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.*

Over The Rainbow

Remember a few months ago, I mentioned that I had a bunch of manicure pictures to post that I had taken when I was on sort of a blogging hiatus?  Ya, well I still have them and these aren't them, lol.  But this is another manicure that I ended up skipping over because of everything going on with the blogiversary, giveaway and my Valentine manicures.  I'll get to the other pictures eventually, but I couldn't let these pictures sit on my hard drive any longer.  This is another beauty from Amy's Nail Boutique, it's called Over The Rainbow.

How awesome is that?!  Over The Rainbow is a white base with rainbow colored hex glitters, black and blue star glitters and red micro-glitter.  I think the red micro-glitter was the perfect touch by Amy to pull everything together in the creamy white base.  

I discovered that Over The Rainbow definitely would have been opaque on its own with probably just two coats.  But I did start out with a base of Wet N Wild French White Creme just in case, since this was the first time I had worn Over The Rainbow.  It applied so smoothly for me.  With the first coat, a small amount of glitter spread out on each nail and with the second coat, the glitter distributed and built up perfectly.  I didn't have any major issues with the star glitters either.  A couple times actually, I had a few too many stars and had to use an extra brush stroke or two to spread them apart from each other or to wipe a couple extra stars off the nail.

I can't wait to wear this polish again.  There's a lot of white based glitter polishes out there these days, but this is easily my favorite of them all.

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!)

Valentine's 2013

Last week I wore two different designs during the week for Valentine's Day.  The first design was my first attempt at using striping tape and the second design was straight out of my good ol' comfort zone...plaid stamping.

For the first design, I started with a coat of Milani's one coat glitter in Red Sparkle.  Once that dried, I taped off 4 lines at random on most of my nails with striping tape.  Then, one nail at a time, I painted on one coat of Finger Paints Black Expressionism and immediately peeled off the striping tape to reveal the red glitter beneath.  On my ring finger, I stamped a hearts design from Bundle Monster plate BM-317 using Konad Special Polish in black.  Then I finished all the nails off with a coat of Seche Vite top coat.

The only thing I don't really like about the Milani one coat glitters is that when they dry, there always seems to be a few dull looking spots that top coat doesn't even seem to help.  I still loved the look but I kept thinking it might have turned out better if I had used Nubar Fire Sparkle like I did for Valentine's Day last year.

For the second design, I started with two coats of OPI Mod About You.  The plaid design is from Konad m60, stamped first with Konad Special Polish in black, then again with Konad white.  I was planing to stamp a single heart on each tip, but I could see the black lines showing through the first heart I stamped.  So I quickly scrapped that idea and grabbed the first red polish at hand, China Glaze Red Satin, and my dotting tools.  I used the largest dotting tool to dot one heart on each nail.  Then I re-dotted over the hearts using China Glaze Ring in the Red to add some glitter and also because Red Satin was a bit jelly and not quite opaque enough by itself.

I loved both of these designs but of course, big shocker, I loved the plaid more!

Giveaway Winners!

The blogiversay giveaway ended last night at midnight and the three winners were picked this afternoon.  All three were contacted by email and I've heard back from all three.  Congratulations to Jodi, Mary and Mateja!  Jodi B. has won the Color Club Halo Hues, Mary D. has won the nail polish assortment and Mateja N. has won the eGift Cards from BornPrettyStore.com.  Thanks so much to everyone who entered!

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Love Stinks

No, this isn't an anti-Valentine's Day post. Well, for the more part it's not...ha ha.  But Love Stinks is an anti-Valentine's Day polish from Amy's Nail Boutique on Etsy.  If you haven't checked out Amy's polishes yet, you must.  Like now.  Did you go yet?  I'm serious.  Stop reading my blog and go already!  Ok, you're back?  Good.  So, I don't buy a ton of indie polish, but Amy's shop is usually at the top of my list.  I was in a Facebook group with Amy when she first opened her shop on Etsy about a year ago and she's been making some really awesome polishes ever since opening up.  I can't say I'm really much of a "hearts" type person (said the girl who has two more Valentine's Day designs to post about), but when Amy first released this one with black hearts in it, I had to resist the urge to buy every single bottle.

Love Stinks is a clear base glitter polish containing shards in black and berry pink/fuchsia, different sizes of holo hex glitters in both silver and gold, and of course my favorite part, black glitter hearts!

There's so many colors I want to try to layer this over, but when I first was playing around with swatches, I thought it looked really great over L'Oreal Amazon's Flash.  Although to be honest with you, the pictures don't do it justice.  This might be a combo I need to redo if I ever get around to buying a new camera.  The pictures are good, but I loved this so much more in real life.

I've got another one of Amy's polishes coming up but first I'll be posting two Valentine's Day designs I wore this past week.  Nothing like posting Valentine manis after the holiday!  Oh well, better late than never I guess.  :)

One Year Blogiversary Giveaway!

That's right!  One year ago today I took the plunge and published my first blog post here at All This Polish.  I just want to thank those of you that have been reading, following and commenting for the past year.  I know I don't post as often as some bloggers...I'm not always consistent and you probably thought I went AWOL for a few months there, but hopefully you've enjoyed the posts I have made so far!

I just recently bought myself a set of the new 2013 Color Club Halo Hues set and they are gorgeous!  I thought they would make a pretty good giveaway prize for my one year blogiversary, so I ordered up a second set and the polishes arrived a few days ago.  I know there are quite a few people who have already bought themselves a set, so I decided to add a second prize so that those of you who may already have the Halo Hues set can enter to win something else.  And since I'm only really comfortable trying to ship polishes within the US, I'm adding some gift certificates to Born Pretty Store as a third option, available as a prize only to those located outside of the United States.  Hey there International readers!

The Halo Hues set consists of 6 polishes (from left to right): Beyond, Cosmic Fate, Kismet, Over The Moon, Miss Bliss and Eternal Beauty.  Again, you must be a U.S. resident to be eligible to win this prize.

The Nail Polish Assortment consists of two a-england polishes: She Walks In Beauty and Lancelot; three Revlon polishes: Whimsical, Girly and Heavenly; a bottle of L.A. Girl Glitter Addict Celebrate, and a bottle of my favorite base coat, Orly Bonder.  As with the Color Club polishes, you must be a U.S. resident to be eligible to win this prize.

Finally, for my International readers, I'm offering the chance to win a $30 USD worth of eGift Certificates to Born Pretty Store. They have a ton of nail art supplies and other goodies, low prices and they have worldwide free shipping with no minimums!  I will have a review of some nail art loose glitter from their shop that you should expect to see posted sometime later this month.  But the gift certificates, as well as the other prizes, was bought and paid for with my own money.  Only non-U.S. residents will be eligible for the Born Pretty Store eGift Cards.

So, that's about it.  A huge "Thanks!' one more time to everyone who has been reading along for the past year.  Fill out the Rafflecopter below to enter.  The giveaway starts right now and ends next week, Friday February 15th.  Winners will be contacted within 24 hours of the end of the giveaway and then have 48 hours to reply or a new winner will be chosen.  Being my first giveaway, hopefully I didn't screw this up too badly, so please bear with me!  Quick reminder one more time: U.S. residents only eligible for polish prizes; non-U.S. residents only eligible for Born Pretty Store eGift Cards!

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