ABC Nail Challenge - Jester Ate the King Cake

ABC Nail Challenge
Day 10
Misa Jester Ate the King Cake

Jester Ate the King Cake is a bright pastel yellow jelly-creme, which is shown in 3 coats. Definitely one of my favorite yellows, especially sometimes when I don’t buy many yellows (I feel like it clashes with my skin tone). Bright pastel yellows I feel suit with my skin tone compared to regular bright yellows. 

ABC Nail Challenge - IDK

ABC Nail Challenge
Day 9
China Glaze IDK

IDK was a part of the China Glaze OMG Collection in, I believe, 2009. This collection along with Kaleidoscope are one of the most popular and hard to find polishes, minus eBay. IDK is a purple holographic shown in 2 coats. This picture was taken with indirect sunlight. To see its crazy holographic, you can also look at the color under the kitchen stove light. 

ABC Nail Challenge - He's Going in Circles

ABC Nail Challenge
Day 8
China Glaze He’s Going in Circles

He’s Going In Circles is a part of the China Glaze Kaleidoscope Collection, which was released around 2009. The nail polishes from this collection is hard to find now, unless you go to eBay and pay more than $10 a bottle. It is easily one of the best collections China Glaze released. The collection contains holographic polishes and He’s Going in Circles is a holographic light green (shown in 2 coats). I love, love, love this polish to death. Another crazy story is that I had this polish a while back and sold it (TERRIBLE ME) but then I had to get my hands on it again (I missed it so much T__T). 

ABC Nail Challenge - Greenport

ABC Nail Challenge
Day 7
Essie Greenport

Greenport was a part of the North Fork Collection a while back. At the time of the collection, I did not pick up any of those, CRAZY RIGHT?! Then I saw a ton of swatches of the polishes and I became jealous and full of regret. But then one day, I was able to swap a polish for this lovely beauty on MUA (MakeUpAlley). And now I’m happy that I finally have it! Greenport is a turquoise creme that is opaque in 2 coats. The formula and application was smooth but the drying time can be improved on this though, but no major complaints!

ABC Nail Challenge - Fireberry Red & Fluo Blue

ABC Nail Challenge
Day 6
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Fireberry Red
Joe Fresh Fluo Blue 

The reason why I posted 2 photos for Day 5’s challenge is so that I can show more pictures of polishes that I never used or I used but never photographed it. But today’s challenge has 2 polishes, Fireberry Red and Fluo Blue.

Fireberry Red is a deep red with sparkly red and gold glitters and this is shown in (I believe) 2 coats. Fireberry Red was one of the specialty polishes from the Xtreme Wear line, but if you stalk Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens, you might be able to find one lingering around; that’s how I found mine LOL.

Fluo Blue is an azure blue creme that is shown beautifully in 2 coats. I definitely LOVE the formula and application of Joe Fresh polishes and I’m so glad that they opened a Joe Fresh near my work (5th Avenue, NYC) so then I can stalk their nail polishes! It was 3 for $9 and I believe $4 each? I got a few polishes from there and I would definitely consider buying more, since they are at a good price!

ABC Nail Challenge - Electra Magenta

ABC Nail Challenge
Day 5
China Glaze Electra Magenta

Electra Magenta was a part of the China Glaze Tronica Collection, which is a ‘holographic’ collection that came after the OMG and Kaleidoscope Collections. I guess it was supposed to be similar to the previous 2 holographic collections, but honestly I liked the other two more than Tronica. Anyways, Electra Magenta is a magenta holographic polish which also highlights a lot of the silver in the polish as well. The holographic isn’t as apparent as the polishes in OMG and Kaleidoscope but it does show in the sun and light. Electra Magenta is shown in 2 coats. 

ABC Nail Challenge - Dusty Miller

ABC Nail Challenge

Day 4
Priti Dusty Miller

Dusty Miller is a dusty jade green with gold shimmer. The gold in the bottle looks amazing but for some reason, it doesn’t translate onto the nail -______-. Nonetheless it’s a great polish and it’s the first Priti Polish I’ve tried. I never really tried Priti Polish, maybe because it was approximately $11 a bottle. But I got this deal from livingsocial where I paid $20 and got $40 worth of credit onwww.bloom.com, so I tried it out and got nail polishes! But that was a while back so I’m sorry I couldn’t share with you earlier! >.<;

ABC Nail Challenge - Crystal Ball

ABC Nail Challenge

Day 3
China Glaze Crystal Ball

Crystal Ball might be one of the older China Glaze polishes before the B3F (correct me if I’m wrong), since it has a silver cap. Anyways, Crystal Ball is a burgundy/dark scarlet creme that’s packed with small holographic glitters. This polish was VERY easy to work with and it was opaque in 2 coats. 

ABC Nail Challenge - Bisbee

ABC Nail Challenge

Day 2
HAREpolish in Bisbee

Another great polish by HAREpolish. Sorry for the picture being a bit blurry! My camera isn’t super awesome :\! Bisbee is a teal jelly-creme that suspends gold hexagon glitters. This took about 2-3 coats to get opaque but looooove it!

You can purchase HAREpolish at Nikole’s etsy store. Most of the time her polishes are sold out, so you can either sign up for the email list to get emails when she restocks or follow her on Facebook.

Galaxy

Hello everyone! Today's a non-nail post but it uses nail polish, so it's relevant in some way right? :P Hurricane Sandy is slowly approaching NY, which is keeping me home so I finally found time to vamp up this wooden jewelry box I purchased from an art store in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It's a plain wooden box that I got for $4. I planned on doing something but then I decided I wanted to make it a galaxy box. I only did the top of the box, and I'm considering on whether I should do the entire box or not.


It started with this plain box like this:

Then, using a black acrylic paint, I painted the whole box black to create the base for the galaxy.

Using a number of polishes (I will list below) and a make up sponge, I created the galaxy look on the top of the box.

Polishes I used:
Cover Girl Boundless Color - Disco Dazzle
Essie Pink-A-Boo
Klassicolor (same exact polish as Kleancolor) - Aurora
Pa Nail Color - A125
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Fireberry Red
Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Purple Gala
SaQu - 635
Wet N Wild Coloricon - The Crown is Mine
Zoya - Crystal


Thanks for stopping by and hope you like this post! :)
Katherine

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

Back

Hello everyone :) I would like to officially announce that I am back on Blogger, Tumblr wasn't the place for me to blog about nails as much as I thought I would like it. I did keep my old entries from Necessary Nails, but I'm not sure if I want to start fresh and delete everything or keep it. I know sometimes people (maybe) reference anything I've done but I don't know completely enough to keep or delete them. I've changed the blog name and URL to The Nail Renaissance. My challenge is to try to post more, which I've always wanted to try to do but I haven't been on a good schedule to be consistently painting my nails in colors that aren't work appropriate. But I do want to challenge myself more.

I'm posting to announce that and I would also like to see any suggestions for any wine/burgundy colors. I've seen someone with that shade on and I definitely would like to try it out. So please suggest away.

Here's a photo of reference from All Lacquered Up -

I'm happy to announce that I'm back (hopefully posting more) =)

Katherine

ABC Nail Challenge - A Positive

Hi guys! I'm deeply sorry about not keeping up with this blog. Despite the summer time, I've been working and keeping myself busy. It isn't the best at taking certain colors to its justice or it doesn't even come up as the right color on the camera, and I'm no good with cameras and changing the settings to make it work, but hopefully I can try to learn.

A Positive by HARE polish. HARE polish is one of my favorite indie brand because I LOOOOOVE glitter! And I love how the polishes are jelly and the glitters are suspended in the colors. Just beautiful for me :)

Thanks for stopping by and happy polishing!
Katherine

Khloe Had A Little Lam Lam

Hey everyone! I hope you all are doing well. I have a ton of pictures and nail polishes to post but it'll come slowly so I hope you can bear with me. I went on a few trips and orders for more polishes lol. Yes I know I BARELY posted any from my last haul but hopefully I can try to do that in my free time. While I had my "longer" acrylics, I decided to swatch because my nails wouldn't be nubs and so it would look nicely with longer nails. But right now, my nails still have acrylic but they are shorter since two of them broke on the ends so I filed all the other ones down. I think I like this length more than it being longer.. it's so much easier at work too especially when I have to use the handheld systems to ring customers up. :)

When the Kardashian Kolors came out, the main color I was obsessed about was Khloe Had A Little Lam Lam and I've been looking for a while... luckily they started popping up at Duane Reade so I was able to get my hands on it. Here's a swatch with 2 coats. It's a gorgeous teal creme with a nice shiny finish and top coat. It's a bit dark than what you've probably seen through other swatches but it is a bit dark like how it is shown in the picture but a lighter.

Thanks to all my followers who continue to follow and be patient with my blog :)

Katherine

Topless & Barefoot

Hello everyone! Sorry for not blogging, my nails haven't been well and I've been working a ton while going to school. ]: My nails have been nubs and they haven't grown. Recently I made a trip to the nail salon for acrylic tips in hopes of allowing my nails to be protected while growing and then using silk wraps to fix my nails from being weakened by the acrylic. I know it is bad but I'm desperate for my nails to grow longer. I do have polishes to swatch but today I want to blog about a nail polish that I keep coming back to, especially when I work, it's the perfect professional color for me.

Essie Topless & Barefoot. The first time I used this was at the nail salon getting my toes done because I needed that massage after wearing heels for my 8 hour work shifts. :X I loved the color which prompted me to buy it and now I even purchased a second bottle! Topless & Barefoot is a creamy pink with hints of nude. This is definitely one of my favorites and go to polishes and I'm always getting compliments on this color. I haven't painted in a while so my nails are a bit more messy and I couldn't clean up since I'm afraid the pure acetone will mess up the acrylic. :\

Do you girls have any go to polishes that you always to go? If so, share! :)

Thanks for stopping by and happy polishing! :)
Katherine

My Address is Hollywood

Hello everyone! I hope you all have been doing good. Today's the first day of snow (not counting the snow we've had in October in NYC), lol. It's not much but thankfully it's my day off ^_____^! Anyways, I've been starting to watch Prison Break, yes it's quite an old show now but I never had interest in the show back then until recently, the bf told me to watch it as he was watching it. I love the show and it keeps me so interested in knowing what's next. I started my free trial on Hulu Plus just so I can watch the show continuously with HD! Lmao.

Enough about me today, and here's today's nail post. OPI My Address is Hollywood is a dusty rose pink creme with shimmer that doesn't really show on the nail. But the shimmer when you look in the bottle is gorgeous! This is shown in 2 coats and 1 layer of top coat.

It was a bit hard to capture because it's not as bright in person. The first picture is with flash and the second picture shows how it looks as close as it is in person.

Thanks for stopping by and happy polishing! :)
Katherine

Mesmerize

Hello everyone! I hope your week has been going well so far. :) Today's post is to show my recent mini haul I had on the 4th. The funny thing was, I wasn't expecting to go but the train I normally take home had to go to a different route so I thought, why not since I haven't gone there in a while. To my surprise I ended up with a number of polishes that I love. Here's two today to show and a picture of my haul.

top - OPI My Address is Hollywood, Skull & Glossbones, Save Me, Pink Friday, Did It On 'Em & Fly

bottom - Essie Luxeffects Shine of the Times, Mesmerize, China Glaze CG in the City, Midtown Magic  & Skyscraper and Duri Divas Only

The first polish I'll be showing is Essie Mesmerize, I've actually wanted this polish a lot but I never got it, thinking I had something similar but after getting it and swatching, I LOVE IT! The color and the formula is rich and beautiful!♥ Super smooth application and the color is so glossy! Mesmerize is more like a royal blue creme, which reminds me of OPI Dating a Royal but I feel like Mesmerize had a better formula and DAR is more jelly like. This is shown in 2 coats, however, I could've gone with one coat too.

The next polish I want to show is Essie Luxeffects Shine of the Time, which is similar to Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Hidden Treasure (the flakie one). This is only one coat of SOTT over Mesmerize and I feel like SOTT applies more flakies than HT. However, it's a pearl like clear base filled with tons of flakies that shine orange, red, pink, yellow and green. This is an easier substitute for those who don't have Hidden Treasure, but another option would be Nubar 2010.

Thanks for stopping by and happy polishing! :)
Katherine

p.s. - Did you notice that I'm trying to make my pictures look more professional? Lmao, I've kept it in mind that I should've been using a plain background so that it doesn't overpower the polish but sometimes I get too excited and I don't have the proper background to make the picture really bring out the polish. Tell me if you guys like this!

For the New Year

Hello everyone! Sorry for the late post for the beginning of the New Year! :( I've been so busy working, that I even hit overtime hours at work, despite being a part time! LOL. I need to take advantage of that since school will be starting in about a little over 2 weeks! Anyways, before the New Year, my cousins came to visit me from Atlanta without their mom for the first time since November :(. It definitely wasn't the same but they definitely needed to keep the tradition of their mom coming here a few times a year. I stayed by my cousin for more than a week and she felt sad when I wasn't sleeping next to her the night I left. :'( But I am glad she and her brother came because it keeps my grandma happy and company while they are here. Anyways, to make it short, my cousin also stayed over my house so I did her nails and my nails. :P Her nails were based off of my nails and I added onto my nails based off of what I did on hers :P


For my nails, you can't really see the colors as well as I thought they would show up on my camera. But I tried to do the ombre mixed nails with Catrice Let's Mauve On on my pinky, China Glaze Something Sweet with OPI Teenage Dream layered over it on my ring finger, OPI DS Reserve on my middle finger, OPI Glitzerland on my index finger and for my thumb I have Misa Spark My Heart That's A Start. I also want to start displaying my rings along with my nails, something different each time to also display my growing collection of rings :P The bird ring was ~$4 on eBay, and I ordered the black version as well! I liked this ring because I believe Forever21 had a ring like this but I didn't get a chance to get my hands on it. And it is a two finger ring.

I added the leopard print on my thumb after I added it onto my cousin's ring finger as her accent nail. I used China Glaze Something Sweet for the spots.

For my cousin's nails, I did OPI Teenage Dream layered over China Glaze Something Sweet, because she really liked the layering combination on me. :P And as she saw me taking pictures of my nails, she wanted some "professional" pictures of her nails as well! LOL. The ring is from H&M for ~$6? The ring was one of my first rings that I got when I started with my ring collection.

This last picture is the current picture of my desk space that I rearranged after I got the jewelry stand, the sparkly K and the Hello Kitty (right underneath the K) for my secret santa this year (THANKS SO MUCH JENN♥♥) and I love it!!! Also, my cousin got me a Hello Kitty picture frame holder that says hello. I have some pictures to add but I haven't added them because my mom says they're going to get dusty, so she wants to laminate them and then put them up there. Also the pink and green Hello Kitty Plush and the Panda Hello Kitty was given to me by my cousin too! The Hello Kitty picture is something I got last year when they were launching the Hello Kitty collection in Sephora. The white organizational divider holds my highlighters for studying in the back, my nail tools in the front and my base and top coats on the side. It's magnetic but it doesn't hold itself up with so many things in it, so I have 2 watch boxes underneath it to make it higher for when I have pictures on the picture holder. 

Thanks for stopping by and happy polishing! :)
Katherine