Sally hansen salon insta gel strips starter kit

Hello everyone!

I was at Walgreens a few days ago, and I saw this kit on clearance.  Im terrible with the nail polish strip things, but I figured id try it with regular polish. I read some reviews,  and it was 50/50 on good and bad, but with the clearance price why not. 

Heres my review of sally hansen insta gel strip starter kit.

I painted my left hand last night and let it dry overnight,  my right hand I painted this morning, that way we can see how it would work if your trying to do a quickie mani versus taking your time. I'm a take my time person btw, I feel quickie mani's don't turn out well in the end.

I painted my nails with wet and wild disturbia, I did a base coat as I always do when painting my nails,  did one coat of polish and waited for it to completely dry, then the second coat. I had to do a third coat on 3 of my fingers because my first one was so light on those fingers, it required an extra coat, as well as banging one on the counter required a fix. I waited about 10 minutes for the 3rd coat to dry before doing the gel topcoat and curng it with the uv light

I did my left hand first and it came out quite well, however,  I feel like if you dont put enough gel on the brush it will create air bubbles/dents. I had a slight air bubble on the middle finger of my left hand,  so I did another coat to try to fill it in,  and it worked to a degree. I have a little tiny dent now. After you cure all the nails,  you are to wipe your nails with an alcohol pad that they include in the kit, they give you 2 along with a file and cuticle stick. The alcohol wipes help take the tackiness away and give it a nice shine. I'll be honest and say that I didnt like how they looked after wiping with the wipe, and decided to do another gel coat. I decided they looked a tad better, waited 10 minutes ,and went on to the right hand.

On my right hand I did the same as my left. I only did a second coat of gel on the nails that had air bubbles/dents really bad. I feel that doing my nails quickly in the morning caused alot more issues, I had more air bubbles and I dented them easily even after waiting 10 minutes.

I tryed this with a less expensive polish, i plan on trying it with a variety of polishes to see if it will cause any issues. I also went and grabbed a cotton ball put some rubbing alcohol on it and wiped all of my nails down.  I honestly think  wiping them down this way was better, the shine was better and took tackiness away better; one of my nails on my right hand stil had a bit of tacky reside on it till I wiped it with the cotton ball.

My verdict?  So far so good. I do alot of typing at work and typically after one day of work my nails are chipped. After one day of work this time my polish was intact. I plan on seeing what happens by weeks end, then changing my polish for my trip next week. Overall i like it alot, i think with time I can minimize the air bubble thing. I do believe doing my nails the night before worked better, and some reviews I saw said even after wiping with the alchol pad their nails were still tacky, they didn't have the full circumstances of their polish adventures on their review so I had to take it into my own hands. I definitely recommend this to try at the clearance price, if it were full price I wouldn't have. I say if you dont rush your polish, try it. Hopefully next time I do better, I think ill use one of my julep holos to see if it puts a damper on the color. i do have a few photos they arent very good but they will do for now, the side nail pic is of some air bubbles I tryed to take better photos but my tablet was not cooperating. Ill do an update in about a week.

Until next post!

*ill try to get my September ipsy bag in before October's bag comes*

Julep may maven box

Im going to go off the knitting topic a bit, and discuss my julep nail polish box. I was excited about this box because it came with the plié wand, its a long balanced handle that helps you improves leverage control and overall comfort. It magnetically connects to any plié compatible julep cap, but its a new product so im assuming next months will start having the caps.

Anyway, inside the plié wand box a precision cap is included, which is a shorter brush, and u can pull the cap out of the plié overcap and connect to any julep polish you already have. Looking further into the box I saw that they added an extra precision brush and and extra overcap with no brush to use with non plié cap julep polishes,  had I looked further in the box I would of used the overcap instead of pilling the brush out of the precision brush in the wand box. I just really wanted to try it.

In this box I also opted to add on a mystery polish, which was a blue color similar to the one that came in the box originally.  I was only a slight bit disappointed about it, but then I realized I dont have alot of blues so it worked out. I decided on the boho glam box this month instead of my normal it girl box, I really was drawn to the purple in this box.

The polish I got was the wonderful purple by the name of paulette, a light cream blue by the name of jeanne and my mystery blue by the name of bess, with also looks cream but is lighter than jeanne. I have not tryed the blues but I have the purple, and I love it. Its kind of sheer but a few coats will give full coverage.

My thoughts on the plié wand, I love it, I have more control with my non-dominate hand and dont have to clean up my nails afterward. I feel its more comfortable as well. Others may hate it but its all in personal preference.  Ill include some photos of all my stuff

Until next post!

A simple headband/earwarmer flat knitting version

As you know its been quite some time sense my last post. ive been meaning to post for a while but with deer hunting week in full swing i didnt have any time to get much done, they job i work at requires me to work with firearms paperwork so as you can imagine i was quite busy. I do however have an update on a project ive been working on brought to you and me from another blogger the name of her blog is devin likes to knit go here to see the pattern i had used for my project. the project i did was a simple headbead, flat knit, with a flower (or without if u choose, but i decided id give it a shot) theres and adult and childs version in the pattern picture she tells ya she withheld the garter stitch rows the pattern called for, either way i think it looks great. for my headband i used a size 8 needle, which is what devin used in her pattern. and for my yar a used a lighter weight dark purple color, because it was my first time attempting the pattern so i wanted to see how it would come out. my next headband i was goin to use a heavier yarn. anyways back to the project!

so i have the items all knitted out i have assembled the the headband and fit it to my head and i have my flower knitted. For the flower i had gone to her in the round knitted headband because in the comment section she had listed a few flowers for the crotchet person and a few for the knitted person because the flower pattern attached to that one was no longer available. for the link to the flower i used go here. i however changed the pattern a bit because i hate to say it....but i thought it was a bit ugly for my taste, i would of probably stuck to the original pattern in a smaller gauge and i would of liked it but i didnt have all my needles, so to the creator of that im sorry if theres any offense...

moving on ....

what that pattern calls for is you basically make 6 petals and sew them together to make the complete flower...i omitted 1 petal and went with five, in a larger gauge needle and knitted tem shorter for more curl, and they way that came out i absolutely love!!! so without that original pattern i could not of come up with the flower i knitted so kudos all around. at this stage in my project i just have to put the flower on the headband and presto flower headband! i however am going to do one more thing to it before had so once im completely done i will post the completely complete project. i have a few pictures i will be attaching so watch for those. ive rambled on long enough...Until Next Post

Scarf done!, kind of

So heres the update on the scarf ive done the 16 repeats and im on that plus 1 repeat where i knit to row 11. I decided to keep knittting, because i want to use up the rest of the skein that i have, so technically its done by pattern terms, but i however like longer scarfs anyway because of how i put them on. I also knitted a pair of the easy flat knit hand warmers i found on the life is good blog. Mine however do not look like her picture, maybe it just the yarn i used i dont know, but heres the break down on the handwarmers:

Easy flat knit hand warmers

I used a us size 10 needle instead of a us size 9 that it called for (my 9 had a project on it) and I knitted them with a purple from lion brand yarn's vanna white collection. The color escapes me at the moment I'll try to remember later. They were a quick easy knit and I really like them a lot they are short so if you wanted them longer you could just add more rows in the straight stitch section I'll put in some pictures.

I won't be around to post for the next few days I'm going to the cabin for the next 3 days so I'll have no internet or cell reception so until I'm back this will be it. Until next post!