Nails: Love & Beauty, Teal

♥ Love & Beauty Teal (2 coats)

♥ Seche Vite Top Coat (1 coat)

I got this nail polish for $.49, which is pretty exciting for me ;) I bought it some time in December when Forever 21 was having a "50% off clearance" sale. I picked up about a dozen shades since the price was right. The shades had different names online but when they arrived they were all labeled in a generic way (Teal, Pink, Purple, etc). Even though this was a clearance item I'm sure you can find a similar shade in their extensive line of blues & greens. There's this one also named Teal, but their online swatch is a little misleading (if it's even the same polish). They're $2.80 each at full price.

And now here's some miscellaneous ugly junk:

Nail One

Red Base (paint until opaque)

China Glaze Ruby Pumps (1 coat)

Seche Vite (1 coat)

OPI Black Shatter (1 thick coat)

This one's not so much 'ugly' as it is played out! With no other use for my shatter polish (since I'm over it and it's starting to dry out) I made this "lava" nail on a display wheel I started. This was one of my favorite combinations to wear when I got my first bottle of shatter so I guess I put it there just fer.. lookin' at ;)

Nail Two

Essie Ballet Slippers (1 coat)

Wet N Wild Part of Five Glitters (1 coat)

Essie Ballet Slippers (1coat)

(...and then I ruined it with)

Sally Hansen Magenta Moves (used for the 'cupcake liner' - L/E)

Wet N Wild Everybody Loves Redmond (used for the 'cherry')

Black Nail Art Pen (use to define the 'cupcake liner')

I went and made my very favorite jelly sandwich and ruined it by turning it in to a cupcake. That sentence sounds like it belongs on a food blog..

Nail Three

Any dark green base (paint until opaque)

Any mixed/chunky silver glitter (1 generous coat)

China Glaze Watermelon Rind (1 thin coat)

Seche Vite (1 coat)

Meh. I didn't really care for this combo.

Review: China Glaze Whirled Away

Did you think I dropped off the face of the Earth?? No such luck, bud-day! No excuses, no explanations.. just a quick + dirty review of my most recent polish purchase.

Whirled Away is from the China Glaze Cirque Du Soleil collection and one of the only shades I desired from this release (the other being It's A Trap-eze! but I can't find it anywhere). It's totally unique to my collection; out of 320+ bottles I don't have a single black, white, or black & white glitter top coat so off to Sally's I went.

'Weeeeeee!' I exclaimed in the car after purchasing it. It looked so. cool! It contains medium black hex glitter, black bar glitter, and large white hex glitter. As I mentioned on Instagram, my bottle had one rogue, tiny red glitter floating around in it.. it does not belong there. Wish I would have noticed that before completing my purchase because I am WAY too lazy to go all the way back to do an exchange over ONE red glitter (c'mon now!). I couldn't wait to try it out!

Pictured above: DISAPPOINTMENT.

I imagined this perfectly speckled/splattered look to my mani, over vibrant, eye-catching colors. Every photo I saw online of this top coat looked awesome over every single color it graced.. I couldn't wait to get it on my nails! I picked Zoya America as my base color which is my very favorite bright red cream. Now comes the sad part of this dramedy...

What you're looking at above?? That's THREE painfully annoying (!!) coats of Whirled Away over two coats of Zoya America. I realize this is not meant to be a full cover glitter but the glitter was so fucking sparse in a sea of thick, blobby, clear base that it made application a nightmare. I had to fight with this polish on every finger, trying to fish out the the good stuff while trying to avoid layering on too much of the clear base. The white hex glitters were nearly impossible to find/fish out so I only have one per nail which looks kind of wack. Of course a ton of the base still poured on to my nails which meant they took forever to dry - even after sealing it up with a coat of Seche! (Are you counting along? That's a full 6 layers on nails..)

My boyfriend said, "Looks like ladybug nails." which is, uh, not exactly what I was going for. Also, having so many layers on the nail means that this mani was more prone to chipping.. and chip it did, in big, jagged pieces. It only lasted two days.

When all was said and done I was far less impressed with this black & white glitter. I liked the look.. or rather, what it could have been... but anything that takes that much effort is just not worth it to me. I might hunt down one of the indy versions of this polish some time after Christmas, that is, if I can find one that doesn't cost the same as a Volvo.

The verdict: I wish I had more hands so I could give this polish 4 thumbs down.

Katy Perry's Nails

(click to enlarge)

I just stumbled upon this collage of Katy Perry's nails in Us Mag. I just wanted to share because I am completely in LOVE with her Daria manicure.. how awesome is that?!

Birthday Trip, Part One: The Lake

Hey girls! I just got back from my trip to Lake Tahoe late Wednesday night and have spent the last couple of days unpacking, straightening up the house, doing laundry and all sorts of other fun junk to get myself ready to go back to work on Monday and snapped right back in to reality. I took a ton of photos and wanted to share some here on my blog! This post is picture-heavy/text-heavy and everything is clickable for a bit of a closer look.. 

Friday (08/17) was our driving day. We estimated an 8 hour drive but made a couple of stops along the way (that I will cover in a separate post) and got stuck in total stand-still traffic for 2+ hours about 10 miles from our destination. We were driving on a two lane highway in the mountains and a truck overturned on the road a few miles ahead of us and stopped traffic completely in both directions. I smoked cigarettes on the side of the road. We made friends. I sang songs (totally off key) for my own entertainment... it was a long wait but I tried to make the best of it. When all was said and done we were en route for 12 hours and got to the cabin pretty late.

When we woke up the next day (08/18) it was raining! I was so bummed, but it did give us a chance to get some groceries and pick up a few other things we'd need for the week. I saw a RiteAid and had the boyfriend make a pit stop since we don't have them in Vegas anymore. The rest of the day was spent inside unpacking and getting acquainted with the place.

PERFECT weather on Sunday (08/19), thank goodness! I was determined to get out and do something. We went for a walk and found this area three short blocks from where we were staying. It had a walking trail and some grassy + rocky areas but no beachy places to lay out. We decided to keep looking..

We found this beach a couple of miles down the main road (out of walking distance). There was a $5/person "beach pass" fee which was good from 8A-8P. This beach was right next to a marina which you can kind of see in the background. It was pretty crowded here and the waves were kind of choppy due to all of the boats in the area. I still had fun swimming and tanning - I'm great at ignoring people around me ;) We stayed until 7:30 at which point 75% of the people there had packed up and left.

I'm not even gonna lie. I didn't want to leave the cabin the next day (08/20) - I think I had gotten too much sun the previous day and I was feeling totally drained.. brain dead! I mostly just hung out around the house/in the hot tub and then got dressed to go out for dinner. Note To Self: Every city is not Las Vegas. You cannot get dressed and leave the house at 10pm and still expect to have a fancy-pants dinner. Establishments, like, close n' stuff.

We found this great place to hike on Tuesday morning (08/21). We went for a drive and found this place randomly. While on our walk we noticed a sandy, deserted area off in the distance and decided to go back to the cabin to get our swimming stuff.. we were only about 15 minutes away so it wasn't too out of the way to go back and change. Before we left we saw this guy...

CUTE!

The deserted sandy area we saw! There were a handful of people out there but we were all so far apart it felt like we were alone. I wish we would have found this beach earlier in our trip.. I think I would have been practically camped out here the whole time if we had. More pix..

Our own private beach ;)

I had some company while sunbathing.

Enjoying the water.

This was our last full day out there so we tried to make the most of it. We stayed out at the lake until the sun went down and then headed back to the cabin to cook dinner, light a fire, and hop in the hot tub one last time before saying goodbye.

I didn't want to put 1,000 pictures in to one post so I'm breaking it up in to three parts. The next post will cover my drive to/from the lake and all the cool shit I saw and the final post will be a couple of looks I wore over my vacation... stay tuned!

Look Book: Errand Day + An Update

I haven't posted my mug here in a while so here's a look from this past Sunday. We had a ton of errands to run so I wanted to be super comfortable! I wore my hair natural (no heat tools used) in a high pomp and side braid with two of my ombre extensions clipped in to help with length. This has been one of my go-to lazy hair do's for the summer because it's quick, easy, and cute.. I usually add some flowers or tie in a bandana for extra flair but it was an especially lazy/casual day.

I paired this lazy hair do with an equally lazy outfit - A loose off-the-shoulder tee (with a black cami underneath), relaxed fit baby-bell jeans in a medium wash and my favorite Desert Life staple - FLIP FLOPS. My jewelry was minimal; A pair of studs, my favorite necklace, a silver thumb ring, and a leather strap bracelet. I carried this studded handbag because it's been on the shelf for a while.

MAKEUP:

-ELF primer

-ELF concealer

-Rimmel foundation

-Airspun powder

-Urban Decay bronzer

-MAC blush

-MAC MSF (highligher)

-Anastasia eyebrows

-Wet N Wild lipstick

-Wet N Wild and Rock & Republic eyeshadows

-Rimmel eyeliner

-Urban Decay eyeliner

-Rimmel mascara

... and here's a goofy picture I took in the car ;D (derp!)

Kinda hard to tell but I went with a blue/green combo.

Apologies for all the cell shots.. these photos were meant for Instagram but I decided to post them here instead since I haven't been showing my blog much love lately. If you'd like to follow me on IG my user name is WitchHazel82. I know the colors and nuances of my makeup aren't very clear which is why I didn't list the specific colors above.

In other news I recently turned 30 (Aug 3rd) and because of this AWFUL milestone my boyfriend and I have planned a trip to Lake Tahoe to celebrate. I had to schedule the trip a couple of weeks off from my birthday because of stuff I had going on at work but the time has finally come.. we leave this Friday and will be gone for about a week. We rented a cabin by the lake and I simply CANNOT WAIT to get there.. I've had a lot going on lately between work and family life so I'm really looking forward to having some R&R.

Purify yourself in the waters of Lake... Tahoe.

(insert favorite Prince gif here)

The place we're renting seems pretty secluded and the reviews are glowing. I especially like that the inside is outfitted with all the modern conveniences and updated decor, and that there's a hot tub out back and a Jacuzzi tub in the master bathroom. Awwww yeah! That's my idea of 'roughing it!'