Here is one of the spoils of the recent BOGO sale on Butter London polishes at Ulta from last week.

 It's two coats of Knees Up.  This polish applied perfectly and attracted plenty of attention!

 I always feel just a bit self-conscious wearing reds, so I wanted to add decals just to be different and for fun.  I have these Kitty decals from pa brand that someone sent me as an extra with a polish order.

 It's kitties, hearts, houses, and then one random little creature that looks like a mouse maybe?  He is so cute and special - I didn't use him yet.

 I did three accent nails.  Sometimes I just feel asymetrical...yeah.

 Black kitty and black heart on the right hand ring finger.

 The decals are pretty thick, so I used two coats of top coat over them to make sure they were secure.

 My right hand thumb had the white kitty, which I really like!

 My left hand thumb was jealous because I left it decal-less.

This was a fun mani and it definitely made me feel better about wearing red.

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Glitter, glitter, glitter!!!  How I love thee!

Here I started with two coats of Diamond Cosmetics Not Your 'Hum Drum' Plum.  It looks more purple in the bottle but then applied a little darker and more blurple on my nails.  And it looks blue in the photos.  Ah, well.  You know the drill.

So far I'm loving my Diamond polishes!  Great formula.

Oh, and the GLITTAH.  It's Lynderella's The Glittering Crowd.  I used two coats.

I didn't have much trouble applying the glitter, but you may notice that the glitter gets progressively thicker as it goes from left to right on my nails!  By the time you get to the pinky it's out of control mania.  I have no idea why that happened.  I was probably careless.

Can I just say that I love that the glitter is reflecting different colors on my skin here, like stained glass windows?!

I used Lynderella's Glitter Tamer and then two coats of top coat after that.  I'm still fighting with my Glitter Tamer, but I think what I will do next time around is add some thinner after doing my right hand (which I paint before the left).  It's definitely too tacky and stringy by the last few fingers on my left hand.

I should have taken a picture of my right hand because there was a star shaped glitter on my index finger that really made me happy!

I think The Glittering Crowd is definitely the ultimate multi-colored glitter polish.  Forever and ever amen.

I bought my Diamond Cosmetics polishes from the company's website.

And if you haven't heard about Lynderella polishes, then you should check out her blog here.  They are a little hard to get, but not impossible (and so, so, so worth it)!

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 CUCUMBER!!!  One of my favorite, almost nutritionally worthless vegetables.  :)

 This is SKINFOOD Nail Vita #BL512 Cucumber at two coats.

 While I adore this color, I'm not a fan of the largish and somewhat stiff brush that it has.

 Let's talk more about cucumbers, shall we?  Love them with Ranch.  Love them with Vinaigrette.  Love them with Italian.  Love Cucumber Ranch dressing!  Love them with onions served ice cold with vinegar, salt, and pepper.  Love them in salads that also have tomato and onion.  Love the smell of them when I'm peeling them!

Wait?  This is supposed to cover "in one quick, mistake-proof stroke?"  While I never fault a gorgeous two-coater polish, I still don't understand why companies feel the need to LIE to me about one-coat coverage!

In any case, I do love this polish.  I bought it off Ebay.

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 I recently ordered some Diamond Cosmetics polishes for the first time ever!

 This is two coats of Deep Blue Sea.

 I'm really impressed!  Great application, formula, and cheap, too!

 This is a darker blue than my sunny pictures would lead you to believe.  It's almost navy.  And the lovely shimmer is turquoise blue.

It would seem that this is very close to Orly Royal Navy, which I am yet to try.  The shimmer in Deep Blue Sea appears to be bigger and more prominent, as well as a different color (the shimmery in Royal Navy is greenish, if I'm not mistaken).

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 Here is three coats of Rescue Beauty Lounge Pizzicato.

 It looks like a pale, pink, glass-flecked shimmer in the sun.

 I found that in most types of lighting it looked much more lilac or lavender on me.

 It's a very pretty, delicate sort of look.  Oh!  And I cut my nails shorter just because!  I'm happy to say that it wasn't because of a break or tear or anything bad.  I just wanted them shorter.  :)  It's a nice change for me.

 I found the formula ever so slightly difficult to work with.  It got kind of thick on me, and I felt that it looked a tad streaky in places (see picture below).

I tried this mani using Butter London's base and top coats.  Big mistake!  I smudged the bejeebus out of my pinky nail, somehow, five freaking hours after I had applied everything!  I was oh so sad.  I will probably give them a try again, later, using Butter London polishes, but I have to tell you I'm slightly terrified at this point.

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 For this manicure I used just one coat of Illamasqua Boosh and then just one coat of SKINFOOD Party Tox #03 Black Party.

 This is my first time trying a SKINFOOD polish!  I am so happy to have some now!  I found them on Ebay.  It took a long time for them to ship to me, but it was worth the wait.

 Black Party does have a black jelly base and I debated just wearing it by itself and doing 2-3 coats.  I'm glad I put the black polish under it, though, because it's so dense that while I think it would be insane on its own, I also think for ease of removal and whatnot, the way I did it was just as well...you know?

This time, there was, FOR REAL, a party on MAH nails.  :)

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 So...I may have been dragging my feet a little in posting this one.  It's two coats of China Glaze Trendsetter with a coat of Anna Sui 802.

 This was inspired and requested by a dear friend at work.

 Here's the thing - I know it's ugly.  I still feel compelled to occasionally buy and even wear ugly polish colors.  It's true.  At least it's GLITTERY and ugly!

Yes, I do realize it's not going to be everyone's favorite mani.  I'm okay with that.  :)  Just posting for the sake of posting.  And who knows?  Maybe even a few people do like it!  I was surprised that I got a couple of compliments when wearing it.

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 For your reading and (mostly) viewing pleasure, I present yesterday's deep space nails on MATTE.

 I used two coats of Essie's Matte About You.  I realize that they still don't look 100% completely matte in all places.  I think the lesson learned (thanks to asking friends on MUA) is to not be stingy when using matte top coats!  :)

 You probably know me well enough to understand how much I like the shiny and the sparkly, yet for reasons fully unknown to me, I felt compelled to try this matte.  

My camera chose to focus only on the bottle in the picture above.  Not a total loss.  I'm mesmerized by all that glitter in the bottle!

My overall verdict?  It's pretty cool!  I'm intrigued by how the glitters appear frozen in time...and space.

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 Today I'm sporting a manicure that definitely makes me think of outer space!  It's two coats of China Glaze Haunting with one coat of Lynnderella Bride of Franken.  Haunting is awesome and almost opaque in one coat - not quite, but points for almost!

 I used Orly In a Snap and then a color preserving top coat from Sally Beauty as my two top coats.  I'm not thrilled that the polish is not awesomely smooth, as you can probably see.  A friend on MUA told me that she uses In a Snap and likes it (I had asked her what she uses over KleanColors), so I'm going to use it for KleanColors and see how that goes.

 There's also a weird scratch across my ring finger nail.  Not sure how that happened but you can see it more in the last photo.

 Anyhow, I quite like this combination!  They are very pretty and spacey looking, which I love.

 I think I may put on a matte top coat tonight and see how that goes.  

 If you haven't heard of Lynnderella polishes, you can see her blog here.

I think Bride of Franken is going to be really terrific over pretty much every dark color.

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