Swatches and Comparison pt1

So I decided to do some comparisons of polishes. This is first of many that I have lined up! 

Essence vs. Sally Hansen

One my nails (from left to right): Essence Space Queen, Sally Hansen Disco Ball, Space Queen, Disco Ball

In the bottle, Essence had a slight pink tint, but on the nails, they both look pretty much the same. In fact, I think they have almost the same glitter density as well. I love both of these though :) I love glitters!

Hope you guys are doing well! <3

Firsts of 2010!

So, I decided to make a lists of my first this year. My first of personal experiences, beauty boughts, and other random stuff. I don't know if anyone has made a tag for this, but I thought it would be fun to look back on this year and see how awesome it was!

Personal Experiences:

• first time I stayed over night in SF 
• first time to Seattle, Washington
• first time making sea glass candy
• first time being hit on by a random stranger (that I know of haha)
• first time to Fentons Creamery 
• first rode trip
• first time driving more than 15 minutes on the highway
• first time I've been to Davis
• first time buying/owning colored contacts, or any contacts
• first time going to the Philippines
• ^first time travelling with my best friend's family
• first time getting a manicure
• first time going into a movie theatre that only has 30 recliner chairs
• first time sitting in first class on the plane (free upgrade as well!)
• finally got a first cousin on my dad's side of the family
• went on the first family vacation since college started for me: Hawaii
• first seeing a sea turtle as close as I did while snorkling
• first acupuncture
• first time going to Boiling Crab
• first time kayaking and biking at Monterey
• first time going to Pogonip (a state park in Santa Cruz)
• first time seeing rainbow roses! very cool!
• first time singing in an open mic
• bought my first candles from bath and body works..Smells so good!
• first time posting any videos on youtube
• made my first tumblr
• made my first BLOG! :D

Beauty: My first year to start REALLY getting into make up and beauty

Face: 

• bought/owned my first foundation
• bought my first lipstick
• bought my first blush
• bought my first concealer
• bought my first mascara

Nail Polish:

• bought my first O.P.I. polish
• bought my first Orly polish
• bought my first China Glaze polish
• bought my first Essie polish
• bought my first Revlon polish
• bought my first Fingerpaint polish
• bought my first Man Glaze polish
• bought my first Wet n Wild polish
• bought my first Nubar polish
• bought my first Essence polish
• bought my first UV changing polish
• bought my first Poshe base coat

WOW...so many firsts, and I'm pretty positive that I'm missing a bunch too. And talk about splurging this year huh? haha so bad. I need to try to control myself this coming year...hopefully. :D I have definitely learned a lot this year, but can't wait to mentally grow and learn some more this coming year of 2011. I'm ready for all the challenged that I will have to face, BRING IT ON!! 

I hope you guys do this too! See how many experiences/things were your first for the year of 2010. 

Anyways, I hope you guys are doing well, Happy soon to be New Years! <3 

Swatches!

So I have finally decided to do some swatches..my first swatch post! hehe

Okay, so I put these colors together since these where the holiday polishes that came out and I'm sure you guys have all seen swatches of these colors anyways. But that okay, this is good practice for me for posting and swatching :)

The first color is China Glaze's Peace on Earth. I love this color. Such an awesome green yellow. This is 2 coats here. 

China Glaze's Jolly Holly. Here, I only did one coat, but it was opaque enough to stand alone.

China Glaze Little Drummer Boy. I don't think my camera really captured the right color, but let me say, it is such an amazing blue color and nicely opaque, this is only one coat. Love it! 

Anyways, so this is my first swatch post haha, I have more that I will be posting up :) Let me know how I can improve these swatch post, I feel like I didn't say much at all for this post...but maybe that is a good thing since I tend to ramble on about nothing :P hehe

Anyways, hope everyone is doing well. It is still in the holiday season, so, Happy Holidays! <3

Introduction pt 3/Merry Christmas!

I apologize for my lack of posting... I went to Tahoe for a couple days and I guess I was just plain lazy before that :P But today is CHRISTMAS!!! YAY! I love the holidays!!

Anyways, here is another thing about me:

I LOVVEEEE music and everything to do with music. I started taking piano lessons since I was 4 and took up and self taught myself guitar when I was 16 and Ukelele just a year ago. I love to sing, although I'm not the absolute best, but who cares :P. I have a list of 3-4 instruments that I want to learn before I die. haha. Anyways, since its the holidays, it gives me the perfect excuse to sing :D.

I have only started posted songs on youtube not too long ago..like a month ago..so my view count is non existent, but thats okay, I definitely don't post because I was publicity or anything. In fact, I don't even know what made me post my first video, I guess it was just spur of the moment.

ANYWAYS,  This is my way of saying MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY HOLIDAYS to everyone!! :D

I hope everyone has an amazing holiday season <3

Haul!

WARNING: Picture Heavy!

Can I say, nail polish/makeup is definitely an addiction?? Every time I go to Ulta or Sally Hansen's Beauty Supply, I feel like I have to get something. AH! Well this time I went, I had a good excuse to buy some nail polish! :D I went to go buy some things for friends as stocking stuffer for the holidays!!
As you can see, some of the polishes are duplicates:

21 polishes!

From left to right: Sally Hansen Pink Boa, Sally Hansen Caribbean Coral (x2), Ulta Sweetheart Pink, Ulta Peach Parfait, Essence Plum Perfect (x2)

Essence Space Queen (x2), Essence No More Drama, Ulta Vintage Violet, Ulta Peach Parfait, Essie Tart Deco, Essie Cute as a Button, Essie Peach Daiquiri

O.P.I Russian Navy, China Glaze Little Drummer Boy, China Glaze Frostbite, China Glaze Japanese Koi (neon), Finger Paints It's an Original!, Finger Paints Tangerine Tints

Seche Vite!

Rimmel Moisture Renew: 180 Sunset (this is actually the first lipstick that I ever bought! Very excited to use it!) 

Most of these are for people, although I did get some for myself as well. I was thinking about doing some swatches, with all the polishes, including the ones I bought for other people...hehe. We will see :) 

The one polish that I did want was Revlon Perplex, but I couldn't find it anywhere :(

Btw, did you notice that I bought O.P.I Russian Navy?? haha Thanks for letting me know what the advertisement color was on my previous post. I was debating if I should get the Matte bottle, but I figured I could just use a matte top coat (even though they, including the suede polish, looks completely different from each other..what the?? how weird..) 

Anyways, I hope that I will be posting more often..haha I'm so bad at posting frequently, but I will try! I'm not giving up yet!!

Hope you guys are all doing well :) 

<3CarissaKuo

What Is This?!?! MUST HAVE!!

So I was just looking about the internet today looking at some nail designs as inspiration, this picture came up. My eyes just wouldn't stop staring at the gorgeous nail color. But after looking around at different blue colors, I couldn't figure out what color this it. Do you guys know??? Please...I MUST KNOWW!! haha MUST HAVEE!!

GORGEOUS!

I'm hoping you guys will have more nail polish experience than me and will know what color this freakin awesome color is and will let me know! haha I know the color that is captured on camera may differ than the actual nail color, but something close?

Hope everyone is doing well :) Thanks!!

<3 CarissaKuo

Done with Finals!! & Simple Mani

YAYYY!! Finals are over!! talk about relief!!! Actually, I was done a couple days ago, but being so drained from school, I turned into anti-social/hibernation mode. but ever since coming back, my thoughts have been pretty much ALL about doing cool nail art. Which is definitely nice, but WOOOOWWW talk about chemicals and fumes! :( Why can't they make nail polish that was healthier/ non-toxic to the body? haha.

I do have some things to post up, so I'm not going to be MIA for so long..hopefully! Also, I do want to see if  I can change up my nails everyday. So I started today, which I'm not going to post up until a bit later. I'm not sure why... I'm debating if I should post everyday, or post up manis every once in a while so that I have something to blog about once I get back to school (my housemates hate the smell so I try not to do my nails around them..which means I'm not able to do my nails...ever!) What do you guys suggest??

So one reason I'm not posting up the mani I just did is because I'm too lazy to upload it on my computer :P (and another is because it was just plain ugly since I had no creative thoughts in me) BUT I do have some old manicures saved up in my folder so this is one I did awhile ago:

simple manicure! (with matte pinky)

So this color is O.P.I: 20 Candles On My Cake. This was actually the first O.P.I. I bought in my life. I love the story behind my reasoning of buying my first O.P.I. too:

I went to the Philippines with my best friend's family this summer and we decided to go get out nails done since it was so cheap there. It was actually my first time getting my nails done as well. After debating about the color choice I wanted on my nails for many minutes, I finally settled in a GORGEOUS RED color. The manicure easily lasted for a week (which makes me totally want whatever base/top coat they are using). After coming back to the states, I wanted to change my nails to a peachy orange color because I was going to go to Hawaii with my family. Since I really like the color I went to Ulta to try to find the perfect color that matched this color. O.P.I was the only brand that had the match (which honestly kind of made me sad a first since they are so expensive) but totally turned me to O.P.I, as their formula is amazing!! Okay, that was a random rant... 

I hope you guys didn't get too bored of my rant, I tend to do this a lot. ANYWAYS, I hope everyone is doing well, and I definitely plan on being more consistent with blogging!!

<3Carissa Kuo

Study Break & Introductions pt2!

So, I've been studying all afternoon...and I DEFINITELY need a study break :/ So I thought I would do some blogging :)

I'm not sure I can blog about nails consistently enough just because I only change my nails around once a week, and I feel like I want to blog more than that! haha. And since this blog isn't specifically dedicated to ONLY nails, I thought I might post some other passions of mine. I hope you guys don't mind, and might possibly even enjoy what I like! So here we go with introduction part 2! :

I love photography. I took photo 1, or black and white film photography, junior year of high school and jumped to AP photography senior year. I love that I can express whatever I want in photography and editing the pictures. This is a picture I'm quite proud of:

Guitars in sunset! <3

I took this picture a couple years ago, and I'm still quite drawn to this picture, even though the quality isn't as great as I would have hoped it to be...it's quite noisy!

I haven't taken pictures like I did in high school in quite some time, though I do hope I can get motivated enough to go out and walk around to take pictures soon!

Now back to studying!! 0.o Wish me luck!

Hope everyone is doing well! <3

Man Glaze

Sorry for not keeping up for a while, but this week was HELL WEEK for me. Check this out:
Tuesday: had a paper due along with 25 sourced annotated bibliography
Wednesday: had a paper due with some homework
Thursday: paper due
Friday: Final for one of my classes.
As you can see, no time for...well, life :( But anyways, I'm sure you guys don't want to hear my excuses, so on will the nail polishes!! :D

So I have heard about the nail polish brand Man Glaze before, but I never took notice of it for some reason. Recently I saw a review on this nail polish brand from someone and it really intrigued me, so after searching up more reviews and seeing all the great reviews out, I decided to give man glaze a try.

If you guys don't know, Man Glaze specializes in matte nail polishes. I believe they only have four polishes out right now? But from the look of their website, they seem pretty legit since so many celebrities, and men use this particular nail brand.

I ordered it online before going home to my parent's house for thanksgiving break hoping that I would receive the package when I got back. For some reason I thought I read somewhere that I would receive my mail in 2-7 days. That did not happen however, so I emailed the company asking about it, and I got to say, their customer service is pretty amazing. They were a huge help. As for me, I probably should have waited a couple more days before I emailed them about shipping because the day after I emailed them, I received my package! Ohhh, I'm so impatient. But can you blame me, I was too excited about the polishes!!

What the package looked like minus the styrofoam peanuts 

Two polishes I got!!

I got two colors: #mattismurder and #fuggenugly. I really wanted the matte white called mayonnaise, but it was definitely way out of my budget. Definitely happy with my purchase, however, I feel like these two colors are actually pretty similiar. They have their differences when you look closely, both spectacular colors, but honestly, I couldn't really tell the difference. I asked my roommate what she thought what nail colors were on which nails of mine, and she couldn't really tell until she looked pretty closely as well.

Here are some swatches!! My first ever swatch! I know I said I wouldn't, but I was debating what colors to put on my nails so I randomly decided to show you guys as well! :)

Can you tell what polishes are on what nails?

From left to right (index to pinky finger): #matteismurder, #fuggenugly,#mattismurder, #fuggenugly
This is two coats of each with no base or topcoat.

Hrm...hopefully the lighting didn't alter the colors too much since this is artificial lighting, but honestly, even when I saw them on my nails in real life, the colors are just so similar.

My first Man Glaze manicure!

So I decided to go with #fuggenugly, a charcoal grey color on all my nails except for my ring finger where I used #matteismurder, a matte black. Can you guys tell the difference?  

In this picture, I did 3 coats of both on my fingers. I didn't use a base or topcoat since I left all my nail polishes at my parent's place (I was planning on not doing my nails until winter break, but that obviously didn't last! haha). I heard that their lasting power is AMAZING, so here is my experiment. I'm going to see how long this manicure lasts on me. I feel like its not going to last as long as everyone says it lasted on their nails just because I'm pretty harsh with my nails. I don't have gloves when washing the dishes, and I already had a MAJOR cleanup today..so we will see! I will definitely try to keep you guys posted about how long this last. No promise on when I will post it, however, since it is finals week next week. boo! :( Wish me luck on my finals...and this manicure! haha

hope you guys are doing well <3

New At This

I still consider myself fairly new to this beauty community (both starting a blog and doing nail art) so I don't have that manicures I can post up. Most of my nail polish collection are also fairly old (and by that I mean, I'm not too updated on new collections since I am a broke college student :[ ) so swatching my nail polish collection might be hilarious since I would  be doing swatches of pretty old polishes.
More Reason Why I Don't Swatch:

• My nails are naturally pretty weak and if I were to keep putting nail polish on and removing with nail polish remover, my nails would thin out to a paper like thickness and that would be no bueno. 
• The smell of nail polish remover is absolutely horrific. I wish they made nail polish remover that didn't have such a strong scent, if anyone sees this and knows of one, PLEASE let me know.
• Again, I don't have as many polishes as all these awesome gurus out there do, so people may just laugh at me....Although, I think getting addicted to nail polish is something I am slowly reaching. I have probably doubled my nail polish collection since the beginning of the summer. GAH, so much money!

I hope I can continue to post of pictures of nail art, not sure often I can upload since I don't change my nail colors everyday. I do have some pictures of manicures I have done in the past that I might just post up! So I guess here is one:

Not sure when exactly I did this manicure, I know it was sometime in August. I quite like this design. Very simple and elegant! :) The color I used in this is Ulta's Celebutante. I don't think this picture shows the true color. It is more purple than the blueish hue shown in this picture.

If anyone is reading any of these post, comment and make my day! :) Feedback/suggestions would be greatly appreciated on how to make my blog more awesome ;) haha Have a good one! <3

First of Many, I hope!

I decided to make an account because I think it's nice to post random things that I find interesting and like. Not sure how this will work out since I got a tumblr not too long ago and didn't really keep up with it. Hopefully this blogspot will not be ignored soon after I start this and hopefully I will keep it up!! Who knows how many followers I will gets, if none, thats okay too haha I don't mind talking to my self :) 

Here goes nothing! Wish me luck!! 

So I guess I will start off with a picture  of what I have on my nails inspired by one of the nails that Katrina's Nail Blog did :) 

First Nails!

I know the picture looks a bit yellow, but without the rest of the picture looking yellow, the color of of the green on my nails looked more teal. 

So on my nails I used:

Thumb: China Glaze's Four Leaf Clover with a silver rhinestone.

Index finger: has an aluminum foiled silver from an asian shop in Taiwan painted french with the Four Leaf Clover linning the silver.

Middle Finger: Same Four Leaf Clover with Ulta's Sequins and some hexagonal glitter.

Ring Finger: Used the same aluminum foiled silver along with Ulta's Sequins over it and some glitter.

Pinky Finger: Did a french with FLC and painted some Sequins along the french line with some glitter :)

*Whew, so many words for such a simple manicure! Used only three different colors; turned out pretty nicely if  may say so myself...although I might change it tomorrow! Can't wait! :)