Essie Stroke of Brilliance

Happy Tuesday!

Look how pretty! Essie Stroke of Brilliance over Essie Chinchilly, which is actually a pairing that Essie suggested on their promos for this new addition to the Luxeffects collection.  I got this along with A Cut Above, they're the perfect siblings!
I didn't do any cleanup on these because the power went out last night, and didn't come back on until 1 this afternoon.  Needless to say I was not a happy camper, and I was *this far* away from calling ComEd, and acting like the typical pissed off female. I thought it took them WAY to long to figure it out what the problem was, but that was just the hot,grumpy, sleep deprived Tess thinking, not the rational Tess thinking that the ComEd people are working as hard as they possibly can.  Thankfully I held myself back and whined to my brother about it when he got back from his camping trip.  :)

 This is 3 coats Chinchilly and 1 coat Stroke of Brilliance.  So pretty.  I've been on a glitter kick lately, and this is a perfect! I had no problems applying it, and it dried pretty quickly. 

Unfortunately for me, I'm on my first ever no buy.  My guy and I are planning on taking our first vacation together in December(granted I'm not active duty), and I need to start saving up. Which is sad, but I CAN NOT wait to go wherever we end up going together!

I hope you guys have a great day!

Austism Awareness- OPI Simmer and Shimmer

Hey guys! I hope you all had an amazing weekend! I sure did! My senior prom was last night and it was great! I went with a purple fish egg manicure that I unfortunately wasn't able to get a picture of. Oh well, I could always just recreate it sometime in the future. To be honest I went a little overboard on the caviar manicures to do another one anytime soon, lol!
For today I went with using one of the polishes I got when I first started hoarding collecting nail polish.  I got all of the burlesque glitters for Christmas that year actually. I don't really pull them out that often because I don't get the best wear out of them and they get SUPER goopey! Even after drops and drops of OPI Nail Lacquer thinner its still finicky. It's not really worth my time fighting with it to wear them all that often.  But I do LOVE these whenever I pull them out.  Simmer and Shimmer is totally worth it after you finish applying it!

I hope everyone has a great Monday!

Petites-Craze

Ya'll I got to visit a Rite Aid while I was in New York, and it was right down the street from my hotel! I was so excited!  You may be thinking I'm a huge idiot because the thought of a drug store excites me so much, but we don't have Rite Aids in Chicago! I picked up a couple of polishes from there before I went to go see Priscilla Queen of the Dessert on Broadway. Which, I highly highly recommend if you're looking for a fun show to go to, and love drag queens LOL.

One of the polishes I picked up was Craze, a gorgeous fuchsia glitter in a clear base. I needed about 4 coats to get it completely opaque. It's a hungry glitter and needed about 3 coats of topcoat to smooth down, and as you can imagine it wasn't the easiest to remove!
But, look at that cap! What the heck is up with it?! It doesn't fit but it completely closes so there aren't any leaks, but it's not esthetically pleasing to look at.  I can't really complain for $1.99 a bottle though. 

April Showers Bring May Flowers Challenge-Glitter Sammy

Hey darlin! I got another challenge post! 3 days and I'm actually keeping up with it this time!

Today I did the glitter sammy challenge using China Glaze Near Dark, and for my glitter Sinful Green Ocean. I love how this turned out because its a little unconventional using such a dark color but since Near Dark is a jelly it worked out perfectly! I need to remember doing a glitter sandwichs more often.

1 coat of Nail Envy, 1 coat Gelous, 2 coats Near Dark, 2 coats of Green Ocean, 1 coat Near Dark and then to top it off 2 coats of NYC fast dry topcoat.
This was my first time using Green Ocean and its amazing! It has glitter and flakies in it!


Here are some other beautiful ladies participating in this challenge!

Hannah

Amanda

Karine

Heidi

Victoria

Sarah

Charlotte

Amanda

Ashley

Dani

Kayono

Hard Candy Sweet P

No clean up.  Two coats over Make Mine Lime. The first time I ever tried to photograph Sweet P it turned out looking way to sparse after using the macro function.  The base really helps with pictures, and seemed to let the green of Sweet P pop.  Such a pretty glitter, best way to describe it lol.

Had to show you my little helper. That's Trudie. She's the kitten I found behind my garbage can when she was 3 weeks old.  She's 9 months old now, and still gets into a heap of trouble around my house! She LOVES "helping" me paint swatch wheels (she steps on them right when they get tacky and leaves foot prints and little hairs) and escaping out the back door when I'm taking pictures.

Unicorn Magic

I have another challenge post for you guys! It's unicorn magic day! AND it's my best friend Bleu "6th" birthday!  I hope you won't be mad that everything we got you has happy 6th birthday on it.  Haha, gotta love leap day babies! He's actually turning 24 today, but that hasn't stopped me from buying him a coloring book and some legos. Happy Birthday Cowboy!

So, anyways! Nothing screams magic and unicorn to me like a holo glitter, so that's exactly what I did.

Color Club Sugar Plum Fairy. I took that on top of the Hancock building hence why I used my phone as something to hold.

Blurry Holo-ness :)

And only my favorite city in the world! I took that on top of the Hancock during my History of Chicago field trip today. If you ever have a chance to come to Chicago and want to see a bird's eye view, go to the Hancock Building, not the Sears(Willis) Tower, it's so much better up on the Hancock and A LOT less touristy there too.

Twin Mani Pedi- Essie Sexy Divide and Confetti Tazmanian Devil

For anyone who doesn't know, I have the most AMAZING twin brother ever. He's my best friend, the smartest, kindest, funniest guy I've ever known, and he happily lets me give him pedicures.  That's a real man right there. It started as a way for him to get a foot massage, but now he has started asking just to get his polish changed, so he must love it right? Most of the time he'll let me chose the polish, but sometimes he'll know what he wants before we start.
I didn't do a complete pedi this time just a quick polish change, and both of our cuticles are looking a bit rough.
I used Essie Sexy Divide and then topped it with Confetti Tazmanian Devil. 

Before Clean Up

I love how this glitter has all different sizes of glitter, I especially love the teeny tiny shimmer glitter particles that are different colors.  This in my opinion is a way better version of OPI Rainbow Connection, just because of those tiny glitter pieces.