Fashion Polish Giveaway Week 4

The lovely Sam at Fashion Polish, is now holding week 4 giveaway of her 1000000 page views/ Blogaversary extravaganza.

If you haven't already checked it out, definitely check it out, shes got a ton of great swatches and reviews <3
You can find all the details here .

Santa Inspired?!

Lol. Well these were not exactly what I planned but it's what I ended up with so here you go...

Tips are Orly Au Champagne, red is China Glaze Poinsettia, and you can't really see it, but I stamped candy canes from Konad plate M12 with Konad special Gold, and topped with Revlon Speed Dry Top Coat.

Go Lions!!!!

So the BC Lions are playing in the Grey Cup today, and while I do know these are tiger stripes, it just so happens that these are the Lions colours, so GO LIONS!

Lol! So I am totally new to nail polish and nail art, I have yet to totally master painting my nails without getting it on the skin, but I'm the type of person who needs a challenge. I found some great, simple instructions for tiger striped nails, so I had to give it a try. You can find the post I used at Emilys Nail Files.

 The sun makes such a difference when taking pics, I can hardly believe it!

I used 2 coats of Sally Hansen eXtreme wear in Sun Kissed, and L.A. Colors Art Deco White,

and Essie Licorice for the stripes, topped with Seche Vite.

I didn't sponge the colours, cause well, I don't wear makeup so makeup sponges are not something I have handy. This was my first attempt at any type of  'freehand'. I think it came out really great. Hope you like!!

Gems in a bottle Giveaway!!

Gems in a bottle is having a great holiday giveaway featuring some of the new China Glaze holiday collections!!
The contest is closed tonight, but check out her blog to enter!
http://gemsinabottle.blogspot.com/2011/10/its-time-for-first-giveaway.html

Microchops.

You may hear me mention my sister a lot, lol. Her name is Melissa, she is 2 years younger than me, and my best friend. We live together, and I credit her for waking the sleeping polish addict within me. In return I like to do her nails too. Here is her most recent Konadicure.

 She was being a B-word about the pics so they suck as usual, but her nails looked good :p

We started with OPI Base coat, and 2 coats of OPI De-signer, De-better, from the Muppet's Holiday Collection. She picked the 'micro-chip' design (her words) from Konad Plate M61 and I stamped it with Konad Special Black and topped it off with OPI Top Coat. I think it came out really good, and I'm loving the full nail stamps.

My First Frenchie!!

Ok, so being that I always had super short nails, one of the first things I dreamed about when I started growing them out was having a french manicure. I literally have been waiting MONTHS for my nails to grow past the ends of my fingers, and they finally have!! Well just barely, but still, it counts!

I recently purchased Zoya - Angella, which I thought would be a perfect base colour for a Frenchie. I was not disappointed, this colour is phenomenal. In the bottle it's a pearly white with like a pink duo colour thing going on. On my nail it had more of a iridescent pink flaky look... either way I LOVE it and I will definitely be wearing it again.

I stamped the french tip with Konad Princess Polish in white and Plate M19. Now I thought this would be easy peasy with the stamps, but I was somewhat mistaken. Line up on the tip is tough, although I'm sure if my nails were longer it wouldn't be as hard. I missed on about 6 out of 10, which I was more than pleased with, and touched up a few with L.A. Colors Art Deco white.  My thumb looks ragged in this picture, but in real life it looked fine.

 I slapped on a coat of Sally Hansen eXtreme Wear in Disco Ball and 2 coats of Seche Vite to even out the graininess of the glitter. I think it came out pretty good for my first real attempt at something other than flower stamps. The sparkles definitely helped hide a lot of the imperfections. How do you guys feel about french manicures? What are your favorite colour combos?

Soulstice Spa Vegan Polish - Troy swatch

I recently got my first bottle of Soulstice Spa vegan nail polish and thought I would do a little review/swatch for you. Before ordering it, I had a really hard time finding any swatches for this brand so I kind of closed my eyes, pointed, and hoped for the best. I was not disappointed!

 Soulstice Spa Nail Colours are 100% vegan, cruelty free, and partial proceeds of all sales go to various environmental and non profit agencies.

So here I am wearing Troy, and I have to say I LOVE IT! The base is a sort of charcoaly, purpleish, chocolate jelly, and it has tons of metallicy particles. It's not quite shiny enough to call it glitter, (maybe this is glass fleck??)  but it adds great dimension to the colour and it looks absolutely stunning. This would be a great colour to wear to the office or a night out. Now if any of you are familiar with Vancouver, you will know once summer is over, its grey and rainy for the next 9 months so all of these are under artifical light. 

No base coat, 3 coats of Troy, and NO top coat

^ Bathroom Lighting ^

^Living room lighting^

With flash: this shows a little more of the true base colour, it really is very pretty.

Pros:

• I really like the brush, it fanned out well and I didn't find myself having to go over 1000 times to cover my nail, which for a noob like me has ruined many a mani.

• It builds up really well, didn't get goopy on my nails.

• Dries super glossy, I didn't even have to use top coat. It dried to super smooth glassy finish.

• Cures very quickly. Usually I use top coat to help get my polish to a reasonable state before doing anything but usually still end up with smoosh marks and indents This stuff didn't really get tacky it just got dry, and I love love love that.

Cons:  

• Its extremely thin. I used 3 coats but could have easily gone for a 4th, then again this is probably partially why it dries so well. 

• The handle on the bottle is very short and it took a couple muck ups before I got a really good handle of it.

• It's smaller than most of my other polishes 0.43oz compared to most of my others 0.5oz

Overall the 'cons' aren't even really cons, more like minor inconveniences, lol. I will definitely be picking up more of their colours in the future!


You can find Soulstice Spa on the Nail polish Canada website, check out all the great colours here.

Fashion Polish Week 3 Giveaway!!

So Fashion Polish is having a giveaway to celebrate 1000000 page views. What a milestone!! The week 3 giveaway will feature some of Sam's 'Frankens', all of which look spectacular.  Check out her blog for details!

http://www.fashionpolish.com/2011/11/one-million-pagesviews-blogaversary-one_21.html

Free Hello Kitty Stamping Plate!!

The Born Pretty Store is offering a free Hello Kitty Stamping plate to everybody who likes their Facebook page!  ( Like them here!!)

I can't deny, at first I thought this was too good to be true, or their was some hidden catch, so I had to check it out. To my surprise there was no catch but supplies are limited to one per house hold. There was no minimum order so I selected the plate and went straight to the check out. I entered the coupon code BP299 and entered my info, I was pleased to find free shipping was also included. I encountered a bit of a problem when it wanted me to select my payment info and PayPal was the only option. I was a bit hesitant at first but when I signed into PayPal the $0.00 price was confirmed, and all I had to do was hit Ok. I didn't actually have to chose any payment info, and none was displayed on the page. 2 weeks later I got a tiny little envelope in the mail and there it was!

I really like the flower at the 3 o'clock and the sort of butterfly thing at 5 o'clock position and I'm sure I will be using them in the future. I haven't had a chance to use it properly, but I can say just from mucking around with it, you can really tell the difference between the Konad Plates and the 'Fauxnad'.

The Born Pretty Store also has a ton of nail art supplies such as polishes, rhinestones, decals, brushes and dotters all for a really great price, and always free shipping. If you like nail art you should definitely check them out -> www.bornprettystore.com

Have you got your free Hello Kitty plate yet??

Nails of the day

So here's my nails for the day.
This was an attempt at holiday nails. I really like how it turned out. I used OPI Base Coat, and 2 coats of China Glaze Holly-day for the base colour. I stamped the dot pattern from Konad Plate M60 with Konad special gold stamp polish.

I hardly got any nail polish on my fingers :D this is always a great feat for me!

Instead of going for the usual glossy top coat, I thought this would be a great chance to try out my new Matte About You from Essie. It gave it a great non-shiny satiny type finish (don't you love my descriptions :p ) that reminds me of Christmas tree ornaments.
Next time though I think I would stamp the gold after the matte coat, cause it dulled the gold quite a bit, but I still love how it turned out. Hope you like it!!

New Stuff!

So I just received my latest order from Nail Polish Canada, and I was so excited. This was supposed to be my last order of the year according to my husband, but they just got Nubar in, so I may have placed another one but shhhh. Here are a couple pics of what I got.

I actually got 2 of the China Glaze Holiday sets, but being the nerd that I am ripped the packaging off right away and they were too mangled for the photos :P

The seasonal sparkles set: comes with Pointsettia, Holly-day, and Twinkle Lights.

Meet Me Under The Mistletoe set: comes with Ring in the Red, Glittering Garland and Velvet Bow.
It also came with a lip gloss which is not pictured and will probably end up going to my sister. Velvet bow is not quite so purple in real life, its more of a dark blood red, and totally gorgeous.

Konad M19 Plate. I also got a new scraper and the special gold polish but I was a dummy and forgot to put them in the pic.

Zoya - Angella. I LOVE this colour. I bought it as something to wear with a french manicure (and it was on sale) and it is really spectacular. It's frosty sheer white with a mainly pink shine, but if you wiggle your fingers around you'll also see blues and purples.

Last but not least Essie Matte About You. This was a toss up for me cause I really love the matte look, and was considering Zoya Posh, but I think this opens up so many more options, and I'm excited to use this!

Well I don't know if anybody else cares about seeing these pics, I know I like to check them out when other people post so hope you like.
Do you own any of these? Will you be picking any up?

Adopt a Polish!

Have you ever wondered what happened to that last little bottle of polish nobody wanted? Tempted to take it home but unwilling to pay full price for a colour you might never wear? 

Well if you haven't already heard, Nail Polish Canada is sponsoring a fun little 'contest' called Adopt a Polish. Adopt a Polish encourages nail lovers everywhere to put in an application to adopt otherwise unwanted polishes. There is nothing wrong with the bottles, they are all new and unopened, but they all come with their own personal quirks.

Currently up for adoption they have the Orly Family. A family of 4 fallen on hard times, just looking to hold the family together.

 Also featured is Angelina Zoyalie. Once at the top of her game, her whole collection was must have, and yet at the end of the day, she was alone. Help put her back on top.

 Charleston Essie, high hopes were dashed when he was found to be the last of his kind. Feeling inferior, after being discontinued, his only dream is to shine in the sunlight.

Last but certainly not least we have COY  (Color Club - Crush On You). Born to be broken, this vibrant little guy just wants a little TLC and maybe a nice base and top coat!








 Personally I think this is a fabulous idea, fun and funny. Make sure you check their site out, http://www.adoptapolish.org. You might even get a little giggle from applications, the responses are amazing. I've already put my application in, which one of these lovelies do you want to bring home?



**All pics are from adoptapolish.org no copyright intended, just hoping to spread the love :D

Lacquered Lover: LACQUERED LOVER 1,000 FOLLOWER GIVEAWAY!!!

Check out this great giveaway from lacquered lover!!


Lacquered Lover: LACQUERED LOVER 1,000 FOLLOWER GIVEAWAY!!!: Good afternoon my fellow Lacquered Lovers! This post is all about YOU! With all your amazing help, my blog hit 1,000 followers this past Fri...

Purple!

So I recently got my first full nail Konad plate, and I have been stamping like crazy. Most of my attempts get the soggy Q-tip of nail polish death, but I really like this one. I started with Essie Grow Stronger Base coat, 1 coat of Billie Black nail polish (dollar store), and 2 coats of Wet 'n Wild Night Prowl. Once that dried I used the Argyle pattern from Plate M60 and stamped it with China Glaze Devotion.
If you haven't seen it before, Night Prowl is a sheer black jelly with really fine purple sparkles. I did try to take pictures of it but my camera sucks (>.<) and you could barely see the purple, which really looks so bright and sparkly in real life so I trashed those.

My husband took these pics with his new 'Genius phone' as he likes to call it, so again I apologize for the poor quality, and the messy fingers. I wasn't about to risk my otherwise perfect nails for my lack of agility with a Q-Tip :P

Devotion looked more silvery in the bottle but I think the purple glitter really bought out the lavender more. This was my first full nail stamping attempt and I was pretty proud that it came out as good as it did!
Hope you like it!

A little about me!!

Hey Lovely People! Welcome to my blog about nail polish. Since most of you don't know me, I'll give you a brief intro. I go by Jen, I'm 28 years old, married to my best friend Nick, barfy I know :P, and I am a stay at home mom of 4.5 year old identical twin boys Dominick and Damien. I am a tomboy at heart, I know nothing about makeup (I don't wear it), and I hate designer purses. I am usually found wearing sweat pants at home with the kids.
I have been a faithful nail biter since the day I was born, and I literally had not painted my nails since I was about 15 years old, when the first Sally Hansen Chromes came on the market. Then one day, at the beginning of the summer I just stopped. My nails started growing, and my sister introduced me to the seriously advanced world of nail polish, and I haven't looked back, lol.

These are pics of the Konadicure I did on my sister. Base colour is Orly Au Champagne, design is the argyle pattern from plate M60, stamped in China Glaze Awaken, and topped with Seche Vite Top Coat

I don't have a great camera at the moment(I'm hoping to get a new one for Christmas, feel free to let my hubby know!)so I probably wont be posting many straight colour swatches, but I'm really into nail art right now so expect to see pics of my many trials and errors. I also appreciate any tips, tricks and feedback you might offer!!