Essence Jacob's Protection

I hope you are enjoying your Sunday! I meant to post this polish weeks ago. It has been sitting in my folder waiting to be seen.

Essence Jacob's Protection is a blackened blue jelly filled with blue and green glitter flakes, along with a sparse sprinkling of holo micro glitter. The application was not as good as I've come to expect from Essence, but not bad considering all the flakes. Definitely worth the beautiful outcome, and opaque in two coats.

Essence Colour 3 Boys Are Back in Town & It's Just a Little Crush

I hope you are enjoying your Friday! Its almost the end of the year. Can you believe 2013 is almost here?!

Ulta is having a huge clearance event (it started Wednesday). The majority of the Christmas stock is on clearance along with other goodies. I grabbed several Essence polishes that were shipped to Ulta specifically for the event. They are all from collections seen earlier this year, even late last year. To give you an idea of what there is (if you have an Essence obsession like me): Colour 3, Special Effects Top Coats, Colour & Go  (original discontinued small sizes), Magnetics, nail art stickers, and press on nails. Selection may vary by store. I scooped up several goodies and backups for almost all of them.

Essence Colour 3 polishes are a duo sticks. The name Colour 3 comes from the notion that you can have three polishes from this one stick. The two polishes, plus a third shade if you layer them. Boys Are Back in Town is a very dusty grayed purple creme. The application is perfection. Almost opaque in one coat; I used two for good measure. It's Just a Little Crush is the layering polish. A clear slightly milky base filled with purple and blue-toned violet shimmer micro glitter. As you can see, just one coat makes it seem like a different polish. I love this duo stick! I cannot wait to try out the other two I found.

Merry Christmas!

I hope you are enjoying your Tuesday! And that you had a Merry Christmas, if you celebrate. Otherwise, Happy Tuesday! I wanted to do nail art for Christmas, but I have been utterly exhausted lately, so I settled for Christmas colored polishes.

Ignore the tip wear and band-aid. I usually take photos within an hour or so of doing my nails. However, I did not remember I needed pictures until the next day after work. By then, I had tip wear and a bandage from a cash register related injury.

For my green, I used Barielle Date Night, a jewel toned emerald shimmer. My accent nail consisted of Essie Head Mistress and As Gold As It Gets. I love this combination! So simple, yet very appropriate for the holiday.

Christmas Stamping

I hope you are enjoying your Sunday! Christmas is getting closer and closer. And the stress is getting worse and worse. But at least my nails are cute. :)

I used only three polishes for my base and stamping. Ulta The Jungle Look (green), Color Club Gingerbread Man (gold), and Love My Nails New Love (red). For my stamped images, I used BM-316 (gift with bow), BM-320 (ornament), BM-321 (tree), and BM14 (bells).

Christmas Tree

I hope you are enjoying your Saturday! Its been a little over a week since I last posted, and I apologize for that. The holiday season has me stressed out. Getting ready for the holiday itself, plus work. I work in retail and I am sure you have seen how the stores are this time of year. I have never little time left. So I am cramming a post in before I go to bed tonight.

You have probably seen this type of design floating around the web lately. It has been very popular this season. I used one coat of Milani Signature Gold as my base. I love this gold, and keep picking it up as the gold in my holiday designs. For the tree, I taped off my nail leaving a triangle. Then I placed striping tape, making sure to lap it over the tape. I painted on a layer of Color Club Holiday Splendor before carefully peeling the tape off. Finally, I topped my tree with a silver star glitter.

The design is very easy to create. I need to work with striping tape more.

Color Club Gingerbread Man & Holly

I hope you are enjoying your Thursday! I recently got a new camera. I have been playing around with it and trying to see if it is what I want. Obviously, macro shots (close up photography) is a large part of my camera use. I have not perfected taking manicure shots with this camera yet, but decided I needed to start posting them. If anything, seeing them on my blog will hopefully help me figure out tricks to make the pictures better. I purchased a Fujifilm FinePix HS30EXR. The camera is amazing. I am just having trouble getting macro shots in my light box without casting a shadow with the long lens. Also, getting my skin to turn out the right color. If you have any advice, please let me know, whether by comment or email.

Enough of my camera rambling, onto the pictures!

Color Club Gingerbread Man is a light gold foil. The application is perfection and opaque in one coat. It may appear like your basic gold foil, but it does have something special about it. Its scented! It smells like a frosted gingerbread cookie. The scent is very light. Nothing overpowering.

I wanted to make this manicure into something even more Christmas like than gingerbread, so added hollies. Three berries and three leaves. I used stamping plate BM14 and Ulta The Jungle Look. I attempted to stamp red and green on my thumb, but the delicate design dried too much before I could stamp it. So I decided to do green and add the red afterward. I went back with a small dotting tool and Love My Nails New Love to make the holly berries red. I personally love this. Its simple and very easy.

Lex Tuileries

I hope you are enjoying your Wednesday! I need to get myself into the Christmas/Winter spirit with nail art. It does not feel very much like the holiday season. And our weather just recently started to feel like December. Louisiana weather... But I do have a very pretty pink polish to show you today!

Lex Tuileries is a sheer pale pink base filled with orange, red, silver, and purple medium hex plus orange, red, and silver small hex glitter. The sheer base easily builds to be opaque in three coats, while allowing you to see the underlying layers of glitter. The application is perfect. Absolutely gorgeous!

Lex Cosmetics lets you submit an idea for a nail polish. If chosen, it is voted on by you and other polish lovers. If it wins, they will create the polish. How amazing is that?! Each polish retails for $10, with 10% of that donated to a charity.

The story behind Tuileries is: "First, tulips are one of the first signs that spring is really, truly, finally here! Second, they always remind me of my mother..... I would love to have a color that can represent her in every way: in beauty, in color, in her favorite things, and in her uniqueness. My color would be light pinkish-red with glass-like flecks of silver, red, pink, and orange within it to showcase the depth of both tulips and my mother."

Glitter Sprinkled Gold

I hope you are enjoying your Sunday!

Milani Signature Gold topped with Snowman Red Glitter. Signature Gold is a metallic copper gold. Perfect and opaque in one coat. Red Glitter is a clear base filled with red micro glitter. The bottle is shaped like a snowman and they are exclusively sold at Rite-aid this time of year.

Zoya Katherine and Wet n Wild The Gold and the Beautiful

I hope you are enjoying your Friday! I have what I discovered to be a popular manicure to share with you today. I wore this for two days and had an usually large amount of people compliment me on it. Some actually reaching to grab my hand to get a better look.

Zoya Katherine is a sheer eggplant jelly. It starts off very sheer and light colored. As you build it, it grows darker and more opaque with each coat. Four coats to reach opacity for me. In person, there is no visible nail line, completely opaque. This polish is a dream to work with. It does not look or feel thick, even after four coats. Given it is a sheer build-able jelly, the layering possibles are endless.

Wet n Wild The Gold and the Beautiful is a clear base filled with small (almost micro) gold glitter flakes. I absolutely love this polish as a glitter gradient! I am so happy I grabbed it to use. It is perfection. It easily gives solid tips, while also making it easy to fade the glitter out.

I originally planned to wear Katherine alone. I painted it on with a fast dry top coat as my last step. However, I did not give it ample time to dry. I ended up with a few exposed tips from push back, a couple of dents, and smudges. All toward the tip of my nails. I did not want to wear a mangled mani to work, but did not want to take Katherine off either. A glitter gradient was my solution. Before work, I quickly sponged The Gold and the Beautiful on. It saved my manicure and turned out so lovely that I am glad I messed up my polish.

Zoya FeiFei and Snowflakes

I hope you are enjoying your Thursday! Today I have a fun winter-y design to share with you. The weather here is warm and not December like at all. But then again, it is Louisiana. Our weather has a mind of its own. I cannot change the weather to be more like winter, but I can make my nails more winter like.

Zoya FeiFei is described as a "medium steel blue base with heavy gold, blue and pink iridescent metallic sparkle." Zoya hit the nail on the head with that description. FeiFei is unlike any polish I own. Its gorgeous! My camera had a hard time capturing all the amazing in one shot. The application is perfection and opaque in three coats.

For my winter manicure, I decided to stamp snowflakes over FeiFei. I used Pure Ice Super Star! along with stamping plates BM14, BM-319, and BM-323. I love the snowflakes over top this polish!

Barielle Carnival Fiesta Collection and Swatches

I hope you enjoyed your Wednesday! The day is nearly over, probably will be over for me by the time I hit publish. Today I have Barielle's new winter collection to share with you. Carnival Fiesta. It consists of five metallic polishes varying between shimmer, frost, and duochrome.

Wanna Samba? is a purple to steel blue duochrome. It even appears teal at certain angles. It has a frost finish and applies opaque in two coats.

Jillian's Jammin' is a bright teal glass fleck that reflects purple at certain angles. The blue/purple duochrome is very strong in the bottle, but not quite as noticeable on the nail. Though it is more visible in person than in photos. The application is great and opaque in two coats. This is my favorite of the collection.

Lindsay's Dancin' is a shimmering red. Every holiday collection needs a red. I love the shimmer in this. Adds something extra. The application is great and opaque in two coats.

Holiday Madness is a metallic light olive green frost. The application is great and opaque in two coats. I love that it is not the typical holiday green. But rather something different.

Rio's Rockin' Bands is a medium purple shimmer. As with the rest, the application is great and opaque in two coats.

All in all, I love this collection! I wish the duochromes was stronger and that Wanna Samba? was a tad less frosty. But its a fun grouping.

Barielle polishes retail for $8 each an sets (including Carnival Fiesta) retail for $25 on their website.

Disclosure: The product in this post were provided to me for consideration. All opinions are mine and honest.

Essence A Piece of Forever

I hope you are enjoying your Tuesday! These pictures have been sitting in my folder for nearly a month. Not sure why I have not posted them before, but here they are now. :)

Essence A Piece of Forever is a metallic gold frost. Ignore the bubbles, its just top coat plus fan. The application was okay. Basically what you would expect from a frost finish polish. I've used three of the four from this collection so far, and none of the applications are up to par with the rest of the Essence polishes I own. Its odd. But it does not stop them from being pretty.

The Essence Twilight Saga Breaking Dawn Part 2 Collection is limited edition. There is a variety of makeup, including four polishes. I purchased all four at $1.99 each.