Blue Monday: Boy Meets Girl

It's that time of the week. Blue Monday is here again.

I'm trying to get through some of my older mani's and this was one that I really liked. It is very simple, but I think that's what drew me in.

Let's go see.

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Blue: Essence - Walk On Air (2 coats)
Pink: Essence - Ultimate Pink (2 coats)

The pictures above are without topcoat.

Walk On Air is a very saturated medium blue which leans the slightest but purple. Application was simple and effortless. Opacity was perfect at two coats and it dries very shiny.

Ultimate Pink is a pigmented medium pink that is slightly cool toned. I think cool toned colours work well with my skin tone. Again, application was easy and this polish dried very shiny as well.

I have to say, I'm very impressed with my Essence polishes. They regularly retail at $1.49 at Shoppers Drug Mart (in Canada) and this week they were on sale for $1.34 (5ml each). They are mini's but the bottle shape makes it look like they hold more. The brush is full sized and flat which makes application very easy. The handle isn't too small, you really get a good hold of it. As they release new shades, I will be only too happy to pick them up!

Do you participate in Blue Monday? Let me know in the comments, I'll link to your blog in future posts.

- A Polished Touch

Retina's: Who Needs 'Em?

I literally have zero time to post this so it will be very quick, hope you don't mind!

Color Club Wham! Pow! (2 coats)

 

I layered Sparkle and Soar from Color Club's Take Wing collection over top
of Wham! Pow! for some gorgeous shimmer. Then, because I can't leave well
enough alone, I decided to add some - you guessed it - dots.
I love me some dots. <3

For some reason the dots make me think of egg whites and egg yolks, LOL.

Application was good on both polishes, I had no troubles. The only issue
I had was with colour accuracy. My camera gets all freaky if I try to take
pictures indoors of a neon. Hence my outdoor photo.
It was a lot brighter IRL.


Have a great Sunday!

- A Polished Touch

Icing Flakie Polish *drool*

While shopping around for polish a couple weeks ago I went into Icing and found some beauties. 

FLAKIE BEAUTIES! 

Let's go see.

Ouuuu, aaaaah.

Necessary boring picture to show "underwear" sans flakie magic.

Purple base: Icing "Text Me Later" 2 coats

Pink base: Icing "Cherry Blossom" 2 coats

Purple flakie: Icing "Pampered & Primped" 1 coat

Pink flakie: Icing "Rave Royalty" 1 coat

Text Me Later was the difficult one out of the bunch. The brush is messed up in ways I've never seen before. It is curved. The bristles on the sides are fine it's the middle bristles ... they have a curvature. Don't even ask, I have no idea what happened. Believe me, I was frustrated. It made application time consuming and generally tedious. The colour though, perfect. It is somewhat reminisent of an eggplant to me. I like it.

Cherry Blossom is a pretty medium toned shimmering pink. Application was good. Two coats needs for opacity.

Pampered & Primped consists of a lilac jelly base which is very sheer and the flakies remind me of Finger Paints Twisted. All different colours of flakies which is very pretty. Application was okay, I did feel the need to "place" some flakie pieces but it wasn't enough that I would consider it a drawback.

Rave Royalty has a sheer pink jelly base and had a gold, coral, orange (at some angles you see a slight bit of green) flakie thing going on, similar to Finger Paints Flashy. Application was the same as Pampered & Primped.

I'm a huge flakie lover so for me, having my Finger Paints flakie collection plus my two new Icing ones ... I can definitely justify it. Life is better with flakies.

Have a great Saturday!

My Twitter account.

My Pintrest account.

- A Polished Touch

Sally Hansen Deep Purple Gets Dotty

I love my Twitter account! If you haven't followed me (I follow back!) please do. I'm excited to get to know everyone a bit better. :) Pintrest is fun although very addicting. I have to be careful when going on there. LOL.

Sally Hansen "Deep Purple" - 3 coats

Deep Purple is gorgeous. It is a very obvious purple with a very fine shimmer throughout. At some angles you can see blue hiding in around the edges. This isn't visible in the bottle but I noticed it while I was wearing it and you can sort of see what I'm talking about in the first two photo's.

Application was a little thin - I needed 3 coats for opacity - but easy to control. I sway between being a 2-coater and a 3-coater. Three coats just looks sooo good, but at the same time, I'm not always patient enough or there is a lack of time. I resolve to be more patient. Nothing I can do about being in a time crunch. Life happens.

The polka dots ... meeeeeh. I'm very blasé about them. Dotting inside of dots is so cute and I've seen many successful mani's doing this, but my colour choices were poor. I should have used polish rather than my acrylic paints. Ah well. Looking back on the photo's now, I realize I didn't have topcoat on for any of the photo's either, just a general FYI.

Enjoy your Friday!

- A Polished Touch

Revlon: A Polish Fail

I have debated posting this, because I am against polish hate, however I felt that it was my responsibility to warn people.

If you like streaky, uneven application that will not cooperate no matter how many times you try to polish your nails, then this polish belongs in your collection.

No polish has ever caused me as much frustration as this one has. 

Without further introduction, I give you:

 Revlon "Varnished"

 

You'll have to excuse the cuticle mess. This was my SIXTH time applying this polish. It wasn't having anything to do with me at this point. My index finger has 2 coats, the rest have one. I couldn't continue.

It's such a shame. I love the name of the polish and the colour was unique to my collection. *sigh*

Can't win them all, I guess.

 

What polish drives you mad with frustration? Vent below.

- A Polished Touch