Subtle Pink Gradient with Stamping

I decided to play with my mani from last night. I did a sponge gradient and because it's been awhile totally failed at take pics of what it looked like before the stamping. Sorry. Anyway, since I used Sinful Colors Cotton Candy for my mani yesterday, I decided to do my gradient with Cotton Candy and her sister, Sugar N Spice. It only took two rounds of sponging to achieve the look I was going for.

I said the other day (Wednesday?) that I missed stamping so I went through my stamping plate collection and found a design I liked and hadn't used before. I used the large swirly design from m51 Konad plate and stamped with Color Club Miss Bliss, an awesome pink holographic polish.

On a side note, now that school is over for the semester, I finally have some time to wade through the 2 TB of data I recovered from my destroyed PC a few months ago. I hope to be able to recover a couple of reviews I was working on, a handful of posts,  and a ton of pictures including the photos from my nail art contest. Thanks to all of you for sticking around through the random & scant posts and failed PC.

Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Sinful Colors Cotton Candy

I thought I'd start out my return to blogging with one of the untrieds I nabbed sometime in spring. This is Sinful Colors Cotton Candy from the Sugar Rush collection. I grabbed up several of the polishes from this collection.

I usually love Sinful Colors but I was a little disappointed in this one. Not for the color, I love the color and the pretty little shimmer flecks in it. No, I was disappointed because the first coat went on semi-transparent and streaky. After letting it dry for a while, I tried adding a thicker second coat...still streaky and semi-transparent. So I let that coat dry and added a third thick coat. I was definitely happier with this polish at 3 coats. I topped it off with one coat of Seche Vite and went to take pictures, then I saw it. VNL, not glaring but enough that I could see it. Bummer. The other thing I noticed was that it looks a little darker than it does in the bottle.

Ah well, they can't all be perfect right? Did anyone else have this problem? Like I said, I love the color so I will probably wear it again. I'm thinking maybe some kind of nail art. I am looking at Sinful Colors Sugar n Spice (from the same collection) and I'm thinking about doing a gradient over this with the two.

Gnight all! Much Love & Lacquer ~ The Dragon Lady

Pink Wednesday - Orly Beach Cruiser with glitter topper

For today's Pink Wednesday post, I've got Orly Beach Cruiser topped with DL Matter of Perspective. I used two coats of Beach cruiser, one coat of M.o.P. and one coat of Seche Vite.

I love the look of black and white glitter over neons! Much love & lacquer, The Dragon Lady

Color Club Miss Bliss

I know this post is on a Friday and not a Wednesday but I labeled it with Pink Wednesday because this was what I was wearing on Wednesday. I managed to take photos even though I was too busy with school to get them up.

This was 2 coats of Miss Bliss with one coat of Seche Vite. I wore this from Sunday to Thursday night. I didn't want to take this off but I did (I'll show what I am currently wearing tomorrow).

 

On Wednesday night I added one coat of Armageddon Barbie (Dragon Lacquer) to change it up a little.

Much Love & Lacquer, The Dragon Lady

XOXO mini post

Hello my lovelies! Glad to finally report that my pc is now 95% functional! I am still attempting to recover a few things and going through the not-so-fun process of putting "things" back where they go. I think after so long of not regularly posting I will be starting back a bit slowly at first. I am going to try to post at least once a week but of course I am shooting for more. I haven't decided if I am going to pick a certain day to post every week or go freestyle.

Here is a little mini post of my own XOXO (Hugs & Kisses) from my Etsy store Dragon Lacquer. XOXO contains metallic glitter in a translucent pink base. Shown with one coat over a white base with no top coat.

One coat over white base

Macro bottle shot

I hope you enjoyed! Since I am pretty new to the whole indie polish making crowd, I have been doing all the swatching of my polish for my store myself. I am, however, looking for some fellow bloggers to help ease my swatching "burden"....so...if you are a blogger who posts more regularly than I have been and have at least 100-200 followers and would like to do a review of my nail polish, cuticle oil, or my soon to be released hand creme & cuticle butter, please shoot me an email over at dragonlacquer@gmail dot com. Please provide me a link to your blog as well.

Much love (and more blogging soon), The Dragon Lady

Neon Pink, Hello Kitty, and Mini-Haul

I just wanted to post a quick one to show you what I was wearing. It an unnamed neon pink with a silver shimmer. I wore this just by itself yesterday but last night after my day of errands I decided it "needed" something. Stamps! I just received a few new stamping plates with some Hello Kitty designs (ordered them to do my little ones nails for her b-day). I decide to test them out on myself too. Here's what I did.

I used two HK images and a whole nail polka-dot from the QA12 image plate which I bought off Amazon.com. I think it turned out pretty cute and I'll probably wear this mani until tomorrow. Nothing like a little stamping to extend that manicure one more day! ;)

Here's a little pic of my mini-haul today from my local Sally Beauty aka My Addiction Supporter. It was time to renew my membership and yes, I bought more polish. I'll have to update the Polish Stash list here pretty soon.

Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Neon Gradient

I have been feeling the neon colors lately because it's officially Summer and all. I did this neon gradient a few days ago and wore it for about 4 days. I started off with two coats of Orly Dayglow, a pretty white with a hint of blue shimmer, from their Summer 2012 collection. I then used the two coats of neon yellow I got in my neon 3-pk Color Zone polishes at TJ Maxx. I did the gradient itself with both the neon yellow and and neon pink from the Color Zone set. These two polishes have this beautiful white/silver shimmer to them. I love it! Unfortunately the green that came with them doesn't share it's sisters' shimmer. You can see the shimmer in the pink bottle in the bottle shot picture below.

sunlight

sunlight

I used a piece of foil and a make-up sponge to do my gradient. I put the yellow and the pink right next to each other on the foil then dabbed the sponge in it in an up & down motion, creating a nice blended gradient on the foil and my sponge. I then sponged it onto the nail in the same way. I did this twice for each nail, then topped it off with one coat of Seche Vite.

lightbox

lightbox

lightbox

After wearing this mani for a day, I decided it needed just a little something. A stamp. I decided to just do an accent nail stamp and because of the "summery" feel of this mani I went with a cute palm tree/beach stamp from SH19.

Hope you all enjoyed this one, I know I did! Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Color Zone - Hot Pink

Hello all! I am feeling a bit better, still kind of queasy here and there but back to work all the same. I just downloaded the entries from my 750+ Follower Giveaway and will start going through them as fast as I can so I can announce the winner! ;)

Here's a swatch of one of the unnamed Color Zone polishes I scored from TJ Maxx last month. This is a creamy blue-toned hot pink with silver shimmer. I love this!!!! Quality was not bad either. Sorry, when I pay $4.99 for a set of 3 polishes I expect a runnier, lighter pigmented polish. I am happy to report this was not one of those. It's a little on the sheer side needing 3 thin coats to cover but 2 thick ones would have sufficed. True to neon fashion, it dries matte and quickly. It wasn't just a flat matte but that lovely velvet matte too. Streakiness was minimal and mostly gone by that third coat. If you find this one, you should definitely grab it up!!!

Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Orly Be Brave

This first swatch of Orly's new Flash Glam FX Collection is Be Brave.  Be Brave is a bunch of holographic pink bar glitter in a very faintly pink tinted clear base. The application wasn't bad at all but I did need to "place" a few bars of glitter but far less than other bar glitters I've worked with. This is one good coat over a black creme topped with one coat of Seche Vite.

I love this polish, it looks like little bars of pink fire in sunlight. Hope you liked this one too. Tomorrow starts my vacay at O'Dark Thirty so this is my last live post for the next few days. I will try to post the mani I decide on for my vacation as well as more Orly Flash Glam swatches for you while I'll gone.
Much Love, The Dragon Lady

P.S. Don't forget about the giveaway!!! Ends on 5/31!