Pink Wednesday: Dotticure Mani

Pink Wednesday, dotticure style.

Let me know if you want the names of any of the polishes used!

Brands used: Borghese, California Colors & Wet'n'Wild (base French White Crème)

Sally Hansen Nude Now

I have been trying to find a good nude/neutral nail polish lately and have found that it's not as simple as holding it up to your skin and seeing if it will work. What you get in the bottle isn't necessarily what you will get on the nail: skin tone can change the tone of the polish and that can be a positive or negative thing, depending on the shade. Anyway, after all that rambling, check out Sally Hansen's Nude Now.

Sally Hansen Nude Now

3 coats, no topcoat

I found this polish to be good for application although a little thin. I would classify the finish as a jelly/crème and after 3 coats I could still see VNL, however I wasn't too bothered by it because I expected it with that type of finish. Overall, this polish made my hands turn a weird orange colour and made them look "dirty" (do you know what I mean?) so I wasn't a huge fan.

What is your go-to nude polish colour?

Blue Monday: L.A. Girl - Extreme

Hi folks! I took a few days to myself to recharge, I hope you didn't mind too much. :) 

Today I have a polish from the brand L.A. Girl. They have a line out called "Color Addict" which I haven't seen at the drugstore where I purchase my other L.A. Girl polishes. Surprisingly enough, I found them in a shoe and handbag store - not somewhere I would think of when I think "polish". Anyway, I'm glad I found out where I can purchase them because I really love this polish! The whole "Color Addict" line, from what I could see of the selection at that particular retailer, is that they all have a strong golden shimmer. I'm a fan. A big fan.

L.A. Girl Extreme

3 coats, no topcoat

I would classify Extreme as a cornflower blue/periwinkle with a strong golden-almost-leaning-green shimmer. This polish is a little thin so you do have to build up the coats if you like a more opaque look. I'm in love with this polish: I own nothing else even close to this beauty and am glad she is mine.

Just a note, my 500 follower giveaway will be posted March 1st! Keep your eyes peeled!

Have you seen Color Addict polishes near you? Do you own any? (If so, which shades. I'm nosy like that, haha.)

Revlon Not So Blueberry

HUGE THANK YOU TO MY FOLLOWERS for helping me reach 500 followers! In the next week I will be working on figuring out the best way to do my giveaway. Until then, be entertained with this swatch and the others to come. :)

Revlon Not So Blueberry

4 coats

No topcoat

I've owned this polish for quite some time and have only just swatched it ... which, really, I could say about most of my collection, however I am working on that. ;)

Not So Blueberry is purple leaning blue with a strong silver based shimmer.Very shimmery, borderline frosty. (Without the streaking problems.) Honestly, I can't remember the scent of the polish - it didn't stand out to me. Application was easy, although thin - 4 coats were needed to remove VNL. Good thing the finished result is so pretty, otherwise 4 coats would be too many for me.

Again, THANK YOU to each and every one of you, both new friends and "old" friends, for enjoying this ride with me and helping me achieve the major milestone of 500 followers. 

♥

Pink Wednesday: WetnWild How I Met Your Magenta

Happy Pink Wednesday!

Do you remember when I mentioned that I was having issues with my Seche Vite shrinking away from the cuticle end of my nail? The following pictures show you exactly what I was referring to. (They were taken at the end of January and since then I haven't had this happen more than once since, thank heavens.)

Wet'n'Wild How I Met Your Magenta

4 coats with a coat of Seche Vite

So glossy!!!

How I Met Your Magenta is a beautiful jelly polish with pretty shimmer. It's rare that I do 4 coats of polish, but I love how squishy this looks so I would definitely learn a bit of patience and do this again. The VNL that you see in the pictures above wasn't that visible IRL. 

One thing I will say: the brush is a bit wonky on this one. I've noticed it on almost all of my "fastdry" Wet'n'Wild's. Have you seen it on yours? Next time I use this brand and type of polish I will take a picture of the brush to show you.

Hope your Wednesday is lovely!

Black, White & Pink Dotticure

Let's see if I can do this in under 50 words ...

Wet'n'Wild Black Crème

2 coats, Seche Vite 1 coat

Polka dots done with acrylic paint: white & pink

I love my dotting tool. ♥

Blue Monday featuring China Glaze, ACO & L.A Girl

Happy Blue Monday!

China Glaze Kinetic Candy

2 coats, no topcoat

I've been reading in the blogosphere that people had excellent application with this polish. I, however, did not. It was a little thick and that made it tricky to work with. Manageable, but I had higher expectations for this one. The pretty pale blue always wins me over though, so there's no hard feelings ...

 1 coat Seche Vite on top

Silver: L.A Girl Sterling Silver, 1 coat

Medium blue: ACO True Blue, 1 thick coat

The polka dots are done with black and white acrylic paint.

True Blue is actually more teal than it shows here, *sigh*. Ah well. Still pretty, no?

Honestly, I tried to do the cloud mani that everyone has been trying out lately and it was a complete fail, so I turned the fail into a win by making it look like I intended for this to be like, well, this. Haha. 

Hope you enjoy! Have a great Monday!

Lots of Layering featuring China Glaze, OPI & WetnWild

Layering is one of my favourite things to do with polish. I love creating different combinations and seeing the result. Today I have one that I really love and hope you will too!

China Glaze Frosty

1 thick coat, just to see what it looks like on its own

Frosty was released with the China Glaze 'Tis The Season To Be Naughty or Nice 2010 holiday collection. I wish I could have found a backup bottle however there was only one left when I found the collection in April 2011 at a hair salon, marked down to $3.99 a bottle. (Needless to say, the entire 16 piece collection made its way into my home over a period of 10 months; I searched everywhere to complete the collection and thankfully didn't have to resort to online ordering, I dusty hunted. ;) Haha.)

Look at all the layering!

The above two pictures consist of Wet'n'Wild French White Crème (2 coats) with 2 coats of Frosty layered on top.

I added 2 coats of OPI I Juggle ... Men (a pink and blue shimmering, layering-only polish, you will never reach opacity with this on its own) on top of French White Crème and Frosty. I think the result is very pretty although it was much nicer IRL. I wish it would translate better on camera, alas it does not. You'll have to take my word  for it, or, if you have the polishes, try it out yourself! (If you do, I would LOVE to see!!)

Side thought: Do you have a "go to" black and white polish that you use for layering? I do ... somewhat. My black go-to is Black Crème by Wet'n'Wild. It. Is. Perfection. I figured that if W'n'W can nail a basic black that they could nail a basic white as well. I'm kinda 'meh' about French White Crème. It doesn't apply as evenly nor as opaque in one coat as Black Crème. Ah well. It did the trick, I guess. 

Although the finished look is a little thicker than I would like, I guess that's to be expected of 6 coats of polish. Quick note, I didn't use any topcoat for the photo's. 

What do you think of this layering? Does it remind you of the glimmer and shimmer you see on freshly fallen snow? That's what it reminds me of. :)

Essie Jag-U-Are + Accent Nail

Good morning. While going through my drafts I found another Valentine's themed mani. Really, this would be appropriate any time of year because it doesn't have anything specific to Valentine's Day other than colour. (ie: some stamping would be specific to that holiday, etc ... does that make sense?)

Essie Jag-U-Are

3 coats, no topcoat

Jag-U-Are is a very pretty warm based medium red with golden shimmer. It was fairly sheer at one coat but 2 thins coats more and you get this beauty. I wanted to add some glitter so I added my favourite red glitter polish ....

Milani Ruby Jewels

2 coats layered over Jag-U-Are, 1 coat Seche Vite

The ring finger ended up looking a lot thicker than I like however I could deal because it was so preeeeetty.

Ruby Jewels is a gorgeous red micro glitter suspended in a cherry red, sheer base; because of the tinted base is is possible to make this glitter polish opaque on its own, however I wasn't going through the effort of applying or taking it all off. ;)

What is your favourite red glitter polish?

Maybelline Cool Couture

Thank you to everyone who left sweet comments yesterday. I'm still feeling under the weather but slightly better than I was. Yesterday I posted a bright yellow mani in the hopes it would cheer me up. Today I have the exact opposite, colour-wise anyway: grey. This actually cheers me up as well because the aqua shimmer is AH-MAZING.

Maybelline Cool Couture

3 coats, no topcoat

She's pretty, no?

Cool Couture is a dark charcoal with aqua shimmer throughout. Application was a little thin at first but 3 coats is perfection. I have to say that they are effortless coats as well so it doesn't feel like a chore. Dry time is good, although I didn't allow it to dry completely and also did not add a topcoat. (The nature of being lazy while swatching.)

This polish is right up my alley. I love it. Maybelline has recently discontinued their core line of nail polishes and will only be releasing their limited edition displays from now on. Honestly, I don't think it's a huge loss because I find that their LE polishes are much more interesting and unique compared to their core offerings anyway. Locally, there is only one shop that carries the LE Maybelline displays and they are always marked down because they aren't a big seller in that area. (That's when I swoop in and buy 2 of each polish, haha.)

On another note, I'm very excited to be getting closer and closer to 500 followers. I'm trying to figure out how to do my giveaway. If you have any suggestions for the easiest way to do it please let me know in the comments. I'm not a computer whiz by any means. Simple but effective is what I'm looking for!

Enjoy your Friday!

Cosmetic Arts Yell-oh!

Emergency, emergency! Nah, just kidding. I'm suffering from a pretty nasty cold/flu and I feel like I could drop at any moment, so for me the intro is fitting. To hopefully lift my weary, sick-burdened spirits I give you a vibrant YELLOW mani. I know, right. Yellow on moi?! Believe it.

Cosmetic Arts Yell-Oh!

3 coats, no topcoat

I realize that some of these photo's look verrrry similar but let's just enjoy them, 'kay?

Yell-Oh! is the easiest yellow polish I have ever applied. Application was nice. The first coat was streaky, which is to be expected, the second coat evened things out a bit and the third coat made it beautiful. It was slightly thick, but nowhere near the disaster that most yellow's are for me. I actually didn't want to take this off but I was on a swatching mission a couple weeks ago and couldn't stop so off it went. I will most definitely be rockin' this in a couple more months. I want to add glitter to it, ouuuu.

Hoping you are all healthy & well. *cough, cough, sniffle* I'm going to go try and beat this thing ... *nods off*

Pink Wednesday: Pink Ombre Mani

Happy Pink Wednesday! I've accomplished a lot of "firsts" this month and I'm happy to share one of them with you today. Ombre mani's were all over the blogosphere last year; I haven't attempted one until now. I found it harder than it looks. I'm a little OCD when it comes to certain things. For this mani, I had to make sure all the finishes of the polish were consistent: I chose a crème finish.

I will mention that IRL, the ring finger and middle finger were more different than what they appear in my photo's. D'oh.

The polishes used for this mani are:

Index: Color Club Poptastic

Middle: Color Club Yum Gum

Ring: Sally Hansen Pink Blink

Pinky: China Glaze Snow

No topcoat

My thumb is also China Glaze Snow

China Glaze Snowglobe (1 coat) layered over Pink Blink

Application for all these polishes was fairly decent: the only one I had issues with was Color Club Yum Gum, I found it a bit thick. A drop or two of polish thinner would help. Snowglobe is GORGEOUS. *stares*

I was pretty happy with how this turned out. Finding a darker creme finish pink proved impossible for me so I  just used Snow and made two nails white. I only swatched this but I will definitely try this out as a full mani sometime soon, with different colours of course, gotta change things up! ;)

Have you tried an ombre mani? What colour scheme did you choose?

2012 Challenge: Valentines NOTD

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY!

I hope you have had a lovely day doing whatever it is you love the most with those you love the most. 

Mr.Polish bought me some polishes that I have been wanting for Valentine's Day. I knew he was getting them ahead of time because otherwise I probably would have picked them up myself. He figured that because they weren't a surprise I was going to have to work for them, so he created a scavenger hunt for me, haha. Lots of fun! Did your loved one(s) get you any polish today?

Here is my Valentines Day Nail of the Day! (Can you believe it, I am actually posting a current mani?!?)

Sally Hansen Bubblegum Pink

2 thick coats, no topcoat

Bubblegum Pink is a light pink polish with white shimmer. I found this polish to be quite thick and rather difficult to apply. I will add a few drops of polish thinner to Bubblegum Pink the next time I use it.

Dots:

Dark Purple - OPI Funky Dunkey

Light Purple - OPI Do You Lilac It?

White - Wet'n'Wild French White Creme

Silver - Wet'n'Wild Silvivor

I added some polka dots to create a fun, different mani. I'm a huge fan of dotticure's and I have proof ... the last 3 mani's I've done have been done in this style, and all with hints of pink to celebrate Valentine's day. (You will see them this week!)

What was your mani today?

My First Guest Post!

I'm very excited to let you all know that I did my first guest post. 

Where, you ask? Over at Laura's blog Laura's Lacquers.

That's a sneak peek of what to expect, hope to see you lovelies over there showing her blog some love!

Come back tomorrow to see THREE Valentine's Day mani's. Woot! ;)