MOTW

Purple...I love me some purple! =D I seem to wear a lot of purple and have loads of purple nail polishes too. So when I asked my hubby to pick out my next mani color, I wasn't a bit surprised to see a purple as his choice. lol What did surprise me was the actual polish, or should I say 2 polishes. I have one round 'sample' set that is nothing but black polish with various color toppers. After pulling up my polish list I grabbed my Sally Hansen Black Out polish and did 2 coats over a base coat. The topper I uused came from a group of polishes I bought on ebay a few monthes back. It's from a company called b. Turns out this is a French company. Their website appears to be completely in French. The color I used was called Lilas Optique...in the bottle and on it's own it is a lovely pale blue color. But something magical happened once over the black, the blue turned into a gorgeous purple color.
And I LOVE that my mani matched my shirt almost perfectly!!! =D

MOTW and what I'm doing now...

Last Saturday was my sisters' baby shower, on my way there I stopped at the Walgreen's just up the road from her hoping to find the Sinful Colors brand copies of the OPI Pirates of the Carribean On Stranger Tides collection. These colors are gorgeous dirty/murky pastel shades, but I honestly can't pay $8 a bottle for polish. So with Sinful Colors being only $2 a bottle I was excited! Long story short my Walgreen's hasn't gotten them in yet, but since I need to break a $20 anyways I picked up 2 Sinful Colors bottles and a Wet N Wild glitter! ($6 total! =D) So without further ado today I have for you Sinful Colors Mint Apple. Mint Apple is a pretty green leaning turquoise with what appears (in the bottle) to be a silver shimmer. Although on me this does leave the tips of my fingers looking a little red I adore this color!!! I've got 3 coats on as the 1st two are a little streaky and leave a good bit of VNL (visible nail line) showing, the 3rd coats evened everything out and left my nails pretty darned opaque. What I discovered was the silver shimmer is actually more gold on the nail! Even better! To top off this mani I used some gold swirly nail art stickers to add a little pop and play up the gold shimmer. I added a clear coat over top (although I should have done 2 to hide the edges of the stickers better) Et Voila! =D

This is what else I've been working on this past week. I want to get back into making Barbie doll clothes so decided to get several pieces ready to sew. So I picked my favorite pattern SEEN HERE. So I grabbed several fun fabrics and set to work tracing out the pattern pieces. I hate working with the tissue paper patterns so I scan and copy them onto card stock and then just trace around the pieces onto my fabric. The other reason I do this is so I can seal the edges of the piece. I use Crafter's Pick The Ultimate glue to keep the edges from fraying. The Ultimate is billed as a water based super glue. I LOVE this stuff, I use it for EVERYTHING!!! (Heck I love it enough that I ordered a case from the manufacturer =D) But anyways, back to the dresses, I now have 8 dresses ready to sew as soon as I break my machine out. For the most part there are just 7 sets of basically straight lines of stitching on these pieces. Of course there are darts and details, but hey that's the fun stuff! So be on the lookout for new attire coming soon!

MOTW x 3

Yeah so I'm a little behind with sharing my nails! Sorry, I'll start with the oldest: my Memorial Day mani. We took the boys camping down at Kolomoki Mounds State Park. It was about a 2 hours drive hauling the camper but turned out to be well worth it. We were situated on Lake Kolomoki and aside from the swarms of gnats it was a wonderful quiet relaxing weekend! We hiked and toured the mounds and museum. (Pics can be seen HERE!)We grilled out, had campfires, roasted marshmallows and just enjoyed quiet time together. For my weekend mani I used 2 coats of Wet n Wild in Waves of Enchantment WoE is a gorgeous pink-y, coral-y gold flecked color. (that really dislikes my camera! LOL) On my ring fingers I added a layer of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Pink Pearl, on top of that I added a nail art sticker. I liked the look and all polishes went on very well! =D

My nails went bare for a bit while my husband and I finished up the dollhouse. My next mani was purple. LOVE me some purple! I couldn't decide what color to paint my nails so I asked my facebook pals. Purple was the first color suggested so that was what I went with. I went through my little sample wheel and picked a shade I hadn't already worn. Totally Cool by Milani looks just like it's name in the bottle. It was a bit of a disappointment on the nails initally though. In the bottle TC looks like a warm maroon-y purple with a multi-chrome shimmer. (shimmer that changes shades)
My nails ended up with 4 coats on them as the 1st 3 coats went on ridiculously sheer and with way more of a blue cast to them. It isn't until that 4th coat went down that the maroon-y color really shows up. The other thing that bugged me about this color was the shimmer. In the bottle it appeared to shift from red to orange to green, but on the nail only the red really showed up. While I did like the end result, the fact that with base coats and top coats I had like 7 coats of polish on my fingers bugged me. :-(

I started taking it off last night as I decided to 'bump' up the shimmer a bit by adding a coat of Nubar 2010 over it. 2010 is a gorgeous top coat with iridescent flakes that is just stunning over nearly anything! However I discovered that the 2010 reacted with the TC and caused it to shrink and peel off my nails. :-( Bummer.
But anyway, that cleared the way for todays' mani. When I asked my friends about polish colors, green was the 2nd color suggested. Today I have 3 coats of Nina Ultra Pro (at Sally Beauty Supply stores) in Leaf Me Alone topped with 2 coats of CoverGirls Boundless Color in Ruby Dust. LMA is a nice apple-y green that is a little dusty in coloration. RD has tiny round silver glitters in a sheer pink base, my favorite part of RD aer the larger holographic hexagons. Now of course these hexs are only about the size of a ball point pen tip, but they do pack a nice punch. I actually with there were more of them in RD. My left hand has 2 coats of RD while my right has 3 as the glittle didn't seem to want to cooperate. But all in all I like the fresh crisp look! =D

It's done, it's done, it's DONE!!!!

Of course if we're friends on Facebook, you already know this, but my hubby and I finished the dollhouse Saturday morning at 3am and delivered it about 12 hours later! Even with all the stumbles, pratfalls and missteps along the way I am thrilled with the final results. AND my friends were stunned at the final results and I think the squeals from the twins was a PERFECT exclamation of their thoughts! =D

Five of the 6 rooms were fully furnished: A kitchen/dining room, the Purple Monkey bedroom, the Pink Butterfly bedroom, the bathroom and a living room. I was lost as to what to do with the sixth room...so I let the girls choose. They want a tv room so that's what my final project for them will be. Their family is moving to Washington state next week so I will ship it to them after they arrive in their new home.

More pics of the house can be seen on my Flickr HERE

I'll have a few more posts later to catch up, but for now I've got to let my latest mani dry! Later friends! =D