Lacquer Layering: Berry Merry

China Glaze Ahoy! + Color Club Sugar Plum Yum

Here's a festive polish combo I came up with, using a layer of Sugar Plum Yum over Ahoy! I feebly attempted to edit the cuticle around my index finger because I had an accident :(

Sugar Plum Yum is part of the Color Club Scent-suous collection, available at Sally's Beauty Supply. It has a really sweet candy scent that was slightly sickening at first, but it faded and smelled pretty nice the next few days. On the third day of wearing this glitter polish, the scent was very faint and almost undetectable.
Peanut Butter definitely noticed the scent. He kept sniffing my fingernails and started gnawing at them!

The glitter base was extremely thick when I first opened it, so I had to add loads of thinner to get it to a usable consistency. I think that may have contributed to the awesome staying power of the polish though. I typically have very noticeable tip wear after a couple of days, but I've worn this combo for a week and it looks as though I just did my manicure. No chips, no tip wear--nada! There's just nail growth from my cuticle, and my tips aren't wrapped anymore, but that's about it. The glitters were a bit tricky to work with, because you need to use your brush to place the globs of glitter where you want them.

I'm thinking of layering this over a royal blue next!

Car Feature: Audi E-Tron Spyder [For L'Iconoclaste]

Audi E-Tron Spyder

This was one of the rides at the L.A. Auto Show. It looks so sick that it seems almost unreal in the setting! It's definitely one of the coolest hybrids I've ever seen. Too bad it sounds like a lawnmower though.

Special shout out to L'Iconoclaste, for hitting me up with an article about this car when it first made its debut overseas! Look up her blog if you want to check out her sweet fashion sense or beautiful photography (:

L.A. Auto Show 2011

The L.A. Auto Show is an automotive event that goes down at the L.A. Convention Center each year. Although it has been more than a century since its debut in 1907, the show is still going strong, providing manufactures with a huge venue to show off their goods to the public.

There were tons of cars at the event, but I just took pictures of the ones that stood out to me. Enjoy!

Black Cement 3's... Finally!

Air Jordan III GS  Black Cement

I really wanted to avoid Black Friday this year, but I've been waiting for these since summer.
And now they're all mine... puahaha!

The sneaker store lines at the mall were pretty crazy.
Hope everyone who wanted these got theirs!

Nails Did: Mustache Mania

Essence Irreplaceable + Wet n Wild Black Creme

Did you know that November is No Shave Month?? I sure didn't, until the bestie recently informed me! I'm not sure what it's about (feel free to enlighten me), but as the name implies, you're not supposed to shave! So if you have been shaving, you can go on and let your hair loose for the rest of this month, because it's No Shave November! :P

Anyway, the bestie thought it'd be cool if I did a mustache manicure, so this is what I came up with. I like the one on my ring finger the most, because it's so devious looking. Do you have a favorite mustache? (:

Sneaker Collection--Summer 2011

My sneaker collection as of Summer 2011

Since I've gotten quite a few inquiries about my collection, here's a shot I took over the summer before I moved out of my old place. I've been debating whether or not to post this, because I feel like this shot doesn't do my sneakers justice by glazing over the details of each individual sneaker. But at the same time, my collection as a whole is a pretty good representation of me... so I figured, what the heck (:

I started getting into sneakers towards the end of 2008. Although the oldest ones in my collection are a pair of Nike Dunks, it was a set of Creative Recreation Dicocos that really got me excited about kicks. Ever since that fateful pair of Creative Rec's, I've been steadily accumulating kicks that catch my attention.
I never intended to be a sneaker collector--I just bought what I liked, until one day, I realized that I had a pile of shoeboxes in my room! It's something that kinda creeps up on you and hits you before you know it... kinda like with my nail polishes!

I can remember every moment when I had laid eyes on each pair. Each sneaker holds a memory, reflecting my likes at a particular time in my life. For this reason, it's really hard for me to choose a favorite. Even though my tastes are always changing and developing, I think you can really get a feel for my personality through the kicks that I've picked out for myself over the years.

It wasn't until more recently that I've been getting into the Jordan brand and other models. Adidas Originals will always be a favorite brand of mine, and Nike Dunks will always be one of my favorite models.

The Color of my Soul

Pure Ice Dreamy

Even though it's no holographic, check out this rainbow in a bottle! Dreamy has bedazzling speckles of orange, yellow green, and violet blue glitter suspended in a pink red jelly base. It's bright and cheerful--the perfect pick-me-up color!
The glitter is more evident in the bottle than on my nails, because it's most apparent when hit by light. For the pictures above, I used three coats topped with my Seche Vite top coat. Since it's a relatively sheer jelly, some visible nail line is still evident. I'm thinking of trying out a jelly sandwich with this shade! What do you guys think?

NYAHHHH

Peanut Butter is such a goofball (:
His shadow looks like the silhouette of a cartoon character!

Nails Did: The Brand with the Three Stripes

China Glaze Blue Sparrow + Wet n Wild French White Creme


Following up my post about the history of the Adidas Superstar, this week's design was inspired by the brand with the three stripes!

For this look, I painted my nails with Blue Sparrow, added the logos with French White Creme, and topped everything off with Seche Vite. Blue Sparrow was still gritty after the top coat, so I'm assuming another layer should have done the trick.

Although I liked how this turned out, I'm not extremely thrilled because my white polish got really goopy and it was so hard to work with!
But on a lighter note, my acrylic paint set finally arrived! I'm really excited to try that out and see if that makes nail art any easier (:

KICKStory: How it all started with My Adidas

Since Nike and Jordan Brand are such big names in the sneaker business today, it can be hard to believe that another brand rooted the sneaker movement and revolutionized the sneaker industry—Adidas.

Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire?

China Glaze Pink Underground + China Glaze Marry a Millionaire


I was browsing Ulta the other day, when I noticed the China Glaze Eye Candy collection on display. I wasn't like OH MAH GAH because I hadn't seen any product photos or heard much about the collection until I saw it in stores, but I swung by the collection to take a look anyway.

Out of all the glitters in the collection, this was the only one that caught my attention--Marry a Millionaire. My eyes literally shot right towards this one, because it's the craziest of the bunch in my opinion.
Marry a Millionaire is loaded with a bazillion purple glitters, making it appear as though it's suspended in a purple base; however, I'm pretty sure the base is clear.
The glitters remind me of the rod-shaped bacteria that I've been peering at through the microscopes in microbiology lab all quarter long... especially when the iridescent glitters turn green, because it really reminds me of bacterial endospores! They're my favorite part about this polish though. The color shift from silver to green is so dazzling--I love it!

The polish was a bit difficult to work with because (1) the dense glitters made it seem thick, (2) it was really hard to evenly coat my nails without having patches of more (or less) glitter, and (3) some of the glitter particles hung off my nails and didn't want to be pushed back on. Oh, and what's with the name... Marry a Millionaire? Makes me associate this polish with sugar daddies and gold diggers... haha.

Anyhow, regardless of the application flaws, I'm really digging this polish. Props to China Glaze for coming out with a truly unique glitter! I can't wait to layer this over different shades (:

From the Vault: OPI Designer... De Better!

OPI Designer... De Better!

When I first heard about the OPI Muppets collection, I was super stoked about Rainbow Connection. But when swatches for the collection started popping up, Designer... De Better! made its way onto my want list as well! It's a super shiny, foil-like silver polish, ingrained with strawberry pink specks!
I really, really like the pink specks. It's what caught my attention about this polish, because it's a subtle detail that makes this polish really unique, in my opinion. However, unless you're looking at it up close, the pink specks are pretty much undetectable! For this reason, this polish can appear a bit underwhelming from a distance away, since it just seems like your average silver polish. (Even though it's not!)

In the pictures above, I used two coats over a base coat, with no top coat. I decided to go without a top coat because I liked how it turned out.
Although I wrapped my nails, there is a bit of tip wear since I omitted the top coat this time around; however, due to the metallic nature of polish, you can't really tell that it's starting to wear down!

Some action shots from the other night...

Take a Look at Body Language

Essie Body Language

I love doing designs on white, but white can look really stark against my skin. As such, I prefer to use an off-white, neutral-ly color like this one when I can get away with a substitute. This color is one of my favorites! I used two coats with no top coat in the pictures shown above.

On a side note, this is what I started out with for my Birch/Pink Nike Vandal nail look. My nails look ridiculously long in these swatches without the design! This is probably the longest I've ever grown out my nails.

Too Cool For School

Nike Air Trainer SC II Citron

My current favorites--fierce and bright.

Lost & Found

Nike Vandal Birch/Pink


I intended to post these shots before the nail set I did for them, but somehow this post got lost as a draft.

These were taken over the summer (:

Oh, what's this exotic? OZOTIC 505

If you remember my post about the Extreme Dimensions meet, I mentioned how I really wanted a nail polish the color of the NRG Innovations ball shift knob (last picture in the post).
Thanks to the awesome Ana over at Trifles and Diversions who suggested this polish, I discovered this super awesome bottle of magic to share with you guys today--Ozotic 505!

Let's get on to the pictures, shall we?


This is what it mostly looks like in the bottle... plenty of teal and purple!


Against the light, this pretty pinkish purple popped up! The polish looks almost matte here.


More purple and teal...


Deep purple fading to black...


Navy blue!


WHABAM. Bet you weren't expecting emerald green!

And yes, this was one bottle of polish! Pretty amazing, yeah?

For these swatches, I used two coats of Ozotic 505 over one coat of Wet n Wild Black Creme, topped with Seche Vite top coat. I took these pictures early in the morning, but I'm wondering if the colors would look different if I took the shots at a different time of day?
I can't wait to layer this one over different colors to see what will become of this polish!

Oh, here's a car from the SMS Open House that I posted about a while back. I think its impeccable paint job really resembles how this polish looks like in the bottle (: