New Beginnings.

Well, now that I caught your attention with a snapshot of my nail polish lot, I can be sentimental for a moment! It's the end of summer for me, my LAST summer break ever, and a lot has happened recently in my life. A lot of positive things, and I'd just like to take a moment to reflect on them all.
The best thing that has happened to me this summer was meeting my new, and best friend Jess. She's so amazing (she's on the right in the picture above, and I'm on the left). We met by chance through our mutual friend Chris and we have been inseparable since late June. She has brought so many laughs, memories, and love into my life. We literally can smile about anything, and it's so great having her as my friend. People joke that she's my wife since we are constantly together! :) I wouldn't have it any other way, she's such a positive influence in my life. Jess, thank you for making this summer fantastic for me. I couldn't have had the summer of my life without you <3
Besides my new BFF Jess, I also managed to snag myself a super great guy, Josh. He has really been the light in my life recently, and I'm not ashamed to say it! ha! Since spending time with Josh I've noticed that I smile a lot more, and I'm just generally happy. It's been awhile since I've felt real happiness all around in my life. I find myself falling for this boy, more every day. He is just a genuinely sweet guy, and those are hard to come by! I'm definitely counting my blessings this summer.

So my summer vacation finally drew to a close, and my last semester of college starts on Monday! 16 weeks until I'm finally done :) I filled out my application for graduation on Wednesday and it was so weird, requesting my diploma, I could hardly believe it! I don't plan on walking at graduation though, but Josh is hopeful that I will change my mind haha.

I decided on a few things that I would like to improve upon in the upcoming months:

• Staying focused on school, while maintaining relationships with friends and family
• Less cursing (man do I talk like a sailor!)
• Better organizational skills for my nail polish
• Not biting off more than I can chew
• Remembering to relax (I'm the worlds biggest stresser!)
• Less procrastination (I'm a huge procrastinator, but at the same time I work my little butt off!)

If I can keep these promises t myself, I'll reward myself with some nice Butter nail polishes Dec 3! haha! Positive reinforcement might just work :)

One last thing! Another great thing that happened this summer was having my big brother move back home. He's in medical school, and luckily was assigned to his clinical rotations in our home town! So he moved back home and will be living here for the next two years for the completion of his medical school. It's great having my big brother close to home again. That's us in the picture below :)

I love Holos!

I was at Forever 21 recently with my best friend, Jess, and saw this AMAZING polish while standing in the check out line! Its a gorgeous plum purple with small holographic glitters!
You can really see the holographic glitter in the bottle in this picture, on the nails the glitter was very sparse :( But it still sparkled in the light! It was hard to capture the glitter with my camera since I took these pictures at night.
I wish that this polish was a bit more sparkley, but it is still a beautiful plum purple!

Golden Tiger

I haven't stamped in what seems like FOREVER! So, I decided to remedy that! I started with my new Nicole by OPI polish Sea How Far You Go, which is a beautiful money green/golden color. I used three coats, then topped with a coat of SV.
I then used Sally Hansen X-Treme wear color in Black out to stamp the zebra print! I used the BM plate from the new collection, plate number 223 :)

Sugar Coated Pink Crackle

So, I was incredibly bored, which I was thoroughly enjoying (haha!) and couldn't decide how I wanted my nails to look :) I started off with two coats of OPI Princesses Rule! Which is a gorgeous powered pink sparkle polish, which was pretty...
....but I wasn't satisfied, so I then coated it with two coats of China Glaze White Cap which is an incredible iridescent sheer glitter...and still bored with the mani, I added OPI Black Shatter!
The winning trio!

Deborah Lippmann Dupe :)

Ok, so it's not really a dupe, more like creative layering! :) I used Essence "You Belong To me" Which is a really pretty cream sky blue, and layered Wet n'Wild "Party of Five Glitters" over it :) Completed the mani with 2 coats of SV!
What do you guys think? I personally adore this combination :)

Blue Marine

Just wanted to post a quick swatch of one of my new favorite polishes! L'Oreal Blue Marine! It's a soft holographic polish in a gorgeoussss aqua blue mixed with sea foam green and purple. It was super hard to capture the iridescence on my camera, but trust me it's stunning :)

Matte Flakies

I'm so sorry for my lack of updates lately, things have been crazy here! I've been enjoying my summer to the absolute fullest :) I wanted to do a fun mani for my Friday night out with my friend, Jess, and came up with this beauty!! I used Forever 21's Love and Beauty polish in Magenta as a base coat, I wish I remembered to take pictures of this mani before I used the matte polish! The magenta polish has the prettiest purple sparkle in it, as you can sort of see in the picture below:
Then, I used two coats of Nubars 2010 flakie polish, I used two coats so I could get a thick flakie covering on my nails :)
I then Finished the mani with a coat of Hard Cany's Matte-ly In Love matte top coat to achieve the perfect matte finish to the flakies! I just love the way the flakies really shine through a matte coat, they are much much more visible!