The Lacquer Ring – Red

I am not sure who picked this month, however with the color and the next theme in two weeks I am thinking it was me, you’ll see why. Either way this month (as always) we have great colors and themes in store. Check out how #TLR does red!

My husband was so sweet and bought me the Ciate advent calendar for Christmas this year. I had so much fun opening it up each day, he gave it to me early so that I had a present each day of the month! For this look I am using one of the Ciate’s I got called hutch, I love how hookery this red is. lol I also used Pretty Serious’s Viscous Vampire.

Don and I have been watching Supernatural on Netflix lately… with the name of the Pretty Serious color I chose, I call this mani ‘My Bloody Valentine’ after the name of the episode we just watched 😉

I painted two thin coats of Hutch and then painted Viscous Vampire as a gradient on the tips

This second pic is more accurate of how it looks in person, sometimes the lighting is just so hard to get with some of these polishes! I do like however in the first pic how you get the different shades of the glitters. Pretty Serious website description states there are both red and fuscia in there 😉

Well there you have my red mani just in time for Valentine’s Day! Check out the rest of the TLR girls for their manis!

The Lacquer Ring – Green

It’s TLR time again, Nicole’s up this month with her choice and she chose Green, very fitting for the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day!

I intended this to be much different than it turned out.. it’s not terrible or a fail just not the look I was going for.   I did Cirque’s Erda and topped it with ILNP’s Flakies (whattttt? again!! i know) Supernova.

So Supernova has Blue, Green, and Purple flakies. On my swatch stick, yes I swatch each color.. It looked mostly green with a little bit of purple. So before I move on let me explain about my swatches because there seems to be some buzz in some of the groups I’m in on FB. Anyway… I have these swatch plates below, and every time I get a new color, before it goes away I paint it and put the name of the polish. All of my polishes are sorted by color, not by shade, lol just all greens together, etc. I also put how many coats it took to get that so that I know if it took 3 coats, it’s not a good stamping polish. Some people think this is a waste, some people think that you can just look at the bottle.. but Erda is a perfect example of why that doesn’t work… For me Erda looks much darker in the bottle. Now I know by looking at my swatches… Just sayin 😉 lol

Anyway back to the mani.. so on the swatch plate Supernova looked more green on it’s on, I guess paired with the green it took on the other colors, which is fine just not what I’d hoped for is all.

So in this angle you see mostly the purple flakes, but at the tips and in the middle of my pinky, and the left side of my index you can really see the green, it’s more subtle because the green matches Erda, but that’s more of what I was looking for here. Either way I think it came out good, It’s just not as St. Patty’s Day as I wanted.

Here’s some more angles

See it’s a more even mixed of both the green and the purple on this one.

Same with this, more even mixture.

So what do you think, are you sick of me doing flakies yet? I just can’t help myself! AND she just came out with holo ones, I am trying very hard to not give in… lol

What’s your favorite green polish?

Here are the other girls green manis

The Lacquer Ring – Cobalt

I’m back.. sort of. I know everyone gets super busy around the holidays, I am of course no exception. My brother in law and his fiancee’ and our niece and nephew came in for two weeks for the Holidays! It was lots of cleaning and repairs, shopping, wrapping, cooking = No blog time. 😦 I have a couple of posts saved up I will use soon, hopefully lol. Things have calmed down a little so I will hopefully get back in to the groove of posting more.

Today was my prompt and I chose Cobalt. It’s also my prompt for the nail art, but it’s a secret as always, you will just have to stick around 😉

I chose Nails Inc – Baker Street and I then did an accent nail using Cirque’s 8 Crazy nights.

I am sorry I only have one picture because I couldn’t find my camera this morning and used my phone, I don’t like the quality as much as I do my camera so you only get one this post.. I promise for our next prompt or my next post you will get more pics 😉

Be sure to check out the girls cobalts

The Lacquer Ring – Magenta-ish

So it’s that time again, The Lacquer Ring is back at it, and this month is Lesley!  She chose and I quote, Magenta-ish, lol. I wasn’t quite sure which color to do, I don’t know that I have very many Mangenta colors. I have more this is definitely pink, or this is definitely purple colors so I hope you agree on my choice, haha!

For my TLR mani I chose Morgan Taylors Sarong but so Right. I did a little french mani tip using Sephora Formula X’s Light my Fire. Take a look and tell me what you think, Mangenta-ish enough?

I was going to do some Hello Kitty inspiration since Lesley and I both share the love for her, but I didn’t have enough time. Next time Lesley, next time 😉 lol

So there you have it Magenta – ish!  Check out the other girls Magenta manis

 

The Lacquer Ring – Teal

It’s finally Thursday! This week feels like it has just drug on so badly. Perhaps it’s partly from me working through lunch the last few days being completely and utterly beyond swamped. 😦 Just because it’s Thursday that doesn’t mean that the swamp-ness has gotten better just that it’s almost over and time for a break 😉

With that being said, I had totally forgotten that today was our bi-weekly post and almost wasn’t able to participate. I decided that I would at least do a quick 4 finger mani because I couldn’t be late again 😦 lol  This month is Amy’s pick and for her color she chose Teal.

I have so many teals to choose from however one sticks out as my favorite and was a quick dry, so win-win.  I painted one coat of OPI’s Fly just to have some undies and then one thick coat of Shimmer’s Strength. This teal beauty can either be worn with undies or on it’s own. Stand alone takes about 2-3 coats or just a few thick ones to become opaque. With the undies this was just one coat of Strength.

So what do you think Super glittery right, how can you go wrong!

What’s your favorite teal, or perhaps if not a teal what is your favorite go-to color?

NAILMATES Review

A few weeks ago I was sent this new product from NAILMATES to try out. There are all sorts of products out there geared toward the removal or easy use of Glitter and/or Gel polish and that’s what this product is. The website lists the product as:

For quick & easy removal of gel polish and nail treatments.

• Comfortable & REUSABLE
• Better than foils or soaking dishes
• Users can QUICKLY & EASILY remove polish from all nails at once
• Caps & Removal Pads stay in place so user can do other things
• Pack includes 10 REUSABLE NAILMate caps, 20 removal pads, 1 nail file.

Nail Mates promises no dripping because of their special pad,  it allows for you to do other things while waiting. They also claim to work better than foil because it allows less evaporation with the rubber caps. The caps and pads were specially designed for removing gel polish, however as I don’t use that, I figured it would be perfect for glitter since that’s always a sore subject in the polish world… Glitter Removal ugg!

*This PR product was sent to me for my unbiased review*

(So I totally stole this picture from Nicole at Polish Me, Please! Be sure to check out her review on these!! – I forgot to take a picture of the bag and applicators while still pretty before I used )

The package comes with the rubber caps and the sponge applicators.

• You are to simply gently apply NP Remover to the sponges ( damply.. be careful to not soak them )
• Then place the sponge on your nail and put the cap on your nail, or put the sponge in the cap and put your finger in.

I had them on for about 5-10 minutes I was honestly doing other things so I can’t be certain but it was no more than 10 minutes which is about what you would do with foil anyway. Once I removed the caps there was a little to rub off with the sponge but the majority was on the pad! Oh and I must say that I use Non-Acetone for ALL my polish so this may go quicker with Acetone, I know a lot of people use straight Acetone for glitter.

I’m not gonna lie.. I did not think this product would work, so many companies have tried things and have failed but I really liked these. This absolutely allowed me to do other things without feeling like I am going to drip all over like when I do use foil. It did the job for me rather than going through about 20 cotton balls that rip to shreds trying to take of glitter. It made it much easier..

My pads were also not so bad and didn’t harden up like my cotton balls do once I’ve used them; So I can flip them or reuse these a couple of times. I definitely feel this is a product for the Glitter and/or Gel user.

If you wanna try these out for yourself and see what you think, you can purchase them here.

The original Nailmates is $14.00

Removal Pads Refill 30 count is $5.95

and Removal pads refill of 200 is only $14.95

Right now they are running a special too :

20! ADDITIONAL REMOVAL PADS WITH ONLINE PURCHASE! That’s a total of 40 pads

 

So, is this a big pet peeve for you too, removing gel or glitter? If so, would you try this product or have you already? Let me know what you thought or what you think if you end up trying. 🙂

The Lacquer Ring – Unicorns Unite!

You have seen us all now for many weeks for our ‘Stamping Saturday’ looks, and on occasion its counterpart that didn’t quite take, ‘Textured Tuesday’ we are back with an all new endeavor.  After many weeks of texts/emails we have finally all voted and decided on our official group name.  The Lacquer Ring!

We are a group of crazy polish chicks who spend way too much time emailing each other all day long about polish, life, woes and more polish. While we haven’t all technically met in person (except for Cynthia & Lesley and Me, Amy, & Frosso), we are pretty good friends and hope that we can all meet one day. Unfortunately, the universe will end that day because that much awesomeness is not allowed all in one place. While you may already know the ladies who make up The Lacquer Ring, let me introduce them all, Including myself the other girls are: (PS totally took this last part from Cynthia because it was not only totally brilliant but absolutely true and couldn’t have said it better!)

Amy from The Fancy Side

Frosso from Lacquer Me Silly

Jessica from Once Upon A Polish

Lesley from IG @MisfitLesley

Nicole from Polish Me, Please!

Siobhan from For The Love Of Nail Art

Cynthia from Of Life and Lacquer

Our newest collaboration will be a bi-weekly post. Each month one of the girls is designated to pick both a color theme and a design/nail art theme for us all to participate together in a post. First up is Nicole for the month of May. She sent us all this polish to do a group post to announce our newest venture to you all. It’s Unicorn Bubbles by Candy Lacquer.

As soon as I got this polish I just could not wait to try it out so I did it overtop Zoya Darcy (which I also got from Nicole) so this look is from a few weeks ago. I did my accent nail with Darling Diva’s LE Miracle Cure

I just love how it made the Bubbles pop more made them appear to be brighter when in reality on their own are more of a pastel.

So knowing that we were scheduling this post for today I had wanted to try this over a pastel and did so last night. I did my left hand with Jessica’s Strawberry Shake it. Can I just say how much I absolutely love this bubble glitter overtop this pink, like I do not want to take it off love…

And finally, I was experimenting and trying to see what it would look like over other colors and so my right hand I used Jessica’s Barely Blueberry and this was how it turned out…

I didn’t hate it, it definitely looks more pastel overtop the blue and the pink, but I prefer it over the pink way better.

Well this was a longer post than normal! Lots of info, lots to look forward to hopefully you agree! 🙂 I will be back here for Stamping Saturday. The Official start date to the new Lacquer Ring bi-weekly posts is May 8th

Here’s the Rest of the Lacquer Ring gang

Textured Tuesdays – Cosmo in the Morning

For most of you that have been following my blog for a while know that you don’t see many textured looks here… I have never been a big fan. My polish girls, Lesley, Amy, Jess, Nic, Sib, Fross, and Cynthia finally talked me in to it and now I have quite a few in my collection; So far mostly Zoyas and a couple of OPI’s.

Amy from The Fancy Side has decided to start a new theme on Tuesday’s for anyone interested and it’s called Textured Tuesdays. Head on over to her blog to add your nails to the link every Tuesday.

I wasn’t able to participate in week 1 so this is week 2. I did Zoya Cosmo on all fingers and accented one nail with OPI’s 4 in the Morning.

Natural lighting hallway

Natural lighting bedroom

lightbox

lightbox

So what do you think? Will you join us for Textured Tuesdays? Head on over to Amy’s blog to add your link!!

NOTD 136 – Featured Color Friday – Lavender

I know I know… another week without a post until Featured Color Friday, What can I say, I’m a slacker. Today I have some purple nails for you that I am not 100% pleased with and then Monday, I will have some Memorial Day nails.

I painted two coats of “Zoya – Charisma” which for any of you that have this, know it’s SUPPOSED to look like a bright neon purple…. This is forever one of those colors that is just simply impossible to capture its true purpleness with my camera. I then took one coat of “Barry M – Lavender” over top it. Lavender is a clear based polish with silver glitter and lavender colored square glitter pieces. This polish is great, it’s not dry, glides on really well this is only one coat and I was pleased with it. The purple itself however, I was not pleased with.

Call me crazy, which I know I am sometimes… 🙂 but this to me is just one of those toes colors. I love it on my toes but not on my hands. I currently have “Jade – Deja Vu'” on my feet and I don’t like it but I love it on my hands…

Anyway, here it is:

This next one is even further from the color, but I just love the way that the glitter shimmers in the picture. You will notice that a lot of the pictures make the square glitters appear silver, but look at the ones to the sides of my nails you can kind of see the lavender color in them

Well guys, that’s it for me today, like I said I will be back Monday for some Memorial Day nails.

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NOTD 47 – A Lucky Duck named Ziggy

This is the second mani that I have done recently with greens, pattern? hmm… I used “Orly – Lucky Duck” (2 coats) and topped it with “Urban Decay – Ziggy”. This top coat is a gold, purple/pink, green and blue glitter and unlike a lot of glitters, I only needed one coat of SV, the glitter did not eat the top coat which is good 😀

This is a picture from Temptalia.com of Ziggy by itself. This is probably 2-3 coats.

I did only the one coat over Lucky Duck

Then here is one more picture a little close to see the full effect of the Ziggy glitter.

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OPI’s Glitter Review

 

Hello Readers: As much as I love “OPI” and I love their glitter lines, like the one Shown above, and the one in my Fancy French post; I find that in order to get the desired look in the bottle you need at least 2-3 coats plus your base and top coat. It tends to be thick as the polish itself is a bit thick due to the bigger sparkles. The Fancy french look I did, the pink started to chip off at the bottom of my nails after about 4 days. You can choose to just fix it by painting the empty spot and putting more top coat, but that’s just adding more paint. They are beautiful however they tend to last a little less than normal matte or just in general shimmery colors. Just beware with these glitter colors is all…

*A Shout out to my wonderful, Awesome Friend in this post, Monique for giving me her bottle of the above color, “Absolutely Alice by OPI” as I was having a terrible time trying to find it as it’s discontinued. Still one of my favorite colors to date!

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