China Glaze Secret Peri-wink-le- February Untrieds

Hey everyone! I'm writing this up on Monday and I am super bagged from the long weekend, I went to a music festival in Edmonton and danced my brains out, it was fun! I don't party very often so it's nice to cut loose every once in a while. I'm ready to sleep for about a day now though haha.

I showed this colour last week as the base for Revlon Heavenly. It's a great light dusty blue with purple undertones. I can't remember how many coats I used, I want to say two. 

Mmmm pretty! I love soft blues like this, probably why I have lots of them! Be sure to check out Amanda and Amanda with their untrieds today!

February Untrieds- China Glaze Bare if You Dare

Hey! So for today's untried I have an older China Glaze polish. I don't know when it's from, I picked it up in a clearance bin from a random salon. At first I was a little afraid I wouldn't like this colour because it looks almost frosty, but I ended up being  happy with it!

Three coats, formula was fine. There was a little bit of VNL left but I was coolwith it.

As you can see it's an orange with an almost frosty shimmer. Or is that pearl? I'm not sure, but I like it! I think it will be a great summer colour with a tan!

Don't forget to check out Amanda and Amanda for their untrieds!

China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint

Hi there! How's everything going today? Watching the Superbowl? I don't really follow sports and I don't have cable, so I spent the day housecleaning and swatching. Yay for lazy Sundays! 

This is a colour I wanted for a long time, I totally have a thing for pastels and ESPECIALLY pastel aqua/mint shades. Mmmmm. I seriously have so many colours in this family and I always catch myself picking up more. 

Re-Fresh Mint was part of the 2011Spring collection Up & Away. I have most of the shades from this collection, they're so great! This is a very pale shade of mint green, with heavy blue undertones. I was afraid it would be close to For Audrey, but it's much, much paler and a little more blue (to my eyes anyway). Formula was a little bit difficult, there was some streakiness on the first coat but I used a thicker second coat and it self levelled pretty well with topcoat.

 
Colours like this make me so excited for spring! Are you ready for spring manis or still rocking the winter shades?

Some Random Swatches!

Hey everyone! I hope your weekend is going well, mine got off to a bad start when I came home to find that my kitten had hurt himself falling and the vet said he broke his pelvis :( He's doing better now, hopefully he will heal up on his own and not need surgery. BUT my weekend is ending on a better note, I'm going to see Zedd tonight! I'm very excited, he's been on my to-see list for quite a while.

On a polish note, I have a few random swatches here and I don't feel like I have enough to say about them for each to get its own post.

Dynamite Blue Symphony- this is a little polish I grabbed in a clothing store I like, I was waiting in line and happened to see a display up by the front. Naturally I caved and grabbed a couple. This is a deep, bright blue shimmer. Not unique but a good shade to have on hand, and formula was good! Two coats.

China Glaze Immortal- A colour from the Halloween collection, Immortal is a grey creme with blue and pink shimmer. I really like it, but as you can see it was a bit patchy at two coats. Next time I'll be sure to do three! Formula was good otherwise, easy to control.

Jessica Platinum Wishes- I LOVE This polish. I've shown it over China Glaze Liquid Leather. It has multicoloured and holo multiglitter in a clear base. The colours look like blue, red, and green predominately, but there are others in there. I haven't seen this polish on blogs and I have no idea why not, it's from the Holiday collection and it's amazing. I have another glitter to show but it's like I forgot how to work my camera when I was photographing and all my pictures were terrible.

That's all for now! I hope you enjoyed.

Dollish Polish Girls Rule Boys Drool

Hey all! I hope you had a fun Christmas if you celebrate, and a successful Boxing Day if you were brave enough to face the malls! I thought about going shopping today, but then decided I would rather read A Storm of Swords. I've been completely sucked into the Song of Fire and Ice books this past bit, so if anyone was wondering where I was... yeah, stuck between the pages of a book haha. BUT I remembered myself, and here I am.
Today I have a very pretty indie for you, and a rare one at that. I don't have many indies at all, but when I heard about this one I thought it sounded pretty cool. It's one of only 300 bottles, and to be given the opportunity to get it you had to fill out a form and have your name drawn. Kind of like a giveaway, but you still had to pay. haha!! Anyway I never expected to get to buy it because I never win anything, but I did! Yay!
Girls Rule Boys Drool is a very girly mix of tiny pink and purple matte glitters. This is also the first matte glitter I own, and I really like it. Here I wore one coat over two (or three? can't remember) coats of China Glaze Something Sweet to really amp up the girlieness. I also think it would look great over periwinkle, or white/cream, and obviously black.

There you have it! What do you think of this girly glitter? Would you wear it, or is it too much?

Whimsical Seas

Hey everyone! So this is a combo I have seen before, but I really wanted to try it out for myself. China Glaze Sea Spray is an awesome grayed out light blue, a very pale shade but a little too dusty to be a true pastel. It's not quite a shimmer but it has a little bit of a pearl to it. I really love it. Revlon Whimsical is a light blueish very sheer base with pink and blue hexes and tiny bright blue microglitter. The polish is too sheer to every reach opacity on it's own, so a base is definitely necessary. I think it would look good over other colours too but Sea Spray is the one closest to its base. Whimsical is also a Deborah Lippmann dupe of Glitter in the Air, so that's a bonus!

That's all for today! What do you think of the combo? Not exactly winter appropriate, but I think it's cute!

Butterscotch Glitter Clouds

Hey everyone! For this mani I decided to try out the cloud design. I've seen it lots before and think it's super cute. Unfortunately I don't think the colours I chose were the best because it's hard to tell them apart, but I still think it was an interesting look. For this one I started with China Glaze Desert Sun, an interesting burnt orange/caramel colour. I'm not 100% convinced about this colour on my skintone, I think it's a little into lobster hands territory on me. BUT it also looks like I have Werther's caramels on my nails. Mmmmmmm *Homer Simpson drool*. So then I did the clouds first with I Herd That, a glitter that closely corresponds with Desert Sun. I added another cloud over the first with I'm Not Lion, a lighter glitter from the same collection. Overall it's really hard to see the distinction in the two glitters, but you can tell there's a difference so that's good for me!

Overall I think it was a cool variation on glitter tip manicures and next time I want to try out the design with some pastels or brights! Anywway that's all for me today, hope you enjoyed!

China Glaze 2NITE

Happy Tuesday everyone!
I'm not sure why Tuesday would be particularly happy except, maybe, for this polish of WIN I am about to show you!

When I first heard of the China Glaze OMG collection, I looked at swatches, I drooled, and I pined knowing these polishes would probably never be mine. I looked on eBay and thought wow, these are definitely never going to be mine!!

But, as you can guess from the title of this post, I would eventually own at least one. I was wandering one of the two small malls in my town, and noticed a nail shop in one with some polishes in the window. The store is across from the video game store my bf likes to browse, so I had lots of time to window shop. I noticed some silver capped China Glazes. I started to get hopeful. Silver cap = good. I went into the shop and asked if the polishes in the window were for sale. Yes they are!! So I asked to look at the silver capped polishes and SCORE!! 2NITE and LOL! I bought them both and took off with a huge smile! Then a few weeks later, I went back because they had some other awesome older polishes, and noticed yet another silver cap I had missed the first time. Well, TMI is now mine as well! This nail salon has another location and I need to get my buns over there to see if they have any more of this collection!

Anyway enough blabbering, here is the money!

In diffuse light, a beautiful cornflower blue with what looks like ordinary silver shimmer.

And then in most light, rainbows of awesomeness!! I could see rainbows seriously 90% of the time on my nails, even in low light.

Do you own any of this coveted collection? Did you luck into them dusty hunting or find them online or in a swap? I'm excited for the 2013 collection of holographics but I'm very excited to own these as well!

Lazy 15- Tape Mani

Hi Everyone!
I saw this nail art challenge on the Polish Enthusiast's blog and thought.... I'm lazy, this might work for me! haha. So there are 15 different prompts in this challenge, most of which are things I've wanted to try for a while! The first is a tape mani.

I used Ruby Pumps (man I am burning through these untrieds!) as my base, 2 coats. Then I taped off the triangles with regular scotch tape and added China Glaze Liquid Leather, my go to black polish. Once it was on, I peeled the tape off before the polish dried and voila, triangles! My lines aren't as neat as they could be, but for my first time I'm pretty happy with it!

What do you think about tape manis? I think they're an easy way to get a look that makes people think you did a lot more work than you actually did ;) Next I need to get my hands on some striping tape and try that out!

China Glaze For Audrey

Hello!!

This is a polish I wanted for a long time until the lovely Arlyn gifted it to me in the Secret Goblin swap a bunch of us did a while back. This is a great colour and I'm super happy to have it, a classic Tiffany blue creme.

Formula wise, this one was a little challenging. It wanted to run off the brush in big blobs and I was tired and let it get away onto my nails! Noooooo! I needed three coats to even it out, but I think next time if I polish more carefully I'll be able to get away with two. 

Then since I've been seeing lots of posts about RBL's Bring it Back event happening soon, and am trying to convince myself that I don't need to buy any more polishes at this point, I tried to imitate Aqua Lily by adding Amethyst Sparkle on top of For Audrey. It's certainly no dupe but it's good enough for me! I really love the CND effects, they're so versatile.

What do you think of this colour? You probably have it by now, it's a great shade! Hopefully soon my nails will be back in good condition, they haven't broken in a while so I hope they keep improving!

China Glaze Dorothy Who?

Hey all!
This polish is awesome because it came to me in a Secret Goblin swap I did with a few other girls for Halloween! It was started by the lovely Amanda of The Nail Polish Enthusiast and my Secret Goblin was Arlyn, she is a total sweetie and you may have seen her on twitter! @Arlyn531
She did a fantastic job and I love everything she got me, my gift included China Glaze Dorothy Who, Ruby Pumps, and For Audrey, as well as Revlon Naughty and some cute extras!

So I decided to get right into my gift and today I'm showing you Dorothy Who, a bright blue jelly base packed with silver microglitter. It does go on sheer, so you'll have to build it up to avoid VNL. I have three coats and you can still see a little bit. The formula was good, not too hard to control, and I didn't notice any staining when I took it off!

There you have it! Pretty hey? I think it'll be great in the summer but the glitter makes it work for winter too!

My nails and cuticles have been giving me some trouble lately, the corners kept breaking off my nails so I've rounded them a bit and am taking lots of Biotin and Omega 3 supplements so hopefully they toughen up soon, and I have some wounds on my cuticles I tried my best to photoshop out! Ouch!

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?

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!

China Glaze Ahoy!

Hi everyone!
Today I have a summery polish for you. Yes, yes I know its fall but I'm not ready to say goodbye to summer yet! Plus the weather here is holding up nicely so it's easy to pretend I still have a little bit of summer left.
Ahoy! is from Anchors Away, the spring 2011 collection. It's a bright, hot pink with gold glass fleck shimmer. I love it, it looks very juicy to me. It dries pretty fast and shiny too!
I did two coats here with a coat of SV.

sun

shade

Just a short one today, what do you think of this colour? I didn't always like pinks very much but I'm really starting to enjoy them now!

Flakie Goodness!!

Hello!! Sorry for the mini disappearance, I really wanted to post but things got in the way. This mani was one I wore last week, but I loved it too much not to share! For this I used China Glaze First Mate, an awesome navy creme. I really liked the formula and found that if I used a thicker coat, it's pretty much a one coater! Then I used HITS Twist, a flakie with blue-green colour shift and a royal blue jelly base. This mani was really fun for me, it made me think of the ocean!
As you can (unfortunately) see in the second picture, cleanup can be a be a little difficult with deep shades like this so be more careful than I was lol! I really like how in the second picture you can see the green flakies on my pinkie and then they look blue on my other fingers.
The first picture is in sun, second inside in natural light!
That's all for now and I have more posts coming, I had an awesome kijiji purchase this week. Broke my no buy, but... Mad As A Hatter is mine!! Anyway thanks for reading, and more to come!

China Glaze Dance Baby

Hello! So I don't think I've mentioned this here yet, but I am doing a no-buy July! Luckily my blog is new enough that almost all of my polishes are unswatched so I have lots to tide me over. I'm still finding it difficult not to buy any more though. And to make it extra challenging, I'm trying not to buy ANYTHING this month except for bare essentials like gas and food. Yikes. But it's for a good reason, and hopefully I will be able to share that with you all soon!
Today's nail polish is Dance Baby from the spring China Glaze collection. I got quite a few from the collection, and like the others I've tried, the formula on this was a little thick for my taste. It seems to work best in two thickish coats. Normally I prefer to do thinner coats but it's just not happening with these ones! No worries though, the polish was still easy to control. I would describe the colour as very girlie, almost Barbie-like. It makes me think of candy and princesses and all that jazz. It's a blue-based bubblegum pink and dries slightly darker than bottle colour.

 As you can see, I flipped this picture. My bottle isn't actually backwards! But that would be pretty cool if it was, right?

Jelly Sandwich with Revlon Royal

Hi there! I hope you all had a great weekend, I really didn't do too much. It's hard to find stuff to do that doesn't involve food or drinking, I'm 15 weeks away from my competition so that means I need to be strict. So I stayed at home with my boyfriend watching movies and painting my nails, of course.  This time I did something a little bit different for me. I bought Revlon Royal a while ago because of the hype it gets on blogs, and I have to say I can see why! The colour is bright and intense and doesn't look black in low lights or inside. And the jelly finish is awesome on its own or as a sandwich. For this look I used two coats of Revlon, then a coat of Revlon Stunning, then another coat of Royal. Stunning is silver and holographic microglitter with small silver hexes. The third coat of Royal covered the holo-ness of the glitter more than I wanted, so I added China Glaze Fairy Dust sparingly over the top. The only negative thing about the polishes was that Royal wanted to run up into my cuticles, it was a little hard to control. 

The weather here is gross again, I ran out and took these pictures in the only 5 minutes of sun we've had in the last two days. Stupid Alberta weather. Excuse the tipwear too, work isn't kind to my nails.

 Blurred to show the pretty sparkle!

China Glaze Custom Kicks

I've been painting my nails like crazy lately! I bought this colour quite a while ago and it's been sitting neglected and forlorn in my untrieds bin. I finally put it on and I was like "Whoa, why have I been ignoring you all this time?!" This colour is awesome. Bright blue-green, with a very hidden golden shimmer. It shows up on the bottle but not much on the nail, and not with my crappy old camera haha. I would almost count this as a creme because unless you're peering at your nails you aren't going to see much shimmer. This colour is from the Kicks collection China Glaze put out way back in 2009. That's pretty old. Formula wise I recall this being decent. I doubled up on base coat because I was afraid of staining and when I took it off, I didn't have any. So that's good. I think I used three coats because that's just how I roll. Trying to take a picture of this polish was a real pain (you like my alliteration??) my camera did not want to focus to save its life. Kind of like me right now, but I'm writing this post very late at night because I couldn't sleep. :( Anyway, on to the good stuff. 

The first one is indoors at night with (badly aimed) flash, the second two are outdoors in the sun. If you look really closely you can kind of see the shimmer where the sun hits my nails. And also a random piece of lint or something attached to my ring finger in the bottom picture :S

Knotty

First of all, happy Memorial Day  to any American readers! I hope you had a good long weekend and observed the holiday in some way.
Knotty is from the Anchors Away collection for Spring 2011. Right now I have this color and Ahoy! but I think I'll be placing an order for quite a few of the others.
Knotty is pretty unique, it's a glass-flecked nude polish. The silvery shimmer is very fine and gives the nude color a really cool glow factor.  It would be great as a work-safe colour with a little something extra! At the first coat I wasn't sure if I liked the polish, but I think it grew on me. I'm not sure if it really goes with my skin tone or not, but the polish itself is pretty. Formula wise it was quite good, sheer at first but I liked how it built up after three coats. I'm a habitual three-coater anyway, the thought of one-coaters weirds me out a bit! Pictures are three coats plus SV.
The first two pictures are in sun, and the last in shade. The shimmer looks crazy in the shade!