1 YEAR OF THE-MANI LOGUES! So excited, that I'm giving away goodies!

Hello wonderful readers of The Mani-Logues! Today my little blog is 1 year old!

I can't believe so many of you that have been following from the start, are still here and leave me wonderful comments all the time! I love love love sharing my nail polish and bits of my life with you all! My kid has become a big part of this blog in so many ways, and I am glad to share her growing up with you all too!

SOOOOO HAPPY YOU ARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

On May 21, 2011 was when my love for nail polish peaked, I decided to blog about it. My close friend had been blogging for a few months already and she really enjoyed it, so I decided to give it a shot… however, I didn’t necessarily want to “blog” more so than to just log all of my manicures in one place and if friends or family wanted to see, then I could just give them the link and say “here have at it!” haha. I never really thought that my little catalog of manis could become so much more. I was shocked when I received my first comments… people were reading!

Yes, Matt, HOLY CRAP! PEOPLE WERE READING!!!

       At that time, I was exactly 6 months (and 1 day heh) pregnant with my daughter Violet. I had talked to a few of my Obstetricians, other moms, parenting websites pediatricians and referenced books, about what I should be concerned about regarding the chemicals in nail polish. They all told me to relax and not worry, although studies have shown that while drying on the nail the chemicals DBP/Dibutyl Pthalate, Formaldehyde, and Toluene could harm the baby’s physical and mental development. They also mentioned sometimes you can have new allergies while pregnant and to be careful of Formaldehyde Resin, even though the chances of an allergy with that are low. Luckily most brands, especially domestic to the United States, are 3 free (free of those “big 3” chemicals I previously mentioned) and 4 free (free of the “big 3” AND the Formaldehyde Resin). Also, most switched to 3 free by 2008, due to a lot of pressure from consumers and the FDA.

     Thinking of all of this and talking to others who love nail polish and friends/friends about my concerns about non- 3 free polish and my trust in baby safe and pregnancy safe polish, my friend Traci (blogger for The Trace Face Philes) suggested that since I already only posted about baby safe… that I should consider it being the focus of my blog. She really triggered in me even more of a passion, yes I am extremely passionate about nail polish… it is fashionable, a hobby to collect, something I can someday enjoy with my daughter, fun to do (um, hello! Nail art and flakies and jellies oh my!), but truly something I all around loved for EVERY reason. I not only have received all of that, but I have made so many close friends all from our shared love of this… well… PAINT! I created a business that brings income to go toward taking care of my child, and is something extremely fun to make!

So because I am JUST SO EXCITED about this!!! I’m giving away some of my favorite things!!!!!!!!

OH LAWD LOOK AT ALL THE GOODEHS!!!

For my 1 year blogaversary, I will give away a prize to 4 different readers!

Prize #1 - ONE bottle of a custom FEVERlacquer that YOU design! + ONE FEVERlacquer of your choice! (exception - retired shades) Donated by FEVERcosmetics

Prize #2 - FEVERshadow (loose and/or cream) Hunger Games inspired trio. Includes: Rue's Wildflowers, District 12 Soot, and Effie's Trinket! These are 3, 3g filled plastic pots. Donated by WISHFUL Bath & Beauty/FEVERshadow.

(these pots are shown empty, as the winner gets their choice of loose powder or cream)

Prize #3 - ONE bottle of Alter Ego nail enamel Desert Storm Trigger Puller + ONE bottle of Alter Ego nail enamel Penny Pincher!!! The cool thing about Alter Ego nail enamel is that it dries to a somewhat matte finish, its a very soft matte. If you do want the glitzy glossy look just apply top coat and you're good to go :)  The always sweet, Cynthia, from Alter Ego nail enamel generously donated these two bottles for the giveaway! They can be found in her shop AlterEgo nail enamel and please LIKE on FB here!!!!! 

(L-R): Penny Pincher, Desert Storm Trigger Puller

Had to do a close up of DSTP, it is by far, my #1 favorite glitter right now!

Prize #4 - MASH Professional 15 piece Nail Art Brush Set! The set come in a really nice black 3 fold satchel and includes: Three drawing tools, seven painting tools (website says they can also be used as gel nail curing brushes), two liners, one dotting tool, and two fan brushes. These were generously donated by MASHnails (MASHnails.com) !!!

This is open to international and domestic participants (excluding countries where prohibited through customs ie NZ, Italy... I'll add this due to inquiries and comments... if you are in these countries where i have had problems with people receiving their polish, and it DOES get seized by customs.. please understand that is out of my control and i will not feel comfortable resending, but you are more than welcome to enter and we can give it a try) any questions please email CasandraEileen@hotmail.com!
It will be open for exactly 4 weeks, leaving it open until 12:00 PM EST JUNE 11, 2011 and all entries will only be accepted through the Rafflecopter entry form below.

special post, HOLO DAY/I can't believe I'm wearing this...

Hello all! I am going to interrupt my nail art challenge for one day and show you all the thing I fear the most... HOLOGRAPHIC NAIL POLISH! haha If you have followed my blog this past year, and/or are in my groups or friends on facebook then you know that I do NOT like holographic nail polish. Flakies and jellies are MUCH more my thing. A list of ladies from my one group decided to put together a joint HOLO day, and I decided to join in and show off some non-linear holos and show some scattered glittery holo bits! In this post you can see all who participated in HOLO DAY and check out their blogs to see what they did also :)

So since I dared to be a bit different than what I am guessing he other HOLO DAY posts will show, I wanted to do a big ol' holographic different colored glitter bomb of a mani!

I started out with 2 base coats of a specialty franken/handmade polish from See Sarah Swatch, Deep In The Meadow. It is an Irish green jelly base with loads of fine to extra large sized and different shades of green holographic glitter. It was extremely easy to apply and even the extra large glitter bits (which are usually very hard to fish out of the bottle) were popping up often on the brush! I decided to add a stripe of holographic silver stars on each nail, to get that I used KleanColor - Silver Star (a clear base packed with small round holographic glitter and larger holographic star shaped glitter. These stars were a bit hard to fish out.), then a stripe over that of OPI - Servin' Up Sparkle (a clear base with fine small and larger holographic round glitter, very similar to China Glaze - Shooting Stars which has irridescent and holographic larger glitter bits but also a jam packed superfine holo glittery clear base). It just looked like it was missing something so I added a little accent bow on my ring finger with OPI - Teenage dream (a soft sheer pink jelly base PACKED with baby pink holographic glitter and superfine baby pink shimmery glitter)

Next SIX(6) pictures are in direct and indirect sunlight and some are slightly blurred to show off the holo bits. These are also just Deep In The Meadow by itself, 2 coats!

This next set of pictures is the finished mani with all 4 polish shown...

HAPPY HOLO DAY FRIENDS!

OUAT challenge DAY 4! Featuring Max Factor Fantasy Fire!

HAPPY FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!! We had a WONDERFUL first visit at the zoo for Violet :) The zebra made noises at her, the ostrich tried to fight through the fence and eat her, and she got to see the Otters get fed and do tricks! Husband and I LOVE the zoo, so we are ecstatic that Violet does too! Can't wait to go again!

Here is husband and Violet hanging out by the zebras and ostrich!

love them!

Now... only 4 days left (including today) of the OUAT nail art challenge!

DAY 4 - Something magical!  I decided to choose the most magical thing from the show... magic itself! I went with the purple "fog" that brought the curse and in the end brought magic back to unpredictable Storybrook!

I did 1 base coat of Julep - Gayle (a perfect eggplant purple cream), and after, on each nail I did swirls patterns with China Glaze - Flying Dragon. Once that dried I did 2 coats of Max Factor - Fantasy Fire (a green to purple/pink layering duochrome... I am majorly underwhelmed with Fantasy Fire but it did the look for me I wanted.)

This shows the dark and light and magical look of the crazy purple "fog", one of those mysterious things on the show that totally reminds me of the "black smoke monster" on LOST! haha LOVE IT!

What is your favorite thing from ONCE UPON A TIME that is magical?!

Take care,

Happy almost Friday!

This is a quick post because we are about to head out for Violet's first visit to the zoo!

DAY 3 - of my Once Upon A Time nail art challenge, The Storybook!

I went off of a still from the show where Henry is reading about Snow White getting caught in Prince James' net trap in the woods when she steals the bag of jewels containing his mother's ring, meant for his true love.

For the portion of the book cover I used Mercury Rising (my only brownish color right now) as the base color, The Nail Junkie's Matte Topper as a stripe on the left for the book spine, and the golden print is done with Dr's Remedy - GLEE gold (a gooorgeous sandy beige toned gold shimmer) and Mercury Rising details.

For the book pages I used a coat of Essence - Mellow Yellow followed by a coat of China Glaze - Heaven to give it an aged but blanched look just like the book pages on the show :) I was going to do the text show in the picture with the newspaper nail art print (paper and rubbing alcohol), but my new printer is so EPIC that the text won't transfer off of the paper with the rubbing alcohol like my old printer did haha. So I went with a fine point sharpie and I wrote the text... horribly :( but I tried! I topped off those nails with The Nail Junkie's Matte Topper.

Take care,

DAY 2 - [SPOILERS inside!] Once Upon A Time Fave Antagonist

First of all... MAJOR SPOILER ALERT AHEAD! DO NOT CONTINUE IF YOU HAVE NOT SEEN THE ONCE UPON A TIME FINALE OR DON'T WANT TO KNOW ABOUT THE FINALE!

I posted a sneak peek of this post to one of my FB groups and TOTALLY forgot to mention spoiler alert and my friend Kim from The Ides Of Polish hasn't completed the season of OUAT yet and well... now she has to erase this from her brain until she gets to the finale! OOPS!

Here goes.... DAY 2- Favorite Protagonist... THE STRANGER AKA PINOCCHIO! See why I say spoiler alert?! Heres another spoiler alert... HE TURNS TO WOOD in the finale before Emma can break the curse. So I decided to do August "The Stranger" Pinocchio (played by actor Eion Bailey... hot hot hot!) when he turned to wood. I have a feeling he will be fine come season 2 but you never know... magic in storybrooke is unpredictable...

I started out with 1 coat of SinfulColors - Mercury Rising (a perfect mahogany red/brown), while that was still slightly wet/tacky I used a nail art brush about the width of a Q-Tip stick and applied in uneven streaks down the nail a mixture of China Glaze - Fast Track (a frothy champagne/beige flecked shimmer) and clear coat (i used my own clear lacquer base from my frankens) so that it was see through enough that you could see Mercury Rising muted underneath and when I did the streaks i pressed pretty hard so that it left textured stripes much like a wood grain look (a-ha! see! bc he is wooden!). Once the textured nails dried I used Zoya - Charla to make his bright blue eyes and I used thin lines of Mercury Rising for his eyebrows.

These first two pictures are with flash to show you the texture on the base colors.

Damn and now I noticed I smudged on my little finger... OOPS! heh

I really love the August/Pinocchio character and I think he was a fantastic addition to the show! I can't wait to see what is in store for him and the rest of the characters in season 2 of OUAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Who is your favorite OUAT protagonist?!

Take care,

Once Upon A Time... I started another nail art challenge...

Once Upon A Time (if you are unaware) is an AMAZINGLY entertaining, complicated, conundrum of a show all about fairytales and modern day and magic and epic and yay.. or as some of us "Oncers" (yes there is a name for us) call 'The Stranger', a riddle wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a leather jacket! Yes. It is! If you have not tuned into this show all season, check out HULU.com or ABC.com to re-watch the entire season! It was created by the writers of LOST (one of my all time favorite enigmatic shows) and makes a few sly references to LOST in a lot of episodes. The finale premiered on Mother's day and boy oh boy did it BLOW MY MIND! I cannot wait until Fall when it starts up again for season 2!

In honor of the finale, I wanted to do a week long tribute to the show with a nail art challenge! If you participate in it or even if you just do a day or two or so, be sure to email a picture or link to CasandraEileen@Hotmail.com or post it on FACEBOOK.Com/TheManiLogues so I can get it posted on here or on the facebook page to share everyone's designs!

Now... for, DAY 1 - Favorite villain/antagonist, I chose my favorite even before the show aired... MALEFICENT! The self proclaimed 'Mistress of All Evil', wicked queen/witch who attempted to put an end to Sleeping Beauty/Aurora. I've always loved her because of her crazy awesome headress of horns and her wicked awesome dragon form she is so fond of turning into.

This is a clip from the show finale of Maleficent (played by actress Kristen Bauer-Van Straten) in all her glory, human and dragon form, being all badass and such!

EPIC!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so impressed every episode of this show. Plus I am a sucker for a good fairytale... especially my favorite (obsession, if you will) fairytale character, Snow White.

For this Maleficent themed mani I went with her dragon form, my favorite! I used a base coat of FEVERlacquer - Midnight In Your Shortest Skirt (a black jelly with holographic superfine thin bar glitter/hairy glitter, and thick fuchsia shimmer bits), on my ring and little fingers I did stripes of China Glaze - (neon) Flying Dragon (how ironic! haha it is a matte very dull neon purple with blue and purple glittery shimmer bits) and covered and smoothed those stripes out with a coat of Max Factor - Fantasy Fire (green to purple to red to copper to epic awesome-ness color changing yay!) to give it the scaley dragon-y look! Then on my middle finger I used a mixture of Zoya - Apple (an amazingly vibrant foil-like shimmery glittery granny smith apple green) and Ulta - Limelight (a pale irish green cream) with some black acrylic dots for the crazy green eye, and lastly for Maleficent's cray cray fire she breathes I used WnW - The Wonder Yellows (bright sunny yellow shimmer) swirled on the nail with China Glaze - Riveting, and white acrylic paint for the pointy dragon teeth above it!

On to the beast.... er....
"I prefer... Maleficent"....

Well since this is a fairytale post I had to post my favorite princess, Princess Violet Eileen. Isn't she fabulous!? this was blurry because the little princess was trying to climb up my legs while i took the picture!

So, fellow "Oncers", how did you LOVE, like, or hate the finale. How would you say the first season was?! I think I am completely in love with this show and hope that it is like LOST, and gets many future seasons! 

Now who is YOUR favorite villain/antagonist from Once Upon A Time, so far?!

Take care,