From the Claw-Set: Feb 2012

February was a pretty slow nail month. I did a total of four mani's the whole month. My first two mani's turned out so horrid that I will not show you the pictures I took of them.

The first one was an unlabeled black creme with silver micro-glitter from Hot Topic. It was thick and clumpy. The lid is ultra tiny, like something off a model paint jar and it was very hard to hold. I ended up taking the polish and pouring it into a new bottle with some nail polish thinner in attempts to salvage it because I like the black with silver color scheme.

My next polish was Wet n Wild "Black Creme," which I've featured here before. I didn't bother to clean up, and took only one picture of it just for prosperity's sake I guess.

Valentine's Day and my wedding anniversary are a week apart so I celebrated those with essie "Wrapped In Rubies". I wish the gold micro-shimmer showed up on the nail like it did in the bottle. Perhaps a thin coat of Orly "Sugar" on top would give the same effect?

My last for February was Zoya "Tama" and oh, how I love my Zoya! The formula is thin but easy to work with and they make such pretty colors! Tama is a bright glowing cool-toned pink with lots of shimmer.

Soon I will be bringing you the Claws of March!
Happy Scratches!
carakitty   >^. .^<

From the Claw-Set: January 2012

Hello my lovelies! I apologize for my absence. I went back to school for a quarter and was really trying to succeed this time. Unfortunately, I've learned that my school just isn't compatible with the way my brain learns, and what life throws at me in general. So, I won't be going back to that school but I haven't given up on getting a Veterinary Technician degree and certification. It's just on hold for a little while, again.

I haven't been posting, but still took pictures of nearly all the mani's I've done in the mean time. So the next few posts will be featuring these mani's from my "Claw-Set", which is much more fun than simply calling them "Archives", right?

Here's January! First, I made another Frankenpolish. I actually dreamed this up for my dear friend M, who is my official local coffee shop and nail stuff haul buddy. The last time we went out, we stopped into Ross and saw some interesting Cosmetic Art polishes. She wondered how they'd look together and I promised I'd play with them when I got the chance. This is what I came up with:

The dusty greyed lilac and flakies are the Cosmetics Arts polishes and I put in some Revlon "Facets of Fuchsia" as well. I need to play with this some more. I think it needs to be brighter and have more purple to live up to it's "Twilight Sparkle" name I gave it.

Next I did Rimmel "Blue Bird" and I really wish they'd bring back these exact polishes. I love the bottle shape, size of brush, the formula, drying time, geeze almost everything about this line!

Then I did China Glaze "Ruby Pumps" which is one of the greatest reds out there! It has a nice squishy cherry red jelly base and ruby red glitter which glistens in the most jewel like way. Check out that bottle too. It's so cute and little and tiny and it just makes me want to squeal! It comes in a full size too which I will get my hands on, eventually.

The last of January was Rimmel "Zietgiest" which is probably my most favorite multi-chrome of all time. It flashes purple, bronze, golden-green, and fuchsia. It's impossible to get all of it's awesomeness in one shot, so here's a trio of images attempting to show off the best of it.

I hope you enjoyed the January claws! I have a lot more free time on my hands now, so stay tuned for the upcoming installments of the rest of my early 2012 claws and the current ones to come!

Happy Scratches,
carakitty >^. .^<

Happy New Year Spam! *PIC HEAVY*

Happy New Year, dear readers!

I apologize for falling so far behind with sharing my manis with you. I hope you don't mind a spamfest. At least there's no calories to be gained here! =)

First one up is from Thanksgiving. I wore Revlon Top Speed in "Mistletoe".

The first color of December was OPI "Sapphire in the Snow"

Then I added OPI "Merry Midnight" on top.

After those came off I chose to wear one of my frankenpolishes, a light grey which I named "Dove".

Then I did the layering thing again, with China Glaze "Snowglobe" on top.

Christmas Eve and Christmas day found more China Glaze on my tips! This time it was "Jolly Holly" with an accent layer of "Cleopatra".

Last but not least, here is my most recent mani! I rang in the new year with "Blue Year's Eve" from China Glaze.

I hope you enjoyed seeing my recent colors. I got tagged by Nailzilla in her blog so I will be answering that soon!

Until then...
Happy Scratches!
carakitty   >^. .^<

Completely Different!

I am wearing a traditional pink and white French Manicure. This is so scary to me that it seems appropriate to turn back time to Halloween so the fright can be better justified. Just kidding! I was pretty much double dog dared into it when I had my Coffee and Colors get together and I've got these nice little nail art pens now so why the heck not? I've tried to do freehand french manis before, with disastrous results. I think this one, and the experiment with the black, turned out pretty nicely. Well, aside from the Revlon Vixen pedi bleeding onto the Poshe brush and streaking up these colors. I still need to work on making sure I don't glop on the lines too thick, but these long and skinny little brushes are worlds easier to use for a clean looking tip than the regular brushes, which is what was used for past attempts.

OPI "Pink-ing of You" indirect sunlight

For this French I used the Kiss Nail Art Paint pen in "White" and OPI "Pink-ing of You". The "White" seems streakier than the "Black" but the brush quality and function are still the same. The OPI color "Pink-ing of You" is featured in their core Soft Shades collection, and is a sheer petal pink. It did apply a little streaky. If visable nail line bothers you, it does look nice over pure white so you could layer it over that. If your skin tone is warmer it might look good over something like "Samoan Sand" or "At First Sight" as well. Both of those are by OPI, but I don't have them. I do have "Dulce de Leche" but I fear it's discontinued now because I didn't see it on their site and I don't want to suggest something if it can't be found any more.

Lit with flash

What do you think about these soft and natural looking claws? Shall I continue playing around with the French tips? I do have one more of the Kiss pens, in Silver Glitter. I also found an extra, skinny, eyeliner brush which is being donated to my nail tools supply. I did a quick tip with the sacrificial brush and it seems small enough to work well for free handing with the other colors in my stash.

Happy Scratches!
carakitty   >^. .^<

Blue Mosaic and a Realization

I don't know what it is lately, but a mani on isn't on for much more than one full day. Call it short attention span, blame it on getting chips, it probably boils down to a bunch of things! My last color was Revlon "Blue Mosaic". It is small round sky blue glitter with large sky blue, silver and green hexagonal glitter in a clear base. It is packed pretty well, achieving almost full opacity with two coats. I knew there were going to be some clear spots on the nail from looking at the base so I did black tips underneath with one of my new Kiss Nail Art Paint pens. It was shockingly easy to use! At first the long brush scared me but then I found that it flicks into a nice line as long as there's not too much paint on the brush. It didn't show up as much as I had thought it would through "Blue Mosaic", which surprised me a bit. Fate had it that I got a chip on my ring finger, so I covered it up by putting some more black tip on top and it looked nicer with the black on top.

Revlon "Blue Mosaic" in sunshine with my apologies for dried out skin!

I had the opportunity to meet up with my wonderful Coffee and Colors friend again. This is our third time getting together and every time has been so much fun! The tradition is that we chat over coffee or tea at Caribou until we can't hold back the inevitable any longer then head over to Ulta, and usually finish off at Ross. We try not to spend too much while out, but we are both quite good at playing the innocent "Who, me? Enable?" role! I remembered to shoot our manis, and M is kind enough to let me share them both with you! Hers is Orly "Liquid Vinyl" (her go-to black) and one coat of Wet n Wild "Diamond in the Rough" which is part of the Ice Baby collection.

Camaraderie and Colors!

The 'realization' mentioned in the title wasn't hinting at the problem I seem to have with keeping my mani's on. I have realized that I don't like glitters all that much. Particularly large or sparsely distributed ones. Which is kind of depressing at the moment because it seems like /everyone/ has glitters for most or all of their new collections. It seems like there isn't much variety out right now and I'm not feeling excited about lots of this new stuff being released by nail polish companies. But my wallet points out that on the bright side, I'm not having a lemming baby boom either! So, most of the glitters in my stash are tucked away into an open box designated as 'overflow' and this is going to be a time for me to encourage myself to try new things!

Happy Scratches!
carakitty   >^. .^<

Always Amber

Here are my current claws! An old Revlon ColorStay called "Always Amber"

Sunshine with over-eager flash

What on Earth am I holding, you ask? Why, it is a decorative gourd I bought last month and it's been holding up rather well but the shellac that was applied to it is wearing off and now the gourds are getting mushy. =( Hopefully my grocery store is still stocking them because they are perfect for my Autumn decorating!

Back to the polish, now. I tried to stick to the bottle instructions so there is no base coat here, two coats of color and I couldn't bring myself to cheat on my Poshe top coat so I'm using that instead of the ColorStay Sealant. I love how this color applied. The formula was just the right thickness so it was easy to place on the nail. Perfectly opaque in two coats. It's been a whole day and not even a hint of a chip or tip wear!

Revlon "Always Amber" in natural sun

This color is making me very happy! It glows in the sun and satisfied my craving for a good Autumn color. I'm hoping it lasts for at least a couple days because it is so beautiful, but I'm also excited to try out one of my untried polishes.

I'm off to Walgreens now, because a little bird told me that there's a 15% off sale, today only. I don't plan on buying anything but one never knows what will happen when there's cash in my wallet! ;)

Happy Scratches!
carakitty   >^. .^<

Black and Sacred Heart

This was another one of my short-lived manis. It didn't end up turning out how I expected it would, but was still nice while it lasted. I put on one coat of Wet n Wild "Black Creme" and two (I think) coats of China Glaze "Sacred Heart" and while it was fresh, it was a perfect blackened red shade but then several hours later it looked more brown than red and it promptly died after being assaulted by the dirty dishes! So here is my one little picture of it.

Wet n Wild "Black Creme" with China Glaze "Sacred Heart" in the sun.

I cropped out the rest of it because I'm not happy with how the clean up turned out. I was in a bit of a rush and tried doing my brush and acetone routine before the mani was all dry and ended up getting a rotten stained mess. Live and learn, especially with Vampies!

And now, on to the current claws!

Happy Scratches!
carakitty   >^. .^<

Halloween Claws!

For Halloween this year I was a Black Cat again, which is a repeating theme around here =) I was going to do blood red claws but at the last moment decided I wanted to do something 'fun' so I did a tribute to Jack O Lanterns to the best of my ability.

I used China Glaze "It's Alive" as the accent nail (the stem). On the others I did a combo of OPI "Don't Be Koi With Me" and the China Glaze Crackle Glaze in "Black Mesh". I really liked it and wish it hadn't chipped so fast, it was on less than 24 hours!

Halloween Mani indoor lights with flash (and cat tail)

And that was the last of my October claws! Hope you enjoyed them!

Happy Scratches!
carakitty   >^. .^<

Quick Flight of Owl's Night

Here is my last purchase from the L'Oreal "Colors Take Flight" collection. Owl's Night is an almost black, brown base with near metallic mossy golden shimmer. I honestly don't have anything like it in my collection. Here is what it looked like on me.

L'Oreal Owl's Night, Sunlight

I wore this for two days (19th-21st of October) and, sadly, got a pretty bad dose of tip wear. But other than that, it was a fantastic polish. The application was smooth and it was opaque in two coats. If I was better about my brush handling skills I might have gotten away with one coat, even.

Happy Scratches!
carakitty   >^. .^<

Cockatoo's Mystery

I have catching up to do, again. Life just seems to get in the way sometimes, doesn't it? There are five colors to show you, so hopefully I will be able to have them all caught up very soon.

First I will share with you one of the other L'Oreal lacquers in the "Colors Take Flight" collection from a while ago. This one is Cockatoo's Mystery, which I wore from the 17th- 19th of October. I can see eye to eye with L'Oreal on this one! Those beautiful birds are a mystery to me, and describing the color is a bit of a challenge for me, too. Here it is in the afternoon sun. I will call it a medium toned shade of putty.

L'Oreal Cockatoo's Mystery, sunshine

Just for fun I tried to 'pose' with my Baby, but she is a bit camera shy and is particularly afraid of the flash. It makes her scream most of the time, so I opted to turn it off. She isn't the bird in the video I linked to, but it is a good example of how loud these birds can be! The lighting is somewhat dark here but you can see what this color looks like indoors.

Baby the Umbrella Cockatoo and L'Oreal Cockatoo's Mystery

When we welcomed Baby into our family I didn't fully understand what I was getting us into. If you think birds are cute, they can be, but they also need quite a bit of attention and before getting a bird do your research! (Link will open in new window. PLEASE read it if you are considering any sort of Cockatoo or other large bird) I have to admit, if I had read about Umbrella 'Toos more before hand, I probably would not have agreed to having Baby come live with us. I don't think we (but mostly me) are the greatest of match for her. But, what's been done is done and now I need to be the best Bird Mom I can be.

Next I will be showing you the other "Colors Take Flight" lacquer I got, Owl's Night.

Happy Scratches!
carakitty   >^. .^<