OPI - Zom-body To Love

Hello ladies! Today I want to show you a super fun polish for Halloween -- OPI's Zom-body To Love! If you don't know what it is (which I'm sure you do), it's a glow in the dark polish!

This is what it looks like in the light. This is three coats of ZTL over one coat of Orly Pure Porcelain. The polish is super sheer on its own, so I'd definitely suggest layering it.

I originally only had this on one hand because I was just planning on swatching it. But after I took pictures of it in the dark, I HAD to make a full mani out of it!!

PS: It's very difficult to photograph glow in the dark things. I had to adjust so many settings on my camera to even get anything to show up, THEN I had to edit a bit in Photoshop! *wipes brow* PHEW!

It actually glows pretty brightly (? is that a word?) in the dark. I'm not sure if it's just uber powerful glowiness or if it's because I put on three coats of it, but either way, I'm pleased! On the second day I added a little bat silhouette before I took it off... just a little something extra to spruce it up :)

One thing worth noting -- this polish was a bit difficult for me to remove using normal measures. I try to avoid pure acetone if I can help it because it dries my cuticles out like none other. I usually use strengthening polish remover, and I had to really SCRUB to get this off. Maybe it's bad remover, but I think it's because this polish has a bit of a weird, gritty kind of texture. Probably from the glowy particles. :)

I wasn't expecting too much out of this because I thought it would just be a silly little novelty, but I'm pleasantly surprised! I was like a little kid in a candy shop. You would've laughed -- I was laying in bed Wednesday night just staring at my hands and wiggling my fingers because I was so amused by it. Definitely fun for Halloween.

Do you all have any glow in the dark polishes? What do you think? Halloween appropriate?

We've been dancin' with...Mr. Brownstone!

Hello ladies! How is everyone doing today? Does anyone understand this post title? My boyfriend sings it ALL THE TIME. This one's dedicated to him :P

China Glaze Brownstone is a BEAUTIFUL fall color. It's a brownish burgundy cream that went on like BUTTA'. Like butta I tell you! This is two coats. Application on this seemed a little runny... I guess not necessarily the formula, but the brush picked up a LOT of polish every time. I had to remove almost all of it or it got really goopy and flooded my cuticles. Is there a more graceful way to phrase that? Do you guys know what I'm trying to say? Please say yes...

Then I stamped over it with a gold Sally Hansen pen and plate BM201.

I still have problems with stamping every now and then. My right thumb is the HARDEST fingernail for me to stamp on. Just look at this:

Hahahah. FAIL!!

That's all I have for you guys today. Hope everyone has a wonderful day!

"No mama, I didn't do nuffin!"

Revlon Starry Pink

Happy Pink Wednesday everyone!

Today I have Revlon Starry Pink from the fall limited edition Expressionist collection.  It consists of small silver glitter and large silver hex glitter in a light pink base.  My bottle was a tad on the thick side, but it applied smoothly and dried fast.  It seems like Revlon's formula has improved a lot lately.  I've applied it over 2 coats of Essie French Affair.

MaD Manis' Halloween Giveaway! (CLOSED)

It's HALLOWEEN!!! One of our most favorite holidays of all! To celebrate, we put together a small Halloween giveaway for you all....because we love you. :)

What are the prizes you ask? See for yourself!

Wet 'n' Wild Fantasy Makers Nail Polish in Night Glow
Wet 'n' Wild Fantasy Makers Nail Polish in Creepy Pumpkin
Wet 'n' Wild Fantasy Makers Glitter Palette in Show Stopper
3 Glitter Pumpkin Polishes (silver & black glitter, silver glitter & crescent moons, and multicolor micro glitter)

The Rules:

1. Must be a public GFC follower. New followers welcome!
2. Only open to U.S. residents. As much as we'd love to include our international followers in this giveaway, we simply cannot afford to ship overseas right now. Sorry! Hopefully soon. 
3. This giveaway ends Friday, October 7th at 7:00 p.m. EST. Winners will be announced here and emailed directly on Saturday, October 8th.
   
   

Sally Hansen Shiny Penny

I'm a huge Sally Hansen CSM fan.  They are some of my favorite drug store polishes.  And I've never had a bad polish.

Until now.

Shiny Penny was the one and only polish I picked up from the fall limited edition.  The color name is pretty much spot on.  It does look like a shiny new penny and dries to a shimmery - almost foil-y finish.

The formula was very difficult to work with.  My bottle was thin.  I had issues with cuticle flooding.  I had issues with terrible streaking and brush strokes.  And I had trouble with bubbling the first time I swatched it because the dry time seems to be longer than average.  I had such high hopes for this one, but am left pretty disappointed with the quality. 

I love SH polishes and hope that I just got a bad bottle.  The color is pretty anyway.  Right?

Butter London - HRH Review + Spoooooky Spiderwebs!

I picked up two Butter London's in their BOGO 1/2 off sale at Ulta this past week. I got HRH for me and Wallis for Mama.

I was really really excited to try this. It's the only Butter London I have and one of the most expensive polishes in my collection.

HRH is a beautiful medium purple. The color is lovely, but that's about the only pro I have for this polish. The application on this was less than satisfactory - for a $14 polish, I expect a flawless application and this one just seemed sub-par to me. I have $4 polishes in my collection that apply better than this one did (China Glaze, I'm looking at you!).

First off, it was SUPER streaky on the first coat. The color evened out a tiny bit more on the second and third, but if I went over the same spot more than once it got streaky again.

Also, I let this polish dry for the same amount of time as any other polish that I use and it bubbled up. I rarely have problems with bubbles, but perhaps it was because I had to use such thick coats to avoid the streakiness that comes with this polish.

I also noticed a funky smell with this one? It smelled like polish... just a stronger scent than most of the polishes in my collection. Nothing I can't deal with, just unusual.

And the last thing, the dealbreaker for me on this polish is that it gave me an ALLERGIC REACTION. After I had this on for a bit, I noticed swelling and tenderness at my fingertips. It hurt to type and if I put any pressure on my nails, they hurt. That has never happened to me before! Needless to say, I took this off after about two hours. I'm not sure if it was an ingredient in this polish or a particular dye or what, but these polishes are 3-Free so I know it's not that.

I really REALLY wanted to like this brand. I've heard some good things about them. But the unsatisfactory formula, high price point and the fact that it gave me a reaction is grounds enough for me to pass on this brand in the future. I had such high hopes for it, but I probably will not be repurchasing. Luckily I got this on sale so I'm not feeling as much buyer's remorse as I would've had I paid full price for it. Maybe I will try the one I picked up for Mama and see if I have the same reaction to it.

Alright, now that I got that out of my system, I will show you some nail art I did on top of this before I realized that it was the swollen finger culprit. I thought this purple could be a nice Halloween purple, so I used white acrylic paint and drew little spiderwebs on my nails. And a little grey spider! Topped it with a coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust.

HAUL-o-ween!

These are our purchases from the last 2-3 weeks.

Ulta had a BOGO sale on Butter London last week, so we picked up two lacquers.  The lucky winners were HRH and Wallis.  Amanda will have a review of HRH going up later in the week.

At Meijer I found some novelty Halloween polishes.  I knew by looking at these bottles they weren't really going to be practical to use because of the bottle shape.  And I was right, application was really difficult because the lid is so small.  Coverage was ok.  Voodoo is a semi-matte red jelly with red microglitter and Toxic is a medium green shimmer almost leaning toward a foil-y finish.

This is 2 coats with no top coat

And this is a coat of Rush High Speed top coat over it.

Here is 2 coats of Toxic - no top coat

Phantom Frights Jack O'Lantern bottles.  Aren't these cute?  They are a little more practical than the coffin shaped bottles.  They had lots of different colors and textures - several neons and glitters and even a mini set, which I impulse bought and gave to Amanda.

 

All polishes are layered over Sinful Black on Black unless otherwise noted.  They don't have names so I'll just show you the pictures.  This was the first one to catch my eye as I love glitters and holos.  I originally thought this was a clear base with holographic glitter and large bat glitters in it.  But upon closer examination, I see that it is, in fact, holographic crescent moons.  So cute!

Next is a small multi colored glitter in a clear base.  I could actually see myself using this one for more than just the Halloween season.  It looks really pretty matt-i-fied too.

Next is a clear base with holographic bar glitter.  This polish is plaqued by the same problem other bar glitters have.  The bars tend to migrate around the nail so uniform coverage is difficult.  The base is also really thick and goopy.  Might need some thinning out.

Here is the only polish out of my haul I didn't swatch over black.  This is applied over the top of Wet n Wild Buffy the Violet Slayer (which looks blue in the pictures but is actually a vivid violet shimmer).  This polish has a medium purple base with holographic glitter and blue flakies.  Again, it's much more purple than the picture makes it look.  

Lastly is a clear base with black and orange bar glitter. Black probably wasn't the best color to layer it over because you can't see the black glitter.  Again, its really goopy and the glitter is hard to place.  It ends up really thick and uneven and you'll need to put a top coat on to try to even out the surface.

And here is one of my most anticipated lemmings of the fall season.  This is the Revlon limited edition Expressionist collection.  I'm so excited to wear these!  The colors are (L to R) Facets of Fuchsia (which is a Deborah Lippman Bad Romance dupe), Smoky Canvas, Blue Mosaic and Starry Pink.  Look for reviews of these coming up real soon!



Robotic Neon Polka Dots

Hello ladies!
 

Today I have something super fun to show you guys. I saw this post by Deniz at Emerald Sparkled a while ago, and LOVED it! I just knew I had to try it.

I started off with two coats of China Glaze Cheers To You from their holiday 2010 collection. This is a perfect metallic silver foil. It applied wonderfully! I don't have many foils but I can live with just this one because it's just that good.

Then I used a dotting tool and made neon polka dots all over. The whole process was really simple but overall I'm really liking how this one looks. It might even stay on longer than two days! ;)

 

What do you all think? It's a little summery but I'm loving it!!

City Silhouette Nails featuring China Glaze - Skyscraper

Hello all! I got some of these new Metro colors last week and have been playing around with them.

Skyscraper is a beautiful blue glitter... I'm sorry I didn't get any swatches of it for you by itself!

This mani was inspired by the name of the polish.. I thought it could be cute to do a mani that looks like a city skyline. I had to do a silhouette because I don't have the necessary talent to do a full detailed city 'scape. :)

I just used regular old black acrylic paint and a little paintbrush to do the silhouette. Overall I think it turned out well, but it is a little hard to see it against the dark blue glitter background. If I do this again I'd probably do it with more of a sunset background so the black would pop more.

That's all for today, you ladies have a wonderful day! :)

Sinful Colors Pinky Glitter

Today I have just a simple mani for you - nothing elaborate or intricate, as I did it this morning before work.  I started with Revlon Desire from their Just Tinted collection.  Fortunately since this is a semi-matte, it dries really fast.  It's a medium pink jelly and I used 3 coats for full coverage.  Then I added Sinful Colors Pinky Glitter as a top coat.  Pinky Glitter is a small holo glitter suspended in a light pink base.  My bottle was extremely thick - it was like GOOP.  I used 2 coats of the Pinky Glitter and then topped with 2 coats of SV.  Enlarge the pics to view the glitter detail. 

Lots of product on my nails - I will probably regret this in a couple days when I have to remove it. 

So here are the pics -

Happy Pink Wednesday!

220 Volts Gradient

After Let Them Have Polish did this gradient mani, I had a burning desire to do one too!

I used three coats of Funky Fingers 220 Volts. This is a BRIGHT neon blue.. I'm surprised these pictures look as color accurate as they do! I didn't get a swatch of this alone, sorry :(

Then I sponged on China Glaze Mistletoe Kisses. Overall I'm really liking how this looks, even if it is a little summery for September. I can never use fall colors for too many manis in a row :)

Short post for today, but there's not much else to say! What do you think?

Candy Corn Nails!

This is something I've talked about doing for a while now. Maybe it's a little early... but I don't care :)

I started with three...THREE coats of China Glaze's Solar Power. I wish there was such a thing as an opaque yellow because that's what caused this to not look exactly like I wanted! The orange is China Glaze Papaya Punch, the most perfect candy corn orange. And the tips are just a basic Sinful white.

Overall I DO like the way this turned out, but there were just TOO many layers of polish on my nails. Theoretically I probably should've used tape for guidelines since I just winged it, but I didn't have the time or patience for tape. It was difficult to only paint half way down the nail though. I guess it still works though because the lines where colors meet on real candy corn aren't perfectly straight!

What do you think of this fall look? Something you'd wear? I want to chew my nails! Om nom nom. I always forget how much I love fall :)