Always Polished

30 Day Challenge: Day 6 ManGlaze ILF

2011-11-06T07:00:00.000-08:00

Hey Guys, Today I have for you ManGlaze ILF, it's from the Fail 2011 collection, and is an awesome matte seafoam green colour. I love it, it's sort of turquoise. Plus it's two polishes in one because when you add topcoat it turns into a sparkly polish!

Look at that shimmer! You just need topcoat to bring it out! I like it both ways, how do you like to wear ManGlaze?

Don't forget to check out the other bloggers doing the challenge!
Alexandria at Je T'aime Lacquer
Amber at The Polished Momma
Andrea at Addicted to the Allure of Beauty
Ashley at Follow the Yellow Polish Road
Caitlin at Something Creative
Carly at Lacquered Lover
Caroline at Good Lack, Nail!
Caroline at Shadow's Nail Art
Chelsea at Pretty and Polished
Gwen at Pudgy Nails
Ingie at Limited Addiction Nails
Jacki at Adventures in Acetone
Jamie at Nails Adored
Lindsey at Nailtopia
Natalie at Gems in a Bottle
Nory at Fierce Makeup and Nails
Rachel at Cherry Glam Girl
Sarah at Lucky Lacquers
Shaina at Haute Lacquer
Taylor at Nailed to the T
Thalie at Glazed Talons

30 Day Challenge: Day 5 OPI Excuse Moi!

2011-11-05T16:00:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys, today I have a new OPI Muppets glitter for you, it’sthe only one that’s not chunky in a clear base. This is Excuse Moi! It’s a light pink jelly base with small multicoloured glitter. It is way nicer than I expected. I actually didn’t think Iwould like this because I’m not a big pink person, but I really liked it. Isuspect it’s because of the glitter, lol!

I especially love the green and blue glitter, it makes this different from the normal pink glitter polishes you see.

What do you think? Have you picked up any of the Muppets colours yet? which are your favourites?

Don't forget to check out the other bloggers doing the challenge!
Alexandria at Je T'aime Lacquer
Amber at The Polished Momma
Andrea at Addicted to the Allure of Beauty
Ashley at Follow the Yellow Polish Road
Caitlin at Something Creative
Carly at Lacquered Lover
Caroline at Good Lack, Nail!
Caroline at Shadow's Nail Art
Chelsea at Pretty and Polished
Gwen at Pudgy Nails
Ingie at Limited Addiction Nails
Jacki at Adventures in Acetone
Jamie at Nails Adored
Lindsey at Nailtopia
Natalie at Gems in a Bottle
Nory at Fierce Makeup and Nails
Rachel at Cherry Glam Girl
Sarah at Lucky Lacquers
Shaina at Haute Lacquer
Taylor at Nailed to the T
Thalie at Glazed Talons

30 Day Challenge: Day 4 Zoya Jem

2011-11-05T14:28:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys, sorry I missed my post yesterday, but I did use anuntried, so here it is, Zoya Jem from the Smoke and Mirrors Collection.

Jem is a gorgeous dark vampy purple with gold microshimmerand a touch of pink. It is so beautiful, and my pics definitely don’t do itjustice. This would be an awesome pedi colour as well. I’m a big fan of darktoes especially in the winter.

Check out the gold!

What do you think? I've read that it's a dupe of Zoya Valerie, so if you have that, you probably don't need this one. But it's still pretty!

Don't forget to check out the other bloggers doing the challenge!
Alexandria at Je T'aime Lacquer
Amber at The Polished Momma
Andrea at Addicted to the Allure of Beauty
Ashley at Follow the Yellow Polish Road
Caitlin at Something Creative
Carly at Lacquered Lover
Caroline at Good Lack, Nail!
Caroline at Shadow's Nail Art
Chelsea at Pretty and Polished
Gwen at Pudgy Nails
Ingie at Limited Addiction Nails
Jacki at Adventures in Acetone
Jamie at Nails Adored
Lindsey at Nailtopia
Natalie at Gems in a Bottle
Nory at Fierce Makeup and Nails
Rachel at Cherry Glam Girl
Sarah at Lucky Lacquers
Shaina at Haute Lacquer
Taylor at Nailed to the T
Thalie at Glazed Talons

30 Day Challenge: Day 3 ManGlaze Mink Mitten

2011-11-03T15:57:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys, Today I'm showing you a polish by one of my favourite brands: ManGlaze! I love everything about this company, they're so unique and crazy and not afraid to stand out. Plus they have awesome customer service, super fast shipping and they include extras in your package. I got a sticker and a guitar pick with their logo on it. I don't play guitar but I'm going to make it into a key chain!

Anyways, on to this amazing polish. This is Mink Mitten, it is an amazing blingy lavender colour. Of course it's also matte as all of ManGlaze's polishes are. However, it's pretty shiny and doesn't really look that different with topcoat on.

Love the artwork on the bottle!

LOL!

2 coats, no topcoat

No topcoat

With topcoat. See what I mean, not much of a difference.

I purchased my bottles of ManGlaze from here: ManGlaze on Facebook

You get 10% off your purchase for buying from there. You can also find them on their Amazon Store but you don't save the 10%.

Have you ever tried ManGlaze? What's your favourite colour made by them?

Don't forget to check out the other bloggers doing the challenge!
Alexandria at Je T'aime Lacquer
Amber at The Polished Momma
Andrea at Addicted to the Allure of Beauty
Ashley at Follow the Yellow Polish Road
Caitlin at Something Creative
Carly at Lacquered Lover
Caroline at Good Lack, Nail!
Caroline at Shadow's Nail Art
Chelsea at Pretty and Polished
Gwen at Pudgy Nails
Ingie at Limited Addiction Nails
Jacki at Adventures in Acetone
Jamie at Nails Adored
Lindsey at Nailtopia
Natalie at Gems in a Bottle
Nory at Fierce Makeup and Nails
Rachel at Cherry Glam Girl
Sarah at Lucky Lacquers
Shaina at Haute Lacquer
Taylor at Nailed to the T
Thalie at Glazed Talons

30 Day Challenge: Day 2 and 11 Week Challenge: Week 3 Funky Fingers Cheshire

2011-11-02T09:58:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys, so because I am doing 2 challenges at once, I have to combine some posts. So today is Week 3 on the 11 Week mani challenge, and since I don't have a favourite polish (how can you choose with almost 300 bottles?) I decided to do my favourite colour instead. I also used an untried to stick to the 30 days of untrieds challenge. So for this mani I chose Funky Fingers Cheshire. It is the perfect shade of purple and I just love it! It is also a dead on dupe of Color Club Puccilicious.

Because purples are so difficult to photograph, I had to alter the white balance before I took the pic, so I apologise if the colours look off.

See how off the colour is? this looks blue, but it's like a dusty bright more reddish purple than this. It's kind of more the perfect balance between red and blue. If you've seen puccilicious, you've seen this colour.

These pics are closer, but still not exact. I'm sorry, I really tried!

Don't forget to check out the other bloggers doing the challenge!
Alexandria at Je T'aime Lacquer
Amber at The Polished Momma
Andrea at Addicted to the Allure of Beauty
Ashley at Follow the Yellow Polish Road
Caitlin at Something Creative
Carly at Lacquered Lover
Caroline at Good Lack, Nail!
Caroline at Shadow's Nail Art
Chelsea at Pretty and Polished
Gwen at Pudgy Nails
Ingie at Limited Addiction Nails
Jacki at Adventures in Acetone
Jamie at Nails Adored
Lindsey at Nailtopia
Natalie at Gems in a Bottle
Nory at Fierce Makeup and Nails
Rachel at Cherry Glam Girl
Sarah at Lucky Lacquers
Shaina at Haute Lacquer
Taylor at Nailed to the T
Thalie at Glazed Talons

30 days of Untrieds Challenge: Day 1 Natural Law

2011-11-01T20:30:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys, My friend Taylor from Nailed to the T made up a 30 day challenge and asked some of our other friends if we wanted to do it with her, and I said yes because it's a challenge to use a new untried polish every day for 30 days. Since I have a ton of untrieds I thought that this would be a perfect challenge for me to do. So for the next 30 days you will see a post every day of a polish I've never tried before.

If you want to participate, send a message to Taylor and get added to the list!

So for day 1, I chose a polish that is a franken of a very hard to find polish that you may know. It's Essie Starry Starry Night. My friend Laurie found a way to dupe it and called it Natural Law. It's a gorgeous dark blue jelly with small silver glitter throughout. It covered beautifully in 2 coats.

Isn't it gorgeous?

Extreme close up!

Here's a list of the other bloggers paticipating, so you can check out their untrieds too!

Alexandria at Je T'aime Lacquer
Amber at The Polished Momma
Andrea at Addicted to the Allure of Beauty
Ashley at Follow the Yellow Polish Road
Caitlin at Something Creative
Carly at Lacquered Lover
Caroline at Good Lack, Nail!
Caroline at Shadow's Nail Art
Chelsea at Pretty and Polished
Ingie at Limited Addiction Nails
Jacki at Adventures in Acetone
Jamie at Nails Adored
Lindsey at Nailtopia
Nory at Fierce Makeup and Nails
Rachel at Cherry Glam Girl
Sarah at Lucky Lacquers
Shaina at Haute Lacquer

Taylor at Nailed to the T
Thalie at Glazed Talons

See you all tomorrow for day 2!

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T22:20:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys! I know Halloween is pretty much over but I've been busy doing Halloween stuff with my kids so didn't get a chance to do a post today, sorry!

Anyways, you're going to see 2 manis today so I think that makes up for it!

The first mani is just a basic spiderweb. I used Kleancolor Metallic Purple and just a basic silver foil polish for the web. I used a paintbrush and painted the web on. Something interesting to note: the Kleancolor polish completely changed color once I put topcoat on!

Kleancolor Metallic Purple

Without topcoat

With topcoat, see how it doesn't look metallic anymore? I personally like it better this way, it turned into a rich glowy deep violet, totally gorgeous!

I played with the white balance to try to show you the true color of the polish. this is pretty close, but it's really rich in real life.

Now for my next mani, I used Kayla Shevonne again as my inspiration. I can't help it, she's awesome!

These are the polishes I used: WnW Black Creme, unnamed pumpkin polish with holographic glitter and crescent moons in a clear base, China Glaze Ghoulish Glow, Essence Lime Up. I also used a bit of yellow mixed with white but I didn't show that.

I used the pumpkin glitter polish on my thumb, index and pinky fingers to simulate the night, and the middle and ring fingers have cat's eyes. I followed Kayla's tutorial, and it was actually very easy.

I'm super pleased with how this turned out

And it glows! ahhh I love it so much!

What do you think? did you do anything special on your nails for Halloween?

China Glaze It's Alive

2011-10-30T07:00:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys, I'm trying to get as much Halloween stuff posted before Monday as possible, so here's a quicky of China Glaze It's Alive. It's from this year's Halloween collection. This is easily my favorite from the collection. I just love this polish so much! it's insanely sparkly, and yes it looks like a swamp or something equally gross, but that's the point, It's a Halloween colour! Though I could easily see myself wearing this all year round, it's seriously gorgeous!

It's Alive covered perfectly in 2 coats and was a normal glitter in that it was bumpy and a pain to remove. It's not bad if you use the foil method, but it still left glitter all over my hands after removal. All this is worth it though, cause look how gorgeous!

To help with the bumpiness I used one coat of Gelous base coat over the glitter, then one coat of seche vite. It's a trick I learned from my friend Traci. Coincidentally I also got this polish from her cause she's awesome like that and will go out of her way to help people out when they can't find something!

If you can still find this, snap it up before It's gone, you won't be disappointed!

11 Week Manicure Challenge: Week 2

2011-10-29T07:00:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys, Yep, it's week 2 already! lol! since I missed the first week I have 2 back to back for you!

Since week 2 is inspired by an upcoming holiday, what better holiday to do than Halloween? For this mani I used several pictures from the web to come up with something I liked. My biggest inspiration was Kayla from Nails by Kayla Shevonne. and the other images I found on Google and changed them a bit. I hadn't seen this exact mani done before though, so I apologise if you did it first and I didn't give credit, I just didn't know.

For the base I used Sally Hansen Green with Envy, for the bride's base I used a dark grey polish mixed with white so it was very light grey, and for everything else I used acrylic craft paint and a small paint brush from Michael's.

I apologise for the dry cuticles, I forgot oil :-(

Anyways, this is Frankenstein and his bride! I used a dotting tool for the eyes and the brides mouth, but other than that I just used a fine paint brush. The "bolts" on Franks neck are rhinestones.

This was super easy, and really fun, I got a ton of compliments and questions about this. I kept it on for over a week with no chips and only one nail had tip wear!If you do this mani, I want to see! send me a link in the comments so I can check it out!

11 Week Manicure Challenge: Week 1

2011-10-28T16:28:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys, Sorry for the brief hiatus, sometimes life gets in the way. Hopefully back for the long haul now!

Some Facebook friends and I are doing an 11 week maincure challenge, so I thought I'd share it with you all. It started last week and I did my mani but didn't get a chance to post it, so I'm going to post 2 this week and then get back on track!

So for week 1, I chose to represent the It Gets Better Project. This is a description of the society and what is does taken from the website:

The It Gets Better Project was created to show young LGBT people the levels of happiness, potential, and positivity their lives will reach – if they can just get through their teen years. The It Gets Better Project wants to remind teenagers in the LGBT community that they are not alone — and it WILL get better.

I am completely in supposrt of this project, and I wish that more people would show their support. Teen suicide from bullying is a major problem, and if more people were tolerant it would make a huge difference.

So this mani I did was on October 20th, which was Spirit Day, where everyone was asked to wear purple in support of LGBT teens to raise awareness for the It Gets Better Project.

I used Wet N Wild Buffy the Violet Slayer, and I apologise for the colour looking off in the pics, it was the only way I could capture somewhat close to the actual polish colour.

BTVS is a gorgeous Violet purple with tiny blue and pink shimmer particles in it. It's a bit frosty, but not too brushstrokey. (yep that's a word now!)

This was 2 easy coats with base and top coat

Hope you enjoyed seeing this colour, I absolutely love it, but then this shade of purple is my favourite colour, so what's not to love?

Please check out the It Gets Better website, and Take the Pledge to help spread the word!

Creepy Pumpkin and a Cuticle Tip

2011-10-18T12:47:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys,

Sorry it's been a while, I had a bunch of posts all lined up for a challenge I was doing, then ended up not doing the challenge, so I had nothing to post!

Anyways, on a FB group I am in, a friend of mine posted that her friend had a trick for nasty dry cuticles, and since mine were less than stellar, I decided to try it and document it for you, and I'm happy to say it worked! so thanks Casandra for the tip! (PS check out her blog, she mentions the tip there too!)

The tip is to use Olive Oil (yes just regular olive oil from your kitchen) and put it all over your cuticles, then wrap your fingers in bandaids and leave it on for an hour or so. I would suggest opening the bandaids before putting the oil on.


These are my cuticles before, I know you just gasped!

After the Olive Oil and Band-Aids are on

After the band-aids came off

Quite a difference huh? I left the band-aids on for about an hour and a half, then took them off, washed my hands and applied OPI AvoJuice lotion. Thanks so much for the tip Casandra, that is definitely gonna be a regular treatment here!

Now for my nails! For this mani I used this tutorial from the lovely Asami at Nails by Asami. check her out, she is amazing with the nail art! To do this mani you need nail strips to make the pumpkin face. I used Incoco since that's what is used in the tutorial and I found some on clearance for $2.99.

The polish I used

the completed mani

I love this mani so much it's been on for 5 days! I'm going to take it off today and do it on my toes using an orange glow in the dark polish!

Magnetic Polish!!

2011-10-11T21:27:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys! I went to the drugstore yesterday to pick up some OPI nail wipes, and as usual I came home with way more! I picked up two of the Layla Magneffect polishes (among some other stuff!). The one I have for you today is 05 Purple Galaxy, It is my fave shade of purple. The main colour is a dark vampy purple and the stripes from the magnet are a gorgeous violet purple. This colour is perfect for Fall, or anytime really, since purple is my favourite colour!


The top of the bottle has the magnet attached.

For this mani I first used a base coat of OPI Nail Envy Matte, then one coat of Kleancolor Metallic Purple, because I'd heard that if you don't use underwear then you have to use a thick coat or you don't get full coverage. I then used one coat of the magnetic, then one of Seche Vite.

Basically you just apply the polish, and hold the magnet as close as you can to your nail while the polish is still wet. There's a line on the magnet showing which direction to hold it against your nail. The magnet grabs the metal particles in the polish and makes the pattern on your nail.

The colour is off in these pics. It's more purple than blue. I tried so hard but my camera just freaked out and couldn't get it right! lol! It's closer to the colour on the bottle lid in the second pic.

In real life, it's really glowy and vampy looking. It's really beautiful!

Just a tip: you should wait till the polish is dry or almost dry before applying topcoat. or you could wreck the design.

Have you tried any magnetics before? Did you like them? What kind did you try?

Orly Fowl Play

2011-10-11T00:02:00.000-07:00

Hey Guys! Today I have a quick NOTD featuring Orly Fowl Play. Fowl Play is from the Birds of a Feather collection . I am in love with this polish! one of my online nail buddies was nice enough to pick this up for me, since I couldn't find it here in Canada.

Fowl Play is a dark reddish purple jelly with red/green duochrome flakies, small blue glitter, and silver micro glitter. You can really see the duochrome of the flakies in the bottle pic, but it's a little harder to see on the nail.

The wear time on this polish is excellent! I put this on Thursday night, It is now Monday night, and I took the pictures tonight! not one chip or peel and minimal tip wear in four days, I am impressed!

Applied in order: one coat OPI Nail Envy Matte, three coats Fowl Play, one coat Seche Vite. It needed 3 coats for full opacity. You could also wear a similar coloured underwear to conserve it, but I wanted to wear it on it's own this time.

Click to enlarge


Click to enlarge

Don't forget to vote for my next theme week in the upper right hand corner!

Intro

2011-10-10T21:52:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone,

My name is Alyssa, welcome to my blog! I created it to share my obsession with you. That obsession is nail polish!

I am a stay at home Mom to 2 great kids. Once my son is in Kindergarten (next September) I plan to go to school to become a hair stylist. It's something I've always wanted to do, so now I'm going to do it!

In my spare time I like my paint my nails (obviously!), read, and I'm learning to crochet.

I'd like to spend more time doing nail art, and maybe get good enough that I would be able to do tutorials for you!

Anyways, welcome to my little slice of the internet, I hope you enjoy and stay a while! Also in the right side bar, I have a poll, please vote for what you think my first theme week should be, the most votes will win!