pictures of him. Most of them came out blurry. He even tried to attack the camera.

His name is Riku and he was about 8 weeks old when we got him. He's so small he gets in to everything but he is so adorable you can't be mad at him.
Once again, Happy New Years! Have you made any New Year's resolutions?
Peace and Love,
Serena

E.l.f. Metallic Orange Konad + FB page!

Out of all the Elf polishes I got from my aunt awhile back, this one was the one I wasn't quite sure about. I prefer to wear cool toned polishes over warm ones and in my experience orange doesn't look very good on me. This one really impressed me though. It's a metallic pumpkin orange with a pink glow to it. It's really hard to describe and unfortunately my pictures failed to capture it. You can kind of see it in a few of the pictures. I wanted to do some Konad so I used plate S06 and stamped a diagonal line pattern on my nails.

Despite how much I love this colour, it was somewhat streaky and sheer. Three coats evened it out nicely though. I wanted to take a picture of this without Konad but by the time I remembered I had already stamped my left hand! So here is a somewhat awkward picture of my right hand. I'm pretty sure I'll never be photographing my right hand again.. I didn't even notice the bad chip on the middle finger so excuse that.

Pink flash still didn't show up but atleast you can see the pretty pumpkin orange colour! I'm holding my teal-ish pants in that picture, I thought it complemented the orange nicely.

I made a page on facebook! Feel free to "like" the page if you have a facebook. I thought it would be cool to get to talk to you without writing a blog post. I'm in the process of uploading all my current pictures on there and feel free to share your own manicures as well. =)

Peace and Love,
Serena

Konad Stamping Nail Art: First Use

Hello! Today I received my Konad order in the mail. Here is what I purchased:

1 Double Sided Stamper and Scraper
2 Konad Special nail polishes (black and white)
3 Image plates (m60, m73 and s6)

M60 has four full nail designs (dots, argyle, plaid, and paisley) and one flower design.
M73 has four full nail designs (flowers with vines, wavy lines, music notes and squares) and a heart french tip design.
S06 has 7 asian style designs. 2 of them are full nail designs.

When I first opened the package I started testing it out a little bit on my bare nails. I had trouble with the full nail designs more than the small ones. After I had done a few practice stamps I painted my nails with Sinful Colors Courtney Orange. Courtney Orange is the only Sinful polish I own and it takes 3 coats for opacity. Next, I used S06 and stamped a circular asian design on my nails. Here is how I did:

 
I think I did alright with this one. The only problem I have is centering the design. Also, when I was practicing I had a lot of trouble getting the full nail designs all over my nails. Before I bought Konad I did quite a bit of research on it and the big debate is this: Do you really need the Konad special nail polishes? My answer to that is yes if you want a decent, hassle free, vibrant design.  While I was messing around I found it much easier to use the special nail polish. China Glaze Millennium and China Glaze Thunderbird were two out of the four I tried that worked. (I also tried Misa Shop til U Drop and Finger Paints Sketch n Etch) It makes sense those two would work because I have heard metallic/chrome colours work best.

If you have any Konad tips for me please share them!

Peace and Love,
Serena