Monday, November 21, 2011

Share the Love: Day 1, Guest post from Rachel of Top Coat It


Happy Monday everyone! :) I hope you had a great weekend! I have something really special for you today!! Me and four other bloggers have put together Share The Love week! We all have themes for our manis and will be guest posting on eachothers' blogs and then finish off the week with our own blog. I am pleased to have Rachel start the week off on my blog! She is a really awesome blogger and I couldn't be happier that she is part of Share the Love! Enough blabbering, her swatches speak for themselves. :)


Hello everyone! I'm Rachel from Top Coat It. I'm so happy to be joining you here on The Polished Panda on the first day of our Share the Love journey. Thank you for having me, Heather!
I'm still pretty new to this nail blogging world. There are so many creative ladies out there and I'm learning so much. When I first heard about water marbles I was blown away that you could put polish in water and do cool things with it. My first couple attempts were messy, gloppy failures. I had no idea what I was doing. It takes some trial and error and practice, but you can get some awesome results. You just have to play around with color combinations and patterns.

I'm loving these colors together! I started with a green base color of OPI Uh-Oh Roll Down the Window (I love this green!) I wanted the green to stand out the most. The purple is Jordana Purple Bright and the grey is Essie Power Clutch.


Using the green as the base color as opposed to white deepened the purple a bit, but I like it.


I used white as a base on my thumb so the purple is more vibrant. The con to using white as a base instead of one of the colors you are marbling with, is if you end up with any bubbles or flubs, you're going to see the white showing through, like near the cuticle on my thumb.
These are nails that get noticed. Isn't it disappointing when you do an awesome mani that you're proud of and no one says anything about it? I hate that. What's worse is when you've spent a lot of time on a cool mani and it chips. Maddening!
In the next week or so I'll be posting a tutorial on how I do water marbles on my blog, Top Coat It, so watch for that. I'm happy to answer any questions. I hope you'll give water marbling a try and don't be discouraged if your first or even second or third attempt aren't so pretty. Keep trying.
Tomorrow I'll be Sharing the Love and guest posting on Nailed: A Nail Polish Blog with another fun mani. Be sure to check it out! Thank you again to Heather for hosting me today.

Thank you so much Rachel for your AWESOME post! Those are really great colors! I can't believe I still haven't tried water marbling! This post definitely inspired me to give a try asap ;)

If any of you would like to check out the other lovely ladies involved and see my guest posts, just click the links for their blogs!

Amanda of Amandalandish 
Chelsea of Nailed (I will be posting on Chelsea's blog today!)
Rachel of Top Coat It

Saturday, November 19, 2011

Sweet Peacock

Hi ladies! I hope you are all having a lovely weekend so far! Today I have one of my new favorite polishes for you :) This is two coats of Orly - Sweet Peacock topped with Seche Vite. Sweet Peacock is from Orly's fall Birds of a Feather collection. I don't normally go for blue polish because.. I just don't really care for it. But when I saw swatches of this I KNEW I had to have it! I actually got it in a set from Sally's with Fowl Play and Lucky Duck (the other two polishes I wanted!) for ten bucks so I am happy about that! :)




Isn't it beautiful!? I can't stop staring at it!! Sorry for the VERY messy clean-up! I hope you all have a great weekend! Next week will be very exciting. Next week is Share the Love week for a few other bloggers so stayed tuned! :)

The Versatile Blogger Award!

Hello ladies! This is my 100th post! WOOHOO!! The wonderful Amanda of Amandalandish has nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award! I am so thrilled! Amanda is such a great blogger and a very sweet girl! She is the first blogger friend that I've made and I hope we can become better friends as we continue blogging! It is such an honor to receive this award from her!





As a winner, I have a few duties:

- List 7 things about myself
- Nominate 15 other bloggers I believe deserve this award

1. I love to learn, I never want to stop going to school! I am very interested in psychology and how the human body works.
2. I want to become fluent in German and Dutch.
3. I am definitely a cat person, but when I have a house of my own, I want a German Shepherd and a Great Dane <3
4. My pupils are unable to constrict so my eyes are always dilated because of all of the surgeries I've had on them making my eyes extremely sensitive to light.
5. My favorite TV show will always be Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I have all never seasons on DVD and have seen every episode at least 6 times.
6. Within the next 5-10 years I plan on taking two years off work and whatever else I have going on to travel the world.. and maybe I'll never stop! I want to experience everything!
7. My favorite brand of nail polish is China Glaze.

Congrats to all of the great bloggers I've nominated!!

1 An Amateurs Nail Obsession
2 Bella's Box
3 Bright Lights, Big Color
4 Colores De Carol
5 Do Not Refreeze
6 Emily's Nail Files
7 Haul of Fame
8 Ice Queen's Nail Parlor
9 Lacquer Ninja
10 Libby's Pink Vanity
11 Moondancerjen's Nails
12 Pixie Polish
13 Show it and Glow it
14 That's So Fresh
15 Valentine Kisses


Thursday, November 17, 2011

It's... BUDDHAFUL !

Hi everyone! Can you believe it's almost the weekend already!? I can't wait! :) This mani is actually several days old. I got my package in the mail from Barielle (which I still haven't posted!!) so I layered over Zoya - Marley when I was wearing it last week.... ummm can you GORGEOUS!?!? I absolutely LOVE Buddha-Ful.. it's my new favorite top coat polish!! Absolutely lovely. This is two coats of Zoya Marley with one coat of Barielle Buddha-Ful <3



It's still soft and beautiful but now it catches the light perfectly! *swoon*


Monday, November 14, 2011

Caramel Zebra

Hello ladies! I hope you all had a great weekend! Mine was pretty good :) I just laid around all day yesterday! It was nice having a day to relax! I've purchased a lot of neutrals over the past few months and haven't really worn any yet! So for today I have this mani:



I used two coats of Color Club - Earthy Angel and then stamped a zebra print BM plate image with Color Club - Antiquated. What do you think? Subtle, but very cute! :)


Oh & don't forget to enter my giveaway!

Friday, November 11, 2011

A lovely palate cleanser

Hello everyone! Gosh, can you believe it's Friday already!? I feel like yesterday was Monday!! I won't complain though ;) Yesterday I received my Zoya package in the mail! I didn't take pictures but I got Harley, Cynthia, Cheryl and Neeka. So after wearing Color Club - Wild at Heart (which I haven't posted for some reason) for a while I decided I wanted to dial it down a little and go with something more neutral. This is two coats of Zoya - Harley and it's beautiful!





It kind of has a blue-ish hue as well. I really like this. Super pretty, and also neutral! What is your favorite neutral color to wear?