For the love of coffee

It's been a bit since I've done a coffee manicure and I saw this ultra cool technique on Pinterest that led to a dead end tumblr log of pictures. So I had to figure out the technique myself and I'll do a tutorial once I have a new lightbox.

Photos aren't very good because, well, the sun is missing :( The effect feels like coffee splashing in a cup. Sadly my decal tore when I was applying it. It's hand painted so it didn't hold up to my attempts to reposition it.

Base color is Essence Oh De Prep and the copper is an unnamed from Maurices. As you can see I need a little more practice on the dots for the joining areas and practice I will. I love this effect and it's not very hard to do. Have a great day!

The lovely ugly manicure

So this polish fiend can't afford much polish lately. I've managed to acquire polish many other ways because, let's face it, I'm an addict who needs her supply. Thus my friend has been the clearance sections EVERYWHERE. So I happen to be at Fred Meyer when I notice a lot of their Essence glitters are marked 50% off and some had even been dumped into baskets marked down and then sporting a 60% off sticker. Well I can afford that! So these two lovelies came home with me:

I use lovely figuratively in the brown's case. The brown one looks more golden in this picture then it really is. It's Essence Oh De Prep and it's walking a fine line between milk chocolate and poop brown. It's ugly. But I found myself fascinated with it and at 0.87 cents I couldn't resist. The glitter is Essence Copper'ize Me and I have wanted to try this one for some time! As it would happen they layer beautifully:

I added striping tape intending to pull it up to leave a revealing line of cream against glitter but when I applied the glitter it happened. The magic. It was so ugly yet so lovely and I just don't even understand how that can be.

I added in a larger image so you can see the glitter mix - it's incredible! Coppers, pinks, and gold all mingle with the lovely pop of turquoise. So pretty! This is one coat of glitter over two coats of Oh De Prep. Essence makes incredible glitters.

Just for kicks I thought I'd show the brown on it's own:

So that's my cheapie look on a restricted budget. Not bad huh? How do you feel about browns of this...hue?