Hair Care - Video / Review

   Hello Princesses!  I was sent two complimentary Goody hair products in my Violet VoxBox to test & review.  This is how they are both fitting into my hair care routine, and I've made a video that gives a closer look at the QuikStyle hair brush.

  I have an every-other-day hair washing schedule.  On the days I don't wash my hair, I get to use the headband.

   If you've been reading my blog since February you may recognize these two prizes.  When the original giveaway ended Rafflecopter chose non-responding entry after non-responding entry.  Being newly pregnant I didn't have the time to keep trying different entries right then, and before I knew it HelloCotton had shut down, making several entries void.  I could no longer see sifting through those old entries.  It pains me to have not been able to complete the original giveaway, but I feel this is the best way to find winners for these prizes.  This giveaway is shorter-running, and I added extra entries for anyone who participated in the first giveaway.

Here is the original giveaway post.

The Prizes:

   Heart-shaped Pastel Rainbow Necklace - This has a soft rainbow sparkle as well as being painted in rainbow stripes!

    Flower-shape Hawaiian Dream Necklace - This is full of shimmer and glitter held a fun flower pendant, very unique!

The Rules:

   You should either be 18 years of age or older, or have the consent of your parents/guardians to enter.

   All entries are recorded using the Rafflecopter widget below, and falsified entries will be removed.

   The selected winner will be notified by E-mail and have 24 hours to respond before another winner will be chosen.

   Any questions or clarification needed, let me know!

   Surprise~!  Two of the items from my haul post were actually giveaway goodies!  These pretty necklaces from Sweet Tips Nails on etsy are going to find new homes with my readers!  What better way to celebrate a new blog domain name than with a giveaway that everyone can enter?  =)

The Prizes:

   Heart-shaped Pastel Rainbow Necklace - This has a soft rainbow sparkle as well as being painted in rainbow stripes!

   Flower-shape Hawaiian Dream Necklace - This is full of shimmer and glitter held a fun flower pendant, very unique!

   Both of these necklaces are ready for spring and summer!  I was going to start the mini giveaways this month, but I thought a nail polish jewelry prize would be much more exciting.  Rather than limit the giveaway to one prize being domestic and another International, these are both available to anyone, anywhere.  Which one will you choose?

The Rules:

   This giveaway is open to all my followers, new and old!  International followers are welcome but please be aware that I'm not responsible for missing or damaged packages.

   You should either be 18 years of age or older, or have the consent of your parents/guardians to enter.

   All entries are recorded using the Rafflecopter widget below, and falsified entries will be removed.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

   Or, why it's going to be easy not to buy any polish during February.  (So long as China Glaze doesn't release their new holographic polishes in the US.)

   I ended up with over 35 new (or new-to-me) polishes this month, the above photo is missing a few because they are either on loan or scattered through my house.  January was a good month for polish because all my end-of-the-year sale purchases arrived along with a few sakes that took place right at the beginning of January.

   I snagged some Black Cat Lacquer polishes from my wishlist, they are: I Want Candy, Let Them Eat Cake, Put a Bird On It, and Women & Women First.  These came from etsy.  These are all so, so pretty!

   I had a most wonderful package of Different Dimension nail polish arrive.  Mostly colors that I've helped name, but a few other pretties to swatch and review, too!  I've gotten to try most of these already, and their posts are up on the blog.  The polishes shown above are: Honesty Feels A Lot Like Mean, Orbital, Vervain, Aorta Miss You But I Don't, All Red-y In Love, A Love Hue, and Love Her? I Don't Even Lacquer!  Not pictured because it is on loan to my Mom: Yours, Mine, and Flowers.  You can find these polishes on etsy.

      I picked up a couple discontinued polishes from Laquerlicious, Invitation Only and Mint N Chip Frappe.  Along with those I was sent three minis to review, Melted Ice Cream, Rainbow Sugar, and Tart Taffy.  Go check out those swatches!  These also came from etsy!

   Lush Lacquer had a sale, so I picked up my first polishes from them.  The colors I picked are Glitter Girls, Mr. Bubble, Oopsie Daisy, Pebbles, Pink Panther and Slumber Party.  These are all so cute!  Visit the Lush Lacquer shop on etsy.

   I snagged a couple OPI polishes from my wishlist, My Boyfriend Scales Walls and Don't Touch My Tutu!

   When Zoya had their promo for three polishes my husband got me a few cremes from my wishlist: Breezi, Jolene and Wednesday.

   These polishes were partly from a trade and given to me.  Pure Ice Material Girl, Milani Hot Pink, China Glaze Peachy Keen and Luna, KBShimmer Oh Splat!

   And nail polish in another form - jewelry!  Sweet Tips Nails had an amazing sale, so I picked up some necklaces and other accessories.  These are really cute!  The shipping prices are really good, too.  And yes, these came from etsy, too!

   So, a pretty good haul, I'd say!  A lot of polish to keep me busy this month and a lot of it from indie sellers.  The plan this month is to be good and not buy much.  ;P

Review

   What are these funny little colorful things?  Camera lenses!  Miniature temporary lenses for your cell phone that simply stick on, remove easily and can be reused.  I've been enjoying Instagram more but have been frustrated by my cell phone's focus limits.  I picked them up because I wanted a macro lens for my smart phone, and these were one of the cheaper options.  So what do I think of them?  How well do they work?  I'll tell you!

   The concept is very simple - each lens or filter has a sticky ring that will fit around your cell phone's lens.  When it isn't in place on your phone it has a round plastic disc cap to place on it.  Each package includes a color-matched leash for attaching to your phone, but I have already removed most of these for my pictures. I would not suggest using the straps as they only wanted to get in the way for me, and the sticky jelly rings will get dirty if they are dangling about.  I store mine strapless in a little tin:


   To help you understand just how these work and stock to your phone, here are two lenses with and without their caps.  Straps have been removed but I left them in the background.

   There are 14 lenses (or 12 sets, 2 packages include 2 instead of 1) that you can find in this style, and as I have not had the opportunity to take pictures with each one of them that I would actually keep, I'm snagging this collage right from the Jelly Lens website with their own examples of the photo effects.

   If you browse their Online store each you can click to see a tiny image off what each lens does on it's shop page.  Let's take a look at my group shot one more time I'm I'll list my filters from left to right, pointing them out by color.

Top Row:

Lime Green, Wide Angle Lens - this lens will let your camera lens "see more", or give a fisheye effect for up close shots.  Quite nice and two useful effects in one!

Red, Stretch Lens - by placing the lens vertically or horizontally you can essentially make something (someone) look skinnier or fatter.  I'd like to try this for landscape shots, but morphing people doesn't appeal to me.

Light Blue, 6 Image Mirage - a fun kaleidoscope effect.  Not very practical but fun to try!

Light Pink, 3 Image Mirage  - splits the picture in a triple kaleidoscope effect.

Lighter Pink, Heart Frame - makes a red border around your subject that looks more like a triangle than a heart.  This lens comes with the one directly below in my photo, the:

Pale Green, "Blue Filter"/Green Filter -  It is green and does just that.  Make photos green.

Bright Blue, Star Filter -  this one makes a blurry blue star frame around your subject, and is packed with the filter directly below in my picture, the:

Yellow-orange, Sepia Filter - This is more yellow than any sepia I've ever seen, but it does work as a filter.

Middle-Left Row:

Dark Blue, Polarizing Lens - like having your camera wear sunglasses, this cuts glare.  I'm excited to try it for sky pictures!
Orange, Macro Lens - this lets you get super close, in fact you need to be for it to focus at all!
Bottom Row:

Pale Yellow, Soft Lens - puts a central circle in focus and everything around is blurred.

Lavender, Starburst - puts a central circle in focus and creates radiating lines from there, gives an effect of movement.

Aqua, Vignette - central focus area, but the blurred edges are more of a choppy motion blur.

Grey, Spark - This lens has criss-crossing lines to create Xs at points of light and soft focus, potentially a very pretty effect.

   It is worth nothing that all of these lenses will obliterate your flash.  Using flash with these doesn't work.  You will also see the edges of the lens on the outer corners of your pictures.  This isn't an issue for me as I mainly wanted these for Instagram use, and you always crop photos to square for that.  They are also a joke to stick onto my full-size camera, as they are way too small.

   Let me say that all of the lenses work, but I don't think they are all practical.  The mirage lenses are fun, but this isn't an effect I'll reach for often.  The central-focus lenses work nicely but I'm more likely to add border and vignetting effects in during a photo edit.  And the color filter lenses do work but I'd much rather take a color photo and recolor it afterward.  Some of these lenses can be replicated by a digital camera's built-in settings and options, or done by a photo editing app.

   The winners in this collection for me are the Wide Angle/Fisheye, Macro, Polarizer and Spark effect lenses.  Here are a couple of my favorite shots using these that have made it to Instagram so far:

Used the Macro Lens - close up of glitter nail polish.

Used the Spark Lens - more glitter nail polish!

   These lenses are just basic plastic pieces but they work surprisingly well.  As for their stickiness, they can be washed in mild soapy water to revive their sticky rings.  I have to use one hand to hold the lens in place on my phone because I use the original HTC Incredible, and it has a larger camera that protrudes slightly.  My phone isn't very sticky-ring friendly.  I'll always need two hands for taking pictures with these lenses, but it is more reassuring for me to keep my chosen lens between two fingers when I don't have a strap on it.  In contrast all the lenses stick firmly to my husband's Sony phone that has a smaller camera, no issue for him!

   These retail in most Online shops for about $5-$7 per lens, but I didn't go that route to buy my set...  The cheapest way I found to buy these was as a complete set on eBay.  If you're comfortable buying that way that is what I recommend.

   In conclusion I am happy with these lenses but now I know that I didn't need to whole set.  Yes I would recommend them, but realize that means carrying something extra along to use, and they can only help cell-phone quality improve so much.  But most of all they are fun to play with, and I think that is their real intention.  Keep an eye out for more of my Instagram pictures using these!

   This post was almost going to be purely nail polish.  I had all my pictures ready to go and hoped to get my hauls of November posted in a timely manner when I had a surprise before work.  I was on the phone when my husband walked in with an ARMLOAD of packages, both the look on his face and his all-encompassing gesture saying "all this stuff is for you..."  Poor guy.  I was only expecting one package, but everything I bought in the past two weeks showed up together, haha.  And because I want to keep things by month to the extent possible (and one box had a giveaway prize in it!) I'd rather take more pictures, type more, and post late.  =)

   One of the first things to show up was my Cherry Culture order.  The eyeshadows are already put away so I'm snagging my picture from Instagram to show you those. 

   Nyx Single Eye Shadows clockwise from top: Cherry, Irises, Luxor, Seafoam Green, Baby Blue, Dust Sparkle and True Taupe in the center.  The Jumbo Eye Pencil is Black Bean.

 

   I was really happy to grab some of L.A. Colors' new glitter polishes, I've worn 3 already!  You can see my post of swatches here.

    From left to right: Candy Sprinkles, Broken Hearted, Glitter Bomb, Flurry, Tinsel and Cocktail.

   I picked up three new Milani polishes, as well. These are packed with glitter! My camera couldn't pick up all the sparkle and especially vibrant blue and purple glitter.

    Left to right: Lavender Fizz, Twinkle, Pink Flare.  They are all "One Coat" glitters.

   The highly anticipated Color Club collection of Halo Hues - holographic beauties - were released and I couldn't resist snagging a couple, as well as two other Color Club polishes from my wishlist.

   Left to right: Diamond Drops, Halo-Graphic, Harp On It, Wild At Heart.  ...Actually, every one of these polishes is technically a holo, cool!

   I also managed to get my hands on some of the new China Glaze colors from their Cirque Du Soliel and fall and winter releases. 

   It's A Trap-eze! is another glitter-in creme polish.  Looks fun in the bottle.  Pizzazz looks a lot like the glitter in It's A Trap-eze! with a clear base instead.  Interesting...

   Glistening Snow and Hello Gorgeous!  Absolutely loving the look of these microglitters...  Need to wear these soon!

   Here is something that is not make-up!  I'll have a review up on these soon so I'm not going into detail, but if you couldn't tell they are a set of mini camera lenses.

   At last I found a bottle of Wet 'n Wild Black Creme.  It was the only bottle in CVS, too!  I hope it is as good for me as all the race reviews make it out to be!  I also picked up Sparked.  Don't know if I really needed another pink-and-silver glitter, but I imagine it would make an awesome gradient.

   Pure Ice is releasing new colors!  I liked the unique mix of colors in Treasure Hunt, I just hope it didn't get it's name because of the effort required to get those diamonds out of the bottle!  Can't wait to try this one, either.  Here is a collage I made with pictures on my phone.  =)

   Then, the mail came...

   Maybe I should have broken this up into parts 1 & 2?  Haha, no worries, I'm not showing each individual item.  First off, I took advantage of the Zoya Dream Box offer to snag their new holographic microshard colors.  This picture doesn't do them justice.

   Blaze, Storm, Aurora...  They are better than I imagined!  But that is typical of Zoya.  By the way, they will be doing flash promos again soon, and they were a steal last year.  You have to sign up NOW to qualify for them.  Hurry and make an account!

   I sniped an eBay auction for a new stick of my favorite deodorant.  Pure Vanilla by LAVANILA.  Good stuff!  Mini review: it's natural, smells nice when I sweat, and it doesn't ruin clothing or leave residue.  Oh, plus it goes with most of my perfumes.  I have several by LAVANILA, and a few other vanilla fragrances, too.  =)

   I made my first purchase from My Beauty Addiction on etsy.  Just one group photo for all this stuff now because I will be picking it apart on the blog later.  Still, look, colors!!

   And finally, I'm so honored to have been chosen as a winner in Smashley Sparkles water marble contest!  That's right, my Citrus Splash marble was actually deemed worthy of a prize!  I was in third place, which originally didn't even exist, haha.  OverallBeauty generously provided the prize.  She included a cute little glass file, too!  But I'm not going into a whole lot of detail here, I'll make a separate post once I get to try my polish from Naild'It.  Thank you Kim, thank you Smashley!!

   My first bottle of Naild'It polish: Summer Lovin' Melon.  Can't wait to swatch it!

   So, this ended up being a lot of stuff, but very little was impulse buys thanks to crazy sales.  In fact I was pretty "meh" about most of the sales that went on!  How about you?

Swatch & Review

   This is an extra-special review post, because I'm getting to share my very own custom polish creation from Different Dimension on Etsy!  After seeing a similar polish in her shop I was inspired to request my own tweaked version called Pastel Nonpareil.  Isn't it lovely?

   My inspiration for the name was taken from these amazingly tasty and especially eye-catching treats served at our belated wedding reception.  They were made by my sister-in-law!

   Didn't she do a stunning job?  Let me tell you, these did not last long at all.  Everyone loved them!  Nonpareil (non-puh-rell) sprinkles are my favorite sprinkles ever, too!  Put them on something and I'll want to eat it.  Thus the name behind my polish!  So, let's get down to the nitty-gritty on custom polishes from Different Dimension.

   First off, sizing and price.  A custom polish from Different Dimension is going to be in a full size Different Dimension bottle which holds 15ml.  The cost for calling all the shots on your own Big-3 Free blend is $10, which I'd say is a smoking deal considering the quality Missi is known for and the fact that every custom polish comes with a personalized gift.

   Admittedly, I had it pretty easy in describing my request.  "Like what you made there, but with X color added and no shimmer."  Still, the customer service was great.  My questions were answered and I had some options to work with before I fully made up my mind.  I gave the polish a name and Missi had it finished for me in no time at all.  Here you can see it has a printed label, finished the same way that one of Different Dimension's regular polish offerings would be.

   Oh, and that free gift?  It's a handmade necklace of your polish that arrives in a little drawstring bag.  Missi takes a bit of your custom blend and pours it into a cute glass vial, corks it and puts it on a long chain.  (My chain was 24", it can be cut down easily if a shorter length is desired.)  The cork is sealed into the bottle with a very strong clear glue.  I don't know if the polish will ever dry out inside the bottle but I doubt it would change the look much if it did.

   Isn't it adorable?   The bottle measures 1 inch including the cork, so it makes a nice piece for layering.  I can definitely see wearing a couple of these necklaces together.  I was very happy to open my package from Different Dimension and be able to wear my custom polish right away - no dry time!

   One other thing to note is the value of the necklace.  You can buy a vial necklace filled with one of the colors regularly offered in the Different Dimension store.  It's essentially the same thing, and the cost is $5.00.  So if you figure that you just spent $10 for a 15ml nail polish made just for you and that polish included a free gift valued at $5.00...  I don't need to point out how good of a deal that is, do I?

   Pastel Nonpareil is a white jelly polish filled with small holographic glitters in a mix of rainbow colors.  As you can see in the above macro shot there is a lot of glitter!  It mixes easily and the somewhat thick formula is easy to work with just like all the other Different Dimension polishes I used beforehand.  I almost used a white creme polish as a base, but I'm so glad I didn't.

   Above, three coats is squishy white jelly perfection.  Top coat smoothed everything out, but I've also worn this polish without a top coat and the glitters aren't annoying or snaggy.  You can see a hint of my nail line in this picture, but I hardly noticed it with my non-macro eyeballs.

   What surprised me is how much I loved it at one coat.  I'm not generally into sheer polishes, but Pastel Nonpareil won me over.  The white jelly base is what makes it work, evening out perfectly and making my nails look like they must be lovely on their own, not slightly stained from all the dark polish I wear...  Oh, and the glitter helps, of course.  ;D  I actually wore my manicure with 3 coats one one hand and 1 on the other, and the winner remains undecided.  I'll wear it both ways!

   I've also used this polish in layering for jelly sandwiches, and it was wonderful like that, too.  I ended up with a very versatile polish!  Which Pastel Nonpareil manicure is your favorite?

   In conclusion, I definitely recommend Different Dimension for custom polish creation.  I already have a few more ideas cooked up and am excited to say that you will be seeing a polish named by me in the Different Dimension shop soon!