Swatch & Review / NotD

   Good day, fellow princesses!  I have a delicate nail look to share today featuring two pretty polishes.  The above photo are my nails modeling 1 coat of Black Cat Lacquer over 2 coats of Essie Vanity Fairest.  I loved wearing this manicure!  Onwards to my reviews!

   I placed my first order with Black Cat Lacquer at the very end of December, and had four pretty polishes show up in January.  I tried a few times to get them swatched, but never did because of the smell.  This was honestly the first time a polish smelled so bad that I couldn't stand to use it.  My bottle of Let Them Eat Cake (and the other 3 colors I bought at the time) goes beyond the usual "smelly polish" scent and heads straight into exterior house paint territory.  I'd know - my day job is selling and tinting paint!  I decided to set them aside until warm weather when I'd try again with open windows.

   It appears that these late-2012 polishes were either made with a different base or perhaps a bad batch of base.  Searching didn't give me any official information other than a few January 2013 reviews and reader comments noting a very strong smell.  A review on one blog said the Spring 2013 colors did not have the awful smell of the previous collection, yay!  In order to attempt to find out the real story I sent Black Cat Lacquer a message asking "Has your polish base changed since last year?"  This is the entire reply I received:

   So, um, not exactly all-conclusive.  I'm hoping the stink is now a non-issue, at least with colors from 2013.  I have added a few more BCL polishes to my wishlist with cautious optimism, though I'm not entirely sure what to do with the ones I already have...

   You see, Let Them Eat Cake is an awesome glitter topper - clear base, pastel hexes in pink, blue, and yellow-green.  A whole lot of cute tiny white glitter and a smattering of holographic bits.  It's pretty, I loved wearing it, but my bottle smells so bad!  I don't know if it is worth keeping in my collection if I can't stand the smell of it.  We shall see.  I didn't have any other issues with the polish; it mixes easily and the formula and application is perfectly fine.  BCL is also 3-free and cruelty free, which is great!

   Above are my nails with 1 coat of Essie Vanity Fairest.  This is a polish I found for $1.00!  I tried looking for swatches but none showed the super-pretty glass fleck shimmer it contains.  It is very hard to capture finishes like this, but I think I have done a decent job.  It shows quite well on my thumb, which is wearing 3 coats:

   I really like this polish!  The formula is great and the sheer finish works with 1, 2, or 3 coats depending on the look you want.  It dries quickly and has a good amount of shine without topcoat.  I'm glad that I happened upon it by chance in June.  =)

   Thanks for reading!  If you have any advice on what to do about the stinky glitter polishes, I'd like to hear it.  Do you own any Black Cat Lacquer polishes?  If so, which one and how does it smell like to you?  If not, they can be found at http://www.BlackCatLacquer.com/.

Swatch & Review / NotD

   My town is currently experiencing a heat wave, with temperatures hitting 90 every day this week.  (In our little arctic suburb, this is a big deal.)  I don't complain about the weather, but I will admit that it has sapped my creativity the past few days!  I come home from work and crash; it's too warm to get up and do things until 8pm when the sun is going down.  So rather than paint my nails last night, I waited and did them this morning.

   I used I♥NP Angel Burp and Essie Sweet Talker.  I looove this easy-on-the-eyes cotton candy combination!  My nails feel so delicate and pretty.  Both of these polishes were untrieds for me, so let me tell you about them~

   Story time!  Essie Sweet Talker is from their 2010 foray into retail sales.  (In fact, it was an exclusive color, so all bottles of Sweet Talker should have a white printed "Essie" on the side, and a sticker with the name on top.)  This color landed on my wishlist right away when I was first getting into polish, and I managed to track down a bottle (along with a bunch of other colors) on eBay.  Then it was put away in a box, where it sat, and sat... and sat.  I have a few Essie polishes I love, but I learned that more often than not I don't like the brand's formula, so I allowed myself to be distracted by other polishes for quite awhile.  I was afraid Sweet Talker would be sheer, pool-y and need at least 3 coats.  Today I'm happy to say that it exceeded my expectations.  I used 2 careful coats, giving it time to dry in between.  It is actually a bit on the thick side - I'll add a bit of polish thinner to my bottle.  The aqua microshimmer in the bottle isn't as visible on the nail, but it doesn't disappear, either.  And I love the pastel blue.  I want a straight-up creme in exactly this color!

   I♥NP Angel Burp is a really pretty glitter in a shimmery clear base.  On my thumb I'm wearing 2 coats, the other nails had 1 coat.  The formula was a bit thick and I did get some teeny bubbles when I was squishing glitter around with my brush - these really only show in pictures.  I topped it off with 1 coat of Poshe and don't have any texture from the glitters; they are thin and lay very flat!

   And what pretty glitters they are.  Satin pink squares and hexes mixed with iridescent squares!  (I'll definitely be combining this with Nyx Girls Dreamy Glitter sometime for a manicure filled with pink pastel shape goodness.)  The iridescent squares shine with a whole rainbow of soft hues, not just the peachy-pink that you see in the bottle!  If you don't already have this glitter and you love it as much as I do, be quick!  This is another discontinued I Love Nail Polish shade, but I saw it is still available at http://www.ilnp.com/ as of today!

   Wow, it's been awhile since I did a haul post!  After my very successful low-buy month of February I continued the trend right through the rest of spring.  Sleeping 90% of the time you aren't working really helps the wallet!  ;P  Alas, I did pick up a few things this month...

   In helping my Mom sell off extra polishes in her collection I ended up with more in mine... funny how that works.  This is what I picked up from her sale:

Left to Right:  Zoya Yasmeen, Caresse, Simone, Jasmine, and Sarah

Left to Right:  Zoya  Posh, Minka, Giselle, Scarlet, and Blossom

   These are some really pretty colors!  I still have several bottles available on my Blog Sale page, check it out if you have any Zoya colors on your wishlist!

   I also snagged a couple clearance Essie nail polishes, a basic red and a sheer french shade that has the prettiest microshimmer in it, which didn't show up in my picture.

Left to Right:  Essie Lollipop and Vanity Fairest

   I spotted this EcoTools brush set at Big Lots for only $4.50!  Considering it isn't discontinued and retails around $13 Online I was very happy with this score.  It is from their collaboration with Alicia Silverstone, who I could really care less about...  What can I say, I'm more interested in the item than the name on it!

   Still, it's a really nice little set.  I've been meaning to get myself an actual powder finishing brush, and this one is perfect!  The eyeshadow brush is something I'll use - I can never have too many brushes for all my powdered shadows.  And it's been a long while since I've had a good lash & brow comb in my collection.


   The cup is of course meant to hold your brushes, but I don't keep my brushes in a cup, and already have a cup at my make-up station.  So, I'll be using it to corral my new nail polish swatch sticks until I get them properly sorted out!  Isn't it cute like that?



   Swatch sticks were my other June investment.  I'm working on organizing my nail collection better, and these are the best way to do it as far as I can tell.  I bought the natural color for opaque colors and clear ones for sheer polishes and glitter toppers.


   Now that I have them I'm loving the "swatchsicles", and once I get more painted and sorted I'd like to do a post about them!  I took way too long in buying some of these!  How do you keep track of your colors?

   So, that was my hauling for June.  I also received a package from Influenster, and you'll be seeing more of those items soon!

   Greetings fellow Princesses!  How has your month of May been?  My husband and I are back from our travels and it has been back to "the real world" for us.  At the beginning of this week my Mom helped me arrange (or pulled me into) a really fun get-together where I was expected attempted to be a good teacher and show some friends how to water marble your nails!  I knew it was going to be fun no matter what, but I was really pleased with how everything turned out!  =)

   First off I spent time before the party practicing my marbling skills.  This was helpful because I needed to feel comfortable, and I was able to test polishes to bring with me to the party.  I tried to make many different styles of marble designs to show what a variety you can get.  Everybody got to look at these beforehand for some inspiration.


   There were six of us altogether, so I set each of us up with a dish of filtered water and the necessary tools.  I talked about the process, then had everyone stand close by as I did my first nail.  That was all it took!  Everyone rushed back to their nail stations and started doing their thing!  These were the results.  (Please keep in mind that these are candid, before-clean-up shots that I snapped in fairly poor indoor lighting!)

Miss Heather's Nails
Colors Used:  China Glaze Four Leaf Clover, Sally Hansen Mint Sorbet, and her own coral from Spoiled
   These colors really pop together!  Heather says she is inspired to let her nails grow longer to do more marbling, but in my opinion this shows how great marbling can look on short nails, too.  Lots of great swirls here!  (One of the highlights of the party was when she forgot to mask off her thumbnail and her whole thumb came out with a beautiful swirly design.  I assured her it happens to everyone eventually!  Water marbling is messy business, and when you get a lot of polish on your hand it's easiest to let the polish dry on your skin, then wash it off with soap and water.)

Grammee's Nails
Colors Used:  China Glaze Aquadelic and Sinful Colors Hazard, with China Glaze Riveting accent nails
   My grandmother is awesome.  Not one of those ladies to go get a boring manicure from a salon, she does her own nails and comes up with great layering combinations.  Now, she water marbles!  (Yes, I have had quite the influence on her.)  Her nails look great and she's definitely getting the hang of it!  I can't wait to see what she tries next.

Michelle's Nails
Colors Used: China Glaze Blue Iguana, 108 Degrees, and Senorita Bonita, also as a solid color
   My friend and fellow polisher Michelle snapped up these sparkly glass-fleck hues that look fantastic together, and especially good on her!  She did the more conservative "marbled nails as accent nails" approach, which left her with more time for clean up afterwards.  I'm inspired to try a manicure like this some time!

Mom's Nails
Colors Used:  Essie French Affair, Bachelorette Bash and Little Brown Dress
   She started off with her own Zoya colors that refused to marble on the water, so I switched her to some of my Essie polishes that would give a similar look.  (The sad truth is that not every polish works for water marbling.)  Fortunately these shades are super easy to marble with and she ended up happy!  I think we could vote her nails as Most Swirly; she went for an every-nail-unique look.

Ruth's Nails
Colors Used:  Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac, Zoya Caitlin and her own Wet 'n Wild dark purple
   Ruth got away before I could take a pre-clean up photo.  Don't let her professional after shot fool you - she had the most polish on her hands!  ;D  But wow, this sure doesn't look like a first time water marble, either - these nails are great!  And rather than fight with marbling her thumbs she painted them solid.

   Everyone did a fantastic job, had a great time, and all agreed that they wanted to keep going after they had ran out of nails to marble.  Success!  It made me really happy to be able to do this with my friends and family.  Oh, I that's right, I did my nails, too.  By the end of the party I only had about 3 nails done on my first hand because I tried to be there to get people more supplies and advice as needed.  This was the result on my right hand:


   I was going for a marbled rainbow gradient, and I'm pleased with the effect, though I think I could have picked some better colors.  The colors, from top to bottom are China Glaze Light As Air, Something Sweet, Peachy Keen, Lemon Fizz, Re-fresh Mint and Bahamian Escape.

   I also want to take a moment to thank my Mom for hosting the party, those who supplied the tasty snacks we had, and everyone who enjoys these awesome nails!  If you haven't tried water marbling yet, do!  If you already know how, host your own party!  =)

Swatch & Review

   L.A. Colors recently added new glitters and cremes to their Color Craze line.  I picked up six of the new glitters, and these are the three I've tried so far.  I've been really happy with them because they are exciting nail polishes at a very low price!  From left to right below they are Candy Sprinkles, Flurry, and Broken Hearted.

Candy Sprinkles


   This polish may look familiar, as it is very dupe-y for Deborah Lippman Candy Shop.  It isn't the first look alike, with Claire's releasing their own Candy Shop polish.  I passed on that one because of the warm-toned pink base.  It is worth noting that Candy Sprinkles looks paler and cooler in the bottle than it is when dry, but I found the color to be wearable.  I don't own the original Candy Shop so I can't make a comparison here, but Internet findings show that DL's blend has a jelly pink base and more concentrated glitter, more of the larger glitters, and additional orange glitter.

   So how do I feel about this rendition?  The creme base is opaque at two coats, and the mix of glitter is very good.  Larger hexes in silver, magenta, green and yellow.  Small pieces of silver, blue and green.  Red glitters are tiniest of all.  Personally I really like it.  They put a lot of blue in, which sets off the pink nicely, and having the smallest glitter in only red makes it stand out.  It's not perfectly balanced but also not an overloaded, muddled mess.  Two coats were smoothed out with regular top coat and wore well.  Removal was surprisingly easy.  And when you can buy it for $1-$2 per bottle, it's not hard for me to choose Candy Sprinkles over either version of Candy Shop.

Flurry

   This is the manicure I'm wearing right now!  My base colors were China Glaze Smoke and Ashes, and Zoya Yummy, which was the closest blue I had to Flurry's bottle color.  I love this polish more than I expected to!  Flurry is packed with both iridescent micro glitter and small hexes.  My pictures can't fully capture all the color shift going on here.  Over black the glitters flash emerald green, lime green, yellow and orange.  Sometimes even teal blue.  Over blue I see aqua green, purple, yellow and faint orange.  My husband said they looked "like space" with all the colors, and I have to agree!

  I used one coat on my index and pinky fingers, two on my middle and ring fingers.  I like it both ways.  The polish has a thick-but-smooth formula that is very easy to apply.  It dries nicely and is completely smooth with top coat.  I think the blue jelly base should be sheer enough to layer over a variety of polishes.  Maybe not the most unique polish but I'd definitely recommend it!

Broken Hearted

   I wore this polish two ways, so you're getting double pictures of everything!  My right hand had a gradient of Essie Licorice over China Glaze Wicked Style, which is the bottle color of Broken Hearted's jelly base.  My camera was having trouble capturing the vibrant pinkness!  I used one coat of Broken Hearted.

   After using Broken Hearted and seeing how vibrant the base was I decided to do my left hand differently.  I used two coats of Broken Hearted both alone and over my black accent nails.  While it does add a nice bit of pinkness I wasn't too fond of the visible nail line, so I freehanded my tips with Wicked Style.


   One coat or two, look at those colors!  This blend of glitters is awesome.  I can't think of any other polishes that mix iridescent shredded bits with small and tiny hexes.  The shreds shine orange to yellow.  The hexes flash an entire rainbow, showing mainly blues and greens.  It is like crushed candy on your nails.  =)


  Application was easy, with a few glitter shreds needing to be poked down into submission.  Top coat smoothed everything out nicely.  I didn't have to fish the glitter out at all, in fact I often was wiping excess back into the bottle!  I'd say black is definitely the base color of choice for this pretty polish, but it can make an interesting French manicure, as well.  (I will note that I had some patchy pink staining on my right hand; the fault of Wicked Style.  My left hand is fine.)  I doubt I'll ever use more than two coats, because I wouldn't want the distinct colors and glitters to get lost.


   I'm very happy with these three polishes, they are definitely keepers!  L.A. Colors 2012 Color Craze polishes are sold in 13ml bottles that you might be able to find in your local dollar store!  Have you spotted these yet?  Which manicure is your favorite?

   I wanted to do some sort of "exciting" nails last weekend, but still keep it easy so I would be able to handle the manicure.  I came up with a glitter manicure that contained literally the most glitter I've ever put on my nails - I was wearing 6 different glitter polishes!!  It looked fantabulous, too.  I was really happy to have winter sunlight streaming through a window, so I went there for my pictures.

   I just love this shade of blue on me, what do you think?  I need to wear more of this, haha.  Anyway, I wanted this type of blue on my nails and lots of silver holographic glitter.  I basically grabbed every polish that fit the description.

   The polishes were layered in this order:

   So last week I finally got to try my treasured Cult Nails Clairvoyant nail polish.  Unicorn Puke, Clairvoyant, call it what you may, it really is a great nail polish.  Mine is the Clairvoyant version bottle from the Super Powers collection.  I actually prefer this as I adore the silver writing on the "regular edition" bottle!  I'm leaving just two pictures out and the rest will be after the jump since they are pretty similar, but I couldn't narrow them down.

   The sun was out really bright when I took these pictures and my camera could barely handle the sparkling rainbow of flake glitter.  It captured the color very well, but it couldn't focus sharply.  Bummer!  These are the colors on my nails:

L.A. Colors Morning Glory, Essie Licorice, Cult Nails Clairvoyant

   First off I have to say that Essie's Licorice surprised me.  In the past I've used it and been fairly "meh" about it's coverage, it took two coats and even then it didn't seen quite perfect.  This time it was a one-coat wonder.  I did apply it carefully, but I don't think my skills have changed that much, so I wonder if it is from using the Orly Bonder basecoat.  Seems to be good stuff.

   Anyway, now I have to give L.A. Colors Morning Glory some love.  This is a color that I picked up on a whim based on the name - after all, it's just another blue-toned purple.  The truth is morning glory flowers are one of my favorites, so when I saw the name I had to buy it (it was cheap!).  But I'm really glad I did because it turns out it's a lovely color.  I chose it for this mani because it seemed to perfectly match the "juice" of Clairvoyant.  When I was painting my nails I almost couldn't cover it with Clairvoyant, though, because it's so deep and shimmery and pretty!  Definitely one I will revisit to wear on it's own.  I will say that it had a slightly runny and watery consistency but I got away with two coats.