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.

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!