Love Manicure with Orly Guilded Coral and Stamping

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Last Love Manicure for Valentine's Day, but of course I'm not done with love. Lulu of Lulu in Greece requested that I show Orly Guilded Coral from the Spring 2011 Precious Collection. Thank you so much Lulu; I forgot how much I like this polish.

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.

Hare Polish They Sky was Pink

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Happy Friday! I am showing you a lovely polish that is sadly sold out now, but I did tell you about it before it sold out, so hopefully, if you love it, you were able to snag yourself a bottle.

Enchanted Polish Austin Powers

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under direct indoor light

Hello dearies! A dream came true when I was able to snag a bottle of Enchanted Polish Austin Powers on Black Friday from llarowe. Reality sometimes is a bit disappointing after such a wonderful dream, but this nail polish is never a disappointment. Forgive me, but I couldn't help putting tons of pictures of this polish; I even removed a bunch and couldn't bring myself to remove any more.

Bubo Nails: The Most Bling Owl Ever

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Hi everyone. I am participating in Polish Days for the first time ever today! So exciting! When I saw that the theme for this Polish Days was Bling, I don't know why, but my mind went immediately to Bubo the owl from the 1981 film, "Clash of the Titans."

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.

Spring Nail Art Contest Entry

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I just learned about Enamel Girl's nail art contest and figured, eh, I'll give it a try. I haven't been stamping for very long, less than a year. Normally, spring is pretty dreary and damp around here until the season has nearly ended, so I wanted to show the progression of spring over my nails. My index finger is full of clouds and has a couple of budding flowers. The flowers bloom and multiply over each nail and the clouds disappear. I love peonies. They remind me of my grandmother, but the flowers are so fleeting, here for a month and no more, so I wanted to showcase them on my index and middle fingers.

What I did:

Base: Two coats Sinful Colors Cinderella, mixed Sinful Colors Unicorn and Sinful Colors Easy Going and sponged them onto the base of the nail, Sally Hansen Emerald City sponged onto the nail tips.

Stamping: Using BornPrettyStore plates m79, M66, m66 (yes, they are two different plates; confusing huh?), and m77, I stamped clouds using Orly Softest White, grasses, and blossoms were stamped in Sally Hansen Emerald City, Nina Ultra Pro Hawaiian Flower, and Revlon Lilac.

Accents: Mixing Sinful Colors Easy Going and Ruby Ruby, I painted the peonies with a thin nail art brush. I dotted the daisies with Sinful Colors Midnight Blue and I accented the grass and leaves with a blend of Sally Hansen Emerald City and Sinful Colors Tokyo Pearl.

I hope you like it and I hope that you'll forgive me for not wearing my St. Patrick's Day nails for a whole week. By Sunday, I felt horribly out of style still wearing green polish. Later this week, I will post a couple more pictures of that green mani and discuss its limited wear. Take care.

~Alexis

Fresh Paint

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Hello, and welcome to "Mangling my Manicure." I plan to post information about my manicure after I have worn it for a week. I will include at least two photos of each manicure, one when it is new and (hopefully) beautiful and another photo once I have worn the polish for the full week or until my nails are chipped to the point that I can't look at them anymore.

Let me begin by telling you about the nail products that I will always be using. I wear one coat of Seche Retain. I am very fortunate to have strong nails, but I have never been able to grow them for a long time without a break. I started using Seche Retain last summer on the nail and under the free edge. My nails have become even stronger. There are so many times that I jam or catch a fingernail, feeling sure that it must have cracked, but most of the time the nail is still in great shape with a little chipped polish. The other great thing about Retain is that it is Big 3 free. As i recall, the other two treatments in that Seche line, Rebuild and Recondition may not be able to make that claim. I follow Retain with one coat of Orly Bonder Rubberized basecoat. I don't know if my nails are super oily, but without this basecoat, my polish will sometimes chip the very first day. Finally, I top my polish with INM Out the Door Fast Drying topcoat.

I'm excited to show you my first manicure. On my nails are 2 coats of Revlon Colorstay in Buttercup. This is my first time using any Colorstay polish, but I have been happy with several other Revlon nail enamels. The application of this polish was a little streaky, but it looked much better than I expected after the addition of a topcoat. I did have to add third coats of Buttercup to my thumbs to combat the streakiness. I really love the look of pale yellow polishes, but found that Sinful Nails Unicorn stained my nails pretty badly. I hope that this polish does not stain. I'll get back to you next week and let you know how well my manicure stood up to seed starting for my vegetable garden and other activities.

Before I sign off, I love A England's Dragon that was posted about on the Swatchaholic. Definite lust going on right now. Her photos show it off spectacularly. What colors are making your mouth water right now?