Twinsie Tuesday: Mish Mosh

This week's Twinsie Tuesday, a theme dubbed "mish mosh," has us doing a new technique/idea on each nail. The nature of this challenge allows for a lot of creative freedom, so I decided to take my Essie Using My Maiden Name mani from the other day and have a little fun experimenting with it; y'know, see where my mind and my stash would take me. :) It's definitely not my favorite mani I've done, but it was interesting to play around with some different ideas and combinations.

On my thumb, I layered Finger Paints Motley, a blue and green flakie, over Using My Maiden Name. The supremely gorgeous Zoya Stevie, a birthday gift from my Twinsie Maribeth, is on my index finger. My middle finger is a dry marble with Using My Maiden Name, Essie Bikini So Teeny and Essie Navigate Her. Another Twinsie, ChiChi, actually introduced me to the dry marbling technique for one of our marching orders challenges and I think it's pretty ingenious! You get effects similar to a water marbling, but without all the hassle. I probably could have used a bolder color in the mix to break things up, because it kind of came out like a watery-looking mess. I wanted the colors in the dry marble to sort of match up to the colors of the flakies in Motley. My ring finger is a caviar mani using beads from a Born Pretty set. For my pinkie, I did a simple glitter layering with OPI Pirouette My Whistle. (Phew! So much hyperlinking going on in this paragraph!)

So there you have it: my mish mosh mani! Some nails turned out well, others not so much, but it was a fun experiment and I like that I got to incorporate some techniques and polishes from some of my Twinsies!

Amanda at Amandalandish

Amber at Nails Like Lace

Anna at Going to the Showing

Anne at Grape Fizz Nails

Chelsea at Nailed Blog

ChiChi at I'm Just Me...ChiChi

Cordia at Seriously Swatched

Elizabeth at Did My Nails

Heather at Peace, Love, & Polish

Kelly at Tuxarina

Lakeisha at Refined and Polished

Maribeth at Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite

Marisa at Polish Obsession

Meredith at Polish and Charms

Nory at Fierce Makeup and Nails

Rachel at Top Coat It

Róisín at Cuti-CLUE-les

Sarah at See Sarah Swatch

Traci at DrinkCitra

Finger Paints Sparkle Top Coat

I was digging through my stash the other night when I discovered this criminally untried beauty: Finger Paints Sparkle Top Coat. It was an impromptu purchase I made at Sally's one day and then completely forgot I even had. It's an iridescent color shifting topcoat and once I laid eyes on it again,  I instantly had to put it on. Black is a natural base color choice for layering polishes like these, but I was curious to see how it'd look over my Pixi Mink Grey manicure I was wearing. The answer? STUNNING. I suggest clicking to enlarge on these shots so you can see all the sparkly goodness up close!

The main color here is purple, but it shifts to yellow, pink and even a bit of orange. The effect is far more vivid in person and it just has so much life to it. Why did I wait so long to try this?! It's ridiculously gorgeous! The formula is fabulous as well. I used two coats here, although the results are already droolworthy at just one. I'm a shimmerwhore so I wanted to amp up the effect even more! I'm betting you could get an even more dramatic effect if you paired this over black.


This is one amazing polish! I want to layer it over everything now! I'm not sure what the availability for this is still like, since I bought it a few months ago. But if by some chance you see this at your local Sally, GET IT!

Finger Paints Motley

I recently made my first Finger Paints purchase when I picked up three of the new Special Effects flakies at Sally. I couldn't find Twisted though, the one I wanted most! Ugh!! But that's okay (sort of...I guess...not really), I at least came home with some other new goodies.

The first one I have to show you is Motley, an iridescent blue-green flakie in a sheer, milky base. This is two coats of Motley over two coats of my favorite black creme, Rimmel Black Satin.

With flash...

I also wore Motley over my OPI Ski Teal We Drop manicure that I showed you yesterday.

And some with flash...

I actually like it much more over black than over Ski Teal We Drop. The black brings out the colors in the flakies more and really makes them pop. Blue and green are my favorite polish colors so naturally I'm going to love a blue and green flakie! The formula was completely cooperative and smooth so that's a plus as well.

Normally I don't pay much mind to the Finger Paints display at Sally-no particular reason, I just never got into the brand-but I'm really glad I gave these a shot. All of the Special Effects polishes look super similar in the bottles to the point where it's tough to tell them apart without consulting the labels but they definitely come alive on the nail and each one has its own look and personality. I'll be wearing the rest of the ones I picked up in the very near future. These polishes are limited edition and seem to be creating quite a stir--the three I bought from my Sally were literally the last ones left in the store--so hopefully you have better luck than I did and find all the ones you want! :)