A pretty (rare) polish

Found a bottle of OPI What's Dune? in an old nail salon. It's a duochrome holo polish from ages ago. Make my hands look red as lobsters, but it's mesmerizing in the sun.

lovely layering

OPI I Pink I Love You was an Ulta Valentine's Day exclusive two years ago (I think. Don't quote me on that, maybe it was three?). It's so pretty and jelly and filled with itsy-bitsy gold glitter and I LOVE IT. But, it's rather hard to get ahold of nowadays, so I have to conserve.
I wore it over Lippmann Pop Life, a pretty creme pink. Honestly, you don't *need* Pop Life, tt's a pretty standard color. I got it for cheap, I certainly wouldn't have dropped $16 on it.

If you haven't entered my giveaway, do so now!

Modern Animal

I loved this. The pictures just don't do it justice, it was so shiny and SO pretty. All freehanded, obviously I need more practice. Still, love it!

This is one pretty polish

I bought this ages ago, when the collection first came out. It's nothing new, obviously as China Glaze hasn't made a holo this fabulous since the OMGs. Very holo and very pretty and very pink. I like it lots.

If you haven't entered my giveaway yet, you're obviously insane. Get your booty over there and click a few buttons for the chance to win some AWESOME polish!

500 Follower Giveaway!!!!

Hey all, it's finally that time! There's a reason why this took so long for me to get together. That secret surprise I mentioned? Well here it is!

I'm starting my own line of nail polish! I honestly love these frankens. I'm not saying that because I'm trying to sell them to you all, I own my own bottles and I wear them on a regular basis (and get SO many compliments every time. People love these!).
I'll be selling my Jane Eyre polish collection for $7.50 a bottle or 3 for $20. The collection is three beautiful greys, all smoky with that mysterious and tragic feel of my favorite novel of all time: Jane Eyre (of course!).














The colors are (in order from top to bottom!):
A Strange and Unearthly Thing- light grey with delicate green/blue shimmer. The shimmer is more apparent on the nail than my pictures would like you to believe.

Mrs. Edward Rochester- a something blue that isn't the usual. Light slate blue with fine holographic microglitter. Gorgeous.

To The Stars- a dark grey chock full of that beautiful holographic shimmer. A bit of blue in there, too, to keep it interesting.

Email me at paintedtips@gmail.com if you're interested in purchasing, limited amounts are available, so buy soon! Shipping will be $2.50 for the first polish with $.50 for every additional bottle.

And now for the giveaway! I'm giving to you, my lovely followers, a FULL set of my Jane Eyre polishes. All three of them will go home to one lucky winner.
BUT, that's not all! SinfulColors has teamed up with Painted Tips to also offer SIX lovely polishes. That's a total of NINE polishes in this giveaway, three of which you can't get anywhere else!
Sinful will send one lucky winner one bottle of each of the following polishes:
This Is It
HD Nails
Forget Now
Vacation Time
Daddy's Girl
Midnight Blue


So what do you have to do to win? Easy!
1) You have to be following me. There's no ifs, ands, or buts on this and I'll check to make sure the winner is legit. Press that little follow button, it's not too hard.
2) Fill out the following form.

Yup, that's it! If you do decide, though, to up your chances, here's ways to get bonus entries:
1) Put me on your blogroll. It'd be awfully nice if you'd keep me there, too.
2) Tell me which of the Jane Eyre polishes is your favorite and which SinfulColors is your favorite.
3) Suggest another color I should franken. I may end up end up making it!
4) Comment on my posts. Anyone who has commented at least 5x will be getting one more entry.
5) Recruit someone to my blog. They have to enter, too, and tell me that you've recruited them or it doesn't count.

So that's all! Just fill this in :D
Also, please note that this is only open for my US ladies. Sorry, international gals, I'll have another giveaway sometime for you!
This ends on February 10th. No entries after that date will be counted.

A post, a post!

CND Plumville
It's pretty but I don't love it on me. Too red, maybe?

Awful lighting because the polish and my camera don't like behaving.

New favorite color combo

CC Take Me To Your Chateau over Lippmann You Can Leave Your Hat On. Bundlemonster stamped. It looked great matte, too.
I love the light blog over the nude, so interesting looking. I really loved this.

Sweaters for my nails!

It snowed! It snowed here and it so rarely does, so I made little sweaters for my nails :D
I didn't take pictures like normal because... well... this is more fun. Yeah, let's go with that.
I used Wet n' Wild's French White Creme and Red Red and then an itty-bitty brush. A little messy, but they looked good enough, I thought. I like the moose the best :D
(Inspired by NeverTooMuchGlitter)

I'm working on getting the give-away stuff together. It'll be soon, I promise. Thanks for helping me hit 500, everyone! Remember, I'm rather partial to people who are with me PRE give-away, rather than post. There might be an opportunity for an extra entry if you've been active on my blog before I announce what you can win ;)

News on My 500 Follower Giveaway

I'm at 498 followers, 2 away from a HUGE milestone.

So, when I do get those two, I'll be revealing exactly what it is you might win. So, if you're reading but not following, now's the time to follow.

Can't wait to let y'all in on the big surprise!

China Glaze- Go Go Pink

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An oldie and a goodie. A bit streaky but that perfect pale pink that just screams femininity. Adore this one.

Essie Sand Tropez

I liked this.

Serena Williams' Polish

She partnered with OPI and made these shades, each sold in a duo with a corresponding crackle.

I didn't mean to buy any. No, I swear, I didn't want the crackle and I didn't want her nail polish.

The crackle was separate at Ulta and on sale. I had lots of coupons, and it totaled somewhere around $4 a bottle, so I bought several colors (black, silver, white, and gold are now all of my OPI crackles. I think. Uh oh, I might be missing a few)

And then the polishes were on sale, 30% off at Trade Secret. I bought these three. The names are silly (aren't they always?!) but the colors are complex and pretty. Please enlarge all pictures. Really, do it. And just in case you won't, I provided an enlarged bottle photo for each. Unique colors with complexity like we don't see very often from OPI, I'm sold!

I really should photograph Simply Smashing, the other SW for OPI color I have. I might just do that now. If so, I'll edit this post with it. I don't have Rally Pretty Pink because someone (achem, Valarie) talked me out of buying it 30% off. She's mean. I also don't have, or really desire, any of the Wimbledon polishes.

Love is a Racket-
This is going to be my V-Day mani. It'll be my own personal inside joke and I will enjoy it (and maybe do a crackled heart on it, that went well last year). It's this incredibly complex pinkish red. Or reddish pink, I don't know.
It has these itty bitty flakies (or, as I call them, microflakies! Let's make that catch on, yeah?) and pretty shimmer. I liked this one the best, actually.

Spark De Triomphe-
A clear based silver glitter with large circular gold glitters. I think. Honestly, this one's so odd I don't even know. I've seen it described by bloggers as gold, champagne, silver, greenish, yellowish.... Just look at the close-up, okay?

Pros and Bronze-
I see what you did there, OPI. Clever name.
This one was pretty sheer. A rose gold-y, bronze-y color. I can't decide if I like this on me, but it's interesting. Please note, immediately after taking this photo I filed my nails so they don't look so silly. I promise they're better now.

Grrrrr

Google took away my ads because they suspected fraud. I made $60 in no time flat, and I swear I didn't cheat. I never once clicked my own ads, and I have nowhere near the expertise to make some kind of auto-clicky thingy-majig. So I lost the $60 and the ability to have ads. It is really awful that I can't contest this because I DIDN'T DO ANYTHING WRONG.

Anyway, I just got a new baby, a Canon Rebel T3. Yup, finally I'm upgrading. I still need a macro lens before I can take nail pics with it, but look at the lovely pictures I took. (I'm proud of myself, I don't consider myself any kind of photographer, but I took these AND edited them all by my self :D)

I obviously have a thing for high-contrast, darkened, saturated images. And broken buildings. And doors, but no wonderful pics came from that small obsession.