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.)

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!

Blue Monday: L.A. Girl "Deejay"

As much as I absolutely adore wearing neutral shades in my wardrobe and as much as I love collecting neutral polishes, I somehow find myself drawn towards brighter shades when polishing my nails. I think I'll have to start swatching my more "work appropriate" polishes, they are feeling neglected I think.

My Blue Monday mani is a tribute to my love of crème blue polishes (which I later cover in glitter, haha) and my affinity for doing accent nails. I used L.A. Girl - Disco Brites in Deejay for all nails except for my accent nails which I polished using a California Colors polish found at Winners. They came in a set of 5 and they were un-named so I creatively called it "Baby Blue". My creative polish names are quite impressive, no?

Deejay, 2 coats - Baby Blue, 3 coats

After polishing I kept looking at my nails, enjoying the two shades of blue but wanting something more. I looked in my Blue Melmer drawer and picked out two corresponding glitter polishes, both by ACO (the polishes by Ardene's) named Blizzard and Blue Glitter. Blizzard is on top of Deejay and Blue Glitter is over Baby Blue.

Blizzard is on my index, middle and pinky - Blue Glitter is on my accent nail. 

One coat on each.

Blizzard reminds me of the type of glitter found in Deborah Lippman's "Across The Universe". I know it's not an exact dupe of the glitter, it is just reminiscent of it, in my opinion. Also, Blue Glitter was a let-down. As I applied the glitter I noticed that the colour from the glitter pieces seemed to bleed as I swiped the brush across my nail. Highly frustrating. I will try it out again over a white polish to see if it does the same thing. I've never had that happen before, I was slightly shocked.

I should mention as well that I didn't apply a top coat over the glitter polish and probably should have. I hated the texture the glitter gave my nails. It was rather odd. It felt like a combination of chunky glitter and plastic, as if the clear base dried plastic-esque. Strange.

Anyway, although it sounds like I hated this mani, I really didn't. I quite enjoyed it for the 24 hours that it lasted. ;)

Do you own any ACO or Ardene's polishes?

L.A. Girl Glitter Addict Polishes

Lately, I feel as though I keep yammering on about Winners and today is no exception. I also feel as though I keep buying polish even though I specifically said that one of my New Year's resolutions was to spend LESS on polish. Anyways...

While on my crazy "shop at every Winners in a 30 mile radius" nail polish finding spree, I picked up 4 of the L.A. Girl Glitter Addict polishes: Eutopia, Explosion, Nostalgic and Uninhibited. I used 2 coats of Wet'n'Wild Black Crème (on the index, middle and ring) and French White Crème (on my pinky) as the base for each of these glitter polishes.

 From L-R: Eutopia, Nostalgic, Explosion, Uninhibited 

I thought this shot looked neat. *nerdy smile*

I won't lie, I love me some glitter and let me tell you, these delivered. These swatches are one coat of polish over top of the base coat and they applied perfectly. Good glitter distribution with basically zero effort. A quick sweep of polish and voila! 

As far as I can tell, all four of these polishes consist of a regular sized hex glitter and micro-round glitter. 

Eutopia is a beautiful, vivid purple that leans slightly blurple to me. Explosion has a disco ball-like effect on the nails and I think that would be really evident if I had layered it over a metallic silver. Nostalgic is a blue leaning green with micro holographic glitter thrown into the mix and Uninhibited is a black glitter. I did notice that in my bottle of Uninhibited I have a couple teal and red glitters mixed in. There are only a few, but I'm very curious as to how they got in there. Does anyone have this polish and can verify if theirs has them too?

I would say my favourite out of the 4 that I purchased would be Uninhibited because this is my first black glitter polish. What an interesting effect; I will be trying out some different layering combinations with this in the future. The runner-up would be Nostalgic because I like the mix of teal and holographic glitter - lots of dimension and sparkle. Very fun!

Black glitter polish - do you own one?

Layering: OPI Mermaid's Tears & L.A Girls Crowd Surfing

Hey! First off, was anyone besides me having a RIDICULOUS amount of trouble trying to upload photo's to your blog this morning/afternoon? I tried everything to get them to be visible. I started a Flikr account and tried to upload them via URL and then I opened a Picasa account. The latter strategy finally worked but I'm wondering if I'm just stunned or if this is happening to you as well.

Anyway, I was going to post a photo of one of my nail swatch wheels however, because there is no sunshine, it was next-to-impossible to make the photo colour accurate. Never fear - I always have a few manicures saved in my "Nail" file on my computer. ;)

I have only posted one of the new Pirates of the Carribean collection by OPI here (Silver Shatter) so I figured this might be a good time to show you another one that I own. I only purchased 2 from this collection (Mermaid's Tears and Stranger Tides) and received the aforementioned Silver Shatter as a gift from my mother-in-law. Also, I have been playing around with lots of different looks lately: animal prints, comic-inspired nail art, etc. One thing that I really like is layering polishes to create something unique. At first it was just a simple, clear glitter polish, however today I bring you some flakie goodness combined with the beautiful Mermaid's Tears. Enjoy!

2 coats of OPI "Mermaid's Tears"
1 coat of L.A. Girl "Crowd Surfing"

Please ignore the black polish on my middle finger.
I was swatching on my nail wheels... need I say more?

Look at that gorgeous shimmer. *swoon*
Enlarge the photo's to see what I'm talking about.
You won't be disappointed.

My thumb looks really strange here. That isn't even how it's shaped... clearly I'm a pro photographer, riiiight. Anyway, ignoring the strange thumb, look at those flakies! They go from coral to lime green and I am IN LOVE.

My passion is nail polish. My second passion is getting an awesome polish at a fantastic price. This sweet baby (L.A Girl "Crowd Surfing") was mine for only $2.39 on sale. That's right, a flakie polish for under $3 bucks! Even my JOE "Twilight" cost me 4 dollars. Anyway, I apologize for not getting a plain swatch of Mermaid's tears but I hope you'll forgive me considering I have shown you a beautiful flakie polish. :)

Thanks for reading.