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

PINK POW

New nails today :) It took me a while to figure out what I wanted to do for my nails and I thought of different ideas. I will post in the future manicures that didn't work out for me though because not all my nails always come out perfect.

Bringing leopard/cheetah print back~

nail polishes used:

OPI Pink-A-Doodle

Nabi Pink M. Star

Sally Hansen Twisted Pink

LA Colors Nail Art Black

Here's OPI's Pink-A-Doodle by iteself, it's a shimmery sheer pink. It's soo adorable! The swatch is 3 coats and 1 coat of top coat.

Don't forget to enter in my giveaway ends October 6th~

Hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

Ruffian

Today's a new type of manicure that has been popular and done by many nail bloggers. But here's my take on it. This is my first Ruffian Manicure. A Ruffian manicure is basically a french manicure except it's been revolutionized so that the tips are actually at your cuticles and you're using various colors rather than the "French" pinks and neutrals with white lined tips at the end of your nails.

First, I did a regular manicure for the base of the manicure and it's the color that you want to be showing as the "tip." For my first Ruffian, I used OPI Teal The Cows Come Home, a shimmery teal. I did two layers of Teal the Cows Come Home over my base coat and put one layer of Seche top coat over.

I then used Duri Midnight Blues and started lower than my cuticles so that the base color would be seen as well as the second color. Midnight Blues is a medium Sapphire blue with orange/pink/red and silver glitters. I suggest you use only one coat for your secondary color or else it'll look thick between your base and secondary color. After that, I topped it off again with Seche top coat and tadaaaaa~! :)

Have you tried the Ruffian Manicure? If so and you would like to show off your Ruffian Manicures, I would love it if you'd email me your pictures, list the nail polishes you used and your blog link and it will be featured in my next blog post! :)

What do you think of the Ruffian Manicure?

Hope you enjoyed!

<3katherine

Birthdaaay

Yesterday was my birthday :)♥ I couldn't post yesterday because I was tight on time but here's my post and about my birthday (if you care).

I worked from 9:30 - 1:30 & went to take the subway but the train took forever (damn weekend service changes!!) to Murray Hill [34th St] to get my eyebrows threaded. I grabbed some food on the way and again the train takes forever & it doesn't even go to my stop so I had to walk from the closest station. -_- I got home was online for a bit and did my birthday manicure (pictures below), showered & as I tried to clip my hair it messed up my thumb nail on the ends but it's okay no one noticed! :P The place I wanted to go for my birthday turns out the wait was 1 - 1 1/2 hour wait (they don't take reservations) so we went to this other Japanese place and even though it was crowded we had a GREAT time. Afterwards we went hookah and everyone was sooo done! I had to meet my friend because she had a family dinner & so we wanted to go to Crumbs but we missed it by a few minutes :( So we walked and were about to go to Max Brenners for dessert, long wait so I ended up getting my birthday "dessert" from an ice cream truck LOL. And the walk to there and back was amazing. I'm so glad my birthday was one of the best birthdays despite the lack of planning. But I had an amazing time! And if you read this, thanks for reading it and caring =) Oh and on top of an amazing birthday, a little mosquito decided to give me presents -_- 5 mosquito bites, yay.

I've been lemming for Chanel nail polishes for a while and I wanted to spoil myself. Of course I wanted Jade but that's kind of impossible so I got Nouvelle Vague on eBay. It wasn't that bad the cost + REALLY quick shipping. I've read that the formula was thick and that many people didn't like it because of that. But here's my review:

Chanel Le Vernis Nouvelle Vague

robin egg turquoise. It's 2 coats of NV and 1 coat of Seche top coat. The formula was kind of thick but you could still work with it if you're patient and trying to make the best of it. My ring finger got bubbles for some reason [-.-] but I added another coat of NV and it was all better & covered up. :P I absolutely love the color and I'm happy that it was a good experience with my first Chanel. I'm definitely planning to get more in the future. The third picture is an outdoors with sunlight photo and the first two pictures were taken in my room with indirect sunlight.

Don't forget to enter into my giveaway!
& I'm definitely taking the suggestions to heart and I will post more nail arts & better pictures! I didn't get to do anything special for my birthday mani. since I was rushing.

Hope you enjoyed and happy nails!
<3katherine

Quick Update

Update: Life's still a little hectic for me and I'm trying to take my blog into a new direction, especially with a lot of the suggestions. Thank you to those who have gave me in their input and opinion which I'm definitely taking into consideration. I use a Sony Cyber Shot camera, not that good but I've had it for more than 2 years, on Saturday it will mark 3 years for my camera. I want to get a better camera, but I simply don't have the money but I'm definitely going to try saving, which is a hard thing for me to do. :\ School's crazy even though I only go to school 3 days a week (2 full days really and 1 class on Friday). I have an exam tomorrow so I'm just going to cram this post in.

I haven't gotten to use the suggestions but here is a swatch for you ~ I know you're probably tired of swatches, but I feel like I'm slacking off considering the past 3 posts are not really nail related except for the giveaway.

Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Xtreme Wear Purple Fiesta.

It's a limited edition polish that I picked up at Duane Reade. It's a burgundy shimmer with glitters. The swatch is 2 coats and no top coat. I really like this one because the color is different. It's like a light red/purple brown. :P

I hope to post more often as soon as I'm used to my newish schedule.

hope you enjoyed and don't forget to enter into my giveaway!
<3katherine

Featured Nails

Today I will post about nails, obviously, but not mine! :P My cousin Pauline came in last week for a few days to celebrate with the rest of my family for my grandmother's birthday. And of course, knowing I love nail polish and seeing my personal Facebook nail album, she wanted me to do them. So today's nails and toes will be called "featured nails" where sometimes/rarely I will post nails not of my own nails but what I did for my family. I've only done nails for my family; my two cousins and my mom (but I only do her toes).

Pauline wanted rainbow toes ;P However, this process took very long to decide which colors! And luckily my mom helped her out. I added glitter stars on her big toes but some of them came off during the night. Can you guess which colors they are? (answers are at the bottom of this post if you give up!)

For Pauline's nails, she picked out Wet N Wild's Tickled Pink (2 coats) and then I used some nail stickers on her ring and thumb nails which has a bow, one rhinestone and one pearl. I also lined the ends of her nails with silver glitter for the other nails.

- Essie Dramatic Drachmas (2 coats)
- Wet N Wild Dream Poppy (2 coats)

- Wet N Wild Blazed (2 coats)

- Wet N Wild Sunny Side (2 coats)

- OPI Banana Bandanna (3 coats)

- Essie Pretty Edgy (2 coats)

- Brucci Gianna's Rockin Blue (2 coats)
- Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Calypso Blue (2 coats)

- China Glaze Flying Dragon (2 coats)
- Confetti Belle of the Ball (2 coats)

1 more follower!!

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

Purrrrple Round 2

This is the last purple, I swear! I'll post up a comparison of the purples to see which ones are similar because after I bought them and was reorganizing my nail polishes, I was surprised because I kept forgetting that I bought a dark purple polish already! :(

Sephora by OPI Just A Little Dangerous. dark purple with purple shimmer. 2 coats and no top coat.

Sephora by OPI It's Bouquet With Me over Sephora by OPI Just A Little Dangerous. clear based purple and silver round glitters. 1 coat over Just A Little Dangerous & no top coat

which purple did you like more?

2 more followers!!! :)

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

Purrrrple

Today's a swatch + nails day. :) I've thought about my collection and I realized that I didn't have any dark purples (excluding Catrice Poison Me, Poison You because this was before I got it). And so I found myself picking up a bottle of this Essie (below) at the nail supply store.

Essie Sexy Divide

deep purple shimmer. The swatch is 2 coats and no top coat. Very beautiful and easy to apply. LOVE IT!

This is Essie Sexy Divide and Revlon Glitters Star. Star is a clear base with purple and silver glitters. This definitely reminds me of stars and the night sky! :P

2 more followers!
I'm totally excited and I added 2 more things into the giveaway :)

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

My Favorite: Dots

I did these when my nails were long, which was a while ago. I haven't gotten around to posting these and other swatches because there are more important updates haha. :)

Again, design credits to Pan; I think I really like doing this when I don't feel creative. :P

The base for my ring finger is Essie Playa Del Platinum (2 coats), which I finally got my hands on and I love it. The dots are Essie Splash of Grenadine, OPI Alpine Snow and OPI You're Such A Kabuki Queen. I used a dotting tool to make the dots :)

The other nails are Essie Splash of Grenadine (2 coats).

we can do this! 5 more followers ;) until giveaway♥

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

[Part II] Barielle Swatches

This is the last group of Barielle's that I got. :) I really like the bottle that you'll see in some of my swatches. It's a glass water bottle that I got from a restaurant. I love the bottle and I filled it up with paper stars that I made a long time ago.

Belly Dance. a light taupe shimmer. It looks really cute but it looks neutral compared to my skintone T__T; maybe if I get whiter over the winter haha! Or whitening soap ;) This is 2 coats and no top coat.

Blackened Bleu. the name says it all, except that the black is jelly. The thing I love about it is that the blue shimmers A LOT. :) The swatch is 3 coats and 1 coat of top coat.

Myrza's Meadow. a lime yellow green jelly with gold glitter that shines rainbow. I read a review about it and someone said it was one of the worse ones from the collection to work with. But generally, I had no problems with this nail polish except for the VNL - it shows the white tip but if you have short nub nails, you'll have no problems. The swatch is 2 coats and 1 coat of top coat. A little bumpy when it dries, but that's no problem if you always seal your manicures with top coat :). Still love it though! *my picture might not be as good; probably will redo this swatch.

Slate of Affairs. medium grayed out cornflower blue water-y base but not jelly (probably glass flecked; I'm no good with identifying finishes =x)with blue shimmer. OH HOW COULD I HAVE DOUBTED GETTING YOU? :( I'm sorry but I'm glad I decided to get you. :) You're totally awesome and beautiful. The swatch is 2 coats and no top coat.

Swizzle Stix. a greyed out sky blue/turquoise thin but not jelly base. This reminded me of Brucci's Kathy's Baby Blues but then that was more sky blue than this. :P The swatch is 2 coats and no top coat on my index and middle fingers & 3 coats on my ring and pinky fingers (for full coverage on my nail tips). Good formula, not hard to apply though it seemed a bit "water-y" but not really.

Overall: Barielle's formula is a thick, but mostly it's opaque when you apply it. You get a glob of polish when you're about to apply but it won't ruin your manicures. I still like the formula a lot despite the 'thickness.'

5 more followers until my giveaway!! & tell me your favorites in this group :)

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

[Part I] Barielle Swatches

Hello! :) Today's special because it's my 100th post! My swatches are going to look different because for Falling Star I used my right hand. Normally I always swatch with my left but since I had 2 nub nails I didn't want to swatch with my left hand but then as I was removing Falling Star, the nail polish remover stung my small cut on my index finger, which I was totally unaware of having. :P But swatching with 2 nub nails will actually help in this case, to see what looks nice with short nails :D

barielle part I

A Bouquet For Ava. a medium teal blue green water-y but not jelly base. This definitely reminds me of American Apparel Peacock, which I shall do a comparison later! :) I love it and it wasn't thick like Falling Star. :) It was easy to apply in 2 coats and the swatch does not have top coat and still so glossy. The only problem I have with this one is that it stains your fingers when you're removing it and you get oompa loompa fingers. :(

Decadence. a medium blue green but more green than blue shimmer. Okay, so I looked to compared my swatch with others and when I looked at other nail bloggers who blogged about this swatch, it was bluer than mine. I'm comparing mine to the screen and mine seems very green. Maybe I got a bad bottle? o___O;; I think I'm going crazy! The swatch is 2 coats and no top coat.

Falling Star. a medium cornflower blue creme with orange-y copper glitter. It was a little gloppy on my brush when I was applying but it didn't overflow onto my nail though. A great color and the glitter really stands out and it's unique. The different 'odd' (but not really) glitter really fasinates me. :P 3 coats and 1 coat of top coat. The third coat wasn't really necessary but I felt that I didn't apply it evenly. You probably need 2 coats, if you apply it evenly and well, unlike me. :\

Lava Rock. deep burgundy-purple-black with burgundy red shimmer. Such an amazing colorrrrr!!♥ The swatch is 2 coats and 1 coat of top coat.

Uninhibitied. a light pearl with gold shimmer. Really cute and shimmery. :) The swatch is 3 coats and 1 coat of top coat.

what's your favorite in part 1?

5 more followers until my first giveaway!! and I have everything ready for my giveaway

hope you enjoyed and there's more coming!

<3katherine

Fast like Flash!

So I received my Barielle package today, so unexpectedly quick! I ordered it on Thursday and got it today. AWEEESOME. (except that they didn't have June Bug on the site, bummer).

Group picture!!

Group 1 (left to right) - Falling Star, Myrza's Meadow, Blackened Bleu, A Bouquet for Ava and Slate of Affairs

Group 2 (left to right) - Swizzle Stix, Decadence, Belly Dance, Uninhibited and Lava Rock

Which ones would you like to see me swatch first? :) Comment!

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

SOTD and Ban

It's going to be a double post day today! So in my earlier post, I've purchase 10 bottles of Barielle Shades because of their buy 2 get 1 free deal. With that being said, I just blew $60. I was hoping to buy more but thinking about spending that much already has me skeptical and thinking about my budget. I do need clothes since the new school year has started and I've been neglecting clothing and focusing on nail polish. So I've decided to put myself on a nail polish ban for 23 days (just until my birthday because I might want to splurge as a birthday present). I was successful the first time I went on my one month nail polish ban and I'm sure I can do it again! But not to worry, I will be posting frequently, because I still have nail polish that aren't up yet and some nail ideas :)

Today's swatch is Love & Beauty Teal Blue. The swatch is 2 coats and no top coat. I absolutely adore this color! I love the lighter teal shimmer. Although it says Teal Blue, it just reminds me of a blue-green.

But this looks familiar - OPI Cuckoo For This Color perhaps? I'm definitely going to post up a comparison when I get a chance!

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

[review|img heavy] Viva La Nails

So I received my sample pack from Viva La Nails a little while ago, and haven't been able to fully review them until now.

On the left is my review for the star glitters. I call this Reaching for the Stars. It reminds me about my goals and dreams that I have for my future (:x Corny I know). Anyways so the base for this is Borghese Tutti Gelati topped with open flakes of stars in light pearl pink and yellow from Viva La Nails.

To apply the stars, I used on a wooden cuticle stick with a dab of top coat to be able to pick up the stars individually and I created diagonal tips with the stars as well as a whole nail full of stars. :)

The name for this one is a lyric from a Ricky Martin song, and you could probably guess it, Float like a Butterfly and Sting like a Bee. :) The base is 2 coats of Quirius Cotton Candy.

The black butterflies are nail stickers had little rhinestones on it, which I thought they were really cute. It's really easy to take off and apply onto your nails and it isn't complicated and it does not bubble up or anything like that!

The other butterflies were a surprise to me. Does anyone remember when they were young and they would have those fake tattoos that you apply by just putting water and holding it onto your arm? That's what these butterfly nail arts are! At first I was trying to peel it off like a regular nail art sticker and then it hit me. These were adorable and they are sooo easy to apply! Just dab on some water with your fingertip and hold it there for a few seconds and voila~ you got yourself a butterfly on your nails! :)

This one I call it Home Improvement. Because from the sample back I used, it reminded me of the stones that people use to create a path on their lawn or backyard. :) The base is 2 coats of Sephora by OPI Never Enough Shoes.

To apply this, I simply took one of my fingers from my free hand to stamp some onto my fingertip and then sprinkled it on the nail. I did this carefully to create tips as well.

I really like this and I think I'm going to try to create a path with this in the future. :) Very easy to do it yourself

hope you enjoyed and there will be a further review on more products from the sample pack!

<3katherine

[* these were sent to me to review]