DIFFERENTdimension Another Brick In The Wall

Today I have the second Echoes Collection polish from DIFFERENTdimension that was sent to me for review.  Another Brick In The Wall is clear base polish with hex and square hot pink glitters in a few different sizes, black and white bar/rectangle glitters, black and white micro glitter and some holographic micro glitter.  I layered one coat of Another Brick In The Wall over Revlon Aquamarine from the Chroma Chameleon collection.

I love this combo!  I hate to give myself a little pat on the back but I will, because I'm usually so bad when it comes to picking a good undies color for a glitter topper that I can't help but be thrilled with how great I think this turned out.  I really need to experiment more when it comes to glitters and base colors and start trying out combinations that I wouldn't normally put together.

I was happily surprised with the application of Another Brick In The Wall.  I only needed one coat and was able to get a lot of glitter in just the one coat.  It actually wasn't that hard to get out the super large hot pink hexes.  My only issue with them is that my nail beds are so high and narrow, with such a big C-curve in my nails, that the big hexes are a bit too wide to fit well on certain spots of my nails.  But that's a completely personal problem because of my nail shape and I have that same issue anytime a polish has extra large glitters.  In spite of that, I just can't resist the mega glitters!  I love them.

Revlon Aquamarine is super thin, in case you were wondering.  I wore it once before and it took about 5 coats at least to be opaque.  Instead of dealing with that nonsense again, for this manicure, I layered just 2 coats over 1 coat of Finger Paints Black Expressionism, which has rapidly become my favorite go-to black polish.

You can check out all 6 shades from the Echoes Collection on the etsy page for DIFFERENTdimension, plus a ton of other great looking glitter polishes and holographic polishes made by Missi.

*Polish sent for honest review.  Review contains only my personal opinions.*

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

A few months ago, I was contacted by Born Pretty Store with the opportunity to review one of their products.  I've been wanting to try playing around with loose glitter and they have a wide selection to choose from.  I ended up picking out some mini round glitters.  I wanted to try something other than the typical hex glitters but I wanted to try something a little more versatile than a specific shape, like hearts or stars, which might limit what designs you can use them with.  I originally was planning to use these in a Valentine's Day manicure, but I ended up saving them for St. Patrick's Day instead.

The glitters come in a set of 12 colors for $7.60.  Each color comes in its own resealable pot.  The pots may seem small but they are packed full of glitter.  I used anywhere from 15 to 20 pieces on each nail for this manicure and it didn't even make a dent in the glitter left in the pot.  They will definitely last a long time.  Click here to view more information on this product.

photo courtesy of BornPrettyStore.com

As you can see in the image above, the glitters are iridescent.  You may want to keep that in mind when deciding how to use them.  For example, I was originally thinking of using the white glitters for some type of Irish Flag design, but at different angles the white glitters reflect back a bright pink color and I didn't want that to throw off the design.  In the manicure I ended up doing, I used only the orange glitters.  But you can see in all the pictures, depending on how the light hits them, they also flash shades of green, which worked perfectly for this design actually!

My base is 3 coats of Revlon Tantalize.  I love shades of green like this!  I especially liked using it for this manicure because, while it is green, it is a bit of a non-traditional shade for St. Patrick's Day.  The application of this polish was super smooth, even though my bottle had a brush that was a bit lopsided.  And it doesn't say anything, anywhere about this polish being scented, so call me crazy, but the entire time I was painting my nails I could smell nothing but sour apple gum!  And the same thing happened when I was taking the manicure off.  So weird!   The shamrock was stamped on each nail using Konad Special Polish in white.  The design is actually from Born Pretty Store's Hello Kitty plate.  But I already owned that plate on my own, it was not sent to me for review as the glitters were.  To make the surface super smooth, I applied one coat of Gelous before applying Seche Vite as my top coat.

The glitters are pretty easy to apply.  I worked one nail at a time and just swiped on some top coat at an angle, then dipped a dotting tool in a bit of top coat to pick up and place the glitters one at a time in a staggered pattern.  I would suggest either using the glitters that stick to the lid first or spreading a little bit of the glitter out on either a piece of paper or a paper plate in order to pick them up.  Any time I tried to pick one up with the dotting tool straight from the pot, there was a static cling effect and I ended up with a little string of glitters.  You want to make sure to only pick up one at a time to be able to place them exactly where you want them on the nail.  If you decide to give these a try, or want to check out some of the other items available at Born Pretty Store, they have provided a code for my readers to get 10% off your order!

*Glitters sent for honest review.  Review contains only my personal opinion.*

April Showers Bring May Flowers

Ok, so yes, it is technically still March.  But this Tuesday does mark the official beginning of Spring and also, this post is serving as my entry into Enamel Girl's Nail Art Stamping Contest, which ends this Wednesday.  The theme of the contest is "Anything Spring" and when I think of Spring, I think of cooling afternoon rain showers and fresh flowers starting to pop up all over.

I decided to use Sinful Colors Cinderella as my base.  I just received it in the mail Friday.  I couldn't find it anywhere around me so I ended up buying it, along with Sinful Colors Green Ocean, from Traci's blog sale over at The Trace Face Philes.  Cinderella is very, very sheer though, so I decided to layer it over Revlon Blue Lagoon.  I originally bought Blue Lagoon to possibly layer Revlon Whimsical over, but it turned out to look almost exactly like the same shade of blue as Sinful Colors Cinderella.  The big difference is that Blue Lagoon has a silver shimmer and Cinderella has that awesome pinkish-copper shimmer that is making everyone go nuts over, myself included.

Revlon Blue Lagoon is a bit on the sheer side as well, but no where near as sheer as Cinderella.  It builds up very nicely after just two coats, whereas Cinderella would take 4 coats at least to be just as opaque.  So my base ended up being two coats of Revlon Blue Lagoon topped with one coat of Sinful Colors Cinderella.

Then I broke out my Konad Special Polish in white and a bunch of pastel Konad Special Polishes for the designs.

Using Konad Special Polish in white, I stamped the clouds design from Konad plate m79 onto my index and middle fingers and my pinkies.

Then on my thumbs and ring fingers, I stamped a flower pattern from Bundle Monster BM-224.

To get flowers of different colors, I placed drops from Konad Special Polishes in pastel violet, yellow, pastel green and pastel pink onto different parts of the flower pattern, then scraped and stamped on the flowers.

Taking my dotting tools, I then used the same Konad colors to dot the centers of all the flowers with a color different than the petals.  I waited for that to set up and then put a coat of Seche Vite top coat on the flowers and let that dry.  This way I didn't have to worry about bumping and messing up any of the flowers while I was trying to add raindrops with China Glaze Blue Year's Eve to my other nails.  To make the raindrops, I used the smallest dotting tool available and once I placed the dot of Blue Year's Eve on my nail, instead just lifting the dotting tool straight up, I gave the dotting tool a small, quick flick upward to stretch the dot into the raindrop shape.  Once the raindrops dried, I added a coat of Seche Vite to those nails to finish everything off.

This is my first time entering a nail art contest online.  There have been other contests that I've thought about entering but ended up procrastinating and just never tried.  So I was very happy with myself that I followed through on this one and making this design was a lot of fun!