Anti Valentines Day Mani

Hi ladies!

Someone on Tumblr suggested that I do some anti-Valentine's Day manis, and I figured I'd oblige because come on, who HASN'T hated Valentine's Day with the fury of 1000 hells at some point in their life? I know I have.

I painted all my nails (except my ring finger) with Wet n Wild Burgundy Frost. On my ring finger, I painted a black base. I then used acrylic paints to draw the lines, "explosion" (I don't know what else to call it?) and broken heart on my ring finger. I also topped all the other nails with OPI Black Shatter.

Now, I've never been into shatter/crackle polishes AT ALL, mind you, but this one seemed to fit. Black Shatter, shattered heart....yeah, my emo side is coming out.  But I digress. Anyway, the ONE time I used this bottle of Black Shatter (I got it in a giveaway) and it's goopy and clumpy. So... I don't know if that's the reason you can hardly see any base color or if I applied too much...but I only used one thin coat. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is I wish the deep red popped out a bit more underneath the Black Shatter. It did come alive a little more with top coat, you should have seen how dull it was before!

I have the whole week off, so hopefully you guys can expect more posts than usual this week! Gotta keep myself occupied somehow ;)

BCA OPI Play the Peonies and China Glaze Brokenhearted

October begins Breast Cancer Awareness month.  I am so happy to see that so many people are promoting it this month including the NFL.

We will be featuring several BCA manis this month to try to raise awareness.  This mani is a base of OPI Play the Peonies with a coat of China Glaze Broken Hearted crackle applied over it. I think I like this shade of pink shatter over the OPI version.

I'm not a *huge* fan of shatters, although I do like how some of them look.  And I happened to really like how this one turned out.  I usually try to apply the shatter or crackle in a criss cross herringbone pattern to add more interest to the way the polish shatters. 

Why dey so mad? Dey declawed too?

Liquid hot MAG MA

Last night I stopped by Ulta (BIG MISTAKE!) and hauled about 7 OPI polishes.  One of the ones I got was the red shatter.  I think out of all the companies that have marketed shatter/crackle/burst polishes I like OPI's formula the best.  It shatters so consistently and the application seems to be the most flawless of the 3 varieties I've tried.

I decided to try it over the top of Sun Worshipper.  I applied it right over the top of the nail decal I had on my ring fingers because I knew I'd be removing it soon.  I applied the shatter in a wavy or swirling motion to make it look like moving hot lava or fireballs.  It's very bold, and I am loving the uniqueness of it!

A shatter mani that I actually like!

After my fail mani with Sun Worshipper, I decided I wanted to do something else... a little simpler and girlier. So, I went into Mama's room and stared at her collection for a good 20 minutes looking for what color to use (I leave my collection at my dad's and use her colors when I'm at her place... so it's like Christmas when I want to do a mani because I have all these colors to choose from that I don't own :] ) I decided on OPI Let Me Entertain You from the Burlesque collection. Then I used OPI Silver Shatter over the top of it. I haven't been able to decide whether I like the shatter trend. On one hand it's really easy nail art gives it a cool effect but on the other hand, it kind of looks like chipped nail polish which I hate. So I don't know, I'm still on the fence about the whole trend but I DO like the way this looks...maybe I'm becoming a believer?

I also wanted to show you these nail art brushes that Mama and I got online. I was using regular cheap paintbrushes to do my nail art and they REALLY weren't doing what I wanted them to, so hopefully these work better. We shall see!

Have a lovely day, followers! :)

-Amanda

Shattered Moon

This was one of those ideas that just suddenly came to me and smacked me in the head.  I wanted to try Shatter in combination with a half moon manicure.

So I started with OPI Rising Star which is a golden yellow shimmer.  As with most OPI polishes, the formula was great and the application was flawless.  It was pretty much opaque in one coat, but I used two for total coverage.  Then I taped off the half moons and applied OPI Black Shatter in a criss-cross herringbone pattern on the nail.

This is the finished mani.

Rainbow Shatter Mani

I must be the last person in the nail blogging world to have tried shatter...but I have a reason, I promise. I never really thought I'd be into shatter because it always kind of reminded me of chipped nail polish, but I finally decided to try my mom's and...I'm a believer. I wanted to try something fun and funky, so I used four different colors and kind of painted them in random blobs on my nails. I don't remember all of the colors...but I know I used OPI What's With the Catitude and China Glaze Sun Worshiper. Don't know what the Orly polishes are though.