Nail Art: Cupcake Mani on Friend

I did this mani for my friend's birthday today! Happy Birthday M! I've been meaning to try a cupcake mani and decided she was the perfect one to sport it.  I used Essie Mint Candy Apple for the back ground color, sinfulcolors white for the frosting, Orly Fancy Fuschia for the cup part with OPI Do You Lilac It? for the stripes, Sparktacular for the sprinkles and Kleancolors Metallic Red for the cherry. The whole cherry on top of the cupcake confuses me, when I bake them I don't put cherries/candies on top of the frosting but when you do it as a mani, it looks funny without one... *shrug* Anyways, this was my first attempt, I'll probably try it on myself but as accent nails as to save time :-)

OPI Rainbow Connection v. Finger Paints Fun-fetti v. SOPI Sparktacular

Ok with all the chunky rainbow colored glitters out, here's a few of the latest as a comparison. All three pictures are from different sources so they're not uniform in lighting but, do enlarge the picture and you can see great details. Let's start off with the comparison:

OPI Rainbow Connection: Hex glitter (large, medium and small), all in orange, gold, pink, silver (most), blue and green all in clear base

Finger Paints Fun-fetti:  large hex in blue, red, green, purple, gold, silver and orange, small hex glitter in the same colors and small round glitters in green - all in a clear base

Sephora by OPI Sparktacular: Small round in pink, blue orange, large hex glitter in orange, pink, blue and green. Has very small glitter that dominates any "empty space"

In my opinion, Sparktacular and Rainbow Connection are close enough to be good substitutes for one another. My favorite out of the three is Finger Paints because it has more of the large hex glitter and it's defined more, I don't feel like the large glitter gets lost in the small glitters. But really, if you're not a polish enthusiast or a glitter lover, you would have a hard time telling the difference between any of these.. Anyone have a favorite?

Closed!: Giveaway Time!

CLOSED:

Thanks to everyone who entered and a big Hello to the new followers :) I had almost 1200 total entries!

I'll be doing a YouTube follower only giveaway soon because there has been a ton of support for all the videos, so thank you!

Onto the winner.... 

Karen Mae Bautista

CONGRATS!!!! I have emailed you!

It's time for another giveaway!


Up for grabs: (click after the jump....)

sOPI: Mermaid to Order, and stuff

 So you guys saw a little of Mermaid to Order from my challenge post, but this is what I had done with it before that. 

OPI's Sephora line is sometimes a hit or miss, this one's... well... both.  Hit: the formula is great, this was 2 generous coats and the color is beautiful.  Miss: the color is not unique and I felt like I wanted to do something else with it.

It's a frosty teal that flashes purple, gold, dark blue and in that sense it's pretty, just not unique. 




In an attempt to make it unique, I thought I'd stamp a peacock from the Bundle Monster plates.... yea.... um.... The feathers kept coming out all wrong, so I decided that it would just be an accent finger peacock. Then I added Nicole by OPI's Nicole... Spotted.  *THEN* I went for Nubar's Sour Candy for chunky glitter.  hhmm... where to start.
 
Numbar has the chunky hex holo glitter with smaller round and mini glitter... miiinniii glit-ter! It's suspended in a clear teal-esque base, so is Nicole Spotted but in a different hue.  I'd say these two glitters should be friends because the look good together, especially over a frosty teal... but that peacock!

 

I like how white looks on the polish so maybe stamping something like stars over it would be prettier.  This mani wasn't a fail for me but it wasn't a total win.

News: have you guys checked out Manicured Monkey on you tube or on the You Tube tab on the blog? :)

I've also been thinking about starting the 200 follower giveaway early, say at 190.  What do you think? What would you like to see in it? I've had some feedback and kept that in mind when I went shopping :)

Have you entered my Giveaway?

sOPI: Ocean Love Potion

So, this is the other polish I was talking about being so close in photos to Read My Palm.  Sephora by OPI's Ocean Love Potion.

This is actually a great color, it's an opaque "Mediterranean turquoise" creme as Sephora's description reads.  I actually like this one better than Read My Palm because it's more blue based instead of green based.  This was 2 generous coats. It applied well and built up fine.  Still don't like the skinny brushes though :)


If you follow me on Twitter you've probably seen me post about trying out frankening.  I picked up Confetti's Ice Ice Baby as a base to use because it has great shimmer and the formula is a glitter base.  I wanted to use it first to test it out, so I put a coat or two over OLP.  I like it over this color, it looks more like tropical waters.  the holo flashes of glitter are always fun! I hope I do it justice when I attempt frankening with it!

Don't forget to enter my GIVEAWAY, I'll be adding more as more people enter :)

sOPI: Never Enough Shoes

Oh Sephora and OPI, you never fail to think of kooky names for your polishes.  This is "Never Enough Shoes".
It should be called "hard to photograph" :) It has a rich black base and is infused with all different colors of fine glitter: gold, red, copper- you name it!

This was 3 coats with no top coat.  You can see it's really glossy. It changes in each light so it's hard to capture the very fine glitters but click to enlarge my photos and you can see what i mean. 

This kind of reminds me of the new My Private Jet, the more you layer it the more flecks of color you see.  I like it... I'd also love to stamp over it with something fantastic... I'm putting that on the "to do" list.  This is probably more a Fall color but honestly, I wear darks year round because I wear what I want, when I want to wear it :) That's the fun with nail polish, you set your own trends!

Did you see TMM giveaway is up? :D

sOPI: Read My Palm

 This color! It as been driving me nuts because I picked up Read My Palm and Ocean Love Potion and they are so similar and photograph so close together that at this point I hope I identify them correctly!

Moving along, meet Read My Palm from Sephora's line of OPI.  It's a dusty green/jade creme and reminds me of a color you'd find in Bali.  It has a very Indonesia archipelago vibe to it.  May be I think this because Bali was super green and is lush... or may be it's just because I miss being there!

I wanted to add a little dimension to this so I added OPI's I Juggle...Men over the top for the shimmer.  I'm still getting used to this polish and it's growing on me.






Then, I used nail art tape that I got in a swap  to tape off some random stripes.  A coat of micro glittered Secret Admirer from Sinful Colors over it, then peeled off the tape strips and voila!






I've never used tape strips before this mani and I thought I'd give it a go/use.  I'm trying out new nail art things, as you will see on my You Tube and here in the blog :)

sOPI and China Glaze

 I recently did a Sephora by OPI haul so you'll be seeing some of those polishes in the coming days.  In a continuing effort to try out nudes, I picked up Nonfat Half Calf.  It's a nude but I feel it has brown/red undertones.  The brown undertones are great for my skin tone but not the red. I put it on, wasn't too excited how it showed, so I stamped over it with China Glaze's Harmony.






I used Konad image plate M64.  This pattern reminds me of henna tattoos; it's beautiful and I find myself using it often.  Harmony stamped extremely well and has the normal China Glaze brushes.  The sOPI has the skinny brushes which I'm not too fond of because of having a wider nail bed, but it does come in handy for using it to get close to the edges for detail work.


Overall, I dig this look but only because the purple canceled out some of the red in Nonfat Half Calf.  Stamping over nudes may become a new thing for me!

Also: have you checked out TMM You Tube page?
Giveaway Update: I've started getting stuff for the next giveaway at 200 followers.

Challenge Tag

TAG! I'm it! Cris from Let Them Have Polish  tagged me for this challenge.... 

Here are the Rules:

1. Go to your lacquer stash

2. CLOSE your eyes and pull 3 random items - JUST 3

3. Create a mani from them

4. Post your mani when you post the tag

5. Tag 3 bloggers

 I ended up with O.P.I Do You Think I'm Tex-y, Sephora for OPI Mermaid to Order and China Glaze Joy.
Because I had just organized my polishes, I had my hubbo pick my challenge polishes.  Yeaaaa... I ended up with a sorbet, shimmer and a metallic.  Behold, my starring cast: