KBShimmer Early Summer Collection 2014 - The Textures

Press Sample

Today is the launch of the new KBShimmer Early Summer 2014 Collection and I have the last 3 polishes I received for review to show to you.  These are the new textures and I have to say they are pretty cool.  The polishes are not super textured.  They contain quite a bit of glitter so they are chunkier compared to something like Zoya's regular PixieDust polishes, but they are not as chunky as the newer Zoya Magical PixieDust shades.  The textures all have a jelly base and dry to a semi-matte finish.  I got full coverage with all three shades with just 2 coats, but I did dab on a bit more polish in a few spots that seemed to not get as much glitter.  And I wore these without top coat, to keep the textured finish.  First up is my absolute favorite of the entire Early Summer Collection, Partners In Lime.

I love this bright lime jelly base, containing lime green, aqua and gold holographic glitters.  I wore this polish again after swatching but with top coat and some stamping, and the glitter really made the whole design pop.  I'm hoping to get a separate post up on that mani in the next few days.

The 2nd texture polish is a bright turquoise called She Twerks Out.

She Twerks Out is full of holographic glitters in teal, lime green, aqua, and violet.  Really easy application in just 2 coats, with just an extra dab or two near the tips to cover a few spots of visible nail line.

The last of the 3 textures is a bright purple called Too Pop To Handle.  The jelly base in this was more opaque, I applied two coats and didn't feel like there were any spots I needed to touch up.

Too Pop To Handle contains violet, magenta, pink and aqua holographic glitters.  It had a smooth formula, as did all three of the textures.  And all three, when dry, had the same degree of texture to their finish.

I have to say that at first I was a bit worried when I heard KBShimmer was releasing some textured polishes, just because there are so many textured polishes out there already.  But I ended up really liking these three textures a great deal, especially because of the multi-colored glitters mixed in.  I've only tried top coating Partners In Lime, but I had great results so I plan to try it out with the other 2 textures and use them as a base for some nail art in the near future.  The texture polishes retail for $8.75 each.  The textures, as well as the entire Early Summer 2014 Collection, are available for purchase starting today at KBShimmer.com.

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

KBShimmer Swatch Spam

Press Sample

Along with the new KBShimmer polishes I was sent to review back in August, I also received several mini bottles of core collection colors.  I've had these swatched since August but just never got around to posting them.  Bad Sarah!  However, if you follow KBShimmer on Facebook, then you may have seen the new Trick or Treat promotion that Christy is running.  If you happened to have missed the announcement, check out the details here.  With the new promotion running, this seems like a great time to finally get these swatches up!  

Be prepared, this is going to be a bit picture heavy.  Check out all the swatches after the break.

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.*

KBShimmer Celebration Duo: The Grape Beyond and Would Jubilee It?

Press Sample

This month, KBShimmer is celebrating its 5th year in business!  In honor of this accomplishment, Christy has released 2 new polishes, The Grape Beyond and Would Jubilee It?, plus everything on the site is 20% until August 14th.  So not only are all the great polishes on sale, but so are the other great KBShimmer products like Christy's handmade soaps, bath bombs, sugar scrubs and more.  Christy sent along a few samples of her polishes for me to show everyone throughout the month of August.  Included was the Celebration Duo, which I'll be showing you today!  These two polishes are sold separately, but are meant to be paired together.  First up is The Grape Beyond, a matte purple polish with a slight turquoise shimmer.

It took only 2 coats for full coverage.  This is a really great shade of purple.  I don't find myself wearing matte polishes very often, but I really do love the matte look of this polish.  After I finished swatching the other samples Christy had sent, I found myself reaching for this to put back on.  I got several compliments this morning when I walked into work wearing it, even from friends who don't usually gravitate to matte finishes.

The turquoise shimmer is very strong in the bottle.  It is much more subtle on the nail, but you can still see it at close range.  And if you decide to top coat the polish, it brings out the shimmer even more, as you can see below.

The second polish is Would Jubilee It?, a great glitter topper that Christy describes as containing all of her favorite glitters: "circle glitters in fuchsia, aqua and silver, hex glitters in sapphire and turquoise, and micro slices in fuchsia, aqua and silver."  I layered one coat of Would You Jubilee It? over The Grape Beyond.  This is definitely loaded with glitter, so I applied a generous coat of Gelous before finishing it off with one coat of Seche Vite top coat.

This glitter would work great over a number of colors, like a bright turquoise or maybe a baby blue cream.  It really does compliment The Grape Beyond perfectly though.

You have until the 14th to take advantage of the anniversary sale on the KBShimmer site.  For international customers, check out the KBShimmer page at Harlow & Co., where KBShimmer is also on sale!  I'll have swatches of a few other KBShimmer polishes throughout the the week.  In the meantime, you can check out some posts from last year of a few KBShimmer polishes I purchased myself, Berry Patch and Orange-A-Peel.

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

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.

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.

Liquid Lacquer 80's Baby

Today I have the first of 4 polishes I recently received from Liquid Lacquer.  There were a few polishes I had been eyeing, so I decided to apply for Melissa's blogger package.  I thought it would be a great way to order some polishes that I wanted and in the process try out a few polishes that I might not normally have chosen on my own.  80's Baby is a perfect example of that!  I don't think that I would have ordered this glitter on my own, so when I got it as part of the blogger package, I was a bit nervous.  Especially since I don't consider choosing glitter and base color combos one of my strong points.  But after testing out a few combinations, I came across one that just wowed me.  This is 80's Baby over Orly Lucky Duck.

80's Baby is a mix of mostly neon colored glitters: yellow, pink and green, and winter white matte glitters in a clear base.  I went from not being sure about this glitter to wearing this combo for 5 straight days.  I tested this over several different base colors.  Some combinations worked well, some were...well, just wrong.  As in "I'm not even going to show you" wrong.  But 80's Baby/Lucky Duck was a winner and my absolute favorite.  It really looks awesome over white too.  I went with Lucky Duck for this post because it seems neon glitters over white is a common find on the internet so I wanted to try something a little different.  But I will definitely be wearing this over white one day soon because I loved my test swatch of it.  Here's a shot of 80's Baby over Milani White On The Spot, China Glaze Lemon Fizz and Finger Paints Black Expressionism.

Some of the neon glitters really pop over different base colors and some kind of disappear on certain shades, but each combination offers a great look.  The lime green squares, for example, really pop over Lucky Duck.  But see that big translucent neon green hex in the middle of Yellow Fizz?  There is also one on the black swatch, to the immediate left of the big pink hex.  But it just kind of melts into the black background and the same thing happened over Lucky Duck.  But for how great the other colors look, that's a trade-off I'm willing to make.  And they show up just fine over other colors, like Lemon Fizz.

Application of 80's Baby was really smooth, but for the test swatches on the nail wheel it did take about 3 coats to get the glitter built up the way I wanted it.  For my actual manicure, I tried dabbing the glitter onto my nails, instead of brushing it on, and I was able to get the coverage I wanted in just one coat.  I finished off the manicure with one coat of Gelous and one coat of Seche Vite.

I'm so glad that I signed up for the blogger package.  I would probably not have thought to order 80's Baby myself and I would have really been missing out on a great neon glitter!  I'll have some more Liquid Lacquer polishes coming up soon.  In the meantime, be sure to check out all of the current Liquid Lacquer polishes available on Melissa's shop!

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.*

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.*