Chimneys and Flowers and Giveaways, oh my!

I've been MIA, I know.  It's been a long week, both of my kids were in day camps far apart from each other, and I've been extremely sleepy.  I've done some manis while I've been gone and some other fun beauty stuff that I'll try to get caught up on over the next few days. Especially since we'll be keeping it close to home these days to save money.  It's no-buy central here after the darecho that blew through the East Coast Friday night and did major damage to our house.

Yes, that's our chimney laying in our backyard instead of being attached to our house.  Ouch.

Before my house decided to reenact a scene from Wizard of Oz, I put on a cute little manicure that was a test run of the Salon Express nail stamping system.

It's not the best picture, but for some reason I was having major issues finding focus for this one.

I had one plan and got waylaid halfway through so my polish layers are kind of odd.  I started with a coat of Gelous, then 2 coats of Savvy French Rose Petal a creamy pale pink jelly which is where I realized I was not going to get the level of opacity I wanted for the plan I had so I put a single coat of Wet N Wild Lady Luck on top.  Much brighter than I was going for, but it turns out I only have 2 light pinks, the French Rose and a bright but pastel creme that looks like chalk on me.  Lady Luck is a girly lavender pink with a very subtle silver shimmer.  It's a good basic color to have on hand.

Since this is my first go at stamping, I played around with a bunch of things on my right hand before deciding what I wanted to do.  I used NK Really White and the flower image on SE19, turns out that the NK is not opaque enough for good stamping.  Bummer.  Especially since it looks like the whole house is going no-buy for EVERYTHING for awhile so I won't be able to look at buying anything better for a long time.  For the center of the petals I used a teensy little dot of China Glaze Electrify. And then one coat of SV.  Really needed 2 in order to level out the glitter dots better, but I'm running low.  All in all, it's cute, the stamping is easy enough, but not nearly as awesome looking as I hoped.  Maybe I'll get better or maybe I'll get better polish someday, we'll see.

Now for some Beauty Giveaways!

First we have Pammy Blogs Beauty and her Glamour Magazine Birchbox Giveaway!  If you've never heard of it, it's a monthly subscription where for $10/month they send you a few beauty items to try.  Usually higher end, so it's a great way to try new things you wouldn't normally put the money out for!

I'm going to add a few more here as I do them today, so check back if you're here early!

ETA:  oops, I was without my narcolepsy meds all weekend and ended up to tired to come back to this.  Keep an eye out because I will blog about them as I go!