Hi ladies!

Just because it is Monday doesn’t mean we should feel blue. Of course, that is easy for me to say because Monday is my hubby’s day off, and we went out today, had a grand time with the kids, and got most of our Christmas shopping done. Win! Plus it is finally December 1, which means Christmas everything. Bring on the holiday nails!

I’ve got a quick and easy look to share with you today. All it takes to do this is a pretty icy blue shade and some glitters. I started with couple coats of this lovely, light, icy blue polish, ironically named Warm Blue (by Sansan). I added a glitter ruffian flair with the pearly glitters from the hexagonal glitter set sent to me by Born Pretty Store. After applying the second coat of Warm Blue, I used a damp orange wood stick to pick up the glitters and place them where I wanted them. Then I finished with topcoat. Easy peasy!

This was easy to do and ended up looking so pretty! I will definitely be doing this type of look again. The glitter adds just the right amount of sparkle. The colors I chose are definitely winter appropriate. I had a couple of people tell me they looked like “Frozen” nails. I can totally see Elsa rocking these babies and singing, “Let it SNOOOOOW”! Haha!

Well, I hope you liked these. If you want to order the 12-color glitter set from Born Pretty Store (or anything else for that matter) you can use my coupon code for 10% off your entire order!

I hope you have a great start to the week! Keep smiling!
Hugs,
Rach

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I have had migraines showing up and ruining my plans for posting.  After I started feeling better, I got so involved at home doing school with my two little ones, just having fun, and trying to slow time down to enjoy them longer. I love being a mom. Anyhooo…  I am happy to be able to post something this evening. I’ve been excited to share it for a while.

Sometimes I like to go out of my comfort zone with nail art. Especially when I see a design by someone else and think “I could barely probably pull off that look.” I saw this look by Haus Of Lacquer on their Instagram a couple of weeks ago and I really liked it, so I put my own spin on it.

I filed my nails more pointy than usual and started with two coats of SanSan Tea Rose. I love this polish! It’s a light-pink jelly with a pretty shimmer to it.  Then I used clear coat to add some silver foil and applied a topcoat. When that dried, I used a striping brush and black acrylic paint to add the lines. Cool huh? I imagine this style on a chic business woman. It’s classy but still edgy, and it totally reeks of self-confidence! I really enjoyed wearing these.

Do you follow any Instagram accounts for nail art ideas? Please share your favorites for me to check out. I always love finding fellow addicts new inspiration! I’m on Instagram too if you want to pop over and follow me.

Have a wonderful day/evening!
Hugs,
Rach

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This is two very easy coats of San San Tea Rose. I think this may be the only exception to my severe case of VNLphobia. But I will definitely be more open minded from now on and give a polish a chance to win my heart like Tea Rose did. The accent nail is a full nail water decal I purchased from My Online Shop on Facebook. I added a coat of Tea Rose to make it match the other nails.
The combination of my nail shape, the floral pattern and the dusty pink just screams vintage romance. Don’t you think?

I also added a pearl accent to the accent nail. These are from Blooming Nail Cebu.

San San polishes are available at HBC branches and retail for 37 Philippine Pesos per 12 ml bottle.

How do you feel about VNL? Are you getting in the mood for some romantic nail art for Valentine’s Day? I’m looking forward to some extra girly looks in the coming days.

Have a fabulous day!
Rach

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I hope you had a wonderful day filled with much love and laughter and that you got to spend it with people that you love. We enjoyed a Skype date with my hubby’s folks in Texas and we enjoyed a lovely lunch with my parents and siblings here in Cebu. Among other yummy things, we had some awesome mashed potatoes for lunch. Mr. Nailinator found this recipe from the Pioneer Woman. The secret ingredient? Cream cheese! Best mashed potatoes I have ever eaten!

Sometimes a girl needs some nail art that is easy and super speedy. This was just that. I applied my polish ahead of time (I’ll talk more about the polish in a bit) and had planned on doing a lovely free handed design, but due to time constraints (seriously, I’ve got two very active kids and a household to run) I chose to use the Hot016 Christmas themed water decals (should have taken a picture) that I purchased from Blooming Nail Cebu a while back. It doesn’t really get much easier than water decals, gals. The Blooming Nail decals are great quality. They are so easy to work with. They have vibrant images, and they are thick enough that I was able to use my tweezers to position them, mumble under my breath at my lousy attempt at centering the design, and reposition it several times. Then I applied topcoat to seal it and smooth it out. I forgot to make sure the decal was completely dry before I placed it on my ring finger, thus you can see I experienced a bit of bubbling. Hopefully the next time I do decals I won’t forget that step and they will all be smooth.

The polish I used as my base is Chic Shadow Crystal (PHP 34.75/US$ 0.78). It is one of the 5 shades in their Grainy Collection. The polishes in their Grainy Collection dry to what I would describe as a slightly textured semi-matte finish. This is two thin coats of Shadow Crystal over one coat of San San Cloudy Gray. I think Shadow Crystal would need 4 coats for it to be opaque on it’s own so I decided to use undies again. I really love this polish. It dries fast and I love the finish and the little sparkles. It reminds me again of glistening snow except with a grayish silvery tint. I received several compliments when I wore the polish on it’s own. If you look closely at the pictures with the decals, you will see that there is no visible tip wear. I had already been wearing it without topcoat for 2 full days when I added the decals so it wears quite well also. Cleanup was very easy for me. A few sparklies were left behind, but they came off easily when I washed my hands. This is another perfect holiday shade in my opinion.

I’m still getting used to doing actual reviews on polishes. I would really appreciate if you would tell me if there is any lacking information in this review that you would like me to include in future review posts. Or feel free to tell me what I did right.

Mr. Nailinator convinced me to take the plunge and file my nails to a sort of pointy almond shape so the next time we meet I will be sporting a different look. I’ve had a lot of positive feedback so I hope you all love them too.

I’m singing off for bed now. Again, I hope you had/are having a very merry Christmas. May God bless you and yours.

Hugs,
Rachael

The post Review of Chic Shadow Crystal and Blooming Nail Cebu Water Decals appeared first on The Nailinator.

I mentioned in my last post that we were hunkering down for super typhoon Haiyan or Yolanda as it is locally called. Unless you have been living under a rock somewhere, you have heard about the catastrophic damage that the storm has left in its wake. Those of us in Cebu City were spared the brunt of the storm but many, many others in this beautiful country were not and they are suffering unimaginably. Thousands have lost their homes. Many are literally starving and suffering dehydration as relief goods are difficult to deliver through blocked roads. Clearing roads of fallen trees and buildings and other debris takes much time and there are many people in many places that need help badly! Many people have been evacuated to Cebu City and Manila and now the government is scrambling to find housing and daily sustenance for the thousands of people with nothing left! The casualty count is getting higher and bustling cities are now in ruins. It is absolutely heart breaking.

Needless to say, with all this going on, I find it hard to bring myself to do my nails. But I decided to do these to honor the strength of the Filipino people and to raise awareness of the situation here.

These nails were inspired by the Philippine flag. I used two coats of Caronia Tea Rose (red) and then added San San Blue Sapphire to half the nail. I added gold studs I bought at Blooming Nail Cebu. These “flag nails” could have been more detailed as I could have added stars and the sun you see in the picture of the Philippine flag (below). But, I have been busy doing other things that mean more to me and I don’t have the heart to spend much time on my nails at all lately. I hope you can still see how it is inspired by the flag. One day I will do another design inspired by our flag.

Photo Credit: Mike Gonzalez

The nail art community is jam packed with AWESOME people. Seriously, you gals have hearts of gold and I feel like I can ask you to please PLEASE consider donating some money via any organization you feel comfortable with. You can donate through the Philippine Red Cross, UNICEF or another  big organization like that. You can also donate through many smaller organizations that are doing wonderful work and are effectively and QUICKLY helping people. May I suggest the non-profit organization Lilia’s Place? I know Doug and Lisa, who run this organization, personally. They are a great couple who have huge hearts for helping others. They gave up their comfortable lives and jobs in the US and left all their family behind and have been working with street families in Cebu City for over 4 years. Now they are working to help those affected by the typhoon as well. I can assure you that they will use your money immediately to purchase relief goods and take them to those in need. Just yesterday they brought a truckload up north of Cebu and provided food and water to a village of 300 families that hadn’t had a bite to eat in 4 days (pictures on their FB page)! Can you even imagine?!? Please consider sending some money through them if you would like to fund a smaller relief effort. If you choose to donate, please include a note that the funds are for typhoon relief.

I want to assure you that every dollar counts! Just one US dollar can buy 3 pounds of rice or 3 cans of sardines or 4 liters of drinking water. Do you think you could have PB&J or ramen for dinner just once this week or drink water instead of soda or  hold of on a polish lemming for a while and send a couple (or a couple hundred) dollars to help get some food to someone in dire need? Please?

If you are in the Philippines and want to help by volunteering but don’t know where to start, please contact me via email (rdrobins84@gmail.com) and I will do my best to find a place in your area where you can help in some way.

I don’t know how often I will be able to post in the next few weeks as my priorities right now are spending my free time volunteering packing relief goods. But I will be back and I hope you will stick around. Please pray for this country as we mourn and try to pick up the pieces and help those hardest hit as much as we can. Thank you for reading all this. I’m sorry for such a heavy post but I hope you will understand.
Hugs to you all!
Rach

The post Philippine Flag Nail Art (and a plea from my heart) appeared first on The Nailinator.

I’m sorry I haven’t posted much this week. Everyone has been extremely busy around these here parts and that leaves little time for my nails. It’s a sad story I know. But it’s all for a good cause and I did actually get to do my nails a couple of times. I went with simple but pretty looks. I just haven’t had the time to sit down and get them up on the blog. This next week promises to be a bit less hectic so hopefully I’ll be back to my old routine. (Fingers and toes crossed!)

I started off with two coats of San San Red Gleam. I don’t really get why they named it Red Gleam since it really looks just like the shade in the picture. More like Dark Pink Gleam. Ha! Anyway, I was kind of dissapointed in the formula for Red Gleam . It applied easily enough and I had high hopes for it’s opacity. But even with this being a dark color that passed the “brush test”, I still had a few thin spots after the second coat. It’s only really noticeable in certain lighting. I went ahead and stuck with two coats as I topped it off with two coats of Kleancolor Chunky Holo Purple which was easy as pie to apply. Come to think of it, I have made my fair share of pies and it was actually MUCH easier than pie. Just sayin’!

As you can see, for a finishing touch I added a bow to the accent nail. I’m still not too crazy about 3D nail art so the bow will have to grow on me a bit. But my 4 year old loves it. According to him, “The one without the bow is not good at all. But the bow is great!” So we’re going to go with the recommendation of my 4 year old… this time.

What do you think? This was so easy to photograph and It’s very pretty and shiny.

By the way, my joint giveaway with Blooming Nail Cebu ends in 12 hours. If you haven’t joined yet, you really need to. Just look at all these goodies up for grabs. And it’s open internationally! Good luck! I can’t wait to see who wins!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Day 26 of the 31 Day Challenge is “Inspired by a pattern”. I’ve chosen to go with an Argyle pattern. I saw a tutorial by Cute Polish for this nail art way back when I was just getting into nail art and I tried it out on a nail wheel right away and it looked very nice. So when I saw it on a nail wheel the other day I thought it was time to try it out on my nails. I learned that doing my nails while watching episodes of the Doris Day Show makes for some wobbly stripes. Definitely not my neatest work. :/ Whatever! I still think they turned out cute. Don’t you?

The colors I used are San San Cloudy Gray, Caronia First Crush (purple), China Glaze For Audrey (green) and Jocarste White.

If you are just starting out with nail art I strongly suggest you check out Cute Polish on You Tube. She has some pretty cute designs that are really easy to achieve. Have a great day!

Hugs!

The post Argyle Nail Art appeared first on The Nailinator.

Some products used were provided to me for honest review. 
All opinions are my own. 

Before I get to the nails I’d like to let you know that I joined Instagram a couple of weeks ago and, while I am still getting the hang of hash tagging and all that crazy stuff, I have been posting some pictures there. I will post my nail art and some other pictures that won’t be on my blog so if you are on Instagram, I’d love to hear from you. Look for @thenailinator  

These are my entry for the Comic Book or Character theme for the Rather Awesome 31 Day Challenge Giveaway.

When I was talking to Mr. Nailinator about what I could possibly do for this theme I had no idea what to do. I’m a bookie for sure but not comic books. Luckily Marvel has several movies out my hubby reminded me that the characters are from comic books. So my son said I should do Captain America nails. And this is what I came up with. I actually wore these a few weeks ago for July 4th. See how I thought ahead?

As I hope you can see, the pinky is supposed to be the A on his head piece, the ring finger is the red and white on the midsection of his costume and the middle finger is the round shield. The pointer is just going along with the color motif and the thumb has 3 stars like the top of the old school comic book shield.

Colors used for this look:
San San Blue Sapphire
Oh My golly Salsa (red)
Jocarste White
Jocarste Silver 26
Klik Super Star (glitter topcoat and stars)

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Sansan Sea Green in natural light

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I have wanted to do another flower manicure and have been tossing a few ideas around for what I’d like to do. I wanted to try an antiqued look and came up with the idea of doing a Saran Wrap mani with a nude color and a brown and adding flowers to that. The base didn’t quite turn out as I had imagined (see last pic) but I think the end result is still pretty. I think I’ll try different flowers next time.

I used an unnamed dusty nude and Oh My Golly Sunny Tan for the base and Oh My Golly Bikini (dk. pink) and Jocarste #36 (lt. pink) for the roses. I did the leaves with Caronia On the Go (dk. green) and Sansan Sea Green (lt. green). This is the first time I’ve done leaves and I finally got the hang of it while I was working on my right hand.

Outdoor lighting

What do y’all think? I didn’t really like these until I finished them and added top coat.

On another note, my birthday is in May and I’m gearing up to have my first giveaway to celebrate the occasion! Yay!

Here is a picture before I added the flowers. As I was working on it I was discouraged because I thought it looked like a perfect Halloween manicure. Unintentional Zombie manicure take 2! The flowers made me not hate it.

Saran wrap mani with nude and brown. Indoor lighting

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