Happy Halloween!!

Thought I'd better throw my Halloween mani on here before the day is over. I used Wet n Wild's Ink Well (black), Color Club's Wham! Pow! (neon orange), Fantasy Maker's Creepy Pumpkin (orange glitter jelly), China Glaze's Fairy Dust, and Konad special polish in black and white, stamp plates BM-211, BM-224, and XL plate K- special design.

Had so much fun with these!!

Outside in the sun

Shade

Blurry close-up to show the awesome holo-sparkle of the coat of Fairy Dust.

I did two coats of Ink Well and two coats of Wham! Pow! followed by one coat of Seche Vite, then stamped, then one coated the orange with Creeping Pumpkin. When dry I hit all fingers with Fairy Dust for that uber blingtasticness and then Seche Vite-d so I could head to be as it was around 2 am yesterday morning when I did these. Oh and thumb is like the pinkie but with 2 different types of skulls, just in case anyone was wondering.

Happy Halloween! Much love, The Dragon Lady

Devil's Night

First off, Happy Devil's Night (aka night before Halloween) to all. I am so sorry that I haven’t been posting more often. Between my birthday on the 9^th, my middle daughter’s birthday on the 11^th, 2 weeks of midterms (apparently one of my teachers enjoys prolonging the pain), regular homework, fixing computers for family, and of course my hubby and 3 kids…well, let’s just say I’ve been a wee bit busy.

I have pics of my birthday haul (I love my hubby!) and some swatches to post so here goes…

First up birthday haul…

Konads, fauxnads, and polish…OH MY!

Of course, now my swatch bin run-ith over...

Next up some of those Halloween 2011 polishes from Wet n Wild (including their Fantasy Makers) and the cute little pumpkin polishes.

For these swathes please refer back to beginning of this post and kindly ignore my horrible cuticles and messy application. I‘d appreciate it. LOL

Pumpkin polishes from Blue Cross

The 3 glow-in-the –dark polishes I got gave great glow…in the bottle. Not so much on the nail, not much color either. Cute bottles but pretty disappointing polish. All of them were thick and hard to apply, nothing much but meh. The Fantasy Makers glow-in-the-dark polish was smooth to apply and the best one of the 4.

The clear base with the holo moons and black & bronze hex glitter looked hopeful but sadly there was way more base then glitter. Two coats (and much placement attempts) and not much coverage. Another meh.

The metallic orange hex and bar glitter one was definitely the best out of the ones I got. Two coats gave a decent coverage, not great but decent. Kind of wishing now that I’d swatched these before I bought the cute little snowmen ones they just came out with….here’s hoping they are better than these were.

Shown with 2 coats

Fantasy Makers

Shown below is Creepy Pumpkin (orange glitter jelly) and Black Magic (black jelly base with orange glitter. The middle finger in the picture below is two coats of Black Magic with one coat of Creepy Pumpkin. Didn't get to swatch Purple potion as the bug-bug bailed with it. It is however, a translucent black jelly base with bright purple glitter. Like the purple version of Black Magic. I loved these polishes and plan to use Creepy Pumpkin in m Halloween mani.

All are shown with 2 coats

Much love, The Dragon Lady

My holo-glitter-tasic birthday mani

For my birthday I decided to play with some of my new polishes and one of my newest konad plates.

As you can see I also decided to use some falsies as well. I wanted length for my birthday, and hopefully by the time they loosen my natural nails will have grown under their protection. Anyways, I started out with a scotch tape mani using Color Club Wild at Heart. I was impressed that I go the needed coverage in just one coat. Then I topped it off with one coat Nutra Nails High Gloss Top Coat to even it out a bit.

I stamped on some butterflies using Color Club Worth the Risque and Konad plate m78. They showed up very light and ethereal. I contemplated originally stamping them in black then again with the silver holo but I was going for light and sparklie so this worked for me.

After the stamp I added another coat of Nutra Nail High Gloss Top Coat and then decided it still needed something. That's where the glitter comes in. I hit the entire thing with China Glaze Fairy Dust. Now I can’t stop staring at my nails. VERY birthday bling! I love it.

I also scored a bunch of new Konad plates and nail polish, some are still en route so I will post a Birthday Haul pic once their all here. 

Much love, The Dragon Lady

Some of my favorite things

I thought I’d start out my first blog mani with my favorite color, purple, and the dragon stamp from my newest fauxnad plate.

Two coats of Milani Hi-Res, a light purple holographic nail polish.Then stamped black Konad special polish with the fauxnad plate T 04. Topped off with Nutra Nails High Gloss Top Coat.  Unfortunately, it is an overcast, rainy day here in my part of “Sunny” California so I couldn’t get any pics in the sun to really show off the holo in this polish.

Much love, The Dragon Lady

Introduction

Hello, my name is the Dragon Lady…and I am a polish addict.

Unlike many of the people that do these nail polish blogs, my nails and cuticles are a wreck. I am a mother of three young girls. My oldest, “Sunshine” is 11 years old. My middlest, “Sweetie Pie” is almost 9. Last but not least, my youngest, “Love Bug” aka “Bug-bug” just turned two years old. I am also a full-time college student and no, I’m not becoming a cosmetician. I am a techie, a geek, I build PCs and tear them apart and play with their parts. So between my family, the housework, the yard work (hubby is a horticulturist) and schoolwork, I am usually too exhausted to do much more than slap a new color on my nails, maybe a design or konad or two (if time permits) then head to bed.

This Dragon Lady turns 33 in less than a week and I have decided that I must make time for me and the little things that make me happy…like nail polish. Unfortunately, disaster struck and I managed to snap the ends off of 4 of 5 nails on my left hands and managed to snag and tear 3 on my right. My nails are very thin (always have been) and are extremely hard to grow. So if anyone has any tips or tricks for growing healthy, thicker nails PLEASE let me know. I am tempted to head to the salon and try out a little gel overlay of my real nails just for strength and protection purposes. Has anyone used gels before? I am wondering how they wear, I hear they are better than acrylics for sure...more research needed I believe.

So you will mostly be seeing my nails, but I will also be throwing on pictures of my daughters’ nails and possibly even my mother’s as we are trying to start a weekly mother/daughter mani day so we can spend more time together.

Much love, The Dragon Lady