Catherine The Grape

Today I have an older OPI polish to show you! It's OPI - Catherine The Grape. This isn't easy to find, but it's not incredibly hard to find either... kind of in between haha. It's not readily available in stores, but you can find it online still I believe. I got this with a few other polishes in a swap with a really sweet MUAer and I'm so excited to finally have my hands on it! I also like the name, it fits the polish. The color absolutely reminds me of a grape, so I have pretty nails that also make me a little bit hungry for fruit haha!

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As you can see, Catherine The Grape is reddish-purple with soft gold shimmer. Depending on how the light hits this on your nails, it's going to look a little different, which is fun. Like in my shade picture it seems like a slightly darker purple, but indoors you can see the shimmer and it picks up more of the red in the color. I really like how this has character but is still a somewhat subdued color, you know what I mean? This feels perfect for fall to me right now, just fits with the weather :)

First Ever Franken! - Stormy Waters

If you follow me on twitter, you probably saw that yesterday I finally got my courage up and made my very first franken! I'm really excited about what I ended up making and can't wait to share it with you. I also took some pictures of the supplies I used to put it together so hopefully I can help inspire some of you to get your franken on :) This post is picture heavy, just giving you fair warning!

Okay first some pictures of the franken, which I've lovingly named "Stormy Waters" and then I'll tell you how to make it!

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The bottle shot is color accurate for the base color, it's a teal with scattered holo. I like scattered holo better than linear holo, so I like using the Milani holographic polishes for frankening purposes. I'm going to make a second bottle of this I love it so much. Stormy Waters is a sibling to China Glaze - DV8 and China Glaze - Atlantis (only holo instead of glitter, obviously) So it's similar to other polishes out there but still fairly unique. Remember the franken I showed you a few weeks ago that Alexandra made for me? This is basically a teal version of that!

Now for how I made it... It's about half a bottle of Milani - HD (silver holo), maybe a fifth of a bottle of OPI- Ski Teal We Drop (pigmented dark teal), and 5 drops of Milani - Hi-Res (purple holo). You don't really need to use Hi-Res, I just thought it gave it a bit more depth. Very easy and inexpensive to make haha, just how I like my polish. It's totally opaque in two coats and was very easy to apply!

you can see in the picture exactly how much of HD and Ski Teal We Drop I used, they were both brand new and never used bottles, I bought them just to make this franken with. Ski Teal We Drop is super pigmented so you don't need much of it.

If you want to take the foray into making your own franken, I suggest you pick up some ball bearings for mixing. I'd recommend stainless steel, anything else is going to oxidize in your franken and ruin it! Here's what I use:

And I hit up my local Dollar Tree (a dollar store) and got a few 2-packs of old style NYC bottles, because I like the shape of them and the labels peel off easily. But you can buy empty bottles online - places like ebay or polish e-tailers as well. Also you can clean out old base coat/topcoat bottles or polishes that are old and you won't use again. Here's a picture of my NYC bottles before I cleaned them out:

I like the shape of these a lot

I also used a small glass bowl and orange stick to mix to figure out an idea of the ratio before I make a whole bottle. All very easy to find things! I couldn't be happier with how Stormy Waters turned out, I'm wearing it right now and honestly can't take my eyes off my nails :) Do any of you franken or are you planning to in the future?

Giveaway! Nail Art Style

I've got another little giveaway for you all today! This one is a bit different from the last few that I've had, it's going to be for nail art, specifically stamping. I'm not very good at freehanding nail art designs, but I do love konad and faux-nad plates; they are much more my speed :) I recently heard about a place to get different kinds of nail art materials and stamping plates http://www.bf-beauty.com/ A few weeks ago I placed an order for a few plates, and got them earlier this week (about a week and a half after I ordered, pretty good for coming from Hong Kong!). Everything arrived perfectly and I've already played with the plates and they are wonderful! No problems at all, and since I (and many others) have had such great experiences with BF Beauty, I'd like to give you the opportunity to as well

Win your choice of FOUR stamping plates from www.bf-beauty.com!

(these are the four that I recently got)

you can go to: http://www.bf-beauty.com/en/category/165_172/index_home.html to view all the different plates - and there are a TON of choices! (the website is a little slow loading, don't let that discourage you!)

Now on to the best part - how to win! This is open internationally!

1) You MUST be a public follower! Please tell me how you follow and the name you follow under along with an email I can contact you at (1 entry - Mandatory)
2) Let me know which four plates you would choose (1 entry - Mandatory)

For additional entries:

1) Blog about this giveaway or put it in your side bar - please leave a link in the comments (1 entry)
2) Put Jeweled Tips in your blog roll - leave a link in the comments (1 entry)
3) Follow me on twitter (@JeweledTips) and tweet about this giveaway (make sure to include the link to this post and @JeweledTips) - leave a link in the comments (1 entry)

So you can have a total of FIVE entries!

This giveaway will be open until 11:59pm (that's Eastern Standard Time) on December 3rd and is open to all! Good luck everyone :)

Fun With Layering Wednesday: My Version Of Chanel Riva

Once bottle pics of Chanel's newest offering, Riva, came out I've been intrigued by it. I don't spend that much on a single nail polish so I never planned on actually owning it, but I loved the concept. A pale blue with shimmer? Pretty! So I set about figuring out a layering combination that would satisfy my craving, and I think I came pretty close - at least close enough for me. Check it out!

I started with a base of Color Club - Take Me To Your Chateau, which I showed you yesterday, but here's a refresher:

And I picked NYC - Scandalous Blue Glitter to layer over it. The name is a little deceptive, it's not actually glitter, but more of a shimmer with a hint of pearl finish. Very pretty and very excellent for layering.

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I personally love it! I think it turned out pretty well, and cost me about $4 total for both polishes, much less than a Chanel would set me back. I've got another one or two layering ideas that could produce something close to Riva that I'm going to try out soon too. I'll post those and let you guys decide which ones you like best! Whether or not you buy Riva, you should try this combo out, it's very delicate and pretty. So what do you think, did I get close? What do you think of Chanel - Riva, will you be buying it?

Would You Like To See My Chateau?

Color Club - Take Me To Your Chateau is from the Pardon My French Collection, which was the first collection I bought all of. This is probably the most popular color from the collection and for good reason. It's a pale blue that's pretty easy to work with, a definite bonus since many pastels can be streaky. Take Me To Your Chateau dries to a somewhat chalky finish, so I used a topcoat for the swatch; glossy finishes are more my taste :)


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The sunlight picture is the most color accurate, although it's just a hint blue-er in real life. I used three coats for the swatch, but if you're careful you can absolutely get away with two coats. Whenever I am in the mood for a pastel blue mani, this is always the first bottle I reach for, even though I have a few that are similar - this one's my favorite!

Tomorrow I'm going to show you how I made my own version of the new Chanel polish, using Take Me To Your Chateau as a base so make sure to come see what you think of it! And I'm taking the plunge into the wild world of Franken-ing in the next few days, so I will keep you posted on how that goes...cross your fingers for me ;-) haha. Andddd I have a new giveaway for you guys! I'll post that in the next day or two, so get excited!

Rodeooooo Fanatic!

Left Hand Alert! My left hand is making a rare appearance in today's post. Why? Well mainly because when I wore this, the sun didn't come out for like four days. And I was playing around with different layering combinations on my right hand and the sun came out for a few minutes so I decided to take pictures. So I apologize for two things, number one- that my hand positions are a little screwy, I need to practice with my left hand haha; and two - that the mani looks a little raggedy around the edges, this was the fourth or fifth day of wearing it. (Yes, I generally wear manis for 4-5 days - I very rarely get chips, just growth)

On to the color... This is China Glaze - Rodeo Fanatic; it's from the ah-mazing Rodeo Diva collection. I got this in my first ever e-tailer order when my nail polish addiction first took off.

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This is a color I wear frequently, I loooove it for pedis and rock it on my tips in the fall/winter. It's a dark blue-green (more so blue, but there is some green in the mix for sure), but it never ever looks black, you can always tell what color it is. Nothing makes me crazier than a color that looks black, I don't wear black polish and don't like my colors to look black inside, just my preference. I have a few colors that are siblings or cousins of Rodeo Fanatic, but no dupes. I definitely would recommend picking this beauty up it's soooo worth it!

I hope everyone's Sunday is going well :) Go Cowboys!

I Have Concrete Evidence That This Is A Pretty Polish

Sally Hansen - Concrete doesn't really look like concrete to me, and that's a good thing. This was a part of the last "limited edition" Xtreme Wear release. It came out with the much coveted Mystic Lilac (which I will be showing you another day.) This color initially didn't really jump out at me, and it wasn't until I saw a display for the second or third time that I picked this up. Mainly because it was purple and I think I had a coupon haha. But oh man am I glad I did!

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This a really nice gray-ed out purple with hints of pink. Very interesting neutral color. Application was good, two coats and you're good to go. This is like the little sister of colors like OPI- Parlez-Vous OPI? and Confetti - Moonstruck. A nice color for work, job interviews, or any other places you would need a neutral nail look.