Make It Stick Nail Chevrons

Today I want to show you a couple of looks I achieved with nail decals from Make It Stick Designs. I first tried these nail decals when I got to know their creator, April, in a nail polish group on Facebook. April is a wonderful person and I love supporting small businesses so I had to give it a try! I was not disappointed. :)

The nail decals are made of a super thin adhesive vinyl material that sticks strongly to the nail and is flexible (so it stays on). If you are like me and get annoyed with anything bumpy on your nails this shouldn't annoy you. There is an almost unnoticeable bump at the edge of the decal with a single layer of top coat, but with two layers it wasn't noticeable at all.

For this mani I used Cult Nails Let Me Fly on four of my nails, added the decals to my thumb and ring finger as accent nails, then added a second accent by doing my pinky in Zoya Trixie. This is a skittlette style mani inspired by Marta of Chit Chat Nails that I actually entered in a contest she had on her blog earlier this year.

This is a long post so click read more to see more photos, 

another mani and read all about the nail decals!

Layla Softouch Turquoise Splash

Today I'm showing you my first ever Layla polish! This polish was a Christmas gift from the lovely Caitlin of Epic Nail Time (you should really go check out her blog, she has the most flawless nails, and takes gorgeous photographs!) I was late to discover Layla, since I wasn't impressed with their holographic line, but I've already purchased three more of the Softouch Effect. :)

This is Layla Softouch Effect Turquoise Splash. It's a bright turquoise blue with silvery green shimmer. It's a matte finish, but has some intense sparkle going on.

The formula was amazing, it applied in two smooth coats that dried quickly without any clumping, which sometimes happens with matte finish polishes (the brush is about the size and shape of the OPI prowide brush, which is my favorite).

I'm seriously in love with this polish, the sparkle is so beautiful and I'm sad that I couldn't quite capture it with my camera. The finish is soft and matte but wore very well. I'm pretty rough on my hands and always have tip wear or chips after 24 hours, and this mani lasted two days without tip wear (although the second day I added a top coat). Did I mention that it's amazingly sparkly

The second day I wore this mani I had to add top coat to see what it would look like. One coat of top coat smoothed it out to a glassy finish and really brought out the sparkly finish. I really can't decide if I like this color better with or without top coat! I love the soft smooth feel of Turquoise Splash without top coat, but it's so sparkly, pretty and gorgeous with top coat too. 

Layla Cosmetics is an Italian nail polish that can be purchased here in the US from select Ulta stores or online from Ninja Polish, or Harlow and Co. The Softouch Effect line retails for around $10.

Turquoise Swirl Stamping

This was my rainy-day-manicure from about two weeks ago. I started out with two coats of Cult Nails Let Me Fly, a beautiful light dusty turquoise with silver flecks. The next day was a gloomy rainy day so I pulled out my stamping supplies and used MASH plate #40 and Zoya Zuza. The combination was perfect, the colors coordinate and it looks beautiful!

Cult Nails Let Me Fly:

Zoya Zuza Swatch

I'm normally not a huge fan of blues, but Zoya Zuza blew me away (pun intended). Zuza is part of Zoya's summer 2012 Surf collection, which has some really great colors (I now own Kimber, Rory, and Zuza).

Zoya describes Zuza as: "Deep, saturated, oceanic turquoise with gold and silver metallic shimmer and a foil-like finish." Their description is perfectly accurate. Zuza is a light aqua blue with hints of green, it has large silver metallic shimmer that is reminiscent of foil, but the particles are too large for a foil.

The ormula was great, opaque in two coats but not overly shiny. Very pretty and soft finish on this one with the large shimmer particles that make it really unique.

Click if you want to see the shimmer/foil particles:

The Quest for Bottle Color

I got a set of the OPI Texas Collection minis for Christmas this year. When I first tried to wear the color Austin-tatious Turquoise I got to three coats of streaky-goopy mess before I gave up. My bottle was very sheer and thin, but my mani got goopy fast. I've heard from other bloggers that there are two different common formulas for this color, the thin version and another rather thick version.

The color is a bright turquoise with blue shimmer and glass fleck. It's a beautiful color. The glass flecks look blue in some lights and fuchsia in others.

In order to get bottle color I started with two coats of Sally Hansen X-treme wear Marine Scene, and topped it off with one coat of Austin-tatious Turqoise. The result: a match for bottle color in real life. Here it is in photos:

This last one is a little bit blurry to try and capture the glass flecks in the bottle. I couldn't catch the pink shade to them no matter how many shots I took.