Guest Post Series, with The Polish Playground - Blue and Coral Chevron Nail Art Tutorial

Today, I welcome Lisa, from The Polish Playground. Lisa is a fairly new blogger, and she always has a great mix of nice clean, colour accurate swatches, and nail art.
I love the chevrons she did here. She very creatively made her own nail art stickers!! Read on to find out how.
Thank you Lisa for sharing with us today!


Hello everyone! I'm Lisa from The Polish Playground and its such an honor to be guest posting for Pam. This is actually only my second time doing a guest post so I wanted to try out a design I've never attempted on my blog. I recently bought a set of craft scissors from Micheals so I thought why not try out some chevron nails. I've always wanted to do one but for some reason never got the chance to. Let's see how it turned out.

I started with American Apparel American Denim on my pinky and ring finger. For the rest of my nails, I have on American Apparel Neon Coral. For my pinky and pointer finger, I did a simple gradient using Sally Hansen Bling-tastic. Prior to painting my nails, I painted a coat of American Apparel American Denim on parchment paper and allowed it to dry over night. With my zig zag scissors from Michaels, I cut some chevron stripes out of it. Then I peeled the polish off the parchment paper to reveal homemade nail decals. While the base color on my ring and middle finger was still tacky, I applied the chevron stripes on, making sure to press it down. Lastly, I applied Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat.

I love how these turned out! I had a bit of trouble with the chevron stripes curling when I applied top coat so I'll have to practice more with it or try using scotch tape instead. Let me know what you think about this manicure below. If you want to see more from me, check out my blog, The Polish Playground. Thank you again to Pam for allowing me to guest post over at her blog. Have a great day everyone!

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More Girly Bits join the party

Today I am very excited to show you a custom creation that is part of the Girly Bits first collection. I have posted this one before, but since it is now officially part of the first collection, here it is again.
I present to you Sailor's Delight.

While chatting with a fellow nail polish lover, she mentioned to me that she was looking for an orange-red, like the sunset. She wanted something that would represent the saying "Red sky at night, Sailor's delight; red sky in the morning, Sailor's take warning. I promptly hopped up, ran to my polish lab and threw some things together. What you see here in the result.
She was very pleased with it, and thrilled that I had managed to bring her idea to life. She named it, and Sailor's Delight is now a part of the first Girly Bits Collection which is now available.

You can access pricing and ordering information by clicking the tab at the top of the page or by clicking here
You can also send me an email at pamsgirlybits@hotmail.com

It is a beautiful red-orange with the most amazing micro-glitter. It applies very smoothly, and is just jelly enough to let the glitter show all it's sparkly goodness.

I am very excited for this project, as it has been a lot of fun creating, mixing, testing and showcasing my creations.

Till next time....

Thanks for looking
♥pam♥

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Pumpkin by Icing, and black shatter

A few days ago I showed you an amazing orange glitter with superfantastical bling-o-rama going on here.
This is the same colour, with OPI Black Shatter on top. I was going for something sort of Halloween-ish with the black and orange, and I guess it's ok, but it's a shame to cover up the amazing glitter. I dabbed the shatter polish on and swiped it back and forth across the nail instead of the typical swiping motion used to apply polish. This causes the polish to shatter in a more random pattern. You can apply shatter in all different ways to achieve a different look. No matter how you do it, you  just have to be fast, and try not to go over the same spot twice.

Here is a pic of it before I applied the top coat. It makes it look a little charred, which I guess is appropriate for Halloween.

Thanks for looking!

♥pam♥

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Icing Pumpkin

I happen to love Icing polishes. The price is right, and they are up to date with trends and colours. Like any line, they have their hits and misses in terms of formula etc, but for the most part I love what I get. I picked up Pumpkin the other day, and while I am not usually a glitter-lover, this one is pretty amazing. Its very sparkley, and a perfect orange for this month. The first coat is very thin, and requires a little patience to apply,  but the second coat really get opaque, and brings out the sparkle. I applied three coats because I wanted a really opaque look, and lots of bling. I'll admit, I really love this and as of right now, I think I  may be sporting this one for either Thanksgiving (which is this weekend for us Canadians) or for Halloween.

I was surprised at how much I really loved this! Later I will show you this same mani with black shatter in top.

Thanks for looking!

♥pam♥

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Polish fume overdose=sleepy brain cells, but pretty polishes.

I am sure you must be thinking I had abandoned you. Never my dear friend. I have been busy in my polish lab getting my line ready for release. My brain is in slow motion the past few days, and I am thinking it's from  huffing fumes hehe
Here is another sneak peak at a few more of the contenders for the premiere collection. Mind you, these are just quick swatches but I thought you might like to see them.

This one is called Sailor's Delight. This is a custom creation for a friend.

 She told me her vision for a colour, and the name, and this is what I came up with.

It will be in the first release.

This shows two versions of grey, one with a blue shimmer and one with a multi coloured shimmer. I haven't decided which I like better yet, but one of them will make the cut.

 I am leaning towards naming this Stormy Skies.

Which one do you like better?

This is one that I love, but I am not sure if it will make the cut for the first release. 

It is un-named as of yet, and I am open to suggestions :)

I am getting very excited about releasing these for sale in the very near future.

Thanks for looking!

♥pam♥

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Joe Fresh

Today (Wednesday) I am taking my kids to Cedar Point in Sandusky Ohio.   I LOOOOVE roller coasters. I mean I run from ride to ride like a maniac, and ignore my thirst/hunger/full bladder kind of love. The higher and faster the better.  The weather looks like it should be nice, so with any luck it will be a perfect day. The last time we went on a perfect day they had the highest attendance ever, and we waited in line for every ride for so long, that we only managed to get on three rides all day!!! THREE RIDES!! I live almost 4 hours from Cedar Point, so it's not like I could throw in the towel and head home ya know?

Here in Canada we are sort of behind the 8 ball on a lot of things. We don't have access to a lot of brands, and we don't get the releases as soon, and sometimes we just don't get the releases at all. But, we do have one brand that is exclusive to Canada for now ( I believe there is a store opening in NYC soon?) Joe Fresh. It's a great brand, with decent quality for the most part, and easy on the wallet as well, at $3.33 per bottle. Mind you they are small bottles at 6 mls ,but really how often do you actually use up an entire 15ml bottle of polish? And- they have a FLAKIE!! ( I will be posting about the Flakie (called Twilight) when I return to adulthood-AKA get home from Cedar Point.  Here are some swatches from their collection.

I previously posted some swatches of another Joe Fresh colour, Persian Blue here and I layered Pure Ice Heartbreaker over it, and it's gorgeous!!

Crush Orange

Crush Orange

Fog

Fog

Fog

Fog

Storm

Storm

Storm

Storm

Storm

All of these had great application, and amazing shine with no top coat. Of course I wear top coat with them ( my trusty Seche Vite) but I was impressed with their high gloss before applying it.

I picked up a few from the fall OPI collection Touring America, and I should have those swatched and posted for you soon.  I am actually just about to paint  my nails with I Eat Mainly Lobster. :)

Thanks for looking!

♥Pam♥

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Essie Tart Deco

Hope everyone had a great weekend! It is hot hot HOT here, and humid. No complaints though after a late start to summer this year. Going with the orange trend lately, I decided to show you Tart Deco by Essie. It's a beautiful orangey peach shade, with great application. There have been some reports of people having issues with top coat changing the colour of the polish. I personally have not had this issue, but it might depend on which top coat you are using. So what I have done is taken photos of it without top coat, and with top coat on just two fingers, and then also with a different top coat on the other two fingers.

So first up is indoors, with no top coat on any of them.

Now due to my lack of professional lighting,  the ring and pinky fingers appear to be darker even with out topcoat. In reality they are all the same.

This is outdoors (in case you thought I planted petunias inside teehee) with no top coat on any of them. Thanks to Mr, Sun there is more consistency in the colour here.

Here I have Color Club Vivid top coat on the pinky and ring fingers only. There really isn't any difference even though in this pic the index finger appears to be lighter. It real life it was not. The index and middle finger both are with out top coat.

This photo is indoors.

This is outside with top coat on the pinky and ring fingers only.

This one is indoors with top coat on all fingers. Color Club Vivid on pinky and ring, 

and OPI DS top coat on middle and index.

No difference at all.

And just for fun, because I love nail art, I added some little daisies.

Hope this comparison helps.

thanks for looking.

♥Pam♥

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Color Club Tangerine Scream

Oranges are really hot this summer. Anything from creamsicle orange, to peach, to coral, to hot neon oranges and everything in between.
This is a nearly neon, slightly iridescent orange by Color Club called Tangerine Scream. It's hot, bright and fun. It has a subtle flash of green. It's more apparent in the bottle unfortunately, and on the nail it translates more to a gold flash. Still very pretty. It has a great application but does require 3 coats which is typical of neons, and this also dries a little satiny. Not quite matte, but not shiny.

This is indoors, in natural light with top coat.

Here we go again with the sideways bit. What is up with this?

Anyway, this is outside.

In the sun

And in the shade.

(I am starting to wonder if I have fallen asleep here and I am looking at the monitor crooked.)

And here we have it with  Joe Fresh Matte Topcoat, indoors.

Tangerine Scream is a fun little polish, and for me it has no dupes in my stash.

Thanks for looking!

♥pam♥

PS, I am going to be away for a few days, but I will have some AWSOME pics for you when I return.

Cheers!

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Orange you glad?

I am not usually much of an orange or red polish wearer, but I do have my fair share of them. Likely in the pursuit of finding the perfect shade for me. It's not that I don't love them, because I do. Especially on other people. You will usually find me with a purple, blue or green polish on, and usually some sort of nail art. But, I am not afraid to try anything once. Well, perhaps I might cringe at an upchuck yellow, or a baby poo green.
So here we have a few of the oranges in my collection.

This is LA Girl Color Addict, in Indulge. Most of my LA girls colours (yes I add a 'u' to coloUr because I am Canadian) are great quality with good application and this one was no different. I do love the colour and although in these pics it makes my skin look a little red, it doesn't do that so much in real life. It is a medium orange with a gorgeous gold shimmer that I love so much. ♥

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I'm His Coral Friend by OPI is from the SUNBelieveable Collection, released  in the Summer of 2009.

This is a beautiful coral colour. Love love love it. It's a two coater and the application is flawless. I think the finish is what really makes it stand out. It's very shiny, almost like a jelly, but it's more opaque than most jellies. I would say this  is definitely one to get if you like corals.

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This is Hot & Spicy by OPI from the Hong Kong Collection in the Spring of 2010.

It is a medium-light orange cream. Good application.

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OPI Cajun Shrimp is part of the OPI Classic Collection.

It's a bright chili pepper orange red. Super bright and summery.

It is very very close to Essie One of a Kind. I would say close enough to be called a dupe.

Ok that's all I have for today in the orange/coral department.

Suddenly I am craving a fruity summery drink.

Thanks for looking!

~Pam

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