Two Looks

Hi everyone! Today's late post is to show two looks that I've done when I haven't blogged.


The first look is my "professional" work nails; this polish is one of my favorite go to polish for work. I've gotten a lot of compliments on this nail polish and everyone always asks me which polish it is. It's Sephora by OPI Xox Betsy which is from Sephora by OPI collaborating with Betsy Johnson. Sorry for the lack of clean up, but other than that, it is shown in 2 coats and 1 coat of top coat. My nails are FINALLY growing back. Over the summer from July to August, they were BEAUTIFULLY LONG and then a tragic STUPID accident chopped 2 of my nails and I had to resort to cutting them :'( I haven't been able to grow them back as long as I like but they're starting to! Xox Betsy is a muted light natural pink with hints of purple/gray.

The next look I did was earlier this summer when my bf became the NY/East Coast brand promoter for Beautiful Struggle. The story behind the brand is : 

Beautiful Struggle is a clothing brand that I proudly started here in San Leandro, California.

What inspired me? Well, life simply did. As a kid, I was in a family that moved around constantly. I went from city to city, school to school and it seemed never ending. I could not get a girlfriend to save my life, I lost a ton of friends, and at points I did not even know who I was. I thought my life was a complete disaster. Eventually I realized that all the pain, sweat, and tears from my childhood only made me a stronger person. I vowed that inspiring others would always be one of the most important priorities in my life.

As my teenage years passed on, I fell in love with art. From photography to drawing and designing; I loved anything that allowed me to express myself. When I combined life and art, I found Beautiful Struggle. The term Beautiful Struggle has always been commonly used by people. It is my passion to expand the term and it’s meaning to an even broader perspective. Clothing. At first it was just an idea, but it evolved into something more. This became a way for me to show my art to the world and was the beginning of the brand.

People ask me, “How can a Struggle be Beautiful?” Well, every person has their own story just as I do. You may not have had the same problems like I did, but you definitely have felt failure and defeat before. The ability to look in the mirror, recognize those failures and defeats, and keep moving forward is a Beautiful thing. What you become because of the pain, the sweat, and the tears are a Beautiful thing. Without those struggles, who would you be?

Thank you to everyone out there that supports the brand, and believes in it as much as I do.

Much love. Stay Beautiful.

His brand mainly consists of clothing (for now) and it continues to grow as he is inspired by life. The 'LIVE' was from his tank top that he had over the summer and the thumb accent is the logo for his brand (I could've done better; but I haven't done nail art in a while). The photo below shows my bf modeling the tank top from Beautiful Struggle, and the picture was taken by ME 8D! We took this photo in the High Lines in New York City. The nail polish I used was American Apparel Cotton, in 2 coats and then I used both a black and red nail art brush for the lettering and accent nail.


I hope you all liked both looks that I have to offer today :)
Katherine

Pastel

Hello :) Today's a swatch day from the vault since I didn't want to change my nails after my pink leopard nails. For these swatches, I used plastic Nailene tips because my nails were nubs. They do look a little funny on me haha. But I hope you enjoy the swatches.

American Apparel Butter

pastel yellow. The swatch is 2 coats and 1 coat of top coat. I love American Apparel nail polishes, the formula is nice and it applies nicely with awesome color. Butter is one of my favorite pastel yellows that actually works with my skintone.

American Apparel Coney Island

a pastel pink. The swatch is 2 coats and 1 coat of top coat. It's suck a cute girly pink. :) The formula and application was awesome, typical American Apparel.

Essie Looking For Love

a pastel periwinkle jelly creme. The swatch 3 coats and 1 coat of top coat. It took another extra coat because the formula was kind of thin so it came out sheer. It applied nicely though. :)

6 more days until my giveaway closes ~ hurry and enter in

you can also click on my right hand column.

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

Minions :)

After watching Despicable Me on Tuesday and I saw on someone's blog I believe, a nail art of a minion - I was inspired to make a minion on my nail too. It came out pretty cute even though it wasn't exactly it but still, I'm happy with my nail art. :) But knowing I wouldn't be able to replicate it on my right hand since I'm right hand dominant, I avoided any nail art on my right hand.

TADAAAAA!~

Used:

Finger Paints Yellow Bikini (3 coats)

American Apparel Peacock for the jeans

OPI Alpine Snow for the eyes

and LA Colors Black Nail Art

Just looking at this picture makes me sad - since my middle finger nail broke :( it was torn on both sides and it broke today. Midget nail.. I hope you grow back soon♥

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

Prevail

Today I went to watch Despicable Me with the boyfriend and I loved it!♥ I thought it was funny and cute :). Before and after the movies, I went to 2 different Duane Reade's to get top coat since my Seche turned horribly thick & useless. At the first Duane Reade, there was no Seche :( but I picked up 2 bottles of nail polish, one which I never heard of before so I decided to try one out since the color looked really nice but it was $6 a bottle, kind of pricey for a drug store polish. After the movies, I went to the Duane Reade closer to the movie theater and found my Seche♥.

Swatches!

Essie Pretty Edgy

green, kind of hard to describe what kind of green but it's not very blue based though - that didn't help much, lol. The swatch is 2 coats and no top coat. For the nails picture, I used China Glaze Strawberry fields to create the strawberry and Pretty Edgy as the leaves of a strawberry. The seeds look like a fail, maybe because I rushed it and it looks awkwardly placed. Another time I'll redo the strawberry nails :P. Overall I like the formula, application, drying time and the color is unique in my collection since I don't own that many greens excluding mint greens. :)

Prevail See You In Chelsea

light sky blue with green shimmer. The swatch is 3 coats with no top coat and there's VNL. This is the brand that I'm unfamiliar with and as I googled it, I only found it relating to 'diapers' (drugstore.com) & Nubar. The price is eh, which made me hesitant but I wanted to try it out. So this isn't the type of nail polish to be the base coat but rather layered. I wanted to see which blue would go nicely under and here are the pictures. After layering them on top, I noticed that it was mostly a green shimmer than blue shimmer. You can't see it well on top of Essie's LOL or CC TMTYC but I like them best on those two, for the 'water' look that I'm looking for to do my nails with. :P

Thumb Claire's Fresh Water (4 coats), index American Apparel Peacock (2 coats), middle Essie Lapis of Luxury (2 coats), ring Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Fairy Teal (2 coats) and pinky Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau (1 coat).

As I was going home, the boyfriend and I were contemplating on ideas and he came up with the movie Titanic. Although I'm a noob at nail art this was a pretty good attempt. On my left hand I made the iceberg, though it doesn't completely look like one.. I'm most proud of it and the 'fail' Titanic, lol. On my right hand since I'm terrible with making nail art with my left hand, I tried to make a necklace relating to when Rose threw the necklace into the ocean. The pendent was kind of a fail but I do like the chain lol. Overall, it was a good experience and challenge for me because I usually do the same, similar or easy nail arts. :)

Used: China Glaze Ruby Pumps, Essie Chinchilly, Essie Lapis of Luxury, LA Colors Nail Art Gold Glitter, OPI Alpine Snow and Prevail See You in Chelsea.

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

Avatar Inspired

Recent purchase:
• Sinful Colors Green Ocean
• Sephora by OPI Leaf Him at the Altar
• OPI Mad as a Hatter (I ordered from a survey & got it in the mail 3/27/10!)

I'm thinking about getting:
• Sephora by OPI Go With The Flow-er
• Sephora by OPI It's Bouquet With Me
• Sephora by OPI Read my Palm
• Sephora by OPI Cover Me In Petals

For this week, I used Essie's Ridge Filling Base Coat, American Apparel Hunter, Sinful Colors Green Ocean and Essie's Matte About You. I think I'm officially obsessed with Matte About You. & this manicure blew me off guard with this ’mysterious' look - from looking at the bottle of Green Ocean, I REALLY didn't think that the glitter pieces were BLUE. I used 2 coats of American Apparel Hunter to reach the bottle color that looks really cool, unforuntately I felt like the color was dark and vampy by itself so I added Green Ocean (:

Until next time♥~,
<3katherine

March Madness Update

I haven't posted in a while and I thought I'd update my blog on what I've been doing recently. I'm planning to do more tutorials with the haul of China Glaze and Essie polishes that I got previously however, 24 hours isn't enough so these will come slowly. :( So here's an update on my purchase, nail sets/design & tutorial!

recent polish purchase:

- American Apparel Cotton

- American Apparel Hunter

- American Apparel Passport Blue

AND:

* Side story: I haven't shopped at the nail supply store that I've gone to in months & I came across the small place in middle school. So I entered the store and the workers greeted me with a hello. As I looked around - I couldn't decide what polishes to get. I went around and around for about 3-4 times between Dante, OPI and Essie and I hear the door opening and a few girls coming in. I went to look at the Dante polishes where they were and the male worker asked them if they were nail technicians or professionals & that they only sell to them. So I thought in my head, sh*t that means I can't buy anything :(. The girls immediately left after that since they looked obviously a student probably in middle school - since I used to go to middle school around there. After I continued to look around and gathered my courage in hopes of being able to buy the 3 polishes I selected. And to my happiness and hopes, I was able to! Thank goodness because I am no nail technician, student or professional.

-♥-

recent nail sets:

(1) Last week's nails

Base: American Apparel Cotton with black nail art to make zebra stripes and topped with Essie Matte About You. - I don't own any whites in my nail polish collection so I decided to get Cotton. It's a very nice white that doesn't make my fingers and hands look weird. The formula is thin since it is from American Apparel. The application was good - not bad. I believe I used 2-3 coats of Cotton to make sure the color was even. I used Essie's MAY to top it off and I absolutely love ittt!~ ^ o ^ The whole design came out so nice & perfect (especially my ring finger which I'm most proud of). The finishing touch was very nice and smooth. The other fingers were also really nice except that the black kind of got smudged when I put on the MAY, since it wasn't fully dry, but nonetheless, one of my favorite designs.

(2) For this week's nails

Base: Essie Turquoise & Caicos with white polka dots and topped with Essie Matte About You. - A beautiful color but formula was very thin. This was 3 coats but still came out nice. Not troublesome to apply. I may have overdone the polka dots a bit as I went along, lol! But it's okay - I adore this plain set. The MAY flattened the set but made it very cute. I received a compliment on them hehe ^ o ^ first one since I've started college in August - sad, I know.

-♥-

From the last post - I've only done different sets on the Misa polishes I have - here's a preview / final look & I'll be posting up tutorials on how to do them as soon as I have the posts typed and ready to go. Also there will be more tutorials in the future since I recently restocked on plastic tips to present my tutorials on. :D♥

For my second tutorial, I will present the steps {through pictures} of how I made the first design of the 5 nails in the picture above.

need:

~ Essie Ridge Filler {base coat}

~ Misa Wishing on a Star

~ Color Club NA54 Neon Yellow {nail art}

~ Kiss Nail Art White

~ Kiss Nail Art Silver Glitter

~ Seche Vite Quick Dry Top Coat

prep, base coat and two coats of WOAS.

color club nail art na54 and make swirl-ish strokes

use kiss nail art white to fill in the empty spaces around the neon yellow strokes

nail art silver glitter over the middle white strokes

white dots {mine are uneven x_x} and seal with top coat! ~

Until next time♥~,
KATHERINE*