Great Weekend and My First Followers!

     Hey! I'm back from a fabulous weekend with my friends! I helped celebrate my friend Tracie's graduation! It was great to be with my friends in the cities!
    And though I didn't get to take a trip to Ulta/Sephora/MAC, I did make a stop in Albertville. Albertville's claim to fame is it's outlet mall. I had to stop in the one and only makeup store on the strip: The Cosmetic Company Store. They have name brand makeup and fragrances from MAC to Clinque and Estee Lauder.

I walked out of the store with three MAC shadesticks: Fresh Cement, Cuddle, and Nurture. I will swatch them as soon as possible. You'll have to wait in suspense for just a little while. I'm completely beat from my 4hr drive.


Before I go I want to say Thank You!!!! to my first followers! It was a great surprise to end my wonderful weekend!!!

P.S. I also have a nail polish haul coming soon.....:)

HauteLook Haul!

I don't own any makeup from Urban Decay. I've been dying to get my hands on some of their stuff, but its just so expensive for me and I don't want to tack on extra dollars for shipping since I have no Sephora near by.

So when I saw that HauteLook was having an Urban Decay Event, I jumped on the opportunity to get their products for cheap prices!

Well, I got to the sale late and there wasn't much to choose from but...

...I did end up with a few goodies. L-R: Liquid Liner in Gash, Smoke Out Eyeliners in Mary Jane, Purple Haze, and Smoke Out.

And of course, some swatches:

 

L-R: Smoke Out, Purple Haze, Mary Jane, and Gash

Oh how I love Gash! I'm excited to use it! Sorry about the blurry pencil swatches, they come with smudgers so I was testing them out. 

Well I'm off to the Twin Cities for the weekend...maybe I'll have an opportunity to hit up the mall, specifically Sephora and MAC. Oh, I hope so!

Kayla

No school, no work, just a blizzard and frankenpolish.

    If you've ever been to North Dakota in the winter, you'll know that the weather is terrible: extremely cold (surprisingly today it is above zero... nine), and the wind can knock you on your rear before you're fully outside. Today is no exception. Blizzard, and not the kind that comes with cookie dough or m&ms in it. Just wind. At 30-40mph.

Here's a view from my bedroom window, though I wish you could see the wind:

   School was canceled about 20 minutes before I needed to be at class (I wasn't even gonna go) and work told me to make the safe choice. So I'm not traveling into town for that either.  What to do with my free day?

Why not mix some nail polishes together? Genius!

    In total I made three frankens today, tested out one I made but never tried, and experimented with layering two polishes. The first one I made today was a mix of Misa's Pour Me Something Tall and Strong and a Sally Hansen silver chrome. I wish it would have come out slightly darker but what can you do? That will be shown on my index finger. The second one was a mix of the same blue Misa and OPI's Banana Bandanna. A beautiful mint green! Very pleased! Shown on my ring finger.  And the third one I made was a mixture of an old pink diamond polish and an old orange creme. Both drugstore brands but I couldn't tell which ones. Made a bright peachy-orange glitter polish. I may add some pink to it later as I am not sure if I like it or not. This can be seen on my middle finger.

Now on my pinky is the very first franken I ever made and its also a mix of two or three drugstore brand polishes from a few years ago. No idea what they were. Its a light blue, slightly shimmery.

My thumb was the layering experiment. I layered a Pure Ice polish called Mint Dream (very sheer, iridescent) over e.l.f's Plum (dark purple, creme, gorgeous). Loved the result though it wasn't what I was expecting.
Please excuse the terrible state of the polish on my nails. I had just finished the final coat on each when I knocked over the Plum polish, spilling it on the floor. Actually my pants\slippers saved it from actually spilling out completely. In the scramble my nails got smudged. :(

With Flash:

 

Without Flash:

The blue on my index looks matte here but it actually looks more like it does in the first picture.

And just to show the effect on my thumb:

A nice flash of teal surrounded by plum. Do you like it? I think I do.

Now I'm off to paint some Shim-merry Chic onto my naked nails.

Kayla

Can you ever have too much nail polish?

Yesterday I went to the mall with my parents. Hey, all the cool kids go to the mall with their parents! Right? Anyways..I went because the weather was bad and my mom didn't want to go alone or even drive for that matter (that's what my dad was there for).  My mom asked me why I wanted to go, since she was just going for a hair cut. I said I wanted to look at nail polish.

That got me the classic "Are you kidding me?" look. Followed with: "Nail polish? Don't you think you have enough nail polish. Enough makeup for that matter!".  I was confused. Enough nail polish? Enough makeup? Was there such a thing? Had I passed the normal point of "Hey I think I've rounded out my collection very nicely."

Two seconds of thought goes by.

Nope. Definitely not. And while this may not have been the answer she was hoping for, she didn't press on. Thank god.

I should really show her some of the blog/youtube makeup collections I've seen. She would probably leave me alone. I don't really have that much. I've only recently become very obsessed with makeup. So my collection has probably grown at a rate my mom would probably consider "financially unhealthy".  But to her relief (well once I show her those collections), my collection only barely fills a large four drawer Sterilite roll away container. That's nothing in the makeup blog world.

Okay, back to the mall story.  At the hair salon they didn't have any OPI polishes that I was looking for. Except Done Out In Deco, but their prices didn't please me. Yes, Mom, I'm a bargain shopper! While my parents were looking at coats for my dad in Herberger's I took the opportunity to see what the hair salon in the store had to offer. Gold mine!!! They had a clearance table full of goodies. OPI for 50% off! And every single color was on my list. So I left with three full size OPIs and a mini set, and spent less than $20! Here's my new little buddies:

Back: L-R: Banana Bandanna, Done Out In Deco, My Private Jet

Front: Holiday Wishes Mini Merries L-R: Shimmery Chic, Holiday Glow, Comet Loves Cupid and All A-Bordeaux the Sled!

I'm extremely excited that I got My Private Jet half off considering its the new formulation...but since the old one was 50% off she gave me the new at that price! Score!  I can't wait to use it and Shimmery Chic is beckoning too. I don't know how often I'll use Comet Loves Cupid or All A-Bordeaux the Sled as they aren't colors I would normally wear but maybe I'll get creative.

I used Banana Bandanna and Done Out in Deco for a look I'm submitting to The Daily Nail's contest. Take a look at the contest! It's a neat concept! Here's my look...its actually the second one I'm sending because my first one was terrible. No need to post that one! Ugh!

I used OPI's You Don't Know Jacques! Matte as the base. Using my handy dotting tool I randomly dotted on Done Out in Deco, Banana Bandanna, China Glaze's For Audrey and Lavender Lingo, and Urban Outfitter's Green 2. 

Okay, that's all for tonight.
Kayla

Irony and Electron Microscopes

Today, I found it ironic that I went to my virology (the study of viruses, just in case you didn't know) class with a cold. Completely miserable the whole time, I think my professor thought I had a kleenex permanently stuck to my nose.

I both love and hate thursdays. I love that I have an extra hour between class and lab, but I hate that I have lab until 6pm.
However, today I love Thursday a lot more, because the geek in me is extremely excited to go see the electron microscope on campus. We're getting a tour for one of my labs today! I've never seen one in real life so yeah I'm super pumped. Maybe we'll look at my cold virus....but probably not. I don't want to see it. I just want it gone.

Talk to you later,
Kayla

Geeking out Glam style!

Hey! Thanks for checking out my blog!
It's probably going to be an extremely random blog about whatever item/trend/thingamajig has my attention that day.  Starting out with nail polish! I celebrated the end of Fall semester by buying about 10 nail polishes from Head2Toe and TransDesign. I had never tried matte polish before then and so I purchased two OPI mattes: Russian Navy and You Don't Know Jacques. I was amazed. Never had I seen a nail polish dry so fast! And the colors were amazing! There was one draw back: sloppy application. I can never get a nice even coat because of the drying. I think I may just need to get used to it.
   Luckily, in that same purchase I got China Glaze's Matte Magic! I was excited to transform my favorite colors to their matte versions! And, no problems with application! Success!
So tonight, I took an amazing green polish from China Glaze called Entourage and covered it in Matte Magic. I also added a little detail on a couple nails with China Glaze's Caribbean Blue.

So here's the line-up: ORLY's Ridgefiller, CG Entourage, CG Caribbean Blue, and CG Matte Magic.

And here's the end result (ignore the forgotten clean-up around the nails):

The above is without flash. I left the Caribbean blue as is (no matte magic).  And with flash:

There! You can see the shine of the Caribbean Blue.

     So, what do you think? Not much of a winter look but then again I'm not much of a winter gal! Dreaming of spring already!

-Kayla