Tips and Tricks Tuesday- Cuticle Oil pen!

Make your own perfumed cuticle oil with an old perfume rollerball!

Here's a quick tip that I wanted to share because it was such a pleasant surprise to me. I recently used up my rollerball of perfume from Tattooed by Inky. Rather than throwing out the empty container, I decided to try using it for cuticle oil. I had tried the cuticle oil from Julep at Sephora, and liked the rollerball format of the packaging. So I pried the top off of my old rollerball of perfume, then filled the container to the top with olive oil. I replaced the top, and voila! I now have a new rollerball of cuticle oil.  My favorite aspect of my new cuticle oil? The remnants of perfume in the bottle have totally affected the oil in the container, so all the oil that comes out smells exactly like the Tattooed perfume. The combination of a great fragrance with being so easy to use makes this my new favorite way to moisturize my cuticles!

Tips and Tricks Tuesday-Drugstore Jellies

Sinful Colors Ruby Ruby and Sally Hansen Sheer Ecstasy, 2 drugstore jellies

A question that often comes up in the nail community is "What are some drugstore jellies?" It's not like jelly polishes are all labeled as such. Yes, there is the standard advice to find a jelly: tip a polish bottle over on its side. If you can see the mixing balls through the polish along the side of the bottle, then the polish is a jelly. However, I wanted to offer people a quick and dirty list of the jellies that I know of that can be easily found at the drugstore. 

I've compiled this totally unofficial list of drugstore jelly polishes based on my frequent visits to places like Target and Walgreens. All but one of these are a part of the core collection for their brand, so they should be easy to access. Here are the jellies I know of so far:

Wet n Wild Everybody Loves Redmond
Wet n Wild Fuchsiarama
Wet n Wild I Red a Good Book
Wet n Wild 2% MIlk
Wet n Wild Break the Ice
Spoiled by Wet n Wild Permission to Proceed (dupe for the color below, SC Irish Green)
Sinful Colors Irish Green (not a core color at any retailer, seasonally available frequently)
Sinful Colors Ruby Ruby
Sally Hansen CSM Jaded
Sally Hansen CSM Shell We Dance
Sally Hansen CSM Sheer Ecstasy
Sally Hansen CSM Almost Almond
Sally Hansen CSM Arm Candy
Revlon Just Tinted Victorian
Revlon Sheer Pink
Revlon Velvet Rope
Revlon Plum Seduction

For almost all these polishes, I don't personally own them so I confirmed their jelly nature by image searching for jelly sandwiches featuring them. Maybe I'll eventually add a link for all of them, but for now:

Sally Hansen CSM Arm Candy sandwich from Never Enough Nails
Revlon Velvet Rope sandwich from Pretty Girl Science
Revlon Plum Seduction floating stamping from SpecialGirl Nails

Do you have a blog post featuring one of these jellies? Do you know of any other good drugstore jelly polishes? Please comment below!

Tips and Tricks Tuesday-Water Marbling 101

Think you can't watermarble? My tips might change your mind!

Like many people, I really struggled with watermarbling. I was a total failure the first few times I did it. Now that I've watched a lot of Youtube videos on the subject, I feel like I'm a lot better at it.  At least, I haven't wanted to tear my hair out the last few times I did it, which is progress for me. ;)  I wanted to share all these tips in a concise post so that other people who were struggling like me could find it all in written form rather than having to a bunch of videos. (Although watching water marbling videos can be quite enjoyable, also!)

I have a few videos links in this post, so please jump to begin unraveling the mysteries of watermarbling!

Tips and Tricks Tuesday- San Jose nail supply edition!

Hi, guys! Today I have a very wordy post that will only be useful to fellow San Jose residents. I am lucky (or cursed) to live in a city with a wealth of nail supply stores, and I wanted to share what I knew about these places for anyone who is interested. Hopefully, if you live in San Jose or will ever visit this part of California, you will be able to use this post to get the best deals and score some great polish!


US Nails is the first nail supplier I found in the San Jose area, and it's still my favorite by far.  It has a great selection of polishes, awesome prices and fairly helpful staff. Here's a yelp page with reviews of US Nails along with the hours and address.  I have to warn you about limited availability of Zoyas there. I once talked to one of the workers there and it appears that with Zoya, they only get one shipment of the new collection and then they're done. This seems to have been how things have worked for a long time. However, they do usually post on their facebook page whenever they get in the newest collection.  They also can be a bit hit and miss with their selection of OPI. Polishes from the newest collections are usually there consistently, but their core line of OPI products often seems depleted. If I could only visit one store out of the 3 in this post, it would definitely be this one.

Find out what the other 2 stores carry, and how they differ from US Nails, after the jump!

Tips and Tricks Tuesday-Storing Your Stamping Plates on the cheap!

My stamping plate storage, made for about $3

I mentioned in my red lip post that I recently splurged on my some Winstonia stamping plates for myself. I had already gotten a few stamping plates prior,  but it gave me the perfect opportunity to organize my plates and get crafty!

I will freely admit, most of the information I needed for creating my own storage was directly from this tutorial from Kayla Shevonne. So here's a breakdown of my costs:

1. Used photo album from the thrift store $1
2. scotch tape $1 (Dollar Tree)
3. cardboard index cards $1 (Dollar Tree)

I won't count the scissors I used since most of us already have some of those.  I guess some people might have to get those separately, but they are also readily available at stores like Dollar Tree.  Find out why I added the index cards to Kayla's original design, and learn another tip for this easy storage method, after the jump!

Tips and tricks Tuesday-Watch your acetone!

Acetone is a VERY strong chemical

This post is to alert you about the perils of acetone. Yes, of course, we need it for many nail related things, but I want to share something I wish someone had told me earlier in my journey into lacquer.  

*BE REALLY, REALLY CAREFUL WITH ACETONE.* REALLY

Over time,  I learned through the blog world that acetone dissolves plastic. It´s what nail technicians use to remove acrylic nails. It´s really strong stuff that acts more quickly than you´d expect and can end up causing a good amount of damage. Join me after the jump for a few of my sad stories!

Tips and Tricks Tuesday-Holding your striping tape

Welcome to Tips and Tricks Tuesday! If you're not familiar with this feature, join the club. It's something I did early on in my blog and kind of fell off doing. However, I have a few ideas for content to share that qualifies as a tip or trick, so I decided to start doing it on Tuesdays again. :)

Using a scotch tape holder for striping tape

Here's an awesome idea I found out about through the Makeup Alley Nail forum. Somebody posted about this video and I think it's genius. Personally, I only have 3 rolls of striping tape that I got from the Fing'rs display, but the video shows that this works really well for multiple rolls of nail art tape.

It turns out, striping tape is the exact right size to fit onto an empty scotch tape dispenser. I think this is great for a couple of reasons. First, it eliminates the annoyance of finding and pulling the hidden end of the striping tape. Also, it stores the striping tape in a way that's consistent with the way that us nail art people use it. I actually only have 2 rolls of striping tape on my dispenser because I lost my first roll-they're so flat and small that I think they're easy to misplace. Thanks to this storage solution, I won't have to worry about that anymore!

Tips and tricks Tuesday-Dealing with a terrible brush

Bad brushes from OPI and Spoiled

One of the common complaints I've heard about the Spoiled nail polish line is that their brushes are terrible. My solution to this problem: use the brush from an empty bottle of a brand you do like. It's easy to clean these brushes by filling the bottle with pure acetone and submerging the brush. Keep reading to find out more details, plus learn some of the other reasons I think it's a great idea to keep you empty bottles.

Tips and tricks Tuesday- Share your toys polish!

Polish exchange, image from 123 RF website.

I am really lucky to have a friend, we'll call her Esmeralda Pearlfinish, who's always liked nail polish. Thanks to my evil influence, Esmeralda's collection has grown in the last year, from under 20 polishes to almost 50. My tip for today is to share your polishes with a friend to save money and increase your polish stash.  Learn some of my tips on how to do this after the jump!

Tips and tricks Tuesdays-Cheap gloves save manicures!

When you are removing a polish from your toes or from one hand but don't want to ruin the manicure you have on, be sure to reach for some gloves. I'll tell you the kind I use and when I use them after the jump.

Tips and tricks Tuesday-Making your own swatch sticks

You may have noticed that I occasionally use what look like lollipop sticks to compare colors. It's something that is cheap and easy to do for yourself. Join me after the jump to learn how.