Merry Chistmas!! What's on my nails this year...

Merry, Merry Christmas! Today I have my Christmas mani which is a refresh of Essie's Navigate Her. This is such a vintage green shade and I found that it was perfect when paired with none other than China Glaze Party Hearty!! I am really starting to put a dent in this polish which makes me sad because I love it so much and don't want it to run out or dry up.

I applied Party Hearty at the base of the nail, gently dabbing the brush on the nail bed and softly directing the glitter with the brush. My first attempt at this was with a cosmetic sponge on my pinky and it worked a little too well! The glitter looked a bit too saturated. I think the glitter looks more natural and free flowing when applied with the brush.

 

I really love this look. Last year I was thinking of layering Party Hearty over a light, mint green but didn't have a shade I liked at the time, Navigate Her is a perfect match in my opinion, although not very minty. I love the contrast between creme and glitter.

Hope you have a great Christmas :)

One More Day! + Neutral Pallet Cleanser

Merry Christmas Eve! Today I have an untried from Essie I purchased in late summer this year, Navigate Her. This polish is a light olive green creme which leans more yellow than blue.

 

Application was okay, it had been sitting for a while so I needed to give it a good shake to ensure it was mixed together properly. The first coat was a bit streaky, but the second evened everything out just fine. I added some thinner to the bottle before applying the second coat since I wanted to apply a thinner coat.

 

 My photos show no topcoat, they were taken right after application. It is such a pretty and unusual neutral colour. I love these kinds of cremes, I think they are very vintage chic. This shade reminds me of vintage kitchen appliances and cookware from the 60's or 70's. It was the pallet cleanser I needed from all of the glitters I I've been wearing this month!!

One more day until Christmas, although Christmas technically starts for me tonight :) I love Christmas and glad it is finally here, however I don't want to see another year go by to quickly!

Top 5 Polish Picks for Christmas

Today I have a list of my top five polishes for Christmas 2012. These include festive polishes not specific to any year or collection, just my top favorites at this point this year.

OPI Merry Midnight
This polish is a classic, it was actually a Christmas miracle finding this polish in a dusty the day after Christmas, the best part? It was regular price and was free of tax for boxing day! This is a long gone hard to find polish now but I love it too much! With a deep purple jelly base and iridescent flakes it is truly unique. It is festive without being over the top Christmas, which isn't a bad thing at all.

Frosty
The perfect shade of snow! I love white nail polish, it is clean and sophisticated. The added shimmery gold flecks in this polish really does give off the texture of snow! Checkout my photo below and you can compare.

China Glaze Mistletoe Kisses

I had put off wearing this polish for too long, but knew it was a stunner. Silver glitter in a green jelly base, so festive! I got a lot of compliments when I wore this to work.

Essie Leading Lady

Probably the only polish on this list that came out in 2012. This is the perfect glittery red for the holidays. With larger glitter than China Glaze Ruby Pumps and a slightly golden glisten, this red glitter is the perfect red for the season.

China Glaze Party Hearty (mani 1 and mani 2)

I have worn this Christmas glitter topper for every year since it's release. I plan on wearing it this year but time is quickly running out! This mix of green, red and gold regular and hex glitter is fantastic and is THE Christmas popish to wear. It may be three times in a row that wear this polish for Christmas. 

UPDATE: To see the other manis I created with this glitter topcoat including last years Christmas mani, search China Glaze Party Hearty in the right hand search bar at the top of the page.

 

Mistletoe Kisses

Its getting close! Less than a week until Christmas! Today I have a Christmas themed polish from one of China Glaze's last holiday collections, Mistletoe Kisses. This polish is a bright green jelly base packed with silver glitter which appears to be mostly green due to the green jelly base.

This polish applied amazingly, super smooth and even, in my photos I only used two thin to medium coats. I love the sparkle and shine of this polish, it's festive and pretty, I really love it. It reminds me of a few other polishes that are similar in formula and finish but are a different shade.

Mrs. Clause - a light red/pinkish jelly with silver glitter

Skyscraper - an indigo jelly with silver glitter.

All three of these polishes from china glaze, and only Mrs. Clause and Mistletoe Kisses were apart of the winter/holiday collection. Skyscraper, in my opinion, could have easily fit in with the Christmas/holiday theme. Out of the three Skyscraper is my favorite, however Mistletoe Kisses comes in at a close second!

Swirly Jelly

Today I have a mani refresh with my jelly sandwiching last week. I decided to stamp the swirly pattern from Bundle Monster plate BM-201 on all my nails. To add a festive contrast I used China Glaze Champaign Kisses for my stamping polish. It is a light gold foil that stamps thin but well.

 

 

I got inspiration for these nails from this post. Isn't she awesome? She freehanded hers!

Oopsie Daisy, I Won! The Holiday Collection + Swatches

I won an awesome set of polishes from hotpinkaurora.com about a week ago and they just arrived! The polishes I won are apart of Oopsie Daisies holiday collection. Oopsie Daisies, if you hadn't already known, is one of the many Indy brands of polish that have been immuring lately. These are my first ever indy polishes! The Indy brands I have seen seem to have interesting combos of glitters, and this collection does not disappoint!

First up is the most Christmasy polish, Carols By Candle Light. This polish consists of small matte white glitter, green and red matte hex glitter and green hex holo glitter! It is sooo pretty! Shown in my swatches below is just one coat, as are the rest of the polishes I will be commenting on. I love the base in this and the other glitters. My number one complaint with larger glitter polishes in general is that it is hard to get them from the bottle to your nail, this is usually due to the base being thick. The base in this polish was of perfect consistency and made it easy to move manipulate glitter on the nail as well for better placement.

 

Next up is Keeping it Kosher, the Hanukkah themed polish. This consists of matte hex blue glitter, shiny silver hex glitter and large square and small circular matte white glitter. This is just fantastic, the blue and silver remind me of hockey of ice skating :)

 

Festivas For The Rest of Us is another clear based glitter with black, pink, purple and white hex glitter. This one is awesome for any time of the year and I can't wait to layer it with some jellies! I love black glitter :)

 

Last but not least is Glacier, the only polish that has a pigmented base. This polish is so complex with the amount of glitters packed inside which adds amazing depth. Glacier is a jelly based polish packed with an assortment of white and prismatic glitters ranging from bar to hex. I cannot wait to wear this as a full mani!! So awesome!!

Below are some swatches indoors and outdoors (overcast). All swatches are one coat each!

 

I am still so excited to have won this awesome collection and I love how three can be worn all year round. Carols By Candle Light is looking to be THE Christmas glitter for me this year, I hope I don't run out of time before Christmas to wear it!

I Am Disappoint - Deceiving Polish

Quick post today, just wanted to share a polish disappointment that I purchased the other day. I was in Winners and found these cool looking glitter polishes from Jessica I hadn't heard of before, Glitterati and Platinum Wishes. After some research online I found out that these are from Jessica's latest holiday collection, Glamarama. Glitterati appeared to have duochrome, colour shifting abilities, the same found in flakes so I was sold! Below are some photos I found online of the two, I could not take a decent photo of the bottles without proper daylight. You can clearly see the colour shift in Glitterati around the edges of the bottle.

Platinum Wishes did not have a duochrome colour shift like the previous polish, however I still liked it in the bottle:

I got home all excited to test them out on my swatch wheel annnnd...

They sucked :( in the bottle they looked so perfectly packed with glitter but one layer is so sparse. Shown on my wheel is one coat of Platinum Wishes on the left and two coats of Gliterati on the right. Not very exciting at all. I will be returning these to Winners the next time I am there, very deceiving Jessica :(

Fauxnad Dollar Store Find!

While wrapping up my Christmas shopping the other day I found myself inside a Dollarama picking up some last touches for gifts, gift bags and such, and I decided to check out the beauty isle. To my surprise I came across a decent set of nail art plates! It looks identical to the Express Salon kit that I have seen in Sally's and As Seen on TV stores. Within the last couple of years Dollarama has been carrying a greater selection of items that fit between $1 to $3, and this kit happened to be only $3! Not too bad! Compared to similar kits that Sally's carries this is a steal. On their site it sells for $10 USD, I'm not sure how much it sells for here in Canada but the tend to be slightly higher. I have provided an in-depth review of the kit below!

Contents of Kit:
-Double-sided stamper (small and large end)
-Metal scraper
-Plastic plate holder
-five metal design plates

First I will start off with the nail art accessories, the stamper, scraper and holder.

The stamper is double sided with a larger and smaller end. The larger side is good for full nail designs/patterns while the smaller end is best for smaller, single designs and should help with placement of them on the nail. I loved using this stamper, although when test stamping the larger side got pushed inside the handle and was stuck! It wasn't an issue to fix, it was probably due to the fact that I was poking around and popping the rubber pieces out before stamping lol. My other stampers can pop out too.

Next the scraper, I didn't like it. I have never really liked metal scrapers to be honest. I received one from the BornPretty Store for review and a Konad one from NailPolishCanada.com and I didn't like either of them! I have a plastic Konad one that is my favorite. For the sample stamps at the bottom of this post I started to use the metal stamper included, but quickly switched to my trusty plastic one. If this is your first ever nail art stamping kit I would suggest ditching the metal stamper and using an old credit card or giftcard as your scraper.

Last but not least the plate holder. I have never owned one of these, but I do find it useful, especially with clean up. It fits all my other plates too so I can use it whenever!

Here are the design plates that were included in my kit:

Did you notice that photo two and five are the same? It's no mistake, I got two of the name plates! The funny thing is I only noticed it after I took the pics lol. I am hoping this was a mistake to only my specific kit because they do show a fifth plate on the packaging. Maybe this was why they were at Dollarama?

The plates originally had a blue plastic film on the front that I removed prior to photographing. The plastic is also on the pack of the plates which I have decided to keep on. On the packaging the plates have reference numbers but for some reason the physical plates do not have one engraved like almost every other nail art plate out there nowadays. Another reason why it may be at Dollarama?

The packaging also claims that this kit can be used with all nail polish, which we of course know is not true. Konad and any thick, pigmented polish works best. Below I have used Konad polish (green) and regular polish that I typically use in stamping (black) to see how the images stamp.

The engraving seems to be be a tad deeper than bundlemonster and Konad, but overall still woks well.

Overall I really do like the kit! The only exceptions are to the metal scraper and double plate. Even if all of the kits have a double plate I think it is still worth the money, I'm pretty sure double stampers sell for the total mount if not more than this kit, so it is worth it for that alone! Plus you can always give someone your extra plate or use it in a swap. The designs are nice and work well with my stamping polishes and overall I really so like the images included in this set. I would recommend this kit for beginners to nail art stamping, for the price it can't be beat!

New Holiday Glitters + A Glitter Jelly Sandwich

I didn't want to remove Leading Lady, but unfortunately it started to chip on me and I couldn't help but pick at it while waiting in line during my holiday shopping this past weekend :) while shopping that day I stumbled upon some sale glitters at a local beauty supply, these included OPI's Muppets polishes. I decided to pick up Devine Swine and Fresh Frog of Bel Air.

Fresh Frog of Bel Air is a green glitter with scattered sliver hex glitter, Devine Swine is pretty much the same with purple/magenta glitter, however I find the silver hex glitter somewhat sparse.

I picked these up in anticipation of mixing them with the other glitters I have from this collection and layering in between jellies. Since my current mani was already half picked off by the time I got home I decided to try out some layering with these polishes right away!

For the look I created I applied of two coats of Zoya Katherine, a purple jelly from Zoya's fall gloss collection.

 

 

One coat of Devine Swine,

And one final coat of Katherine.

I recommend applying thin to medium coats as even as possible while allowing for some dry time in-between for the best results. Since this polish is so sheer multiple coats will be needed to reach full opacity, patience and time is required to make this polish look good on the nail! I think the glitter helped with distracting from any imperfections.

Katherine is super glossy on it's own but to speed up the dry time I applied a coat of Seche Vite. Crazy, glossy syrupy, glittery goodness!