KBShimmer Vicious Circles

Press Sample

Today, the KBShimmer 2013 Fall Collection was officially announced!  Head over to Christy's blog to view the full announcement.  The new line won't be released until September 1st, but here are some swatches of one of the new polishes, Vicious Circles, which Christy was nice enough to send to me to preview for everyone.

Vicious Circles is described as "a blood red jelly loaded with silver holographic circles in two sizes, silver holographic hex glitters and holographic silver micro slices."  All pictures show three coats, which I followed by applying one coat of Gelous and one coat of Seche Vite.

I love the way the holographic circles look suspended in the jelly polish.  You will love this even if you're not a fan of bar glitter.  The micro slices are a very subtle touch to the overall look.  There is a generous amount of glitter in the polish, which was super easy to apply and the glitter spread evenly over the nail.  This shade, along with the rest of the new fall line will be available for purchase starting September 1st at the KBShimmer site.

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

Liquid Lacquer The Rain Song and Collide Into You

I have got two more polishes to show you out of the blogger package, which I purchased last month from Liquid Lacquer.  I've grouped these two together because both polishes are great teal/turquoise shades.  The Rain Song is beautiful teal holo shimmer polish and Collide Into You is a teal jelly with pink and gold circle glitters and gold micro glitter scattered throughout.

First up, let's take a closer look at some pics of The Rain Song.  All pictures show 3 coats.  I think most people would be satisfied after just 2 coats, but I just can't seem to resist adding a 3rd coat when it comes to, well, practically every polish I ever wear.

Application was a breeze and the polish seemed to dry super fast.  The holo is a bit subtle but it's a gorgeous shade of teal with what is really just the perfect amount of holo shimmer.  Even though it's not an in-your-face kind of holo, I still found myself constantly admiring the color on my nails.

Next up is Collide Into You, which seems, to me anyway, to be one of the most popular Liquid Lacquer shades around.  And looking at the following shots, I think you can understand why.

This was 3 coats as well, but like with The Rain Song, I think most people would be happy with just 2 coats.  Application of Collide Into You was super smooth.  I had such an easy time with getting the glitter to apply evenly.  There were even a few times where I had a little too much glitter on the brush and just used an extra brush stroke to sweep off a little excess.

One more shade from the blogger package to go!  Be sure to check out Liquid Lacquer's shop to view all of the polishes currently available.

DIFFERENTdimension Hey You

I have a review for you of a very pretty polish from DIFFERENTdimension.  DIFFERENTdimension is a brand I've been eyeing for a while now and I recently got the opportunity to have two polishes sent to me for review.  I'll be starting today with Hey You from the Echoes collection.  Hey You is a lavender base with several different sizes and shapes of glitter in shades of purple and some fuchsia circles.

Let me start by saying I really loved wearing this.  I had it on for a full week and it wore like a champ.  I had no chips and very little tip wear.  Depending on how thick of a coat you apply, you can definitely get way with two coats.  I had just a hint of visible nail line after two coats though, which no one else probably would have even noticed.  But I applied a third coat just to even out the coverage.  I applied one coat of Gelous before adding a coat of Seche Vite top coat.

I think this would be a great polish to layer over different shades of purple as well.  But on its own, the overall look is so pretty and very delicate.  The base of Hey You reminds me of the OPI Ballet Soft Shades Collection.  Its formula is similar in consistency and in opacity.

Be sure to check out DIFFERENTdimension on etsy.  Coming soon, I'll have another polish from the Echoes collection to show you called Another Brick In The Wall.

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

Spring ASBMF Challenge #10: Butterflies!

As much as I love the look of the Monarch butterfly wings manicure (and want to eventually try it myself), I decided to use one of the gazillion butterfly stamp designs I have that I never ever use, so at least now I can say I've used one of them!

It's not that I don't like butterflies.  I do.  If I see a real butterfly, don't bother trying to carry on a conversation with me until it's gone 'cause I'm gonna be all "Ooh, a butterfly!" and just watch that little bugger flutter around and around until it flies away.  But butterfly patterns, decorations, etc. aren't really my thing.  So I've never had the urge to use one of the ump-teen butterfly designs available between all the different plates I have from Konad, Bundle Monster, Red Angel, etc...  I have had the DRK-A plate for a few months now though and have yet to use it.  Even though I'm not big on butterfly designs, the DRK-A plate has this full nail butterfly design that kinda caught my eye from the first day I saw it.  The butterflies are a bit more cartoonish, with a hand drawn look to them that I like.  So for this manicure, I decided to use a few polishes from the New York City Ballet Collection.  I started with 3 coats of OPI Care To Danse? to make it more opaque.  Then I layered on one coat of Pirouette My Whistle, another coat of Care To Danse? and finally topped it off with one more coat of Pirouette My Whistle.  For the butterfly pattern, I used Konad Special Polish in Dark Purple.

I like the way this turned out.  I really like the the look of these colors together and I love the jelly finish of the OPI Ballet colors, even more than I though I would when I bought them.  The stamping came out decent enough.  My only issue was my impatience, as usual, with waiting long enough to top coat when I stamp.  I have a few little smudges on my pinkie and ring finger.  It may seem dry enough, but the stamped polish feels almost perfectly dry as soon as you stamp it on, considering how thin of a layer of polish it is you're dealing with.  So you really have to give it enough time to set up and dry all the way before trying to spread a nice big glob of top coat over it.  This time, I didn't wait long enough and got a few smudges.  Not too noticeable though.  It didn't drive me crazy enough to redo them.  I've gone all week so far with smudgy digits.

Just a few more designs to go.  There is a Summer Challenge starting this Friday but I've decided to pass.  Especially since I would be overlapping the start of that challenge with the end of this one.  I'm planning to do a post probably once a week though linking either to the new manicures that week from the group or maybe one post a week for each part of the challenge and then I'll update links as people do them.  I'm not sure which way I'm going to do it just yet.  But there are some super talented ladies in our group, so even though I'm not going to participate this time, I still want to be sure to share the amazing manicures I'm expecting to see these ladies come up with!

Hannah from Polished Prisms

Amanda from Mandy's Polish

Heidi from DIY Polish & More
Katee from A Girl and Her Polish
Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails
Tess from Football and Fingernails
Karine from Karinea0a
Victoria from Manicurator
Sharon from What Color is My Coat?
Ashley from One Nail To Another
Dani from Rustic Comfort
Sue from Creative Nail Design by Sue
Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss
Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind
April from Munia's Nails
Sharra from The Blahg
Jess from Nearly Natural Nails
CR from Color Me Silly
T from Mami Blogs
Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #7: Glitter Tips!

For part 7 of the ASBMF Challenge, I had a ton of ideas for glitter tips and didn't know what direction to go in.  One of the ideas I had involved using one of the new jelly polishes I had recently received from Birchbox when I bought the Zoya Blogger Collection.  I didn't have a definite plan, I just knew I wanted to try out one of these newbies and thought maybe I could make sort of a glitter tips/glitter sandwich combo out of it.  And that is basically what I ended up with.  It was a lot more subdued than some of the original ideas I had in mind, but I think the end result was a subtle and elegant little manicure.

Out of the three Blogger Collection colors, I decided to use Zoya Belle because it is the most unique jelly out of the three.  It's the most unique jelly I own actually.  The shimmer in it makes it looks not quite as squishy as other jellies, but it's still got a lot of jelly characteristics to it.  Here is three thin coats of Zoya Belle over nothing but Orly Bonder base coat.

You can see there is some visible nail line even with three coats but I think adding a fourth thin coat or having used three thicker coats instead would have taken care of that.  The glitter I decided to use was China Glaze Techno, which is a clear base full of holographic hex glitter and holographic micro glitter.  For application, I just used the bottle's brush to dab the glitter around on the end of each nail.  After it dried, I dabbed the brush around the tips a second time just to get some more hex glitters on there.  Techno right on top of Belle was pretty harsh on the eyeballs, to tell you the truth.  It was "Japanese anime cartoons causing seizures in kids" type harsh.  If I hadn't already considered layering the glitter between the jelly, I probably would have ended up taking it off at that point.  Techno looks great over so many colors, so I'm not really sure what happened when I layered it over Belle that made me dislike it so much, but I think maybe the shimmer in Belle and the holo in Techno just weren't able to play nice with each other.  I wish I had taken a picture of the glitter like that, but it just slipped my mind at the time.  After the second coat of Techno dried, I added two super thin coats of Belle and that just transformed it into something totally different!

Techno was so pretty layered between Belle instead of just layered over it.  You could still see the holo in the glitter come through but without feeling like someone was smacking you in the face with a disco ball.  Here's a reminder of what's yet to come and, as usual, be sure to check out the other ladies who are participating in this challenge!

Hannah from Polished Prisms
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Heidi from DIY Polish & More
Katee from A Girl and Her Polish
Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails
Tess from Football and Fingernails
Karine from Karinea0a
Victoria from Manicurator
Sharon from What Color is My Coat?
Ashley from One Nail To Another
Dani from Rustic Comfort
Sue from Creative Nail Design by Sue
Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss
Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind
April from Munia's Nails
Sharra from The Blahg
Jess from Nearly Natural Nails
CR from Color Me Silly
T from Mami Blogs
Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Zoya Blogger Collection

So this post is a little overdue.  I received my Zoya Blogger Collection about 9 days ago, but it took me three attempts at pictures over the past week and a half to get the lighting right for these bottle shots to even come close to showing the beauty of these colors.  The Blogger Collection is a collaboration between Zoya and Birchbox, both of which I've mentioned several times on my blog.  I don't remember exactly how long ago it was, but I did participate in voting on the mood boards, created by bloggers, in order to choose the colors for this collection.  When the winners were chosen and the collection came out, I almost didn't order it.  But I quickly realized the colors were all jellies and two out of the three are like nothing I already have.  So then it didn't take long for me to place my order.  The set is $22, which is actually a couple dollars less than what you would normally pay for 3 bottles of Zoya, and Birchbox is offering free shipping on this collection.  Plus, I had some Birchbox points saved up on my account, so when I applied them to my order, it took 10 dollars off and this little set of lovelies became mine for just 12 bucks!

The blogs whose mood boards won are blogs I'm sorry to say I'm not familiar with.  All three blogs are full-on beauty blogs and I tend to lean more towards nail polish specific blogs.  But if you're an avid beauty blog reader, I would be sure to check out the three blogs behind these polish creations.  Coraline is a "warm juicy tangerine" inspired by the mood board designed by Eleventh Gorgeous.  I don't have any true orange jellies, so I'm happy to own this one.  Kate is a "pinkish grapefruit" based on the mood board designed by The Small Things.  This reminds me of a few of the OPI Texas sorbets but I haven't compared them yet.  Regardless, it's a gorgeous color!  And Belle is a "a coppery pink which features microscopic bits of iridescent glitter" created from the mood board designed by Captiol Hill Style.  That's right, it's a jelly with shimmer!  I'm most excited about this one!  Belle is definitely unique compared to any jellies I currently own.

I can't wait to try these out.  I wanted to try them as soon as I got them, but I was in the middle of working on ideas for my Rainbow After the Rain manicure and these didn't fit in with that.  But after I do my ombre for part 6, I'm thinking I might try to incorporate one of these in the glitter tips part of the ASBMF Challenge.

One of the other great things about this set was that once I ordered, I was able to forward a copy of the confirmation email to Zoya and I received 200 points towards my Zoya Share the Love points total.  The Zoya Blogger Collection is still available for purchase through Birchbox but I'm not sure if the Share the Love points are still available for redemption on this collection.  They had posted on Facebook on April 27th, that you had until midnight that night to set up an account with Zoya, if you didn't already have one, in order to redeem the 200 points.

If you're not familiar with the Share the Love Program, it's basically a system where you can get rewarded by Zoya for referring your friends and family to sign up with Zoya.  Speaking of which, if any of you do not already have an account with Zoya, but have been thinking about it, now is a great time to sign up.  If you click on my personal link and set up an online account (click "create an account" at the very top once you follow my link), a coupon for a FREE Bottle of Zoya Nail Polish will automatically be placed in your new account and can be used immediately on a current order.  TIP: If you use this coupon and add 2 more polishes to your order, you get free shipping too!  The coupon will appear in the "My Coupons/ Promos" section of your "My Account" Page.

Peanut Butter and Jelly

When I received my order from Whimsical Ideas by Pam, it was the most excited I think I have ever been about new polish.  I looked at the bottles and thought, "I need at least one of these on my nails IMMEDIATELY!"  I decided to start with Peanut Butter and Jelly, a purple/raspberry jelly polish packed with gold micro glitter and larger hex glitter.

I wore Peanut Butter and Jelly by itself, three coats total, and I topped it off with a coat of Seche Vite.  There's not really much else that needs to be said, the pictures tell it all.  It's simply a great polish...great color combination and the name is just genius.

I'm so glad I finally bought this polish.  I loved looking at the glitter and how it was layered in between all that jelly polish.  And let's not even discuss how dorky I was acting at work when I realized I was wearing Peanut Butter and Jelly while eating lunch, which was...yup, you guessed it, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich!  It took all I had to refrain myself from taking a picture on my cell phone.   Maybe next time...!

Hauls: Essie and Whimsical Ideas by Pam

Back when I was deciding on what to do for the glitter sandwich part of the April Showers Bring May Flowers Challenge, one of the things I kept thinking about was this absolutely beautiful manicure I had seen on The Posh Polish.  Even though I ended up not doing something similar to Jamie's mani for the challenge, I had to go out to get Essie Marshmallow because I knew that one day soon, I would be using Marshmallow in a glitter sandwich.  So somehow an innocent trip to Target, to pick up some needed supplies and look to see if they carried Marshmallow, resulted in me coming home with 5 Essie bottles.  Target had Marshmallow in with their everyday Essie display, so I grabbed a bottle of that.  They also had a special display with the Essie Navigate Her Spring 2012 Collection.  I had seen this collection for quite a while at other stores but kept talking myself out of it.  I must have had a weak moment while at Target though because I ended up buying four out of the six colors.  So besides Essie Marshmallow, I came home that day with A Crewed Interest, Navigate Her, Ole Caliente and Orange, It's Obvious.

Essie Marshmallow in front.  Then (L-R) Essie A Crewed Interest,
Orange, It's Obvious, Ole Caliente and Navigate Her.

The other part of my haul post is from my purchase from Whimsical Idea by Pam.  I had seen a number of Pam's polishes on other blogs and I just couldn't resist any longer.  I sent her an email late one night to let her know what colors I wanted to order and by the morning I had an invoice from her.  Within a day of sending my PayPal payment, I had another email with tracking and two days after it shipped, my order had arrived and I was completely giddy over them all!  I decided on four of Pam's polishes: Hatched, Kismet's Pajamas, Peanut Butter and Jelly, and Seuss.

Other than nail polish, I've not one to be very girly-girl, but if you'll indulge me this one time...aren't these just the cutest bottles ever!!!  I seriously love the little bows on the caps and the pretty handwriting on the bottle labels.  Here are a few shots I took of my new prize possessions as I was opening the package up.

I love the little "thank you" card she put in with the order and, even though I was already familiar with the foil method, I also love the card she included with instructions for removing her glitter polishes.  I think that's a very sweet touch.  And here is the best picture of them all, a shot of the back of the bottles with a view of all that glittery goodness!

Hatched, Kismet's Pajamas, Peanut Butter and Jelly, Seuss

Ordering from Pam is a little unconventional compared to other indy polish brands, but it's super easy!  You can visit her Facebook page to view pictures of all of her polishes.  Once you decide what you want, you just have to email her your order to pea422000@yahoo.com.  Don't forget your shipping information!  You should get an invoice back within a few days with your total and PayPal instructions.  If you use a different email address for your PayPal account than the one you used to email in your order, make sure to let her know so that she can properly match up your payment to the order you placed.

Glitter Sammy Mattified

Just a quick post before I head to bed.  Last week, I wore the the OPI Big Hair...Big Nails glitter sandwich from the challenge for a few days but then I started to get bored with it.  I still didn't have any new ideas for the next part of the challenge, April Showers, and I wasn't in the mood after work for removing all that glitter, so the next best thing was to slap some Essie Matte About You on top of it.  I really liked the way it looked with the matte top coat added.  I never used to be into matte polishes but, especially with glitters, I'm really starting to love experimenting with matte finishes.

I have a small haul post I'm working on and some swatches of one of the polishes from my most recent nail mail, so I hope to have those two posts up within the next day or so.  And if the weather decides to cooperate tomorrow, I'll be able to take some pictures of my April Showers mani that I finally got around to doing today.

Spring ASBMF Challenge #3: Glitter Sammy

Part 3 of the Spring Challenge is a glitter sandwich.  I wasn't completely sure what I was going to do.  I had a few ideas in mind, but I don't have a ton of jelly polishes.  Most of them are from the OPI Texas Collection, which are great, but they are all pretty similar.  I definitely need to add some jellies to my stash in some other colors, like greens or yellows.  I finally decided to start out with three coats of OPI Big Hair...Big Nails.  I've seen it described as a mix between a reddish coral and a light cherry red.  To me, it seems more like "cherry tomato" red, if that makes sense.  Once I had it on, it leaned more coral/orange to me.  The idea I originally had would work better with a much redder jelly, so I decided to save my original idea for another day and started looking through my glitters for something else.  That was when I came across China Glaze Electrify, which I immediately thought would be perfect to use.  The only drawback with Electrify is that it's all tiny glitter and I wanted to have some larger glitters in this as well, so I grabbed Synergy from my collection of L.A. Girl Glitter Addict polishes.  I saw Purge sitting next to Synergy and, for a second, thought it might be interesting to add large green glitter to contrast the colors in Electrify, rather than using gold glitter.  But in the end, Synergy won out because it's not just gold glitter, it's holographic!

So after the three coats of Big Hair...Big Nails, I put on one coat of Electrify and one coat of Synergy.  Then I ended up putting on three more coats of Big Hair...Big Nails.  I started with one coat and then added a second, but I wasn't really satisfied with its "squishyness" until I put on the third coat.  My only regret is that I wish I added a second coat of Synergy.  It could have used some more of the larger hex glitters, but I'm still happy with the final outcome.

Here's a list of some of the other ladies in the challenge:

Hannah from Polished Prisms
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Heidi from DIY Polish & More
Katee from A Girl and Her Polish
Charlotte from Charlotte's Nails
Tess from Football and Fingernails
Karine from Karinea0a
Victoria from Manicurator
Sharon from What Color is My Coat?
Ashley from One Nail To Another
Dani from Rustic Comfort
Sue from Creative Design by Sue
Amanda from Counting Down to Bliss
Kayono from Neues vom Kellerkind
April from Munia's Nails
Sharra from The Blahg
Jess from Nearly Natural Nails
CR from Color Me Silly
T from Mami Blogs
Alyson from Beads. Nails. Food.

Hopefully I'm not missing anyone.  Please tell me if I am!  There is also a number of ladies with great designs but who don't have blogs to link to.  So instead, you can always check out everyone's pictures and links by heading over to the Facebook page.

My First Glitter Sandwich

Wednesday night, I noticed a few chips starting to form in my Floam manicure so I decided to take it off and use a polish I had just picked up earlier in the day, OPI Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em, to make my first glitter sandwich.

I never really had a lot of jelly polishes in my stash but I knew of a place that still had a bunch of the OPI Texas Collection available.  So Wednesday while I was out running errands, I decided to stop in and see what I could get.  I picked up a number of polishes on Wednesday including Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em, along with two more OPI jellies (or sorbets as OPI refers to them) from the Texas Collection: Guy Meets Gal-veston and Big Hair..Big Nails.  I'm planning to put up a haul post with more details on that later this weekend b/c I also have my recent nail mail still to post about and I made a stop into Sally Beauty as well.

I wanted to try combining colors, not just laying glitter between one polish, so I actually started this out with a couple coats of Zoya Kristen, then one coat of L.A. Girl Glitter Addict Celebrate.

Then I put on 2 coats of OPI Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em, which resulted in it having more of a purple hue than hot pink/red because of the base of Zoya Kristen.

In the image above, I'm holding Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em and you can see the difference in color Zoya Kristen caused.  The funny thing is that I went back to the store on Thursday to double check if any more of the Texas Sorbets were there, I found Do You Think I'm Tex-y and Houston We Have A Purple.  When I picked up Houston We Have A Purple, I noticed that the OPI Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em layered over Zoya Kristen ended up making Too Hot Pink look almost exactly like Houston We Have A Purple's bottle color (which you can see in the pic below).

I may be getting around to glitter sandwich's late in the game, but I think I'm going to like experimenting with them and how different base colors will end up affecting the color of the jelly polishes.  It will also be a good way to incorporate all the different glitter polishes I have, that I don't use nearly as often as I should.

***Edit*** April 3rd 1:14 am: I just realized, at one o'clock in the morning for some ungodly reason, but I did just realize that in my very first post, I included a picture of a Peppermint Bark mani that I did sometime around Christmas.  Technically, that would be considered a glitter sandwich.  But, since that was just me copying a definite themed design, and I don't think I even knew the term Glitter Sandwich back in December when I did that, I'm still going to consider Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em my "first" glitter sandwich, lol.