TopCoatIt

Happy Tuesday! We’ve got a fun theme today. Sweet Sixteen; something our sixteen year old self would have liked. I’ve always taken care of my nails and tried to keep them pretty. Nicely manicured nails make me feel feminine. To be honest, when I was sixteen I probably would have sported a traditional, white tipped french manicure. I tried time and time again to use those french manicure kits from the drug store and could never achieve a pretty manicure.

That said, I did not choose to do a french today. I was sixteen in the nineties. The grunge era. I was very much a grunge and skater wannabe. You can laugh. It’s okay. I roll my eyes and shake my head when I look back at some of the pictures.

So I was going for a grunge look with this. I think I achieved it. Hubby agrees. I started with a base of China Glaze Platinum Silver then added little bits of Essie Soul Mate, Milani Fresh Teal and Essie Alligator Purse.  To smear and streak it, I used a brush that was about the same width as my nail, dipped it in acetone, dabbed it off them brushed it down my nail.

The way the colors bleed down the surface of my nail reminds me of something that has rusted and is all weathered. I don’t know why that says grunge to me, but it does. I guess the other thing that ties this to my sixteen year old self is that I had a metallic silver polish like this back then and wore it on my toes all the time. It was for sure the cool polish in my neck of the woods at the time. What were you like when you were sixteen?

Be sure the check out all the other manis today:

Amanda of Amandalandish
Anna of Going to the Showing
Anne of Grape Fizz Nails
Ashley of Art Evolve
Brandi of The Beaulieu Review
Chelsea of Nailed Blog
ChiChi of I’m Just Me…ChiChi
Cordia of Seriously Swatched
Elizabeth of Did My Nails
Jamie of Polish, Please!
Katherine of Haul of Fame
Maribeth of Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite!
Marisa of Polish Obsession
Meredith of Polish and Charms
Nory of Fierce Make Up and Nails
Sarah of See Sarah Swatch
Tara of Polishy of Truth

I guess you could maybe classify these as art deco. I don’t really know what else to call them.There was a slight plumbing emergency in my kitchen yesterday. There was a leak under the sink so I called my dad to come rescue me since hubby was at work. I tell you this because his gracious repair cut in to my manicure time so I had to do something quick. I didn’t want to bust out any art brushes and have to bother with clean up, so this is what I ended up with.

I really quite like it. I started with China Glaze Platinum. I love this metallic silver, but be careful with it. It has a tendency to bubble like mad. Then I used China Glaze For Audrey, Sinful Colors Hazard and Wet ‘n Wild On a Trip.

Bottle brush designs are some of my favorite to do. Sometimes I just don’t want to hassle with all those tiny brushes and am grateful that there are some easy nail art designs out there that don’t require special tools. Do you have a favorite bottle brush design?

It won’t stop snowing!  Seriously, I’m 100% ready for spring.  The high temperature yesterday was 9°F.  THAT WAS THE HIGH!!!  I didn’t even leave my house.  It was too freaking cold.All the snow and whiteness is what prompted this wintery leopard mani. My base polish was Essie Main Squeeze.  It doesn’t look at all pink in the bottle, but looked like a very natural pink on my nail.  It’s not exactly what I was going for, but I like it anyway.  A happy mistake.
My spots are OPI DS Radiance and OPI Swedish Nude.  I know I do a lot of leopard manis and have mentioned more than once that it’s one of my favorites.  To prove it and show my dedication to all things leopard print, here’s what I had my sister do to my hair over the weekend.Isn’t it fun?!  There’s a peek-a-boo panel on both sides of my head that replaced the stripes that were there for the last year.  It took forever, but it was worth it.  I love doing unique things to my hair without going completely crazy.  I’m grateful that I have a sister that can do these kinds of things and is willing to experiment with me.  There’s no way I’d be able to do it otherwise.  I don’t think I would trust anyone else to do something like this to my hair.  I love it!

This week was an easy one for me.  We’re showing our birthstone colors.  My birthday is in January, so my birthstone is a garnet.  I actually have a polish called Garnet.  Hmm… I wonder what polish I should use for today’s theme?  No brainer.

This was the first time I’ve actually used Kleancolor Garnet.  It’s a jelly for sure.  You can almost see straight through the bottle.  It looks much deeper in the bottle than on.  I’m sure with multiple coats it would look darker, but I got excellent coverage with one coat so I stopped there.

 To add some extra sparkle, I added a coat of Kleancolor Chunky Holo Scarlet over the top.  Of course I can’t leave well enough alone.  Heaven forbid I just wear some polish without embellishments.  I added a silver dot in the form of OPI DS Radiance to each corner to represent a prong that would hold such a stone in a piece of jewelry.  I don’t like it all that much, but I don’t hate it either.  I do love garnets though.  Such a beautiful deep red color.  Very pretty.

We’ve got a new member of our group debuting this week.  Show Jamie a warm welcome by heading over to see what she’s been up to.

Be sure the check out all the other manis today:

Amanda of Amandalandish
Anna of Going to the Showing
Anne of Grape Fizz Nails
Ashley of Art Evolve
Brandi of The Collegiate Nail
Chelsea of Nailed Blog
ChiChi of I’m Just Me…ChiChi
Cordia of Seriously Swatched
Elizabeth of Did My Nails
Jamie of Polish, Please!
Jenn of All That is Gorgeous
Jenna of I’m Still Thinking
Katherine of Haul of Fame
Maribeth of Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite!
Marisa of Polish Obsession
Meredith of Polish and Charms
Nory of Fierce Make Up and Nails
Sarah of See Sarah Swatch
Tara of Polishy of Truth

Ahhhhhh…  Last week was so busy.  I’m glad it’s over.  I wanted to play with red and silver together.  I’m busting out the holiday colors.  I’m not in love with how this turned out though.  Individually the colors are great and I would probably like them better with another design.  I have to say that I did this quickly, under a bit of a time crunch and I wasn’t all that creative.  Oh well.

My red is China Glaze Velvet Bow, one of my favorites!  The grey stripes are Julep Annette and the silver is OPI DS Radiance.  I’m excited to start in to holiday manis.  I just hope I can think of some fun stuff to do without duplicating last years Christmas manis.  Do you have any fun ones planned?  Any good suggestions for me?