Floam day!

Hello lacquered lovelies! Happy Tuesday :) I apologise for my absence... again. I might explain more in another post but for now, let's just say that I'm sorry, okay?

Today is a fun day! A bunch of blogger friends have decided to get together and do a theme post. With indies taking our world by storm, it can't be a surprise that we chose Floam to be the polish we all featured.

Floam is created by Amy of Nail-Venturous. You can get them from her Etsy shop or from Ninja Polish. I got mine from my dear friend Kellie - thank you so much, sweetums! <3

I'm sure we all know it by now but just in case - Floam is awesome. It's a mixture of matte neon teal and yellow glitter named after a very flammable toy for children. I've never played with Floam, never seen it, I didn't even know what it was until this polish haha.

I layered two coats of Floam over a coat of China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise. And I apologise for the photos. :( This is my fourth time wearing Floam and every single time I've worn it the weather has been crappy. I love neons but I hate photographing them. My camera makes them look washed out and I'm terrible at photo editing so... yeah. Floam really is neon and it's much more teal than my pictures make it look. Thankfully, there will be lots of other pictures to compare mine to, so just imagine it with... you know, more neon. I also added a topcoat - it doesn't bring out any sparkle, of course, since Floam is matte glitter, but this is a thirsty glitter!

This polish is seriously so cute haha. I think I'd find the toy less so, but that's fine, I never did like risking fires anyway.

What do you lovelies think? Have you managed to grab Floam yet? I have a spare bottle that I'm thinking of adding to a giveaway... would that be a prize you'd be interested in?

And a big thank you to the lovely Hannah of Polly Polish for organising Floam day! <333

Thanks for reading! Have a beautiful day!

Pink Wednesday: rhinestone bows

Hello lacquered lovelies! Happy hump day! I did some nails on Monday night that I knew would be perfect for Pink Wednesday so I knew I had to share them with you. They only lasted a day but I quite liked them... I hope you do too! If you follow me on Instagram (that's a link for the web interface of Instagram) you've already seen a cell phone (and edited to look all ~*~artsy~*~) photo of this one. :) I post pictures of my manicures on there pretty often... I try to do it every day. I'm only just getting into the swing of Instagram but if you want, you can follow me there! I'm just glittagloves of course :) And leave me your usernames if you want - I'm looking for new people to follow!

I started out with three coats of Nicole by OPI Kim-pletely in Love. Barftastic name aside, I do quite like this polish. It's a baby pink with shimmer that flashes aqua and hot pink in some lights. It's quite gorgeous. Even if it is associated with that vile family haha. After I applied the third coat on my ring fingers and thumbs, I added little black rhinestones around a light purple rhinestone to make bows. You guys know I'm obsessed with bows haha. It was slow going (I'm blind and clumsy on the best of days so I kept losing the damn rhinestones) but I was happy with the result. I used Essie To Dry For as a topcoat, since I knew I wouldn't be keeping them on more than a day. If I had intended to keep the manicure longer I would've gone for something thicker, probably China Glaze Fast Forward. :)

A lady at the bus stop was very concerned and kept asking me how I avoided getting the rhinestones caught on things. Kind of adorable. She was scared they'd get caught in my hair too... which they did haha. But I still liked them!

What do you lovelies think? Have you done any super girly princess manicures lately?

Thanks for reading! Have a beautiful day!

Models Own Hedonist and Ibiza Mix

Hello lacquered lovelies! Happy Saturday! Any plans for the weekend? It's a long weekend for us, yay! Though I'm still working today... oh well. Stat pay on Monday is pretty sweet.

Today I've got a quick post for you guys - I was excited about the promo shots of the Models Own Hed Kandi collection. I've not the slightest idea what Hed Kandi is, really, but a quick search tells me it's a record label? Anyway, the glitter (Ibiza Mix) looked really interesting, so I had to get it, of course. I added Hedonist as a last minute decision - I figured a neon coral would be a great summer pedi colour!

Before I get to the pictures, I have to say that my camera absolutely freaked out with Hedonist. My pictures are making it seem way more orange than it actually is :( I tried to fiddle with the colour accuracy in Photoshop but I have no idea what to do, so I wanted to say this ahead of time!

I used two coats of Hedonist and one coat of Ibiza Mix. :)

And here's Hedonist on its own. Like I said, imagine it more coral. It dries to a satin finish too, like most neons.

I love summer because it means wearing neons... but I hate summer because it also means photographing them!

Have you guys scooped up any polishes from the Hed Kandi collection? Ibiza Mix is so cool... I thought I'd have a dupe of it somewhere but I've yet to find one!

Thanks for reading! Have a beautiful day!

Sephora by OPI XOX Betsey

Hello lacquered lovelies! Happy hump day! How is your week going so far? My roommate brought home a lovely assortment of illnesses after she visited her family... we're slowly making our way through each one, apparently. Last week it was feeling nauseous, this week it's a cold that just won't quit. It seems like it's going away and then it just comes right back to remind us that nobody is safe. I'm dramatic today, no?

I don't know if this counts as a pink Wednesday post... it's a nude but it's a pinky nude so...? This is a pretty I saw in Sephora and HAD to pick up. I'm obsessed with nudes and neutrals at the moment and after finding my perfect neutral I was on the hunt for something that would be a little more nude on me. I knew that meant it needed to be more pink, because I'm ghostly with lots of pink... I had to give this a try!

This is Sephora by OPI XOX Betsey. I knew one of the Betsey $OPI polishes was scented so I avoided that one like mad (really not keen on scented polish - I like when my polishes smell like chemicals, thank you very much) but I asked one of the sales associates (a task made much easier by the fact that I had sold her shoes earlier that day) and she said that was the only scented one, as far as she knew. I decided to give this one a shot and I'm so glad I did - I love the colour and not a hint of scent that I could detect!

The formula is lovely too - thick but not too thick, just that perfect consistency where you barely need a second coat. In love. This was two coats!

I love polishes like this! They make me feel classy... I say as I type with Floam currently gracing my nails. ;)

What do you lovelies think? Have you found an awesome nudey colour lately? Are you a fan of the nude nails trend?

Thanks for reading! Have a beautiful day!

Mint chocolate chip nails with American Apparel Office and LA Girl Uninhibited

Hi friends! Happy Saturday! I hope you're all having a great day so far. And an early happy mother's day to any moms reading, including my own. Love and miss you, mommalom, can't wait to see you!

Today I've just got a quick post for you guys. A little while ago my friend Ania told me that Team Buy had a coupon offer for American Apparel polishes. I believe the deal was 5 polishes for $15, which is an awesome deal since American Apparel polishes are usually $9 each. I've heard a lot of good things about them so of course I had to try! I got a few for myself and ended up sending five to my mom too for her to try out - she loves a good creme so I picked four of them for her, and added a glitter as the fifth! I might show you the glitter soon... you know I couldn't pass up getting a bottle for myself! ;)

I'm exhausted and it's really late as I'm typing this so I'm not going to say it in this post, but I do want to make it clear that I'm not really a fan of American Apparel as a brand. Going into the stores gives me the heebs and their ads often baffle me. That being said, good polish is good polish, and the ones I've tried out of the pretties I ended up getting have been great.

All of this being said, I had a terrible experience actually getting these polishes. The customer service was atrocious. When I placed the order it said it could take up to ten business days for my order to arrive. That's fine, two weeks isn't bad at all. A month came and went and I hadn't heard a peep. I finally contacted them (I live on an island so sometimes our mail is really messed up) because like I said, not a word. I hadn't even gotten a shipping notification, although I do know some companies don't send them. Anyway, long story short, it took me contacting them for the orders to actually get shipped. My mom's came to her all in one package, the ones my friend and I ordered came in five separate packages. The customer service rep told me that the polishes I'd wanted had been on back order (all 15 of the ones I was inquiring about, apparently - my order, my friend's and my mom's), which isn't a problem - I'm annoyed that I wasn't informed of that and was made to wait a month without a word instead. Sooooooo. I work in customer service and I think it's super important. I chose to get the coupon for online redemption for a reason and that's definitely the last time I'll be ordering from their website. I'm glad that I got them and trying them out has been really nice but yeah. Even gorgeous polish formulas aren't enough to make me forget bad customer service haha.

Anyway, I used two coats of Office (it didn't really need the second coat but I did it anyway) and added one coat of LA Girl Uninhibited. Mmm black glitter.

Here's two easy coats of Office on its own. :)

I'm not sure why but I found a random silver glitter in my bottle of Uninhibited. You can see it on my ring finger. Strange, no? I thought it was amusing!

What do you lovelies think? Have you guys ever noticed how often I do manicures that remind me of food? I was thinking about it the other day and was amused haha.

Thanks for reading! Have a beautiful day!

Gradient zebra print

Hello lacquered lovelies! Happy Friday, yay! Any plans for this weekend? I work tomorrow and will most likely be doing nothing Sunday... my roommate comes home that night! She's been gone for about a week and a half. I know she needed the visit but it didn't make me miss her any less haha. I'm glad she's coming home... I've slept even less than usual because I've been convinced that someone is going to break in the house. That's a fear that always keeps me up but it's worse when I'm alone... I figure, nobody would know my body was here for days if it's just me here. I know it's irrational, but that's what I think haha!

So, on a less morbid notes, here are some nails I did a few weeks ago. I really wanted a summery animal print manicure so I decided to do a gradient... crazy how things can become insanely popular in just a couple weeks! It's gradient time everywhere, I know, so I hope you're not sick of them already!

I decided to use glass fleck polishes, because nothing says summer like a glass fleck <3 And nobody does glass flecks like China Glaze! I don't know what it is but they have it down to an art. All of my favourite glass flecks are China Glaze, I think! I started out with two coats of Ahoy! (which, judging by the amount I've got left, is one of my favourite pinks ever haha, maybe even one of my favourite polishes ever o.O). Then I sponged some of ChG Senorita Bonita on two thirds of my nails. Once that dried, I sponged ChG Drinkin' My Blues Away on the last third. I got Drinkin' My Blues Away from the lovely Jasmine when she had a blog sale recently! I was so happy about that, it was one of my biggest lemmings... old, chemically, smelly and gorgeous! Maybe I'll feature it on its own in vintage week... :) Then I stamped using Wet n' Wild Black Creme and Konad M57.

I was a bit impatient so I got some smudging when I added topcoat, but I was still pretty happy with these. I got a lot of compliments on them!

That's it from me today! What do you lovelies think? Have you worn any gradient manicures lately? Are you ready for summer yet?

Thanks for reading! Have a beautiful day!

Pink mini spam

Hello lacquered lovelies! Happy pink Wednesday! I don't know what it is but lately I've been wearing more pinks than usual. I had three swatches sitting around, edited and ready to post, so I figured I'd combine them into one post. So, enjoy (hopefully!) some mini pink spam :)

First up is Claire's Candy Shop. No attempts to hide the duping effort here, I think haha. This is a cute polish, I actually didn't mind wearing it. I used two coats - there was still some VNL but the glitter in mine was a bit lumpy (which you can seen in the macro, I think) so I settled for two. I'll probably thin mine before I use it again, though.

Next is China Glaze Dance Baby. Sorry for the cloudy picture, I wore it a few weeks ago and the weather was absolutely miserable! The formula on this was really nice, I used two coats. I'm not sure this pink does much for my skin tone but I wore it for a day anyway.

This last one is the result of me playing around with layering, like I seem to do a lot haha. I started out with two coats of Nicole by OPI Kim-pletely in Love (the name makes me want to vomit but I do like the polish). Then I added a coat of a franken by Jen, which she so sweetly named "Phuckin' Glitter" (the result of one of the best twitter conversations I've had in ages that happened about a month and a half ago), which is also totally awesome and the polish I keep turning to to update manicures when I don't have time to do a new one, added a coat of China Glaze Luxe and Lush, another of Phuckin' Glitter, then one more coat of Kim-pletely in Love. Luxe and Lush kinda got lost in all the sparkles and glittery bits but I liked this one anyway. And I'll say it before - I'm sorry for the dry cuticles, so ick!

Alrighty. That's it from me today! I know I haven't been the best about posting lately but I really will be trying to get back on the wagon soon. I've got lots of ideas, I just need time to follow through with them. And because people seemed to like the idea, I will be doing a "vintage week," I just need to wear all of my knockout (literally - the smell of some of them is unbelievab[ly delicious]) babies first. 

What do you lovelies think? Are you wearing pink today?

Thanks for reading! Have a beautiful day!