Berry Metals

Forlan BB Cream and Cover FX Blemish Concealer are Press Samples.  All opinions are my own.

Hello, Fireflies!

Today's look is very, very berry! I love this color, and all the metallic shininess I have in this look for both my makeup and nails, and I hope you enjoy it, too.

Falling for Nail Art - Stripey Sweater Weather

Hello, Fireflies!

Yes, another matte-obsessed post.  Tell me you don't think this berry matte is gorgeous.  It's Sinful Colors Get It On.  Oh, yeah, baby.

Orange and berry?  I think I am channeling a little '80's Cosby sweater action.  The stripes are made with Sinful Colors Laced Up, another matte.

The glitter is a striper, but the grey is yet ANOTHER Sinful Colors matte, My Turn.

Everything just pops with a little topcoat.

Bottle shot:  Sinful Colors mattes Get It On, Laced Up, and My Turn, and a glitter striper.

I'm back in my high school, wearing my Shaker knit sweater with the rolled cuffs.  Sweater weather, baby!

Hobby Polish Blogger Challenge - Summer Fruit

How can I possibly pick *ONE* fave summer fruit?  It's like asking me to pick my fave way to eat potatoes.  Just can't do it (Wouldn't be prudent)

So I picked *A* fave.  I started with a brand that is new to me - Chaos & Crocodiles.  This is Nothing Sweeter, and when it comes to ripe fruit - or this pink polish, I guess that's true!

Really pretty shimmer!

Not too many pinkish fruits, I suppose!  There is usually some red coloring, too, which I emulated with Sally Hansen Beautiful Berry (how apropos) and some black dots, which I made with Nubar Black Polka Dot.

Have you guessed what fruit I'm trying to paint?  For a regular mani, I would have left it like this.  I rather like it!

But, this is a challenge mani, and I had to go the distance.  So I cut some fimo slices.

When I showed this mani to my hubby and asked him to guess the fruit, he said, 'Watermelon?' smh.

Yes, dear.  Because watermelon looks exactly like strawberries.  This is one of the reasons we do the grocery shopping together.  I should tell you that this man has a Ph.D.

Bottle shot!  Chaos & Crocodiles Nothing Sweeter, Nubar Black Polka Dot, and Sally Hansen Beautiful Berry.

Have you done a fruit mani?  Do my strawberries look like watermelons?!

Indie January - Jindie Nails

Jindie Nails came out of nowhere and just bowled me over with her awesome polishes!  I can't wait to show you some of the neat creations she has!

Swoon.  This is the one that got me.  Blue milky base with blue and translucent neon green and pink glitters.  Tons of glitter that went on smoothly.  I need an industrial-size bottle of this one.

Candy Land Remix and Choose Me.  Choose me is a micro-glitter-shimmer in a berry color.  I thought it would be chunkier, but I'm glad it's not.  I decided to pair it with the Candy Land Remix (remix to include the small neon glitters as an LE edition)  They were fun to wear together.  I love the bright cheerfulness of these two polishes.

Just Claws (formerly Mrs. Claws.)  If you put this next to Choose Me, they are hard to tell apart, but on the nail they are different.  This is holo!  Beautiful, easy application.

I saw this look on Dressed Up Nails for a minimalist watercolor, and I really liked it, so I thought I could maybe do something with these polishes.  I added Peripera P026, a shimmery-chrome pink, and China Glaze On The Prowl, a red-toned purple, then used a black striper to create the wave.

Water 4 Elephants. Grey and blue together.. so awesome.  I painted an accent nail in Revlon Fashionista, a dark teal, and then tried a glitter gradient over that.. but Water 4 Elephants is opaque in one coat, so it's not the best for gradients.  I did a small French tip with the Fashionista on the other nails, and really liked the final result.

Bruised Ego.  This is a fun microglitter!  My ring finger is 2 or 3 coats of Bruised Ego with no undies!  I didn't think it would be opaque on its own, but I was wrong.  I used Pure Ice Black Rage on my thumb and Milani White on the Spot for my other fingers and tried a reverse glitter gradient.  Boy, howdy, was this not fun to clean from around my cuticles!  Tiny dots everywhere.  But so worth it.  Next time, I'll be neater!

Stomping Gilbert Grapes.  Very punny!  lol.  I really like this color combo in the milky glitter.  The purple, pink, and green go really well together.  Very pastoral, soothing, but the pink makes it fun.  Perfect Spring polish, too!

Jindie Nails has amazing customer service, too.  I see her really going above and beyond to make sure that her customers are taken care of. 

Does customer service for Indies mean anything when you're shopping, or is it just about the polish?  Do you like the fancy packaging and little notes?  What makes you want to go back to a particular Indie?

If you're interested in learning more about Jindie Nails, you can find her on Facebook, and also on Etsy.

Indies - fruity goodness

The theme today is that all of the Indies have something about fruit in their names!

First up, some colorful red jelly undies with Chi 24k red.  Love the flecks.  It's a lot like OPI Animalistic and other red flecks.

This Indie had a small marketing problem - they didn't put their name anywhere on the bottle!  I think it's 2Chix Holo Berry, but I could be wrong.  They might have changed their name, too.  People, if you're selling something, put your name on it...

I used Essence Grey-t to be here to do some nail art.  I was going for flowers, but I think they look like zombie/skeleton arms reaching out.  Yeah, that's what they are, that's the ticket.

The next mani starts with China Glaze Immortal, which was released around Halloween.  It's a beautiful medium grey with flecks of blue and purple.  I love grey, and this grey is pretty awesome.

I wanted to emphasize the blue, so I added Lilacquer Blueberry Pi.  I am loving those iridescent blue glitters.  So pretty!

The last look starts with a polish I had to find on ebay - Revlon Royal Cloak.  I love the flakies in this purple polish, but I do wish they were a tad more pronounced.  Still, it has all the wonderfulness of a Revlon polish.

I did a glitter gradient with Hit Polish Pomegranate Ice.  I don't always like to wear red and purple together, but this polish is pretty cool.  The red makes the mani a little more interesting.

So, there you have it - berries, blueberries, and pomegranate.  Sounds almost good enough to eat!

BL Stripey Socks

I know you were sad that yesterday I only showed you a little bit of BL Fiddlesticks.  So here's a swatch of it in all it's raspberry glittery goodness.

Like most BL, this has an amazing formula, and the glitter is opaque in 2 coats.  Even without topcoat, it was smooth, but a little matte.

I used tiny striping tape to create this effect with BL Scouse.  I got my inspiration from this look by Miss Ladyfinger.

Scouse needed two coats to be opaque, but with the tape, I couldn't wait for a layer to dry and then apply another layer, so I just put one very thick layer on.  You can actually see the difference in thickness in the pix above, but a thick topcoat like Seche Vite can help blend the layers together and create the illusion of one layer.

Makes me think of wild, stripey socks from the 80's. 

Half-moon over London.. Butter London

I saw this mani with a half-moon, and thought it looked like fun to try and do my own version with some of my new Butter Londons.

I started with BL Fash Pack.  In the bottle, this polish has a golden shimmer.  Can you see it?

Yeah, I couldn't really see it either.  It's a nice mushroom-y taupe, but I wanted that golden shimmer!

I used hole reinforcements over Fash Pack and painted the rest of the nails with BL Scuppered.  This is one of their new glitters for Winter 2012, and I'm in love.  I adore mini-micro glitters, and this one is so nice with the golden tones, but with flashes of green and pink.  

I used a dotting tool and BL Fiddlesticks to make the chain between Fash Pack and Scuppered, but I got the dots too close together, so it just looks like a lumpy line.

I think that with a different, lighter (maybe pinker) base coat, this mani would look even better.

I like this half-moon mani.  When I do French tips, it seems to make my nails look shorter and blockier, but with the half-moon, the curve elongates my nails.  Do you like half-moon manis?

Cult Nails - Behind Closed Doors Collection

It's no secret that I'm a Cultie - a groupie fan of Cult Nails!  This new collection from Maria has totally wowed me, though.  I think some of my new fave polishes are in this collection...

First up, Disciplined.

Hard name, soft color.  This is 3 coats, so it's pretty sheer, but look at that blue and pink shimmer.  I think next time, I will layer it over another grey, though.  I didn't get the 'jelly' feel of added depth from the extra layer, so putting it over an opaque creme would probably work just as well.

Afterglow is a perfect color for me.  I love duochromes that mix tones of orange and pink.  This one is predominately copper, and has tons of shimmer. 

I decided to do a little filigree with Kiko 402, a bright pink holo that is very opaque.  I love how it both compliments the pink shimmer and makes the background even more coppery.

 It's hard to pick a fave from this collection, but I think it might be Flushed.

Blue background with a purple shimmer, all in one color.  And the shimmer isn't shy, either.  It's gorgeous.  It reminded me of Fantasy Fire, so I thought I'd see how it compared.  Revlon Royal seems to be the preferred undies for FF, so I put a coat of that on my thumb.

 Here's one coat of Fantasy Fire over the Revlon Royal:

And how it compares to Flushed.  Definitely not dupes - the FF is more of a red shimmer, and the shimmer particles are bigger.

This may be sacrilegious, but I actually prefer Flushed!  I love how the purple shimmer seems to glow from within the polish, and how you get the impression of blue from the edges of the nail.

Next, I tried Bitten, a raspberry polish with glass flecks.  Doesn't it look like you could just dive in and go swimming?

I did a simple stripe with a striping brush and Revlon Silver Screen.  Scratches, maybe?  Fangs? 

 Last, but not least, is Coveted, a deep forest green with green shimmer and green flakies. 

I would have liked more flakies!  I didn't get hardly any on the first coat, but I got some on the second.  I think they're so beautiful, I wanted more.

I love green and gold together, so I used Maybelline Bold Gold and a dotting tool to make a gradient of dots down the center of the nail.

All of these polishes have a little something 'extra' that I love, whether it be that shimmer, duochrome, or flakie accent.  One thing I did notice about this collection is that the polishes were a little thinner than usual.  I did have to take care during application to avoid polish pooling in my cuticles.  Bitten actually got away from me and flooded a whole nail's cuticle!  Disciplined was the only polish that needed three coats for opacity, though, so the thinness really wasn't an issue for that.

The Behind Closed Doors collection is preview priced until November 15th!  That means you get all 5 polishes for $40 - like getting one free.  Check out the sale and her other polishes at Cult Nails.  Will you be joining the Cult?