FingerFood's Theme Buffet #4: Sparkle!

It's time once again for FingerFood's Theme Buffet! This weeks' theme is sparkle, and of course I had a million options to choose from, but I decided on some polishes I just recently got my hands on. I participated in a nail polish Secret Santa alongside Andrea of Indigo Bananas, and I wound up with nine new bottles of IB! Three of them are these awesome color-shifting microglitters in tinted bases, and I used them all for this mani.

My inspiration was this sparkly chevron mani from Nail Addicted Sisters.

I feel so glam right now!! The polishes are, top to bottom: Indigo Bananas 2% Butterscotch Ripple, We Are the Music Makers, and Pure Imagination. I didn't really show off the color shifts here, but I plan to wear each of these alone later on and show you the magic!

I'm also really glad the stained parts of my nails have grown out long enough to be able to do this mani. :-P

Check out the other lovely ladies' sparkly nails below and on our Pinterest board!

Review: January's Ipsy Glam Bag

I got my second Ipsy Glam Bag this week and got some interesting products! Ipsy is a beauty subscription service where you get five personalized samples and/or full-size products for $10 each month. Everything comes in a cute makeup bag! (Here's my referral link if you want to try it out.)

Here's this month's haul! I'll start with the less exciting stuff.

1. Proactiv Mark Fading Pads

I'm going to get this one out of the way first because I'm not going to be using it. I got four Proactiv Mark Fading Pads, which are supposed to exfoliate and fade acne scars. The active ingredients are salicylic acid and glycolic acid (i.e. BHA and AHA). These are good chemical exfoliators, but the reason I don't want to use these pads is because they contain alcohol, which is very very drying. No thank you! Plus you can get AHA/BHA in thousands of other (cheaper) forms.

2. Briogeo Don't Despair, Repair! Deep Conditioning Mask

This is a deep conditioner meant for damaged or chemically-treated hair. I'm not really the target audience for this, since my hair is pretty healthy (or so my hairdresser told me) and I don't color it or anything. But it had some nice-sounding ingredients like avocado oil, argan oil, and biotin, so I gave it a try. You just leave it in your hair for 3-5 minutes after shampooing and then rinse it out. My hair did feel noticeably softer the rest of the day, but it didn't look any different. I was afraid the conditioner would make my hair really heavy and greasy, but it left only a little more residue than my normal conditioner leaves. Unfortunately the nice soft feeling went away the next time I washed my hair. Maybe I need to try this more than once to get a lasting change? I won't be buying more of it to find out.

3. MicaBeauty Tinted Lip Balm in Fiesta

First off, I have to say I'm baffled why this is called a lip balm. It doesn't have the luxurious feel of a balm--in fact it feels pretty dry--although there are a couple moisturizing ingredients in it (propylene glycol and mineral oil, not the most appealing stuff). It's really more of a lip stain. It IS very pigmented though; only a few dabs were enough to color my lips fully. It also seemed to be pretty durable, although I didn't wear it for very long. [Update: Over 12 hours after writing this, the swatch is still visible on my arm!] The color is a little too pink for me, and I wish they'd sent me the neutral color. I'm not very adventurous when it comes to makeup, except on my nails!

4. Elizabeth Mott Smooth Shadow Creamy Eye Pencil in Pearl

This eye pencil can be used as eye shadow, eyeliner or highlighter. I'm by no means an expert on eye makeup, but I do think I'll use this one again. It applied smoothly and it wasn't too pigmented on the first swipe--this is good for me because, again, I'm pretty conservative with makeup! It does have a nice amount of sparkle, so I'd probably wear it for a party or formal event.

5. Nourish Organic Lightweight Moisturizing Face Lotion

This was my favorite product in the bag. It has a really nice list of ingredients, including aloe, shea butter, argan oil, cupuacu butter and almond oil. And it really is lightweight--I could barely tell I was wearing moisturizer! There is no trace of greasiness with this stuff. I don't think there's any added fragrance; the smell is very natural. The only downside to this lotion is I think it's a little too light for winter--I still had some dryness after using it. I'll definitely come back to it in the summer, and might buy a full-size tube.

The thing I like about Ipsy is that you can give them feedback on each product you receive, which they supposedly use to choose your samples in the future. So I'll be interested to see what they send me next month!

Swatch: Orly Milky Way

The product in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

Hey! There's less than a week left to enter the giveaway I'm participating in at Marbles for Polish!

It's Friday! Anyone have any fun weekend plans? I've already started working on my next polish collection, so I'll probably spend some more time on that! (Have you checked out my shop lately?)

Today I've got a new polish from Orly's Galaxy FX collection. This is another case where I think the company looked at indie polishes while coming up with their collection--look at all the glitter! Milky Way is a pastel blue base with small white, red-orange and holographic hexes, plus light blue microglitter.

Orly Milky Way. One coat with Out the Door and Gelous topcoats.

(Time to shorten my nails, huh? They're getting a bit duck-footed.)

I love that Orly went all-out with the glitter in this one. Despite the base color being pretty sheer, I only needed one coat because the glitter covers everything up. I didn't really have problems getting even coverage. The only downsides were 1. the formula was hard to spread because of all the glitter (the polish itself doesn't seem incredibly thick) and 2. even after two layers of topcoat it still feels bumpy. The texture is only visible in closeups though.

Milky Way is available at Orly's website ($10 for 18 ml), or you might be able to find it at your local Sally Beauty like I did (I'm not seeing it on the site right now).

The product in this post was purchased by me. All opinions are my own.

NEW products at ALIQUID Lacquer!

Good morning! I'm really excited to tell you about my second set of ALIQUID Lacquer polishes, now available for sale!

First up we have three polishes in the Re-Gifted Collection. I made a bunch of polishes as gifts for friends and family this winter, then Trudy picked three to put in the store!

ALIQUID Lacquer Exploradora. Two coats with Out the Door topcoat.

Exploradora was originally made for a relative who used to work for Dora the Explorer (apparently she's a real taskmaster). It's a tan crelly with magenta hexes and small black glitter. I've made this crelly (and the others) more or less opaque in two coats, since I hate having to use a ton of coats with glitter polishes!

ALIQUID Lacquer Gargoyle. Two coats with Out the Door topcoat.

Second up is Gargoyle, an homage to Gargoyle Magazine at the University of Michigan. It's a grey creme with white, gunmetal, gold and copper flecks. Looks like stone!

ALIQUID Lacquer A Pun on Teal. Two coats with Out the Door topcoat.

Finally we have A Pun on Teal. I made this as part of a Secret Santa swap in a nail group I belong to. We're always joking that teal polishes need to have a punny name (like this one, for example), so I skipped the hard part of actually thinking up a good pun. This is a green-leaning teal crelly with matte glitters in multiple sizes and colors.


In addition to the Re-Gifted collection, I've also made a polish to go along with Pantone's Color of the Year for 2014, Radiant Orchid. (Thanks to Jessica at Be Happy and Buy Polish for encouraging me to make this!)

ALIQUID Lacquer Stop and Smell the Orchids. Two coats with Out the Door topcoat.

Stop and Smell the Orchids is a Radiant Orchid-style purple crelly with purple, white and fuchsia glitters, plus white, blue and purple flecks. Super sparkly!


Finally, I made two new scented lip balms that both smell divine: chai and mint citrus!

Go check out the new stuff at my shop! The polishes all retail for $9 (15 ml)/$4 (5 ml) and the lip balms are $2 (or $5 for three). Trudy and I hope you like everything!

Today's mani: Red Mountain

Hey folks--don't forget to enter the January Jamboree giveaway if you haven't already! It ends later today! I'm also participating in an EPIC giveaway at NailNation 3000's Facebook page!

One of my favorite video games of all time is The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind (ancestor of the very popular Skyrim). It takes place in the home of the dark elves, an island dominated by an enormous volcano called Red Mountain. I wanted to do a Morrowind-themed mani for a long time, but I missed its tenth anniversary last year and put the idea aside. I finally got the opportunity now, because a Facebook group I'm in is holding a video game nail art contest! Here's my entry:

I chose that particular color scheme for three of the nails because the dark elves have blue-grey skin and red eyes. The symbols stand for the three gods of Morrowind--you can see them on the box art for the game:

I used over a dozen polishes for this mani, using a combination of sponging and nail art brushes. If you want to know what any of the colors are, just ask!

I love this game so much I might make some nail polishes inspired by it! Any other Morrowind/Elder Scrolls fans out there?

FingerFood's Theme Buffet #3: weather

Good morning! It's time once again for FingerFood's Theme Buffet! The prompt for this week was "weather". I decided to recreate another mani I did about a year ago (pic is down below).

First, today's nails:

It's a beautiful day! (Unlike the weather here lately!) I started with a gradient of Zoya Blu and Wet 'n' Wild I Need a Refresh-Mint. Then I made the clouds by sponging on Maybelline Porcelain Party with a little corner of a makeup sponge. The trick to doing clouds is to make sure there's not too much polish on your sponge--you want the clouds to be fuzzy and translucent. Finally, I painted the hot air balloon with Revlon Red Carpet, Sally Hansen Lightening, China Glaze Hanging in the Balance, and Julep Otte; I sponged one more cloud on over the balloon to give a little 3D effect.

Now here's my old mani that inspired this one:

The clouds are a little heavy-handed, but I still love this mani! I don't think I would have been able to manage the balloon a year ago though. :-)

Don't forget to check out the rest of today's challenge manis below or by following the Pinterest board!

I made food: chai from scratch

When it comes to caffeinated drinks, I'm definitely a tea person. And my favorite kind of tea is chai. But I've never had "real" chai before, just teabag and powdered versions. Until the other day! For my birthday I got a make-your-own chai kit, and I finally got a chance to try it out this week.

This kit is really cute (and smells heavenly)--here's what's inside:

It's got three kinds of black tea (two tins each): cardamom tea, earl grey and ceylon tea. It also contains star anise, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon and black peppercorns. You can mix up your own blend of spices and teas, but the kit includes a recipe to get you started.

Since I'm a chai newbie, I followed their directions. Here's what they recommend:

Two pieces of cinnamon (I used three because I'm a cinnamon nut), 8 cardamom pods, 8 cloves, 6 peppercorns, 1 anise pod, and 3 teaspoons of tea (I used one of each kind).

You add the spices to 2 cups of water in a saucepan and bring it to a boil. (It was already smelling delicious at this point!) Then you add 3/4 cup of milk, 6 teaspoons of sugar, and the tea. Lower the heat and let the tea steep for a few minutes (depending on how strong you want it).

Then you strain the chai and you're done! The recipe makes about two servings.

The chai was delicious! Just sweet enough, very smooth and not bitter, but with a spicy kick at the end. It was a great drink for a rainy afternoon. And I love the fact that I can keep refilling the tins as I run out of ingredients.

The process of making chai from scratch is not as scary as it sounds, so give it a try!