MOTW...sort of

Well as I sat down to paint my nail, I realized I had totally forgotten to take a picture of the mani I just removed!!! Argh, so please excuse the fact that I only have one nail painted! But this is what I was wearing on all 10 digits until about 2 hours ago!

I started off with 2 coats of Barielle's Snow Day. They call it an ice blue metallic with silver undertones. I call it real pretty. After this I used 2 coats of Maybelline's Blue Brilliance. BB on its own is really sheer but it is a lovely color that tends to shimmer with pinks, purples and greens depending on the light. It kind of disappearred over SD, but I swiped it diagonally on my nails. (it's on the portion below the black dots.) Ok so I guess my next step was pretty obvious but I added black dots in acrylic paint. After that dried completely I added 2 coats of Northern Lights Hologram Top Coat.


On a crafty note I have been attempting to sculpt little polymer clay guinea pigs for Barbies. It's not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with my first one! =D

MOTW

Well I had planned to share this one with you yesterday but Blogger didn't want to co-operate. Soo here is yesterday's mani. I had a bit of a love-hate relationship with this one. The end result turned out gorgeous, but getting there was a royal pain. Color 13 on my wheel is by Piggy Polish, it's called Teal me About it. In the bottle its a luscious glowly teal. Sadly this color is DEFINITELY a layering polish. It took me 5 coats on my sample wheel to get it to look halfway close to the bottle. :-( (and once you throw the pink of the nailbed, well you're screwed! So I chose another of my e.l.f. polish from the other day. This one is called Blue Mist. Like it's Lilac sister, Blue Mist went on very sheer and rather streaky. It took me 3 coats to get a nice covereage, although had I not been putting TMAI over top of it, I would have gone with a 4th coat. I added 3 coats of TMAI and then did a thin strip of Petites Figi. Figi is a much darker and more opaque verion of TMAI. In the end I did love the final results as with Blue Mist underneath the TMAI really glowed, and there really appeared to be a ton of depth to my mani. Sadly the downside to lots of layers of polish is they do then to peel rather quickly. So this glowy mani only lasted 2 days. :-(

MOTW

OK so next in line for my 1st nail wheel is #7 Milani Totally Cool. I wore it back in early June. Number 8 is a deep purple from Goldie that doesn't have a name. I thought I wore it already so I skipped it. BUT as you can see in my sample wheel pic it's so dark it's nearly black! Following that is b. Lilas Optique. This is another one I already wore also in June. This really is a neat polish as it looks totally different by itself!
This brings me to my mani today. Number 10 on my wheel is by Barielle it's called Jess' Champagne Toast (I don't quite get the name as to me I think of cream or amber when I think of Champagne, but that's neither here nore there. lol) I lucked out and foudn this color at my local Ulta comsmetics store on clearance, but it is available on the Barielle website! =D
JCT is a blue leaning lilac with a pink glitter. It dries kind of gritty so I decided not to do full coverage on this one. Saturday while out shopping for kids school supplies I stopped into Biglots and found a 5 pack of e.l.f. brand nailpolishes for $4.50.
While I don't really need any more polish, I loved the colors in these and it fell well under my $3 a bottle price cap. So into my cart they went. I laid down 3 thin coats of the Lilac shade. (Sadly these are out of stock on their website as they say they are reformulating them) I decided to matte all but my ring fingers before sponging on the JCT. On my ring fingers I added a white outline sticker of a hibiscus flower before topping off with a clear coat.
That's it for me for nails and that ends the purple reign (heeheehee) from wheel A, up next are some gorgeous teal-y greens! =D Later friends!

MOTW and a New Pet

Ok so today's mani is the next 3 colors in wheel A. I first laid down a base coat of Mystical by Petites, then I free-handed a diagonal triangle of Purple Pizazz Frost by NYC, and lastly I added another triangle going the opposite direction using my paler version of Lavender Marquise. I added a small lilac acrylic gem into the wet clear coat, and toppped it off with 2 more coats of clear. It's a fun mani because PPF and LM both change color slightly depending on the light. I initally thought afterwards that I should have placed the gems in the little overlapping triangle at the tips, but I think that would have driven me nuts. Feeling the bump of the rhinestone is odd, but not too terribly bad. I really wasn't expecting the rhinestones to stay on, but they are hanging on nicely.


Every now and again I peruse ebay looking for Barbie 'stuff'. The other day I was searching out animals and found a listing for a dog I had as a little girl. AND they were offering free shipping! Sweet. So needless to say I bid and won Beauty the Afghan Hound! Sadly she is in kind of rough shape, but her body (under all the fur) seems to be in good condition) So I think I will skin her and try to replicate her plastic pieces so I can maybe possible make as sell these. I am currently researching color variations for this breed as well as fake fur sources.

MOTW and more Barbie goodies

Hey y'all, sorry it's been a few days, been busy getting my kiddos ready for Back-to-School. My oldest started his Junior year of high school on Thursday and my younger 2 start 1st and 5th grade today. Yes our kids go back really early here! lol After having them home for a few monthes, it seemed strange for the house to be silent all day. I'll admit I slept for most of the day. I haven't been sleeping well for the last few weeks with my hubby being away at school so I guess I was catching up.

First off my MOTW (which I actually just took off today) was using the next 2 polishes in my first nail wheel. They are both by Sally Hansen. Royal Romance #2 and Lavendar Marquise #3. I started out with 3 coats of Lavendar Marquise which is a sheer pale pink leaning Lavendar. (the weird thing about this polish is there seems to be 2 variations of this color and I managed to get them both! One is distinctly pink while the other is more pearly with just a hint of pink (#4 in the wheel pic) even using 3 coats of each!) I had initally planned to do a french mani with the darker Royal Romance as my tip color. I tried using the curved tip guides and just couldn't get them centered right. So I decided to just sponge over it. While the edge of the tips still showed only up close, so I was really happy with my sponged gradient mani!)

Up next is a few Barbie items. I really should be cleaning and packing and all that good stuff, but I think I'm kind of in denial about this whole moving thing! :-( So I have been playing with clay!
I started out making a peach slice cane. I got the idea while eating my breakfast peach the other day. It took me some foodling and messing about to get the right colors for the peach flesh as well as doing a skinner blend to get the inner red shading you find in a fresh peach. I think I did this cane atleast 3 times before ending up with a color combo I was happy with! I ended up making it a round cane for ease of reducing, but simple cut each slice in half at the red center before gently shaping. I think they look pretty darned good! I spent several hours on Flickr searching for peach desserts looking for the best ways to use my slices. I'm happy to say I found several and look forward to making some yummy desserts eventually!

MOTW x 2

I have for you today my last 'ruby' mani of July. It's 2 coats of an un-named pink polish frmo the Goldie brand. I got mine in a back of 6 or 8 that I bought at TJ Maxx several monthes ago. The color is a nice silky pink creme. To bump it up a bit I added 2 coats of Nubar 2010 (which is by far my favorite top coat heck I ordered 2 more bottles so I wouldn't run out and so I could play with it a bit! ;-D) I really liked it shiny, but had seen other nail artists use a matte top coat over it. Mattifying it does something amazing. Since I recently found Hard Candy's Matte-ly in Love I knew that's what I wanted to do. Personally I love the subdued iridescence! BTW the pic with the spoon is to show what my mani looked like before I matted it. =D
I had iniatally planned to do 'peridot' (green) manis for the month of august, but I actually don't have that many green polishes and most of them I have already worn and posted. I really want to try and get through all of my polishes so I have decided to start at the begining! ;-) After a disappointing pedi using a color I had purchased (2 coats looked NOTHING like the bottle) I decided I needed a way to know what colors I had and how many coats each should take. So I picked up a pack of art wheels from Sally Beauty Supply (btw I have since found the same ones cheaper on ebay! There are 10 wheels to a pack and each wheel holds 18 samples. So I sort of sorted my polishes by color, grabbed my laptop and set to sampling every polish I own. Last week I filled up my last wheel with one of my holo frankens so I have more coming. Filled up all the wheels...omg that's 180 polishes! Well actually it's more like 162 as one wheel is pale polishes over black to see how they'd look! But still! lol


So anyways I am going to start at A1 and work my way through until I am all done! A1 is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Purple Potion This is one of the first polishes I bought when I got back into doing my nails. Hubby says his favorite color to see me wear is purple so there aer several. This one has a really great blue duochrome effect. and yes the 2 pics are of the same polish, I just wanted to show off the cool color 'changes' this polish can go through. (there will be another pic of this mani tomorrow too as I am playing around with some nail art!)

MOTW and time for change...

So here I am again, it's Monday and well life is what it is. Feeling kinda blah today, but I will explain that in a minute. For today's mani I have another holo polish. This time it is Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Golden Tourmaline. This is a gorgeous candy apple red with a great gold shimmer and subtle holographic quality. I decided to do my accent nail in Romantic Blossom also by Sally Hansen. RB is a rich brownish red creme finish. I accented each ring finger with 2 hearts done in Golden Tourmaline. I am super happy with this mani. It makes me smile and that's a good thing!

On to changes and feeling blah. I mentioned a few posts back that my husband is gone to Recruiter school, we were hoping to get an assignment in Texas. We found out right away that, that wasn't gonna happen. Some of the places where we could wind up were Los Angeles (um no, don't wanna live there) NY (not keen on this at all either) Maine (um really 0_o) Tampa (urgh not really into big towns) Montana (eeep winters there, I shudder to think) and South Carolina. So needless to say we were really really really hoping for South Carolina. We we got our general assignment today. We are headed to New York. Can't say I'm thrilled, BUT on the good side we are headed to the Albany area as opposed to NYC like we both feared. It turns out the Albany area includes Connecticut, Massachusets, Vermont and Northern New Jersey too. Sooo it's not nearly as bad as we thought, but I'm not looking forward to going from GA (hardly ever snows) to WINTER!!! But our kids are super excited and even eager to shovel the stuff. (we shall see how long THAT lasts! lol) So over the next 2 months I will be cleaning, sorting and packing as much of our home as possible. Nine years worth of belongings for 5 people seems like a daunting task! *sigh*

But we are definitely ready for a change and I have heard this area is lovely. While I will bitch and moan, I really am an adaptable person and really do look forward to this newest chapter in our life!

MOTW and custom polishes

Today I pulled out a color I've worn before but hey I LOVE it! It's Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Pink Rose Diamond . This polish is actually what started my love affair with holographic polishes. (and heck even if you don't like pink the holo-goodness makes this a yummy color!)Sadly this line isn't available in retail stores anymore BUT it can be found on ebay quite frequently. Just be warned that the Nail Prism colors with the word PEARL in the name are NOT holographic! (But they are lovely sheer colors!) I started out this mani with 2 coats of Sinful Colors Star Fish which is a nice dusty pink. I added 2 coats of Pink Rose Diamond on top. After letting them dry I added black polka dots to my ring fingers with acrylic paint. Word of advice, be sure to let the acrylic FULLY dry before adding a clear coat. I smudged my right ring finger just a bit! lol


Trying to stick with my 'Ruby' manis for the month of July is kind of tough...I have been playing around with my Spectraflair pigment powder and mixed the pink I wore HERE. Plus I also made a purple and a charcoal grey! I am super excited because my order from TKB Trading arrived today. They sell supplies for making custom cosmetics, including nail polishes!!! I ordered some empty mini bottles for storing colors as well as sharing them, as well as the little ball bearings that help mix the polish. I ordered some syringes in 2 sizes (these are going to be used with my resin for mini making) and some cool holographic glitter.


I found a recipe for a deliscious looking cake on the Betty Crocker facebook page, and decided to save myself the calories and make it in mini. I am currently slicing a tiny brown wrapped cream color polymer clay cane into about a bazillion tiny almond slices for the cake topping. I forgot just how may strands the smallest disk on my extruder makes with just a peach pit sized piece of clay! (I'll have 'almond slices' coming out the wazoo!)

MOTW and Barbie goodies

My mani today is a nice straight red, fire engine red maybe even. It's called Red Tape by Wet n Wild. It's rather sheer, I've got 3 coats on my nails! But 3 coats covers pretty nicely and it dries really fast. The brush is also unique as it seems to be asymetrically curved which I thought was very nice. I want to do something to give this mani an extra pop, but at the moment have no idea what to do. Any suggestions?


Onto the Barbie front. I finally finished the ruffled tube dress outfit. I added pink and black shoes and bracelets, switched out the pink neck ribbon for a black on and added a nice gold bag. As soon as I can set up my 'studio' I wll get good pics taken and list it in my etsy shop. I have also been working on making dishes of Macaroni and Cheese. It's one of my kids favorite dishes. I initially was wrapping the clay around a toothpick and then quartering the wraps. but after a bit I realized that I was still reshaping them by hand so I just started cutting them my hand too. Taking out the wrapping step sped things up tremendously! I saved space in the dishes by baking mounds of pasta color clay to put under a thinner layer of macaronis. I am not a fan of the liquid polymer clay sauces as they need to be baked for them to set. Since I am often using plastic Barbie dishes this is well nearly impossible. So I came up with a mxture of glue and paint that I customize for that ever I am making. So, what do you think?

MOTW

Earlier this month I order a batch of Spectraflair holographic pigment powder. This was originally designed for custom car painting, but some industrious nail artists discovered you can mix it with nail polish to make custom holographic colors! Since I missed out on many of the original awesome holo polishes I figured hmmm, $18 for a gram of this stuff, which will make about 9 bottles of custom polish was better than paying between $8 and $20 a bottle for the holos I missed. When my powder arrived I knew I HAD to play with it. I broke out a deep purple polish, some clear and the powder. I chose purple since I didn't have a purple holo already. You basically mix half and half clear and color and then add about 1/8th of a teaspoon of the pigment powder. Shake it all up really good and swatch it.
Keep adding drops of color or clear until the color and holo shimmer are perfect. The only downside to the powder is that it is silver in color so you won't be able to get a crisp color say a red, you end up with more of a muted frosty looking color. Which in my book is fine! =D I ended up mixing up 3 colors, purple, fuschia and a silver (which was actually just clear and the powder) I am planning to order some empty polish bottles as well as other things for making my own custom nail polishes and well I can't wait! =D I'm currently wearing my pink holo polish...any thoughts on a name? The color in the bottle is closer to the actual color of the polish. it's grey and rainy out so I'm trying to make do with my indoor lighting. lol

Back to my Vacay recap and another MOTW

Eeeep, so sorry, didn't mean to be away so long. Let's see where was I, oh yes, last Friday was our 3rd leg in our trip from Georgia to Kentucky.
Amazingly the day dawned beautifully (although once again the power was out at the campground we stayed in, but that didn't hamper our efforts to be on the road by 8) We enjoyed the scenery for our shortest travel day and arrived at the Reunion site before lunchtime! (the pic is of a bridge crossing Lake Cumberland in Bronston Ky)We got the trailer set up right quick and headed off to the pool. (I threw some laundry in while the boys attempted to swim) I say attempted because the water was frigid!!! The younger 2 played in the water for about 30 minutes before their teeth started chattering. Meanwhile, my FIL arrived so my hubby took the boys off to go say Hi to their Pappaw. =D I stayed poolside to wait for the laundry to finish. I grabbed a book from the 'library' and settled in the sun to read. (can I just say that I am really good when it comes to making sure my kids get sunblocked, but suck when it comes to remebering myself!!!) Yup you guessed it, I burned my butt! (well not actually my butt but the backs of my legs all the way up to the tuck just under my tush! (argh I really wish I had taken my board short style bottoms instead!!!) And what didn't I pack...aloe! So needless to say I was rather uncomfortable the next few day! lol
Most of the family arrived Friday evening and we had a great time roasting hot dogs over the campfire and just hanging out! (more on the actual reunion tomorrow!)

Since I knew my nails would get scuffed up while traveling I left mine plain, so for you today I have my current mani. Special FX by Funky Fingers is a great rich red, (I figured since July's birthstone is the Ruby I'd make each mani this month include a nice rich red! =D) After 2 coats I added a swirl of polka dots done in pearl acrylic paint.
I much prefer using acrylics paints for my nail art as it doesn't dry as fast, so I don't feel like I'm wasting as much nor do I feel quite as rushed. After the dots dried I added 2 coats of Orly Fifty Four which is a sheer shimmery pink.

Ooooh ooooh ooh, I almost forgot to share the Barbie dress I made last week while we were camping!
I used some hand dyed pink knit material and made essentially a tube dress. To zhuzh it up a little I added a trio of ruffles down what was supposed to be the center front. I used the technique shown HERE. While I like the ruffles at the front I twisted it as I went to remove it and realized I liked them way better down the side. I did a bit of gathering at the neckline and then stitched on a gold hoop jewelry finding to hold the ties. It still needs a few accessories, but it will be up for sale shortly! =D

I interrupt my vacation recap for MOTW

Hey everyone! To those in the US (or American living abroad) Happy 4th of July!!! IN honor of the day I did a quick little Red, White and Blue mani. Hope you like!
The red is called Frosted Raisin, it's by a polish company called Love My Nails. I found this bottle while cleaning out a kitchen cabinet that I swear hasn't been touched in 3 years! Amazingly the polish went on beautifully. I used 2 coats, then a clear coat. I followed that up with 3 curving strokes of navy blue acrylic paint and 3 little dots of pearl acrylic paint as well. After the paint dried I added a layer of top coat and voila! =D
Wishing you all a safe and fun holiday. Please remember to take a moment out of your celebrating to remember the men and women of our Armed Forces; past and present, here and gone, home and abroad; for it is THEY for truly allow us to enjoy our freedom!

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

MOTW and more dollhouse updates! =D

My poor nails looked like crap, but I've been so busy I hadn't had a chance to take care of them. After dinner, Hubby and I watched a movie with the kiddos so it was the perfect time to give my tips a fresh look. And fresh was exactly what I went for! Bright crisp green with some great sparkle and shimmer. I used LIME Alright by Piggy Polish as my base coat. I bought this one on clearance at Ulta a few months back and I don't see it on the Piggy Polish website. BUT...any creme lime green will work. LIME Alright is actually a matte polish and was a bear to apply. I have 3 coats on and honestly it's a little streaky. I am not sure if it's just this color or if all mattes apply like this. But it being matte is kind of a moot point since I added a top coat. Actually first I used a single coat of Sally Hansens Nail Prisms in South Sea Pearl to all nails but my ring fingers. On them I added a layer of Sinful Colors Call You Later. South Sea Pearl is a wonderful sheer polish with a blue/green shimmer and Call You Later has fine gold and green glitters as well as small green round glitters. I tested CYL and was able to achieve near opacity with 4 coats all by itself if you wanted. The Sinful Colors line is available at Walgreens for just $1.99!!! =D


On the dollhouse front I am nearer to completion! I finished laying the flooring for the 2nd story. This is the bathroom and secondary living room or rec room. Hubby and I found an awesome green 'tile' looking material for the bathroom floor. I ended up laying it twice as I realized quickly that the wood grain showed through the fabric after decoupaging the fabric down, so I yanked it up, layed down some gift wrap (white side up) and then reglue the fabric down. I used Mod Podge to both glue it down and to seal it. I put 3 coats on top. It looks amazing! The other room has a green dark sage green diamond patterened 'carpet'! The 3rd floor has also been done. These are the bedrooms and are stained in a pinkish stain on one side and a purplish one on the other. That layer also got a coat or varnish to seal it and make it shine! The 1st floor is drying now. We found a black and white checkerboard vinyl for the kitchen and the main living room will get the same 'carpet' as the 2nd floor! Tomorrow I will get the walls painted and then we can hopefully start assembly tomorrow evening!

MOTW and dollhouse update

Friday night I had to take my oldest out to get something nice to wear. His girlfriends' parents were renewing their vows on Saturday so off we went. I found him a whole outfit for $30 (pants, shirt, socks and shoes!!!!) Of course this was after I used the $35 of customer rewards cash I had, but hey it was free money! While there I of course had to check out the cosmetics department. I have decided that I am really going to try to keep any nailpolish purchases to under $3 a bottle. I have a hard time justifying spending more than that on a bottle of polish. My find Friday night was Wet n Wilds' Gray's Anatomy. In the bottle this color is a gorgeous oilslick/peacock gray. (I would like to say that I am a sucker for peacocks!!!) Actually on the nail this one was a bit of a let down. :-( First of all it's really sheer. I have 3 coats on my nails and there is still a good bit of VNL. (visible nail line) That's not that big of a deal as the polish is very thin, and dries fast so adding a couple more layers wouldn't have been to bad. I think in the future I will use this as a layering polish over different dark colors. It does have an awesome shimmer to it and as you can hopefully see in the pics it looks like anything from a dark silver almost pewter color to purple or green depending on the light. While I'm not totally in love with it, for less than $2, I'm glad I bought it!

On the dollhouse front I have finished several pieces: the kitchen island is so far my favorite piece. I have also completed the fridge, claw-foot tub, commode, 2 bedroom chairs, and the vanity. You can find pics of them on my Flickr page here. Currently in process are the wardrobe (which just needs the trim done),a pair of ottomans, the bathroom sink which still needs painted and assembled, the 2 poster beds which need painted and linens made, and the 2nd loveseat.

There will be other pieces as well but to be honest at the moment I'm still not sure what those will be....oooooh yeah the dining room! lol I will be working on this for the rest of the week rather diligently so expect to see updates all week long!

Eeeep! Way behind! (long winded! lol)

Ugh, I'm rather behind on just about everything...this week has been an emotional roller coaster. It started Monday as I was settling in to really kick tush on finishing up the dollhouse. Middle of the afternoon I get a call frmo my sister asking me to come take her to the ER. Her blood pressure wa sky high and her OB nurse (she's 29 weeks) told her she needed to come straight in. So I spent about 6 hours at the hospital with her, long story short she was admitted for what was supposed to be 48 hours of bed rest. Well with great joy (and loads of panic, stress, fear and prayers) Sophia Jo was delivered via c-section yesterday at 12:37pm. She was one day shy of 30 weeks and weighed 2lbs 5oz, and was 15 1/4 inches long. Amazingly my gorgeous niece is currently only on oxygen! Both mother and baby girl are doing wonderfully. My sister will get to come home Sunday or Monday. Sophia will spend the next few months in the NICU, but she's a strong feisty little gal! =D
Needless to say I spent 2/3rds of the past week at the hospital with my sister. I am blessed to have wonderful caring friends who sent prayers, thoughts and well wishes for the pair. The owner of the dollhouse happens to be one such person and she told me to not worry about the house and concentrate on my sister. Now that the initial 'drama' has past I am back to work full tilt. In the hours while I was at home and couldn't sleep I have managed to paint the kitchen island, fridge, claw-footed tub, and toilet. I also finished painting the vanity and reupholstered and painted the 2nd bedroom chair. I ended up buying a wardrobe for the more tomboy-ish twin and that is nearly finished as well. It rained like crazy here this afternoon, but hopefully I'll get some sun tomorrow so I can take pictures of the finished pieces. (if not you'll just have to make do with my chaotic messy desk as a backdrop. lol)

On the nail front I purchased a set of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms polishes off ebay. It's a set of 12 polishes for $45 including shipping which works out to $3 a bottle, which to me is a great deal. I was under the impression that this line was all holographic. Well sadly it's not, it seems that half the line is what are called duo-chromes. (This means 2 toned basically. It's one color when you look at it from one direction and another color when viewed from a different direction) So it was a bit of a let down, but they are all still gorgeous colors. My current mani is the Blush Diamond which is a holo. It's a rich deep pink with a fabulous holographic shimmer when viewed in the sunlight.

I have loads more to update, but I've droned on long enough. Thanks for reading along and I'll be back tomorrow! =D

MOTW (fail!!!) and A new House!

I decided yesterday that I had had naked nails long enough, so I asked my oldest son to grab me a polish out of my boxes. (after explaining that I wanted a COLOR not a clear...lol) he brought me CoverGirls' Iceberry. I got this color in a lot of polishes I bought on ebay, so to be honest I have no idea when this came out but I'm pretty sure it's not a current color. :-( On one hand I honestly don't think that's a bad thing. Sadly this polish was not a good color on me, not to mention I've got 5 (yes FIVE) coats on each nail and this is still ridiculously sheer! VNL (which means Visible Nail Line) is something that most nail bloggers consider a bad thing. This means that you can still see through the nail that over hangs your finger tips. After 5 coats the VNL on this is glaring! So for me this color is a no go. I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do with it yet. I might keep it for layering over other colors, or I might decide to mix my own custom color with it, or heck I might give it away.

Ok onto the new house, nope I'm not talking dollhouse, or barbie house, or honestly even brick & mortar houses...but houses on wheels! My husband and I bought a travel trailer today!!!! We've been talking about this for several years, and finally found an amazing deal on a brand new Heartland North Country travel trailer. While this floor plan isn't exactly what are is it's 95% right. I'll be taking loads of pictures over the weekend! We are going to spend Mother's Day weekend camping and I'm in the process of trying to find a campground where we can camp locally over the summer and on into the fall as well.

Well I'm off for now, but I'll be back on Monday with loads of pictures! To all the moms out there...Happy Mother's Day!!!

MOTW and Serendipity

I changed my polish Saturday night and decided to use a fun blue glitter nail polish I made. (Well I mixed the color anyway... lol) It seems within the polish 'scene', creating custom colors is called Franken-ing. (Like Frankenstein! heeheehee)
Sooo last week I found some nail polish that came in some clearanced make-up kits I bought a few years back. I really just wanted the cool cases! ;-) The bottles are tiny and I truly figured the paint would be old and gloppy. Surprisingly the consistency was still good. I picked a sheer beige color (I figure it was meant for doing French Manicures) and found some gorgeous teal holographic glitter in my craft stash. Little did I know that the polish would leach the color right off the glitter!!! So instead of a sheer polish with teal glitter, I ended up with a sheer teal polish with SILVER holographic glitter! I gotta say I love serendipity! To get the full coverage on most of my nails I needed 3 kinda heavy coats. The sparkle level is amazing, but the texture is a little rough. I've decided to call it Sunlight on the Water as it reminds me of the way sunlight sparkles on a smooth lake. On my ring finger of each hand I started off with a single coat of E by Essences' Forever Mine then topped that with a single coat of my franken. I think I actually like it better this way!



On the Barbie front, I sold several of my heart topped cupcakes this weekend! YAY!! (I did realize that I need to list the chocolate versions of these though!) I am working on the 1st loveseat, my husband is a great problem solver and an awesome out-of-the-box thinker and he helped me out with some stability issues. So this pair of seating should be awesome and perfectly capable of standing up to the imaginative play of a pair of 8yr old twins! =D(hopefully I'll have pics tomorrow)