dress your nails for the occasion with ModCloth!

How do you like to do your nails when you're dressing up for a party? Bold colors, sparkle fo' days, or maybe go marvelously matchy-matchy with your fabulous frock?
The fine folks at ModCloth decided to round up some bloggers for a challenge to highlight ways you can perfectly pair your 10 best accessories with the dresses of the season!

You may already be familiar with ModCloth's adorable Nail Klub posts on their blog. They created two matching dress'n'nails designs here and asked us to use those for inspiration, pick a dress, and go for it! Here's what I came up with.

Did I nail it, or what?! I don't think the color could have possibly matched better.
I used China Glaze - Four Leaf Clover and accented it with black tips and a black lace stamp from Konad plate m71.

Doing the research to pick a dress was clearly a very difficult task... (Not.) The dress is the stunning Drumroll, Please dress from ModCloth. I decided I wanted something green because I wanted to choose a dress I know I would love wearing! With my red hair, I find green dresses to be really flattering. Like a mermaid, obviously. And now I totally want the dress!

What do you guys think of my design? I hope you liked it!
Keep an eye on the ModCloth blog because they'll be rounding up some of their favorites in a post later on. I can't wait to see what other cool nail designs people came up with when checking out all the beautiful dresses!

piCture pOlish Blog/Insta Fest 2014!

It's that time of year again... Picture Polish Blog Fest! Big thanks once again to the fine folks at PP for including me in this fun tradition. Last year's blog fest mani was one of my most popular manicures ever, so I was excited to see what would turn out from this year's event.


Things are a little different this time around: We all got one shade to swatch, two shades for nail art, and a special treat... Nail Vinyls!

I got the straight nail vinyls, which come in two sizes on the same sheet. You get a whole bunch in one pack! I was really looking forward to trying these because I am seeing them everywhere and I just hadn't gotten around to buying any. But I think I definitely will now because they are super fun to work with and I can only imagine the things you could create with all the different shapes.
While you're doing your PP shopping, they are now offering a set of four different vinyls on their site here.

So without further ado, let's start this Blog Fest 2014!
My swatch shade is one of the newest polishes, and it is tooootally gorgeous. Ready to see it?

piCture pOlish - Grace
Isn't this the prettiest princess polish ever? The subtle holo combined with the sparkly pink base is just so sweet and cute.  I did three coats for full coverage. This is a re-release of the old Ozotic shade 607.

And now for the nail art!

My two shades are piCture pOlish - Totes, a summery creamsicle orange, and piCture pOlish - Malt Teaser, essentially liquid chocolate in nail polish form. I paired it with a white base and did some stripes! I think it looks pretty cute and retro, n'est-ce pas?

This wasn't my first (or second) attempt to do something with these colors. Let's face it, orange and brown are pretty much my least favorite colors to use, and we couldn't mix other nail techniques besides the vinyls,  so this was super difficult for me. I envy those of you with the pinks and purples and chevron vinyls... Haha! But I'm glad I managed to pull something together. And in fact, I even got two compliments on it at work today!

Creating this striped look is really easy with the vinyls. Once your base color is dry, you lay down the vinyls in whatever areas you do NOT want to be painted with your next color(s). Once they are smoothly applied to the nail to avoid any polish seeping under, you add your other colors to fill in the spaces. If you're working in a large area you can just use your polish brush, but I opted to apply the colors with a dotting tool to precisely get the polish between the small stripes. Work one nail at a time, and remove your tape as quickly as possible to get the most crisp lines. It's totes simple!

Couldn't resist.

I hope you guys enjoyed my contribution to this year's blog fest!

__________________________________

Here's all the links you need to keep up with piCture pOlish:
Store: picturepolish.com.au
Every Day Deal: picturepolish.com.au/everyday-deal
International Stockists: picturepolish.com.au/network
Facebook: facebook.com/piCturepOlish
Instagram: instagram.com/picturepolish

And all the links for Nail Vinyls:
Store: nailvinyls.com
Facebook: facebook.com/nailvinyls
Instagram: instagram.com/teismom

An InLinkz Link-up

Dance Legend Smoky Collection - Cetraria, Grey Britain, & Moorland

Moooore Dance Legend! Today's polishes are a bit more plain than the ones before, but sometimes those can be the best.

These polishes are all light shades with a smoky pigment running through them. I can honestly say that I don't have anything else quite like them!

Dance Legend - Cetraria
Smoky teal! What a different color. Into it. Two coats.

Dance Legend - Grey Britain
Cute name, I see what you did there! Love this soft gray. Two coats. 

Dance Legend - Moorland
This one's my fave! I love smokey purples and this definitely fits the bill. Two coats.

___________________________

I gotta say I am loving the look of these polishes. Like I said, they're totally unlike anything else I own, and I really love the greyed out smokey look.

These polishes retail for $9 and you can find them here on the Dance Legend website or here on Llarowe, as well as at other stockists.

Press sample

Dance Legend Galaxy Collection - Milky Way, Solar Eclipse, & Pulsar

Hey guys! Happy Tuesday! Why is it a happy Tuesday? Because I'm going to the Pizza Hut lunch buffet. Aww yeahhhh. Hopefully your day is starting out as swell as mine.

I'm gonna keep these Dance Legend posts going with some multichrome polishes!

These polishes are so complex, they show so many colors, plus there's that added holo sparkle. It takes some effort to try and photograph these babies! I've included some flash photos to better show the sparkle, and some natural lighting photos to better show the color shift.

I did not need to layer these over black, they were opaque enough on their own in three thin coats. Thank you polish gods. Because nothing makes me madder than doing multiple swatches over black. Think of that mess!!

Dance Legend - Milky Way
Dayuuum, that color shift tho! This one is so amazing, I had to start with the real knockout. I can't stop looking at those photos! Describing this type of polish is so hard, I will just let the photos do the talking. The purple-blue shifts are always my fave.

Dance Legend - Solar Eclipse
This one goes more towards the brown-green color shift which is not really my thing, but the polish is still stunning especially for those who like to wear these colors!

Dance Legend - Pulsar
Whoops, forgot to take a "butt pic" of this one! Haha. I don't think I've had a polish with this color shift before! I suppose it's like a blue-red.

___________________________

These polishes are all fabulous for those multichrome addicts out there! The color shift is phenomenal and I love the added sparkle, which really makes them more wearable for me because I don't really just wear duochromes or multichromes on their own. But with that sparkle? Yup!
As I said at the beginning, the formula is nice because you don't need to wear undie-polish. And they practically apply themselves - not runny or streaky or hard to deal with at all like some multichrome polishes can be.

These polishes retail for $8 (or $13 for the bigger bottle) and you can find them here on the Dance Legend website or here on Llarowe.

Press sample

july haul 2014

Another month, another haul. I actually just looked at my phone and said "CRAP I forgot it's already August?!"
Clearly I am not good at keeping track of days in summer. Every day is Friday, right?

I can't even remember what polishes I bought this month. Lemme go check my Instagram and see.




My wonderful pal and occasional polish hookup Lori from Spectraflair4u sent me these adorable Frozen-themed polishes from Funky Fingers!
Funky Fingers - Olaf 
Funky Fingers - Anna 
Funky Fingers - Elsa 



I had a small Urban Decay haul a few months ago when they had a bunch of stuff on sale, and it was living with my American mailbox aka the amazing Jini from MakeUpMom123 until this month. It included a polish of course. Buy ALL the Urban Decay polishes!! (Now I NEED the new Pulp Fiction one because I have all the others.)
Urban Decay - Blackheart 

I found two more Color Club polishes to finish off those collections that were on clearance at local drugstores. I have one more on the way from NPC and then all I have left to score is East Austin... Anyone have a spare? ;)
Color Club - Sugar Rays
Color Club - The Uptown

I went on a lil' trip to see my bestie Emma in New Brunswick, and believe it or not I only bought ONE polish even though we went shopping in Maine for two days. You should just SEE all my resistance right meow. (But I make no excuses for the expensive makeup I may or may not have purchased...)
OPI - Wharf! Wharf! Wharf! ($2.50 on clearance at Ulta)

I got a couple new OPI Neons at Sally's, plus one from the baseball collection that was on sale.
OPI - Push & Pur-pull 
OPI - Hotter Than You Pink
OPI - 7th Inning Strrretch 

Aaaand last but certainly not least...



I got a whole mess of polishes from Dance Legend. 18 to be exact. I won't list them all here because that will take me too much time to remember them all, but I've already posted some here and here, and there is plenty more to come!

That's a grand total of 28, but really I only bought ten so no biggie. And most of those were cheap! July was a success. 

Dance Legend Anna Gorelova Collection - Lebedushka, Vodyanoy, & Chudo-Udo

Hey guys! More Dance Legend for you this evening!

Anna Gorelova is a great polish blogger from Russia, and I believe she was the first person to start swatching DL polishes and making us all fall in LUVVV. So it makes sense that together with Dance Legend she released her own collection!

It's hard to see because of the dark colors, but check out the cute owl on the bottle! I like that these have a completely different bottle than the usual Dance Legend polishes because it totally sets them apart and makes them all her own!

I picked two flakie shades and a textured one and lemme tell you, they are gorgey.

Anna Gorelova by Dance Legend - Lebedushka
Light blue with golden shimmer! So delicate and pretty. 3 coats for full coverage.
This is a textured polish, but not quite as textured as most. The shimmer did make it hard to capture the textured look in photos. One coat of topcoat does even it out, if you'd prefer to wear it that way!

Anna Gorelova by Dance Legend - Vodyanoy
This is straight up gorgeousness! Check out all those flakies! You need to do three coats for full coverage but that ends up creating this depth between the flakies which is so beautiful. In love with this polish!

Anna Gorelova by Dance Legend - Chudo-Udo
Check out that awesome purple hue! I can't decide if this or the blue is my favorite. Again you need three coats to build the jelly base but that adds so much depth. I have visible nail line in photos but that wasn't noticeable in person.

___________________________

These and all the rest of the polishes from Anna Gorelova are so different and complex, they make great additions to any collection no matter how big. Great job Anna!

These polishes retail for $10 and you can find them here on the Dance Legend website or here on Llarowe.

Press sample