DizzyNails

My lovely followers, I wanted to give you a sign that I am still alive! Speaking of alive...this mani I put on a full week ago is more than alive and well. I took photos to prove it.

Yeah, ignore the gnarly gap. Can you believe it still looks like this?! I cannot. I feel like it's practically a part of me now...I'll be sad to see it go!

I did put on a fresh coat of Poshe Thursday night because it was looking a bit dull and also like the edges might want to lift a teeny bit in a few places. After that, it was back to perfect. Also, about 90% of the places where the tips are wrapped under are still perfectly intact.

For anyone wondering, I had used my usual Palladio Fuse as a base coat, two coats of Chanel Graphite, a coat of Poshe, stamping with Special Black Konad polish, another coat of Poshe, and then yet another coat of Poshe five days into it.

I'm still wearing this and it's been two full days! That is great for me, for Chanel, I must say.

Thanks to audraelena from MUA for the stamping idea here! This is two coats of Graphite, stamped with Konad plate m63, using Konad Special Black polish. I used Poshe for my top coats.

Also, everything is holding up so well that I fully expect to get through another day as well. We'll see, though. Hopefully I don't jinx myself (not that I'm actually superstitious).

The other day I was thinking about my favorite vampy colors, and I remembered Dior Purple Revolution.

I was looking for it on my blog, here, but couldn't find it. What the heck?

I forgot all about it but then remembered again tonight. I searched through old photo albums and finally found it! Along with it, I found this situation that you are looking at right now.

What is it, you ask? Milani Blue Flash topped with Sephora by OPI Flurry Up!

This is from December of last year!! Oh me. Oh my. I do not know what happened that I forgot to post this before. (As an aside, I did search fairly good for this and also the Dior Purple Revolution mani on DizzyNails, with no luck - but if by some crazy chance they already got posted and I just couldn't find them, then consider this just a beautiful encore!)

How cute is this?! Seriously. So cute.

Oh, you wanted to see that Dior I was talking about? The one that I love so very much? Here she is.

Two utterly glorious coats of Dior Purple Revolution 906.

It practically applied itself, and look how pretty it is!!

Almost black, I know. A weakness of mine. I believe, if my memory serves me right, that this was a Sephora exclusive color from last winter.

And my wee little baby nubs. I kind of miss them, honestly.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this random little blast from the past!

Here I started with three coats of OPI Obscure. Obscure is a matte mini polish from Halloween 2010. This first picture is the only one shown without top coat, so you can see the matte effect.

I used Konad plate m73 and Chanel Peridot for stamping.

I really liked how it looked with the black matte, but was sure I would scratch the life out of it in no time at all, so I added top coat!

I've got to say, these dreary, drizzly day pictures aren't doing anything for Peridot!

I'm not sure what possessed me to pick up my stamping supplies and go at it, after such a long stamping hiatus. I'm super glad that I did, though! Probably the tape mani got me wanting more nail art! :)

I hope you all have a wonderful and safe 4th of July! Here's my first ever tape mani.

I started with three coats of Illamasqua Scorch.

The red is L.A. Girl Glitter Addict Animate and the blue is L.A. Girl Glitter Addict Jostle.

I'm sure most of you know how to do tape manis as they are super popular (and awesome) and all over the nail blogosphere now.

Here is how I did it, in case you are curious. I started with three coats of Scorch and then topped it with Poshe. I let it dry pretty well, for several hours. Then, I used scotch tape to mark off on one nail everything except for the part I wanted to be red. I painted it red, careful not to get polish on my skin, and kind of encouraged the glitter pieces to spread out as evenly as I could with the brush. After that, I pulled the piece of tape off, rather swiftly.

I finished all the red parts, going one nail at a time and being careful not to smudge the red glittered areas after. I tried taking some of the stickiness off the tape by sticking it to my palm first, but I found that I actually preferred the tape to be quite sticky. I didn't have any problems because the base polish was completely dry and with it stickier I could keep it on the edge near my cuticle better (so none of the polish I was painting on would pool under the tape).

Thanks for stopping by!

Mad props to my boy Jaysen for incessantly nagging me to wear this mani. Your persistence and genius idea has paid off!

This is three coats of $OPI Full Moon, a glow in the dark white from Halloween last year, with a coat of OPI Black Shatter.

Can I just say that this mani was a major pain in my patuckass? Yet now it is for sure one of my all time favorites.

When I first began to put all this together it was very late at night, in fact, early into the wee hours of Thursday morning. I decided to try my China Glaze Black Mesh Crackle as I have not worn it for a mani yet and wanted to enjoy the difference of how it cracks (as compared to Shatter). The $OPI Full Moon was thick and goopy, a bit of a trick to work with. I thinned it once or twice in the process of applying the three coats. Then, I used SV, waited about 5 or 10 minutes, and began to apply the Crackle.

ZOMG it was a disaster! I watched in horror as the ungodly event unfolded before my eyes. Two, yes TWO of my ten nails cracked and the other EIGHT did not (or did so just very minimally, not enough to even count really). And the darnedest thing is that one of those two nails that did crack, cracked so freaking perfectly I could have cried. I honestly have no idea what went wrong. Maybe I thinned things too much or didn't wait long enough for the SV to dry. Who the heck knows? (If you know, please share in the comments.)

I recently found a really pretty mood polish at Claire's. It looked blurple with a blue shimmer in the bottle. I had to have it! It's called Relaxed/Hyper.

Well, the Relaxed/Hyper looks totally different on my nails, as compared to the bottle. It's more turquoise into cobalt. Still very pretty, but no lovely blurple to be found!

The Paul & Joe glitter is really fun because it has sort of pastel multi-colored glitter. I'm not sure if it's scented like the other P&J I've worn before. I have a major head cold and cannot smell.