the Never-Ending Pile Challenge: Textured

Hey! Happy Monday! I just have a quick post for y'all tonight. Of course, it's another installment to the Never-Ending Pile Challenge and today's theme is textured. I have quite a few textured polishes. I love how they look like the inside of geodes. I just never think to wear them! Tonight, I paired two of L'Oreal's textured polishes from their Gold Dust collection.

On my pointer and pinky fingers are three coats of Hidden Gems. For my double accent nail, I used three coats of Too Dimensional?

And some macro shots for good measure.

Overall, I really like these polishes but I favor Too Dimensional? over Hidden Gems, right now. While I love the darkened teal of Hidden Gems, I wish the purple flash you can see in the bottle shot would have translated better on the nail. I've seen Hidden Gems swatched on a few different blogs and that seems to be the general consensus.

Too Dimensional? is a beautiful dusty lavender and that gold shimmer makes it look so expensive. I'll definitely be wearing it as a full mani, soon!

What have been some of your favorite textured polishes since they've come out?

Be sure to check out the other sparkly ladies and their textured tips!

xo, ali

Tahitian Squares

Happy Tuesday!

I hope all of you are doing well, this evening. I'm refreshed and relaxed after a three-day weekend. Over this weekend the nail-blogging community just exploded into a lovefest. I don't know who started #sharethelove but it was amazing. That is why I love this community so much. We are all so supportive of each other. I'm proud to be part of this community! #sharethelove also led to me starting up a Facebook page for the blog. If you haven't already, go ahead and visit Ali's Dancing Phalanges on Facebook and give it a like!!

Tonight I'm sharing a really cool polish and some simple nail art, so let's get to it!

I really loved this mani so it's kind of photo-heavy. You've been warned :x

I started with two coats of Wet N Wild Megalast in Tahitian Pearl.

I believe this is one of the Dollar General-exclusive colors and it's definitely unique.

I mean, it dries matte. I was not expecting that!

Plus, it's LOADED with shimmer that really stands out once you top coat it, which I love.

The next day, I decided to spice it up a little bit and got out my Scotch tape. I taped off squares in different corners of each nail and applied one generous coate of Wet N Wild Wild Shine Black Creme.

Here's my thumb, for once!

I loved this and wore it for two more days before taking it off. All the polishes wore wonderfully, with only minor tipwear.

My Zoya order finally came in so I'm off to play. I'll be back on Thursday with some winter blues for the Crumpet's GOT challenge, week three!

xo, ali.

Tape Mani Thursday!

Goooood evening lovelies!

I hope you are all having a great week. We're almost to the weekend and Christmas. My next post after this one will be on Christmas Eve! I'm so excited to spend time with family and open presents :)

Tonight, I have a really quick, really sparkly mani for you. I don't know if Tape Mani Thursday will become a thing but this manicure is a great starting point!

I recently joined the Julep Maven program and I love it. I did the free box offer and my style quiz showed that I was an "It Girl," which is fitting ;)

I loved it so much that did December's box, but in Boho Glam.

If you are unfamiliar with the Julep Maven program, I'll give you a little rundown.

For about $20 a month, you get up to three polishes, depending on your style profile. The boxes to choose from are It Girl, Boho Glam, Bombshell, Classic With A Twist, and Modern Beauty. If you don't like your style profile's box for the month, they give you an option to choose one of the other boxes, or you can skip the month entirely. Isn't that awesome?!

If you're interested in joining from just that description, you can join up here.

Now, onto the polishes!

 In the Boho Glam box, there were two polishes and a neutral eyeshadow palette. Plus, they threw in two twistband hair ties, which I love.

For this mani, I started with my usual Orly Nail Armor base coat and then three coats of Julep Misti

Misti is a dusty teal green. It reminds me of the Atlantic Ocean.

The formula was decent on this. Because of the shape of the Julep polish bottles, you really have to make sure that you wipe the brush off on the mouth of the bottle so you don't get too much on your brush. Other than that--three coats and you're good.

I topcoated this with Beauty Plus Salon top coat.

After that dried, I took my roll of striping tape and made X's on each finger and took a thin nail art brush with Julep Joelle to make sure that I got my points exact.

Joelle is just gorgeous. Holo microglitter and slightly larger silver glitters, suspended in a clear base. It just sparkles at any angle. It's a great glitter for the holidays!

I can't wait to see what Julep has in store for next month!

What you do think about this simple, sparkly mani?

Tell me about it!

xo, ali

Quick NOTD

Well, well, well! It's me, keeping my end of the bargain and keeping to my posting schedule.

I don't have much for you lovely people but I do have something that I'm quite proud of. I rarely do nail art. That's mostly because I get frustrated if it doesn't work out or I'm too tired, etc. A couple Saturdays ago, I was feeling ambitious and had the perfect polishes to go together. I also had a great tutorial from Globe & Nail in the back of my mind that I wanted to try. I love Emma's blog. She does such great nail art and has gorgeous swatches. The tutorial looked pretty easy and I don't bust out my striping tape nearly enough. Here's my final result!

For this manicure, I used:

Two coats Orly Nail Armor (base coat)

Two coats H&M Come Along With Me (base color)

One thick coat elf Sea Escape (accent color)

One coat Beauty Plus Salon (topcoat)

Come Along with Me is a really pretty, creamy teal with sparse teal shimmer that you really have to suss out. It went on really easy with no application problems that I can recall.

Then i laid down a square of scotch tape, at an angle,to create the half moon and a piece of striping tape down the middle. Next, I painted a thick coat of Sea Escape, which is from the Ursula portion of the elf Disney Villains nail polish cube. Sea escape is a black jelly-esque polish with teal, grean, and blue sparkles. I painted each finger, one at a time, and pulled the tapes up as soon as I painted. Top coat, and done!

The only thing I can really see wrong with this is that my lines could have been a little cleaner. Other than that, I was really happy with this. I got a lot of compliments on it when I went for my volunteer session at the satellite cat adoption center for the Erie County SPCA.

I get to hang out with these cool cats:

Corncob (top) and Paige (bottom)

My life is hard ;)

That's all for me...I'm off to watch some hockey (go Sabres!) and Parks and Rec.

[source]

Hmmm, maybe that's an idea for some nail art?

However, I, unlike April, happen to love Ann Perkins.

over and out!

xo, ali

PS-don't forget to follow me, via bloglovin'! Just click the bloglovin' banner to the right, above my pretty picture :)