Tuesday, May 28, 2013

Hard Candy swatches

Good evening!

I have for you tonight more swatches from my recent purchases. As you may ore may know, the Walmart brand, Hard Candy, revamped quite a bit of their line in the last few months, including the nail polish line. My Walmart finally had the entire collection available instore for me to look at early last month.

I must say, all the colors and glitters were pretty :) I could have taken alot of them home but settled on two of them, Bity Blue and Mermaid Magic. 

Bity Blue is a gorgeous, electric blue base loaded with what I think are glass flecks. I reminds me a little of OPI's Be a Dahlia Won't You?, with as sparkly as it is. I know it's not glitter, or a foil, or a shimmer. I love it, whatever it is lol.




There is no hint of another color in this polish; it is blue!! This swatch was done with 3 coats, no topcoat.

The other I bought, Mermaid Magic, is a glitter. It's packed with small, teal green glitters and larger purple glitter, both hex in shape. It covers very well in two coats on its own.






Mermaid Magic also looks nice layered over 2 coats of Bity Blue :)






All in all, I don't have any complaints about Hard Candy. They're cruelty free, which is a plus in my book, and they're relatively inexpensive, another plus :)

Monday, May 27, 2013

Something patriotic

Good evening and happy Memorial Day!

Tonight, I have a little something patriotic that I slapped on late last night for today. I didn't have any plans to go anywhere or do anything, but I still wanted to show my patriotism :)

I have, in my stash, all three red, white, and blue textured glitters- Zoya Chyna and Liberty, and OPI's Solitaire. So onto my nails they went, at 3 coats apiece, no base coat, no nothing. Suprisingly, they held up pretty well, even through my shower, with hardly any chips or tip wear. I may have to go this route the next time I wear a Pixie Dust or Liquid Sand......







Sunday, May 26, 2013

Stamping Sunday!

Good evening! I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend :)

So, today is Stamping Sunday, and today's theme was called "inspired by your new summer dress, swimsuit, or shoes". It just happened that I bought a new dress a week and a half ago for my parents' 35th anniversary vow renewal next. Here's a pic of it:


Let me just say, I love this dress :) This isn't my photo, since my dress is at my grandmother's getting altered, this is the stock photo from where I ordered it.

I started with a base of 2 coats of OPI's My Boyfriend Scales Walls topped with Seche. MBSW is my fave white, since it's a "cold" white as opposed to a stark white. Then, I stamped, one at a time, with Sinful Colors Exotic Green, Maybelline Colorshow's Flash of Purple, Sally Hansen InstaDri's Co-Balt Blue, and Wet 'N Wild's Black Creme, using my Apipila P.2 plate. I topped it all off with another coat of Seche.

I know I didn't get the pattern exactly, but I think it looks close, and not too bad.







Saturday, May 25, 2013

A few Indie swatches......

Good evening!

Ok, so I FINALLY, finally finished swatching my recent acquisitions lol. I know I've devoted a post to what I'm about to show you, individually, but I'm gonna put them together here. Tonight is the three Indies I've bought/received as a gift :) Two are matte glitters, one is a holo.

First up is the holo. Dark Emerald is from up and coming Indie seller Aly's Dream Polish, from the Holographic Euphoria collection. This collection had literally dozens of different colors. Most of them had a pretty strong holo effect; Dark Emerald's is a little more subtle, but the color is gorgeous. I only need two coats for opacity.






Now, the two matte glitters are from two different sellers. Pink Lemonade is from Amy's Nail Boutique, and Sand Art is from Pretty & Polished. I love them both. I layered one coat of Pink Lemonade over 2 coats of China Glaze's Sunshine Pop. PL is a mixture of matte pink and yellow, tiny hex glitters, suspended in a clear base.

Sand Art is a mix pink, lime green, bright blue, darker blue, and red violet matte glitters in a clear base. I layered 2 coats of Sand Art over 2 coats of Zoya Robyn for this swatch.










One tip: You will want to either use Gelous before you top coat over PL, or double up on your preferred topcoat. Sand Art isn't as rough when its topped, I've found, but I think it could have benefitted from a coat of Gelous.

Friday, May 24, 2013

A new jelly sammich!

Good evening! I hope everyone has a fun filled weekend ahead of them :) I don't have anything planned for it, but that just means anything could happen!

Tonight I want to show you a new jelly color I picked up last week. This summer, L'Oreal has released a collection of jellies, called the Miss Candy Collection. While I want just about all the colors in the collection, since they're not pink or orange, I only got Miss Pixie.

Miss Pixie is a gorgeous royal blue jelly. I actually like it much better than OPI's Dating a Royal, which is more jelly like instead of a true jelly. The biggest drawback to Miss Pixie is the STINK! Omg, does this stink. Not like Klean Color or Nabi, more like a black label OPI or my China Glaze Frostbite x.x

To make my jelly sammy, I laid down one coat of Miss Pixie first, than two coats OPI's Servin' up Sparkle, followed by another coat of Miss Pixie then Seche. It rather reminded me of what OPI's Got Your Number looks like in the bottle, or even a darker version of Last Friday Night, lol.








I've seen these mostly at Walgreens, but I'm sure they're also available at CVS and maybe Walmart. The price point isn't bad, $5.99 a bottle :)

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Orange creamsicle

Good evening!

Tonight I want to show you one of my newer Zoyas, Pixie Dust Beatrix :) I can't say enough how much I love this soft, tangerine orange. It's summery without being loud and in your face.

This particular Pixie Dust is more foil like than the previous collection were. You can see the gold in it quite well. For my mani, I applied 2 coats for opacity. It did take a long time for it to dry though =\ Also, to prevent chips while showering, I wore gloves.







Tuesday, May 21, 2013

A mani to match my new purse........lol

Good evening!

So, about a week and half ago, I was at Macy's to buy Clinique's makeup remover (which is freakin' awesome, btw!), and went to browse the handbags. Bad move, lol; I could have taken them all home xD Anyways, in the clearance bin, I found these gorgeous, neon colored clutches, which really surprised me. Long story short, I got a coupon and went bag for the clutch; I ended up with neon pink.

And it's decent size!! This new clutch is bigger than the mint one I got at Target O.o Unreal. 

Turns out, I have a color to match the neon pink clutch, China Glaze's Pink Voltage. The bag has a textured feel to it, so I decided to sponge the pink over China Glaze's Lightning Bolt, like I did last week, just the pink though. I really like how this came out. It's a little hard to tell in my pics, but in most lights, it actually looks like I have two colors, not one, sponged on. What it is, is the blue flash that Pink Voltage has over the areas that don't have the Crackle. It looked cool :)








And for fun, I added two pics of my new clutch. One is without a flash, the other is with a flash.






:)

Monday, May 20, 2013

Dupes.....

Good afternoon!

Today I want to show you some yellows I have that are close to dupes, or are just very similar. They be: Sinful Colors Let's Meet and Firefly, and China Glaze Sunshine Pop.


As you can see, the middle one, Firefly, appears to be the one that's the most different. To clarify, they are all a golden yellow shimmer, all three required 4 coats for no streaks and opacity (and even then...... they're tricky).

Let's take a look at them on the nail.





Ok, now we can see the differences! Let's Meet is the darkest, and has a golden fiery shimmer to it. Firefly is the middle of the three, with a silvery shimmer to it. Sunshine Pop is the lightest, with a shimmer/frost like finish. Of the three, Sunshine Pop is the best, in my opinion, and can be done in three coats with proper application. It is also my opinion, that you don't need all three, unless you absolutely can not live without ALLLLLLL the yellows!

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Stamping Sunday!!

Good evening!

I have for you tonight today's Stamping Sunday challenge, which was themed over a Skittles base. A Skittles mani is, simply, 5 different colored polishes, not to be confused with an ombre which is graduated shades of a certain color.

My mani started with 5 Zoya foils- Kerry, Amy, Zuzu, Rory, and Carly, at two coats each topped with Seche. This gave me the perfect opportunity to try out one of my new plates, Vivid Lacquer 009. I bought this plate for one image in particular; the one that creates a "spotted" effect that everyone was crazy for late last year. I love how I have the option to use any color to create this effect, instead of being limited to the black spotted polish. I did use black this time, Wet 'N Wild's Black Creme, topped with Seche again.

I absolutely love how this looks, I can see myself using this particular again in the near future.









Saturday, May 18, 2013

Another inspired mani........

Good evening!

Tonight I'm gonna show you yesterday's inspired mani :) As most you know, I love love love Shatters/Crackles, but lately, mine haven't been getting much love. It's not that I'm over them....... I've just gotten distracted from them with other polishes. One of the blogs I follow showed me a new way to wear at least one of them. 

This post from Abnorm Nails was my inspiration. I happen to own both OPI's White Shatter and China Glaze's Lightning Bolt. For this mani, I used the China Glaze over my normal base, like I would polish, then topped it with Seche so it would be dry for the sponging. I don't have all the colors that she used in hers, so I used different colors for mine. Top to bottom they were: Salon Perfect nail art color in Orange Flame (which is a right bitch to take off), Color Club's All That Razz and Disco Dress. I did have to go over it about 3 times, since they are neons, but overall I'm happy with how it turned out. I may have to try this again with different colors :)







Thursday, May 16, 2013

Foil gradient

Good morning!

I totally meant to post yesterday's mani last night, but I got caught in a couple of my shows and completely spaced it ._. But, at least I'm doing it now!

Yesterday's mani was inspired by this blog post from Zoya, featuring Chalkboard Nail's mani using three of Zoya's Irrestible colors. I loved it so much that I had to attempt it myself. Mine didn't come out nearly as nice as Chalkboard's did, but I don't think it's too shabby :) I used the same colors as she did, topped with Seche. I do recommend covering your skin around the nails with either tape or Elmer's or something, to make clean up a breeze.







Tuesday, May 14, 2013

A few China Glaze swatches

Good evening!

So, I've finally finished retaking swatch pics that needed redoing. Most of them were glitters, and let me tell you, I officially hate photographing glitters.  More often than not, the pics come out blurry -.- Thankfully, I think I've figured out how to prevent horrible blurring.

Tonight, I'm gonna show you the few China Glaze's I had to swatch. I haven't bought any since their whole debacle with Vampy Varnish and one other blogger, and not crediting them and what not. These I've had a while. Up for consideration are Ruby Pumps, Dandy Lynin' Around, and Red Satin.














Ruby Pumps is a gorgeous, red jelly base packed with fine red glitter. Took me three coats for evenness and opacity. Dandy Lyin' Around is what I call my cream cheese frosting color with a shimmer. It's also got that wet, dewy look to it. Sadly, this swatch took me 4 coats for complete opacity and no streaks O.o So worth it, in my opinion. Red Satin is red crelly, similiar to Winter Berry. Three coats for opacity for this swatch.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

So not a Stamping Sunday....

Good evening! 

What a busy weekend :) Not only did I just not have time to put together a mani for today's Stamping Sunday theme, I really couldn't think of, or find enough images for it =\

The theme today was, actually, not the one I voted, but was gonna try to do anyways. It was supposed to be inspired by your favorite fairytale. Now, my favorite fairytale is Disney's Beauty and the Beast...... and I could not find enough images for a mani. It was frustrating.

So, in lieu of that, I'm gonna show you some swatches. They're all Color Clubs, and they're from last year's Winter Affair collection. Mine are the minies that are scented. I only bought them, really, just to stamp with (which the three foil do nicely), and the flakie isn't really unique. Here are Berry & Bright, Ho-ho-Holly, Gift of Sparkle, and Snow-flakes over Gift of Sparkle. All are 2 coats, including the flakie.