Friday, July 31, 2015

Rainbow Honey July Mystery Bag

I love, love, love my mystery bags from Rainbow Honey! Such a great collection of colors every time and some are sneak peeks of upcoming collections and new bath and body items! This time was no exception. I'm so spoiled by indies anymore, I am constantly lemming on new unique polishes. And if you hit the sales right with free shipping, it's actually cheaper than some mainstream polishes, so what's not to love?!


This time around, I received three new polishes, pomelo scented body spray, shea butter skin treatment, and sweet mandarin lip scrub. The body spray smells so good. I have their cuticle oil in the same scent, and it's my fave. The shea butter is nice too. I used it on my hands and it felt really nice.


Alright, on to the polish! First, we have Summer Tan. This polish has a tan creamy base with tiny gold glitters throughout. I don't really know how to describe it other than to say that it is glowy. This is two coats with one coat of Seche Vite on top.


Next, is Calama. This one is really pretty and totally unique in my collection. It is a super opaque green filled with tiny shimmery glitters. It's really opaque - this is only one coat!


Last, I have Costa Dorada. It is a beautiful gold-yellow base filled with gold flakies, shimmers, and hex glitters.



Thank you so much for checking out my blog today. Have a great weekend!

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

July Julep It Girl Box - With Extras

Well, I had ditched Julep for a while, but this month, I saw I had enough Jules to get the box plus a couple add-ons, and I liked the colors, so I went for it! Do you guys like how I have this ridiculous quantity of Jules all the time lately? haha


Anyway, I was pretty into the colors this month, and then saw the add-on options and said "yep I need some of those". So, I got myself 6 polishes this month as a result (if you ordered 2 add-ons, you got Ilsa as a free bonus). I also used an add-on to get their cuticle cream. You can never have enough cuticle cream. I am literally more than halfway through the bottle of cuticle oil I got from Rainbow Honey two months ago...and I've been using it interchangeably with my Burt's Bees!


The first color I have to show you is Juliana. This is a coral metallic, almost frost-like polish. It was thin, and took 3 coats to become opaque. Not my favorite polish ever, but it's unique in my collection, so I like that. The formula itself was good. It was not streaky and went on smooth.


Next, I have Alyssa. This is a pastel teal cream. This one had a really nice formula and was very opaque. I did two coats, but I think I could have gotten away with just one thick coat. I like it - it's minty. It's not unique, though, so it's not the most thrilling color ever, to me haha.


Next up is Mara. This polish is one of the stardust finish polishes. It is a sparkly textured polish, that I am a bit of a sucker for, to tell the truth. This one was a bit lackluster though. The sparkle wasn't sparkly enough for me, but I will say that the formula was nice on this one. This is two smooth coats.


Next, is Ilsa. This one is insanely opaque. It went on in just one coat. It is a super dark blurple cream. I really like it, although I would not wear it until fall/winter, unless of course it works in some nailart. The formula was perfection.


Next, we have Magdalene. This is a pretty shimmery, metallic blue. It's very ocean-esque. This one had a great formula, too. It was very smooth. I did two coats here.


Last, we have Queen Anne. This is probably my favorite of the bunch. It went on in two smooth coats despite the mega-quantity of glitters, and dried to a satiny finish.


I added topcoat here to show what it looked like shiny. The bottom picture is outside in the sun to show off the holo sparkles a bit better.


Thank you so much for stopping by today. I got the August box because the colors were awesome. Hopefully it was a good decision. I'm out of Jules now, so I am going to be more picky about the boxes each month. They reeled me in with the August box with another stardust finish polish. I'm such a sucker! Ha! Have a great evening!

Monday, July 27, 2015

52 Week Pick n Mix Challenge - Tape Mani + Green

Happy Monday! Well, it is for me anyway, I'm on my last day of a four day weekend, so I have to make this day count. My husband and I celebrated our 13 year wedding anniversary yesterday (can you believe it?! I feel soooo old!), and we are making today count too! We're off to brunch in a little bit, and then we are going to cuddle and watch movies the rest of the day, oh and then we are going to the beach for a walk at sunset - that is one of my favorite things to do. I needed the relaxation - I was getting very stressed out at work. Anyway, I have a new mani for you today that I am pretty stoked on. It is one of my better tape manis, in my opinion - ha!


I used all Rainbow Honey polishes for this one (mostly because I was swatching them, and decided this was the perfect green for my base. I'll have the swatches for you by the end of this week. Anyway, the base is Calama, the paler green is Stolen Dance, and the gold is Cuprum Veritas. I used striping tape to make my initial 'V' using Stolen Dance, then once it was dry, I used striping tape to make my thin gold outline as well.


Thank you so much for checking out my post today! I appreciate it very much and love all of you to bits for every view and comment! Please make sure you share the love with my fellow bloggers and take a peek at what they did for this week's challenge, too!

Friday, July 24, 2015

My First Polishes From NailNation 3000!

Guys! I am seriously so stoked that I FINALLY own some polishes from NailNation 3000. I recently joined a facebook group for indie nailpolish fans, and Maria was kind enough to offer some of her older/discontinued polishes before she put them up for sale on her site. I decided it was my time to snag a couple, as I have admired them from afar for YEARS. Imagine my excitement when I actually got two polishes that were on my wishlist from years ago - Quitting Is Not An Option and Twinkle Twinkle. Hooray for holos and flakies! Check these babies out!


This is Twinkle Twinkle. It looks just like it sounds: beautiful iridescent flakies and holo goodness in one bottle. The flakies shift from green to blue, and the blue is just so bright and deep. I painted it over a navy polish, but for the life of me, I can't remember which one. I painted essie matte about you to see what it would look like mattified. I was hoping to be able to capture the flakie color shift a bit better while these were matte. You can see it a little better.


Here is what Quitting Is Not An Option looks like. It is a beautiful teal, linear holographic polish and only took two coats to become opaque. I pretty much LOVE it. The formula on both of these was perfect. No dragging, no clumping, just right. :) These first pics were taken in indirect lighting, so you can't see the holo as well, but I also took pics with flash and in the sun (below) so you can see it in all different types of lighting.


Here is what it looked like with the camera flash. Still beautiful haha. Look at those rainbows popping!


Here are the pics I took the next day in full sun! So pretty!


So, my thought on NailNation 3000 polish: um, yes please. I will take them all. :P Thank you so much for reading! I appreciate so much more than you know! <3

Wednesday, July 22, 2015

Ocean Nailart - Lunchtime Nail Fun!

Last Friday, I had offered to do my coworker, Angela's, nails during our lunch break. She gave me her favorite colors (blues/greens), and the theme - ocean. I packed up a selection of about twenty of my most ocean-y blues and greens, some great glitters, white, and a sandy shade to be used for any stamping. I also packed up a bunch of plates that had ocean/beach-y images on them. At lunch, we sat down, I busted out my selection of polish (a embarrassing quantity of blues and greens for someone to own...and that wasn't even ALL of them), and the plates. Then, I had her pick her favorites. She got to see how I feel whenever I try to sit down for a manicure. So many choices! So much glitter! So much shiny distraction! It's a wonder I ever get anything done once I sit down in my nail nook lol.


Pardon the quality of these photos. I took them with my phone under some crazy office florescent light. :)

Once she settled on her favorite couple of colors, I helped her narrow it down by which ones looked best together, and we settled on Zoya Tallulah and Black Poppy Turquoise (it's nameless but pretty so it's forgiven). Since I didn't want to make too much of a mess, I used my Loki's Nailvinyls aprons on her (she was amazed by those), and then I did a gradient using the two colors we had picked. While that dried, I had her pick out her favorite couple of images (also hard because I brought so many plates!). She settled on a wave-like pattern from Mash-50 and the fish and starfish images off of MoYou Sailor plate 10. I also set aside Mash-39 because I decided she needed mermaid nails too, and painted the tips of each of her thumbs using Rainbow Honey Aqua Crystalline. I stamped the images on using Wet n Wild A Latte Love, then we let that dry and I did peeled off the aprons and did some cleanup. After that, I slapped on some Seche Vite and we were all done. I am so stoked on how these came out, and Angela totally deserves to be treated to this kind of thing more often, so maybe I will try to make that happen. ;)


Angela took these photos with her phone later that day. They are slightly blurry, but show off the sparkle on the thumbs really well!

      

Thank you so much for stopping by today! I appreciate all of you who come to look and read so much!

Monday, July 20, 2015

52 Week Callenge - Swirls + 3 Shades of Red/Orange

Oh my goodness, another Monday. I just want a break already! :D You know, for like 6 months, haha! Ah well, today, I have a water marble for you. I haven't done one in a while, so I decided to give it a whirl again, and this one came out about as good as any other I have done. It kept drying to quickly in the water (probably because of the air conditioning), and I got bubbles as usual. BUT, I like it anyway. :)


I used Revlon Fearless, The New Black orange (it has no name that I can find, and came in their rainbow collection), and Barielle Joytini to create this water marble. I painted my nails white using Pure Ice Superstar! first to make the colors brighter. I don't have much else to say about this mani, haha. I'm a little disappointed in my inability to create nice watermarbles, but I feel like it was partly the air blowing too much and possibly a bad choice of polishes. I weeded out a bunch that didn't spread well, but these ones were drying so fast. I'm not sure if it was the A/C or the polish itself. Oh well.


In my next post, you will see my coworkers nails instead of mine. I did her nails on lunch break and they seriously came out SO awesome. Make sure you check out what everyone else did for this week's prompt, and have a great week!