Nifty Nail Polish Finds: Collistar

Hey y'all, long time no see! Boy, have I had a crazy past two weeks. Before I jump into the post, how about I do a little insight-into-Allie's-life section? Here we go!

On the Saturday after the 4th of July, I headed out on a road trip with my mom to visit a couple colleges and get a taste of what I liked and didn't like in a school (for the record, Kenyon College is my favorite as of now, with nothing coming even close). We stopped for four days to visit my grandmother in New York, visited a few colleges in her area, and then spent last Friday driving home. For twelve. Long. Hours. Ick! So of course all I wanted to do when I got home was spend the weekend sleeping, relaxing, and maybe painting my nails, right? Nope, I wasn't getting off that easily. The next morning we had a HUGE amount of rain (four inches in one hour, I think I heard?), and our basement flooded. Hoorayyy. I've spent the last week helping my mom drag stuff out of the basement, talking with the people from Servpro, and trying to find whatever little bits of peace and normality I could. We lost a few little things, and the carpet's wrecked, but other than that we got pretty lucky with the whole flooding disaster. It still hasn't been fun to have our entire house turned upside down, though (half of our main floor has turned into emergency storage space for everything that was earlier stuffed in the basement), which is why it's nice to get back to the blog and jump back in to the magical, comforting world of nail polish. Enjoy the post!

So as you all know, I recently took a trip to Italy, and there would have been something very wrong with me if I hadn't brought back any nail polish to remember it with! I bought three different polishes while I was there, and today I've got swatches of the color Bordeaux Perlato by Collistar. I did a bit of research and I don't think it's possible to buy this brand in the US (maybe there are some bottles on eBay?), but if anyone can think of a good dupe, let me know, because this polish is STUNNING!

*Swoon*

Seriously, just look at this gorgeous color.

I ended up paying eleven euros for Bordeaux Perlato (around $15), but it was totally worth it because this polish has great application, shine (even without a top coat, although I've got a healthy coat of HK Girl on in this photos), and wear-time. Perfection all around!

I'll be back soon with my two other polish finds, both from Kiko (although I'm not sure yet if I'll swatch them both in one go or split it up into to seperate posts). These two are more like our average drugstore brands here, so I'm curious to see how they hold up compared to Bordeaux Perlato.

In the meantime, let me know what you think of my Collistar polish! Know of any good dupes? And do you have any favorite brands from other countries? Tell me in the comments!

Fourth of July Nails

*Mini pre-post rant: Sheesh, you guys won't believe the trouble I went through getting this post up. For whatever reason, my computer's been getting progressively slower over the past two days, becoming practically unusable. I've been able to slowly get around by opening tabs and letting them load for five minutes, but I ran into an issue an hour ago when I learned that my computer was now too slow to use my favorite online editing tool. Gah! After some research I discovered it'd probably be a smart idea to reset the little wifi box thing, which I asked my father to do (yeah, probably not best to make me mess with the techy stuff), and bam! My computer was all back to normal speed and ready to edit photos. Huzzah!*

I had a bit of a rough time figuring out a design for the fourth of July- this feels like one of those holidays that everyone ends up doing nail art for, and I really wanted to find something that hadn't been done before. Enter sugar-spun stripes!

Okay, yeah, I know the whole sugar-spinning technique has been around for awhile, but I thought it'd be cute to switch up the typical perfect-straight-line-stripes of the American flag for something a bit more... unique.

... oh my god, they kind of look like blood splatters in this picture.
NO, THAT'S NOT WHAT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE.
Gosh dangit. 

I wasn't quite able to think of something as special for the accent nail, but polka dots are still fun, right?

The white background and polka dots were done with China Glaze - Snow, the red is Elf - Smokin Hot, and the blue accent nail is Sally Hansen - Blue Me Away.

Bonus: I've been trying some different hand poses recently, since I usually just do the same two in a few different angles, like this one below... yeah, I don't think I'm going to be using The Claw as one of my regular poses anytime soon.

See, the pose was so awkward to do that I didn't even take enough time to focus the camera properly... woops.

So do you all have any fun traditions for the fourth? Lemme know in the comments! My family usually gathers at my grandparents' for hot dogs, burgers, and swimming, but as their pool's under repairs right now, we're switching over to my aunt and uncle's. I hate breaking the tradition, but ah, well, it shall still be fun! 

I'm heading out for another week-long trip on Saturday, so there probably won't be a new post until the weekend after, unless I find wifi somewhere while I'm gone. So, thanks for reading, and I'll see you all then! 

Life Update!

Howdy, y'all, I'm back from my vacation in Italy! It was completely beautiful, but I've got to say... other than our terrible humidity and lack of gelato shops every ten feet, I really ended up missing home. Hello again, constant wifi access and free bathroom access (did you know you have to pay to use the public restrooms in Italy? I didn't, and as a girl with a teensy tiny bladder, lemme tell you, it was NOT FUN)!
Anyway... wow. I'm not really sure what else there is to put in this post. Nothing interesting's happened to me nail-wise recently... right now I'm wearing LynBDesigns' England Would Fall (which has now beaten out Cajun Shrimp as my favorite polish ever... sorry, OPI!) Although it's the most stunning pink holo you will ever see, my town's been shrouded in the gloomy sadness of clouds for the past week, preventing the perfect shiny holo-ness from coming out to play.
Okay, I'm just going to bombard you all with my Italy photos, because the only thing that's happened in my life over the past month other than my trip was a bunch of sleeping. Huzzah (or, as I learned from Italy, "hurrà!")! If you're here for nail-stuff, I'd go ahead and skip this post and wait a few hours until my 4th of July nails are up. If you want to read more about the life of the gal behind the nails, then read on!

Okay, you see this face? This is the face of a girl trying to keep it together after 24 straight hours awake. No one told us we were stopping at Verona before going to the hotel... by the end of the day, my vision was blurry, I swayed in my chair at dinner, and my hands were shaking so much I could barely hold anything. Fun times, eh?

Allie's Travelling Nails #1: Taken on the bus. A lot of time was spent on the bus.

Allie's Travelling Nails #2: Taken on the boat-bus into Venice. Hooray for crummy focus, awful back-lighting, and a photobombing water bottle!

Here's a picture documenting what may have been the most terrifying gondola ride in history. Somehow we ended up with all the heavier people on one side, and we were dangerously close to tipping over the entire time. At least we got to hear our gondolier sing Madonna, though!

Allie's Travelling Nails #3: Taken in the Doge's Palace. This was the point where I realized how much I hated the fact that this camera had no manual focus setting.

So I found this Italian movie on the hotel TV... I think there were mummies and Nazis and some really messed up CGI monsters? Someone tell me if you know the name of this one. It's a must-see.

I need this bike. So. Much. I also think I deserve bonus points for matching my shirt to the painting.

LOOK WHAT WE FOUND.

Allie's Travelling Nails #4: Taken in an American restaurant. Yeah, I totally did go to an American burger shop in Italy. Their fries were great, too.

So swagadelic, man.

Note to anyone ever going to Italy: make sure you eat at Grom at least once. It might be the best gelato place ever. Ever. 

Heyo, Colosseum.

So... erm, yeah. I hope you all enjoyed hearing me talk about something other than nail polish for once! I'll be back with my 4th of July post once I can get pictures taken, uploaded, and edited. In the meantime... uh, enjoy this bonus picture of a pigeon.

Nail Fails

I've never addressed this on the blog before, but today... we're going to talk about nail fails! That's right, all the nail art attempts that aren't quite good enough to make it on the blog. I feel slightly bad about the huge amounts of time that passes between each post, so I want to discuss all my nail fails, which are (usually) the reasons behind my slow posting. Enjoy this collection, working backwards in time, of all my "brilliant ideas" that turned out to be less brilliant once on my nails.

The Boring Picnic Blankets
Okay, I guess I'm not totally dissatisfied with these. I don't know. For some reason they just bore me- I think there needs to be more to them. I tried to paint some ants on the thumb nail, and failed, so I gave up on any creative idea for the rest of the nails.

The Smudgy Ice Cream Cones
Eh. I tried. They look kind of ice-cream-y, I guess. I loved how the cones came out, but the actual ice cream just kind turned into smudgy blobs. Woops.

The Sloppy Gradient
I actually adore this gradient. I just forgot the cleanup before taking photos. Oh well.

The "Damn You Seche Vite" Nails
It's a short story: my Seche Vite started shrinking. Now I'm a happy user of HK Girl.

The Chubby Smiley Face

See, I was all pumped up for the Sherlock season 3 premiere, and I attempted to replicate the wallpaper design on my nails. It resulted in this mess. 

The Office Finale Nails

I forgot the yellow polish I used wasn't opaque. I hate visible nail lines. 

The Horrendous Nail Break

Of course my nail had to break before I could take my photos. Eh, the nail art wasn't that cute anyway (Also. Ick. The photo quality here. *shudders*). 

 Those are the only ones I could find for now- I think I may have deleted some of the worst offenders. I'll let you all know if I ever find the penis-gingerbread-men pictures, though (... don't ask).

I won't be seeing you all for a little bit- I'm heading off to Italy (Eee!) tomorrow, and I'll be back a week from Tuesday. I'm hoping to take plenty of pictures of my nails while travelling, so I'll put those all together in a post when I get back. Catch you all later!

I'm backkk!

Yeah, wow. Two months. I won't get into it all too much, but life in these past couple weeks has been crazy, stressful, and really not all that fun. This resulted in me feeling so exhausted by the end of every day that I couldn't find it in me to sit down for an hour or two to just paint my nails and pull together a post.

However, it's finally SUMMER! I survived the torture that is finals, and I'm done with the stress of social interaction for a whole three months. Don't get me wrong, I love (most of) my classmates, but I go to a tiny school with 60 kids per grade, and by the end of the year I'm honestly just sick of everybody. Now I get to chill at home, sleep in until twelve every morning, wear my pajamas all day, and sit around like the lazy couch potato I always dreamed of becoming. Huzzah! All of this relaxing has lowered the amount of stress I've been going through a TON, and so now I've (finally) got the motivation to whip up a post again.

Okay, a lot has happened in the past few months, so I'm just going to to quick little summaries of everything, plus the pictures that go with them. Enjoy!

Minecraft Creepers
These actually started out as a suggestion from my school's college counselor (long story... and yeah, guess who's starting to plan for college? This girl!). Y'all already know I'm a hugeee Minecraft addict, so of course I followed the suggestion!

The only reason I chose Creepers over anything else Minecraft-related was because they ended up being the least complicated design I could figure out. I might try something a bit more difficult in the future if I'm feeling motivated, but square shapes and nail art don't quite go together all that well. These are my second attempt at the design- the first time I used black polish and a dotting tool, and was left with a bunch of smudgy oval shapes on my nails. For these I used a fine-point Sharpie instead, and they came out ten times better. The base color is Essie - Mojito Madness (one of my favorite greens!). 

Pastel Polka Dots

Fast forward to Easter, with a different nail shape and a happy little holiday design. Yes, I can never decide what shape I want my nails to be. Square's so much better for nail art, but I gotta admit, stiletto nails make me feel just a bit bad-ass. Heh. 

I'm really satisfied with these! I'm not a pastel fan at all, but I had fun trying something bright and spring-y. These bring back memories of my Easter nails two years ago- my very first attempt at nail art! I tried to do cute little chicks, but I didn't have as steady of a hand back then as I do today, and they all ended up with really creepy misshapen eyes and messed up feet. Ah, well, we all have to start somewhere.

From left to right (including the thumb) I used: Sally Hansen - Lightening, China Glaze - For Audrey, Essie - Play Date, OPI - Sparrow Me the Drama, and Essie - Navigate Her. The polka dots were made with China Glaze - White on White and a dotting tool. 

Prom Nails

Oh, yeah, I went to prom this year! Hooray! Not only did I get to spend a fun night dancing, though- a bunch of my friends let me paint their nails for the occasion. I somehow never got a picture of my own nails (the color I used was LynBDesigns - Purple Polish of Sex, if anyone is curious), but I took plenty of everyone else's. 

Here are Sally's nails. She just wanted something nice and simple to match her dress, so we just did two coats of China Glaze - For Audrey (okay, it might have been Aquadelic... I can never remember which one I used. Those two are pretty much identical anyway) with a coat of HK Girl on top. 

Up next are Alice's. We used LynBDesigns - So Changeable for her because her dress had both the blue and purple shades found in the duochrome polish. 

Donna originally wanted this same design but with silver instead of gold, but turns out I don't own a silver polish (gasp! There's actually a shade of polish that Allie doesn't own?), so we improvised a bit with the gold instead. This is Orly - Luxe with ELF - Smokin Hot on the tips (with a black line from a striper in between).

Here are the nails I'm most proud of! The prom's theme was the Great Gatsby, so Adina found some Gatsby-themed nail art for us to work off of. I couldn't find the reference we used for these, but I don't take credit for the design- the inspiration for the accent nails was found through a Google search. 

[Update: Found the source!]

Here's a closeup of the thumb, which I was super proud of. I hate how time consuming it can be to use striping tape, but that always makes it feel worth the effort when the design comes out perfectly!

Can you figure out which nails go with each girl? Hehe! 

Conclusion

Whew, it's nice getting back to blogging. I'm leaving in about two weeks for a trip to Italy (Eee!), so that will be another short break from the blog for me, but other than that I'm hoping to get back to a weekly post schedule. And speaking of Italy, let me know if you have any ideas on what I should do with my nails for the trip. I want to do a fun little "travelling nails" post where I take pictures of my nails in front of all the different places I'm visiting there, so of course my nails have to look extra cute for everything! 

Annnd that's all for now! I shall be back soon with a new tutorial- catch you all later!