Laura's Lacquers

I meant to post this yesterday but I totally spaced out.

So I am posting my New Year's mani a day late. *sigh* Classic Laura. Well not really, but whatever.

I started with Deborah Lippmann Naked.

2 coats. Or was it 3? Jeez, I only did this two nights ago, I should remember. Actually it's probably 3, since my nails are biznasty mofos and need to be extremely covered up. Naked is a beige jelly/creme, it applies nicely although it levels slowly, but it was good for the most part. A nice nude, it almost matches my skintone. You have probably heard me rant about how much I love nudes (they are Classy with a C, not Klassy with a K) so I'll spare you.

Anyway, next I applied one coat of Hits Lambada.

Lambada is fantastic. It's got orange and green flakies, and they do kind of shift color to teal, yellow, and reddish. And then of course since it's on a lighter color you can see the opalescent blue-lavender thing going on. It's nice and it had a fantastic formula, although it stinks to high heaven so you should probably wear a gas mask.

Anyway, to make it New Year's-y, I drew one number each on my fingers using a black Kiss nail art pen, and then I applied various glitters over the numbers.

Yay! I'm pretty sure you can tell what all these things are, or else I'm slightly worried about you. For the base I again used my NFL Saints gold foil (holy guacamole that stuff's awesome) and for the red, I used Essie One of a Kind, for the brown I used Essie Little Brown Dress, for the green I used Finger Paints ________ and for the white I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Whirlwind White.

It's all freehanded, I found my freehand brush! *cheers ensue* So hopefully I'll be doing more freehanding in the future, at least after I work my way through all my new babies! I'll show them to you in just a moment. (you might noticed I'm holding one of them because it was the closest bottle at hand...)

On my right hand, I did the gold foil again, plus China Glaze Twinkle Lights.

I hated Twinkle Lights over green but I absolutely love it over gold! It's so pretty and sparkly, and it works perfectly. Hallelujah, because I don't think I could bear getting rid of it (it came as part of a set and then I would have this empty slot where it's supposed to go, and that would just bug me for the rest of my life).

All right, are you ready for my Christmas haul? I'm pretty sure I just heard a resounding YES, which is troubling because there's no one here so it's probably just the voices in my head. Oh well!

*squee* OMG LOOK AT ALL THAT STUFF. We've got:

- Speciallità Hits Lambada and No Olimpo Artemis

- a england Iseult and Perceval

- Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe, Naked, and Don't Tell Mama

- an adorable green foil snowman polish!

AND OMG I GOT A HELMERRRRRRR. (thanks mom & dad!)

For those of you that have no idea what I'm talking about, a helmer is a little file-cabinet like thing that you can get at Ikea, and it's handy-dandy for storing nail polish because the drawers are just the right height. Here is where my polish is living currently:

On my thumb is a-england Tristam, index is the NFL Saints polish, middle is Elianto Racing Green, ring is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Celeb City, pinky is Orly Emberstone.

I've seen this design on many blogs so I can't give credit to anyone in particular. I really like this design, it was easy to do and come on, it's adorable.

Also, I think that I now love foils. I used to think foils, especially metallic colored ones, were completely meh. Here, let's use some visuals.

How I used to feel about foils:

The gold NFL polish and Celeb City are just freaking awesome. They're so sparkly and FANTABULICIOUS. And they're so flattering, too... looooove them. I need every foil in existence now.

I have some awesomer Christmas nails that I did for today, except freaking Blogger is being stew-pod and not cooperating with me. So I'll have to show you those tomorrow. It'll prolong the Christmas joy!

Anywho, I'll also show you my Christmas haul tomorrow. So how was your Christmas? Get anything super awesome?



I don't know if you know this (here I go again) but I LOVE football. It's so much fun to watch. I could literally watch football 24/7 and never get bored, it doesn't even have to be teams I know. But I am an ardent fan of my dear Houston Texans and the New Orleans Saints. I hope they never ever play each other, or else I'm pretty sure my heart would rip in two.

Anywho, yesterday was possibly the awesomest game ever for the Texans. I'm not sure if you're up-to-date or even really care about football drama, but I'll fill you in anyway. Our regular quarterback, Matt Schaub, got injured, so he was replaced by Matt Leinart. Leinart was in for less than one game when he got sacked and his collarbone is broken and he's out for the season. So, because there were no quarterbacks named Matt left, we must turn to TJ Yates. 

Now, nobody had any expectations of this kid. A third string quarterback winning the game? Fo realz? But they did it. TJ was freaking awesome and I am as goshdarn proud of him as I'm sure his parents are! Of course the rest of our team was amazing as usual, the defense was fantastic and Arian Foster was running like a BEAST (in the best way possible). I just wanna give 'em all a big ole hug.

All right, enough of me waxing poetic about one of the greatest teams ever. Here is the mani I did in honor of the Texans.

(hey look, I figured out how to make the pictures bigger!

This is what I did on my right hand.

For the base I did OPI Roadhouse Blues (which luckily happens to be the perfect Texans blue). On my thumb (not pictured cause it's boring) I wrote "#1" because if it's not pretty obvious by now WE ARE NUMBER ONE. On my index finger I wrote "Yates" because he deserves major credz. I also did his number, 13, on my ring finger. I thought it was pretty ironically awesome that he was lucky thirteen.

This is some nail art I did recently, inspired by a little clutch thing I got with an owl on it.

So let's see. The base color on my thumb and ring finger is Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Pink Breeze, the base color for my index finger is Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Tough Taupe, the base on my middle finger is Sinful Colors Dream On, and on my pinky the base blue is Zoya Phoebe. The dark pink on my index finger is Sinful Colors Dream On, the light pink on index, middle, and pinky is OPI Feelin' Hot-Hot-Hot, all the yellow is Sinful Colors Unicorn, all the teal is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Fairy Teal. I'm pretty sure that covers it! I did the owl and the words with a fine-tipped Sharpie.

Since I didn't feel like going through the trouble of trying to do all of that with my left hand, on my right hand I wore OPI Roadhouse Blues topped with OPI I Lily Love You. It's super pretty, I definitely like ILLY better over vampies than over pinks!

This took forever, but I'm pretty happy with how it all turned out except for the index finger, which kind of looks like amoebas and a bunch of tiny bacteria... but the owl turned out pretty nice! I think I'd like to try owls again, maybe with feathers and stuff... hmm... so many ideas! Hopefully I'll find the time to do some more freehand stuff like this, I really like doing it and I know you guys do too!