Some New Drug Store Swatches

Recently there have been several drugstore nail polishes releases from several brands. I have picked out a few from these brands to show you>>

Sally Hansen - Lacey Lilac - This is from a new set of Xtreme wears that includes a mint, dark gray, blue and magenta. This is an awesome pastel lavender/lilac creme. It's bright, but not stark and is isn't too red or too blue. Beautiful and also has a great formula. Easily applies in two coats. God I love Xtreme Wears.

Revlon - Copper Penny - This is a copper foil that can be found in a special display of metallics that includes a gold and silver as well. This is awesome. I have plenty of gold and silver metallics but none that are a copper color like this. I have a cool mani I did with this to show you too.

Revlon - Cloud - This is in a new collection of Top Speed Revlons that have a big display of several bright colors I am sure you have seen if you frequent the makeup section of the drugstore at all. This is a super pretty periwinkle creme. I feel like this is what Sally Hansen - Cloud should have looked like. Although I shouldn't take away from it, but this one is more wearable.

Wet n Wild - Party of Five Glitters - (shown over black) - This is a clear top coat with blue, silver, green, red and purple glitters (five!). I was disappointed with this one formula-wise. The base is very thick and gloppy and the glitter is very sparse. This is three coats and I am still not pleased with the coverage.

Oke Doke - Camo Loco - This is a new brand to me. Oke Doke surprised me one day at Rite Aid. And I am glad I found it because this green is to die for. This is a mossy, olivey, super shimmery green with gold undertones. This is gorgeous.

Oke Doke - Purple Nurple - Another winner from Oke Doke. This is a deep, rich, royal purple with red and blue shimmer. Really pretty. This is one you have to see in real life.

Just goes to show, you don't have to spend a lot to get gorgeous, good-quality nail lacquer. These are all between $1.99 to $4.99 and are easy to find at any drugstore.

Serena Williams - Grand Slam from OPI

Simply Smashing - This is an awesome, very yellow, green shimmer. It's a bright, weird, maybe hard to pull off green, but that is the kind of shades that I like!

Black Shatter - Shown over Simply Smashing - Black Shatter is released with this collection as well as the Katy Perry collection if you were wondering. I was confused about it at first. I don't mind of course because I love Black Shatter. I may have been more exciting if they did a different color shatter, but it's cool.

Disclosure: The products featured in this post were furnished to me by the manufacturer or PR company for review. For more information please visit my disclosure policy.

Teenage Dream - The Katy Perry Collection by OPI

OPI has teamed up with Katy Perry to create a collection of 4 glittery shades this winter. Katy Perry is a nail icon so it makes sense to collaborate with her! To complement the shades in the collection, OPI has also released a crackle top coat: whole lotta fun!

Teenage Dream - Semi sheer pink base full of large hexagon holographic glitter and pink micro glitter. This is three coats and I think it does a decent job building up. You could wear it like this, however I prefer it layered.

Not Like The Movies - My favorite of this collection! This is a steel metallic with a green/purple duochrome and little, itty-bitty silver flaky pieces in it.

Last Friday Night - Sheer blue with bright blue shimmer and iridescent hexagon pieces flashing red, blue and green. This one is definitely one to be layered. It looks pretty much identical to Sinful Colors - Hottie which I used layered for this mani.

The One That Got Away - This is a super rich, magenta berry with glass-fleck shimmer. This doesn't have quite as much sparkle as OPI - Let Me Entertain You from the Burlesque collection which I expected it to look just like, but it's beautiful in its own right.

Black Shatter - Shown over The One That Got Away - This is the best thing since sliced bread! I have been having a whole lot of fun with this one. You have to apply this over dry polish. It works best that way. If you ever used the old Cover Girl - Crackles from the 90's you'll remember they had to be applied over wet polish and they took forever to dry/crack. Black Shatter cracks quickly and gives a more uniform look. I am a big fan.

So overall, cool collection. It has everything. Holo, iridescent, duochrome, glitter, shimmer, and crackle! The Katy Perry Collection is out now!
What do you think!?
-Elaine
:c)

Disclosure: The products featured in this post were furnished to me by the manufacturer or PR company for review. For more information please visit my disclosure policy.

Striping Tape Review

Hi! I recently had a chance to review some products from bornprettystore.com and the product I am showing you today is the striping tapes.

Striping tapes are thin, colored/metallic/glittery tapes that are used for nail art. These supposedly come as a set of 12, but I only have 10: black, coppery-brown, purple, blue, green, silver, white, pink, yellow and red. From their picture online it looks like there may also be a sky blue and magenta? It's hard to tell.

This is the first time I have ever used striping tapes but I think they were very easy to use and I like the mani that I did with them:

I started by painted my nails as usual. For this design I did half white creme and half China Glaze - Jolly Holly. Once that was all dry I started with the roll of red, taped it onto my nail from the diagonal corner near the cuticle, pressed it along the nail and cut the end. Simple! I did that to all 10, trimmed and excess and topped it with top coat.

There really weren't any issues with using these except that a couple nails did have some lifting at the free edge but to remedy that I just added more top coat.

The set of 12 tapes is sold for $8.99 and decreases in price the more sets you buy. Bornprettystore.com is located in China but ships internationally.

The store also sells plenty of other nail art products including rhinestones, filmo and stickers. They also sell polish (I have some to show you) tools, acrylic equipment, false eyelashes and other things. I have some nail stamping kits to review for you but so far I haven't had success with them. More to come...

Glitter, Glitter, Glitter... and more Glitter!

I am a list writer. I write to-do lists all the time, for everything, and I generally like to write them in little notebooks. That means I am always on hunts for cute notebooks to write all my lists in. While shopping recently I found really cute glitter-bomb notebooks at Charlotte Russe and of course bought one. It was made of red, purple, green and blue hex glitter and of course all I could think is "how can I translate to this exact look to my nails?" Well I figured it out!

I did this with two coats of Nubar - Night Sparkle, a deep blue base with blue glitter. Then added Nubar - Grass Green Glitter, then Hard Candy - Zombie, then Wet n Wild - Prancer on top.

-What do you think?
:c)

Holiday Jewel Basket by Nubar

For the holiday's Nubar has released a gift set of seven shades, including lots of glitter, Diamont top coat and base coat all wrapped in a little cube with a little basket that you can put nail tools and things into. Let's take a look at the shades>>>

Competition Red - Dreamy, creamy, red, red red. Is it just a red creme? I guess. It is a very nice rich red and I like the formula in comparison to other red cremes I have been trying lately because it is more like a true creme than jellyish.

Pixie Dust (over Competition Red) - This is a super shimmery, white/silver dusting of little particles. This is meant to be worn as a top coat. This won't get you full coverage but it is beautiful.

I love looking at the bottle. It's like a magical snow globe.

Silver Glitter - This is a dense, full coverage silver glitter. This is three coats.

Grass Green Glitter - This is a full coverage green glitter with little flecks of gold. This is 4 coats. I wasn't terribly impressed with the formula. It's still patchy after 4 coats. I am looking forward to wearing this over Nicole - Fell From The Tree.

Ruby Red Glitz - This is a red jelly with little red glitter. I love this! I had it on for 5 days which for me is like a decade.

Heavy Gold Glitter - This has to be the best formula for a glitter, EVER. This is two coats, it is full coverage, it was even, smooth and just perfect.

NOT Pictured: Nubar - 2010. 2010 is a flakie in a clear base that was released in the summer and is a close dupe to Sally Hansen - Hidden Treasure and GOSH - Rainbow. It accidentally was forgotten in my samples but if it shows up I will post it.

This is a the basket. You could put about 5-6 bottles in it, but not close it, or you can keep little manicure tools in it.

The Holiday Jewel Basket retails for $49.95 on bynubar.com

What do you think?
Elaine
:c)

Disclosure: The products featured in this post were furnished to me by the manufacturer or PR company for review. For more information please visit my disclosure policy.

China Glaze 'Tis The Season to be naughty and nice

For the holiday collection this year China Glaze has released a beautiful set of 16 SHADES! I am stunned. This is not only amazing because it is 16 polishes, but it is amazing because they are gorgeous colors. I have swatched all of the shades and did a couple comparison swatches. Swatches and reviews first and comparison s second. Let's take a look!>>>

Ruby Deer - Bright, bright tomato red. Sort of jelly in finish and has a fantastic smooth formula. So, so smooth. Amazingly smooth.

Phat Santa - Another bold red creme but darker than Ruby Deer.

Mrs. Claus - This is very interesting! This is a sheer red with silver glitter. I am so intrigued by this because it seems soooo sheer but with three coats, the color and the glitter still hide any VNL. Very impressive. This reminds me of candy canes. It also reminds me of Zoya - Astra, although it is absolutely not a dupe.

Mommy Kissing Santa - Deep, burgundy red shimmer. This is velvety and smooth and delicious. I love this! I had a client comment that it was gorgeous and very Christmas-y. I said that it was funny she should say that because it was from a Holiday set!

Sugar Plums -Wine shimmer with sparse, tiny holo specks. Similar to a discontinued China Glaze fave, Crystal Ball, but not a dupe.

Naughty and Nice - Deep, deep, almost black, burgundy creme with a jelly finish. I loooooved wearing this. This is three coats, although when I did a mani I did two. When I did this swatch I guess I forgot how to paint my nails and needed to do a third coat to even things out.

Little Drummer Boy - Navy/denim shimmer. Very nice. I wanted to say that this isn't terribly unique/exciting, but I also don't have anything close to it. What did excite me about it, though, is that it has an out of this world formula. Super pigmented and smooth. You can get away with one coat with this one.

Jolly Holly - Wow! This blew me away. This is a rich green with golden shimmer. So beautiful. Just like Little Drummer Boy this is an amazing, smooth, super-pigmented one coat dream.

Mistletoe Kisses - What a cool polish! It makes me smile when I look at it! This is a mix of a really neat, soft green that is sort of between emerald and jade, completely packed with super small silver glitter. Very pretty. I couldn't decide if this is a two or three coater. I guess it's two but I did a third to be sure. I probably could have just stayed at two. This swatch is with top coat and one coat makes this polish smooth. It's not too grainy.

Peace On Earth - Wow! Striking, olive shimmer. This is one of my faves of this collection. I did a comparison with a few other olive shimmers below.

Jingle Bells - Classy gold. This isn't a very yellow gold. It's more or a neutral gold. Very pretty. The finish is hard to describe. It isn't quite a foil. It's sort of a chrome, but not as chrome as a chrome... if that makes sense! It's like a pearlish chrome.

Midnight Kiss - Partying yellow gold foil! There is no ambiguity here. This is definitely a gold foil. This is two coats.

Party Hearty (over white) - Fun! This is a clear base with large red hexagon glitter, smaller green hexagon glitter and even smaller gold and silver glitter. This is two coats over white.

Snow - White Cream. Nothing noteworthy. I am always interested to try a new staple like white creme to see if it may be like, the best white cream ever. But this one isn't . It a standard three coat, sort of difficult to apply, white creme. This is three coats with top coat.

Frosty - Pretty, delicate, snowy, pearly shimmer. It's not like a typical shimmer. The particles are sort of like small pearly pieces. I really, really like this on. It is sort of sheer so it needs at least 3 coats unless you want to layer it over something. This is actually 5 coats but that is because I kept getting my middle finger uneven and had to add more to fix it, but then it was way off then the rest. I do like the look of 5 coats though.

Cheers to You - Silver fun foil. Very pretty and flashy and awesome, but not unique.

And as promised here are a couple comparison swatches:

Sugar Plums on index and ring and China Glaze - Crystal Ball on middle and pinky. Crystal Ball is thinner and has more holo glitter. Sugar Plums only needed two coats, but Crystal Ball needed three.

Peace On Earth comparison. From left to right:

• Peace On Earth
• China Glaze - Cat's Eye
• OPI - At Your Quebec & Call
• Peace On Earth

I was hoping that Peace On Earth would be close to an amazing discontinued olive from China Glaze: Cat's Eye. Cat's Eye is more metallic and not as green.

Midnight Kiss on index and ring. Orly - Luxe on middle and pinky. Close, but not dupes. Luxe has more silver particles giving it a less yellow gold look then Midnight Kiss.

'Tis The Season is available now online and at retailers. What do you think?! :c)


Disclosure: The products featured in this post were furnished to me by the manufacturer or PR company for review. For more information please visit my disclosure policy.