Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!!

I seen this on Facebook not too long ago and I love it because this is exactly how I feel about the whole situation with people being offended about people saying a certain greeting. Its just rude. You don't have to celebrate it, just respect that they celebrate something different and let them great you how they great people for their holiday. You wouldn't be offended if someone from another country told you hi in their language would you? Anyways, thats just how I feel. So happy holidays to everyone no matter what you celebrate!

 I really wanted to do a lot of Christmas mani's this year, but I have absolutely no Christmas spirit. My kids have been rotten. Even now being Christmas Eve they're screaming at each other and fighting over everything. Its mostly my oldest, he antagonizes his brother and gets him going. My youngest is such a good boy when his brother is at school, he's a different person when he comes home.

I have really been depressing on my last few posts, I am sorry... 

Ok, so here are my Christmas nails. I did two different ones. One on each hand. So the right hand is messy haha. I used mostly all Milani for both manis. Here is the first one:

I smudged the thumb a little, so please ignore that. lol

For that mani I used Nabi White underneath all the glitters. For the middle finger glitter I used NOPI Heavenly Angel. Then here are the Milani colors I used from thumb to pinky: Silver (glitter), Ruby Jewels, Green Glow, Gold (glitter). Green Glow was a very transparent polish. I had to put like 5 or 6 coats on. Its a very pretty color though. I should probably throw out this nabi white polish too cuz its so thick and goopy, its gross. Yet I keep using it for manis because I know right where its at instead of searching for my other whites. lol

For my next mani I used Milani Ruby Jewels, Nabi White, and NOPI Heavenly Angel.

Please ignore my dry skin. This was right after I got out of the shower and the shower dries me out!

I really love using Ruby Jewels for Christmas manis because its sparkly and red. I used it last year I believe too for my Christmas mani. Heavenly Angel is just so pretty and looks like sparkling snow flakes, I love it! I think this is the first time I've used that polish. 

Hope you guys enjoyed my post and have a great Christmas or whatever holiday you celebrate!! Tonight my family and I are going to my parents to do our annual Christmas party. Everyone be safe! Merry Christmas! xoLeah

Merry Christmas from my family and I!

Halloweeny

Its so funny, usually I only do 1, sometimes two manis for holidays, but for Halloween this year I have been in the mood to do more! I wanted to squeeze in one more for my last post before Halloween, so thats why I am posting this so late. lol I literally just did these candy corns. I only did one hand, doing this post, then finishing the rest. haha

I am taking my kids trick or treating on Halloween, but I don't have a costume. I could wear an old costume, but I don't have any of them here and I don't want to dig through my storage unit cuz its super cluttered. I want to dress up, but don't have any idea what I want to do. Anyone have any suggestions? At least my nails are cute right. lol

We don't really have any Halloween traditions except going to the pumpkin farm and carving pumpkins. This year I didn't realize that one of the pumpkins we got was starting to rot already. I opened it up and the insides were nasty. So my pumpkins face looks like when people don't have teeth and their lips curve in.... its an elderly pumpkin. lol

My youngest and I carved this one. This is the one with folded in lips now. XD

This is the pumpkin that my husband and my oldest carved. They have strobe lights in them now!

Alright, so lets get down to business, thats enough of my rambling. haha

Ok, so for my candy corns, I used Julie G Gumdrops in Sugar Rush and Tangerine Dream! I think they were perfect. For the white I used Nabi White. I love the texturedness of it especially. I also did this same mani on my friends Ariel and her sister Caitlyn, along with something similar on my friend Rebekah.

For this other Halloween themed mani, I used Fantasy Makers Once Upon A Time and Finger Paints Iconic Orange. This was my first time using Finger Paints, and I quite like the brand. The stickers are Kiss brand. There are a ton of different stickers you can use, the pack came with a few sheets of different ones. I was excited when I seen them. lol This was my first time using a Fantasy Makers polish. I love it! I love the bottles too!!

Right hand.

Left hand.

For this Halloween mani I used Wet n Wild Ebony Hates Chris and KleanColors Metallic Red. I love love LOVE this red. Its definitely one of my faves. I got it in my last Adopt A Friend swap and was super excited cuz it was on my wishlist!!  Pardon the bubbles and smudge on my thumb in the pics. lol

Thank you so much for reading, I hope you guys have a super awesome Halloween and a super awesome week! xoLeah

Moms nails!

A few weeks ago my mom came over to hang out with me and my kids cuz she hadn't seen us in awhile. While she was here I was like "Mom! Let me paint your nails!!" They were so long and mine have been stubby for awhile. She had acrylics put on awhile ago, but they eventually, after lots of fills, became her own nails under the acrylic.

We sat down and she picked out some colors that she liked and started to paint her nails with the base color we wanted to use. I was like mom, I am supposed to be the one painting your nails... lol But I ended up just letting her finish that part. We used Wet n Wild Megalast in Candy-Licious.

After we did that, she really wanted to use Color Club's Wing Fling from the Take Wing collection. I don't blame her, its my favorite from the collection! Side note... If you have a Meijer department store near you, they have the Take Wing collection, also the Halo Hues collection on sale right now!!! Scoop them up!!

On her accent nail, we did the slant with Color Club Harp On It. Also for the lil dots! The white on the nails is Diamond Cosmetics White Nail Art. I used a dotting tool to apply it though because I had just gotten them and wanted to try them! haha

I wish she still had her nails on though, they were so fun to play with. I bought some fake nails to play around with, but I need to find a way to display them when I do some funky stuff on them. They were only a dollar for a pack of like 20 at Dollar General! So I was like why not!

I am really trying to get my nails long right now. I was just introduced to some stuff called Duri Rejuvacote. I have seen before and after pics from the people who recommended it and I am so excited for it!! I have some and been using it, but my nails were already getting really long, but since the stuff didnt really have time to work on them that much they did start to break and one hand is way shorter than the other, so I think I am going to file them down and start over and see how it goes. Here is a pic of what my nails on my left hand look like. I need to get rid of the stains, but otherwise they are looking awesome. They're just SOOOO thin and they chip off easily. So I am really hoping this stuff works wonders for me!! My fingers look terrible, don't mind them. lol

Left hand

Right hand

Hope you guys enjoyed my post! Have a great week! xoLeah

Happy Birthday to me!!

Ok, so my birthday isn't actually until the 11th, but since I am doing my posts on Tuesdays and Saturdays, I figured I would just do my birthday mani post today!

Last Saturday (the 7th) my hubby thought he was planning a surprise birthday party for me. Well he told me awhile ago that I could get on his facebook anytime I needed to and send myself game requests. So I got on his facebook a few days after he made a fake event page for my birthday making me think we were having a birthday party on the 12th, and I noticed when I typed in my name in the search that there was "Leah's Birthday Party" and "Leah's Party." I was so confused. Since he had different pics for both, I realized one of them I hadn't seen before and not even thinking it would be a surprise party, I clicked on it. I felt like an a-hole instantly. I was like well dang, I can't just pretend to be surprised, so I gotta make this into something awesome. My husbands birthday is April 30th and I thought, well why don't I turn it around on him!

I went along with all of his plans, didn't question things that normally I would question and so forth. He had two of my friends helping him with the plans, so when one of them took me out to eat I let her in on my plans. I explained that I knew about the party and she said she had a feeling I was going to find out. My husband is terrible at keeping secrets btw. lol So I told her that we needed to make this real good! I told her, "make sure that you let him give you control of the cake plans." He did of course and so she ordered a cake and had them write "Happy Birthday Tyler, gotcha!" on a cookie cake.

He had told Ariel to make sure that everyone was in my kids bedroom and that he was going to find a way to get me in there to be surprised. So I told her, make sure they're all in the kitchen and I will get him to go in there!

When we got home from the movies, he walked over by the bedroom to see if he could see if there were in there yet, but he couldn't tell cuz the door was shut. So I walked into the kitchen while he was doing that and was like ok evereyone, get ready, he's coming! lol Then as I walked out, he went in. He noticed them but acted like he didn't and as he went to walk away they flipped the light on and were like "SURPRISE!" He turned around and looked at me like "Oh crap, they surprised the wrong person!" I just laughed and they started to sing happy birthday to him! So I said "go read the cake!" lol He was like "DAMMIT!!" I was like "Yea, I knew a few days after you posted the event pages on facebook. He laughed and was like "Damn, I really thought that I had you so good!" Haha and I could tell that he thought he really had me good. It was real hard for me to not laugh so many times when he said stuff about that day and my 'other party.' lol

I had gotten him real good last year too, and he was completely surprised! So thats the reason he tried to get me this year, but it didn't work! lol

So anyways, here is the mani I did for my birthday party! I tried this technique that I seen somewhere else, but I didn't do it as good. From a distance they look much better! haha but I still really loved them cuz I love lots of colors!!

First I will show you how I did them!

 

The pinky didn't turn out as well as the rest, but I had forgotten to take progress pics until I got to that nail! lol

Basically though, you just start with a base coat, then dab different colors across your nails in different strokes and do different amounts of polish for different colors!

Finished off my accent nail with some gems and a special custom glitter that Sparkle-Factor-Lacquer when I ordered one of her other polishes from her! She sent it to me as a birthday gift and its so special that she only made enough for this bottle and doesn't have the way she made it written down! It made me feel so special!

This is sloppy, lol but I didn't want to redo them.

Hope you guys enjoyed this! xoLeah

Leah's Collection

Happy New Year everyone!!

So I recently went to put my new Christmas polishes that I got into the box that I keep my nail polishes in and realized they're starting to not fit anymore. Not to mention the $40 I just spent at the Julep end of the year sale which I haven't received yet. All these polishes except for about 3 I have acquired in 2 years, but mostly in the last year. We moved about 2 and a half years ago and I wasn't all that into polish at the time like I am now, so I put a bunch of it in storage. I have no idea where that box is now, not to mention they're probably all broken/exploded from the heat/cold changes. That makes me very sad, and I wish I would have kept them all out of storage, but at least I got a new collection going for me now!

This is the case I currently use. I was being lazy and didn't want to get my camera out again so I took a screenshot of the case on the Caboodles website. Its a great case, has shelves for other stuff like brushes, files, etc... Currently all my polishes fit in it, and I have a lot.

That is the top view of my current polishes that aren't in storage. You can't really tell from this pic, but I have an obsession with sparkly and glittery nail polishes! lol I have been trying to branch out from pinks too with my new collection of colors. My old collection was mostly pinks cuz its one of my favorite colors, but I seem to be leaning towards blues this time, haha.

To be honest, I am not really sure why I am doing a post about my collection of polishes, but I would really love to see pics of everyone elses collections!! Nail polish is one of my favorite things, and I love to share it! Panacea and I were talking about how we like to mention how we want to see certain things that you other ladies do, and we have yet to see anything from anyone! So don't be shy, share your pics with us!!

 Essie (owned by L'Oreal who DOES test on animals)

 Milani (cruelty free)

 Kleen Color (cruelty free)

 Wet n Wild (cruelty free)

 Sally Hansen (cruelty free)

 Studio M formally known as Massini (cruelty free)

 Pure Ice (cruelty free)

 Lynnderella (cruelty free)

 More Sally Hansen (cruelty free)

 L.A. Colors (cruelty free)

Blue Cross Beauty Care Winter Wonderland Ornaments Holiday Glitter Collection (not sure if they're cruelty free or not) 

 Rimmel London (claims to be cruelty free, but says in cases where required by law, like selling in China, etc... they do test on animals for that reason)

 Diamond Cosmetics (cruelty free)

 NYC (cruelty free)

 Julep (cruelty free)

 YH Beja (not sure, but they have been messaged to find out. I will update you all with the answer)

 Nabi (not sure, can't find any info on them.)

 Maybelline (owned by L'Oreal who DOES test on animals)

 Mary Kay (used to be cruelty free, but dropped their cruelty free status in order to sell their products in China who requires by law that companies test on animals.)

O.P.I. (cruelty free)

 Sinfun Colors (cruelty free)

 Sinful Colors that I forgot to put in the pic (cruelty free)

Another Sinful Color that I forgot to put in the pic (cruelty free)

Funky Fingers, Color Club, Lex, and Spoiled (all cruelty free)

When I first started to do this blog with Panacea, and we discussed making it a cruelty free polish blog, I was scared that I was going to have a lot that were NOT cruelty free, but I was glad to find that almost all of mine are!! 

I hope that you enjoyed looking at my collection of polishes!! Please don't forget, we are curious to see what your collection looks like too! Post pictures on our facebook page HERE or you can email them to us at Mynailpolishispoppin@gmail.com!