The Lacquer Ring – Spoooookkyyyyy

Whoa, you are not reading this wrong, I am really posting from the blog! Blog posts take time and I just didn’t have any.. lol I was keeping up with my posts on my instagram account to make sure you are following that @maes.beauty  also on facebook at MaesBeauty page.

In any event, today TLR has some spooky looks for you for Halloween! Halloween is my FAVORITE holiday. I realized that this year I only did two Halloween looks…. two… and one of them I didn’t even picture. That’s sad.  So instead I will show you some of my favorite looks from prior Halloweens as it is Throw Back Thursday too after all.

These were our TLR ‘Inspired by Frosso’ last year Halloween, one of my favorites.

Click on the picture to be brought to the post.

These were my vampire bite nails, still today one my favorites

Click on the picture if you want to be brought to the post

And last but certainly not least one of my other favorites, my werewolf nails

This Throwback Thursday reviewing some of my old Halloween and regular manis reminds me of how much I have learned from my nail girls, and other bloggers. There are so many tips and tricks to nail art, to clean up, or just regular doing your nails that I didn’t know when I first started out.. Some of my pics were terrible… lol

Well, without further adieu, here are this years Spooky nails. I used OPI’s My Private Jet and stamped using Darling Diva Black Diamond

As most of you may or may not know, I love The Nightmare Before Christmas! This year MoYou came out with what they call a ‘Gothic Collection’ Plate that is mostly NMBC that I got. I used it for this look, heres a picture of the awesome plate

Make sure you check out the other Spooky TLR looks!

Next up will be my review of the YoUnique 3-D lashes! Ever tried them before? Well they have changed their formula and made it much easier to use and it still makes your lashes look amazing!

Also check out the other HPB link up Halloween nails!

The Lacquer Ring – Turquoise shimmer

Hello to anyone that reads this anymore… lol I am sorry.. I suck I only barely post twice a month it’s bad, but my life is hectic, not that anyone else’s isn’t… trust me I know.

To fill you all in as I think I sort of touched on, my husband’s brother(my brother-in-law), his fiancé (my future sister-in-law), and their two children moved back to NJ from AZ and are living with us for a while until they get on their feet. I took off a couple of days from work to help them move in and things are going well I think we got our schedule going with everyone in the house now… oh and did I mention in case you don’t know we also have 3 horses… not really horses lol but three large dogs 😉 lol. So with preparing for them to come and getting settled and all it’s been hard for me to paint, or blog but I am trying to come back 😉 I love my blog I love painting my nails it’s so relaxing as most of you know, it’s just finding the time which I am going to make sure that I do 🙂 Plus Ashley and I were doing our nails together a couple of times already so I’m getting her hooked hehe

#TheLacquerRing is also trying to come up with another segment twice a month like this for anyone that wants to collab like Stamping Saturdays for untrieds and such so keep an eye out for that 😉

 

 

Before I begin with the actual TLR post for this week, I want to first welcome our two newest exclusive members! Rei and Shelby Lou! Welcome Ladies to The Lacquer Ring!!

For this post, it was turquoise shimmer, I have always really wanted to try the turquoise gem nails, so why not… UGG! So for those of you that have tried it and did well, you suck. Those of you that don’t know I will explain… So it’s sort of like water marbling.

• You paint your nails the base coat in this case mine was China Glaze’s Too Yacht to Handle.
• Once dry, you can stamp a gold and/or a white a little bit as most turquoise has those hints. I used OPI’s Love.Angel.Music.Baby and China Glaze’s Dandy Lyin’ Around.
• Again once dry you drip a couple of drops or only one of black into water I usedIllamasqua’sBoosh. Once it separates and is a big circle, again like water marbling but without the bullseye you lightly spray hairspray or alcohol on to it.
  • From there the black will separate and make a watermarbly or a turquoise design.
    • You dip one finger at a time in the water (unless you’re pro- I’m totally not) and while under take a pin or a toothpick and swirl it around in the top layer of the water to get the excess polish at the surface
• Oh and before I forget in case you didn’t already knowing from water marbling TAPE, TAPE, TAPE, or latex. Just like water marbling this is MESSY, MESSY!
• Once done you can sponge a little bit of the goldish and/or white again if you’d like
• Top Coat and done (Oh and since this was turquoise shimmer I also did a coat of Enchanted Polish’s Ice Castle overtop for some extra shimmer)

With that being said I don’t know what I expected for my ‘first time’ but it wasn’t this… lol I like how it came out but it’s not as turquoise gem as I’d hope.

So what do you think of this? Have you tried this look and how did you make out?

Don’t forget to check out all the other girls posts for TLR and make sure you welcome our newest members! 😉

The Lacquer Ring Turns 1 – Baby Blue

Can you believe it! We have been doing The Lacquer Ring for one year already! Our very first post was our special polish Nicole got for us collab with Unicorn Bubbles. From there, we took off with each of us picking a color collab and a nail art theme collab.

This month’s pick was Lesley and she chose baby blue. My nails are atrocious right now! My brother in law and future sister in law and their two kids and possibly dog are all moving in for a while in less than two weeks now. I have been cleaning and organizing to make room for them. To say the least my hands and nails have taken a beating 😦

Luckly! I already had this gem (along with many others 😦 ) in my folder to post so it worked out perfect. This is Delush Polish’s Springing in the Rain. It’s a sky blue crelly filled with sprinkles of white and fuchsia glitters that remind you sunny days are ahead! (taken from Delush’s website)

So what do you think? I find it funny only because to me this is such a spring color and we are having nothing of the sort here on the East Coast. Today will be going up to 90, that’s not normal for our Spring.. smh How is the weather in your parts of the world? And how are you feeling this springy blue?

Don’t forget to check out the rest of the TLR gang’s looks. Oh and I almost forgot, we are cooking up some surprises for you this year in our upcoming TLR year, keep an eye out 😉

The Lacquer Ring – Aztec Nails

Hey there, long time no see. I have a whole folder of un-shown looks for you. Today we delayed our TLR looks from Thursday to now. In honor of Jess whose too busy for us hehe just kidding she works A LOT we did these nails for her this month. 🙂

First I painted Morgan Taylor My Carriage awaits. Once dry I used striping tape and did opposite triangles and filled it in with China Glaze Too Yacht to Handle. Once super dry I did my Aztec stamp using the triangle the opposite side using MoYou’s Pro Collection-02

I then decided I felt like my look needed to be matte, I used OPI’s matte top coat and waited like 975283798273489 hours for it to dry. LOL Does anyone else have this problem? What I did as a trick, and maybe everyone already knows about this, I did a thin layer of my Seche Vite as that is lightening fast, and in about ten minutes just to be sure I used the matte topper. I went to bed about a half hour later and it worked! no sheet marks like every other time I’ve used matte yay!

Here’s my take on Aztec nails, whatdya think?

Well there ya have em, what do you think of my Aztec nails?

Don’t forget to check out the other girls nails!

The Lacquer Ring – Bikini Bottoms

A while back one of our TLR members went through quite a health scare. We were all so ecstatic when she got the clean bill of health we wanted to commemorate the occasion with what else, matching manis. Amy found the most gorgeous, vibrant, lively color she could and got one for all of us to share. We are finally here with it for you today.

TLR gives you, ILNP’s Bikini Bottoms!

You would not know it from us East Coaster polishes, but this is a gorgeous magenta holo. The reason I call us East Coasters out is it’s been raining for almost a week here and I at least couldn’t get a good shot of this holo goodness no matter what I tried 😦

ILNP describes this as: A ‘definite in-your-face (color) and “pops” like nothing else! Perfect for summer! Bottoms is a wonderfully vivid magenta pink holographic polish with a delicious blue hue that is sure to please!’ We agree that’s why this was the perfect choice for a joined celebration!

Of course I did a little accent using bikini bottoms along with some other summer staples using Jessica’s Strawberry Shake-It! See what I did there, very fitting in more ways than one to this mani 😉

Here you can kind of see the holo

Tried to get more lighting, it’s more of this darker magenta color than it appears in the first two pics.

Well hopefully the other girls have better pics for you as the shitty East Coast weather dampered my pics 😦

The Lacquer Ring – (WD) Negative Space Mani

It’s that time again and as you know it was Nicole’s pick this month. For our TLR collab for nail art she chose negative space nails.

For my fellow Walking Dead-ers this week is the season finale so I really wanted to use Dollish Polish’s Walker bait polish. I paired it with Ulta’s Concrete Evidence and some blood using China Glaze’s Adventure Red-y. If you watch the Walking Dead you will notice the two W’s I have on my nails you all know what that’s for … well we don’t know yet, but it’s a part of the current story line. For those of you that don’t it could just be for Walking dead 😉 lol

I absolutely love Walker Bait and I am so mad it was part of my un-trieds. I picked up this beauty from Dollish herself last year when we did the NYC Blogger Meet up which was really fun 🙂

Well there you have it, There are my (Walking Dead) Negative Space nails

Any other Walkind Dead-ers out there? 🙂

Don’t forget to check out my fellow Lacquer Ringers manis here

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

Stamping Saturday – Elsa nails

Today I am going to the Philadelphia flower show. The theme is celebrate the movies inspired by the films of Disney and Disney/Pixar. As you know since there was so much hype over Frozen you KNOW there will be some Frozen displays. This gives me a chance to use my polish I got over Christmas!

So before you get scared, no I did not do full-on Elsa nails.. BUT I am going to bombard you with Elsa images, etc to set the tone since Frozen is literally EVERYWHERE!

I got Different Dimensions No one Elsa but you. It’s a holographic silvery blue polish with added shimmers, microglitters and real sterling silver flakies (direct from Different Dimensions website). I then did an accent nail using Orly’s Sweet Peacock and stamped a snowflake using Essie’s Blue Rhapsody.

Are you ready for Frozen overload? Here goes….

This went perfectly with Orly’s Peacock I really think that the vibrant shiny blue really brought out the shimmer and holo-ness that is this gorgeous Elsa color and visa versa. What do you think?

Don’t forget to check out the other girls Stamping Saturday looks.

If you have a look and want to join us, well c’mon then!

get the InLinkz code

Lastly before I go, in case you weren’t already singing it… you will be now ; )

The Lacquer Ring – Gradient

The talented and lovely Cynthia’s choice is up again. I am loving her right now because her original choice was water marbling for today but thankfully she came to her senses and chose Gradient.

I’ve done both looks but water marbling for those of you that have tried it is A. a pain in the ass and B. messy no matter what I’ve tried. So I’m loving Cynthia for changing her mind for all of us 🙂

For my gradient I had Valentine’s colors in mind as I did this right around that time, I know I was super prepared this time 🙂 I did the base using Morgan Taylor’s Ella of a girl from the Cinderella collection. I then did a flakie gradient using I think my favorite one of the ILNP bunch, Electric Carnival

I especially love Electric Carnival as it has soo many shades, red, pink, gold, and green. ILNP’s description talks about how you will catch even more colors in different lighting. I sure do and I love it! 😀

Looooook at all those colorsssss ❤ So what do you think about these flakies or more importantly, Electric Carnival?

Check out the rest of the TLR girls for their gradient looks! 🙂

Stamping Saturday – Let it Snow

Whaaaaaatttt? It’s Stamping Saturday and I have a look for you? Yes I do. I know it’s been about forever since the last time I did Stamping Saturday, but I am trying to participate more again! 🙂

It’s snowing, yet again, it’s beyond freezing, yet again, it’s NJ and it sucks, as always… so I have a snowflake mani.

For this mani I desperately wanted to use my flakies, since they are really just a top coat unless you do multiple coats, I painted one thin coat of Julep’s Emma to give it that frost look. I then did one coat of ILNP’s Cold Fusion. My accent finger I did two coats of China Glaze’s Resolution, once all dry I stamped different snowflakes using Essie’s Blue Rhapsody.

 

I love how Cold Fusion shifts from cobalts to emerald greens. These flakies are the best thing ever I’m in love.

As one of the Stamping Saturday Founders I really should be doing this every Saturday with the girls but I’ve been slacking, 😦 we’ve welcomed so many new girls and new looks each week with us. If you love stamping and would like to join us, please do!!

If you have a look to share this week, you can grab this link to put in your post

get the InLinkz code

Check out everyone else’s Stamping Saturday that had one for today!

The Lacquer Ring – Purple

So I had a post all planned out, I was going to paint my nails using this gorgeous holo glitter that Lesley gave me and no such luck.. So I was going to paint my nails last night with it, I know last minute.. serves me right. Well all of the sudden we had noticed that the floor in our Laundry Room was wet and my washer had been leaking. We moved the middle ‘agitator’ and the drum had water under it.. what the pluck. So we have been having a lot of issues with it and it’s capacity so this morning we bought a new washer dryer set because our dryer has been going as well. In any event I forgot to do my damn nails so I am cycling an old post that I never posted that’s why I have a leaf stamped.. lol

This Month Cynthia is back up from Of Life and Lacquer and first up for color she chose purple. This is Figgy Pudding by Smitten Polish. This was part of their Christmas/Winter Collection and was seriously my favorite Holiday Collection and this my favorite color of all of the collections I got. Believe me, I got quite a few collections around that time. lol

Smitten’s website describes this Jem as a purple jelly base filled with subtly shifting reddish bronze flakies and shimmer. With that I decided to use Essie’s Penny Talk to stamp a leaf as an accent on one of my nails I figured it would really make the flakes pop and I think that’s true.  Although with or without this stamp the flakes pop and are gorgeous on their own too.

Isn’t it amazing! This is one of those colors that has bumped it’s way to my top faves. 🙂

Don’t forget to check out the other gals in their TLR Thursday this Month!

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 – Comic Book Nails

I love Lacquer Ring Thursday! It’s so fun to see what each of us picks as themes and even more fun to see all of our interpretation on that theme 🙂

As you know this month was Amy’s pick, for her color choice we all did teal nails, and for nail art she chose Comic Book nails!

I was so excited with these theme! I love Wolverine so of course I was going to find a way to incorporate him on my nails!

First, here are my inspirations:

My Favorite:

My Husbands favorite:

And what I call my ‘bull in a China shop’ husband (he’ll kill me for telling you all this LOL)

I have this really cool ‘Whaam!’ stamp on one of my MoYou plates so I knew right off the bat based on my Superhero inspirations I would do one of my nails with that. First I painted the nail white then mixed Orly’s Sweet Peacock and Zoya’s Posh to get this really cool mixed color. I stamped that nail first.

For my Wolverine nail I painted two coats of Opi’s I can’t Copacabana. Once Dry I free-handed the black pointed stripes in his top using Sinful colors blackest black and a fine brush. I did the pants accent in Orly’s Sweet Peacock and Zoya’s Posh and then did the X for his X-men belt using Blackest Black again. Finally I put scratch marks from his claws. They look a little shaky but my stupid thin brush kept making bumps I need a new one 😦 Anyway that’s Wolverines claw marks 🙂

Next up for my Iron Man nail I did two coats of Zoya’s Posh. Once dry I stamped the same Zoya stamp you see above from one of the circuit board type stamping plates so I could get that circle. I used I can’t Copacabana again and filled in the circle using two coats. Once dry again I used Opi’s OPI with a Nice Fin-nish to stamp overtop again and made lines to make it sort of look glowy for Iron Mans Arc Reactor.

Lastly it was gonna be very hard for my to draw Hulk’s ‘Me Smash’ fist so I just went for his skin using Zoya’s Verushka. I then used my brush and did his pants with Ulta’s Celebutante.

Well there you have my Marvel themed Comic Book nails. Whatcha think? 😉  Make sure you check out the other girls nails below 🙂

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?

Pink of Hearts

OPI is back at it with their 8th Annual limited edition Breast Cancer Awareness duo in support of Breast Cancer Awareness.

This years set includes a pink entitled Mod About You and this gorgeous pink cream jelly with various pink and white glitters suspended in it entitled The Power of Pink. The pink jelly can be worn on it’s own (takes about 2-3 coats to be opaque) or over-top Mod About You. The set comes with a pink glitter nail file with a breast cancer charm. This year OPI will donate $25,000 to the Susan G. Komen Foundation (US) and $5000 to Rethink Breast Cancer (Canada) in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

The Set retails for $16.95 but you are in luck! I have a set to giveaway!

First check out my swatches of these beauties. I did two coats of Mod About you on my ring finger for accent and I stamped Orly’s Miss Conduct using my ribbon stamp. I did two coats of The Power of pink on the rest of my nails.

This giveaway is  a Rafflecopter giveaway **GIVEAWAY CLOSED**

Open to Mae’s Beauty followers only.

Must be 18 years or older. Open Internationally.

Giveaway starts now and Ends Friday November 24th at 12Noon EST prize will be mailed out Saturday 25th.

GOOD LUCK!!!

THE BOYS ARE BACK

It’s hockey season again! The official first game for my boys is tonight, I am so excited 🙂 I love my hockey!  Also I don’t know how many other AHS (American Horror Story) fans there are out there, but the new season starts tonight too. Gonna be a good night 😉

Here are my nails from last years Hockey start Click the picture to be brought to the link

Tomorrow is our TLR collab post 🙂

GO FLYERS!!

Stamping Saturday – Guest post

This Stamping Saturday you are gonna have to head over to The Fancy Side to see my look 😉

Here’s a sneak peek at the base. Click on the picture below to be brought to the post.

Here’s the other girls this Saturday.

TLR – All that glitters IS gold

Hey There! This month’s TLR pick was Siobhan’s and she chose gold for our color collab post. Anyone that knows me knows I am usually a hater of gold, however V is the ultimate gold lover. She is slowly turning me on to more and more gold looks, but shh don’t tell her I said that.

I have a couple of different options but I wasn’t sure what I wanted to go with for this look. I ended up with my least favorite of the Nordic Collection which is Opi with a nice Fin-nish. This is a very ‘pearly’ gold if you will with hints of bronze not straight gold. I usually hate those types of finishes where you can see every brush stroke and this is of course no exception! LOL! I decided to gradient Cirque’s Trousseau and with that I now absolutely love it! Who’da thunk? My mani started to look very fall like so I then took my new MoYou stamp Mother Nature Plate 07 and Sally Hansen’s Forbidden fudge and added a leaf accent to each nail.

This is for you V, I hope it’s gold enough for ya 😉

Here is an angle picture so you can see the change and it’s a little more vibrant with the leaves

Lastly, this picture is a little dark but again shows the vibrancy of all colors together I absolutely love this color combo.

Well there is my gold mani, I don’t do em often so this shows how much I love V that I went this Gold. lol

On a side note, today as many of you know not just in the US but the rest of the world today is 9/11. Especially those of you in the US I’m sure remember exactly where you were and what you were doing this day 13 years ago, so it seems almost silly to say ‘never forget’ none of us ever will. Today though, even more so, try to remind yourself of everything you have, be grateful, call a loved one and tell them you love them, do a pay it forward deed today. Say a prayer for or just honor those that lost their lives by living yours to the fullest and being thankful that we live in a free country, as there are many that lost their lives since that day, both Military and civilians trying to keep our country safe and free. ❤

NOTD – Tangerine Easter Beanz

Whoa, I know I am posting in the middle of the week, can you believe it! I’ve been so busy posting for our weekly Stamping Saturday is about all I’ve been able to handle. I’ve painted my nails and have lots of looks to show you.

Today I have some Easter nails for you using Jessica Banana Peel and Tangerine Dreamz. I stamped Catrice’s Heavy Metallilac  using plate Wistonia W212.

I still need some help from Cynthia on the gradient, but I think it turned out okay… what do you think?

I wanted my nails to resemble when you are dying eggs and you dip one half the egg in one color and the other in another, I somewhat achieved my look. I’m not 100% sold on my gradient with this, it needs work.

I got this whole Jessica Gelato Mio set so I will be doing some other looks shortly with the other colors!! 🙂

See you Saturday for SS!