Duochrome Purple Layering

Good evening Ninjas!

The weather here in NC is just toying with my emotions this week. There have been days nice enough to wear summer dresses and others where I needed gloves and a hat when I went outside. Ah well, Spring will be here soon enough!

Tonight's manicure is one coat of Cult Nails Charlatan over two coats of Illmasqua Vice. I really liked the way that Vice looked with the rubberized finish and sort of wished I hadn't layered anything on top of it. I can always wear it again though! Vice is a really pretty magenta that Illamasqua calls a "deep cerise" where Charlatan is a sheer pink jelly with pink/blue duochrome particles suspended in it.

New Year's Eve Nails

Happy New Year's Eve Ninjas!

I hope you're all having a great NYE and that you're all planning some safe fun for later tonight. I don't think I have anything interesting planned but staying warm and watching the Ball Drop on TV, how about you?

This manicure is one I did based on the way confetti looks when it's falling in Time's Square after the Ball Drops at midnight! I used two coats of Zoya Raven for the night sky base and one coat of Cult Nails Happy Ending for the confetti. I actually like that Happy Ending is an applicable name for New Year's! It's a happy ending of the old year and a joyous welcome for the new.

Happy Ending is a really neat shredded type glitter that can be stubborn about laying down on the nail if your base polish isn't dry. I only had problems with 2 out of 10 nails so it worked out! I'll just have to be more patient the next time I use it.

Flakies Galore!

Hello Ninjas!

This week seems to be particularly heavy on the flakies. I'm not entirely sure why that is, I guess all the polishes I recently acquired from Cult Nails have flakies in them. That's ok, that's why I chose them!

Today's manicure is a really pretty purple combination. I used two coats of Zoya Monica as a base for one medium coat of Cult Nails Seduction. Seduction is a sheer purple jelly base with blue and iridescent orange/green/red flakies suspended throughout. I really liked this combination and it was surprisingly easy to apply the two together. I was worried that the number of coats might cause bubbling but when I used Wicked Fast to top it off, the whole manicure dried wonderfully!

 Monica provided by the Zoya PR team for honest review.

Christmas Nails!

Hello lovely Ninjas!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas day with their family. Between the cold, being away from my parents, and leaving my pets behind, I'm a little sad. Ah well, that's what happens when you get married, you have to spend time with a whole new family. I still miss the food and traditions though, this if my first year not getting to see my parents for the holidays :(

Today's manicure is a shimmery evergreen color from Cult Nails: Coveted. I used a base of two coats of Zoya Envy before adding a coat of coveted over top. Coveted is a really pretty deep green polish with a jelly base that suspends green shimmer as well as flakies. Some of the flakies didn't want to lay flat on the nail but overall this was a very pretty manicure for the holiday.

With this manicure I also used the Cult Nails Wicked Fast topcoat and it did a great job of helping even out the stubborn flakes. This was a much easier polish to work with than Iconic which gave me issues. I'm very happy I decided to get the Cult another try :)

Cult Nails Iconic

Hello lovely Ninjas!

Today I've got a manicure done with Cult Nails Iconic. According to their website, Iconic "is a deep berry creme with gorgeous red flakes and hidden gold shimmer throughout. Iconic is destined to become an instant classic. " So it's safe to say Iconic has a complex formula to go along with the complex finish of the polish. When I got my bottle, I was wowed by how wonderful it looked just sitting there but the beauty was not entirely translated to the nail. I had a lot of problems with the formula on this one. It was fast drying which is good but since it dried to fast and was relatively thick to begin with, it was sort of goopy when I applied it. Due to the goopiness, I ended up with much thicker coats than I would like to avoid dragging with such a sticky polish

On top of that, the polish did not play well with others. What I mean by that is that it did not end up with a high shine finish I was expecting after a generous coat of Seche Vite. I think because of it's goopy consistency, Iconic was craving more polish to help it self level, sort of like a hungry glitter polish. You'll see in my pictures that there isn't the usual perfect mirror shine on the nails. There were even small indentations each place where a flakie was close to the surface like it sunk back into the nail. Very strange and very disappointing for the price of this polish. There was also tipwear on Iconic (Probably because it didn't like Seche) in less thank 24hours of wear. Nothing like I was expecting at $10 a bottle. I will probably refrain form buying any more Cult Nails colors and spend my money on a brand I trust implicitly like AEngland.

In-Law Haul and a Polish Rack!

Hello ninjas!

Today I've got pictures of all of the polishes  my amazing Mother In Law got me for Christmas (and after). This is an amazing Haul. I'm not kidding, she willingly took me to a mall nearly an hour away so I could get my hands on some Illamasqua polish from a Sephora. She's so awesome at enabling my polish addiction <3

Whole Illamasqua Collection: Scarab, Poke, Viridian, Vice, and Kink.

 Isn't she amazing? I am so incredibly lucky to have her as a MIL, she's the best! The other pictures I have for you are another great present from my MIL: an acrylic polish rack! Now, I could probably use almost 5 of these so I ended up putting only my favorites on the shelves. It took me nearly an hour to do! I've got a whole picture, row pictures then an updated row picture after I received my amazing Illa. polishes and my Nails Inc Magnetic!

L-R: Base and Top Coats, Stripers, Flakies, Effects, Holos, Duo/Multi-chrome glitters

L-R: AEngland, Butter London, Chanel, Cult Nails, Essie Untrieds, Illamasqua, Cool Cotoure (I love this polish!) Orly, RBL, Revlon Dupes, Rimmel London

ZOYA

Updated with my new Illa polishes :)

Thanks for looking!!

Christmas Nails

Hello darling Ninjas!

After a few hours of making pierogies from scratch this morning, I'm ready for the holidays to commence! Today I've got the most Christmas-y manicure I've worn this month. The base for this manicure is two lovely coats of Time Traveler from Cult Nails. TT is a gorgeous deep blue that reminds me very much of the TARDIS from Doctor Who. Since Dr.Who travels in Time and Space, I thought that the name was very apt for this polish. On top of TT I added nail stickers that I picked up from Sally Beauty on clearance. These were not the easiest stickers to work with and they did stick up a little more than I would like from the nail but for less than a dollar, who am I to complain?

Gift Haul :)

Hello darling readers.

Sorry I missed Saturday's post, Hubby and I went camping and froze! Man was it cold, below freezing and our tent was covered in frost when we woke up. Anyways, to make it up to you I'll post a haul polst today then another swatch tomorrow instead of my usual every other day posting.

The first set of polishes are those I was given by my MIL (or picked up for someone other than myself) while I visited her in NY for Thanksgiving. The Lemon Fizz and second Ruby Pumps mini are gifts for other people while the rest were gifts to me. The two Cult Nails colors are gifts from my husband from her Black Friday sale.

Top L-R: ChG Ruby Pumps, Essie School of Hard Rocks, Orly Twilight, Orly Emberstone, Orly Androgynie, Essie Bobbing for Baubles, ChG Ruby Pumps.
Bottom L-R: Cult Nails Iconic, ChG Glittering Garland, ChG City siren, ChG Lemon Fizz, Cult Nails Time Traveler.

This second set is a prize package I won from The Polished Panda's Holiday Giveaway. She's such a love and a fellow North Carolinean to boot :)

The polishes are Finger Paints Comet's Collar, Santa Kisses, and Frosty Night. I love the peppermint hand sanitizer and lotion, my favorite Christmas scent (even though I can't smell very well) is peppermint so they make me happy. My purse now jingles wherever I go! I haven't tried out these chrome pens by Sally Hansen before so I'll have to let you know how they work out. The black and white floral pattern is actually a super cute clutch that is my new wallet :)

There you have my lovely gifts! However, I broke down after three weeks of looking for Shine of the Times in stores and just broke my no buy last week. I ended up with 7 polishes that I'm sure I'll post later. I'm sorry I failed! Alas, I still don't have my lovely Essie flakies :(