China Glaze Harvest Moon - Fall is Coming!

Hi all, it's been some time. Since I last posted we had our house built, got another dog and 2 cats, moved, I got laid off/got another much more demanding job, etc. etc. etc. I'm still trying to adjust. Cleaning a house 3x the size of my last is a lot to take on!

I wanted to share a Fall manicure. Glitterbombs are great because they wear like iron and I only get time to do my nails once every few weeks now. This is China Glaze Harvest Moon from the 2012 Hunger Games collection; the collection that got me into nail polish.

This is 2 coats on its own. I love this one. There's a cheaper Sinful Colors dupe for it, I hear! Are the rest of you as excited for fall as I am?

P.S. My blog name changed, yes. I've been meaning to pull the trigger on it for some time now. :)

Thanks for reading!

K x

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-Kellyne

Zoya Song + DRK-B

So, a couple months ago I got engaged. My ring was custom-made by the fine folks over at Art & Gems Jewelers. When the Mr. announced to me that he'd picked out a TARDIS ring for me, I was floored; I had secretly wanted this ever since I saw the first renders, but since he's very traditional I never in a million years thought he'd be OK with me having anything but diamonds, or a Doctor Who ring for that matter.

Anyway, it got here, I love it to death, so the first thing I did was coordinate my nails and do a shoot! I used Zoya Song for the base color and stamped using DRK-B and OPI DS Radiance. DS Radiance is an amazing stamping silver, and the DRK plates are so worth it. The below is 2 coats of Song.

 

Again, thanks for reading!

K x

Pretty & Polished Swamped + Valentine's Lip Balm Preview

Hi readers!

Today I have for you a preview of the LE Valentine's Day lip balm from Pretty & Polished, Dipped Berries. First of all, it smells delicious! Just like the description, which is "chocolate covered strawberries." Mmmm. One of my fave treats :) When I put it on though, maybe I'm just crazy but it tastes nothing like chocolate covered strawberries, it tastes like a PB&J sandwich (sans bread flavor, obviously haha)! Definitely a novelty taste, I loved it. Anyone who knows me knows I'm downright obsessed with food-flavored lip products :)

This lip balm would be perfect for those who like a more "waxy" lip balm; personally, I prefer a really oily lip balm, but for people who don't like to feel like there's a lot on their lips this would be right up their alley. It's really light and you don't feel it "sitting there" after you put it on.

Dipped Berries will be available in a limited edition Valentine's Day gift box called "Sinfully Sweet Gifts" and will include the following (from P&P's description):
The Sweetheart of the bunch, "Pinkie Pie" nail polish
The Sinful polish, "Bedroom Delights"
An aromatic hand and body lotion, "Sin City"
and a sinful and sweet lip balm "Dipped Berries"
Sin City smells like delicious dark chocolate and Dipped Berries smells like chocolate covered strawberries.

Secondly I have Swamped, a P&P core line polish. Swamped is a murky green filled with all sorts of glitters, little red squares and hexes, little green hexes, silver hexes, and more! It definitely has a fitting name, I've never seen a swamp in person but this is what I might imagine the color of one might be :p I don't think this is quite my color, it gave me wildly bad lobster hands (curse you, olive green!)

My camera hates macro!

This is three coats of Swamped, finished off with 1 coat Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food &
China Glaze Fast Forward Top Coat.

 

This color may not be my skin tone's friend, but I have nothing but good things to say about Pretty & Polished. They were one of the first indie polish makers I discovered when I first got into polish. My first order ever was Black Swan and Galactus, still two of my favorites :) I've never gotten a polish from her that didn't go on perfectly, never had to fish for glitters and have always gotten exactly what I expected. A bonus plus...her mini bottles are great! I usually hate the brushes in mini bottles, which is sad because I love minis (you really don't NEED full size bottles when your collection is 1k+), but I don't have this problem with the ones she uses.

Swamped is $4.25 for a mini and $9 for full sized at the below links. The LE Valentine's Day box will be released Wednesday, January 16th.

You can order Swamped and the rest of her gorgeous colors here:
Pretty & Polished
P&P's Etsy Store

For news and updates, follow:
P&P Facebook

As always, thanks for reading!
K x

Note: The products in this post were provided to me for review in exchange for my (as always!) unbiased opinion.

Color Club Put A Pin In It - ABC Challenge "P"

A few months back Birchbox sent me a Color Club mini, a rose gold metallic called Put A Pin In It. Around the same time I had just gotten Zoya's Peter Som 2013 trio in the mail, and thus this combo was born. Shown is 2 coats Put A Pin In It and Zoya Neely. No cleanup was done, I was in a hurry and didn't feel it was needed :) Caution, picture spam, I got a little happy with this color combo! Also, please ignore the dent on my ring finger!

Put A Pin In It can be purchased at Birchbox's website, $8. Zoya Neely is also $8 at Zoya.com.

As always, thanks for reading!
K x

Note:  The products in this post were purchased by me.

Influenster Cosmo VoxBox Review

So, I got lucky and was sent the Cosmo VoxBox courtesy of Influenster. Influenster is a cool community where you can review products, earn badges via surveys and linking your reviews, and you can even receive products to review! I was excited when I learned I'd be receiving a box.

I took about a month to post this for a few reasons: one, I've actually been thoroughly using the products. Second, I'm so busy with wedding planning it's not even funny. #kellyneproblems.

I opened my box to find several items that I was excited to try:

First up, Forever Red perfume from Bath & Body Works. I'd been hearing a lot of hype about this on the B&BW Facebook page, but I usually avoid their perfumes since they have an alcohol-y note to them. I was pretty impressed by this one, as things go. It's sexy and floral all at once. Unfortunately, it doesn't last very long and it does have that faint alcohol undertone but not as bad as say, the body sprays. Also, this is a very cute little bottle and totally could work as a stocking stuffer. Influenster describes the scent as "a passionate blend of pomegranate & red osmanthus with a sexy surprise of vanilla rum." Ummm...I describe it as "mmm" so I'll just steal their description ;)

Forever Red, price depends per item, at Bath and Body Works

Next up, CHOCOLATE! Next time just send me a box full of this, hahaha. It was just as delicious as you'd expect Ghirardelli to be, and if you love sea salt chocolate...mmm.

Ghirardelli Sea Salt Escape, $4.35 at ghirardelli.com

They included some very cool pens in the package, as well. They're FriXion by Pilot. I'm a sucker for a good pen so I brought these to work to try out. Their hook is that they're erasable. I did try this feature out and, while they erase quite well, it's hard to write back over the area you erased. However, they write very smoothly and as erasable pens go (does anyone else remember having to use those horrid black erasable pens in high school English?) are quite nice.

FriXion ball point pens, $2.68 at pilotpen.us

Lastly, they included a Venus Embrace razor, a coupon for $2 off of refills and an Olay refill cartridge. I used to use the Venus Embrace for a long time, but about a year ago switched to using Gillette Mach 3 Fusion men's razors instead for several reasons: one, so that we could buy one razor refill pack for the whole household, and two, they just work better. I get a closer shave, the shave lasts longer, etc. While the Venus Embrace is very moisturizing, I just don't feel that I get as close of a shave as with the Mach 3 Fusion.
That said, if you don't want to use a "guy's" razor, I found the Schick Quattro Titanium for Women to be quite sturdy. It just has that heavy, well-made feel. Nothing against the Venus Embrace! I've been using it since I got the box and am quite happy to use one again.
Gillette Venus Embrace retailer list at gillettevenus.com

Also, I thought I'd throw in that even though this post is totally NNR, the lovely polish I'm wearing in several of the pics is Allons-Y from Nail Pattern Boldness' Time Traveler collection :) I bought the whole thing (duh, it's Doctor Who) and wore this shade for my birthday since it's Tenth inspired and I just love Ten *flutters*

You can pick it and the rest of the collection up at NPB's Etsy store for $9/15ml bottle!

As always, thank you for reading! Happy new year!
K x

Note: The Influenster box was generously provided to me in exchange for my unbiased (as always!) opinion. The Nail Pattern Boldness shade was purchased by me :)

Julep Gunta (and the lengths I went to to own it...)

Hi friends!

A lot has gone on since the last time I posted, my apologies. Blahblahblah normal excuses, but between massive overtime at work every week, MoP raiding, my birthday, the holidays, etc etc etc this poor little blog has gone neglected. Awww. :(

Anyway, hoping to throw together a redesign somewhere in the next week or so, I'm not too wild about this template.

So a while back I picked up Julep Gunta in one of Julep's many promos. I highly dislike Julep's bottles, I will say. They're awkward to store and aren't very stable during use. However, some of their colors are worth making the exception for! Gunta is one. It's from the Trina Turk Fall '12 collection. Hellloooo TARDIS blue. Gunta went on smoothly, I used 2 coats for the below. Cleanup wasn't that difficult, as far as dark blues go it didn't settle into the cuticles much. There was no staining after I removed it. I wore this for about 4 days since the color was so amazing.

Here's where the story in the title comes in! I wore this before I made my swatch stick of it, so I'd already voted it Favorite Blue Ever. When I went to go grab it for real swatches, I dropped it and it shattered evvveeerrryyywwwhhheeerrree. Lucky cleanup is easy on granite and stone tile, but my foot was covered in blue for a few days. Immediately after cleaning I hopped on Julep's site to buy a new bottle (duh). The single bottle was no longer available! Like, it's up there but you can't add it to the cart. Nothing on Copious, nothing on eBay. The only way I could find to get it was to order the September Boho Glam box. Seriously, guys, I ended up having to buy the Julep brown mascara and a 2nd bottle of Popova (a green) just to own Gunta again. /facepalm Hopefully the pics explain why and I'm not just crazy...it's a gorgeous color. ;)

What's your guys' vote for best TARDIS blue polish? 

Thanks for reading!

K x