Swatch and Review of Stardust Polish: Mr. Rabbit

This is my 50th blog post! Can you believe it?? It seems like I just started my blog, but somehow I managed to get to 50 posts already. I started back in June as an outlet and I am so happy to share my polish adventures with you! So, thank you readers! I am celebrating my 50th post with a polish I really love. Today I have Stardust Polish's Mr. Rabbit from her Alice in Wonderland collection. It has such a whimsical feel to it. It has a white base with many different glitters in different colors. You can take a look at the macro here:

So lovely, I just adore the way this looks. I used three coats, but could have used four. It does have a lot of glitter, so a good thick top coat helps to even that out, I always use Seche Vite. You can find Mr. Rabbit here, but it looks like Drema is working on a restock. Because it is an indie brand, restocks are like Black Friday on the web. Every one loves her polish, and they are all in high demand. I think I actually got the last Mr. Rabbit from the most recent restock. I highly recommend this brand and this color. Thanks for reading!

Swatch and Review of Deborah Lippmann: Rolling in the Deep

Last week I had to take an emergency trip to Sephora (beauty emergency) and of course I had to check out the new nail polish offerings. I have never bought a Deborah Lippmann polish, but have been eying them for a while. Ever since she came out with a True Blood collection I have been curious, but the price point always steered me away. In my emergency visit to Sephora, the nice sales lady gave me a generous sample which made me ever so grateful and much more willing to purchase a $17 polish. Usually DL polishes are $19, so really you could say I am being thrifty...sort of. Anyway, here we have Rolling in the Deep, which is part of the 2013 Fall Collection. It is a beautiful inky navy blue with some subtle shimmer that you can see in the bottle. One of my biggest hang ups about buying this polish was trying to determine if I can see the shimmers on the nail or not. Let's see:

As you can see in some pictures, this really looks black rather than blue, but in most lighting it is a great navy blue. However, there are no shimmers to be found on the nail. The shimmer gets lost int he polish, which was a big disappointment for me. I did like the color alone, but I was feeling like I needed a little nail art, so I added some dots and zigzags with OPI's Designer De Better (Holiday 2011 Muppets Collection). Pretty simple, but it added some spice to the look. Overall the quality was amazing, I only used 2 coat here and I had no tackiness or balding issues whatsoever. The polish also seemed to dry quickly, and that is always a plus. I would recommend this polish, but I still have a little buyers remorse over the cost. What do you think? Worth the price, or get a more unique color for the cost? As always, thanks for reading!

Nail Art: A Random Sampling

 Hello all! I have a somewhat unusual post for you today. I have a few nail art designs I never shared with you on my blog, but I didn't think these deserved a post on their own, so I decided to lump three nail art designs into one post! If you haven't figured it out yet, I like to play with nail designs a lot. Often I feel like the design doesn't live up to my expectations so I'll leave it on for maybe a day an take if off. The next few designs were of that variety of nail art. The first was for #nailartsep on Instagram (@HandtasticIntentions) and the theme was football. My husband is a Niners fan and I automatically thought I could represent his team on my nails for a little while at least. I'm not a huge fan of football, but why not make my husband happy and do a little nail art in the process?

The next design was one of which I wished I had taken more pictures! I wanted to try a natural colored leopard print nail and I actually think it turned out pretty well. I used some simple dotting tools to achieve this look. Nude: Ruffian, Naked, Brown: OPI, Wooden Shoe Like to Know, Black: Ruffian, Ciré Noir, Top Coat: NYC, Matte Top Coat. Ruffian nail lacquer can be found at Birchbox which is exclusive to the site. I bought the classics set which came with a nude, black and red. Once I finished my design, I felt like I had to have a matte finish, and I really enjoyed the final look. Makes me wish I had a better matte top coat!

This last design is one I had originally planned on writing it's own post about, but I didn't really like this one as much as I thought I would. It was inspired by one of Miss Jen Fabulous' designs seen on her YouTube channel. Pretty easy to do if you have dotting tools and an interesting look. I might try this again with different and more contrasting colors. I used A England Tristam for the dark blue and OPI Thanks a Windmillion for the lighter blue.

This was a pretty random assortment of designs, but I hope you like them! Let me know if you want a tutorial on any of these!

Swatch and Review of OPI: Lucerne-Tainly Look Marvelous

OPI came out with a lot of hits with their Fall 2010 Swiss Collection. I reviewed Yodel Me on My Cell a while back, and I still have a few others from the collection on my mind! Today I have Lucerne-Tainly Look Marvelous! This reminds me of a foil but in the bottle, you can clearly see the different specks of glitter. It is a blue leaning grey/silver color which is right up my alley! I love this color so much, I can actually see myself wearing this over and over again. I feel like this would be a great transition color from fall to winter.

Above I used three coats of polish to achieve opacity. Like I said before, I love this color! The formula left a bit to be desired. It had a tendency to be a little tacky even though the polish seemed thin. It took a long time to dry and didn't dry solid for a while longer than I am used to waiting, I'm a little impatient though. The color is definitely worth the hassle of the formula, but if you are one of those who really has a hard time with application, I might be careful with this one. The sparkle is just so lovely! I think I actually picked this one up at Fred Meyers with one of their buy 2 get 1 free deals, but I don't think that always have the same stuff in stock. Ulta should have it though! Retails for $9 per bottle. Thanks for reading!

Nail art: Orange Leopard and Chevron Nails

Hello all! I've been thinking about animal print and particularly leopard print a lot lately. I don't usually wear animal print, but I like it. Sometimes I think it is a bit too wild, but I like mixing it with solids. That's kind of what I did here. I decided to create an unnatural leopard print coloring of orange and red and added a deeper red overlay to kind of balance out the print. I did this for #nailartsep on instagram.

I used only the above polishes in this mani from left to right: Soul Mate, Cherry Bomb, Mind's Eye (All Orly). I started with a base of Cherry Bomb and added irregular spots of Soul Mate. Then I added somewhat irregular C shaped around the spots and added some random dots using Mind's Eye. After I let it all dry, I cut up some tape into smaller angled triangles and painted Mind's Eye over that to create the sharpened chevron tip. This manicure made me want to perfect my leopard print painting skills, so look out for a more natural leopard spot on the blog soon! Thanks for reading!