Orly Lollipop

Orly Lollipop

 

This is a really stunning lilac pastel purple. It only needs two coats for full coverage. It's not streaky at all. The formula is really wonderful. You will get lots of compliments on this color. It is beautiful for spring!

OPI Don't Touch My Tutu & Easter Nail Art

 OPI Don't Touch My Tutu is the greatest sheer white jelly on the planet. It has a million uses. Looks great on it's own, perfect for french manicures, excellent base for nail stamping, etc. It's not streaky. It's amazing. I have not a single negative thing to say about this polish. Go buy it! It's an A+! I used three coats in the picture below.

OPI Don't Touch My Tutu

This is my take on easter nails. I didn't have any image plates that had bunnies, eggs, chicks, or other easter things. So I decided to stamp a pattern that might look a bit like a faberge egg. I love the way this turned out! Nail stamping can look very teenage or sleazy. It's very spring without being tacky. Très chic!

White & Copper Nail Art

I've said it before and I'll say it again, metallics are really great for nail stamping. For a while now I've been wanting to try Essie Penny Talk for nail stamping. I decided to try it over white. I figured it would really pop. To be honest, this manicure looks better in the pictures than it does in person. The copper looks too dark unless you are in really bright sunlight, as I am in the picture below. Oh well, it was worth a try!

Sally Hansen White On with Essie Penny Talk

The Perfect French Manicure

It's taken me many attempts before I discovered how to do the perfect french manicure. There are many techniques, such as using tape as a guide or using a french manicure pen to draw on your tips. These work okay but the perfect french manicure is created using a konad image plate to stamp on the white tips.

One thing that bugs me about french manicures is the sheer nail color. It is so hard to find the perfect sheer color to apply over the entire nail. They're mostly too pink, sometimes too yellow, and never how I like them. Enter OPI Don't Touch My Tutu. This is the perfect sheer white jelly for a french manicure. I used two coats of OPI Don't Touch My Tutu in the pictures below. To complete my perfect french manicure look, I stamped on my tips using a konad plate. I did this twice on each nail to get a really opaque white, using Nails Inc. Floral Street.

The Perfect French Manicure

OPI A Butterfly Moment

I've never really been into any of the OPI collections done by celebrities. They're pretty tacky. I even think all the colors in Mariah Carey's collection are tacky, with the exception of  A Butterfly Moment. This is a pinky, peachy, frosty, nude/tan with bunches of gold shimmer. It's quite unique. There aren't many other polishes out there that can be considered pink, peach, nude, and gold.  I think you can consider this a neutral. It's a lot more opaque than you would think. I only needed two coats for the picture below.

OPI A Butterfly Moment

I give this color an A because it's universally flattering. This is a color for all ages, skin tones, etc. It does not get the + because I think some people might have trouble with streaking. For some reason, I find that using a top coat helps to get rid of any streaks. This would make a great little present for anyone you know because chances are they don't already have a color similar to this.

P.S. I feel like this polish should've been named after Mariah Carey's song Honey.

DIY White Iridescent Glitter Manicure

One of the problems of being both a college student and a nail polish addict is not being able to afford certain brands of nail polish. Chanel, Dior, YSL, Nars, Illamasqua, Deborah Lippmann, and countless more all prove to be too expensive for me. I don't mind it really. I haven't really found any colors from those brands that I am dying to have, with the exception of one. Deborah Lippmann Stairway to Heaven. Actually there are a lot of Deborah Lippmann polishes that I want but this one I am dying to get my hands on. This polish contains small, white iridescent glitter in both square and hex form in a clear base. I've heard this described as having multicolored glitter in it. No. It's iridescent, meaning the surface appears as various colors when viewed from different angles. Anyway, another thing I love about this polish is the name: Stairway to Heaven. Not only is it an absolutely epic song from one of my favorite bands, but the polish is as glowing and luminous as actual stairways to heaven. There's a feeling I get when I see them and I get that same feeling when I hear that name and see that polish. 

Okay so onto the whole reason I even created this post. I decided try a much cheaper alternative to buying Stairway to Heaven. It's really not at all as pretty as the real thing but it's still pretty cool. And I really love experimenting with do it yourself nail polish and manicures. It's fun to pretend you have your own nail polish brand.

It was really hard to to capture just how sparkly the glitter is. It's much more beautiful in person than in the pictures. I think that says a lot because it is still quite lovely in the pictures. 

DIY White Iridescent Glitter Manicure

DIY White Iridescent Glitter Manicure

How to achieve this look:

1. Apply Orly Bonder (or your favorite base coat).

2. Apply one coat of OPI Don't Touch My Tutu.

3. Apply another coat of Don't Touch My Tutu, sprinkle glitter over nail immediately after polish is applied (meaning don't apply the second coat to all of you nails and then sprinkle the glitter. Do one nail at a time with both the polish and the glitter. This is how you get the glitter to stick on properly).

4. Apply a top coat if desired (I did not in the pictures above).

I only needed to spend an extra $1.25 to complete this look. All I needed was the glitter since I had all of the other stuff I used on hand. That beats $19 by a landslide. I hope this inspires you to try your own glitter manicures. You can do this with any color glitter!

L'Oreal Paparazzi Pleaser

This is a dark grape purple creme polish. If you search for this color on google images, there are quite a few pictures that make it look much lighter than it really is. My pictures very accurately represent the color. To me, it is a dark color, others might see it as a medium purple. In my opinion, it's a really unique shade. It's a bit muted, which I like. It's kinda streaky but you can't tell at all in the photos. In certain lights, some spots look a bit more sheer than others. I used two coats in the pictures below.

L'Oreal Paparazzi Pleaser

I love nail stamping, but I don't always get it right. You have to use a reaaaaalllllly opaque color for it to look good, especially if you are stamping a light color over a dark polish. Today I realized that Essie Nothing Else Metals would be perfect for nail stamping. I decided to try a cute little flower pattern. It came out fantastic. I love the combination of the two purples.

I give Paparazzi Pleaser a B+ because the formula isn't the greatest. You might need three coats for it to be completely opaque. Still, it's really not noticeable and I am just nit picking. The reason I don't give this polish an A is because I am just not wowed by it.