A (Late) BCA Manicure! Featuring Pretty & Polished Hello Dolly!

October was Breast Cancer Awareness month & I wanted to show my own awareness!

At work, we do product specials to raise money and whatnot but sometimes sporting the pink just to show your respect for all the survivors out there is just as meaningful! I wore this manicure in late October, so I'm showing you all a little late.

This is 2 coats of Zoya Emme, a light pink shimmer polish with a little bit of a frostiness to it. I actually got this through Glossybox, which is a subcription to a box where I get 5 sample sized (and sometimes full sized!) products for $21 a month. It's also a Canadian company, which I dig since I'm Canadian. Zoya sent an assortment of pink polishes to Glossybox to give to their subscribers for BCA month!

This photo shows the frosty finish really well. I love the baby pink color! It covered well and was not streaky at all despite the fact that most frosty polishes are. Very nice!

I then added a coat of Pretty & Polished Hello Dolly. It's 100% the girliest manicure I have ever worn in my life. I loved how the girly glitter added some pizazz! (You know I love glitter, who could resist?)

It's kinda funny actually, I didn't even remember purchasing Hello Dolly when I first got it, but I'm so glad I did! It is a collection of micro pink, medium purple, & large and extra large white and pink hex glitters. This is only one coat (super dense!) and all of the glitters went on fairly evenly! I did have to do some digging for the large white & pink hex glitters, but it was worth it.

There is a nice macro & bottle shot for you, showing all the sparkle. The larger glitters do sink to the bottom as you can see in the macro shot which is why I had to dig, but if you left it upside down for a while and gave it a good shake, it would definitely make it easier.

 You can purchase Pretty & Polished on Etsy and Llarowe. You can also watch for new collections & updates on the Facebook page! They even have two special BCA polishes!

Delicate Mani From Day 15! Featuring Pretty & Polished Cheer Camp

So I was going to use this for my glitter mani day but because I couldn't get over how delicate and dainty this polish was! So even though the challenge called for delicate "print", I thought this was a suitable mani for this day!

This is Pretty & Polished Cheer Camp! I purchased Cheer Camp from Pretty & Polished some time back in August so when I received it I was very excited because it is my dream polish. I love pastels, I love glitter and I love glitter in a creme base because you get automatic glitter sandwiches.

This nail polish is so fittingly named Cheer Camp, but it kinda reminds me of ballet dancers & their leotards. This is 3 coats of Cheer Camp. It is a combination of light pink & purple hex glitters in different sizes suspended in a very light pastel pink creme base.
Dreamy. That's all I can say. The formula was so nice, not too thick. Just perfect.

You can purchase Cheer Camp and other Pretty & Polished polishes on Etsy and keep an eye on new polishes and restocks on Facebook. Cheer Camp is currently in stock, so go get it!

So tomorrow I will be posting another two challenge mani's! One being tomorrow's challenge, inspired by a song & two being tribal from day 16. I kinda cheated for tribal, but it still counts.
See you tomorrow!

Challenge Day 13: Animal Print!

Of course I had to do leopard print for this mani.
I thought about doing something new, like giraffe print, but I kept gravitating toward bright colors. So I picked my two favorite colors and came up with this funky leopard print!

This is the funkiest leopard print of all time. Definitely no natural leopard around these parts! I started with a base of Essence Ultimate Pink. This is 2 coats. I received this polish to review by Essence and it has officially become my favorite pink.

I then did the spots with Barielle Do Unto Others, which is my dream turquoise polish, and my black nail art pen from ebay. Pink and turquoise are my favorite colors, so hey, why not make leopard print bright and interesting with my favorite, bright colors?

Tomorrow is flowers, which i'm sure I can have fun with. So many different flowers, so little time to choose!

Essence Color & Go's! Review and Swatch

Hi everyone! Today I have some awesome swatches of Essence's Color & Go line to show you!
They have come out with 18 new & trendy colors for their Fall/Winter collection.

They have a gel-like shine finish and a fast drying formula! (Best of both worlds, right?)
They also have a new bottle shape! Instead of the old 5ml bottle, they now come in 8ml bottles!

Let's get started with these swatches.

This is Essence Stuck On You. It's a blue-grey creme with a hidden shimmer. It is absolutely gorgeous and the favorite out of the 3 I got. It covered in 2 coats perfectly. It even shines somewhat purple in different lights! A dark grey blurple. Hard to find something like that!

This is 3 coats of Essence Ultimate Pink. It really, truly is the Ultimate Pink. Ultimate Barbie pink, that is. It is a hot pink creme that dries with a crazy shine. It went on a little streaky, so I went with 3 coats to be safe. You could probably get away with 2 coats instead. This is very cute and girly, love it!

Oh, I loved this one. This is Essence Modern Romance. It is a peachy-nude creme with a pink shimmer (Couldn't get that shimmer to photograph! But it's there!) that shows up in direct light. It's a very cute and girly shade! This was 3 coats as I had trouble getting full coverage with 2 coats. This would be an awesome spring shade! I can't wait to use this baby in some nail art!

Here's a comparison of the new bottles. The new bottles are easier to hold and grip to paint evenly and precisely! And who can complain about an extra 3ml a bottle? (Not me!)

All Color & Go polishes are Big 3 Free and have a professional patented brush that distributes color with amazing accuracy!

They have a huge range of colors from brights to classics! You can purchase Essence at ULTA, HEB & Fred Meyer in the States for only $1.99!
You can also purchase Essence Cosmetics in Canada at Shopper's Drug Mart & Pharmaprix!

The products featured in this post were sent to me by the company for an honest review.

Glitter Sandwich Love! Featuring Lush Lacquer Pink Panther

I've been seeing lots of glitter sandwiches hitting the blogverse lately. Glitter is back with the indie polish explosion and everyone wants to wear it 101 ways.
This is a neat way to transform any glitter!

Let's look at some pictures of Lush Lacquer Pink Panther first!

This is 1 coat of Pink Panther over 2 coats of China Glaze Innocence. Innocence is a nice light, dusty pink creme that is the perfect amount of sheer to use for a glitter sandwich! (It doesn't always have to be a jelly polish!)

Pink Panther is an awesome matte glitter. It features black, pink and white hex glitters in all sizes. I especially love the giant white glitters. (See my thumb!). It is super cute. You could layer it over all sorts of colors because it has a clear base. Awesome!

And then we sandwich! This is another coat of Innocence on top to sandwich it all. It makes the manicure so delicate and pretty, but funky at the same time!

Innocence was a great base for Pink Panther. It let the glitter be the feature of the manicure ever though it was covered up again to be sandwiched.

I got so many compliments on this manicure! Lots of people thought it was one polish and wanted to know how I did it! A glitter sandwich is a great way to make anyone think you have crazy nail skills!

Have you sandwiched any of your glitters lately? I love the way it looks like all one polish!

You can purchase Lush Lacquer on their Etsy and follow them on Facebook for updates!

Rainbow Honey Equestria Collection!

Hi everyone! Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Not only have I definitely dropped the 31 day challenge (oops, my bad) but I've been without inspiration as I patiently wait for my new indie polishes to come in the mail!
Well, they are finally coming in! After receiving my Lush Lacquer order, I was excited to see what was next.
Then I got my Rainbow Honey order! I saw swatches of the Equestria Collection and couldn't wait to get my hands on it. All of the polishes are inspired by different ponies from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. How cute is that?

Let's get started on some swatches!

This is one coat of Rainbow Honey The Worst Possible Thing over 2 coats of China Glaze Electric Beat. The photo is taken with flash. It is a glitter packed polish with tiny blue, purple, teal, pink, silver glitters. It also featured some flakies! Lots of glitter madness going on here!

No flash photo. The combination of all the glitters in The Worst Possible Thing gives it an overall periwinkle look. That being said, Electric Beat is the perfect underwear, since it is a periwinkle creme.
This was a lovely surprise and definitely my favorite.

This is one coat of Rainbow Honey A Little Kindness over 2 coats of China Glaze Innocence. It is pinkish shimmer base with small, medium and large gold and pink glitters throughout. This is so beautiful. I love a pink and gold combination.

A photo sans flash. I am usually not a fan of shimmery bases, but this sold me! I can't wait to try this over lots of colors.

Last but not least, the party that is Rainbow Honey Pinkie Promise! This is one coat over 2 coats of Joe Fresh Bloom. It has a pink/yellow duochrome shimmer base with pink, blue and gold glitter. It features lots of different sizes of glitter including large, medium and small hex glitters and bar glitters as well.

No flash photo. The duochrome shimmer base is the coolest thing about this polish. Let alone the chunky glitter which made me so excited. The shimmer base shows up mostly pink on it's own and over light colors but it transforms entirely over black. I can't wait to show you guys in the future!

Now i wish I didn't get mini's of these beauties!
Next on my list, 20% Cooler and Koi Pond! Rainbow Honey makes beautiful polishes!

You can purchase Rainbow Honey Polishes on her main website here and keep up with the updates on Facebook.

Nail Art Challenge: Day 8. Metallic Nails Featuring Lush Lacquer Mr. Bubble!

Oh am I ever excited to show you guys today's mani. I doubled over in excitement when I got some precious nail mail from Lush Lacquer! I finally jumped aboard the indie train and Lush Lacquer was my first indie purchase. 

Beware, this post is a little picture heavy!
Anyway, let's get down to business.

Here is my little set of goodies! All of these polishes are gorgeous. I am a huge fan of glitter, so I couldn't wait to receive these polishes. Above all, Lush Lacquer was awesome with communicating to their customer about the time frame you should expect. They left a note on my purchase saying they'd need an extra 2 weeks to process my order due to such a high volume of orders. I definitely appreciated the notification.
I finally got these about a month later and it was WELL worth the wait. I mean, look at them! Gorgeous, gorgeous glitter bombs. I will for sure be purchasing from Lush Lacquer again. Thanks Karin & Lexi for your wonderful polishes!

So of course, I couldn't wait to see what they looked like on the nail. From left to right we have Mr. Bubble (2 coats & 1 coat), Pink Panther (2 coats & 1 coat), Snap Crackle Pop (2 coats & 1 coat) and Salt N Peppa (2 coats & 1 coat).
Beautiful, dense glitter madness. I was about to faint, I was so excited.

So I obviously wanted to incorporate one of these bad boys into my challenge mani. But let's start off with my base polish. This is the lovely OPI Birthday Babe. It is a nice frosty silver that has the awesome, dependably smooth application OPI is known for. This is my favorite silver I own.

This is two coats of Birthday Babe. No streaking or drag with this polish. Also, unlike most frostier polishes, you don't see any brush strokes with this beauty. A+ rating from me!

Then I topped it off with Lush Lacquer Mr. Bubble! This is one coat of this awesome matte glitter. It applied pretty evenly. I didn't have to poke any glitters around to get the placement right. I just did a little dab here and there to fill in any bald spots afterward.

Mr. Bubble is made up of micro, small, medium and large hex glitters in pink, blue and white. It is a party in a bottle. It reminds me of confetti or something I would wear to a baby shower. Super adorable. I can't wait to try this over some different colors.

You can purchase Lush Lacquer at their Etsy Shop and check them out on Facebook :)

Swatch Spam: My Favorite Polishes!

Polishes definitely come and go and I always come across a new favorite every once in a while. Especially at this time of year when neons are popping up everywhere you look. Well I was wondering what my actual favorite polishes were and I wanted to share them with you guys!
Prepare for some picture heavy swatch spam.

 

This is OPI Gargantuan Green Grape. However, when I look at this color I don't see grape. I see honey dew melons. You know, the blue-ish green color on the inside, this is the exact color. This is a light green creme that applies horribly streaky. You need 3 coats for full opacity. At the same time the color pay off is more than worth it for me.

 

 This is China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise. It's a neon so it dries matte as you can see here. Topcoat makes it shiny but doesn't change the color, it's as bright matte as it is shiny. This is one of my favorite colors so it's always been a clear favorite. The application is also a dream. The first coat is sometimes streaky but you only need two coats and it dries in a flash.

China Glaze Make Some Noise. This is from the new Poptastic collection and is an awesome bright color. It's a reddish-pink that covers beautifully in two coats. I bought a few others from the Poptastic collection but this one definitely stole my heart.

This is the best red in my collection, a must have for everyone. OPI Comet Loves Cupid is an oldie from the 2009 Holiday Wishes Collection. I actually got it for free when I started my job at the salon that I do hair at 2 years ago and it was one of my first OPIs. This is 1 coat, that's it that's all. You can see a bit of my nail line in the photos but not in person. Perfect. Red. I can say no more.

Last but not least is China Glaze Ruby Pumps. This is a favorite across the world as far as I can tell. It's a red jelly base with red glitter and an awesome color payoff in 2 coats. It's a pain to photograph, hence why I only have one picture (I took about 300, this was the only good one). This is a must have for all red lovers. Go get it.

What are your favorite polishes? Do we have any in common?

I'm off to celebrate Father's Day with my family, happy Sunday!