Kell's DIY Nails

The last Textured Cream I tried from Milani let me down a bit so I'm happy to say this one is much better. This is another from their Fall Release; Gracious Green is a muted (you could also say dusty) sage green creme with texture. I love these types of colors. Application was really nice with this one; I was able to get a nice, clean line at the cuticle and had very minimal clean up. 2 coats, no top coat. It also wore like cement on my nails.  These are Limited Edition and still available on Milani's website . I highly recommend grabbing these before they disappear. While I wasn't crazy about the lighter colors (they collect dirt) I like the brighter and darker shades a lot. I love the texture, the dry time, and wear time. All around great polish. Orders $30 and up get free shipping. Oh, and check out this awesome White Faux Leather Jacket I found at Kohl's! I absolutely love the fit. I've never had a leather or faux leather jacket like this so it's been fun ...

Here's another St. Patricks Day mani I did earlier this March. Mentality's Bandit is pretty darn awesome! This is the first Mentality I've ever had the pleasure to use thanks to my polish pal, Michaela . This was a RAOK (Random Act Of Kindness) gift from her and WOW, it's a good one! It's a forestry green matte shimmer and the formula is like butter. Dreamy to apply. Because it's a matte it dries quickly too. This is 2 coats. It's very opaque but I did need the 2nd coat to reach full opacity. Because I wanted a little extra wear time I added a coat of Gelous and then matted it again using Illamasqua's Matte Top Coat . Mattes on their own tend to lack longevity so this gave me a few extra days of wear time. I did an accent nail using gold prismatic nail foil I bought off of eBay . I  had some challenges using nail foils for the first time so here is a list of do's and dont's when working with nail foils: 1) Don't use Base Coat; it caused dra...

Are you wearing your green today?!? I sure hope so or you just might get pinched!! The month of March has been very inspired for me and I've done more nail art this month than usual. I did some Mardi Gras Nails that I adored and was very proud of.  I also did a few different green manis earlier this month that I still need to post, but first I want to show you the nails I am wearing today.   Shade. Sun. I started with 2 coats of Jessica, Lime Cooler . This fantastic pastel lime green creme is from the Summer 2012 Gelato Mio! Collection. I picked this up from Ninja Polish quite a while ago because it made me think of Essie's Navigate Her. It's no dupe but I like it even better. I used 2 coats. The first coat was pretty streaky and would drag if you over worked it so I gave the 1st coat plenty of time to dry before adding the 2nd. It then became nicely opaque. Formula was a bit thick. I also got a wonky brush with this polish; the brush is nice and fans out over the nail ni...

This is another mani I wore in February... And Hey, wouldn't you know, it's a texture polish! We never would have predicted one of those! (That's all sarcasm right there) There weren't too many winter collection polishes I went crazy over and I spent most of my money on buying lemmings from stash sales. But just after Christmas I stumbled upon a hidden gem of a collection; Finger Paint's Enchanted Winter Collection . The swatches were great and they were all textures including a dupe of an NOPI texture I always wanted but refused to buy since they are not cruelty free. I was stoked! I went onto Sally Beauty Supplies' website to buy them but one was not available so I thought maybe I could find them at my local store; no luck. So, I went to the next logical place; the Polish Swap Society Facebook Group and reached out. I scored and was able to get the entire collection; and I paid less than $20 with shipping! What a great deal! You gotta love polish pals! Spell B...

February is always a busy month for me and this year was no exception. I didn't get a chance to post my manicures but I did take photos. Please forgive the terrible condition of my hands and the bad photo. CND's Shellac is great for me at tax season; my nails look great for 14 days straight, my nails get the added strength of a gel manicure so they are less likely to break, and application time is much quicker than traditional manicures because you don't have to wait for each layer to air dry.  This is how the color translated most of the time. For February I decided to wear Tropix which I initially thought would be a vibrant coral but in reality it ended up looking fluorescent pink most of the time which I really dug. The picture above was taken after about 4 days of wear. I had a bit of an issue with the color coat pulling away from the edge of the nail as well as trying to wrap my tips but I found a few things to try next time to eliminate those issues. It's importa...

Guess what else arrived in the mail? That's right, the other new Barielle collection! This is much more of my idea of a Spring collection. Let's take a look... From Left to Right: My City Apartment, Designer's Shoe, First Class Ticket. From Left to Right: Money Talks, Fire Me Up, Take Me Shopping. From Left to Right: My City Apartment, Money Talks, First Class Ticket, Designer's Shoe, a Take Me Shopping, Fire Me Up. Front to Back: Fire Me Up, Take Me Shopping, Designer's Shoe, First Class Ticket, Money Talks, My City Apartment. Fire Me Up is a vibrant and bold orange. The formula is a cross between a creme and a jelly; a crelly. A very opaque crelly. What you see here is 2 coats and no top coat. I'm very happy to see a serious orange in Barielle's line up; one of my favorite nail colors is orange. This orange is also very unique to my stash. The closest colors in my stash are Bettina, Starfish (slightly lighter with more white in the base) and China Glaze,...

I'm kind of a jerk for showing you this set because it's no longer available. However... This is my first time trying LUSH and I am really enjoying this set. You can also buy each of these items individually. Isn't that packaging great?!?  TOP: Red Fun MIDDLE: Bubble Gum Lip Scrub BOTTOM; Left to Right: Turkish Delight Shower Smoothie, From Dusk 'Til Dawn Massage Cone, Neon Love Soap. The good news is the Neon Love Soap (3.5 oz.) is still available and if you like unique warm scents you should get it while you can. I am a huge fan of Warm Vanilla Sugar from Bath & Body Works so I love this too! The scent is a unique blend of fresh fruit juice, soya yogurt, citrusy bergamot, rosewood, and spicy cinnamon leaf oil. I'm used to soaps that rinse clean so I had to get used to the moisturizing oils this leaves behind but it did moisturize very well when I skipped body lotion. I also used the entire bar up in a week. LOL I like to lather up really well. ;) I also tried...

Just a quickie to post my Mardi Gras Nails. I did this to enter Barielle's Mardi Gras Manicure Contest. I didn't win but that's cool; I still love them and I am very happy with how they came out. I started with a base of ManGlaze, Matte is Murder, a shimmery matte black. It's got a great formula and I only used one coat. I used 2 Barielle Shades: Holiday Madness, a shimmering bright sage green, and Rio's Rockin Bands, a shimmery red-toned purple. To apply these I used a dry flat tipped nail art brush and dabbed at the cuticle and then dry brushed towards the tips to give it the feathered look.  To finish the look I used one coat of Zoya's Gilty, a gold flake topper. I sealed it all with a coat of Gelous, In A Hurry.

Well HELLO there! I've been a very busy little tax pro hence my lack of presence here but I just got Barielle's newest collection so I wanted to get you a peak at the colors and my initial thoughts on formulas and finishes. Let's jump right in with some photos and a quick take on each color. From Top to Bottom:  My Week Away, My Tan Blazer, Sexy Mood. From Top to Bottom: Cream 'n Sugar, A Little Exotic, Uptown Girl. From Left to Right: My Week Away - My 2nd favorite of the line up. Barielle's description is 'A Dusty Pink' and that's mostly correct. In the bottle you can see a soft pale green shimmer (like Greenwich Village from the 2012 Fall Collection). This swatch shows 2 coats. I also added a coat of Barielle's Ulta Speed Dry Manicure Extender to see if it would magnify the shimmer at all but it actually hid it and made it look more like a creme. The formula was nice and easy to work with and very opaque. This photo gives you a nice side-by-side ...