Faye

I got my first ever Zoya order in the mail last weekend and I tried out Faye first since it has been on my wishlist for a while now. OMG LOVE. I am now a Zoya customer for life! I LOVED this polish! I've had my eye on it for a while, and it did not disappoint. It's even slightly duochrome, which is one of my favorite polish finishes, next to glitter and shimmer. At some angles it looks shimmery brown/bronze and other angles it has a purple tint to it. It applied so easily too, and only needed 2 coats.

In case you didn't know Zoya is B3 Free polish, meaning that it is free of the 3 biggest toxic chemicals that tend to be in polish. A lot of polish is B3F nowadays, but I believe Zoya was one of the first to do it.

So without further ado, here are some pics of Zoya Faye!

These first 3 were taken in the early morning light

In other notes, today was my mom's birthday! I got her coffee and chocolate, her two favorites!

The invites for my daughter's birthday are all ready to be sent out. So excited for her party next week!

Guess what color I will be showing you soon? FAST TRACK from the Hunger Games Collection! The manager at my Sally's came through and got some of them in! How awesome is she?! So I grabbed Fast Track and Smoke and Ashes from the store last week, and then ordered the ones I wanted that they didn't have online. I am so excited to show them off.

Mandy

She's Picture Perfect

The title of this post would make you think I will be blogging about my amazing daughter, who is, in fact, picture perfect, but alas, it's not about her. I'm actually going to be showing you the gorgeousness of Essie's She's Picture Perfect polish from the Resort 2012 collection!

Purple is my favorite color. I love all shades of purple, from lilac to deep dark purple. SPP is a lilac/periwinkle color and it's perfect for a spring color on your nails! I love it and will definitely wear it again!


These pictures were taken with my cell phone early in the morning sunlight. Please ignore the state of my cuticles, I am working on getting them in better shape! There's also some tipwear showing because I took these pics a couple of days after I put this color on my nails and I haven't figured out how to wrap my tips when I polish them to make it last longer.

In the pic above the skin around my pinky nail looks horrible, I know. I got nail glue all over it when I did the teabag fix. The mark on my ring finger is dye from doing the Easter eggs. The only reason I am posting this one is to show you the awesome miracle of the teabag fix! The pinky is the nail I broke in my previous post and look! It's good as new and you can't even tell it was broken! I am so happy I discovered this miracle cure. Now I won't bawl my eyes out if I break a nail!

I added to this mani after I took these pics, so read after the jump to see what I did!

Easter Nails

Happy Easter everyone!!! Hope the bunny brought you lots of goodies!!!!

I'm posting my Easter mani for you today, just because I said I would. I personally was not very impressed with the job I did on this, so much so that I already took it off. Free hand nail art is something I am not very good at. Mostly because I can barely draw a stick figure or even a straight line. Trying to draw something on the nails on my right hand? Fuggedaboutit! So while I will post these pics, please don't judge me. I did the best I could and I am hoping that I will get better as I practice more.

So here they are! I used SH Complete in I Pink I Can for the base color and Stripe Rite nail art polish for the designs. The Stripe Rights don't have color names, or even numbers as far as I can tell, but I used shimmery purple, sky blue and shimmery turquoise blue.

This one is my left hand. This is the hand that I feel I did an ok job on. The design on my thumb and index finger doesn't match the rest of them but that's ok. Do they look like Easter Eggs? That's the idea I was going for!

This is my right hand. I am not showing you my thumb because that looks hideous! I'm right handed, so I think I did a pretty good job with this considering I was using my left hand. Except for my thumb. The polka dotted nail is actually the best one I have ever done, so I was happy with that one.



Last night we dyed Easter Eggs with Kool -Aid! Yup, Kool-Aid! All you do is mix a packet of Kool-Aid with 2/3c water and dunk the eggs! And they turned out pretty darn good!

I will definitely be using the Kool-Aid method again next year. The dye smelled so yummy! Some of the colors need to be mixed together to make them bright enough. Like the pink lemonade flavor needs to have some cherry added to it, the grape needs some blue added and the lemonade needs some orange.

Here is Mini-Me hard at work on her eggs! Please excuse my mom's butt in the background. I warned her these were going on the internet so she might want to move, but when I said that, she just stuck her butt out and wiggled it at me. So I snapped the pic and now it's on the internet! You're welcome Mom!

I have no idea why the color in this pic is so off! Maybe the lighting in the kitchen was weird!

Happy Easter!
Love,
Mandy and Mini-Me

I broke a nail but I fixed it with a miracle cure

I cracked my pinky nail somehow last night. I have no idea how. I looked down and realized it was broken below the nail line. But, thanks to the nail board at Makeup Alley I found a miracle fix!!! I'm going to teach you how to do it!

First, you get a teabag. Yup, a teabag. Just a plain old Lipton teabag. Cut it open and dump the tea out.

Then pull the bag open and measure it against the width of your nail. You want it to cover your entire nail bed, but especially where the break is.

Cut the teabag paper to fit the width of your nail. Get some nail glue ( the best to use is the kind that comes with a brush) and cover your entire nail with glue and then gently place the teabag paper on it. You need to make sure there are no air bubbles or gaps under it and the paper is covering where the break is. An easy way to do that without your finger sticking to it is to get some Saran Wrap and put it over the nail while you smooth out the paper and press it to your nail. After it's dried, carefully trim any excess paper off.

Once the paper is smooth on your nail and trimmed to fit, put more nail glue on top. Once it is totally dried, then you can file the tip a bit using a medium grit file and gently buff the top to smooth it out. You don't want to buff through the paper, you just want to smooth it out a little bit.

Your nail should look good as new and the teabag paper should last through about 4-5 polish changes if you use non-acetone polish remover. If you use acetone, it will last through 2-3 polish changes.

Hope this helps anyone like me who dreads breaking a nail!

Major Polish Haul!

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven't been blogging much this week! I've been wasting my time watching How I Met Your Mother on Netflix instead of blogging. I'm addicted to the show now and can't stop watching! (Thanks a lot, Robin!-my BFF in WA made me start watching it, so it's all her fault I haven't been blogging! Blame her!) I want to marry Ted Mosby and am in love with Barney Stinson! I have been in love with Neil Patrick Harris since his Doogie Days, though,  so that's no surprise! (Did I just reveal what an old fart I am? I think so.....woops!)

I went on a buying spree this week though since Sally's Beauty Supply has a great polish sale going on this month!(they really need to hire me with all the free PR I give them in this blog!) All polish brands are buy 2 get 1 free and you can mix and match brands! The sale doesn't end until April 30th so I am sure I will be buying more! Funny story about that too- When I was shopping there on Wednesday and trying to decide which colors to buy I was helping the other customers, more than the actual sales associate was! The store just opened so they don't have their price stickers up yet for the nail polish. So every time I heard another customer wondering how much the polish was, I started rattling off the different prices! Then the sales associate was stocking the polish and I was helping her stock the China Glaze Prismatics Collection because she had no clue what it was, or how many different colors there were! They need to just hire me so I can start getting paid!

I've been nominated for my first blogging award!

I was nominated by Pretty and Polished Pointers for the Versatile Blogger Award! Please make sure to share the love and  help me thank her by checking out her blog!

So here are the rules for this award!

1. Nominate 15 fellow bloggers who are relatively new to blogging.
2. Let them know that you have nominated them.
3. Share 7 random facts about yourself.
4. Thank the blogger(s) who nominated you.
5. Add the Versatile Blogger Award picture to your blog post. 

 Here are my nominees!

1. Laquered Lover
2.Polished Love
3.LaynieFingers
4.Concrete and Nails
5.Grape Fizz Nails
6.Little Nails
7.Polish Fixation
8.The Polish Well
9.The PolishAholic
10.heartNAT
11.Lee-Ann's Crazy Life
12.Nail Nerd
13.Quite Polished
14.The Nail Buff
15. Princess Polish


7 random facts about myself:
1. I am very short. Only 4'11"
2.I am a redhead!
3.I have an almost 8 year old daughter who looks just like me
4. My other hobby besides painting my nails is reading
5. My all time favorite TV show is Sex and the City-I've watched the entire series about 6 times
6. My favorite color is purple
7.I am terrified of driving on the interstate and bees

Polka Dots! With a bobby pin!

I love the way polka dots look on my nails! I just got a dotting tool, but you don't need to have one to be able to do them! I used a bobby pin! Read on to learn how!

New NOTD-Effie Trinket from Hunger Games

Well that didn't last long! I finally made up my mind and decided I did not like the last mani I did and I changed them. I decided to do a Hunger Games inspired mani, inspired by Effie's nails at the reaping.

 Read after the jump to see my version!

NOTD- China Glaze Flying Dragon

I have a new mani, but I haven't decided yet if I'm completely happy with it. I wanted to do a marble effect but I need to practice it more because I can't get it to look right yet. I swatched this color earlier, and was tired of messing with my nails so I just left it on and added to it a little. Here are the color swatches

In this pic you can see the pieces of microglitter that give it a tiny bit of shimmer. This dried matte so you will definitely want to put a topcoat over it. I needed 2 coats of  color to get it to look like the bottle. I really like this color and will wear it again!

I got a new pretty today!

So even though the Hunger Games polish still isn't in yet, I can never walk out of there empty handed! I picked up this awesome blue today, China Glaze Frostbite. Isn't it pretty??

This is 2 coats of color and one coat of SV
So my normal routine when I'm messing around with my nails is to watch Law & Order: SVU on Netflix. But I'm almost done with all 12 seasons and I don't know what I want to watch next! Any suggestions?

NOTW

This post is going to be pic heavy. I took lots of pics so you could see all the different colors of this polish.

ZOYA!!!

I just placed my very first ever ZOYA order!!! I have been wanting to try this polish forever but just never felt like I could justify the cost. But one of my friends my message board posted an awesome promo today and I was able to get some Zoya for cheap, and in colors that have been on my wishlist for a while. So be on the lookout for some Zoya posts in a couple of weeks! Yay!!!

STILL no Hunger Games polish WAAAAHHHHH. I called today and the shipment still hasn't come in so I guess I will check back tomorrow!

 My current project is swatching every single color of polish I own. I've never counted them, but it's a lot! I bought some nail polish wheels (it's a wheel of fake nails so you can display your colors and nail art) and I am in the process of painting them. I haven't decided yet if I am going to post pics of them on here or not. I may not because I might decide to physically swatch all my colors eventually. I know I have a LOT of untried polish that I have never worn and this will give me an excuse to wear them!

It was a sad day for me today. I've had a babysitting job for the past 3 months watching the cutest little 1 year old boy in the world, and it ended today. It was only temporary to start with and I knew this day was coming, but still sad not knowing when I am going to see or babysit him again. But, the good news is I will need something to fill my days with. That means more time to blog and play with my nails! Yay!!

China Glaze For Audrey

I couldn't wait to swatch my new pretty for you all! So I did a quick polish on one hand so I could show you how gorgeous it is!

And it IS gorgeous! Sorry for the sloppy looking polish job but I was doing it quickly. This is ONE coat (well 2 on my thumb) of polish! And one coat of SV (Seche Vite) . It looks really really close to being a dead ringer for Tiffany Blue! So pretty!

Now I am deciding what my new mani will be for the week ( I think I have a pretty good idea) while I get caught up on 16 and Pregnant. Yeah I know it's trashy but I love it anyways!

OH and guess what!! THREE!!!!! times in the past 2 days I have had people think my nails were fake, but they are totally 100% real! One person was even the lady working at the Sally's store! Another one was my daughter, who seen what my nails look like when I do have fakes on. My natural nails have NEVER been this long. I have so much trouble getting them to grow and stay long because they are so thin and weak, so you have no idea how good that made me feel! My natural nails right now are the same length that I keep my acrylic nails when I have them done. Now though I am so paranoid and terrified that I am going to break one. So wish me luck that I can keep them long!

I am working on my post for my NOTW(nails of the week) but I won't be able to finish it until tomorrow. I need to take pics of it outside in the daylight so the color change holographic flakies show up better and you can see all the different colors.

Products I use

 So I went to Sally's today and they STILL don't have the HG polish! Their truck didn't come today :( so I am going to try again tomorrow afternoon. BUT- I did get some goodies while I was there today! I had to replace my white crackle polish from OPI because I can't get it open anymore. That's a common issue with crackles, the polish thickens up over time. So I also bought some polish thinner so I can keep on top of that happening to all my crackles. I got another pretty color too! China Glaze For Audrey, which I have seen swatched on other blogs and it's pretty close to being Tiffany Blue. It's so pretty and I can't wait to swatch it for the 5 people that read this! LOL

I did the dumbest thing while I was there too. I am SOOOO embarrassed. I picked up the bottle of For Audrey and I dropped it. It broke and spilled polish ALL OVER the floor in the store. My face was beet red and I apologized over and over but the manager was really nice about it. She said it happens all the time, but I can't help feeling like I am the first person to do it in that store, considering it's only been open for 3 days!
So I decided to do this post about the products I use when I paint my nails, since I couldn't do the post I wanted about the Hunger Games polish :(

Hunger Games!!!!!!!!!!

I finally went and saw the Hunger Games today! I don't know why I am saying "finally" since the movie just opened on Friday and it's probably the fastest I've seen a movie after opening day. Except for Jackass 3 on opening weekend, but that was only because I was trying to make my new boyfriend happy. I'm single now, so that worked out really well for me!
Anyways, I'm going to kind of review the movie, so if you haven't seen it and haven't read the book and don't want any spoilers STOP READING NOW! If you HAVE seen the movie, some of what I am about to say will explain some of the differences between the book and the movie and you may end up understanding it a bit more.
Happy Hunger Games!

Splatter Nails!

Here is my first polish post!!!!

This is the manicure I am currently wearing. It was so easy to do and the instructions on how to do it are below!

To do this manicure, you will need to get some of those skinny coffee stirrer straws. Regular straws won't work because they are too big. You'll also need a small paper plate, preferably the Dixie brand because those are the ones that have that coating on it. Other paper plates I imagine the polish will just soak in to it.

 Pick out the colors you want to use. You will need a base color and then 3-4 contrasting colors for the splatters. I used black for my base, but you can use any color you want. For your splatter colors you will want to pick ones that contrast with whatever your base color is. So if you're using black like I did, you will want to pick bright colors. Darker colors will just blend in with the black base color.
Colors I used
Base color:
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Black Out
Splatter colors:
Essie Blanc (white) 
NYC Quick Dry in Water Street Blue
Sinful Colors Cream Pink


Ok so Step 1 is to paint your nails with the base color.
Then get a paper towel or newspaper or old towel (basically something you don't mind getting ruined) to put your hand on. This WILL get a bit messy!
After your base color is somewhat dry, pick your first splatter color. Put a blob of it on the paper plate. Take the coffee stirrer and dip the end of it in the blob of polish. Make sure the hole in the end of the straw is covered in polish. If it's not, the polish won't splatter on to your nail. Then hold the end with the polish on it over your nail and blow hard into the other end so that the polish blows out and splatters onto your nail. If it doesn't work the first time, just put more polish on it and try again. If the polish you have on the plate starts drying out, just add some  more.

Now repeat that step with all your nails and all your colors until it looks the way you want it! I actually went back and added more white to mine after I did all my colors.

Next is clean up! You will probably have polish have all over your fingers! The best way to get the polish off the area around your nails is to take an old (or new that you bought just for this) eyeshadow brush and dip it in polish remover. It's easier to control around your nails and small enough so that you take off just the polish you want. Use a regular cotton ball or pad to get the polish off the rest of your fingers and hands, just be careful not to get the remover on your nails.

Then add your topcoat and you're done! I use a really awesome topcoat called Seche Vite, it's the fastest drying and shiniest topcoat I have ever seen! I'm planning on doing a post about the products I use at some point, but if anyone has any questions about what I use, or any of the steps to this manicure,  just ask in the comments!

Hope you enjoyed my first nail polish post!

My next couple posts will probably be about the Hunger Games! I am going to (finally!) see the movie this afternoon, and my brand new Sally's store that just opened said they should be getting the China Glaze Hunger Games nail polishes in tomorrow! I have been dying to get my hands nails on them! I plan on swatching them as soon as I can. I'm not buying all the colors, just picking my faves of the collection!

Mandy

Welcome to Mandy's Many Musings and Manicures!

So yesterday I had this really awesome welcome blog all typed out and ready to post. It took me over an hour to get it perfect. And then instead of hitting publish, I accidentally deleted it. FML

So now I am starting over from scratch even though I know that nothing I write now will be anywhere near as awesome as that blog that got deleted. But I will try my best.

My plan for this blog is to share with you my obsession with nail polish and painting my nails. A Sally's Beauty Supply store just opened yesterday in my small town, I am so excited! In between nail polish posts, I plan on talking about my life living in the same small town I grew up in. But we all now plans tend to change and nothing is ever set in stone, so I guess we will just see what happens!

I'm gonna start off by telling you a little bit about me. I'm Mandy-obviously! I'm a bit of a stickler for spelling and grammar. I'm not a member of the Grammar Police Force though, so while I will try not write too many run on sentences, my grammar may not always be perfect. Now spelling, though, that's another issue. I was the 3rd grade spelling champ and even though that was many years ago (exactly how many I refuse to divulge) I still hold that title near and dear to my heart. I know how to spell and I know how to use a spell checker.

I have the most amazing, wonderful, smart, beautiful, multi-talented daughter ever to be born. Well, probably not EVER, but to me she is the most special person in the world! Did I mention multi-talented? One of her many talents is her ability to drive me up the wall and across the ceiling in about 90 seconds! The thing is, we are both redheads. Both have a temper. Both stubborn. Both like (for me it might be more a NEED) to have the last word. So we have had many minor disagreements that escalated into major disagreements. The scariest part? She's not even CLOSE to being a teenager yet! I am absolutely terrified of her becoming a teenager. In fact, I am trying to think of a way to legally ad safely lock hide her in a remote cave somewhere on her 12th birthday and let her rejoin society on her 20th birthday so I can totally skip the dreadful phase of her being a teenager. Or maybe I could just lock myself away somewhere, preferably somewhere in the Caribbean on remote beach with white sand, turquoise blue water and a cabana boy named Winston Shakespeare (How Stella Got Her Groove Back anyone? Taye Diggs? *drool* Damn I think I just dated myself!) and stay there until she's become a reasonable adult.

I hope you all realize that I'm not really going to lock my child away in a cave for years on end or runaway to the Caribbean (although I'm not making any promises on the Taye Diggs part. If he were to offer to whisk me away somewhere tropical, I'm not sure I could turn him down. But since he's already married, and a big celebrity, the chances of that happening are slim to none. Damn)

I also have the tendency to lose my train of though and go off on wild tangents. I am easily distracted, kind of like that dog from the movie UP (what the hell was his name???). you know the SQUIRREL! thing? Yeah I do that a lot. It's just a quirk of mine, you'll get used to it eventually.

Hmm what else should I tell you about myself? Maybe I should keep some things a mystery for now. This is kind of like a first date, right? A first BLIND date! I want you to like me, so I should keep you wanting to come back for more! So I'll just say goodnight now.*nervously twirling my hair* I had a really great time with you! *looks down at my feet, the ceiling, everywhere but at you* I'm looking forward to seeing you again! *flashes my killer smile and bats my eyelashes* Call me!

Mandy

PS I told you this wasn't going to be anywhere near as awesome as the first one I wrote and I was right! *sob*