Red, Black, & Silver Holo Georgia Bulldogs Mani

Hey y'all!  With the official start of college football, I had to do some UGA nails. I guess they could be Atlanta Falcons themed too, but I love my Bulldogs!  I went a little trigger happy with the camera, so there are TONS of pics. 

These are actually kind of a 3-in-1 design.  This could be just solid colors or have holo added, like I did, for some extra flair.  You could also stop at any point or make any changes.  In fact, you could swap out & use the colors of your choosing....which is what nail art is all about.

This is how this mani started.  I used OPI Coca-Cola Red, then sponged Wet N Wild Black Creme onto half of the nail.  I sponged it on separately so that it looked more rough and not blended as it would have if I'd applied both the red and black polishes to the sponge. 

For the accent nail, I started out with Color Club Harp On It as my base.  Once that was dry I applied some chevron vinyls and brushed on WnW Black Creme then Pretty & Polished Black Swan quickly before removing the vinyls.  Then I just put on a coat of Seche Vite.

Of course I wasn't fully satisfied, even though I liked it....so I kept adding to it.

I grabbed the sponge again & applied Red Friday by Darling Diva Polish and Black Swan by Pretty & Polished over the red/black gradient.  This added more holo to balance out the accent nail. 

I had to add a little something else to take it one more step further, so I grabbed my white acrylic paint.  I am sloppy when it comes to writing on a curved surface with a very pointed dotting tool, but it works.  I think the "GO DAWGS" finished it off perfectly.


Once I was finished I took a few pics outside with my phone as well as a couple macro shots.

So what do y'all think?  Excited for the return of college football?  Who do you cheer for?

*Football Friday* LA Tech with Amanda

Hi Y'all! Amanda here filling in on FOOTBALL FRIDAY! cause Harri is sick *sadface*

I wanted to stay neutral this week with a crazy out of left field mani! My Alma Mater: Louisiana Tech!
Just a few quick facts about LaTech!

1. Tech is located in teeny tiny Ruston, Louisiana; Home of Karl Malone (I met him once at a chinese food buffet!)
       Ruston also has some of the best peaches I've ever had in my life!
2. Tech is in the WAC: Western Athletic Conference, which includes teams like Hawaii (?!??!) Boise, and Fresno
       Our colors are red and blue and we are the BULLDOGS!
3. Louisiana Tech became the first IN THE WORLD to award a degree in NanoSystems Engineering 2007 (the year i graduated!)
4. When you graduate from Tech you get an engraved brick that goes into a huge walkway recognizing every graduate from Louisiana Tech University.
       as of May 2011 the bricks go up to the graduation year 2000

For this mani I used OPI Alpine Snow and OPI Red and Blue shatter. For the logo I used Zoya Sooki and China Glaze First Mate.

even tho our team tends to flub up a lot, I'm still a proud supporter!
GO DAWGS!

*NOTE from Harri*
Thank you Amanda for doing this for me, I really appreciate you staying up late to get this done for me and showing a Dawg of a different color. ;)  For those of you who ask "Who is Amanda?", she's a non-blogging polish freak that I met through one of my FB polish groups.  I'll be meeting her for the first time & dragging her with me shopping on Black Friday as long as she doesn't have to work that morning.  She did an awesome Steve Jobs tribute mani recently, I think she needs to start blogging!

I was feeling better yesterday and took pics for part of my next review, but I woke up this morning feeling the crud again.  SO, I'll try to get that done this weekend for y'all.  AND, I have to get my giveaway prizes mailed out as all the winners have replied. 

TOODLES Y'ALL!!!

*Football Friday* Pink UGA Ribbon & a mani too.

Since it's Breast Cancer Awareness month a friend of mine made this image below and is allowing me to use this on my post today.

My mani is kind of just meh.  This is 2 coats of Butter London Knees Up with a layer of Wet n Wild Tangled In My Web from the On The Prowl collection.  This is the first OTP I've used since I got them too.  I have way too much that I need to swatch and play with. 

It almost looks like a ladybug. 

TOODLES Y'ALL!!!

*Football Friday* Hawkeye Game Face!

Today, I bring to you a true "game face".  While I'm using this as an Iowa Hawkeye look, it could also be used for a Pittsburg Steelers look.  The SO is fans of both teams, so I have to watch.  While I don't really consider this as a wearable look, it would be appropriate for a game or a party. 

When researching on YouTube on different looks as inspiration I found several that I liked.  I went to go do this and went way opposite of what I was originally thinking.

It's not perfect by any means, but it's something I would actually wear if I went to a game.  I know I made a few mistakes when doing this, and of course having the kiddo home sitting on the bathtub watching my every move didn't help much.  So, here ya go...

I drew the black on with my eyeliner, then went over it with a NYX jumbo pencil in Black Bean and went over it with black shadow.  I filled inside with a NYX jumbo pencil in Milk and went over that with yellow.  I used the same eyeliner to line my eyes and slapped on some mascara.  For my lips I just used my EOS lip balm and ran over it with a lip liner.  Covered the rest of my face with foundation and voila. 

Products used:

• ELF Eyeshadow Primer (the $1 one)
• NYX Jumbo pencils in Black Bean & Milk
• ELF Brightening Eyeliner - Black
• Matte Black Eyeshadow - ELF 100 palette
• Korpse Kosmetics eyeshadow in Halo
• Bare Escentuals Big Tease mascara
• Bare Escentuals foundation in Medium Beige
• ELF Mineral Lip Liner in peachy

I wish I'd actually been more precise when applying the black and that I'd put the yellow on before the black.  Another thing I'd change is putting the top black line even with my brows and not have so much yellow.  Other than that, it's pretty cool.  My kid said it looked like Batman.  

TOODLES Y'ALL!!!

*Football Friday* Iowa Hawkeyes dotting fail

I promised an Iowa Hawkeyes mani at some point, and decided to go ahead & do it while I was playing around the other day.  This is my first time playing with a dotting tool I picked up a while back and I'm wishing I'd gotten a set of different sized ones as this one just has a brush on the other end. 

I used 2 coats of Ulta Sun-Sational and forgot to take pics of it alone.  Then I dotted the letters on my nails using Wet N Wild Black Cream. 

It was fairly easy, though trying to dot letters upside down was the challenge.  you can see where it's all kinda wonky.  My son loved it though.  Then again, he did pick out the color for me.  Please excuse the top coat bubbles on my pinky. :/

I still think it's cute.  I'd actually thought of doing this with some black rhinestones I recently got, but then thought about how difficult removal would be and changed my mind. 

What do y'all think?

TOODLES Y'ALL!!!

*Football Friday* Game Face

I know, I usually post these early, but I just finished editing the pics.  Usually I do my Friday posts in advance so that I don't have to worry, but I've been kinda busy and distracted lately.

I didn't know what I was going to name this post until I started editing the pictures.  I've done UGA inspired looks in the past, but wanted to do something different.  And, this is remotely tame. 

For inspiration, I went to YouTube and looked through xSparkage's video's.  Ironically enough the one I did find was her Horoscope inspired tutorial for Scorpio!  Not only was it red & black, but it was my sign too!  Y'all should really check her out if you haven't already.  Thankfully my friend Melissa pointed me toward watching her and I'm hooked :D

I also wanted to try my new Wet N Wild DreamWeavers Trio Enter A New Realm that Kristin at The Manicured Monkey picked up for me recently.  I already have the Night Elf palette and did use one color out of it.  So....onto the pics and what all I used will be listed below.

Here's what I used:

EYES 
ELF Mineral Primer
NYX Jumbo Pencil in Milk
WnW Enter A New Realm (only used the red & black as the silver was kinda meh)
Bare Escentuals Black Ruby Liner Shadow (as I didn't have the dark red shadow she has)
WnW Night Elf (only used the white in the upper left corner)
Josie Maran Argan Infused Eyeliner in Raven
Maybelline Falsies mascara

FACE
NYC Matte Powder Foundation in Urban Light
ELF Contouring Blush & Bronzing Powder (used both)
Rimmel Stay Matte Pressed Powder in Transparent

LIPS
ELF Minty Lip Gloss in Boston

Also, if you haven't already, go enter my $25 Apothica Gift Card Giveaway which ends tonight at 11:59PM EST.

TOODLES Y'ALL!!!

*Football Friday* SPIRIT Fingers!!

I have spirit fingers, yes I do.  I have spirit fingers, how 'bout you?

Sorry, just had to make myself laugh when that popped in my head.  I have another UGA themed mani to show you.  I promise to do an Iowa Hawkeye one soon.  Even though UGA didn't win last week, I was loving this mani.  Even our waitress at the mexican restaurant asked where I got them done out.  I thought I was going to have to pick her up off the floor when I told her I did them myself. 

I did this mani with just 4 colors.  Zoya America,  Wet N Wild Ebony Hates Chris, a silver striper, and a silver glitter striper. 

I kinda went about this the wrong way, but it still worked.  I started out by alternating red & black on my nails.  Red on thumb, black on index, etc on the left hand.  I did the opposite on the right hand, black on thumb...and so on.  Then I used scotch tape and applied it diagonally on the nail to apply the opposite color on each nail as pictured below.

You can see on my index finger(on the left) where I didn't allow enough time for America to dry before applying my topcoat....so I got some drag marks. 

Now, here's where my plan went wrong.  I'd planned to do this on all nails, but decided maybe just to try an accent nail first on my ring finger.  SO, I took some of the small striping tape that the lovely Kristin over at The Manicured Monkey was lovely enough to send me in a swap package, and applied it over the line where the red meets the black.  I applied OPI Red Shatter over the black and OPI Black Shatter over the red, then used my silver striper to cover the line and this is the result....

I didn't like it too much......so I threw a nitrile glove over my right hand and removed the polish on just that nail to replace it with WnW Ebony Hates Chris by itself and then on the right hand slapped America on my index finger.  From there, I just kinda free-handed a funky french with my silver striper and covered all the silver with my silver glitter. 

This is how it looked in the end. I forgot to get a pic of my right hand. :/

What do you think?  It makes me think of a cheerleader uniform.

My prop is a bottle of layered sand with a UGA sticker that I got at a festival ages ago just cause I thought it was cute.  I absolutely LOVED this mani, and may kinda re-create it later with different colors. 

TOODLES Y'ALL!!!

*Football Friday* Glitter Crack Sammich!

Here we are with another Red & Black mani.  Tomorrow, UGA plays South Carolina.  Blah.  LoL  I just hope they play better than they did last week. 

I attempted this first on a nail wheel to see what it would look like before doing it on my nails.  I actually think it looked better on the wheel, but it doesn't look bad on the nail.

This is 3-4 coats of China Glaze Ruby Pumps (which I showed the other day), OPI Black Shatter, and lastly KleanColor Chunky Holo Scarlet.  So, rather than a jelly sammich, it's a glitter crack sammich. 

This was so pretty, so I went with it....

This was the best pic I could get with shatter over Ruby Pumps.

 Now all 3.....

At first, it looks almost like Lubu Heels, but if you look closer you can see that it's not.

TOODLES Y'ALL!!!

*Football Friday* - China Glaze Lubu Heels!

Tomorrow fall officially starts in my opinion.  College football started last night, but until UGA plays nothing else matters.  I am a DIE HARD Georgia Bulldogs fan.  As I told you last week, pretty much everything I own is red & black.  I have a lot of UGA memorabilia laying around.  It's always a good thing in a way because when people aren't sure what to get me as a gift, they can't go wrong with anything UGA.

I have a snuggie, glasses, shotglasses, nail stickers, keychains, stickers, t-shirts, socks, salsa, Coke bottles, as well as a figurine or two, a stuffed bulldog that dances & plays the fight song and a rubber ducky.  I'll try to get them in some of my posts.

During football season, my mornings are spent watching Game Day on ESPN and football all day.  Rarely will I go anywhere on a Saturday unless the game is over or I absolutely have to.

Now back to the polish.  Lubu Heels is a black jelly with small red glitter.  I picked this up at Sally's, but it's part of China Glaze's core line and should be available anywhere you find China Glaze.

While I probably should've tried this polish alone, I went ahead & layered it over Wet N Wild-Ebony Hates Chris.  All pics below are base coat, 2 coats of EHC, 2 coats of Lubu Heels, and SH Insta-Dri topcoat.  I wore this for 8, yes EIGHT days before any chips!

Dunno why this is so dark.

This one either.

My pretty shotglass.  My hand is hiding the handle.

And even though tomorrow is "Spread The Red" day, I'm sporting the red & black on my nails....I'll just wear the red clothes!


TOODLES Y'ALL & GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO DAWGS, SIC 'EM, WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF!!!