Tag Archives: Milani

Nail Art Tutorial: Snow Bunny Nails

Flash Snow Bunny Rabbit Nails Nail Art Tutorial & PicturesSince I had so much fun wearing my Penguin Nails, I decided to try more animal nail art in the snow – Snow Bunny Nails!

Although this design doesn’t use many colours, it took much longer to complete than the penguins. So if you give this one a go, make sure you have a good chunk of time on your hands.

Like what we learned in Aesop’s Fables, slow and steady wins the race. Looks like in this manicure, the hare taught us that, though, not the tortoise.

This was my Christmas manicure. I wore it on the 23rd straight through to today even though I really wanted to wear China Glaze Party Hearty. (After spending over an hour on these ‘wascally wabbits’, as Elmer Fudd would say, I just couldn’t bring myself to remove them for a long time.)

With some minor tweaking (i.e. making the ears shorter), you can easily convert these rabbit nails into cat nails!

Also, I was extremely busy over the past few days, so I was only able to capture this manicure mainly with my flash. Although, a few are in the sunlight and some are in terrible dim artificial light. But from the mediocre photos I was able to take, you get the basic idea. Continue reading

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Nail Art Tutorial: Santa Nails

Sunlight Santa Nails Nail Art Tutorial, Swatches & PicturesChina Glaze Phat Santa, a red jelly polish, inspired me so much that I knew I had to do some Christmas nail art with it. These Santa Nails are the result!

Here’s Santa’s red suit with fluffy white trimming and black belt with gold buckle. It just took a few steps, and as long as you don’t rush, yours will come out lovely. And the best part? You just need 4 colours.

You know how lots of children like to put out a plate of cookies and a glass of milk on Christmas Eve for Santa Claus to enjoy when he visits?

Well, when I was a kid, I told my parents that I was thinking about leaving Santa Claus a bowl of salad and a glass of water. No, I’m not cruel – my intentions were good.

I was concerned about his health and if Santa felt the need to finish everything on all the plates. That’s a lot of cookies! So I thought I’d at least make sure that he got his vegetables in. Yeah, I was a strange kid.

My parents just burst out laughing at my suggestion. So I didn’t put out the salad that night, but I did consider leaving a little note telling Santa that if he couldn’t finish all the cookies, he could just leave some at my place. I’d help him out. 😉 Maybe I wasn’t that strange, after all.

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Nail Art Tutorial: Chicken Drumstick Nails

Sunlight Chicken Drumstick Nails Nail Art Tutorial & PicturesYesterday I shared my thoughts on Milani One Coat Glitter Gold Glitz with you. I was really impressed that it actually was dense and indeed covered my nail with just one coat.

The only thing was I felt like I couldn’t properly rock that shade of gold and orange glitter, so I did silly nail art on top of it.

Here are the Chicken Drumstick Nails I ended up doing. 🙂 With poultry on my nails, I was way more comfortable sporting this manicure. It reminds me a little of shake ‘n’ bake chicken.

For the bone, I used an L.A. Colors white striper, and for the meat, I used OPI Espresso Your Style!, which is a pretty shimmery brown.

Hehe, I don’t know how many of you will actually want to recreate this look. I still took step-by-step photos of it as I was painting so that I could include a little nail-art tutorial for you. Maybe you’ll want to modify these and turn them into turkey drumsticks for your American Thanksgiving. 😛

Side note: I was a vegetarian for 4+ years partially as a personal challenge and partially because I saw an alarming documentary, Earthlings. I couldn’t watch it all because it was so disturbing. (If you click on the link, you’ll be taken to the free online video of it. Warning: It’s very depressing and graphic.)

These days, I do eat meat, but only 1-2 times per week. (I’ve always loved the way meat tastes, but I got really used to cooking vegetarian dishes over the years, so it’s really only when I eat out that I tend to eat meat. And after being a vegetarian for a few years, I learned that there are tons of delicious meatless dishes. Some of them, like the vegetarian lasagna I make, still tastes way better to me than any I’ve tried with meat! That really surprised me. Sometimes we just have to give new things a chance.)

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Milani One Coat Glitter Gold Glitz Swatches & Review

Sunlight Milani Gold One Coat Glitter Review & SwatchesWhen a blingy glitter polish claims to be a one-coater, I’m itching to put it to the test. A lot of times you either need tons of coats, or the polish is more suitable for layering.

The Milani One Coat Glitter Gold Glitz was a prime candidate in the running. Would it win the majority of the votes, or would a huge scandal break out and force it to step out of the election?

I’ve heard a lot about the One Coat Glitter polishes from Milani, but this was the first one that I ever tried. So you can imagine how it piqued my curiosity. Continue reading

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OPI Rainbow Connection Dupes, Comparison Swatches & Brush Reviews

OPI Rainbow Connection Dupes Comparison Swatches Milani Gems Swatch & Nicole by OPI Rainbow in the S-Kylie SwatchIt feels like a long time ago when I swatched and reviewed OPI Rainbow Connection from The Muppets Collection even though it was just in September.

You’ll remember it as the multicoloured glitterbomb with 3 different sizes of hexagonal glitter.

Since then, I have acquired 2 other nail polishes that are quite similar.

One of them is a dead-on dupe. And if you’re not interested in paying OPI prices, you’ll want to check this out because one of the polishes I compare rings in at just $3.99 USD online!

I whipped up a post for those who are a fan of the glittertastic look of OPI Rainbow Connection, but who want to see how it stacks up to the alternatives. Thought this would make for a nice little shopping-tip post.

The nail polishes featured in this OPI Rainbow Connection Dupes post are: OPI Rainbow Connection (of course), Nicole by OPI Rainbow in the S-Kylie, and Milani Gems.

I’ve compared all 3 in relation to their appearance, brush, accessibility, and price. Hopefully this will help you decide which one is a better fit for you. Or, maybe you’ll decide that you no longer like any of them, and you’ll keep your hard-earned cash in your wallet.

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CLOSED: Huge Milani Giveaway for Canadians on Swatch And Learn!

Congratulations, Nicole!

I e-mailed Nicole and she replied to claim her prize. 🙂

Thanks to everyone for participating! I’ll be having another Canadians-only giveaway really soon. 😉

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Did you go trick-or-treating last night? Well, this Milani giveaway is all treat and no trick. There’s tons of loot to win!

I think the Dirty Harry quote is very fitting for this: “You’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do ya, punk?” 😉


Milani Giveaway on Swatch And Learn November 1 to November 11, 2011 Continue reading

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Milani 3D Glitzy Stylish Glamour Gloss Review & Swatches

Image of Milani 3D Glitzy Stylish Glamour Gloss** This post was written by Fiona. She no longer blogs for Swatch And Learn. However, Mary still continues to blog and will be happy to reply to your comment. **

Holy orange lip gloss, Batman! Milani 3D Glitzy Stylish Glamour Gloss (try saying that 3 times fast) is an orangey shade with a tinge of pink when you look at it in the tube. It’s not a shade that I’d normally gravitate toward since I’m only recently starting to venture outside of my color comfort zone.

I’m glad I did because this pop of orange is hmm hmm good. And I don’t mean the taste. At first, I was scared that this gloss would make me look like I drank that orange soda from McDonald’s straight from the cup. (It’s natural to not want orange lips, I think!) But Stylish is just sheer enough to complement my skin tone while really adding a tinge of orange.

BTW, did McDonald’s stop selling their orange pop? Continue reading

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