A little layering

Hello darling readers!

Today I've got a pretty wintery layering combo for your viewing pleasure. This is three coats of Color Club Shabby Drab from their new Bohemian collection as a base with two coats of Inglot 204 on top. The overall effect was sort of like frost on a lake in the winter and I loved it! The only weird issue I ended up with was that some of my flakies sunk into the base color! I would have preferred a smoother finish but the end product was still really pretty to look at.

Orly Androgynie

Hello Darling Readers!

I've been feeling less than stellar today but thanks to my lovely husband, I have homemade chili to make me feel better. Tonight I've got one of the new colors from Orly's Winter 2011 collection, Androgynie. This color is a black base with scattered holo glitter, various colored hex glitter, and a ton of gold fleck glitter. While this looks amazing in the bottle, it doesn't exactly translate on the nail. What you mostly get is black polish with a lot of gold fleck and maybe one or two hexes if you carefully place them. What also doesn't help is that the base is not a very good suspension base for the holographic particles so they are very sparse on the nail. Add to that a black base that doesn't show hex glitter through it unless it's on the very top coat and you have a basically black manicure. This is two coats with Seche QD on top.

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 :(

Rimmel Pro Rags to Riches

Good afternoon!

Today I've got a pretty metallic green for you from Rimmel London's Lasting Finish Pro line. This is a preally pretty lighter green foil with a nice extra shimmer in the finish. This is three coats of polish, the formula was thin but easy to work with and it dried quickly. I loved this color, I wore it December 1st with red eyeshadow to be a little festive!

Essence Irreplaceable

Good evening darlings,

Tonight I've got a super pretty neutral from Essence's Color and Go line: Irreplaceable. This is a sort of hard to describe color... It's beige with goldish or light green glitter so fine that it looks like shimmer. Two perfect coats and awesome wear, I loved this polish!

Essence Just Rock It!

Hello darling readers,

As I drink my coffee and fight off a massive headache, I have a very pretty navy blue polish to show you. This is ONE amazingly easy coat of Essence Just Rock It! which is a navy blue that looks like one of those in-between cream and jelly polishes. The wonky tip fading is because my Seche pulled this badly away from my tips as it dried *grr* I added a hard to see coat of Orly Love Each Other on top of it for some pretty subtle sparkle and I loooved this combination.

Zoya Neeka

Hello readers!

Today I've got Zoya Neeka from their fall Mirrors collection for you. This is a super pretty polish that is similar in composition to Yara. Neeka is a nice blue leaning medium purple with a lot of gold flake glitter and a red shimmer that you can only see in some lighting. My co-worker fell in love with this polish when I wore it this week, I actually had to ge ther a bottle because she just wouldn't stop talking about it! This is two coats of Neeka with Seche QD on top.

Claw Polish Phantom

Hello my lovely readers!

Sorry this post is so late in the day, I was super busy with my martial arts classes. This week I graduated to my yellow belt :) I know I'm not the first one to do this polish and I'm also nowhere near October when  it was popular but I still think this was a great find! My husband bought this polish for me on clearance for only .99 from CVS and it's awesome! This polish reminds me a lot of Zoya Tao because it is a medium grey with silver shimmer. However, the shimmer isn't all silver, it also shows flashes of pink and blue similar to Essie's Smooth Sailing from their spring collection. This covered very well in two coats and dried surprisingly fast for a drug store polish.

Red-ical Gypsy and Chunky Holo Scarlet

Hello lovelies!

I hope you all had a lovely weekend and for my US readers I hope you had a great Thanksgiving! Tonight I've got a Color Club polish from their Back to Boho collection, Red-ical Gypsy underneath two coats of Kleancolor Chunky Holo Scarlet. This was an amazing combination that looked like Dorothy's Ruby Slippers!

Zoya Cynthia

Hello lovely readers!

Are you ready for Thanksgiving yet? I'll be flying up to NY to visit the in-laws so I might not get to post this weekend, just a heads up! Tonight I've got Zoya Cynthia from their Smoke collection for this fall. This is two easy coats with Seche QD on top. This mani was so incredibly shiny that you could see scratches on the surface like someone had scratched a glass! Cynthia is a super pretty dark teal that looks black in low light. In daylight though, Cynthia is a gorgeous deep peacock type color that is a really interesting fall shade. Sorry for the gross pictures, the sun  just did not  come out when I had this on :(

Zoya Jana and Kleancolor Chunky Holo Purple

Hello!

I cut all of my nails really short a while back (thus the nubbins in the Wallis post) and was looking for something fairly subtle to make their shortness less noticeable. I settled on Zoya Jana from their Smoke collection for this fall. However, my nails were in sore need of buffing so there was some unevenness in the polish. To cover this up I added two coats of Kleancolor Chunky Holo Purple on top. The result was a gorgeous lilac purple with a really neat multichrome glitter. There are a larger number of pictures for this polish because I wanted to show all of the shifts on the glitter. From what I can tell the main colors are pink/red, yellow, and green.

Butter London Wallis

Hello lovelies!

Tonight I've got a super pretty polish on some nubbins :) This is Butter London's Wallis which I picked up when the Butter Londons were BOGO at Ulta. This is a neat polish that is hard to describe, it seems like a greenish jelly base with a TON of gold shimmer/glitter. The effect ends up looks fairly metallic and on short nails it looked like I have snake scales on my fingertips. I love it! This is two coats with Seche QD on top.

Color Club Love 'Em Leave 'Em

Hello again lovely readers!

Tonight I've got a pretty neutral from Color Club for you today. This is Love 'em Leave 'em  which is a beige holo. It's almost a linear holo but certainly not on par with the China Glaze OMG collection. A little closer to the Kaleidoscope collection where it's obviously holo but slightly more scattered than linear. I didn't get any good outside shots so it's hard to see the pretty holo rainbows but they're there!

OPI MPJ

Hello readers!

Today I've got a swatch of OPI's My Private Jet. This is the new formula which is only mildly holographic and a shimmery brown color when you ignore the holo. Even though this isn't the black linear holo of legend, MPJ had a very easy to work with formula and I could have gotten away with one medium coat for full coverage. This polish wore very nicely and was pretty in its own right. However, I hated it on me. I don't know if it was the outfits I wore while I had it on or I just wasn't in the mood for the color but I didn't love it.

Essie Power Clutch

Hello again!

I meant to post last night but then we started doing a Harry Potter marathon and I forgot. Oops! Anyways, here's my swatch of Essie's Power Clutch from their Fall 2011 collection. This is a really nice green based grey that looked lovely after two coats. I might have gotten away with one thick coat but I wasn't in the mood to deal with bubbles.

Kleancolor Chunky Holo Black

Hello readers!

Sorry I've been so erratic with posting lately. Between two jobs and picking up extra hours at work I keep forgetting I do anything else!

This is a pretty awesome combination that I matte-fied  for even more awesomeness. I used a base of Wet n Wild Black Magic (dud) then two coats of Kleancolor Chunky Holo Black. CHB is a really neat hex and small glitter combination that looks like flakies from far away. The main shift on the glitter is orange to green but in the right lighting you can also catch some red or blue as well. I thought this would look cooler matte because most iridescent things do so I added the Kleancolor matte topcoat that came with my glitters. It's actually more of a vinyl finish when it dries so you could probably use it with Illamasqua's fall collection for a similar finish.

Zoya Ibiza and Orly Fifty-Four

Hello lovelies!!

Today I've got a neat combination of a very dark blue with a copper/gold shimmer. I put these two together in an attempt to recreate RBL's Piu Mosso without spending nearly $20 on one bottle. The bottle of Ibiza that I used belongs to my friend, and new polish addict, Elizabeth. Ibiza is a gorgeous dark blue with a shimmer finish that isn't very shimmery. To add a little contrast and shimmer, I put a coat of Orly Fifty-Four which is a very nice light pink and copper shimmer layering polish. These pictures aren't great, I took them after four days of wear, sorry!