OC Nail Art coupon code and new stuff from OPI and Deborah Lippmann

First in the agenda is a coupon code from OC Nail Art. This is the website that I get my Konad stuff from. They sent me an email for 20% off, just use the coupon code ocnasummer1. This expires on July 10th at 12pm so take advantage of it while it lasts!

Next up, the final duo of the Serens Williams Glam Slam! sets. This final one is Glam Slam US and it will be coming out in August.

Left to right:

Love is a Racket

Pros & Bronze

Finally, Deborah Lippmann summer and fall/winter collections. 

First summer:

Left to right:

Girls Just Want to Have Fun- coral creme/jelly

I Know What Boys Like- dusty periwinkle

Yellow Brick Road- yellow jelly

Lara's Theme- orange creme

Fall/ winter:

Billionaire- Hunter green creme

Brick House- Rust shimmer

Single Ladies- red creme

Until next time,

The Wicked

Orly Bubbly Bombshell

First and foremost I want to say HAPPY FATHER'S DAY!!! Now, on to the polish! This is the last of the Orly's and it is the only one from the Pinup collection.

Bubbly Bomshell, three coats. On the press release this looked much more purple, but it is very magenta. It is a glitter so it needed three coats to be completely opaque. Its really nice and has a foil like effect from varying sizes of glitter, it's almost metallic-y. Very interesting. The formula was great, nice consistency and good coverage, the glitter isn't very sparse, but it does need more than one coat,

This is an idea I had ever since I saw the press release for the Pinup collection. What goes better with pinups than fishnets?!! Absolutely nothing! So this my take on a pinup mani (it's a little sloppy, I apologize). Its kind of a play on naughty and nice, very pinup like and I liked the contrast between regular black and the super sparkly Bubbly Bombshell. For the fishnet I used my trusty Konad, the M57 plate and the Konad black stamping polish. Then I free handed the tips with Nicole by OPI Razzle Dazzler, which was a little difficult to use since it was almost empty, so I got a new black hooray!! And finally Seche to smooth everything out. I think it turned out pretty well, if my black polish wasn't empty the tips would have come out better, but what can you do?

Until next time,

The Wicked

Nail Art Options

When thinking about nail art, most people don't realize how many options there are, but there are SO many! I'm sure some people like to have their nails just one color, but others need some options (like myself). So, I'm going to go through some different options for jazzing up our nails!


1. Nail Art Pens/ Polishes

 
So, these are pretty simple to understand. They come in a variety of colors and are made for detailing.

On the top are the Sally Hansen nail art pens that came out a few years ago. They're pretty interesting. After you use them, you need to do a top coat of they will actually wash off, which is super strange. They run about $6-7 and you can find them anywhere.

On the bottom, are LA Colors nail art polishes. You can see that the brushes are thin and pointed and they come in a variety of colors. There are lots of brands that have these kinds of polishes, they're also widely available. I actually haven't seen the LA Colors in stores, but I saw another brand and each one was $2.99


2. Nail Stickers

Also super simple to use, nail stickers are a great quick fix when adding to nails. There's no drying time or really any effort at all. You can find tons of these everywhere and pretty much any kind you want. These are really easy and are great for kids (and adults!).

I really love these, I might have to find them lol








3. Rhinestones

 Ahh, rhinestones. I do love sparkly things.

You can get rhinestones 2 ways: stick-on or not stick-on. The sticky backed ones come in sticker form, while the other ones come just like you see here
<------

They come in all different shapes and sizes and colors and are relatively easy. Obviously, ones with sticky backs are like stickers and therefore easy to adhere.







4. Stamping

Probably my favorite way to decorate my nails. This picture is of a Konad stamping set, but other companies do make these types of plates, people tend to call them "fauxnad" plates. Such simpler to use than it seems, it just takes a little practice. When buying Konad specifically, you can usually get bundles that include some polishes, plates and the stamper and scraper. I do recommend getting the Konad polishes because they dry on contact, but any polish will work. Because they dry so fast, you do have to work faster when using them.

You can get Konad on various websites. I use http://www.ocnailart.com/.

One alternative to Konad that is an awesome deal comes from Bundlemonster. It's 21 plates for $17. Yeah, awesome!



5. Nail Polish Strips

This is the newest thing when it comes to decorating nails. They are nail polish strips, no polish necessary. It completely simplifies the way you do nails. I'm not sure how the application is or anything, but I think it's a good idea, especially for people who don't have time to do their nails all the time. You can see that there are TONS of options here, some of them can be achieved with Konad, while others are definitely original.

When going with these I would suggest getting something original, like the butterflies, flowers or lace (my favorite!). Getting a plain color or even glitter wouldn't be worth it in my mind. They're $7-8 and I think you get one use out of each pack.


Until next time,
The Wicked

Happy Easter!!

I actually don't celebrate Easter, but I do have something special for everyone!! My matte top coats from Manglaze still haven't arrived >:(  so I decided to do something completely different from what I originally had in mind. I saw this somewhere and decided to try it myself.

BAM! Rainbow leopard! The base is 2 coats of OPI Alpine Snow, then I used Konad black stamping polish with the leopard print from the M57 plate. To color in all the spots I took various colors that I had and took that wooden cuticle pusher thingy and dipped the pointy part into the polish and just filled in each spot. I thought about buying those nail art polishes with the special brushes, but I honestly just didn't want to spend the money. You don't even need them, the cuticle pusher does the job just fine. After all that was done I did a top coat of Seche Vite and that's it!. Pretty simple, right? A little time consuming, but relatively easy. Oh, you should definitely enlarge the picture to get a better view. 

It's pretty festive, kind of goes with Easter. Also I saw the movie African Cats yesterday and it was so amazing. Seriously. This is kind of an homage to that. Go see it. Really. 

I hope you all have a Happy Easter / continuation of Passover!

Until next time,

The Wicked

Zebra Comparison!

Before I had my Konad, I tried to do some patterns by hand (I tried leopard once and that was a ridiculous fail). One day I found a picture of someone that did a free hand zebra print, so I went out and bought the polish she used and tried for myself.

I'm pretty sure the base coat is OPI Alpine Snow and the black is Nicole by OPI Razzle Dazzle. You just wipe the brush across your nail and it comes out like this. You just have to make sure you have the right amount of polish on the brush. If there's too much, the lines will be too thick and won't taper properly and if there isn't enough polish, the lines will be streaky and won't look right. Another major issue for me was that it was easy to do the pattern with my right hand, but when it came to my left hand, yeah it just didn't want to work. So one hand came out obviously better than the other, and it took about 4 tries before it came out decently. So, if you're not ambidextrous, this could be tedious and difficult.

And to compare, this is a close up of the zebra print I did from my Manglaze meets Konad post. Obviously it looks much cleaner and is so much easier to to do on both hands. It doesn't require for you to be ambidextrous, a steady enough hand will do. So, I totally prefer the Konad. 

Until next time,

The Wicked

Manglaze meets Konad

I tried the Konad on OPI Obscurity a while back, and it just didn't show up as well as I would have liked and I vowed to try it on Manglaze. And I did! And it turned out pretty awesomeeeee.

Fantastically is came out just as I had hoped. The Konad polish retained its shine without a top coat and looked awesome with the Manglaze. Here I have one good coat of Matte is Murder and then I used the Konad M57 plate. I used Konad polishes for all the designs, obviously black for the leopard and white for the zebra. I think I'm going to have to get larger plates soon, my nails are getting too long for the Konad ones, which kind of upsets me.

When I was putting on Matte is Murder, I realized how beautiful the color actually is. There is so much depth in the color. I love it. I was reluctant to put anything over it, but I sucked it up and continued on.

I think I'm going to try it with the Black Shatter, as my experimenting continues, and I'll report that back to all of you.

Until next time,

The Wicked

OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous!

As I was very upset with the nail polish from the last post, I decided to do a mani that would make me happy. I was rummaging through my stuff, looking for something that wasn't dark or a glitter (I didn't want to spend forever removing a glitter polish). And then, this came back into my life.

(you can even see my lit book in the background hah)

Yes, its lovely. All sparkly and glittery, and looks like a foil. I remembered by I loved it so much when I put it on. For a while there I had forgotten. Anyway, this is awesome because you get the effect of a glitter without the hassle of removing it. Also, I decided to test out my argyle pattern from the Konad M60 plate. Obviously I had some issues getting the pattern all the way at the bottom of my nail. I'm not sure why. Maybe my nails are getting too long. *Sighs*

OH NEWS!!! did anyone happen to see the supposed OPI Pirates of The Caribbean Stranger Tides collection? If you didn't here's the link:

http://www.bodycare.becomegorgeous.com/hands_and_nails/opi_pirates_of_the_caribbean_nail_polish_collection-3842.html

I'm actually pretty disappointed with it. When I heard, I was super excited but these colors really are really underwhelming and don't seem to fit the Pirates of The Caribbean theme (my favorite movies btw). Well, maybe besides the silver shatter (but that really doesn't even fit), which I think I should get a sample of because this is all coming out very close to my birthday :) please and thank you OPI lol

And in other news, I am still waiting for my black shatter. I should get it this week but we'll see annnddddddd my bestest friend in the world got me a very special something! I'm not going to tell you what it is, you'll just have to wait for the post!

Until next time,

The Wicked

Double Valentine's Day Trouble!

Yeah yeah I know I have succumbed once again. The ruffian was kind of boring for me (I have another one in the works), so I had to change it up.

Here I have on 2 coats of Wet n' Wild Lust. I really was impressed with this color. I was expecting it to be really sheer, but it was actually really nicely pigmented. Way better than usual Wet n' Wild colors. It was pretty opaque with one coat, but I added another for good measure, and it dries super fast. Like wow fast. After that I used my Konad M57 plate with the black stamping polish and finally added some of the bigger sparkles from Revlon Galaxy. It was kind of tedious to put the sparkles on just because I had to fish out one at a time and place them all. After they were all placed, I did a final coat of Seche Vite to smooth every thing out. I think it was kind of a play on naughty and nice. The pink being nice and the fishnet type print being naughty. I thought it was fun lol

But as all my manicures, it didn't last long. So this is the next one I did.

This is my attempt at replicating the nails on the Illamasqua Throb ad (they used different colors of course, this is my take on it). I have 2 coats of Sally Hansen Red Cherry and for the black I used Milani Black Magic. It's supposed to look like the top of a heart, I did it free-hand and it took me 2 tries until it looked decent. It was actually harder than I expected. With the red and black it kind of reminds me of the Queen of Hearts so I was into that. I love Alice in Wonderland. I really like this but I'll have to do a bit of practicing. 

Actually Illamasqua was featuring all of their naughtily named products for Valentine's Day, its hilarious. Check that out here http://www.illamasqua.com/, and you can also find the Throb ad there.  

So there you go, some not too girly Valentine's Day looks. Hope you guys liked them!

Until next time,

The Wicked. 

The MANGLAZE Revolution!

Yesterday my life changed. My MANGLAZE arrived! Of course, I had to test it out.
This is Fuggen Ugly aka Death Tar:

Ok seriously, Fuggen Ugly should be called Fuggen AMAZING! I am in love with these freaking polishes. So, this one is the grey shade, it looks more like a concrete grey in person. These polishes have a very very smooth application and dry pretty quickly. Here I have 2 coats, but a 3rd probably wouldn't hurt. When wet it looks really shimmery and sparkly which I wasn't expecting, but it dries with only a really really really slight shimmer while being completely matte at the same time. It's just too awesome for words.

Some people are kind of confused by the name MANGLAZE, but I love it. If you're a dude and you love to rock out and wear nail polish, this stuff was MADE for you. Literally. So buy it, just don't let your girlfriends do your nails (thats weird).

And I have to show you guys the art that is the bottle:

Freakin' amazing. How many bottles are literally works of art? ALL the MANGLAZE ones! I'll definitely be keeping the bottles once I run out.

I also ordered Matte is Murder, which it their black one and I'll be doing a separate post on that. But in the meantime, I did a comparison of the 2 MANGLAZEs and OPI Obscurity.

From left to right:

Matte is Murder, OPI Obscurity, Fuggen Ugly

The flash on my camera kind of fudged the colors, so I'll put up a clearer comparison with my next post. But you can see that the slight shimmer in the MANGLAZE opposed to the OPI.

Anyway to sum it up, if you like matte polishes you NEED these. Seriously. Just buy them, you won't regret it. On MANGLAZEs website you can get these 2 for $6.66 a piece and I hope everyone sees the humor in the pricing. Anyway, in stores they're $13 each ( not inclusing tax!) so its much cheaper to buy them online, even with shipping you save about $4 each.

The website is http://manglaze.com/. Everyone should check it out. After trying the 2 that I bought I can only imagine how awesome their new matte white, called Mayonnaise, is. And they have their own matte topcoat, Matte-Astrophe which is probably freaking kickass ANDDDD they have a blingy topcoat called Hot Mess. If you make your own polishes they have bottles called Franken Juggs that have freaking amazing art work on them. I'll have to get my hands on these. If I don't I may actually die.

But before I die, I want to show you what I did to my nails before MANGLAZE came and took over.

You can see it better if you click on the picture and enlarge it. I used OPI Obscurity as base color and then I took my trusty Konad and used the fishnetty looking pattern from the M57 plate with the black staming polish. I was inspired by this converse sneaker I saw at Famous Footwear, but the stamping didn't stand out as much as I'd hoped and I felt like it actually started to blend in or fade. But it looked pretty cool when it caught the light. 

So to sum everything up: BUY MANGLAZE. ITS AMAZING. I love it so much and I can't wait to show you guys Matte is Murder!

Until next time,

The Wicked

Revlon: The Truth Uncovered!

All of you have probably seen the commercials for Revlon's new Top Speed polishes featuring Jessica Alba, boasting that you can change your nail color every day because they dry so quickly. Well, I always have my doubts so I had to test it out. Here I have it in the color Golden:

I first put a base coat on my nails as I usually do, then I applied a coat of this so called "top speed" polish. I found that this was FAR from top speed. It was pretty tacky for quite a while and I was very disappointed. It didn't dry any faster than typical OPI polishes (some OPIs might even dry faster). Even though I was disappointed I decided to put on a second coat. Oddly enough the second coat dried pretty fast and I felt better about the polish. I'm not sure why the first coat took so long to dry, it might have been my base coat so I'm going to suggest no base coat for these polishes.

But I'm not really a fan of gold on my skin tone, so I had to take it up a notch.

I used the zebra print from the M57 Konad plate and the black Konad stamping polish. I really liked the way it came out and it even matches a blanket I have!

Here is the actual bottle:

When looking at the bottle, it looks gold and shimmery and I thought that it would have a glossy shimmery finish, but I was pleasantly surprised when the finish turned out to be really metallic. I really LOVE the metallic finish! It isn't glossy or shimmery at all and in the pictures I don't have a top coat, but if you want a glossy finish, a top coat would probably do it. Also, I'd say that the color is more in between gold and bronze, but it's nice either way.

Overall, I'd say that this is a relatively good polish. I'm not sure if product actually lives up to the "top speed" name though. The formula is good, it's very smooth and easy to apply. I'll have to test it out without the base coat to see if that helps the drying time. But for quick drying polishes, I think Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri polishes are faster. 

Also, I just wanted to comment on where you can purchase these. I was in CVS and I noticed these and the new scented Revlons. When I checked the price it was $6.75! Kind of ridiculous if you ask me, so I passed on them. A few days later I was a Wegmans (grocery store) and decided, just out of curiosity, to see if they had them. And they did! and the prices were soooooo much cheaper. They had the Top Speed polishes for $4.99 with a coupon for $1.00 off and the scented ones for $2.99 (I believe, it might have been $3.99)! So I really suggest you check around for these, it's definitely not worth buying them at CVS. I did buy one of the scented ones and I'll probably post that one next.

Until next time,

The Wicked

OPI Go Goth minis!

I finally received my OPI Go Goth mini collection in the mail and here are the first pics

From left to right:

             Unripened- In the bottle it looks a black base with some duochrome glitter. It looks really awesome and I'll put pics of it up later on

Nevermore- It looks like a glittery, inky purple blue

Sanguine- A deep shimmer, red

Obscurity- Matte black

This is the back of the box, it has 3 different nail designs and how to do them. They look pretty cool, especially the first one called swirls of mist. Btw, if you click on the pictures you can get a better, enlarged view. 

They are super cute little bottles, maybe a little smaller than I expected, but what can you do? I've seen pictures of the colors online and I'm really excited to test them out and I'll definitely be putting up pics of each individual color and I'll comment on the application and formula when those go up. If anyone is interested in buying these, I purchased them on Amazon. 

But on another note,  I couldn't leave my nails alone knowing that I had perfectly good Konad stamping gear and so I stamped the rest of my nails and came up with this.

And I thought it was fantastic! I love the contrast between the black and the sparkles. In person its amazing! 

Until next time,

The Wicked

My new friend Mr. Konad!!

So my Konad stuff came in today!!! it was an exciting moment in my life and of course I had to test it out.

These are the 2 plates that I got:

                                                M57 on the left and M60 on the right.

For my first try I used the M57, the leopard print. 

I already had on 2 coats of the OPI Simmer and Shimmer from the Burlesque collection. It really has a bluer tint in real life, but my camera obviously didn't capture it. fail. Anyway, for the stamping I used the Konad black polish that I ordered as well. This stuff dries SUPER FAST, so you really have to work fast when applying the polish to the plate, scraping it off and getting it on the stamper and then onto your nails. 

I'll probably be posting some more Konad stuff later on, but definitely check out http://thenailphile.blogspot.com/. She has a really awesome tutorial too.

And I bought my Konad supplies from http://store.ocnailart.com/. They have free shipping with any purchase over $20 and with the code "joshura" you get 30% off any purchase of $30 or more!

Until next time,

The Wicked