Hi everyone!! I have a short break now during my swim meet, so I thought I'd show you an older pic of my current fabulous mani! OTStW is amazing!! Like the perfect bright blue glittery holo :D Unfortunately I still ended up with chips on the corners of every nail from putting my suit on... so I redid half of it this afternoon ;-) Here it is (I can't remember how many coats the swatch is, but I'm currently wearing 4).
Enjoy and have a great week-end!! :D
This afternoon I decided to give one of my newest polishes a try, so I ended up picking Nubar Green Tea. This is the first Nubar I've ever worn for more than a swatch, and I must say I am very impressed! Green Tea is an almost pastel medium green creme (surprise!) that applied extremely well and is completely opaque in 2 coats! It is exactly what I wanted OPI Green-wich Village to be :D Unfortunately, the only pic I could get is a semi-darkness flash pic =( My skin looks extremely washed out, but the color isn't too far off from it's true color :/
As pretty as it was, it was clearly missing some excitement! I therefore added some Konad tonight using plate M65 with Essie The Cove Copper, a bronzey-gold metallic. I really like the result... somewhat blingy, but also subtle.
As always, I look forward to your comments and let me know if you have any particular requests!
Enjoy :D
As I said yesterday, I added some Konad to my ChG Whimsical mani. I thought something sparkly would look great, so I chose ChG OMG with the checkered pattern on plate M64. Unfortunately, the pics don't really show if off well as flash blings out the holo too much :/
Enjoy! =D
Seeing as I've been asked many times before about how I keep my polish looking good while spending so much time in the water, I thought I'd write up a short post about the products I like to use :D
First off, I will say that personally chlorine doesn't seem to affect my polish at all. It is more a case of getting chips when hitting the walls or lane ropes or other swimmers! Maybe I'm lucky, but it must also help I change my polish very regularly... although I've worn China Glaze Blue Sparrow for 6 days straight before with only a few small chips! Anyways, here are some of the products I love using:
Base coat: I usually pick between Barielle Camo and Sally Hansen Nail Quencher Hydrating Base. I've used Nailtek II Foundation and Precision Base a few times and they were ok, but not my favorites. I've also recently received Seche Base but haven't tried yet.
Top coat: My favorite top coat remains Sally Hansen Insta-Dri. Other ones I sometimes use are Sally Hansen MegaShine and Oh So Wet, but I usually only use these after my Konad. I remember reading that Poshe is supposed to last longer in chlorine than some other t/cs, but I've never really like it personally. EDIT -- My new favourite is Out The Door, and it wears really well for me :D
So these are my personal favorites, and they seem to work really well for me at most times :D Let me know if you have any questions!
From the "fake" swatches on the web and a bottle pic on eBay, it appears as if Whimsical should instead be some kind of dusty pink polish... The big question is: is my bottle mislabeled? or maybe it is a franken? or maybe there are 2 different versions of the same color? LOL! If anyone happens to have a bottle labeled Whimsical, please let me know if it matches mine!
Enjoy =D
I just finished sorting all of my new polishes into their rightful homes last night, so this evening I took some pics for fun. I'm always amazed at how fast my stash is growing... I discovered the nail board last January when I only had about 10 polishes, and well now I have a *lot* more than 10!
First, here they are all together in their home:
And now by color...
Silver-White and Soft-Sheer:
Orange-Coral and Gold-Yellow:
Bronze-Brown and Black-Grey:
Green:
Red-Burgundy:
Blue:
Purple:
More purple and some pink:
Pink:
And the best for last!
Holos (OPI DS, OPI Summer for Shore, ChG OMG, ChG Kaleidoscope):
Glitters, flakies and random holos and top coats:
Finally, family pic:
Enjoy =D
Totally not nail-related, but I thought some might be interested in seeing the swimmer side of me! So here's a couple of photographic evidence I really am a swimmer (breaststroke is my best and favorite stroke, although it's also the hardest technically!).
And here are a few of the fabulous places I've been too throughout the years :D
Pierrelatte, France (1998) -- This is the D'Avignon Bridge (or what's left of it!)
Porto Rico (2005)
Izmir, Turkey (World University Games 2005)
Bangkok, Thailand (World University Games 2007)
Costa Rica (2007 and 2008)
So that's it for my other life :D And if you ever want to see what I do at school, there's a link to my home page on the right ;-)
First off, I want to extend a big thank you to Gabrielle for finding the name of my new blog! Thanks sweetie!!
Second, I thought I'd tell you a little more about me. I've been a competitive swimmer (the kind with the super high-tech suits!) for almost 20 years now. Granted the early years weren't that serious, but training over 20 hours per week has been my life for a long time now and I still thoroughly enjoy it! Besides swimming, I'm currently a Ph.D. candidate in computer science where I work in the graphics field to synthesize true-to-life images on a computer. As if my life wasn't full enough already, I stumbled upon the nail board over at MUA last January and discovered a new (and addictive) hobby! Starting from around 10 bottles, my stash has now grown to 60x that!! And I've also recently been introduced to the joys of Konad by a couple of my NB friends... I think that's how you spell trouble! LOL
Well, that's enough about me for now, so I'll end this first post with my last NOTD which I haven't replaced yet as I ended up doing quick and dirty swatches until very late last night ;-) The base is 3 coats of Precision Crème de la Crème topped with 1 coat of ChG Tinsel. CdlC seems like a very nice white to use for layering :) The Konad design is using Art Club Azul, a gorgeous medium blue shimmer. I hate winter, but this seems like the perfect mani to go with it!
One last thing, please let me know if you ever have suggestions about cool things to add to my page, or if you have requests! See you all soon!
I thought it would be interesting to gather my favorite konadicures into one post to serve as inspiration, so here are some of them in no particular order (updated Feb 19, 2009).
