Holo-Houndstooth + A Contest!

Hello out there! Today I have a mani refresh with my Layla Flash Black. I love this polish so much I have been wearing it for over a week now! The wear has been great, just some rip wear here and there.

Before stamping I cleaned up the wear my applying the tiniest bit of polish to the tips and stamped over it using Bundle Monster plate BM-19 and Wet n' Wild Ebony Hates Chris. Lots of photos to follow..

camera flash

camera flash

So not to dull the holo polish below I did not apply a top coat over this, I didn't want to dull the holo effect. I find that if you seal the stamp by brushing some cuticle oil on top it can actually last pretty long on it's own before getting any type of wear. Due to the length of my nails and small size of the original Bundle Monster nail art plates I had to double stamp most of my nails, but didn't have any problems lining up the pattern.

lamp light

lamp light

I love this so much :) .... So soooooo much that I entreated it in to Bundle Monsters latest art contest! I'd love to have your support by voting for my design if you like it. I'm pretty sure like last year you can vote for multiple entries once per day. Voting starts today HERE and goes until May 13th.

natural lighting - outside

natural lighting - outside overcast

The winners will receive the newest batch of plates from Bundle Monster! So exciting! Good luck to all who entered and thanks if you voted for me :)

Flash Black!

Of course I chose to wear a holo during a week where it's raining most of the time :(

The good news is that Layla's Flash Black shows off it's rainbows in indoor lighting too! And lucky me, at work I have a pot light right over my desk so I get to stare at the prettiness all day long :) My camera isn't the best with picking up holos for some reason, I'd say it is way stronger and prettier in person. I did include lots of pictures though :)

I applied two coats of Flash Black over Ebony Hates Chris. Application was a little difficult as first, but once I got he hang of it I felt like it was alright. The trick I find is to move quickly and smoothly with a light hand, this way you do not get any balding.

One coat was a little uneven, this may be due to the fact that I was still trying to figure out the best application. So after another coat I let it dry and left if at that. I attempted to add a top coat but the holo effect wasn't as great as I would have liked so I left it alone.

In the bottle is doesn't look like much, but on the nail, whoa!

All photos are large so please click!

So far I am on my sixth day of wear and I have not experienced any chipping, only tip wear from my keyboard at work. Im thinking using a base polish helped out with that. I am very surprised it lasted this long without a top coat.

Back to the Basics

You know, when I was a teenager in high school the only polish I ever wore was black. I'm pretty sure it was your standard Wet n' Wild black too! I also had a terrible habit of biting my nails and could not paint neat enough to save my life! lol I hope this gives those other nail biters out there some hope!

Anyways, today I have gone back to what was a basic nail color for me when I was younger, black. This time it's Wet' n Wild Ebony Hates Chris.

I think I have commented before on the brushes of the Wet n' Wild quick dry polishes, although I like the shape and size, the bristles suck, they are so hard and drag the polish on to your nails. So for this application I chose to use a brush from a black Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear.

The formula was perfect, only one coat was needed :) I was using this as a base for some layering so I didn't add a top coat. It dried pretty quickly too and that's why I chose to wear it. Too bad for the brush :(

Haulin' !

Today I have a look at some polishes I have acquired recently. First are three that I picked up during Sally's buy 2 get 1 free promo. I picked these up last week and considering their promo ended on Monday they still have a good selection in stock. I picked up Ray-diant, Four Leaf Clover and Blue Sparrow.

I had been debating Blue Sparrow for a long time now because it has a matte finish, but I saw it on my cousins nails not too long ago and it looked great. All it needs is a good top coat :)

 I'm kind of regretting Ray-diant. Although it only needs two coats for opacity, I'm not feeling it as much as I did in the store. The lighting in there made it look magical! On my swatch wheel it falls flat. I still don't know how I feel about it.

Next I have some nail mail :) I picked up these China Glaze beauties from Amazon, Gothic Lolita and Stellar.

Stellar applied well also and needs two to three coats for full opacity.

Gothic Lolita has the perfect formula! It's thick without being too thick and unmanageable. It is so pretty too, nothing like I own at all.

 I also finally got my Red Angel plates! I have been lemming these since late last year!! I finally scored enough swag bucks for Amazon dollars and snatched these up.

I also got Cheeky plate E which is one of those extra large plates. Unfortunately mine arrived with a chunk missing from the corner of the plastic backing :( Other than that I am very impressed with the size and quality of the images.

Annndd... Best for last....

Layla Hologram effect in Black Flash!! I almost didn't get any of these due to the price, but figured I had to at least get the black one since I don't have one in my collection. So worth it! The holo is amazing!

Any polish goodies you received recently? Anything super special!?

Finally Apart of the Cult!

Soooo excited! I ripped through my package that came in the mail the other day and dug out my new pretties :)

Captivated and Living Water is what I got, Maria over at Cult Nails even signed the bottles for me ^_^ Here are some close ups of the polishes in the bottle.

I just had to test these polishes out right away so I pulled out my nail wheel. The formula on living water was excellent and perfectly opaque in two coats!

Captivated was a bit thick, I'm not sure if it was just my bottle or the fact that it is so densely packed with glitter. I added some thinner to even out the consistency a bit and it applied just fine. Two- three coats looked pretty good, I included three on the nail wheel. I love how this one can be used as a glitter top coat or easily built up to be worn on it's own.

Can't wait to wear these!!

Lovin' Layering Part 2 - Poor Man's Merry Midnight?

Happy Friday! So back to yesterday's mani, Milani's Rad Purple and Kleancolor's Black Chunky Holo. And now to complete this look...

Milani's Totally Cool! This is what i'd like to call a Milani jelly sandwich... Or the way it looks in certain lighting I would consider it a poor mans Merry Midnight. It's not a dupe but has the same elements for sure. I love how the bigger pieces of glitter peak through the shimmer in Totally Cool. It's so awesome from so many angles you know I had to post many photos...

Milani's Totally Cool has a deep purple jelly base, this is much darker and blue toned than Rad Purple. Scattered within this polish is a duochrome shimmer with very similar colour shifts as the Kleancolor glitter.

I've never worn it on it's own before but from this one application I could tell it is thin. This was perfect for layering over the Kleancolor, only one coat was needed.

All indoor photos are with no topcoat and all outdoor photos are with my NYC quick dry top coat. I really love this combo! I have got to layer my polishes more :)

Lovin' Layering

About a day after applying Milani's Rad Purple I realized I should have taken advantage of this jelly by layering other polishes in between! Since it was a little too late I decided to layer a glitter on top and leave it at that... for now lol

I used Kleancolor's Black Chunky Holo and applied one coat. This glitter polish is made up of different sized hex and regular smaller glitter particles that are opalescent. In different angles of lighting they appear to shift in colour. They range from red, orange, yellow, green, and if you're lucky blue! 

On another note, I've found a better way to apply glitters only recently. The funny thing is I had been hearing about it for years but I guess it never really clicked, I would still always apply thicker glitters the same as any other polish.

I've found, and I'm pretty sure that most of you have too, that you need to kind of blob the polish on at the base of the nail by the cuticle and blot with the brush then and pull up! So simple yet it took me forever to figure out. Oh well, now I know! Do you have any tricks for applying glitters?