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.

Floral Water Decals

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Hello again! I have a new favorite to share with you today . . . it seems like I say that a lot, but look at this. If you can apply a temporary tattoo, you can apply water decals to your nails. The water decals I have came in packs of 12, so you can make a big mistake on one or two nails and still be able to do the manicure. I bought these from lightinthebox.com and unfortunately the instructions on the website were wrong. I had to do some experimenting to figure out how to use the water decals.

You need a bowl of lukewarm water. You cut each nail decal out and I found that I could place the second decal in the water as I began applying the decal for the first nail. The decals are on a paper backing and will not come off the backing unless they are really wet. I peeled them off with my fingernails and tweezers. I then lightly dried the decal, centered it on my nail and smoothed it on. Once removed from the paper backing, the decals can handle a little bit of abuse, so if it didn't place perfectly, I could move it around a bit. I use a rubberized basecoat and that helped the decals to adhere to my nails. I cut most of the excess decal from the tip of each fingernail. Right after application, the decals didn't look completely smooth.

After all the decals were in place, I coated each nail with a layer of Gelous and wrapped around the tip, tucking the excess decal under the nail's free edge with the brush (I didn't use my fast drying topcoat for fear that it would bubble the decals like it did the stickers last week). The Gelous topcoat kind of melted the decals a little bit into the nail. This was a good thing. It made the decals look more like they were painted on than stuck on. It smoothed out the decals completely. Since the Gelous painted parts were a bit melty, it made removal of excess decal from the sides near the cuticles a little easier and it just peeled off with gentle scraping of a cuticle stick. After the Gelous had dried for a couple of minutes, I added the fast drying topcoat and there was no bubbling, just pretty flowers. I had to shoo little hoverflies away from my fingers all week because they thought my nails were really covered in flowers . . . silly little bugs.

Look at that! Six days and only tip wear. That never happens for me. I am usually a chippy mess by day six. This made me so happy and this mani was so much fun, that I decided to revitalize it with french tips in Revlon Orchid. It gave me three more days with the manicure. Nine days for a manicure. Not bad. I will definitely be purchasing more of these water decals in the future. If you like these, take a look at my giveaway and perhaps you could win a set of these wonderful water decals.

1. Ladybugs:  Ladybugs are spectacular killers of aphids and they are adorable. My daughter and I have been watching the development of ladybugs on our Japanese meadowood bush over the past couple of weeks. She saw and would talk to the larvae that look very little like lady bugs and I took a picture of one of the larvae that was changing into a ladybug. The other day, during a lunch picnic, a ladybug decided that it just wanted to hang out and take a little rest on my girl's hand. She was thrilled!

2. Finally finishing a project:  I had only the tiniest amount of sewing to do on my dress and I procrastinated, but it is finally finished. I really love it!

3. Sea Monster:  I gave my husband this knitted dice bag as a Father's Day present. He had been asking me to make it for a long time, but I knit it in secret. He loves it and tells me that it fits the perfect amount of dice.

4. Strawberry Shortcake:  I need it just once a year and it is perfection, just that taste of strawberry with lightly sweetened whipped cream on a tender biscuit . . . It is a good think that I really only crave it about once a year or I would not fit out my front door. My daughter insisted that we eat strawberry shortcake while watching Strawberry Shortcake . . . Goofball.

5. Shabby Apple:  I just received the dress I ordered using the gift certificate that I won a few weeks back. It fits me perfectly and looks just wonderful. I love it!

Illamasqua Nomad

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Hello, Dearies. I fell in love with Illamasqua Nomad the moment I saw it. It is a vivid green, that has an almost candy appearance to it. But this polish is more than just looks. It was an absolute dream to apply. It looked decent with one coat, but perfect with two coats. It was smoother and more even than most of the polishes I own.

I could have worn Nomad by itself, but I have been trying to show some simple nail art recently and it is just about strawberry season in New York, so I thought that these stickers would be the perfect touch on this candy color. These stickers applied smoothly to the nail, but the full nail sticker freaked out and wrinkled when I applied a fast drying topcoat. I have since experimented with the stickers using Gelous instead of the fast drying topcoat and the wrinkling did not occur. Next time I use the full size stickers, no fast drying topcoat; lesson learned.

I removed the polish after six days of wear. The manicure looks pretty bad, but I spent a lot of time pulling weeds while wearing the manicure. Wearing gardening gloves does not protect nail polish all that well, in my experience. To be honest, even if this really bad chipping had not been in part due to my being really hard on my nails, I would still love and be willing to wear this polish often. It was so incredibly easy to apply that it was a joy!

So, what do you think of Nomad? Did the stickers work with this manicure?

Five of my favorite things over the past week:

1. Lemon Eating Contest:  My nephew's birthday party was this past weekend and a lemon eating contest could be the very best kids' party game ever . . . at least for the adult audience. The kids make hilarious face, but keep eating. Lemon doesn't stain. Kids sometimes don't have the best breath, but lemon helps to freshen their breath. Awesome!

2. Preschool Graduation:  My little girl's preschool graduation was this week. And while I tend to be a bit of a pragmatist and find it a little silly to make a big deal out of such things (kind of like placing your flag triumphantly after climbing the first 1,000 feet of Mount Everest), the look of pride on my daughter's face told me that it wasn't just a silly ceremony.

3. Chicken Fajitas:  My husband grilled the most delicious chicken fajitas for dinner this week. Cooking outdoors kept the kitchen cooler on a warm day and grilling means that my husband did most of the work. Really good with a lemon garlic marinade and he said it was simple too.

4. Finding the last bottle of polish at Sally's:  I went into Sally's with my list of must-haves. Number 1 on that list was China Glaze Surfin' for Boys. I rushed over to the China Glaze Neons display and looked under several bottles feeling sure that none of them were the right color. It was not there. However, there was just what I wanted in the storeroom, so yay!

5. Stepping out of my comfort zone:  I am a little bit shy. It's not a debilitating shyness, but I am most at ease with my closest friends. When I talk with or spend time with people I don't know well, I am always afraid that I will just sit there with nothing to say and no way to easily leave the situation, that everyone will feel the awkwardness. My husband convinced me to go over and hang out with our neighbors last weekend and I was apprehensive, but I went over. I knew they were nice people already, but I had such a good time and got to meet a couple of their friends and play a silly board game. Good times.

Have a fabulous weekend! And wish all the wonderful dads an extra Happy Father's Day!

~Alexis

Revlon Timeless: Not just an Infatuation

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I love Revlon Timeless. Let me just get that out of the way.  L-O-V-E,  love. I love it without sparkly adornment. I love it with a little bit of flash from Milani Gems. 

Timeless applied really smoothly and evenly. I then splotched Gems onto the tip of my nail and a little bit down to the middle of my nail. I topped it all with Gelous and my quick drying topcoat.

I apologize for not having any 6 day later pictures. I tried to email them to myself and they got lost. I deleted them off my phone before I realized that the email disappeared. But the polish held up really well. By day 6, I had a small amount of tip wear and a couple of little chips on my thumbs and middle fingers. The polish was starting to lift a tiny bit off of my left index finger too. I will say this, even with only a tiny bit of glitter polish on the tips, it was a pain to get that glitter off. It took about twice as long as usual.

What do you think of Revlon Timeless? Do you prefer it by itself or with the multicolored glitter polish?

Next week, I'll show you Illamasqua Nomad. It is another love affair for me. Shh, don't tell Revlon Timeless!

Five things that I've enjoyed or celebrated over the last week:

1. Dress making. I've been sewing the Vogue 2960 pattern to wear at a friend's wedding in July. I'm finishing it right now. This is my very first attempt at sewing clothing and I'm just so happy that it will be wearable.
2. The Zoo. It is especially fun going with my little girl. I can see it all through her eyes. Her face was full of joy upon seeing an elephant!
3.Running Races. My family ran in a Kid's race this weekend, just for fun. My daughter always wants to run with me and we finally had the opportunity to run together . . . kind of.
4. Shabby Apple. I was very fortunate to win a contest for the first time ever yesterday! Rachael of Island Girl Insights and Shabby Apple teamed up to offer a gift certificate for some of the most beautiful clothes I have ever seen. Now, I have the problem of figuring out how to spend my prize.
5. Employment. I just got a call this morning to tell me that I got the job! Yippee!!

What did you enjoy over the past week. I look forward to hearing.

Have a great weekend.
~Alexis