HPB Presents: Dusty/Muted Colors

Boy am I squeezing this one in at the last minute!

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Hobby Polish Bloggers, a fantastic group on Facebook for nail polish bloggers, has put together a link-up this month with the theme "Dusty/Muted Colors."  You all know how crazy I am about things like holo and flakies and everything sparkly shiny, so I got a little nervous thinking about what the hell I could do for my mani.  I mean, did I even own a "dusty/muted" polish??

Then my husband kindly reminded me it could still be sparkly, but be a dusty/muted color.  And that made it easier :P  Here were my weapons of choice:

And here is the mani I created:

The base polish is Mystery Holo #4 "Dangerous Woman" by Different Dimension stamped with "You Are My Symphony" by MPolish using images from The Pro XL plate 03 by MoYou London.  I fully admit I LOVE how this turned out :D  Loooooooooove it!

What do you think?  Would you consider this Dusty/Muted?  You can say no - you won't be able to see my dagger eyes glaring at you through my computer screen :P  I'm such a stinker. ^_^

Be sure to check out the other gorgeous manis in the link-up below!!
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An InLinkz Link-up

HPB Presents: My First Indie Brand

This month's prompt for the Hobby Polish Bloggers group on Facebook is a very fun one - the theme is "my first indie brand."  This theme actually happened at an ironic time - I'll be coming on 2 years of having this blog, and my first indie polish is what prompted me to start blogging in the first place :D

My first ever indie brand was Colors by Llarowe.  I won a giveaway the creator was having of one of her discontinued polishes, and once it came in, I was hooked!  I'd never seen polishes like that before in stores, and when I went online to look at more colors by that brand, I was in awe of the holo!  It was all addiction from there ;)

The polish I won was "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes."  It is a lovely pale brown jelly with a pigment reminiscent of that "unicorn pee" stuff everyone talks about.  I decided to pair it with another Colors by Llarowe "K-9" and created this mani:

CbL still remains one of my favorite indies, especially for the way the super holographic polishes tend to watermarble!!  

Do you remember your first ever indie polish?  Tell me about it in the comments!  And be sure to check out the other fantastic posts below :D

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An InLinkz Link-up

HPB Presents: Gradient

*Contains Press Sample*

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Well, not just today, but the entirety of last week.  I had a baby, y'all.  Mama is tired!  I regret nothing.

NOTHING!

So now I bring you a post with some nail art on the longest nails I think I've ever had - so long that I actually trimmed them down this weekend because they were becoming weapons, and I really didn't want to go through the hassle of registering them.

The always-amazing group Hobby Polish Bloggers put together another awesome link-up for the members, and this month's theme is "gradient."  I've been sitting on the beautiful "Make It Merry" Christmas Trio by 77 Nail Lacquer for about a month, wanting to do something awesome with them, but not sure what. 

This gradient theme was the perfect answer :D  So here's what I came up with:

Holooooooo!!!  Hngggggggg so gorgeous...

So for this look, I used "Santa Baby" for the base color.  I then used the "fishnet" vinyl stencil from What's Up Nails and sponged a gradient over Santa Baby using "Under the Mistletoe" and "Winter's Kiss."  The end result is everything I wanted it to be and then some - probably the best and smoothest gradient I have done thus far in my nail art life.  Huzzah!

So whatcha think?  Let me know in the comments, and be sure to check out the other nail designs through the inlinkz below <3

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Christmas Trio purchased with a blogger discount.  All opinions and experience with the polish are my own and remain 100% honest.

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An InLinkz Link-up

HPB Presents Halloween!

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I'll admit it, for the *longest* time, I hated spiders.  With a passion.  My back would seize up whenever I saw one, mostly because every time I would have instant flashbacks to when I was 6 living in Virginia and decided to go out on my deck.  Had no idea that every feckin' spider in the neighborhood had decided to lay their eggs on our deck, and all the little spiderlings decided to hatch at the same time and march in a giant wave of tiny horror across the entire deck - up my legs, into my shorts and shirt, and into my hair.  You cannot simply brush tiny spiders the size of crumbs off of yourself, so I did the next logical thing - I screamed like hell, ran inside to the bathroom, and turned on the water, clothes and all.  

Scarred for life at the age of 6.  It's only been in the last two years that I've finally gotten over my huge fear of them - I blame the scorpions for that.  Dealing with those shrunken deformed lobsters from Hell is so much worse than a spider.  Spiders are cake compared.

So, in light of my recovery from spiders, I decided to do a spider design inspired by @BruisedUpDollie and @nailsbykball on Instagram for the Hobby Polish Bloggers October link-up!  Check it out:

I did a base coat of the one-coat wonder "I See France" by Digital Nails and watermarbled web designs using a silver by OPI and "Clearwater" by Pipe Dream Polish.  I then glued orange gemstones to each nail and hand painted the spider legs with acrylic paint.  I think they turned out pretty nifty, though the watermarble web look was a PITA for me.  I'm still trying to get the whole watermarbling thing down.

Whatcha think of this design?  Have you done anything similar for this Halloween season?  Be sure to check out all the other awesome Halloween designs by some of the members of Hobby Polish Bloggers through the inlinkz below!!

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An InLinkz Link-up

HPB Presents Fall!

***Contains Previous Press Samples from M Polish***

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Metaphorically speaking, of course.  Still getting into the high 90's here.  I feel your pain, Spongebob.

For this month, the lovely group Hobby Polish Bloggers on Facebook has put together another link-up with the theme "Fall."  It was hard for me to figure out what I wanted to do - freehand?  Watermarble?  Stamp?

Ah!  Yes!  Stamp!!  I purchased the Secret Garden plate set from Bundle Monster a while ago, and knew I wanted to use one of those plates.  I also knew which Pahlish I wanted for the base, as it was one of the first colors that popped into my head as a fantastic Fall background - "The White Tree."  And I used 3 M Polish colors, because of course!  They're the best after all ;)

With The White Tree as my base, I stamped the leaf images from the tree onto my nails using a mix of Penny (prototype), I Need A Vacation, and Guilded all dotted over the leaves.  

It created the perfect fall leaf color mix!!  I'm so glad it turned out!!  And it happened to match one of my favorite fall sweatercoats very well ^_^

Here's a macro of each nail

I love this mani!!  I love it so much that I decided to leave this mani on for a few days :D  What?  Crazy!!

Be sure to check out the other beautiful manis from other HPB members through the inlinkz below!!

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An InLinkz Link-up

HPB Presents NEON!

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It's so true... For my husband and I, Saturday's are usually more like Fridays, because that's when the free babysitters (a.k.a. Grandma and Grandpa) already had their Friday night (because they don't have kids at home anymore and can do those fun things like going out again...dammit) and are available to watch the munchkins so we can go do an adult thing.  Like go grocery shopping WITHOUT the kidlets.  Or clean the house WITHOUT children uncleaning as we go.

My God, we are so lame...

ANYWHO, I've got a fun post for you today!  I belong to an awesome group on Facebook called Hobby Polish Bloggers.  It's a great hub for all us polish bloggers to talk about the hobby and ask for advice and such.  And it's just a fantastic gathering of amazing gals ^_^  I'm very happy to be a part of it, and that group has helped me many, many times in this little polish blog journey of mine.

Every month, Steph, the admin of the group, puts together a link-up for all of us to join (if we so choose) and we all create a mani inspired by a specific theme.  I've been trying for months to get a mani done for these link-ups, but either press samples or life got in the way.  I *finally* was able to participate in this round, and at the same time was also finally able to use the new Jior Couture Summer collection I ordered when it launched!!

I was inspired to do a design based off one of my favorite games - Gummy Drop!  All those neon fruit candies in those appealing patterns called to me.  They said, "MAKE US INTO A MANI" in creepy little candy voices.  So I did a random pattern dotticure - I was originally trying to make a neon "wave" pattern, but it didn't really turn out too well :P

Oh!  OH!  But here's the best part - it gloooooooooooooows!!!

Aw yeah!!  That purple though - what a brat.  She did NOT want to glow.  At all.  Had to leave my camera shutter open for 5.5 seconds.  What a snob.

I used all the colors in the summer collections sans Geek in the PINK and GOLD rush, and topped the mani off with Jior's topcoat, which they included as a freebie in my order ^_^  I'll definitely be revisiting this collection again soon with more neon goodness :D
 
What do you think of this design?  Did you get any of the new summer colors by Jior?  Be sure to check out the other manis in the inlinkz below! <3

An InLinkz Link-up