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.

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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

Orly Sashay My Way

Today's polish is Orly Sashay My Way from their new Flash Glam FX Collection. Sashay My Way is holographic yellow toned gold bar and medium sized hexagon glitter polish in a clear base. Okay, I admit that I was a bit biased going into this one. I really don't do the whole yellow gold thing. I don't even slap it on for Christmas. I'm more of a silver girl. My mom still thinks it's weird because gold matches my redheaded complexion far better. That said, I LOVE this polish. I mean hello bling! Sadly, it was extremely hard to capture all the fire going on in this polish. So take what you see in the pictures and multiply it by 10. Here is Orly Sashay My Way one coat over a black creme topped with one coat of Gelous.  As for application it was pretty easy, did have to place a few glitter but not as much as Be Brave. Glitter stayed down pretty flat too, I hit it with a coat of Gelous anyways.

Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Orly Flash Glam FX Collection Teaser

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 In my last post you saw that I managed to score Orly's new glitter collection from Sally Beauty. I decided to sample them before I choose my vacay mani and wow. Just wow! I couldn't believe how sparklie these were I just had to post some pics. I am going to attempt to squeeze the time to swatch these all over black before I go and use them as posts while I'm in Fort Bragg. So on to more pics!

Sunlight

On the nails, 2 coats of polish no undies. On rings, one coat over black. I haven't finished the rings I am making from this collection yet (still need to set stone) but keep an eye out for them either in a future giveaway or on Etsy or both. Hubby has been bugging me to do something to pay for this addiction to polish, LOL!

Sunlight

Sunlight

Sunlight

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Can't Be Tamed Macro

Spazmatic Macro

Mermaid Tale Macro

Be Brave Macro

Sashay My Way Macro

Stay tuned for more glitter-awesomeness! I'm swatching Be Brave first and I'll post that later today. The rest will come over the next four days! Don't forget to enter my current giveaway ending 5/31! Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Week 15: Easter Mani

For this week's challenge, the Easter mani, I decided to use the mani I did for my almost 12 year old daughter (her b-day is on Tuesday). She loved the little chickies but also wanted an accent nail with a bunny. Her nails are pretty small so I was worried about tried to fit a bunny with his ears on there, but hey, sometimes you just have to say, " I can always take it off and start over if I screw it up!" LOL! I think they turned out pretty cute and she absolutely LOVES them!

We painted her nails with 3 coats Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow and 2 coats China Glaze Bahamian Escape on the accent nail. For the chickies I used Wet n Wild Black creme (eyes) and Wet n Wild Sunny Side Up (toes/beaks). for the bunny I used Konad stamping polish in white (for it's opaqueness factor). I was actually able to just brush on the half circle face and ears. I then used China Glaze Dance Baby and my dotting tool for the nose and inner ears, and again used the Wet N Wild Black Creme for the eyes. I also used the dotting tool and Konad white to finish up the eyes. I then coated it all in Seche Vite - I did wait about a minute for the nail art to "dry" a bit so the Seche wouldn't smear it.

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. I will leave you with this cute bunny pic I found the other day.

Happy Easter!

Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Fellow Challengers:

**Again if you are doing this challenge and aren't on my list please leave a comment below with a link to you blog home page so I can add you and check out your designs too! ;)**

Polished & Not Quite Put Together

I'm Still Thinking

Addicted 2 Nails

Prncess Sarah 02

Polished Criminails

No More Nail Biting

Charlotte's Nails

Fun With My Nail Polish

Operation: Nail It!

Lauriestrodes Fun With Nails

Square Polish

Only Always Soccermom

Hurr Did, Nails Did

Olivia Writes

Nothing But Nail Polish

Nails By Carol

Tres Chic Nails

Glitter Obsession

Lissa's Nail Blog

NailsN'cupcakes

omgnoodles

Oje Sihirbazi (Wizard of Polish)

Meisie's Nails

Nail Art by Joy Ella

Polish Polish Polish

Darling Nails

I'm Simply Complex

Nails Actually

Asa Nisi Masa Nail Spot

Emerald Sparkled

Gypsy’s Glitter

Glitter Obsession

The Lacquered Nail

Easter Mani #4 - Easter Franken

No top coat

I decided I couldn't let a holiday go by without at least one franken in it's honor. So here's my franken, Robin Egg (you know as in the chocolate malted robin's egg candies). It has a light yellow creme base, with lavender and teal hex glitter, rose pink mini-hex glitter, pink holo bar glitter, and rose, lavender and teal micro glitter. Top two pictures are shown with two coats of Robin Egg without top coat, the bottom two are with (it's labeled). It was pretty opaque at one coat, could have probably gotten away it but then no glitter sammich effect. So two coats it was! ;)

No top coat

With top cpat

With top coat

Much Love, The Dragon Lady

Easter Mani #3 - Easter Chickies

I saw this adorable Chicken mani by Kelly @ Kelly's Kolors. I just had to try it out. I admit that although yellow was once one of my favorite colors, being a redhead it really just isn't my color. I didn't want to do 5 yellow chickies, so I thought I'd give you my 5 colored chickies instead.

Kind of like these:

I used China Glaze Dance Baby, Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow, Color Club Twiggie, China Glaze Bahamian Escape, and Revlon Charming. Same base colors I used for my first Easter mani, the Easter eggs.

For the beaks and claws I used Wet n Wild Sunny Side Up (orange creme). For the eyes I used Wet n Wild Black creme.

 So here they are:

Then I added some sparkle with a coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust.

Sorry, the sun was out wanted to see some sparklies after so much rain!

So, after seeing my chickies SOMEONE else wanted chickies. Sounded close to this, "Chickies! Chickies! Please! Cherry top!" Yes, the two year old wanted chickies enough to use the magic words Please with a cherry on top or at least her version. Now I want you to stop and think a minute about how small a two year old's fingernails really are. We are talking about 2/3 the size of a small polish brush, the pinky might be less than half. Those of you with kids or younger siblings know what I'm talking about. I should have posted this on it's own with the post title, "An Exercise in Patience." LMAO! She begged for these but would NOT hold still for them. Kept trying to lean over and see what I was doing. Oy!

The oldest also wanted some chickies and she wanted a bunny as an accent nail...we'll see how that goes and maybe I'll post it tomorrow. For now, goodnighty all and a great big thank you to all my followers for well, following! ;)

Much Love, The Dragon Lady

P.S. As I am previewing this Bug-bug is in my lap pointing at the screen and yelling, "Mine chickies." She actually scratched and peeled hers off hours ago. LOL