Pink Wednesday: A different take on magnetic polish

Hi ladies! Happy hump day! Almost to the weekend, what are your plans? My boyfriend is coming up for the weekend. He is still in school still -- I don't get to see him whenever I want, so I'm pretty excited :)

For this mani, I started with a base of two coats of e.l.f. Fuchsia. Such an original name, man....Fuchsia, for a fuchsia polish. These execs at e.l.f. are so deep and creative. All the other e.l.f. polishes I have are streaky and sheer, so imagine my surprise when this one was opaque in just two coats! The brush was wonky on it, but again... all my e.l.f. polish brushes are wonky and need hair cuts. I don't know why I love this color so much -- it's your regular, run of the mill magenta, fuchsia color. I don't know! I never used to like pinks either... I must be going soft in my old age.

Here are some swatches of Fuchsia by itself:

On day two, I wanted to freshen this mani up. It had gotten dull and I already had tip wear a day later. Mama sent me two Icing magnetics a few days ago that I decided to use on it. When I initially got the package, I played with the magnetics and could NOT get them to work for the life of me. It would only magnetize down the center of my nail. But, when I tried this time, I used thinner coats and it seemed to work a little better. I still need some practice with them though to get a harsher pattern to show up, I think.

Anyway, I just taped down the diagonal of my nails and painted on a coat of this gold magnetic polish from Icing. It has no name. Icing, y u no name awesome polishes?!

Finished up with a black line over top of the diagonals and voila! A simple Pink Wednesday mani that isn't your standard magnetic mani. Mom called it "interesting" ... I guess I can live with that.

Also, just a little note: I've added a requests/submit button on our Tumblr! So if there's any mani ideas, requests, questions, what have you.... send em there! :)

Day 2 - Orange Nails

Today's theme for the 31-Day Challenge is Orange Nails!

I started with three coats of ELF's Mango Madness. MM was sheer and took a while to build up. I haven't good luck with the few ELF polishes I have but I have heard other people say they are very pleased with theirs. Maybe it's like Essie -- I hate Essie but everyone else seems to love them. Maybe my standards are different :)

I then layered Orly's Winter Wonderland over the three coats of Mango Madness. And no, it is most definitely not too early to layer a polish called Winter Wonderland, especially when Boston just got snow last weekend.....so there!

Have a great day and be sure to check out Mandy's orange manicure!

2-in-1 - Swatches AND Konad!

I picked up a set of five summer e.l.f. polishes a few weeks ago for my birthday. It looked fun, and it was only $5 so I figured, "Hey...what the heck." I should really learn to stop buying things just because they're cheap. I guess I figured that they might be good quality since Wet 'n' Wild polishes are about a dollar and are pretty awesome for the price. Anyway, onto the review...

First I swatched elf's Lilac. What a unique name ;) This was three coats of Lilac. It was pretty sheer and I got tired of adding coats. You could probably get it opaque with four, but that's more than I normally like to do. The color is nice though -- sort of a muted, dusty, well... lilac color.

Next, I swatched elf's Mango Madness. This color covered better than Lilac, but was still pretty sheer. This color is really pretty though. My camera was FREAKING OUT when I was trying to photograph this puppy. It's not so orange in real life -- it's more of a lighter coral color. These pictures make it look really orange, but it's more subtle. This one is three coats too.

Bottom line, these polishes are $5 for five...take that as you will. I was pretty disappointed in them only because I have some of elf's cosmetics and they're pretty good. I guess you can't expect much out of a dollar polish, but I thought maybe these would be up to par with Wet 'n' Wild's dollar line. The colors are nice, but nothing I couldn't live without. I feel like there's a ton of dupes to the colors in this collection. I still have three that I haven't swatched, but I don't know if I'm feeling up to it. Here's a picture of the whole collection if you're interested:

From: dollmeup2.com

Anyway! On to the fun part (wow this is a long post...). Mama ordered us both sets of these Mash plates off Amazon. I didn't know that these were exactly the same as Konad plates, just cheaper. But that's ok with me :)

If you've been reading this blog for some time, you'll know that Mama and I have not been the best at Konad in the past. Perhaps it's just from lack of practice. So when I was home yesterday for a doctor appoint I picked these up to play with today. I probably could've just waited since I come home for the summer in 4 days...but you know me. :) I had one successful attempt and one er....not so successful attempt with the Konad. My unsuccessful attempt is too embarassing to show you, so I'm just posting the one I did over elf's Lilac.

Not too shabby for not having Konad-ed in months, right? Please say yes ;) I think this is so girly and subtle and cute! I used plate m64 and just a basic Sinful white polish for the stamping. Those Konad polishes are so expensive!! Anyone have any alternatives for stamping polishes that work well and won't break a hole in my bank account?

Until next time,
Amanda