Friday Favorites: Sparkle City, Dream Fashion, and Forest Treasures

Linking up with Style Elixir and friends for Fab Favorites again!

Friday finally! I'm extra excited about today because I finally get to visit with my best friend for a while. We live only about 35 minutes apart yet between our schedules and my wonderful health, you'd think we lived a couple hours apart based on how infrequently we get to do this!

What I'm loving:

1) This nail polish, given to me by above best friend.

In. sane. Sparkle. Seriously. It's "Dorothy Who?" by China Glaze and it is, I repeat, insane. Love it.

2) In case you missed it, I met Polyvore this past weekend. Oh dear.

And I have since spent much happy time on there. (Follow me! ;) You should give it a try if you haven't--and it's even more fun if you sell jewelry online ... that's all I'll say for now. But trust me, you'll be seeing much more of it around here as time goes on.

3) This super unique, super lovely Etsy shop:

I found Emily and her shop, Moss of the Woods, in the happy little world of Etsy forums, and she is as talented as her botanical expertise is impressive.

Her passion for nature drives her creations, and she knows every single thing about every treasure her resin jewelry contains, all the way to their scientific names, which are often included in the pieces.

I think this piece is my current favorite, available here.

Unique pendants and earrings for nature lovers or anyone who loves an earthy or even boho flair to their jewelry would love a piece from her shop. (And p.s. her packaging is just so perfect.)

Do head over to her shop and take a look around--so many perfect gifts are to be found there!

Happy Weekend, and Happy Spring!

Oh, and speaking of spring, there's only a couple of days left to enter my welcoming-spring giveaway! You can get more info and enter it here.

Favorites with a Bonus Announcement!

Well, this girl is still sick but desperately praying I'm getting over this and will get through it without going to the doctor, something my body hasn't been able to do for years.

In the meantime, it's time for some favorites!

1) My birthday this month brought what I wanted most: my first iPhone--in gold! :O (Which means I now finally have Instagram!) And so of course it needed a case, which I found in gold... I wasn't planning on that color until I saw the phone that way and couldn't give up the color while needing the protection. So gold it was. It's from Amazon. :)

And of course my current (and potentially permanent) favorite nail polish, Good as Gold by Essie, which I mentioned last week, just so happens to match. I'm wearing it here topped with Swing Baby by China Glaze.

2) While The Civil Wars sadly might need to get their act together professionally, this Grammy 2014-winning song is pretty awesome. I've never been really into the duo, just neutral about them, but when I saw they won for this song, I looked it up and had to buy it.

And I bet this video took longer to make than the song did to write... Wow.

3) And I'm now on Bloglovin! In case you're not familiar with it, Bloglovin is a happy little (or not so little) place where you can follow all your favorite blogs, and it logs all their posts in one convenient place so you can keep up with all the latest posts without having to go to each blog individually.

And if you don't already have a ton of blogs you follow, you can do some exploring and search Bloglovin by category, like photography, food, or fashion, and you can also find a specific blog by its url.

Handy little place. So if you're on there, I would love for you to follow me there! And if you're not, do give it a look! :)

Friday Favorites: Chocolate and Gold and their Musical Equivalent...

It's Friday! And time for three of my favorites at the moment:

1) I'm currently pretty addicted to these:

I have never been a dark chocolate fan, but these are free of gluten, wheat, dairy, peanuts, tree nuts, egg, soy, fish, and shellfish (what IS in them??) and meet my current diet needs' requirements. And they do not taste like dark chocolate. They are amazing.

2) This nail polish:

Essie's "Good as Gold." I saw this nail polish a while back on Pinterest and finally tracked it down recently. This stuff is just so me. Keep an eye out for it in a future Wear-It Wednesday Post!

3) This song:

I first heard this song when the duo debuted it on The Voice a couple months ago. I tend to multitask while I watch TV, and it made me stop whatever I was doing and watch. It was captivating, and the official music video is even more so (warning if you're not into crying...).

This song makes the writer in me excited and hopeful that there can be songs of substance that are also enormously popular finding their way into the market today. And it also shows that repetitiveness can be deep and meaningful if done just right. Incredible song, incredible performance.

And now it's gettin' to be time to go paint my nails gold again... :)

Friday Favorites: Danielle Bradbery and Other Happiness

It's Friday! And time for just a few of my very favorite things right now:

1) When Danielle Bradbery was on The Voice last year, it was pretty clear to me, and evidently a bunch of other people, that she would get pretty far in the competition. So when she won, I was quite thrilled for her. Then her album finally came out, and when I previewed it on iTunes, I just had to buy it.

It's a really great album, but one song in particular is just amazing. And even though the album came out nearly two months ago, this song is still repeat worthy. I'm not sure if it's possible to get sick of it ... but we'll find out.

I knew right away that whoever wrote this song (come to find out, Katrina Elam, Josh Kear, and Chris Tompkins, according to trusty Wikipedia ;) was definitely not messin’ around—this is perfection, complete with an unpredictable hook and two key changes (my personal favorite songwriting “trick”). And it's no wonder this one has an extra something to it, because that's the only song on the album by those three writers. Home. Run.

2) In case you haven't gathered by the fact that I make and sell jewelry, I am definitely pro-handmade. At least half the gifts I gave for Christmas were handmade, whether by me or others, and I'm to the point I feel kinda bad buying things at, say, Walmart that I know I could find on Etsy, made by someone like me who could use the money a whole lot more than some retail chain.

So when I was set up at an Arts and Crafts fair in my area a couple months ago, and the nicest lady ever was set up next to me with all of these cute handmade purses and photo cards and coasters and more, I went to town. My grandmother, cousin, and niece-in-laws all got purses for Christmas ... and I got two. ;)

I decided to use this one first, and I love it.

If you look closely at the top of it, you can see the striped lining--it's reversible!

I've always loved this design, which I'm sure you've seen before, whether on a vintage bedspread or modern lampshades.

A close-up for ya

And even though gray/black aren't my usual colors, I just couldn't pass it up. The beige makes it passable. ;) The wonderful lady's name is Martha Davis, and she doesn't currently have an Etsy shop or else I would totally link it here. But if you'd like to get in touch with her, just comment or email me and I can get her email address to you. :)

3) And in case you missed it, this stuff is awesome:

If only I'd found it years ago. Now my nails can actually last more than a day, and that, my friend, makes me very happy. :)

So go paint your nails with this stuff, and then while they dry, do some good old USA Etsy shopping and listen to some Danielle. It'll make you happy...! ;)

Essie and Sally are Best Friends

So maybe it's because I've been using super cheap nail polish, though gorgeous. Or maybe it's because I wasn't letting my nails dry long enough between coats. It's hard to tell...

But all I know is I've finally found a way for nail polish to both look amazing and last more than 12 hours! :P

I had been doing one coat of clear nail polish, two coats of whatever color I was using (with very little time between) and then another coat of clear. And I'd get up the next day and it would chip--bad. What in the world??

Now, you can't really blame me--I knew next to nothing about nails and just did whatever I had gathered from Pinterest. Well.

However, Pinterest had also gotten Essie into my head. So I found these two bottles on clearance at T.J. Maxx: "Orange, It's Obvious" and "Fear or Desire."

The awesome nail polish

The secret weapon

I skipped the first coat of clear (which I probably could have done) and just did two coats of the colors, using the lighter orange on my ring finger. And I just waited a couple of minutes between each. Then I let them dry for a good 45 minutes to an hour. Then I did a layer of Sally's awesome No Chip Top Coat and generously let it dry as long as I could. (What do people do while they take two hours on their nails?? I watched TV and then got brave and got on my computer. Anyway...)

And they lasted a good 4 days. And when they did finally start chipping, it wasn't hideous gashes out of them but little ones on the ends.

So maybe if I'd waited longer between coats of color it would have lasted even longer. But regardless, I am pretty thrilled!