True Confession: I love accent manicures!

Hi everyone!

I was so busy cooking tonight that I almost forget to put up a post.  Good thing I have a backlog of nail polish swatches to show you!!

So let's talk about accent manicures.  Generally speaking, I consider an accent manicure one where the whole hand is the same except for one nail which is usually, but not always, fancier than the rest.  Or it's just painted in a different color.  There's a variation on this where the thumb is the accent nail and it's called "Blackberry Bling".

I've been doing accent manicures since 2007, I started with a black creme and Sally Hansen Glow on my ring finger.  I wish I could find photographic evidence, or maybe I'll just do it and take pictures, either way it looks awesome!  I also liked to do black + a shimmery fuchsia accent.  Nowadays everyone is doing accent manicures.  But I still think they're pretty sweet, so without further adieu, here are 2 recent versions that I was particularly fond of:


Essie "Armed and Ready" + SOPI "Don't Be Eggnog-ious" accent

Okay so I loved Armed and Ready in the bottle, it's a really interesting cool olive green with copper shimmer.  On the nails?  Less interesting, but it coordinates really well with the SOPI glitter, which is really nice and shiny.  I just wish it wasn't quite so dense. 


China Glaze Happy Go Lucky with a Pool Party accent.

OH MY GOD I LOVE THIS MANICURE.  It is one of my favorite manicures I've done this year.  Happy Go Lucky is a favorite polish of mine, I've worn it multiple times with no complaints from me, it's a nearly perfect yellow and it's so much fun!  And then there's Pool Party which is this eye searing neon reddish pink and these two colors just work so well together!  I did this manicure in January when I was bummed about winter and some personal drama and it cheered me up a little, which is pretty amazing because I'm kind of a grumpy person.

(Speaking of bright colors from CG, have you seen the summer collection?  TOTALLY SWOONING!)

And those are some of my favorite accent manicures, feel free to share yours in the comments!

love and cupcakes,
Ms. Meghan

Funky French manicures, are you my arch-nemesis?

Hello friends!

I'm here today with a confession: I have a love/hate relationship with french manicures.  While I do love the soft, clean look of a classic french manicure, I can't stand 75% of the french manis out there.  It has gone from "my nails but better" to "BIGGER BLINGIER TACKIER PINK AND WHITES OMG."  GROSS.

I really think a funky french can be quite chic if done well, black is the go-to choice for many women but really there's a whole rainbow of colors out there, experiment!!  I wish I could just get the hang of doing a french; I've used guides and even when I freehanded it, I just didn't feel like it looked as neat as I wanted.  So here is a brief history of my french manicures, in all their glory:

FF #1: Going green!

Zoya Rose with China Glaze Entourage tips.

Rose is a sheer pale pink-y beige shimmer with a green flash.  It's really nice by itself, but I thought that green tips would coordinate really well, and Entourage is a pretty spring green with green shimmer.  I like it a lot and it did look nice with Rose, but can you tell I had never done this before and I free-handed the tips?  Because I totally did.

FF #2: SPARKLE ALL THE TIME edition

Essie Vanity Fairest + OPI Your Royal Shine-ness + OPI Servin' Up Sparkle

I actually really love this look.  This was my first time using guides and I thought it came out really well, not perfect but still lovely.  Also it is SO FREAKING SPARKLY.   Vanity Fairest is a good go-to french base, it's not streaky, has a little bit of shimmer and it brightens up your nails overall.  And how can you go wrong with a silver foil and silver holo glitter?  I used 2 coats of Servin' Up Sparkle, and it applied really nicely.

FF #3: Black like my soulless heart

Vanity Fairest again + OPI Baby It's Coal Outside + China Glaze Fairy Dust
Again with the Vanity Fairest and the silver holo glitter!  I lovelovelove Fairy Dust, it's so pretty and goes with so many colors.  I really like Baby It's Coal Outside, it's a rich black that has a lot of shimmer and still manages to look black and not dark grey.  Oh man the edges here are super messy looking, even with guides being used.  I like the look and I may try this again but I took it off after a day, it was too messy for my tastes.

So there are my 3 attempts at french manicures.  What do you think of french manis?  Do they make your skin crawl, or are they still chic?  Do you have any tips for a french mani n00b such as myself?  Let me know in the comments!

love and cupcakes,
Ms. Meghan

My first glitter gradient mani!

Soooo in the wake of not dealing well with the aforementioned juice cleanse, I completely spaced on writing my post for yesterday, so you get 2 posts today, and this one is about the sweet manicure spotted in Monday's post.  So without further adieu...my very first glitter gradient manicure!



First, let me wax about Illamasqua Nomad, which is the base for this polish.  It is MAGNIFICENT.   It is a glorious, gorgeous jade green that applies pretty much perfectly.  I had almost no clean up and it barely needed 2 coats.

I used 2 China Glaze polishes for the glitter, "White Cap" which is a sheer gold glass fleck and "Medallion" which is extra small and small gold and medium silver holo glitter in a clear base.  Both polishes are great, though I didn't really need "White Cap", "Medallion" is spectacular all on its own.

To make the gradient, I did a layer of polish on the top third of the nail and let that set for about a minute.  I then applied a thick second layer over that, and working quickly, took a clear polish and ran that over the top and middle third of the nail from the top down.  I used a clear Essie I had lying around, but any clear polish will do as long as it's not a quick drying polish.  I only had to do this all once through.



I think it came out fairly well for a first time, and if I had more patience it probably would have been even nicer!  I hope you liked this post, I'll be back later with the juice cleanse update!

love and cupcakes,
Ms. Meghan

Week of Greens day 7: St Patrick's Day mani!

Even though I'm sort of indifferent to St Patrick's day, being festive = fun nail polish, and I'm always down with that! I was going to something over the top and fancy but then I realized simpler was easier and could still be just as pretty!

And how could I NOT wear a polish called "Four Leaf Clover"?


This is China Glaze Four Leaf Clove from the AMAZING Up & Away collection. It's a seriously beautiful teal/green creme, which of course just won't be photographed properly. It's brighter and more green in real life. On my ring finger (my accent nail of choice) I did a coat of Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure (the original) and over that a coat of Essie As Gold as it Gets. So it's kind of like a pot of gold, but mostly it's just really pretty.

A note on the manicure: This is 1 coat of Seche rebuild, 1 coat of China Glaze Ridge Filler and 2 coats of FLC. I think China Glaze Ridge Filler is the best in the entire universe but it's a little HTF for me, so I don't use it very often. I do like to use it with really intense/pigmented greens to help prevent staining.


Slightly blurry, but still so pretty!!!!

I think you can still get the Up & Away collection from most e-tailers, and if you can, you should, speaking only for the brights, it's an amazing collection. The pastels are beautiful too, I'm just not a pastel kind of girl for the most part. Hidden Treasure was of course LE, but there are enough dupes of it floating around, and As Gold as it Gets is still pretty widely available (I saw it at Target last night!)

So that's my week of greens! I'll probably give nail polish a break, but I'll definitely be back soon with something awesome! Happy St. Patrick's day everyone!!

Week of Greens day 4!

Just like I promised, today I'm posting 3 Funky Fingers polishes for you! I'm so nice!

Funky Fingers is pretty much re-packaged Color Club, right? I mean, there are some colors that Color Club doesn't have, but it is nice if CC is harder to find and you happen to have a Five Below near you (where I find mine). Anyway, on to the polish!!

First up, Sold Out Arena!


I'm not a huge fan of foils but I really liked this polish. It looked much better in real life, I didn't feel like I needed more than one coat, and I didn't have too much trouble applying it, and while it looks brushstroke-y it really wasn't.

Next, is a "funky fingers" exclusive (not a cc dupe) Mrs. Mint!

I wish this color looked like the photograph but it is much more pale/yellow based, and the gold shimmer in the bottle was non-existent on the nail. Bummer! I would love a bright jade-y turquoise with tons of gold shimmer, but this was a standard mint creme with a whisper of gold shimmer.

Finally....TINSEL TOWN.

Tinsel Town vs. China Glaze Atlantis, a color which blew our minds when it was released. Well, it blew my mind, look at how gorgeous it is! Anyway, I thought maybe these two would be close, and while they are close-ish, they're not dupes at all.


That's Atlantis on my ring finger and Tinsel Town on the others. Atlantis is darker and more muted, while Tinsel Town is brighter and I think the glitter is a little different. They are both worth owning (of course I would say that) but owning one or the other is a matter of taste/availability.

So there you have it, 3 groovy new Funky Fingers polishes! I hope you liked them, and if you did try checking your local Five Below or consult that wondrous oracle The Google to find out if they are sold elsewhere. Coming up in the next couple of days a pretty new and a kind of old couple of polishes from Sally Hansen, plus what will my St. Patrick's day manicure be?!?! Come back tomorrow, same cupcake time, same cupcake channel!!