Valentine Blues

Somehow I ended up with blue hearts on my nails last week.  I was already wearing 2 coats of KBShimmer Blue Topaz and had every intention of using the top image from Pueen plate 16.  But then I spotted the hearts images on the right side of the same plate and the next thing I know, blue hearts all over my nails.  I ended up spending Valentine's Day itself sporting naked nails, so this turned out to be the closest thing to a Valentine manicure I did this month.

I really like this mixed hearts design from Pueen.  I'm not usually a fan of heart-themed items, except when it comes to my nails it seems.  I've ordered many a stamping plate solely because of a cool hearts design that I saw and decided I had to have.

To stamp the hearts pattern, I used Robin's Egg Blue from Rica on Etsy.  I had pulled out both Robin's Egg Blue and the blue pastel Konad Special Polish as possible stamping colors.  Robin's Egg Blue was just a touch more pale than the Konad and I thought it paired with the KBShimmer polish better.

I do love a good monochrome manicure.  I don't know if I just prefer the way they look, or if it's because I kinda suck as mix-n-matching colors when stamping!  Maybe a little of both.

KBShimmer Early Summer Collection 2014 - The Creams

Press Sample

This coming Friday, May 23rd, KBShimmer will be releasing their new Early Summer 2014 Collection.  There will be 12 polishes in this new collection, and throughout the next several days, I'll be previewing 8 out of the 12 shades for you.  Let's start with 2 of the creams in the new collection.  First up is Low & Be Bold, an extremely bright blue, slightly jelly polish.  Shown is 3 thin coats of Low & Be Bold without top coat.

Application was a breeze.  It covered completely in 3 coats.  There is just a hint of visible nail line showing up in the pictures, but in real life I actually didn't even notice it.  You might even be able to get away with full coverage in 2 thicker coats. 

The second cream I have to show you is called Right As Reign, which is a deep, bold purple.  It also has a bit of a jelly finish to it, but it is far more pigmented compared to Low & Be Bold, so it doesn't come across as squishy as its blue counterpart.  Right As Reign covered completely with just 2 coats.  The swatches below are also shown without top coat.

Low & Be Bold and Right As Reign, as well as the 3rd cream in the collection, Let's Not Coral, will retail for $7.50 each when released on May 23rd at KBShimmer.com.  You can also follow KBShimmer's Facebook page for more blogger swatches from the collection.

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

Milani Sugar Rim

I picked up Milani Sugar Rim a few weeks back, so when I decided to cut back my nails, rather than deal with a patch when my index nail cracked, I reached for Sugar Rim.  I wore one coat of Sugar Rim over OPI Ogre-The-Top Blue.

Sugar Rim is a matte glitter in a clear base, and was super easy to apply.  I love the mix of colors in this glitter.  There's black, red, pastel blue and a pale yellow.  There's also some metallic silver shards mixed in, which honestly, I still can't decide if I like or not.  There's not a ton of silver pieces in the glitter mix, so they don't overpower the polish, but there's a small part of me that thinks I'd love the glitter so much more if they hadn't been added at all.

Shards and all, I really liked the way the glitter looked over this blue base.  I used three coats of OPI Ogre-The-Top Blue.  But I'd also like to do some experimenting on a nail wheel to test out some other colors to use as a base for Sugar Rim.  I can see this working really well over quite a few different colors!  

DIFFERENTdimension Just Keep Swimming and Dueling Unicorns

Here are a couple simple stamping manicures I did towards the end of January, using some gorgeous holos from DIFFERENTdimension.

I bought these two polishes back in November and finally decided that they had been sitting in my untrieds for way too long.  This might be a bit picture heavy, because I can't resist showing some swatches of these pre-stamping, so this seems like a good spot for a jump break.

Winter Wonderland

A few weeks ago, OPI Ink & OPI Ink Suede had come up in a conversation and it reminded me that it had been a while since I'd worn any of the OPI Suede shades.  So I pulled out OPI Ink Suede from the drawer and used it as a background for a snowy, winter design.  And yes, I know it's meant to have a suede/matte finish, but I also love the way all the OPI Suedes look when top coated.  I think the way that top coat brings out the sparkle in the OPI Suede shades was perfect for this design.

I didn't want too much empty space between the snowflakes, so I first stamped a scattered sparkles design from Nailz Craze plate NC02, using Konad Special Polish in pastel blue.  For the snowflakes, I stamped with Konad Special Polish in white and used a mix of snowflakes from several different Bundle Monster plates (BM14, BM-319 and BM-H01) along with several snowflake designs from Winstonia plate W120.

When I finished stamping, I felt like it was missing something.  I ended up adding just a little bit of Sonnetarium Snowfall.  Instead of brushing the glitter over the entire nail, I used the tip of the brush to dab on just a little glitter in the spots between the snowflakes that seemed a bit bare.  Then I top coated the whole thing with Seche Vite.  

The light blue sparkles in the background didn't turn out as noticeable as I had originally thought they would, but I still loved the little touch of light blue to contrast the dark blue of the OPI Ink Suede and the bright white snowflakes.

Zoya Saran Wrap Nails

Welp, looks like I've got some catching up to do.  Lots of manicures have come and gone since my last post.  My nails grew out, then a few broke so they were down to nubs, and then they grew out again, lol.  I'm going to try, more or less, to go in order with these.  Here's one manicure I wore back in the beginning of August, using Zoya Charisma and Zoya Rocky.  I actually wore this the week right before the KBShimmer swatches in my previous two posts.  This was my first ever attempt at saran wrap nails.

I started out with 2 coats of Zoya Charisma, which is a neon magenta/purple shade.  Application was really smooth and Charisma dried to a matte finish.  Once that was completely dry, I followed with the typical saran wrap nail steps using Zoya Rocky, a wonderful dusty light blue.

Working one nail at a time, I applied a thick coat of Rocky and then took a small piece of plastic wrap balled up and dabbed it randomly on the nail, slowly revealing bits of Charisma underneath.

I think it went pretty smoothly, being my first time trying this technique.  There were a few times that I thought I took too much polish off, but I just applied a fresh coat of Rocky and dabbed again with a new piece of plastic wrap.  After waiting for everything to dry, I applied top coat.

I was really happy with the final look.  Charisma and Rocky worked really well together.  I think this is a fairly easy technique to do and would work well on those days when you just aren't sure what type of manicure you're in the mood to do.

Liquid Lacquer Pink Elephant

Alright, so here we are with the 4th and final Liquid Lacquer polish from the blogger package.  This glitter topper is called Pink Elephant.  I have two combos to show.  These swatches have been sitting on my laptop for a while.  I wore a few other polishes in between and I also had a few breaks, hence the longer silver nails and shorter blue ones.  I went back and forth on whether to re-swatch these because of that, but finally decided just to go for it as is because I've put off this post long enough, over thinking it.  And I don't think any of you will mind.  First up is one coat of Pink Elephant over Zoya Trixie.

Pink Elephant is a clear base with different sized hexes and squares in neon pink, black, white and grey.  It does remind me a bit of DIFFERENTdimension Another Brick in the Wall, which I reviewed last month.  Pink Elephant does not have any holographic micro glitter, which I think I prefer that it doesn't.  And I love, absolutely love the grey matte glitter in Pink Elephant.  Both are great glitter toppers but I think I would give a slight edge to Pink Elephant just based on my personal preferences.

I have to say, I'm a little bummed about the way this photographed.  I tried a few times but I could not capture how cool Pink Elephant truly looked over Trixie.  The grey matte glitter especially looked really great against the metallic silver background.  The second combo I have to show you is one coat of Pink Elephant over OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui.  I loved this glitter over a cream base as well.

Check out Pink Elephant and a ton of other great polishes on the Liquid Lacquer shop page.

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.*

Born Pretty Glitter Powder

Today I have another glitter review for you from Born Pretty Store.  This time it is a super fine loose glitter that is a fairly new add to the Born Pretty Store lineup.  It was added to their site only about a month and a half ago.  It was hard to decide which color to pick, but I chose #9 to sample, a blue/teal metallic color.  Shortly after I received the glitter from Born Pretty for review, I also received the bottle of OPI Taylor Blue that I had ordered online.  By chance, I placed the bottle of polish out on the table next to the glitter and realized they were a perfect match!

I decided to keep it simple and created a design similar to a manicure I had included in my very first post, where I used Holly and Rina from Zoya's Gems & Jewels collection, and applied the glitter to half the nail diagonally.

Since this was a loose glitter rather than a glitter polish, application was a bit different than my Zoya mani.  After 2 coats of Taylor Blue dried completely, I taped off my nails diagonally with scotch tape.  Then, one nail at a time, I applied a coat of Taylor Blue and poured the glitter onto to the wet polish, shook off the excess over a paper plate and then lightly patted the glitter left on my nails to make sure it stuck well and peeled off the tape.  I top coated my right hand first and noticed a few glitters were finding their way onto the brush and then getting deposited onto the top half of my nail where I didn't want any glitter.  For my left hand, I applied a thin layer of top coat diagonally over the plain polish part of my nails, then the same to the glitter half.  Once that dried, I was able to apply a second layer of top coat normally, without picking up any stray glitters.

The glitter has a very fine texture to it.  I think there are a lot of possibilities to be had with this type of glitter because of how tiny the particles are.  It also made for super easy removal.  I was actually kind of shocked how easy the glitter came off when it was time to change my manicure.  The plastic bottle has a rubber top with a small capped opening.  This work wells to poor out the glitter in a more controlled manner.  It did occasionally get clogged but a quick tip of the bottle cleared that up.  And the entire rubber topper can also be carefully removed to poor out more glitter at once or to be able to pour any excess glitter back into the bottle for use later.

There are 12 colors in total to choose from.  You can get one color for $4.19, or there is an option to buy all 12 colors for $37.19.  To read more about the glitter, visit the product page here.  I can definitely see myself ordering some of the other colors available to experiment with.  Don't forget, use the coupon code, JYL91, to get 10% off your Born Pretty Store order.

OPI Taylor Blue is a collaboration between OPI and the Taylor's Gift Foundation to promote organ donations.  To learn more, visit TaylorsGift.org.

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

Reciprocal Gradient

Sometimes I see an idea and I think, "I have to try this" but then I just never seem to get around to it.  This time though, I needed to try it immediately!  I first saw an example of this manicure just a few days ago on Facebook.  It was a post from My Simple Little Pleasures for her latest video tutorial.  She had seen Wacky Laki's Valentine's Day Gradient post (who had originally been inspired by a post from October by Globe & Nail).  I've been slacking lately on reading other blogs so I totally missed it when Wacky Laki posted her Valentine's Day gradient, so I'm so happy that I caught Colette's Facebook post in order to discover this look.  All three of these ladies did a fantastic job and it just made me want to try this manicure ASAP.

Colette's video does a great job of explaining how to do this, and Globe & Nail also posted a tutorial on her blog to correspond with her original post, so I don't really need to go into great detail myself on how this was done.  The basics are that I started with one coat of Zoya Kristen as a base for my gradient.  Kristen applied great, but on its own, I definitely would have needed a second coat.  Using a makeup wedge/sponge, I sponged on my gradient using Zoya Kristen, Zoya Skylar and Zoya Cynthia, with Cynthia at my cuticles, Skylar in the middle and Kristen at the tips of my nails.  I've tried a few different techniques for gradients and they all seem to work just as well for me.  For this particular manicure though, I used the same technique as Colette did her in YouTube video and applied all three polishes directly to the sponge.

I applied a second coat of sponging to the gradient to make it more opaque then top coated with Seche Vite.  Once it was completely dry, I applied three pieces of striping tape to each nail and repeated the gradient (two coats) but with Kristen at the cuticle and Cynthia at the tip.  Then came the moment of truth, when it was time to peel off the striping tape.  I was a bit worried that some how I had managed to screw it up.  But I peeled off the striping tape and it had worked and it looked awesome!  I was so thrilled.  I cleaned up any polish that had gotten on my skin from sponging and applied top coat to finish it off.

This did take some time, probably about an hour and a half or so, plus clean up, but totally worth it.  I didn't tape off my nails or apply Vaseline or chap stick so clean up took a little while.  But then again, I'm weird and I sort of actually enjoy clean up on my manicures.  It's kind of calming or relaxing for me in a weird way.  I just use pure acetone and a small chisel tip blender art brush I picked up at Michael's.  And luckily, I didn't have any major problems with any of the Zoya polishes staining my skin.

I loved this look so much, I can't wait to try it again.  I might just try it with shades of green since we're into March now.  It's definitely a bit time consuming but still super easy and so worth the time and effort.  Be sure to check out the other ladies I linked earlier!  I've followed My Simple Little Pleasures and Wacky Laki for a while now.  Globe & Nail is fairly new to me, but she is quickly becoming one of my favorite bloggers.  (Example...see Hunt...whoa!  The only thing I love more than plaid is camo and this absolutely kicks ass!)

Blue Gradient Snowflakes

Right before Christmas, my friend Kelly from work bought me this little polish set she found at Aeropostale.  She told me, "I don't know if the polish is any good, but I saw the glitter and rhinestones and had to buy it for you."  As soon as I opened it, I knew what kind of design I was going to do to use all 4 pieces in the set.

The set came with two polishes, a dark blue shade and a light blue shade (no names on them), and it also came with two little pots.  One pot was filled with loose glitter and the other contained small rhinestones.

photo courtesy of aeropostale.com

I started with two coats of the light blue polish and then sponged on the dark blue to create a gradient.  The gradient ended up being a bit more subtle than I had expected, but that was due to the light blue polish drying a lot darker than it looked in the bottle.  I still like the way it came out though.  Then using Bundle Monster plate BM-323 and Konad Special Polish in white, I stamped on the snowflakes. To apply the glitter and rhinestones, I worked on one nail at a time.  I applied one coat of clear polish and dipped a fan brush in the glitter and lightly sprinkled the glitter over the clear polish.  I dabbed on a dot of clear polish in the middle of the two largest snowflakes and, using an orange stick, applied two rhinestones.  Then repeated the process on each nail.  The glitter was a little rough, so I applied one coat of Gelous before applying Seche Vite.

I had originally planned to stamp the pattern in the opposite direction but didn't realize until after my entire left hand was done that I had reversed it.  So I decided to turn it around for my right hand.  I honestly couldn't decide which way I liked it better though.

The Aeropostale polish, by the way, was pretty good.  It applied really well and only took a couple coats to be opaque.  This manicure lasted a full week.  I was pleasantly surprised.