Belle of the ball

So I'm actually in Yosemite right now, but I figure I should be a good blogger and schedule some posts for while I'm gone! Sometimes when I'm not feeling up to doing nail art, having a nice and well made indie polish with loads of lovely glitter in it is a great thing to fall back on. 

Belle made my The Hungry Asian is definitely one of those polishes that you can go to with ease. I really love how feminine and simple this polish is. 

 Belle has small pink hex glitter with some copper hex glitter mixed into a sheer milky base. This was about 3 coats to opacity and I'm sure if you layered this over a white first the coats would be reduced. Overall, this is yet another great polish from THA. Great application, little to no fishing for glitter, and an all around great polish. 

Coco Allure Snap Dragon Swatch and Review

Good evening everyone! In the world of nail polish, I think everyone would agree that aside from all of our polish drying up, breaking a nail is without a doubt our biggest fear. And that happened to me today :( quick, someone play me the world's smallest violin! 

Breaking my nail may have no real world implications, it is still pretty darn frustrating! I was cleaning my house (gasp!) and I look down to see a CHUNK of the nail on my index finger just missing. Yes, a chunk. WHAT? And, of course it's on my left hand so I can't just pretend it didn't happen. That will teach me to clean again! ;) Nail art sort of left the picture after I trimmed my nails down so I moved on to my second love - indie polish!

Enter Coco Allure's Snap Dragon, a super pretty lilac jelly base with tons of neon blue, purple and orange hex and round glitter in varying sizes. I snagged it about 3 weeks ago from Llarowe and I'm so happy I decided to go for it!

 

The formula is pretty great and easy to work with for the most part. It is a jelly base so you'll have to apply several coats to reach opacity, but it's nothing that isn't easily dealt with. These photos are 3 coats. 

The only really issue I have with this polish is the amount of fishing I ended up doing for the glitter. In the macro/closeup of the bottle, you can see how the glitter has settled at the bottom and that made it difficult to get on my brush. However, I just flipped the bottle upside down for a good five minutes and that seemed to help tremendously. 

Overall, I'm really happy with this polish. This is the only Coco Allure that I own but I don't think I will hesitate to buy more in the future. What do you think of this polish?

Happy Polishing :)

China Glaze Creative Fantasy Swatches

After I finished my smooch mani tonight, the boyfriend disappeared again into the depths of the garage, only to reappear holding what is apparently another part of my Valentine's gift. Can it be the 14th yet so I can see whatever else he has hiding back there!?! He was pretty excited to give me China Glaze's Creative Fantasy and I was even more excited to receive it! It is such an incredible royal purple that has a very unique formula. I was going to try and hold off on swatching this since I JUST did my previous mani, but I honestly couldn't wait to try this out. It took me 3-ish coats to get to this opacity, and though in the pictures it still looks a bit sheer, in person it's hard to tell. This is definitely more jelly than opaque. I added a top coat to this because I'm impatient, but it has a really neat rubbery finish that is very unique. I'm just incredibly excited about this purple!! :D

Happy Polishing!! :D

My new Zoya loves!

Yesterday, I welcomed 5 new babies into my home! That's right, my Zoya's came. YEEEEEEE!

From left to right: Kieko, Caitlin, Megan, Dove and Jacqueline. 

I was definitely so excited about these that I went ahead and swatched all of them last night! I did get a few requests to do so, so I'm not completely insane ;) 

First up...

Megan! Megan is described by Zoya as taupe grey creme and it definitely has a lot of greys in it. However, I also see a lot of pale lilac in it despite what they say. I really love this shade and it applies great. This is 2 coats with no problems :)

Dove is a really pretty neutral grey that appears to have some light green undertones in the right light. I like this one on much better than in the photograph. This is fairly opaque and 2 coats. 

Jacqueline is a really pretty creme that almost looks like buttah! I was worried I wouldn't like this with my skin tone but I ended up not wanting to take it off! I had to use 3 coats for this one so it could easily present problems with application.

Next up is Caitlin. This is an incredible greyed out light bluish-purple. I really liked this one. I was a little hesitant to buy it at first because I thought maybe it would be too similar to some of my other colors, but I'm so glad I went for it. This was so opaque and smooth that I could have easily gotten away with only 1 coat of this. Lovely!

Last is Kieko. This is an interesting color that I actually really like, but it's a bit too bright for my taste this time of year...yet despite this, I ended up using this for my mani...I guess I do like it! This applied well and is 2 coats. 

Overall, I think my favorites of these would have to be Caitlin and Dove...but then again, I'm completely drawn to muddied greens and blues so I guess I should've known! ;) What are you favs?

Happy Polishing!

Zoya Blaze

A quick swatch of one of my newest Zoyas, Blaze. Blaze is part of Zoya's winter 2012/2013 Ornate Collection and oh my goodness is this a stunning color! Wow. I don't even...

It's a great full coverage purple with lots of holographic glitter that is incredibly easy and smooth to apply and makes me want to dance with how lovely it looks as it sparkles in the light. 

Happy Polishing :)