Nubar Elegant Indigo/CND Raspberry Sparkle

Hey everyone!! How was your Halloween weekend? I'm scheduling this post, Saturday night I headed up to Edmonton with my boyfriend and some of our friends and we went to a party called Scream, it had Nicky Romero and Hardwell djing and they're fantastic, I'm sure I had a great time! Haha it's weird writing from the past, I'm not sure what tense to use.

This polish I picked up at Winners a long long time ago, but it seemed like it would be a biatch to photograph so I left it for Future me to deal with when I had a better set up. That would be now, so here we are! This is a black polish with glassfleck shimmer that shifts from pink to purple to blue. Super awesome! I'm not really much of one for straight black polish so the colourful shimmer in this one really brightens it up nicely for me. Formula wise this was great, nice and easy to control and only needed two coats for opacity. If you can find this, I'd recommend it!

Pretty neat hey? Anyways I thought that wasn't quite splashy enough so I did a gradient with my CND Effects Raspberry Sparkle. I'm a big fan of the CND effects, especially the sparkle ones. They're like duochrome glassfleck polishes in a sheer base than can be used over a variety of colours. I love them but they are a little hard to find, if you're in Canada they can be found in Chatters and are on sale right now!

In this shot you can see more blue shimmer.

And here you can see the purple/pink shimmer!

What do you think about this shimmer? Do you have any effects type polishes that you like to use?

China Glaze Rainstorm

Hey all! This is going to be a super quick post because I have to go get ready for work (laaaaame)! This is an older polish I picked up in the sale bin at some random salon in West Edmonton Mall a few weeks ago. It looked interesting in the bottle so it came home with me!

Rainstorm is a medium cornflower blue polish with some bright blue microglitter in it! The microglitter doesn't look clumpy or gritty in the polish, it lays smooth and makes it look really interesting. On top of that, there's also a very very subtle violet shimmer, almost a pearl effect. I think it's a super pretty colour! Formula wise, this one was a little odd. It's very sheer and needed 4 coats, and it was thick but runny at the same time. I didn't have much trouble controlling it though. Maybe the formula is weird because it's an older polish? Anyway, here are the pics! All have Nail Tek II basecoat and SV topcoat!

I think it does look like a rainstorm, don't you?

Joe Fresh Mulberry

Hey folks! I'm back with another awesome Joe Fresh! Since I just talked about them Monday, I'll go right into the polish.

Mulberry is a deep, vampy wine colour with amazing gold and what looks like burgundy microglitter/shimmer. Once again, the shimmer almost looks like teeny tiny flakies a la Zoya Neeka, and I loved that so obviously I love this too! This is a FANTASTIC fall/winter polish and I'm super glad I scooped it up! Formula was, it was perfection, I only needed two coats and had hardly any cleanup. I will note that the tiny bottles on Joe Fresh polishes take some getting used to, but after that it's all good. I loved this so much that I ended my swatch session and put it on as a full mani!

Let's see some pictures! All have Nail Tek II basecoat and SV topcoat.

 Can we just take a moment here and look at that bottle? Amazing.

Love love love. Thank you Joe Fresh. If he was a person, I would have to marry him.  

Joe Fresh Twilight

Hi everyone! Happy Monday! I hope you're all having a happy Monday anyway. If not, maybe this beauty will cheer you up. I've posted Joe Fresh polishes before, and I have to say I'm impressed with them! They're very affordable, (3 for $10?! Heck yeah!!) good quality, and the colour range is phenomenal. I don't go to Superstore much, but I always spend some time looking at all the different polishes. This one is pretty awesome because it's a FLAKIE!!! Twilight is one polish I make sure to always slip into swap packages because I think it's just so cool, and it's only available here in Canada.

Twilight has a sheer black jelly base loaded with green to orange colour shifting flakies. It does take three coats to reach opacity, but it's soooo worth it. The flakies flash green most of the time, and it makes the polish look like a gemstone! Then at certain angles, bright orange! Man it's great. I can't believe I waited so long to try this out. Because the base is sheer, it could probably be layered, but I like the depth and flakie payoff of wearing it on its own.

You ready? Yeah, you're ready!
All pics are with Nail Tek II basecoat and SV topcoat.

I'm in love.

Then, because I've heard great things about mattified flakies, I decided to throw on my matte topcoat (also Joe Fresh, hey I love a bargain!) and find out for myself.

I still like it, but I think I prefer the glossy look! I definitely will be trying more matte manicures in the future though. So what do you think? Has this steal of a deal stolen its way into your heart? Find a Canadian friend to get it to you, it's worth it! 

A Few L'Oreals!

Hey everyone! How's it going today? It's my day off and I've spent the day doing errands and then working on the blog, I'm loving the new setup! Swatching is way more fun now :)
These polishes I picked up at WalMart a few weeks back, L'Oreal's newish nail polish line seems to have pretty basic colours but I've heard good things about the quality so I wanted to try them out! And I didn't have anything like these two in my stash so I figured I was filling a niche, right? ;)

First up is Walk on the Beach, which is a sandy nude creme shade just like the name describes. I found it to be a very cool neutral, leaning more to the grey side of things than to a warm orangey/peachy neutral. In the pictures it was giving me some lobster hands but in real life it was much better, and I was playing with my camera's white balance. About the formula, it did not live up to the hype. It might be my brush, but the polish kept having these "scratches" in it from the bristles and it didn't want to level out. I ended up doing three coats to try and smooth it but you can still see the lumpiness in photos. That said, it is a great colour and from a distance, you couldn't tell. It's definitely a great palette cleanser!

Next we have Safari Chic, an awesome army green. In the store and honestly right up until I was swatching this, I thought it was a straight creme as well but there's actually some fine silver shimmer in there! It's very very subtle but I thought it was kinda cool! Formula was a bit better on this one, I really only needed two coats but felt compelled to do three (better safe than sorry right?!) This green seems to have a bit more blue in it than some other khaki greens, I wouldn't say it has brown in it at all. I love that's it's faded, muted, but not "dirty" looking. I'm still undecided about the famous ugly/pretty colours and to me, this is just a pretty colour! My skin is a different colour here because I custom set my white balance, so this is perfect!

There you have it, my picks so far from the L'Oreal line! I bet these colours would look great in a nail art look together, maybe one day I'll get super adventurous and do a tape mani, but don't hold your breath haha! Thanks for looking :)

Zoya Neeka

So this polish I had seen on another blog and I fell in loooooooooooove. The smoky purple base, the teeny tiny gold glitter that almost looks like micro flakies... Just gorgeous. The only problem is that Zoya is very htf in my area, unless you order online. Which for some reason, I kept dragging my feet on doing. But then one lucky day, I saw it up for sale on a blogsale over at Polish Art Addiction and I snapped this pretty up! You're looking at three coats and a coat of SV to really bring out that shimmer!

Isn't she beeeeeeeeeeautiful? Also, this is the first post using my totally ghetto awesome lightbox! It's actually just a hacked up cardboard box that I modded using Chalkboard Nails' tutorial which you can find here. This is going to be a super useful tool to help my swatches look way better and I'm super excited. I also got a copy of Photoshop Elements, I had used Photoshop before but I am no expert at all and could basically only crop and rotate. I like the dummy version way better already! Anyway, I hope you enjoy and see you again real soon :)

Metro Chic...In the City

Hi all!
So this polish is one that I remember being popular when it came out, it is one of those purple/gray colours that is awesome for fall! Every brand seems to have at least one shade like this, and today I have the Sephora by OPI version, Metro Chic.
It's a creme formula, and mine needed about 4 coats to even out and look good! I'm not sure if that's typical for the polish though because mine was bought from someone else and I'm not sure how old it was/if she thinned it, etc. I have an accent of China Glaze CG in the City on my ring finger, it was my first time doing an accent nail and I liked it! The sparkle brightened up the subdued colour of Metro Chic nicely. Now I did about 4 coats of CG in the City its own, it would have taken less I think if I'd layered it over a darker base.

I really like the combo and think I'll probably do it again, maybe as a gradient? CG in the City is a great fall glitter with its purple, silver, and copper and looks awesome with these murky shades. That's all for now, I also built a lightbox tonight so my future pictures will probably be in there, it's too cold for outdoor swatches now that it's been snowing!

China Glaze Ingrid

I wore this a while ago but I've been sitting on it until now because it just wasn't fall-weather enough here for me to post it! China Glaze Ingrid is from the Vintage Vixens collection. I had seen swatches online and was interested in it, and then it turned up in the sales bin of my local Chatters and had to get it! I've been on a crusade to try and make myself more fond of brown (not a colour I normally wear a lot of) and this was a nice starter!

Ingrid is a taupe brown with a gold shimmer, and the shimmer is what really makes me like this polish! The formula was good, I only needed two coats here for opacity.

 sun

shade

Now that fall has set in, I definitely need to get myself a lightbox, Alberta is WAY too cold to swatch outside in fall/winter. Its supposed to snow tomorrow. Gross right?

What do you like about fall polishes? Muted cremes, or rich jewel tone shimmers? I think I like both!