Swatch & Review: a-England Elaine

Hello, lovelies! I'm still recovering from coming home at 1:30am from the Maroon 5 concert last night. I hope everyone enjoyed my Instagram feed. I was, at many points, only a foot away from Adam, so you can imagine the level of recovery I require today!

Well, that and the fact the speakers were right under his feet/the stage, so I think I had some major temporary hearing loss. But it has come back!

Truthfully, now that the sequin nail art from yesterday is off of my nails and has stopped snagging on EVERYTHING, I'm also rather happy! Hehe.

Today, I'm bringing you a much simpler manicure: a-England Elaine! I purchased this as part of the a-England deals last month, also picking up Dragon, Ophelia, and Princess Tears.

 a-England Elaine is a gorgeous smoky violet creme. It went on like a dream, smooth and even as butter in just two coats. I LOVE how it looks against my skin tone.

Just... to die for!

I own a ton of the holo shades from the lovely Adina over at a-England, but I'm so glad I came over to the creme side of things. Not disappointed in the slightest!

Are you on board with a-England? What's your fave?

Maroon 5 Sequin Nails

Happy Saturday, everyone! Thank goodness it's the weekend, right?

Tonight, I'm heading to see Maroon 5 in concert for the 56th time and of course, needed to rock some awesome nails. I've actually be wearing these since Thursday because they doubled as Valentine's Day Nails. The lead guitarist's name is James VALENTINE, so they were twice as appropriate for this reason.

For those of you following me on Facebook, you may have read about my disappointing incident regarding Macy's Herald Square and the Adam Levine appearance to celebrate the launch of his 222 Fragrance. To put it simply, I was given bad information when I called the store after the appearance was announced, relied on it, and was unable to get a pass as a result. And, considering I had spent 2+ hours on these nails, plus got up extra early and traveled into NYC on a non-school day, I was more than a little upset.

But the good news is I'll still be heading into Madison Square Garden tonight to see the band play, along with Neon Trees. I'm disregarding the fact that I'll have to suffer through Owlcity for the fifth time. Oh, they are AWFUL live. Rule of thumb: If you need a wind machine and you're a solo artist, there's a problem.

Anyway, this was my second attempt at a sequin manicure. I used hexagonal glitter I bought at Michael's for $10 with a coupon. The set has twelve different colors, but I only used the red, black, and silver.

I painted on coat of Rimmel Black Satin on each nail (two coats on the ring finger). Then I applied top coat in small sections of each nail as I went to make sure it didn't dry before I could stick on a sequin. I trimmed down some pieces of glitter to fit them to the tip and applied a coat of Seche Vite to the whole nail as soon as I stuck on the last piece. Doing the Maroon 5 logo on the ring fingers was the easiest part!

In order to pick up the sequins, I let a drop of top coat on a paper plate dry until it was tacky, pressed the tiniest dotting end I had against it, and used that to pick up/place sequins. Oh, it was a pain!

In the end, I was really happy with how it came out. It was tedious as heck to alternate the red, black, and silver like I did. It needed about four coats of Seche Vite in order to smooth it out to the point where it wasn't snagging on everything I own. Consequently, I had a bit of an issue with bubbles in the top coat, but it isn't noticeable outside of macro shot.

I love how crazy sparkly this is. And the colors are that vivid in real life. It's starting to fade a little now because the top coat seems to eat away at the seal on the sequins, so this won't last much longer than a few days.

I can't imagine doing two full hands again, unless I was guaranteed the chance to meet Adam down the road. But I could easily see myself using this technique for an accent nail!

How about you all? Would you attempt this yourself? Did this manicure "rock" your world?

I promise I'll share some pics on here tomorrow. Be sure to follow my Instagram for all of the photos I take at the concert tonight!

Valentine's Day French Manicure

We did it, everyone! We survived Monday. I know it was hard. And I know you probably looked at the clock more times than you'd care to admit. But it's Tuesday, a VERY good Tuesday if you're in New Orleans, but even if you're not, we're still closer to Friday! Woot!

This is Part 2 of my Valentine's Day nail art series and I think this may be the simplest of them all, but it has just as much impact. This requires a little more attention to detail than Part 1, and a bit more dexterity, but I have faith that you can do it.

For my Valentine's Day French, I used Zoya Gei Gei (from the new Lovely Collection) and my favorite Zoya of all-time, Zoya Sarah! I also used Purity and Trixie to get the heart shape with nail art brushes. The heart was a little bigger than I intended, but I didn't mind it at the end. If you can't draw a heart freehand (I'm not counting myself amongst those who can), you can always use a decal or even a stamper.

I freehanded the French tip. Don't feel bad if you can't... honestly, I finally got the hang of it last year after failing miserably for... oh... seven years. But if you can't freehand it, there is no shame in that. You can use striping tape or even regular old scotch tape for a guide.

If you use scotch tape, just make sure that the base color is completely dry and you stick each piece to your palm once so it won't pull off any polish!

I always loved doing non-traditional French manicure colors, so I wore this all weekend. What colors would you use for a Valentine's Day French?

Valentine's Day Lace Nail Art & Tutorial

Hi, everyone! Today, I'm starting my four-part series of Valentine's Day nail art! I'm going to try and bring you some manicures that are fun and funky, along with classic and sweet. For the most part, you'll be able to do all of them at home!

Monday's manicure theme is lace!

This look was accomplished using two coats of OPI You Only Live Twice and and OPI Skull and Glossbones. But obviously, you can replicate this using any shades you like and two different sized dotting tools! (Or a toothpick and a bobby pin. Seriously, that will work too! It's what I used before I knew what dotting tools were.)

This is really easy to replicate!

Step 1: Paint your base color until opaque, as you normally would.

Step 2: Using your second color, paint a French tip. It doesn't have to be perfectly even because you're going to be covering it up anyway!

Step 3: Take your larger dotting tool and dip it in the second color. Make dots along the outline of the French tip, with the top 1/3 of the dot overlapping the tip.

Step 4: Take the smaller dotting tool and dip it in your base color. Place a dot in the center of each of the large dots.

Step 5: Let it dry for about fifteen minutes before applying top coat to avoid dragging.

Step 6: Go rock it and look fabulous!

So what do you all think? Is this something you'd try on your own?

Until tomorrow!