Christmas nails with Elevation Polish & Lumina Lacquer!

Hello! I haven't posted for awhile.. I have bronchitis and still have about another week of antibiotics left (if it fully goes away.) My doctor prescribed me a refill in case it doesn't, but let's hope it does, because this medicine makes me feel awful.

But anyway, here is the manicure I did for Christmas. I used Lumina Lacquers and Elevation Polish.

The base colors I used were: Wrapped in Red (and it's hard to find a red that is flattering to my skin tone but this one is!), Elevation Jengish Chokusu (light green) and Alpine Heights (Carlit) (darker teal).

On my pointer and pinky, I used Lumina Lacquers Hooked on Christmas. On my middle and ring fingers, I did striping with Pitaraq (a silver glitter) and you can see the alternating green colors I also used Yeti Loves the Holidays and Hooked on Chrismas on my ring finger. Unfortunately the candy cane lifted a little bit on my pinky even though I used Glitter Food to try to hold it down. If anyone has any tips on how to get these to stay down longer, let me know. I was so glad that Tatiana sent the extra candy canes, and I thought it was cool that she made a polish with both red and green candy canes!

(Side note about me- for some reason I don't like peppermint that much- so I always eat different flavored candy canes. This year the new ones I tried were the warheads super sour ones and they were rainbow colored!)

I also wanted to add a link to show fellow bloggers' holiday nail art! It is really awesome to see how creative everybody has been.

Polish Yer Hooves Review, Part 1

I was really excited to try this brand, Polish Yer Hooves, because I grew  up across the street from cows. So I would like to thank my friend Elise,  From Lips to Tips. .. Mommy Style! for letting me know about the opportunity to do a review.

The first color I decided to review is Dance of the Sugar Plum. It is a really beautiful color shifter that at first looks purple, but then you can see it shifting from pink to blue.

To bring out the duochrome nature of this polish, I used 2 coats of it alone on my pinky, middle fingers and thumb, and I used it over black (2 coats again) on my ring and pointer fingers. I also used a topcoat of Seche Vite to smooth it out. I used a basecoat of Rejuvacote because my nails have been having a really rough time with the weather, but a different basecoat may make this polish easier to apply.

With flash

Without flash- the nails with the black undies show more of a blue tint.
I had a little topoat shrinkage that is showing some black around the edge- my apologies. I think my pinky, middle, and thumbnail look better, but again, I wanted to show the contrast.
You can see a little bit of the shimmer in this picture, but there is a lot more in real life.

This color is called Miss Bessie. I got the Vanilla Lavender scent. I think the vanilla scent is more prominent, because my nails smell sweet. Unlike some scented polishes I've recently read about, you don't have to wait for your nails to dry to smell it. You can smell it while you are painting your nails!

The polish itself is a really pretty. I'd say somewhere between maroon and burgundy depending on the lighting, with a very sparkly scattered holo. This is 2 coats with HK Girl topcoat. You could get away with 1 coat but you might have a little bit of visible nail line.

Leigh Anne sent me some really cool holo hearts and flowers, so I decided to do an accent nail with them.

Both pictures are with flash

Here are pictures of the adorable bottles:

The mini bottle is one from the Star Grazers set, which is currently on sale 3 for $11!

You can buy Polish Yer Hooves at Leigh Anne's Etsy shop here.

The Snow Prince and a bonus mani!

This is the first year that I've actually gotten holiday/Christmas themed polishes!

I had a hard time picking undies for the Snow Prince by Lumina Lacquer. It has a lot of different colored glitters, as well as big snowflakes, snowmen, and hexes/snowball looking glitters.'

I love green and I ended up using Oh, Christmas Tree by Colors by Llarowe with Absinthe by Models Own on my ring finger as an accent. Absinthe is from the Velvet Goth collection, and all the polishes come with a velvet cap. The polishes are semi-textured glitters that smooth over with a topcoat.

Also, I have a bonus mani! When I was trying to decide what colors to use with The Snow Prince, I did a semi-skittles mani:
From pinky to pointer:
CbL Oh Christmas Tree, KB Shimmer Snow Flaking Way, and Liquid Sky Lacquer Teal it Like It Is

(somehow I ended up with an odd glitter arrangement that made it look like my snowman has feet)

I ended up deciding to use green undies with The Snow Prince because of the light green sparkles that showed up with flash.

33 Day Challenge: Freestyle/Recreate Someone Else's Mani

So, I tried to recreate a manicure that The Manicured Monkey  did using OPI Black Spotted over neon colored polishes. In fact, I tried 3 different times, but I couldn't get the coats thin enough to work properly. So I gave up and just made neon rainbows using different Color Club and LA Colors Striping Polishes. Also, the purple I used is a Dear Rus Color Changing polish that fades from purple to pink, which I thought was really cool. It is #CC24.

I decided to tie it all together with Enchanted Polish Djinn in a Bottle, except on my ring finger- that holo topcoat is Rainbow inthe Dark by the wonderful Carpe Noctem Cosmetics. (although none of these colors are dark- LOL.)I  love that the polish is named after a Dio song! It also is extremely vibrant , even over these neon colors.  It did dull them a little, but I still love it.

I wanted to go out with a bang. . . so here you go:

Here are the other lovely ladies who did this challenge:

33 Day Challenge: Shapes

For this challenge, I decided to do stars. I used this tutorial from Pack a Punch Polish to learn how to do the stars.. but the one on my pointer finger was kind of a fail. It looked a little better before I put the black outline on it.. but I think the outline definitely made the ones on my pinky look better.

I used Layla CE 01, Colors by Llarowe Black Gold, Texas Tea and  Lilypad Lacquer As Good as Gold for my base colors. I have a KISS Nail Dress sticker on my ring finger.

For the stars, I used L.A. Colors striping brushes and Stars on Fire by Sparkle Nail Lacquer. I also lightly used some dots of the 90's by Carpe Noctem Cosmetics.

I did a closeup of my pinky because at least you can tell these are stars.. hopefully :P

From this angle the star on my pointer finger looks more like a heart.. lol

Here are the other lovely ladies that did this challenge!

33 Day Challenge: same pattern in various colors

This challenge was to do the same pattern in different colors.

(Yes I'm posting in backwards order.. I did this mani a few days ago but I'm just getting around to posting it.)

Now that I actually have decent dotting tools, I decided to try dots. I used this gradient dotting tutorial from Chalkboard Nails here.
I actually had to redo my pinky nail.. I didn't think to use a smaller dotting tool on it the first time and it didn't look so great LOL.

From pointer to pinky, the base colors I used are:
Liquid Sky Lacquer Teal it Like It Is, Colors by LlaRowe Young Grasshoppa. Teal it Like It is (again) and Liquid Sky Lacquer Moonless Night.

On the ring finger I used Carpe Notem Cosmetics Hyperion as a glitter topper.

For the dots I used Color Club Pure Energy for the light blue on my middle finger, and the neon green is an LA Colors Striping Brush colors. The other dots are the same colors mentioned above.

I saw my grandmother on Monday and she said that my middle fingernail was her favorite! Which one do you like the best?

Here are the other lovely ladies that did this challenge:

33 Day Challenge: Artwork Featuring your Favorite Polish

Today's challenge was to do artwork featuring your favorite polish (Well I should have double checked, it was actually our favorite 3 so I may redo this one in the future) As some of you may know, the reason for my blog name is because of Cosmic Ocean by Girly Bits. It's a really great color for layering and it has a beautiful blue/green shift with shimmer as well. I'm always amazed how even in low light the blue that it picks up is the most beautiful shade of blue ever!

The base colors I used (from pointer to pinky) are: Revlon Royal, a blue custom with holo from Carpe Noctem Cosmetics (Emily actually sent me a new one that she liked better, so this is the newer version! I had no issues with the older one, so I thought that was really cool of her.)  Sizzlin Liz by Colors by Llarowe, and Revlon Royal again,

Then I layered Silent Night by Carpe Noctem Cosmetics on my ring and middle nails. It is in a sheer light blue base, which I wanted to test over 2 of the blues in this mani. I think it compliments them both well, although the stars stand out better over a darker color.
I didn't have to try very hard to "fish" for any of the star glitters at all. They fit very well to the brush and they didn't keep falling back into the bottle.

 I did want to place them a certain way on my nail, so I dabbed them on, but that isn't necessary- this is color is very, very easy to apply.

With flash:

Without flash:

Here are the other lovely ladies who did this challenge: