Sally Hansen Nail Prisms - Halo Stamping :)

Hello ladies,

I actually wanted to post this mani on Friday, but blogger wasn't letting me upload my photos :( Oh well, I have it now. I was playing around with my BM plates and Sally Hansen Nail pPrisms in diamond (pure white halo, think china Glazes OMG). Although the Nail Prisms line is pretty sheer, if used quick enough it will work for a subtle blingy Konad :)

I decided to go with a swirly almost water marble design over my past mani of American Apparel, Peacock. I could not get this to photograph correctly at all! Please enlarge the photos to see the halo and design more clearly. For the first and last pictures I had to use my desk lamp to capture the halo and deign.

As you can see below with the flash, it is hard to capture the beauty of the halo pattern.

For the most part I was just playing around and decided to change the mani up right after these photos. As you can see more clearly in the photo below, I double stamped some nails and it was obvious enough to bug me lol.

It does look super cool though, I will try something similar again in the spring or summer when I can actually enjoy the halo in the sun.

Blog Award & Some New to Me Blogs

Last week Kee over at Base Coat and Beyond tagged me for the blog with Substance award!

1. Thank and link back to the giver of this award - Thanks again Kee!

2. Sum up your blogging philosophy, motivation and/or experience using 5 words

- Inspired

- Relaxation

- Art

- Passion

- Love!

3. Pass it on to other bloggers that you feel have substance to their blog.

I would like to open this to anyone who would like to participate, I know many of us have received this award before so it is hard to pick and choose and not re-award the same blogs over and over. Below I have listed some of the newer blogs I have come across lately, but anyone is open to participate :)

Nail Polish Enthusist

Colour in Cario

Spaz and Squee

Kira and Lydia's Makeup Home

Lately I'm Obsessed With

Queen of Friggen Crap

Enjoy :)

Some Goodies and Nail Art to Share! Very Pic Heavy!!

Hey Ladies,

Today I have some goodies that were sent to me for review from, the Born Pretty Store. Jessica at the Born Pretty store was nice enough to let me pick the items I want too! Before I get to the items I received, I want to briefly discuss the actual online shop.

Born Pretty has their own website (which has been liked at the top of the page) as well as an eBay store that specializes in beauty products mostly related to nail polish/art and accessories. They have a large selection of nail art items including:

- nail stickers

- rhinestones

- bullion beads

- striper brushes

- full nail sticker/foil

- fimo canes

- fried flowers

- fauxnad plates

and much, much more!

Not only do they have a large selection of items but their prices are awesome! I just purchased a set of 5 dotting tools off their eBay store for under $3 including shipping! I haven't received these yet, but when I do, you will definitely know!

Talking about waiting for items in the mail, I will start this review off with shipping time. Now, I don't know how accurately the length of time it took to me receive my items will necessarily be for the rest of you because they were sent on December 14th, which is probably the worst for shipping since it is close to Christmas and New Years. Not only that but they had also listed on their eBay store that shipping may take longer due to rain and snow storms.

I eventually received my items on January 21st, which was about a month and 7 days total from China to Toronto, Canada. I admit I was impatient, but when I received my new nail art toys was very happy :)

First up I have bullion beads! These were enclosed in a small resalable plastic bag, which is good because during shipping it looks like my package was thrown around a lot! As you can see in the photo, there are little bullion beads stuck on the edges of the enclosure, this makes it difficult to turn to open at times, but I doubt this is how it was originally sent and it is probably due to shipping.

Application of these to my nails was fine, I used the point of an orange wood stick to pick them up and place on my nail (which I had swiped some clean polish on.) One thing I noticed with the yellow beads is that the colour does bleed. I only noticed this during the removal process when I was picking them off. I guess the best way to avoid this to use nail glue to adhere the beads (so you don't need a topcoat) or use a very thin topcoat over the full design when you are done.

Next I have half pearls, these are awesome and I love how they look on the nail. These are supplied in 3 different sizes. I used the same application as the bullion beads, orange wood stick to pick them up and nail glue or topcoat to adhere them to the nail. I personally prefer nail glue for all nail art I apply. No issues with these at all :)

Lastly I have some fauxnad supplies :)

Below are comparisons of my actual Konad scaper and stamper.

The scrapers are the exact same size, the only difference is the Konad one has a plastic blade, which I purchased specifically because I prefer it to the metal one. The faux-konad scraper has a thin metal plate which I find much thinner than the regular Konad one.

The stampers are pretty much identical with the exception of colour (black is Konad, pink is form the Born Pretty Store)

These came as a part of the Hello Kitty fauxnad nail art plate which also features other designs such as flowers, dolphins, another cat, a butterfly, grapes and a 4-leaf clover.

But before I show you the actual plate and the art on my real nails, the day this arrived I couldn't help but start to play with it right away on a fake nail! Below is what I came up with.

please enlarge to see the nail art better

I used the Hello Kitty image in a Sally Hansen chrome polish with no issues at all with application, the plate works the same as any other Konad/fauxnad plate out there that I have used. I then added some black billion beads to her eyes and some pearl decoration to the top right side of the nail.

Below is my second attmept over Brand New Skates. I used a pink Perfect Formula polish that was very well pigmented for stamping.

please enlarge to see the nail art better

Love this! Super cute floral images and of course Hello Kitty. Below is the full plate.

please enlarge to see the nail art better

Next I decided to add some of the bullion beads and pearls. I used pink beads for Hello Kitty's eyes and purple, yellow and a lighter pink for the middles of the flowers. I finished the whole look off with some pearls at the base of my nails.

please enlarge to see the nail art better

So there you have it, I hope I still have some of you ladies still with me! I think this is the longest post I have written! Overall I am very happy with the products I received, you can expect to see some Hello Kitty themed manis coming up soon :)

* these products were sent to me for review, all views and opinions expressed are truthful and my own.

An Amazing Blue One-coater!

Hello ladies,

Today I have the first polish I have ever tried from American Appearal. I have purchased a total of 6 polish from them and this is the first time I have tried them out. All I have to say is WOW! If all the polishes are as awesome as this one than they are worth the high price. On a quick side note, I was so turned off of them because of the price, I mean they came out with polish out of nowhere! But I take it all back now, and as soon as I can I am going there to get some more!

The first polish I chose to wear out of my small collection of AA polishes was Peacock, A dusty blue with slight green undertones. Like all the other AA polishes, this is a cream.. and what a cream! In these pictures I am only wearing ONE COAT! I used a base as always, but decided to skip the topcoat all together because it is just so glossy on it's own.

I'm curious to see how much wear I get from one coat of polish and no topcoat. I just can't get over how opaque and glossy this is, the gloss was hard to capture in a picture, it shows a little more in the picture below.

* note: I had written this post last night and during the night I got some sheet marks so I had to add a top coat to make the polish smooth again :(

Application was obviously awesome, I can't remember the last time I applied a polish this opaque and smooth :) It's been a while since I wore a cream colour. I'm hoping to do some nail art with this colour in a couple of days.

Do you own any AA polishes? If so, which one is your favorite?

OPI - Brand New Skates

Hello ladies,

Today I have a polish I picked up right after Christmas, OPI's Brand New Skates. This polish was from OPI's holiday collection from 2008, Holiday in Toyland. I never had interest in this polish before, but I was kind of on a buying frenzy on boxing day when I picked it up! That day the sun made this polish look very interesting so I figured I would try it out, when I got home I had mixed feelings. In the bottle indoors it didn't look like anything special, almost even frosty! But when I finally got around to trying it on, I fell in love :)

Click to enlarge for most accurate colour/finish depiction

The polish colour and finish were super hard to capture! In the bottle picture above, the right side of the bottle is the most accurate depiction of the colour/finish in all of my photos, so please enlarge! The base colour itself is a medium to light charcoal with blue undertones. The shimmer is what really makes the polish interesting, indoors it looks more like a white, sliver flash, but is is actually a yellow/gold/green colour in other lighting.

Very true to it's name, it reminds me very much of a skate blade :)

Natural Light

This colour also reminds me of the pictures I've seen of Sally Hansen's Opulent Cloud. It's not as fosty/smooth and doesn't have a duo-chrome, but the gold and grey together in this polish are similar to SH, OC.

Application was only okay, I needed 3 coats to reach opacity as the formula was pretty thin, and I probably could have gotten away with one final coat. Other than the polish being thin, it applied very well with the pro-wide brush :)

Natural Light

In my photos, it almost looks like the the polish has a chrome, frost, or foil finish, which it does not. Amongst the shimmer there are little tiny flecks of gold, VERY pretty and super hard to capture in a photo.

Camera Flash Light

Overall I am very happy I picked up this polish on boxing day spontaneously, if not then I don't think I would have even bothered to try this polish. What do you think of this one?

Blue Jelly

Hello ladies,

I was so upset with myself yesterday! I had this post all ready to go but I uploaded the wrong photos and did not have the correct ones at work :( So today I have yesterdays post!

This was a random polish I purchased for 50 cents. It looked nice enough in the bottle, a deep blue jelly, so I decided to try it out. It reminds me of the pictures I've seen of the new Revlon's Navy jelly everyone is picking up.

I was still rocking Merry Midnight on my fingers ;)

The only downsides to this "brand" of polish is the smell and brush. The smell is really strong and bad! This polish is definitely not big 3 free. The brush for this polish was alright compared to the brushes on other bottles of this polish I have purchased, they are very inconsistent.

The brush on this one was big and bushy lol it that makes sense. The brush on others have been cut on an angle, shorter or curved!

This polish was made and/or distributed by the same company that had bottles similar to Nfu-oh I showed in this post.

I applied 2 coats to my toes over a base coat. Due to a not-so-shiny finish I added 1 coat of Sheche Vite to shine it up.

I really love how this colour looks on my toes, unfortunately the extreme close up does not do it justice. Although fairly dark, you can tell that the shade is blue, not black. I was considering adding some glitter or shimmer overtop, but I think I like it the way it is :) What do you think?

Stylish blogger Award, an Eyeball and Some New Bloggers

Hello ladies,

Yesterday I was tagged for the stylish beauty award by Morgan over at Pass the Polish. Thanks a lot Morgan :)

This award came at a perfect time because I am still wearing Merry Midnight and currently do not have any new mani photos to share with you today!

1. Thank and link the person who gave you the award

2. Share 7 things about yourself

3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers

4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about he award.

7 Things About Me:

- I love animals

- My natural hair colour is a medium to dark brown but for 2 years I had bleach blond hair!

- I get distracted very easily

- My birthday is on Canada day, I always get fireworks the day off for my Birthday :)

- I make a lot of lists, it helps me feel organized and get things done

- I have green tea multiple times a day, almost every day

- I have a thing for pretty eyes, whether is be eye shape or eye colour. I have hazel eyes that actually change depending on lighting and mood! My boyfriend has blue/green/grey eyes that do the same, they are so cool! I told him I want to franken a polish based on his eye colour lol. See for yourself below, isn't that awesome! He has pretty eyelashes too ^_^

I'm going to switch it up a bit for who I'm giving the awards to. Instead of 15 bloggers, I'm going to tag a smaller amount of bloggers I have recently come across that have just started a blog. Please check them out :)

- Base Coat and Beyond

- Nails by Bellan

- Jugando con mis uñas

- Silence is Loud

- Une Ruxi a Paris

- Narc's Nails

- Miss DeVious DeVa

- Yacking About Lacquer

- Sanjey so vecne

A Very Merry Midnight - PIC HEAVY!

Hey ladies,

Today I have one of the polishes I have been lemming the most since I started collecting, it's OPI Merry Midnight. I had been searching for this colour for a while now, I was not as big in to nail polish when was released apart of OPI's 2009 Holiday collection originally so finding it for a decent price was difficult.

I had searched in Beauty Supply shops, online, including eBay, Amazon and other etailers. If it wasn't sold out, it was a ridiculous price. I just checked eBay right now and it is priced between $25 - $40 dollars before shipping!

My last resort was a salon I had been to in the summer (if they even still had it!), they were selling it for $12 which I thought was too much at the time. I'm glad I didn't give in because I FINALLY found it at a Beauty Supply I frequent! Had I missed it in the past? Had they just restocked? I don't know how I would have missed it before but omg, when I found it, I went nuts! I ultimately ended up purchasing it for $7.99 with no tax!

Enough of my ramblings, on to the photos! They are all huge so please click for a larger view.

Click to enlarge

Look at all the colour in that bottle... Merry Midnight is a deep plum jelly loaded with flakies, fine blue glitter and some extra shimmer. The flakies change deepening on the light between red, orange and green.

As I'm sure you can tell, I took many photos of this polish to show you how the flakies and glitter look in different light settings. There was so much going on in this polish and it changes depending on your light source. The first set of photos were taken outside on a snowy overcast day.

These next pictures were by the window in indirect sunlight.

The last round of photos were taken in direct sunlight. Yay, finally some sun :)

In lower lighting the purple can be quite deep, but in natural light you can see a lighter based red tones purple.

The overall application was not what I would have thought. The first coat was very thin and pretty sheer. In the pictures I have 4 thin coats of polish. Since this is a jelly you do have to build it up a bit. It was totally worth the extra time to get the depth this polish has.

I finished this mani off with a thin coat of Seche Vite for some extra shine and I am totally in love with it :)

Speaking of love... Today is my boyfriend and I's 2 year anniversary :) He is super awesome and totally supports my polish obsession lol, he is the first person I told about my blog and the only person who knew about it in my family for the longest time. He is just amazing and perfect and I am very much in love with him. I know he doesn't frequent my blog, but if he happens to stumble across it today, Happy Anniversary :)

I was undecided on if I wanted to post a photo of us up when I wrote most of this post yesterday, but I chose to today :) I don't have a large selection since I am at work and not sure if he would like be posting up his photo without permission so here is one of my fave pictures of us from last year lol.

Flurry Up!

Happy Friday Ladies :)

The snow just keeps piling up here in Toronto, similarly I keep adding to my snowy mani ;) ... cheesy, I know lol

Today I have a mani refresh for China Glaze Frosty. I wanted something soft and subtle originally, a stamping over the white shimmery polish with a light pink maybe?

I ended up creating an accent on my ring fingers with fauxnad plate BM 11 and Sally Hansen Salon polish (older rectangular bottle) in Flamingo. This colour is awesome by the way, it really pops and is more pigmented than I would have thought. It's great for Konading. I topped that off with Flurry Up from Sephora by OPI, which I LOVE!

After a couple days of this I added 1 thin coat of Flurry Up to the rest of my nails for some subtle glitter, I may have added more coats for my ring fingers trying to get out as much hex glitter as I could. I find that the less you saturate the brush with polish, the more glitter you end up with on the nail.

Click to enlarge and see higher quality image

The glitter looks almost grey/black on my nails but it is actually a shimmery silver like in the bottle. Also This photo was taken after 6 days of wear! I have almost no tip wear but I do have some slight cracking in the nail polish, not really visible because the polish is white. Does anyone else have this problem with China Glaze polishes? I find it happens every so often but only with china Glaze.

For those of you who don't know, Flurry up was apart of Sephora's limited edition line for the holidays, it is identical to Only Gold For Me, that was released as a part of the summer limited edition collection, only silver. Both polishes consist of mini and hex silver glitter suspended in a clear base. I actually forgot about the smaller glitter pieces when I put it on! It was all about the hex glitter for me I guess. The small glitter really does add something extra to the polish over all.

click to enlarge

As you can see in the screen cap above, for some reason the swatch on the site makes both Flurry Up and Only Gold For Me look like the glitter is in a white base, but this is not true in the actual polish.

Let it Snow ...

Hello ladies!

Late last week and over the weekend Toronto had a good amount of snow fall. Not a huge crazy storm or anything, just pretty fluffy snow... but a lot of it! and I should know, I had to help shovel it a couple of times!

I actually started writing this post last night and didn't even realize it was snowing! It was still snowing late this morning... since last night! I hear New York among other cities in the States are getting blasted as well. So I guess this post is a little more appropriate ;)

The actual snow put me in the mood for China Glaze, Frosty from their past Holiday/Christmas collection. If you recall, I picked this one up for $2.99 at a beauty supply by my house because some of the silver from the cap had chipped off durring shipping. Yay for me :)

click to enlarge

This colour is pure Winter :) The polish flashes a shimmer that reflects light in a way that actual fresh fluffy snow does! I think the shimmer also simulates the actual texture of snow.

Natural light

I applied 3 coats of this polish over China Glaze Strong Adhesion base coat with no issues at all. It was not streaky or too thick/thin. Such a great white to apply :)

Camera flash

I topped this mani off with NYC quick dry top coat, which actually dried the polish pretty fast. I'm very impressed with the top coat. It's not as glossy as Seche Vite, but I didn't want this mani to be super shiny anyways.

I don't really have too much more to say about this polish lol It is pretty awesome though. I really liked it in pictures I had seen on other blogs before I purchased it and noticed it looked elegant on fair skin. I thought it would be perfect for me, but my skin tone actually has a yelowish hue to it lol. Still looks good on me, but I still think it looks nicer on fairer skin :) What do you ladies think?

Hot Topic Haul and a Deborah Lippmann Dupe

Hello ladies!

Who knew my mom would finally give in and support my habit?! lol I got a call from her last week when I was at work, she had found some reduced polishes at Hot Topic. Now, I had actually forgoten that there were any Hot Topics even in Canada! I think they recently opened some up in Ontario, there may be only 2 or 3 locations.

Anyways, Though vague descriptions over the phone of mini packs of 2 polishes, I told her to buy all she could find. The result? I only liked 2 of the 4 sets picked up, but it was worth it :)

Below are the 3 polishes I liked the best

On to the bottles!

This was one of the sets, a bright yellow and an interesting large hex multicolour glitter.

The next set included a black jelly with purple small and hex glitter (*ahem* Bad Romance dupe?) and a blurple cream which reminds me of Color Club - Pucci-licious, which I LOVE!

All swatches below are 2 coats. I was pretty impressed with the creams, especially the yellow! Very bright and pigmented and not streaky at all! They both dried to a glossy finish, there is no top coat worn in the photos.

The Bad Romance Dupe could have used a 3rd coat, but it is a jelly and the formula was much thinner than the cream polishes.

The glittery polish could have been more saturated with glitter, as you can see 2 coats was not even close to full coverage, although I didn't expect it.

Here are the mini swatches are all together... I'm now just realizing that I think I may have lightened these photos a LITTLE too much lol, although the colours are totally accurate. I may re-upload edited photos when I get home from work tonight.

The other 2 sets I received included a green and red/pink cream & a medium pink and black shimmer.

What do you think of these Hot Topic polishes? Would you buy them? If you own them, would you purchase more?

Emerald City Refresh

Hey Ladies,

Today I have a mani refresh for Revlon's Emerald City. As you may remember this polish dries to a suede/satin finish. After the seond day of wear I decided to add some fauxnad (BM plate) and a nice glossy top coat of Seche Vite.

enlarge to see the sparkle!

I had originally wanted to do a half moon mani, but didn't want to cover up the pretty green, so I found a design that had a curved pattern and used that instead :)

The polish I used for the BM plate stamping was Sally Hansen Hard as Nails, Rave review. This polish is a foily silvery gold, and is great for Konad stamping. I chose a flower design which reminds me of St. Patrick's day because they look like little 4 leaf clovers!

enlarge to see the sparkle!

A glossy topcoat really adds a lot of depth to this polish and brings out the lighter shimmer in the polish. I think I may actually like this polish better with a topcoat. Very pretty and shiny!

Which do you like better; Suede/Satin or Glossy?

These Bottles Look So Familiar...

Nfu Oh?

Click to enlarge to see the detail on the bottles

I ment to post this sooner but Christmas and Holiday time got in the way. I found these polishes at the Fragrance and Cosmetics Depot I always talk about. Can you believe they actually advertised for these polishes in the newspaper saying they are a "Designer Brand". I only saw the ad after I purchased these.

As soon as I saw the bottles in that place I knew it was too good to be true, but could you imagine! Nfu-oh's for only 50 cents? lol I only purchased these for the bottles. The black is thick enough for Konading with, the yellow is okay, don't have a neon yellow like it, and the green... just wanted another bottle lol. FYI, these smell super bad lol.

The bottles are not quite identical to the Nfu-ohs if you know what I mean, check out my photos below. The caps don't quite line up properly with the bottle design.

How my bottles look:

How the bottles should look:

Weird huh! The bottles all state on the bottom that they are made by a company called PSK Toronto, along with their postal code. I tried Googling them, but all I came up with is that they are a cosmetics and fragrance distributor out of Mississauga, no real website.

Interesting huh? Any thoughts?