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BIRTHDAY HAUL!!!

Another year has come and gone.  I turned 25 this past weeked.  So I have got to show you guys my fabulous birthday haul.  My wonderful wonderful boyfriend took me shopping and got me TONS of polish for my birthday.  So here we go!

These guys are from Sephora.  From left to right we have Illamasqua in Jo'mina, Sephora by OPI in I Don't Bite, and TokiDoki in Savana.
 

 Next we have a couple bottles we picked up at Claire's.  The first one is just called Glitter Topcoat, and the second is from Spoiled Rotten: Point the Finger, and according to the Claire's website is just called Blue.  Way to be creative guys...

These guys are from Hot Topic.  From left to right we have Blackheart in Creep Show, Blackheart in Plummer, and L.A. Girl Cracked in Shattered.

These next few pictures are of my Ulta haul.  In the this picture is Butter London in Knees Up, Butter London in The Black Knight, and Layla Hologram Effect in Mercury Twilight.

(L to R) Sally Hansen HD in Spectrum, China Glaze in Crushed Candy, OPI in Pink Shatter, and Revlon in Fire Fox

Last but not least we have my new Ulta's which were buy 2 get 2 free.  Score! I got Pink-A-Boo, Diva, Indigo Go Girl, and Peach Parfait.


Overall I'd say I made out pretty good this year. 

Red and Holo Glittery Goodness

Please excuse my cuticle area.  I was picking at the polish and it looks a bit sloppy, but I just LOVE these polishes together.  These are a couple of the colors I got for my birthday, but I plan on posting my haul too so watch for that if you are interested.   I used Butter London in Knees Up and a holo glitter from Claire's that just reads "Glitter Topcoat" on the bottle, but is so dazzling I could hardly stop looking at it. 

Birthday Nails!

Today is my birthday!  and I'm going on a road trip to Ulta!  and I love my nails for the day!  It's gonna be a great day!  So here is my mani I gave myself for my birthday.  I used Orly in You're Blushing as the base and Wet n Wild in Black Creme on the tips (I'm gonna call them bubble tips) and Savvy in Chrome for the dots.  Kiss Nail Dress in Shrug was used on the accent nails. 

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Coral and Gold Polka Dots

I have gotten so many compliments on my nails since they have been done up like this.  I love the color combo of the orangish coral and the gold dots, even though the dots are far from perfect.Please excuse my messy fingers, I hadn't cleaned them up at the point the picture was taken. 

I used Revlon Top Speed in Mock Snob and Gold Rush.

LOTS of Swatches

I'm gonna keep this quick because I'm short on time, but today I have swatches.  LOTS of swatches.  All are from Revlon and most of them are so very wonderful I had to share.  So lets get going!

First we have Sunshine Sparkle which was my least favorite out of the bunch mostly just due to formula.  The color is great but it was really streaky and uneven going on.  I'm pretty sure this is 4 coats. 

This is Electric, and unlike Sunshine Sparkle this one applies smooth and evenly.  I love the bright color and the subtle shimmer to it.  I used 2 coats, which I gotta say is pretty damn good for a yellow.

This is Super Nature.  It's a great darker lime green cream polish and the consistency on this was perfect.  It dries super fast and has amazing coverage.  I used 2 coats here on most of my fingers but some were only 1 coat 

 This is Wind Fall.  I wish pictures could express how lovely this shade is.  It's like a bright jungle green with a subtle shimmer that really is very pretty.  It's definitely one of my favorites.  Also I only used 1 coat and it was so smooth and shiny, a perfect 1 coater.

Here we have Stormy.  Another 1 coater.  The color is a muted brown color, or kind of a dark khaki, it's really quite pretty, even though browns aren't unusually my thing.  

This is Smoky Canvas.  It's yet another excellent polish from the collection we are looking at today.  It's a nude but it leans more to gray than the typical nude.  This was 2 coats, but was also a great formula with great opacity
  

This is Orchid, a great shade for those of you who like girly colors, personally it's not my favorite color but the formula is great.  It's kind of a muted magenta-ish color in a metallic finish.

Guava is a great coral type shade. It leans a bit more towards pink than your typical coral.  I used 2 coats here, but could maybe have stuck to just one if they had been a bit thicker.   


 

Mock Snob is like Guava's move vivacious sister.  It's also in the coral family but leans more red/orange.  I LOVE this shade.  I used 2 coats.

 This is Cloud.  It's a very pale greyish blueish lavender.  I've never seen a shade quite like it.  It's very elegant and classy. I used 2 coats with this one as well. 

Oh my frickin goodness.  This is Gold Rush, and my absolute favorite out of the bunch.  SO gorgeous.  1 coater with a metallic foil finish, and it's just perfection.  When I bought this I thought it was close in color to another gold I have and the shade is bit different, but it totally kicks the other polish's ass in terms of consistency and pigmentation. 

Last but not least we have Carbonite.  The formula is just as good as Gold rush.  The color is a brownish pewter color, and it's right up there for me with Gold Rush.  It seems very close to Chanel's Graphite, which I would compare, but I don't own a single Chanel polish because I'm too cheap to be forking out that kind of dough.  I may eat my words one of these days, but for now I'll stick to Carbonite.  : )

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Lava Nails

Hello pretty people!  I present unto you red crackle over a yellow/orange gradient.  The gradient was kind of lost behind the crackle, but I like the effect. My boyfriend said the looked like lava.  I used L.A. Colors in Shock and Sinful Colors in Cloud 9 for the gradient and the red crackle is from Pure Ice and is called Show Stopper.

China Glaze Giveaway from Glam Polish

Amazing giveaway over at glam polish to celebrate 1500 followers.  Check it out here!

Crackle Polish and My Latest Mini Haul

Ok, so at this point I'm feeling like I should just give up on my who no buy month.  I just cant resist a good deal.  I ended up getting a small haul yesterday and I figured I'd share it along with my nails today.

I picked up a couple of Pure Ice bottles and some Kiss Nail Dress from Walgreen's and some L.A. Colors Art Deco from the Family Dollar up the street.  I thought the Pure Ice ones (Siren and Iced Copper) were crackle polishes but it turned out they weren't.  I ended up returning Siren because I already have red cream polishes that I love but I don't wear red very much anyway.  I ended up picking up Show Stopper when I went back, which isn't pictured but I'm going to redo my nails here after I'm done and plan on using it, so I'll be sure to post it tomorrow.  The Nail Dress that I got was only $2.99!  I'm excited to use them.  Anyhow... Here are my nails for the past couple days


I used Spoiled by Wet n Wild in I'm So Jaded with a thin coat of Appletini Fizz From Revlon over top, and then put a generous coat of China Glaze in Black Mesh.  Please excuse the skin around my nails.  I wasn't as careful and was in a hurry and had no time to clean up. 

Geometric Pattern NOTD

I'm kind of proud of my mani today.  I was inspired by a post on reddit that you can see here.  This is really the first geometric kind of print I have done and I love it.  I used China Glaze in Sea Spray for the base on all my nails.  Dotting and taping was done using Pure Ice in Kiss Me Here and Super Star (white), and also China Glaze in First Mate.  Hope you enjoy them as much as I do.

ChaChing Nails

Hello good people!  I have another Nabi magnetic polish mani to show you.  This one I believe is called Candid.  None of the bottles I have gotten from my Walgreen's have had the sticker on the bottom with the name, which I have heard is a common problem, but I had seen this color on another blog (scrangie, I think) and that is what they had called it.  I've been looking at my nails all day and the color and glitter in the polish.  It makes me think of mountains of gold coins, like kind Scrooge McDuck goes swimming in so I free-handed a small green dollar sign on my accent nail, because it made me smile, and hey it's pay day tomorrow! 

Recent Haul Swatches

 

 
Over the past week or so I have picked up a handful of polishes (no buy month is not working out so well.) so I figured I would do some more swatches.  So today I've got these beauties for you.  Pictured above are Sinful Colors in Luminary, Wet n Wild's Spoiled in I'm So Jaded, Finger Paints in Grape Gumball, and Lemon Sour.  So here we go....

Sinful Colors' Luminary just can't take a picture to do it justice.  It's a pretty peachy coral color with a shimmery sparkly something special to it.  When I walked by it at the drug store it immediately grabbed my attention.  It's part of the Sheer Shimmer collection, but coverage was surprisingly not that sheer.  Pictured here are 3 coats and it seems to cover decently.

Next we have Spoiled in I'm so Jaded from Wet n Wild.  The name doesn't ring true for me if they were going for the obvious pun.  This green is far from jade colored. It's a darker lime green with GORGEOUS gold shimmer.  It kind of reminds me of a lime green hot rod.  Application is interesting due to the wonky brush that this line has.  This one was much better than some of the others I've gotten, and I like the color enough to make up for it.  Pictured above are 3 coats.

Finger Paints in Lemon Sour is part of the Gumdrops & Lollipops collection which has been available at Sally's for a few months now I suppose.  It's actually clearanced right now, and you can find it here  for $3.29.  It's a creamy light yellow.  Yellows for some reason tend to be streaky but this one isn't too bad.  I only used 2 coats and it applied pretty evenly.  This seems like a yellow worth having.

Finger Paints in Grape Gumball is also from the Gumdrops & Lollipops collection and is also on clearance.  It's a really lovely purple color.  I gotta say I am in love with this shade.  It leans kind of towards blue and has a subtle shimmer to it which didn't photograph all that great but you can see it a bit there in my pinkie.  I liked this color enough I didn't want to take it off so I just decided to swatch a glitter I got recently as well and layer over top Grape Gumball.  Picture here is ONE COAT!.  I could hardly believe that.  I urge anybody that doesn't have this shade to go get it before it's gone forever. 


 So you guys get a bonus swatch (sort of).  I recently got this beauty at my local CVS.  It's Tazmanian Devil by Confetti.  It features medium and small sized hex glitter, and super tiny (I'm assuming round) glitter all in a rainbow of colors, but silver being the most prominent.  Here it is layered over Grape Gumball.  It lays really smoothly and is a pretty dense glitter.  I used 1-2 coats depending on the nail. 

Nabi Magnetic Mani

This is a bit belated posting. but I actually haven't had time to sit down and do my nails much lately, let alone  blog about it.  I got a bottle of Nabi Magnetic Polish at my local Walgreen's last month and hadn't used it yet so I figured I'd give it a go.  Unlike most of my polishes there was no color name anywhere on the bottle, but that seems to be a common problem with these Nabi magnetics.  In the bottle the color was a pretty teal color.  The magnet on the bottle is pretty weak but will get the job done if you hover over the nail long enough, which proves difficult because it doesn't have a finger rest on it (boo hiss!).  The color on my nail is very different from the color I see in the bottle.  The shade didn't photograph very well but it leans more towards an emerald green shade than a teal.  Still very pretty.  The polish itself has a very weird kind of smell to it.  It's kind of a plastic smell, and not at all pleasant.  I did end up using a magnet off of my Finger Paints magnetic polishes, which work much more efficiently.  The color selection in this line is pretty impressive.  I may have to get a couple more and try them out.  All in all I would say that I love the color, but the smell and crappy attached magnet are definite downsides to the brand. 

Nude with Red Dots NOTD

I was so excited my dotting tools came in the other day.  I had pretty much forgot I ordered them so it was a pleasant surprise.  I wanted to start off small and simple so did this nude mani with red/orange dots on the accent nails.  I've never been one to do only accent nails, but I love the shade of nude and and how creamy smooth it is, so I figured why the hell not.  I recently got a new phone with a decent camera and it takes pretty good pictures but it sucks to take pictures of my fingers with it, because the button to take the picture is only on the screen.  So, taking pictures of my nails has become a somewhat awkward thing.  Anyhow... Here is my mani...

 I used Essie's Sand Tropez for the base color.  It's quickly becoming one of my favorites.  the dots are Spoiled in Breakfast In Red and Wet n Wild Megalast in I Red a Good Book. 

Matte Neon Glitter NOTD

Hello good people!  My mani for the day is 3 great things rolled into one.  We have China Glaze in Purple Panic, which is billed as a neon, and is a lovely bright fuchsia.  Layered on top of that is L.A. Girl Glitter Addict in Synergy, a gold glitter with micro glitter and medium size gold holo hex glitter.  It's not a very dense glitter which would bother me in some cases but I love the purple panic so much I didn't want to cover it up.  All of that is topped off with Hard Candy's matte topcoat, Matte-ly In Love.