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.

Smitten Polish Glass Elevator

Hi ladies,

First of all, thank you for being patient and putting up with me being MIA on vacation :)
Second of all, here are some posts I need to catch up on! This mani dates back a few weeks, but I never did post my "G" week ABC Challenge selection.

Smitten Polish just keeps knocking it out of the park for me, so I chose one from her Confection collection: Glass Elevator. It's a jelly white with small and large ??seafoam?? glitter. These are my words, mind you, so I could be totally off :p It's pretty, that's all I need to know!

This is 3 coats.

 

 

The formula on mine was pretty thick (same as my Winter is Coming), but that's OK with me since I like thick polishes, they give my thin nails some defense lol. You can do 2-3 coats of this on its own for full opacity, or layer it over a white for more sparse glitter.

As always, yay Smitten Polish! Like her Facebook and follow her blog for her Etsy shop updates ($9 for a full size bottle). She has some super cute fall shades right now that are on my wishlist.

Thanks for reading!

K x

Loch Seaweed

This post is rather late, but this was last week's ABC Challenge: F. I've been dying to jelly sandwich with one of the new Zoya Gloss colors, and was determined to use Elixir Lacquers' We Sisters Three as something other than a simple topper. I chose Zoya Frida, a greenish teal jelly. We Sisters Three is green, silver and holographic glitter. What I like about this combo is that Frida obscures the plain glitter in We Sisters Three and lets the holo glitter shine through. It's like sun sparkling through the seaweed at the bottom of a lake, I love it this way.

This is two coats of Frida, two coats of We Sisters Three and one more coat of Frida. 

See what I mean? Look at that depth.

 

I didn't get a good macro bottle shot of WS3...my camera couldn't handle the sparkly.

 

Elixir Lacquers can be purchased at elixirlacquers.com for $10 each, if you order 7 polishes you get the secret shade Buzzworthy for free (I believe it's a yellow color). I've gotten one of her secret shades before, Calypso, and it was gooooorgeous. WS3 is no longer sold, but With a K and Kind of Connery are a similar kind of ridiculous sparkly. She also just released her Lov-a-Bully collection and 10% of every bottle sold (or 20% if you order all 7 bottles) goes to the Atlanta Bully Rescue. I love this, the polishes are adorable and any intersection of dogs and polishes is right up my alley! Follow her Facebook page for more updates and swatches. Zoya of course can be purchased at zoya.com. 

What's your guys' favorite Frida sandwich?

Thanks for reading!

K x

Ulta Envy - TIOT & ABC "E"

I have it bad for dark greens right now. Like, really really bad. I think that's my biological Christmas clock kicking in for the year.

Enter Ulta Envy that I got with Copious credits. For those who don't know, Copious is a site where you can post beauty products, shoes, jewelry, clothes etc. for others to buy. They give out free credits once or twice a month, free nail polish, yay! If you don't have an account yet you can use my link to sign up and get a $10 credit to use.

Moving on, I expected this to go better than it did...Envy was as gorgeous as I had hoped, a rich dark green shimmer. I had a gold nail art pen I got from Sephora back when they were on clearance for $3. This is a weird pen, the color didn't want to flow smoothly and I had to go over the lines about 5 times. I was going for a gold vine-y, foresty look but since I had to revisit the lines so much they didn't turn out delicately like I'd  wanted. Also, I misjudged how big the rhinestones were. Oops.

But long story short, Ulta Envy...well worth getting! I think I got an older bottle, because it seemed a little gloopy. Nothing thinner won't fix. The below pictures are 2 coats.

Haha, and the ring was another $2 off eBay China special. Before I forget, I ordered 2 sampler packs of cuticle oil rollers from 365 Days of Color. I love ordering things from Sunny, they get to me ridiculously fast in a cute blue padded envelope and her attention to detail is great. I know I'm going to get something packed with thought and care when I order from her. Anyway, because I'm obsessed with Christmas (see above) I chose all her Christmas smells for my cuticle oils. The oils come in rollerball containers (YES YES YES) and a sampler comes with 3 5ml bottles. You can pick the scents you want. I got Christmas Cookies, Toasted Marshmallow, Christmas Morning, Christmas Memories, Country Christmas and Christmas Tree. Phew.

I've only tried Toasted Marshmallow, Christmas Cookies and Christmas Memories thus far but YES! I love them! The smell lasts foreverrrrrrrrrrrr. With Solar Oil and Avoplex the smell is gone in 5, what a bummer because they smell good. I put on Toasted Marshmallow around 8pm last night and I woke up with marshmallowy scented hands this morning. 365's Big Cartel link is above, but she also has a blog and a Facebook...check her out!

Thanks for reading! K x

ABC Challenge "D" + TIOT: Julep Daphne & Elevation Polish Ama Dablam

Hi friendsies! (is that less lame than nailistas? Probably not.)

You maaaaaay have noticed but we have a new layout, it's sort of weird I guess but if anyone has any comments please let me know!

Anyhow! For this overcast, muggy TIOT (which also happens to be ABC Challenge "D" week) I had just gotten Elevation Polish Ama Dablam in my mailbox and really really needed to wear it. But that doesn't start with a D, you say! So I hunted through my spreadsheet and figured out which "D" named polish would work underneath, and settled on Julep Daphne. Daphne reminds me of Zoya Wednesday, but just not as nice. More on that later :/

It was also time for Round 2 of PVA Basecoat Fun. I found some Aleene's Tacky Glue in the back of my storage closet, and according to Duncan's site it's a water-based polymer emulsion. The bubbles in the below pic are totally my fault, guys, I tried adding some water to the glue and shaking it was a bad idea. Oops. Once the basecoat, polish and topcoat go on you can't tell, but Round 3 will be focused on eliminating the bubbles.

Drying time was about 10-15 minutes for both hands. The water in the glue made it sort of lumpy, I don't recommend this for even drying times. I followed the glue with Barielle basecoat, then Julep Daphne. I just don't like these colors on me. I love them in the bottle or on other people, just not me. Plus it had my usual complaint with Julep polishes, which is the runny + globby, crappy brush problem. I had to slap this on in 2 thick coats to get it to look OK. Like I said before the color reminds me of Zoya Wednesday but I like both the Zoya color and formula better.

I feel like my camera makes it look a little brighter and less green here than it really is.

After loading that up with SV I used tape to do angled Ama Dablam tips. AD is awesomeeeeeee. Elevation Polish describes it as being packed with micro multi-colored glitter, micro copper colored glitter, green teal square glitter, blue teal holographic hex glitter and copper colored round glitter. It makes me so happy to look at. Here are bottle shots of both, isn't that just amazing?

This is 2 coats of Ama Dablam brushed over the tips, I didn't need to place the glitter at all.

Julep polishes can be purchased at their site for $14. Elevation Polish announces her releases on her blog, but you can also check out her Etsy or their website. Unfortunately Ama Dablam is no longer available and will not be restocked, according to the preorder page, but her other polishes are gorgeous as well!

So far I see no difference between the glue basecoat and normal basecoat (and I've showered, washed dishes, etc. since last night) but I will follow up with removal either later today or tomorrow.

Has anyone else tried the PVA basecoat?

Thanks for reading!

 K x

Darling Diva Polish - Channeling Coco: Alphabet Challenge "C"

Hello lovelies,
Tonight's post is very special! It marks the culmination of an epic trifecta: finally changing out Brummie, Lustrous Lacquer's ABC "C" week and my first on-time contribution to Try It On Tuesday!

For this I chose Darling Diva Polish's Channeling Coco. I saw this on her Etsy shop and had to have it (along with like 10 other of her polishes :p) Her polishes range from $8-12 per full size bottle and have some seriously cool/hilarious names. Plus the girl has a Battlestar Galactica collection, ok, let me hand over my wallet now, thanks. /love

Isn't this cute? She describes this as a pale warm pink base with small black and pink glitters. Yup, that's about right.

So, this didn't turn out very well on me. I shook it, turned it upside down for a while and fished like crazy but I could barely get any glitter. The Etsy picture for the item has a decent amount of glitter but I just couldn't coax it out. I was sorta bummed about this :(

This is five coats!

First of all, I probably should have put this over a nude base coat...but on the other hand, the only reason I got as much glitter as you see above is because I had to coax 5 coats onto my nails and be careful not to sweep the glitter off with the brush. It looks pretty and milky and only a tiny bit streaky, which is most likely due to me babying the glitter :p Topcoat is a must for this one because without it looks a bit uneven. However, it dries smooth, this glitter doesn't eat topcoat :) I feel like if the base was a little thinner and the glitter a little more dense in the bottle I could have gotten the results I was expecting, but don't get me wrong - I do think this is very pretty.

I've also picked up Ringer, Space Beetle, Princess Celestia, Fancy Nancy, Cherry Jubilee (LOVE) and Enchantment and can't wait to try them. 

Thanks for reading!
K x

Alphabet Challenge "B" - Oops!

Happy Monday again (not), there's no excuse for me...I just felt like playing video games all week and not posting. I do kinda have an excuse though...MoP comes out in a month and I gotta tie up all those loose ends. Someone understands, right? :s

"B" week was last week for Lustrous Lacquer's alphabet challenge, I did these Sunday and seriously sat my lazy ass on editing the pictures for an entire week. Wow me. Wow. Sorry guys.

Anyway, for "B" I chose Brummie, one of the Macy's-exclusive colors from butter LONDON. The fun thing about this color is that it dries to a rubber finish. I have a love/hate relationship with rubber finishes. Love, they look so darn cool. Hate, they seem to wear so fast! According to Wikipedia (Reputable sources, psh), "Brummie" is is a colloquial term for the inhabitants, accent and dialect of Birmingham, England. Hm, ok. Not sure what that has to do with rubbery purple, but it's still fun right?

Brummie went on sort of thick, but it was easy to manage. I did two coats for the swatches below. Even though I did end up using topcoat, I wanted to take pictures of just the rubber finish for you guys. If I knew I'd be changing this in the next day or two, I'd totally leave it like this:

It's so rubbery!

Please ignore the fingerprints on the bottle! :p

This bubbled a little; you can see it on the sides of my fingers somewhat.

As you can see, I should have added another coat just on my pinky...for some reason I have issues with polishing my thumb and my pinky, who knows. 

Since I did want this color to last decently, I threw some topcoat on there after adding an accent sticker (cupcakes! yay!). The sticker I got from MagnoNails, they're in Germany so shipping's sort of pricy but they have 92830284092784092 cool stickers and decals. I got a bunch of stickers and striping tape there a while back when they were the only place to order an XL stamper. (like seriously, I need to get around to my peacock feather water decals)

Poor MegaBloks Thrall. This is what he's reduced to.

For being so thick, Brummie cleaned up really well. All in all, I don't really even know if I'm too crazy about it. From the bottle, I thought it would be a little brighter, maybe even a touch neon. Even the pictures look brighter than it does in real life. Don't get me wrong, it's a really pretty purple, but it's something you probably want to experiment with layering over.

There are three other Macy's Exclusives from butter LONDON that I grabbed at the same time: Cake Hole, which is a bright hot pink and shares the same rubber finish; Alcopop, which is a light pink creme, and Squatter, which is a neon green creme. I don't even know why I got Squatter because I don't particularly like neon green but I think I had a NAIL POLISH o.O moment. I bought mine off the Macy's website, so I don't know what the availability is like in stores...also Brummie and Squatter seem to be out of stock at the moment. Their stock seems to fluctuate, though, so I'd guess they'd be back in soon. 

Random complaint, I hate opening BL bottles. That label on the side...I don't like peeling labels off of things. I have to get a knife out, and pry it up, and then the BF tells me to be careful...why can't it just be easy?!

Sweet...now back to liquidating my assets before the next xpac ;)

K x