Opi Live and Let Die Review and Swatches!

Hello everybody! Sorry I haven't posted for two days! It snowed in my area and I've been enjoying it! Heres a picture for your entertainment.

Thats my puppy. Isn't she cute?
So anyway, getting back on track. :) Today I have for you a polish that was given to me as a gift.

I'm 99% sure that it's called "Live and Let Die". I received it as an individual mini that doesn't have the color name on it, so I had to do some research to identify it. It's a very dark green that has gold shimmer in it. It looks almost black in some lights.

Application

It applied really well. 1-2 coats. It was a great consistency and I had no trouble with it.

Look

Im not a fan of it personally. It's nice and all, just not the type of color i'd wear. Super dark greens don't flatter my skin tone very well. I prefer emerald green. This one leans a bit blue.

Price

I'm not sure because I didn't buy it, but Opi minis aren't normally super cheap given their size.

Overall

I probably wouldn't have bought it myself. I'm sure that others might love the color but its just not my thing. Plus if i'm going to buy Opi polishes, i'll buy the full size bottle because I think the minis don't give you enough for your money. *Rant mode on* I have about the same issue with them as I do with the Covergirl minis, except Opi has the option to buy the full size version of colors. The only reasons I would ever buy a polish that has less then 4 mls in it is if A. It's really cheap/on a really good sale or B. I want to make sure I like the color before I buy a full size. Otherwise it just doesn't seem worth it. *Rant mode off*

So, do you like the color? Would you buy it? Does anyone else feel the same about super tiny mini bottles as I do?

Happy painting!

Fire and Ice

Okay, so I was looking through the polishes I have to swatch, and I was looking at two of them. One reminds me strongly of fire and the other reminds me of ice, so I thought it would be cool to swatch both of them in a "fire and ice" post!

So here we go. Right now where I live its really cold and theres a 90% chance of snow later. I really want snow because we don't get it very often. Where I live its always dry cold, so i'm excited to finally get something to show for the cold weather. But..at the same time, I keep missing summer. I like heat better then cold. So, I'm going to start with fire so I can have something warm.

This polish is called "Sunkissed" by LA Colors. Two coats. I picked it up at the dollar general for $2. It's not a very well known brand, but I actually really like these polishes. This one is gorgeous. It has a foil type finish except its more with flaky glitter. It has orange red and gold mixed it and its just beautiful.
One thing worth mentioning about this brand, and this is just awesome, is its incredible removing powers. I'm a little lazy about taking off nail polish, so occassionally I'll just get most of the old polish off then apply new polish over the old. It then come backs to haunt me when I have to take all of it off. This is where these polishes come in. If you apply a coat of LA colors polish and let it dry for a minute or two, it will remove any old polish left on your nails when you take it off. Before I put it on, my nails were stained green from my last manicure, and had a few pieces of old polish still practically glued to them. Not a pretty sight. But when I took it off after swatching, this polish cleaned my nails. It got the green stain out and removed most of the old polish in only a few wipes. Its awesome. It works better then actual nail polish remover.

So now onto the ice polish..

This is called "Icedream", and its by sinful colors. Its a silver glitter with scattered blue glitter in it. I wasn't quite as happy with this one as I was with the other. Its a nice color and all, but I was expecting more. In the bottle it looks very densely packed so I assumed it wouldn't be hard to build up the opacity. Wrong. While it did become opaque, it didn't level itself very well so I ended up with patchy nails. I tried to get it even, but as you can probably see it still looks lumpy. I could also tell just by looking at it that it would be an absolute beast to remove. It was only on for a minute or so, but I still have glitter clinging to my nails after removing it. If I were to use this polish again, i'd use a little bit of it in nail art instead of by itself, if I ever use it again at all.

Both of these polishes retail at $1.99, although I got "icedream" on sale at Target for $1.39.

So..are you a fire or an ice lover? :)

Essie Mint Candy Apple Review and Swatch!

Hello everyone! Today marks a milestone for myself. My first Essie polish review! :) In the past, I haven't been too sure about Essie, since they're higher in the price range. But they looked so adorable on the shelf at Target, so I caved and bought one.

Mint Candy Apple, Flash

Mint Candy Apple, Natural light

Mint Candy Apple, Natural Light

This beauty is called Mint Candy Apple, its a soft baby blue that kind of reminds me of baby blankets. It also has some soft mint green tones in the right light. It's part of the winter 2013 collection. It fit with the season perfectly! 

So onto the review..

Application

It went on evenly in two coats. At first I thought it was going to be a little patchy but then it evened itself out! I love polishes that self level, it makes it so much easier.

Look

I think its very cute. I had been hoping to see some more of the green tones in it, but I like it as is now. Its the type of blue thats great for winter, but it could be adapted for other occassions. Its a pretty flexible color.

Price

$9.00. Personally I still think thats pricey for nail polish, but I just couldn't resist it. Essie polishes are just so cute!

Overall

I like the color a lot, although I think i'll take a look at sale boards on pinterest to buy Essie polishes from now on. Or maybe Amazon. They have cheaper prices and you know me, I always look for the best deal.

So what do you think? Do you have this one in your collection? If not, will you get it soon? 

As always, happy painting! :)

Back to the Clearance! :)

Hello everyone. Today I'm starting a new type of post. I call them back to the clearance posts! Name inspired by my favorite movie. Something about me is that I'm almost always on a budget, and because of this I tend to gravitate towards the clearance section like a fat kid does to the cake at a birthday party.
So these posts will be all about whatever I picked up recently that satisfies both my "OOH pretty colors! I must have ALL of them!" thought pattern whenever I'm in a store that sells polishes and is kind to my wallet. So here we go. Todays clearance buy was Covergirl Appletini, a bright lime creme.
Normally I wouldn't dare buy one of them, even though the colors are adorable. The thing I don't like about the glosstini collection is that the bottles are so small! Teeny is right! They're 3.5ml. Bon bons nail polish bottles are bigger then that and thats seriously saying something. If this one hadn't been on clearance, I never would've gone for it. Even if they're kind of a rip off in my book, the color is pretty cute at least, so I was kind of glad to find this one for a $1.19 at Target.
So here it is!

Appletini Natural Light 1

Appletini Natural Light 2

Appletini Flash 1

Appletini Flash 2

I think its a cute color in genial, but it doesn't really suit my particular skin tone. I have strong pink 

and occasionally red tones in my skin, and this color just isn't bringing out the best in it. I did have one last thing I wanted to try with it, another polish that I found on clearance. Here it is!

This glitter is called "Green Rocket" and it has a mix of tiny, small, and medium metallic green hexes, tiny, small, and medium matte white hexes, and small white bar glitter. Maybe you are starting to see a small pattern here, and I admit it, I love the color green. That might have something to do
with the fact that my birthday is St. Patricks day and the fact that I have a slight obsession with irish mythology. Whatever the reason is, I just love the color. I've been searching for the perfect emerald green polish for some time now. But anyway, back to the glitter.

This was 2 coats of Green Rocket over Appletini. I'd say this looks okay. The one problem I have with it is that its kind of lumpy. The top coat didn't really smooth it out either, so it has this weird texture. Its not too bad when you just look at it though. 

Overall ive done better with color choices, but I say $2.50 for a Covergirl and a Sally Hansen polish isn't bad, since the normal price for both would be $6.18 at walgreens. 

Maybelline Clearly Spotted Review and Swatch!

Hi everyone! Today I have to show you one of my favorite glitter top coat polishes! A few months back I started to notice all of the black and white glitter polishes that were popping up everywhere and knew that I had to get my hands on one. So I ran off to the store and bought this!

This beauty is called Clearly Spotted, and it's part of Maybelline's Polka Dot collection! I really like this collection, and plan to buy all of the polishes in it when I can, but right now this is what I have. 

Clearly Spotted is a mix of tiny, small, and medium black hex glitters and small white ones in a clear base. I applied it over an unnamed Claires polish that I nicknamed "glue" hah. Heres a picture of Glue by itself for reference.

                                               

So..onward to the review!

Application

This applied so well! Some glitters are hard to get to apply evenly or hard to get out of the bottle at

all. But this applied just about perfectly! I used two coats on most of the nails, but I could've easily

gotten away with one!

Look

I think it looks great! It really reminds me of cookies and cream ice cream over this color. Although white makes the white glitter harder to see. It seems sort of snowy to me. I showcased that for your entertainment in this little animation..

I also have an older picture of this glitter over another color, e.l.f Electric Fuchsia. It lets you see the 

white glitter in it.

Price

It costs about $4 in stores and $2.99 online at Target. 

Overall

I really like it. Though its not very unique with the other million and a half black glitter polishes from

various other brands. I like the whole collection in general, and hopefully I'll have the others from it to share with you soon.

Until then, happy painting! :)

Sally Hansen Amethyst Chrome Review and Swatch!

Hi everyone! Okay, I admit it, I have been slacking off a bit with posting. What I did do though, was swatch a bunch of polishes to show you! So, without further adue, here's the first one. This one was given to me by a friend and I was so excited about it as soon as I saw it! Its from the Sally Hansen Chrome Nail Makeup collection! Ive seen some swatches of a few of these online, and I loved them!

This one is called amethyst chrome, and its a pink purple chrome (duh hah).


Application

This was fully opaque in one coat! I think that's pretty awesome since I'm going to want to have this bottle for as long as possible.

Look

I love how shiny this is! It almost matches the bottle! My one complaint was that it shows every single ridge, dip and imperfection your nails might have. I'd recommend buffing your nails and using a base coat so it looks as smooth as possible.

Price

I'm actually not sure how much this originally cost, since it was a gift.

Overall

I like this! Its shiny and really looks like metal on your nails! Again, buff your nails before you put it on, and I'm almost positive that will even out fine! I'm pretty happy to have received this and I would've bought this myself!

So what do you think? Would you buy it if you had the chance?

I Love Nail Polish Nostalgia Ultra chrome Review and Swatches!

Hi everyone! So lately I was online, and was looking at my favorite online Indie polish store to waste time on(expecially useful when I have big research papers due the next day), I Love Nail Polish. Home of the amazing set of Ultrachromes. I'd been eyeing them for weeks, and recently I caved and decided that I had to have one. After much hard thinking, I have to share with you the new queen of my stash.
Her name is Nostalgia, and shes smoking hot. Seriously, this is a really pretty polish. Its the newest of the bunch, added a bit before christmas as part of the holiday collection. As all the other Ultrachromes in the set, it has amazing color shifting power. I coukd've taken about a million photos of this one polish, and i'm pretty sure that I literally took about 100. But I won't make you sit through all of them, so heres a few of the best pictures in various lightings.

The flash lit up the metallic shimmer in the polish really well, but you can only see one color in the pictures with it on. 

Indoor lighting, how pretty it is really depends on the type of light. For me, the light in my house didn't really do it justice.

Ive seen a bunch of people take pictures of ultra chromes under water, so I gave it a try. I'm really glad I did, because it looks incredible! You can see whole rainbows on the nail when you look at it from some angles. It really brings out the green, and you can even see some blue, which you don't see otherwise. 

The only lighting I haven't managed to get a picture of is what it looks like in sunlight. Where I live, its been either cloudy or rainy for the last week or so. Every once and a while the sun will come out, but the second I get my camera its gone again. I think it enjoys taunting me. But let me tell you, while sunlight normally tends to dull polishes like this, this one polish is unbelievably stunning in the sunlight. It brings out a strong metallic shimmer and its just amazing. I'll try to see if the weather will cooperate with me over the next few days, to see if I can show you a picture of it.

Now, onto my review,

Application

I'm going to be honest here, I'm not totally sure. I applied the polish in really low light because we had family over, and they were watching a movie when I received the package, and I couldn't wait for them to turn the lights back up before trying it out. So I think that the polish was opaque in 2 coats, but i'd have to do it again to be absolutely certain. Although I'm not completely sure of the opacity, I did apply a new coat after a few weeks of wear, and it was so fun to apply. The polish is really shimmery when you put it on, and that makes it cool.

Look

Just a warning, it doesn't look like the swatch photo ILNP has on their website. As you can see from the pictures, its darker, and not quite as smooth. Don't get me wrong, it's gorgeous, but I didn't get exactly what I thought I was getting when I got it. Also, i'd recommend you either buff your nails or put down a base coat. Chromes tend to show ridges and bumps in nails really easily. 

Price

$12.50 a bottle. For any normal colors, I wouldn't have paid that. I'm not the type of person who normally goes for brands(Theres been a few exceptions, but to me, whats the point in paying a bunch of money for, say, a purple Chanel polish if you can buy a similar color in a cheaper brand?) But, going back to this polish, this is worth the money. The entire Ultra chrome collection is unique, I've never seen anything that matches up to the color shifting power that they possess. If there is something similar, I haven't seen it. 

So that about wraps up this review. What do you think? Will you be adding this beauty to your collection? 

Happy painting!