Halloween Pumpkin Carving

I finally got around to carving the pumpkin I picked out on my birthday! I had some friends over and we ate some delicious fall-themed snacks: crepes with apple butter, pumpkin pie, and cupcakes with apple pie filling inside! I also got some Angry Orchard Cinnful Apple Hard Cider to try out, and it was really delicious! I highly recommend it if you are a casual drinker of ciders. I also got a pumpkin carving kit at Kroger that had carving tools as well as sample designs that you could transfer to your pumpkin to guide your carving.

Halloween-Colored Patchwork Nails

It has been awhile! I have been busy with conference travel and writing a paper that is due on Friday, but I managed to sneak in a Halloween mani this week. I was inspired by a tutorial made by The Nailasaurus for "Patchwork Nail Art". I tried to pick Halloween-y colors, though they look more like Mardi Gras colors in these pictures! I don't know why, but I cannot get the pictures to look true to color, but I promise that the yellow is really a mango-ish orange and the green and purple are much deeper in person.

TJ Maxx Haul + Simple Triangle Nail Design + Pumpkin Patch

On Saturday night, I decided to stop by TJ Maxx since I always have good luck with nail polish deals there, and I decided to treat myself for my birthday! It also helps that my boyfriend is quite the enabler and will sift through all of the colors with me. I would consider this a pretty successful haul!

Ipsy October 2014

 

This review is for the Ipsy subscription for the month of October. Ipsy is a monthly subscription box that focuses on makeup with some skincare, hair care, and nail polish products. It's $10/month (+ $.75 for tax (?)) for a small makeup bag plus 5 samples that are influenced by a quiz you take. You can earn Ipsy points for reviewing products, posting things to your facebook, and inviting friends. These points can be redeemed for additional full-sized products.

Deep Blue and Silver Half-moons

 

I am back in nail art business! My nails are looking pretty healthy and I am excited to get back into making designs. This weekend is Duke Homecoming and also my birthday, so I wanted to do some fun things, starting with going to the Homecoming reception and dance tonight. I picked out a dress to wear that I got a few years ago at Express. It's mostly dark blue with black on one shoulder, so I did my nails in blue to match with a silver sparkly half-moon to accent the color. I love dressing up and being fancy, so I am very excited!

Swatch: Deborah Lippmann - Good Girl Gone Bad

I'm taking a short break from intricate nail art, but I wanted to have some nice nails for a small conference yesterday, so I decided to try out one of my new nail polishes on it's own. I got this full-sized Deborah Lippmann in the color Good Girl Gone Bad in the Sephora Favorites Glitz and Glam Sampler.The Sephora Favorites samplers can be a good way to try out some popular high-end products without completely breaking the bank.

Birchbox October 2014

This review is for the Birchbox from October 2014. Birchbox is a very popular subscription box. It is $10/month for 4-5 beauty and lifestyle samples, which are personalized based on a quiz you take. They seem to stick to the quiz fairly well, though they do state that even if you "dislike" a particular product, you may still get it once a year or so. The great thing about Birchbox is its reward system. You get 10 points for every item you review from your box, as well as a point for every dollar you spend in the Birchbox shop (which includes the purchase of your actual box). You can also get points for referring friends. Every 100 points you accumulate is $10 toward a purchase from the shop, which contains full-sized items, some of which are exclusive to Birchbox. So, it's a pretty inexpensive way to try out products and then use your rewards towards buying the ones you ended up liking or something else entirely.

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day #31 - Honor Nails You Love

It's finally here! The last challenge and I am only 9 days late! I decided to honor the post that first got me interested in the blog Chalkboard Nails, which is also the blog that inspired me to do the 31 Day Challenge. I always love Sarah's posts, and she makes such great designs! I followed her tutorial for making "distressed nails", which is very simple to do but looks really cool.

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day #30 - Inspired by a Tutorial

For this challenge, I followed a tutorial that I found through reddit for doing plaid nails. I have tried doing a plaid design before and it just utterly failed, so I was really excited to see such an easy tutorial with nice results! The one I first saw was done with shades of gray, and I really liked the monochromatic look, so I decided to do shades of brown.

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day #29 - Inspired by (the) Supernatural

So, I interpreted this challenge a little loosely, and instead of being inspired by the supernatural, I chose to base my nail art on the TV show Supernatural. I don't think that's officially cheating because the whole point of the show is supernatural creatures and events! I based each of my nails on a title card from different Supernatural seasons.

Glitter Gradient on a Friend

My friend and labmate really liked my pinkie nail from my Day #24 nails, so we took a break from lab work one day to have lunch and do her nails. I used the same polishes from my nails, but I put the glitter on a little more thickly at the base to create a stronger gradient. I think the colors pop so nicely against her skin tone, and she received a lot of compliments! I even did her daughter's nails to match a few days later!

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day #28 - Inspired by a Flag

Better late than never! I will hopefully be finishing up the challenge in the next couple of days. I am impressed with myself that I didn't fall too far behind until the last week of the challenge.

Anyway, here are my nails that are inspired by a flag. This theme was kind of weird since I didn't really want to go with patriotic American flag nails, but I didn't really have a reason to pick another flag. So, I took my boyfriend's suggestion and painted the Taiwanese flag, since that is special to him.

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day #27 - Inspired by Artwork

For this theme, I based my nail art on the artwork of Leonid Afremov. I do not know much about art at all, but his oil paintings have always visually appealed to me because of how there are so many swatches of different colors that come together to make a scene. I based my nail art specifically on his painting "Farewell to Anger".

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day #26 - Inspired by a Pattern

For the "Inspired by a Pattern" theme, I chose to be inspired by a maxi dress I have, one of the few that isn't too long for me. I think it's really unique because the front of the dress has a stripe pattern that is kind of braided, while the back of the dress has all horizontal stripes.

Happy First Adoption Day, Chester!

Today is the first anniversary of bringing home Chester from the shelter! He was our very first bunny and he completely captured our hearts! When we first got him, his fur was all brown and coarse due to his malnutrition, but now he is all black and silky. He also has his lovely wife Pepper to keep him company. The shelter guessed that he was around 2 years when we got him, so we are going to call this Chester's 3rd birthday! We gave him some pineapple, which is one of his favorite sweet treats, to celebrate. HAPPY 3RD BIRTHDAY CHESTER! =3

Walmart Beauty Box Fall 2014

For those of you who don't know, Walmart has recently come out with a beauty box of their own. It's $5 for each box, and they are reportedly going to come out every "season", so four times a year. They don't give out really any information about the quantity or specific products except that they will be beauty products, but for $5 I was willing to give it a chance.

31 Day Nail Art Challenge: Day #25 - Inspired by Fashion

I am not someone who pays attention all that much to fashion, so to get inspiration, I browsed one of my Us Weekly magazines that I somehow get delivered every week for free (no idea how, I never asked for it!). There, I found out that one of the new fashion trend is "perforated leather".