Where the Mountain Meets the Moon inspired

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I read Where the Mountain Meets the Moon, by Grace Lin out loud to my 7 year old daughter in February. It kept her attention, was full of lovely, magical stories, and made a teary mess of me before the end. It is an uplifting story with a message that we all need to be reminded of from time to time. I think my girl will want to and be able to read it independently soon too.

a-england Briarwood Skittlette

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Hello all. No challenges today, just a fabulous polish. This was my first true autumn manicure of the season.

Ursula manicure

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This will be very short. I actually forgot to write a quick post about this last of the October Disney villains inspired manicures.

31 Day Challenge: Inspired by Artwork

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I have to be really quick. My Grandma Janice loved Monet and I loved her dearly, so any time that I can do, or see something that reminds me of her it is a treasure.

Pahlish Chemical Swirl

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Happy Friday! Today I'm showing you a manicure that I wore last month. One of my favorite polishes, Cult Nails Disciplined and a couple of previously untried polishes.

Polish Days: Back to Nature

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It seems like January Polish Days just happened. The month just flew by! It is now February's Polish Day and here is my nature inspired manicure.

Skittles! Marbled and Stamped

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Hi all. I've done a couple of skittlette manicures, but I've never shared a true skittles manicure on here. Today I remedy that. It has been very cold and grey around here and a colorful manicure was in order.

1 Year Blogiversary Giveaway

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Hello, wonderful readers. Thank you for allowing this website to be more than a private diary. Thank you for taking the time to read my ramblings several times a week. Mangling my Manicure turns 1 year in a short while and I wanted to celebrate with a little giveaway.

China Glaze Desert Sun with Julep Mystery Glitter

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Hi there. Are you having a good weekend so far? I wanted to show you this quick little mani that I wore for two days. I planned for it to be a full glitter manicure, but after seeing this glitter polish on the nail, I decided that it would be better as an accent nail.

Zoya Remove+ vs. Julep Remover vs. Homemade moisturizing remover

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Hi everyone! Before I take you to this  post, I just want to say, this is my 100th post!! I can't believe it. Thank you  to everyone who takes the time to read this little blog. Thank you to any of you who share your thoughts, comments and suggestions with me and thank you to all of you for inspiring me! OK, on with the post.

I have always been intrigued by Zoya Remove+, and finally got some a couple of months ago. What you see above are the results of one swipe of each polish remover on index, middle, and ring fingers.

Chelsea Lavendairy for the New Year

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Hi lovelies! It is almost New Year's Eve. You want to see what I'll be wearing for my big party. . . By "big party," I mean hanging out with my husband and daughter, cuddled up together. Just because we're not going out doesn't mean I didn't want some New Year's bling.

a-england Saint George Skittlette

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Well, here it is, my last Nail Files of 2012! Last Sunday, with nails chipping, I decided to do a quick, easy manicure, no stamping. And, since my skittlette mani a couple weeks ago, I've been excited to try another. This is what I came up with.

a-England Ophelia for my aunt

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I know that November is nearly over, but if you didn't know, it is pancreatic cancer awareness month. Pancreatic cancer affects over 40,000 people a year and unfortunately at this time, there is less than a 10% five year survival rate. It is wonderful that so many strides are being made in the fights against other cancers. Now is the time to be even stronger in our fight against pancreatic cancer. Check out the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network for more.

In 2006, my aunt, one of the most vibrant, unique people I have ever known was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. She fought the cancer for only a few short months before it took her life.

China Glaze Rare and Radiant with stamping

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 I know, there are tons of versions of this color, the yellow-green gold with flashes of teal, but until now I didn't own any of them. I am such a sucker for duochromes too. One of my favorite nail polishes is Revlon Khaki Zing which was discontinued many years ago. I will be so sad when that polish is gone. In fact, I might have to do an old school manicure using Khaki Zing one of these days just because it is so fabulous . . . But I am getting off track. Today, I want to show you a different duochrome manicure.

I went for a girls' weekend for a bachelorette party a couple of weeks ago. I wanted a flashy, but still elegant manicure and since I didn't know what I would be wearing, the manicure had to be neutral enough to go with any outfit. Rare and Radiant from the China Glaze Bohemian Collection fit the bill. Application was a breeze. I have been completely smitten with the most recent China Glaze polishes I used just because they were fun to apply, so smooth and even. I really couldn't capture all the beauty of this polish in photos. There were these amazing flashes of blue when the polish was viewed at a sharp angle, but you can see the wonderful metallic look of the polish.

The polish looked beautiful by itself, but I really wanted to try out one of the polishes from my Julep August Maven box too, so I did a floral french tip stamping using Julep Stefani. Stefani worked really well as a stamping polish. In the bottle, Stefani is a dark charcoal grey with loads of gold shimmer. As a stamping polish over the goldish colored Rare and Radiant, only the grey comes through, but it will be quite fetching as a full manicure on it's own with the gold showing too.

What discontinued polishes continue to make your heart skip a beat? Did you get any of the China Glaze Bohemian collection? Which colors from the collection are your favorites?

It has been a long time since I linked up with the Nail Files, but I love it. It is so much fun to see what polishes that others are wearing and loving. Check it out.

Happy polishing.
~Alexis

Julep Audrey: the Perfect Princess Pink

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 Hello, darling readers. Wow! I have been so busy this week. I have a small list of planned blog posts, but haven't even had a chance to write them up or think about things I'd like to discuss with you after those posts. I've been enjoying the new job, but now there really are too few hours in the day.

I am going to make the time to tell you a little bit about a great polish, that makes me love sheer even though I am not normally a fan of sheer polish. This is Julep Audrey, which I wanted to love just because it is named Audrey. The first coat, I thought, "Oh, this is way too sheer. I'm not going to like this." The second coat had me changing my mind and by the third coat, I was so happy. To me, it looks like my fingernails are coated in silk taffeta. I think that the glass shimmer in this polish makes it work even though it is very sheer.

On day five I had some pretty heavy chipping, but I was in a pool for quite some time earlier that day. All in all, Julep Audrey held up very well. And it is so lovely. I really did feel like I had a princess manicure that looked elegant on a woman, but would also look pretty on a younger girl's fingers.

Are you a fan of sheer polishes or does a visible nail line drive you bonkers? What do you think of Audrey?

1. Love:  This week marks the 11th anniversary of my first date with my husband. Yes, I'm a sap who still takes a moment to celebrate our first date even though we have a wedding anniversary to celebrate each year now too. I figure that when you love someone, you should take every possible opportunity to celebrate that love.

2. Mod Cloth:  Yeah, I know that I'm really late to the party on this one, but I placed my very first order this week (need some dressier clothes for the office) and all three dresses I bought fit beautifully, which is sometimes a challenge for me. One dress in particular made my husband say, "That dress is almost too adorable to wear."

3. My new favorite drink:  While I still love my pina colada, it is not the most figure friendly beverage. I  recently enjoyed UV grape vodka with club soda. It is a really pretty light purple too and purple always puts me in a better mood.

What Bela looks like now

What Bela looked like when we got her *shudders*

4. My kitty:  I have two cats and the oldest was adopted from the SPCA. Bela had lived in a house with 24 other cats and was skinny, scared, had ear mites, and looked like Falcor from "The Neverending Story," which to me meant not cute. She was hiding in a corner. There was another cat there who was very sweet, loving on my now husband and I. But we knew that the sweet cat would have no problems getting adopted, but that poor, scared, ugly kitty in the corner may not find a home.

We brought her home and she was petrified for about a week, hiding behind the toilet and then one day, she just decided that she'd let us pet her and she loved it. I laughed so hard because in an instant she went from being completely withdrawn to completely affectionate.She wouldn't let us walk near her without running away though. It took about 6 years before she would let us slowly walk by her without running away. And just the other day, she let me pick her up and put her down several times without racing away, almost 8 years after she joined our family! I don't know exactly what happened to her in the 4 years before we found each other, but I am so glad that she seems to now feel completely safe, happy, and loved.

5.  Good books:  I normally read one book at a time, but for some reason I'm reading two right now. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones is a really fun to read fantasy novel. My little girl insists that I read it to her and she has listened to about half the book, no small feat for an almost 5 year old. I am almost finished reading The Decendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings too. It is a really touching look at how a father deals with the serious injury of his wife and taking over the primary parenting role. The relationships and interactions are at times terribly troubling and at other times they are so lovely.

Have a great weekend!
~Alexis

Rainbow Watercolor Nails

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This manicure was the result of my creation of a Fourth of July manicure a couple of weeks ago. It was too early to sport the red, white, and blue manicure for more than just pictures. But it was easy to transform the Old Glory Tie dye nails (seen below in High Five for Friday) into Rainbow Watercolor Nails with the addition of a few dots of yellow polish, Sinful Colors Let's Meet.

Old Glory Tie dye Nails:  To achieve this look, I painted my nails with two coats of Orly Softest White and a thick layer of fast-drying topcoat. After that dried thoroughly, I worked each color on each nail individually. I placed about three small dots of Julep Amy on my nail and then using a nail art brush soaked with acetone, thinned and spread the color a bit on my nail. After doing that to each nail, I did the same thing with China Glaze Dorethy Who? and then Revlon Fearless, and finally Orly Softest White. I kept each color separate for the most part, but allowed a little bit of overlap and blending. I topped with fast-drying topcoat.

Rainbow Watercolor Nails:  Create Old Glory Tie dye Nails. Using Sinful Colors Let's Meet, place about two or three dots on each nail and gently blend the colors using an acetone dipped nail art brush. Top with fast-drying topcoat. I then stamped my nails with Orly Softest White using bornprettystore's plate m65 and one final topcoat. Thanks to Colores de Carole for her willingness to take a bold manicure and add even more pop with some stamping. I followed her lead on that and I like the way it turned out.

Considering how many layers of topcoat I was wearing, I'm surprised that this polish didn't just peel off in sheets after two days. It was a really fun manicure and garnered a few compliments. However, once it started chipping, at about four days in, there was no stopping it. By day six, there was severe chipping on both thumbs, index, and middle fingers. I enjoyed this mani a lot and the acetone blending technique gave me some other ideas for prolonging my nail polish wear time, but I'll post about that next week.

What do you think of the rainbow nails? Have you tried out watercolor nails? If so, did  you enjoy creating a watercolor manicure?

1. Drive-in movies:  I love drive in movies, the stars, the sliver of moon overhead. We saw Brave, which was a really sweet story about a daughter and mother reconnecting and discovering one another. It was a double feature and the second film was The Avengers. It was a great, action-packed movie.

2. A lazy, breezy afternoon in the park:  My girlie and I took a trip to the park the other afternoon. We saw a deer in a field, found some raspberries, threw rocks in the creek, and played on the playground.

3. A fortunate trip out to the garden:  I was making guacamole the other day and was not content with the jalapeno I had in the house. I decided to go out to the garden to pick one. While walking to the backyard, I saw the back end of a bird that seemed to have strangled itself in the slats of our neighbor's fence. I gasped, "Oh, no! Poor birdie," and then the little bird began struggling, apparently not strangled. I ran to the house and got my husband outside with his work gloves. He grabbed a tennis racket and flicked the back end of the bird, giving him the boost he needed to get unstuck. I don't know if he survived, but he was exhausted and stunned, so we just left him alone to catch his breath and regain his energy. There was no evidence of the little bird the next day, so I'll imagine him living a happy bird life . . .  Oh yeah, and about the jalapeno, we decided that the ones in the garden weren't ripe enough, so I used the one from the house anyway.

4. Unexpected tomatoes:  My garden had a couple of random plants growing this spring. There were three tomato plants. I hope that they are from the heirloom tomatoes I planted last year and not the hybrid tomato, but either way, all three plants are beginning to set fruit. They are my fun mystery tomato plants.

5. Old Glory Tie dye Nails:  I feel very lucky that my Independence Day inspired manicure was included in  Nouveau Cheap's "Indpendence Day Manicure Roundup." There are some really fun and beautiful manicures in that roundup.

Julep Kelly in the garden

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Hi again, lovelies. I had an interview on Monday, so I wanted a subtle, classy manicure. I wore Julep Kelly. It is a very pretty pale pink polish. Application was a bit difficult. It seemed to thicken up as I was applying, so one nail would turn out fine, but by the time I got to the next nail, the polish was a bit gloppy. I would close and gently mix the polish to fix the texture problem, but as you can see, I must not have mixed as gently as I thought because this resulted in a very bubbly manicure. The bubbling was not really noticeable until two days into the manicure when I did some work in the vegetable garden. Then the bubbling looked like brown dots, yuck. To get a fairly even finish, I had to paint three layers.

After four days, the manicure was really beat up. Planting and weeding take a toll on my manicures even when I wear gardening gloves. Even though it is hard on my nails, I love spending this time of year outside playing in the dirt.

My little girl and I had so much fun and she did a great job cleaning up the weeds from the walkway between my garden beds and getting rid of slugs. I was called in for a second interview on Thursday and my peonies are blooming too, so overall it was a beautiful week. Looking at this picture, I can almost smell the flowers! I'll go out and gather a small bouquet today.

Before I go, any followers other than GFC followers, if you are interested in a giveaway that I'll post about this weekend, let me know that you follow the blog and how you follow. This is your last chance to let me know.

Does anyone else have Julep Kelly? What do you think of it? Any tips for great polish application?

Thanks for reading. Have a great weekend!
~Alexis

A Wine-Tasting Fairy Princess

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Hello. I hope that you all are doing well today. I have lots of pictures for you today. I was wearing this really fun manicure for a really fun wine-tasting bachelorette party. I love the little grapes on the shimmery background of Sonia Kashuk Fairy Princess. Fairy Princess was a very thick and hard to apply. I actually got frustrated and added three drops of nail polish thinner to the bottle and that fixed the application problems completely, but you can see my middle finger in the picture above is not as smooth as I would have liked. The middle finger was painted before thinning the polish and the ring finger was painted after thinning the polish. I added a coat of Melissa to my ring fingers which just gave a bit of a frosty, shimmery green finish to those nails.

I stamped all nails with bornprettystore plate m71, a floral pattern in Revlon Minted and stamped over that with the grape pattern from bornprettystore plate M71 using Revlon ColorStay Amethyst and Sally Hansen Emerald City. I have been very pleased with the performance of ColorStay polishes for stamping lately.

With my nails ready to face a day full of wineries, I hit the road with a bunch of my favorite girls. I loved the view from this winery, the grape vines and then the lake in the background. It was an absolutely beautiful day in every way!

Noble Winery, Westfield, NY

I removed the polish after five days of wearing it, one day after the wine tour. You can see that there is one big chip on the middle finger and some chipping on my index finger, but the manicure quickly deteriorated after taking this picture. I spent the day at the beach, finding sea glass in the sand with my daughter.

Day 5

Sunset at Lake Erie

I am wearing a very traditional, pretty manicure right now, Julep Kelly. It is pretty beat, so I'll post about it in a day or two.

Join the Nail Files link-up and check out what's going on other fingers.

What do you think of coordinating your manicure with a special event or holiday? If you've done it, what was the event and what did your manicure look like?

~Alexis

Green Ombre Gradient Manicure

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Hello there. I put a lot of effort into this manicure. I used the tutorial  for gradient nails from The Nailasaurus and transitioned between Revlon Bare Bones to China Glaze Fast Track, Julep Sofia, Sinful Colors Irish Green, Sonia Kachuk Fairy Princess, and concluded with Sally Hansen Emerald City from index finger to pinky. I then stamped Emerald City over all the nails and dotted them with Bare Bones and Emerald City. The manicure was my entry in Midnight Manicures Green nail art for Lyme Disease Awareness and Mental Health month contest. You can see all the entries on the Midnight Manicures facebook page. There is one nail art manicure that I think is fabulous and I really want to try out something similar. See which ones you like the best.

The next time that I try out that gradient, I'll use polishes that differ in color a bit more for a more pronounced effect.

By the second to last day wearing this manicure, I wanted something a little different, so I added a coat of Matte about You. I think it looked pretty matte. I find that my sponged manicures tend to hold up pretty well and this one was no exception. There was a little bit of tip wear and chipping at the edges of index and middle fingers after five days. My favorite nail color was the Irish green with Fairy Princess sponged over the top of the polish. Someday I'll do a full manicure with that combination.

I liked my middle fingers a lot too, just because I think it is so cool that Julep Sofia glows in the dark.

Check out the Nail File:  Week 20. Look at great nail polish finds, fun manicures, and join the link-up yourself if you have some eye candy to share!

Next week, is a Fairy Princess manicure. I can't wait to show it to you all! Have any of you tried out the gradient tutorial from The Nailasaurus? I'm also curious, how long does it usually take you to do your manicure?

Take Care.

~Alexis