#NailArtMar Challenge: Dotticure

Hey everyone!

I can't believe that it's finally March! Hopefully the spring weather will also be coming soon...

Anyway, I decided to join Californails'  "Totally Doable I Have A Life" March Nail Art Challenge!

Today's theme is Dotticure so I decided to do a multicolored polka dot design.

I think I might have used a few too many colors in here, but I love the blues, purple, and sparkly gold polishes together!

The polishes I used were:
-a sky blue polish by California Nails
-a teal polish by Body Central
-In A Flash by L.A. Colors
-Blue Me Away! by Sally Hansen
-Strapped by Sinful Colors
-Love.Angel.Music.Baby. by OPI
-What A Pansy by China Glaze

So what do you think of the color theme I used? Will you be taking part in a March nail art challenge?

Have a great rest of the day!
-Colleen

Swatch Time: Zoya Erika + floral design

Hey Polishers!

I hope you've all had a great weekend! I finally finished my first semester finals last week and luckily for me, I have another extended weekend due to a "cold day" today. So no school for me! :)

Anyway, this past Saturday I went over to Ulta hoping to buy some polishes from the new Spring Collections since there are so many good collections coming out. Sadly, none of them were out yet. But since I somehow am never able to leave Ulta empty handed, I ended up buying a Zoya polish called Erika, which I will be swatching for you today.

Zoya Erika is a pale pink polish with a gold shimmer from the Summer 2008 Chit Chat Collection. I would describe this polish as being very pearlescent. The formula was a little on the thin side, but thankfully it wasn't streaky. I used 3 coats for the pictures below.

Even though I'm no much of a pale pink person, I think the gold shimmer in it makes this polish beautiful! I also really like the pearlescence feel to it as well.

Here's a floral polka dot design I did using Zoya Erika as the base color.

I did the white polka dots in order to bring out the pink a little more.

Other polishes used: OPI Hey Baby, Sinful Colors Tempest, Nicole by OPI Hit The Lights, and Pure Ice Superstar!

What are your thoughts of this polish? I really like it and I think it will be useful to use for a base color for nail designs. It's actually my first Zoya polish, and I have to say that I'm quite impressed!

I hope you have a great start to your week!

-Colleen

#HePicksMyPolish September Challenge

I hope you've all been having a good weekend!

I know I'm very last minute with this, but the girl who runs the The Sparkle Queen blog started up a #HePicksMyPolish challenge for the month of September where you have any "he" in your life (brother, husband, boyfriend, neighbor) pick three colors from your nail polish stash with absolutely no guidance from you.

I had my brother choose the three polishes, and unfortunately he choose three very bright and eye-catching polishes. He choose: Nicole by OPI Hit The Lights, a grainy silver glitter by Charlotte Russe (no name), and China Glaze Pool Party (these polishes are pictured below).

With two very bright, neon polishes and a glitter polish, I had no clue what design I should do. So, I decided just to do polka dots so that it would be a little less "in your face." I mean, I love neons, but not neon on top of neon WITH glitter. It's just a little much to me. But hey, these are the polishes my brother choose.

So here's my mani:

It actually turned out okay, but I wish I would have done them all with the yellow base color instead of mixing it up, but oh well.

If anyone else wants to participate, you have one more day!

An InLinkz Link-up

-Colleen

ROY G BIV Polka Dot Mani

Hey all!

I hope you're all having a great week so far. Today I'm showing you a mani I did modeled off of Jen's Rainbow Polka Dot Nails on her blog Polish and Pearls. You can see hers here, where she also has a tutorial. I thought this mani was amazing for summer, and the bright colors really cheered me up since it the weather was so gloomy in Chicago for most of the day yesterday.

Anyway, here it is:

And then here is the line of rainbow colors I used (Sorry about the window being in the pic...I couldn't crop it very well and I wanted to be able to use the ledge):

For the white I used L.A. Girl Disco Ball, for the blue I used a pastel blue color from California Colors (it didn't have a name), for the green I used Essie The More The Merrier, for the yellow I used Nicole by OPI Hit The Lights  from the Selena Gomez Collection, the orange and pink were two neons from Delia's (they didn't have a name either), and for the purple I used Sinful Colors Tempest.

To do this design all I did was start out with 2 coats of white. Then on half of each of the nails I tried to do 3-4 big dots of the colors with the end of a bobby pin. Then, I used a small-pointed dotting tool to add smaller dots of the same colors. You can see a regular tutorial of this mani from Polish and Pearls linked above.

I hope you like this mani! The little kids I teach for swim lessons loved it lol.

Have a great rest of the day!

-Colleen

Mint Mani For TALIA JOY

Hey, guys.

If you haven't heard already, 13 year-old Talia Joy has been called home to heaven a few days ago from losing her battle with cancer, and many nail bloggers have started giving their tribute to her through mint-colored mani's, the color of her mani before she died.

Although I have only recently discovered Talia, I wanted to make sure I gave my tribute to her as well. Pictured above is my tribute to the wonderful Talia Joy Castellano. Rest in peace, Talia. My thoughts and prayers are with her family and friends.

-Colleen

Polka for Polka dots!

Hello, there!

I actually got a lot of compliments form my family on my polka dots in my 4th of July mani yesterday, so I decided to do more polka dots today in summery colors.

For my white base coat I used L.A. Girl Disco Ball (which was still a pain due to how runny and streaky it is). For the Polka dots, I used Delia's Coral Cascade, and a hot pink and lilac color also by Delia's (these don't have names...I got them a long time ago).

To make to polka dots, all I used was the end points of bobby pin. And just an FYI, the pictures don't really capture the vividness of the colors....they are actually a lot brighter in real life.

I really liked how the polka dots turned out, but as for the zebra print on my thumb, not so much. I think I need to bend the lines a bit more for it to look more realistic. But, hey, I'm learning as I go :)

 I'm going to try to make it to the store today to buy some new nail polish....any suggestions? Anyway, thanks for reading and have a great rest of the day!

-Colleen