Stash Swatch - 2true Shade 10

Hi all!

I have a second 2true shade for you today, Shade 10 (aka St. Tropez?). This is the second of the 2true polishes I picked up on a trip to the UK in 2012. This one is also a foil, much like Shade 9, more brown than coppery however. I really really loved this one. The cooler tone of this shade seems to compliment my skin tone better and I think it's even more interesting than Shade 9. You can see these bits of blue and red foil flecks in there that really add a lovely bit of complexity to this polish!

The above two pictures were taken in my lightbox. The below two were taken in my bathroom. Something about the combination of lights in there shows a different side to a lot of my polishes and you guys will be seeing more bathroom pics in the future! I really liked the way this one looked in my bathroom. Those blue and red flecks really sparkle here. Look at my blurred out index finger!

These polishes have really opened my eyes up to complex neutral foils. I really wish I had been paying attention when Sephora Formula X Alchemy was out. What are some of your favorite neutral foils?

Stash Swatch - 2True Shade 9

Hi everybody!

The polish I'm going to show you today has one of my favorite finishes ever. Foil! Yes, these polishes are highly annoying when you're removing them because those little bits get everywhere but I think it's worth it. I love how sparkly these polishes are without the topcoat eating behavior of glitters. Not that I don't love glitters, but they do take some extra work. 

This is 2True Shade 9. I looked really hard on the bottle to find another name for this polish but Shade 9 is all I found. A little internet digging shows that it could also be called Rio. Either way, it's a coppery foil that took me three coats to achieve opacity. I have a very prominent nail line and it seems to take me more coats to get rid of it than most others. The consistency was great! Another annoying aspect of foils is the clean up. With Shade 9, I had barely any clean up to do. There appear to be some tiny pink and gold flecks in this polish, which gives it a nice complexity. 

 I don't really have much else to say about this polish. I have a couple of others from this brand that I'll show you in a future post, another foil and a glitter. All of them were bought by me in London at a Superdrug.

Stash Swatch - Zoya Savita

The one color I probably have the most of in my stash is purple. I can't get sick of it. I have so many different iterations of this color and yet every time I find a new purple, I have to have it. So, with all the purple polishes I have, I still find this one to be pretty special. This is Zoya Savita from the Matte Velvet collection.

This polish is an amazing dark purple matte that is almost a one coater with careful application but I did two out of habit. I need more practice polishing with matte polishes because they dry so fast. My application was less than perfect in these swatches.

Still, I love it!! This polish actually makes me drool. Adding a topcoat really brings this shade to life. Look at the shimmer in the sun!!

Aaahh, how amazing is that? Is that little pink and blue shimmer in there? I don't know but whatever that shimmer is, it gives the polish more character than it might otherwise have had.

Well, I'm going to keep it short and leave you guys with that. My son has a bad viral illness of some sort and he is just so sick :-( A cold, diarrhea, fatigue. He's got to be feeling awful. Until next time guys!!

Review post - Lady Queen Nail Wraps

Hi everyone!

This post is coming a lot later than I wanted. Over the last week my entire household has been one by one falling like dominoes to the cold and trying to deal with that while being back at work has been...challenging. I finally had a little breather today so let me show you a quick review. Today I'm showing you one of the oldest polishes I have, Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Reflection Frost, with one of the newest nail art items I got, Lady Queen Nail Wraps.

I was contacted by the company, Lady Queen Beauty, to review a couple of nail art items for them. I had never heard of them before but after browsing their website, they seem very much like Born Pretty Store. One of the items I selected was this set of nail wraps.

I had been resisting using nail wraps for the longest time. I was always under the impression that they would be fussy, complicated. What it they didn't fit my nails very well? What if they peeled away too early? What if they were too hard to take off? Boy, was I wrong! When I saw this cute set of wraps on the Lady Queen website, I decided to go ahead and try them. What could I lose?

It was never my intention to wear these as a full set. I've seen others use nail wraps as quick accent nails and I wanted to do the same thing. The thing about these wraps is, those larger ones towards the left side of the pack, they are large enough to cover two nails when cut in half and laid on the side. So, I used ONE of the nails wraps, and got accents for two nails. My left hand, which you see here, had the I Heart NY portion of the sticker and my right hand had the picture of the government building. It too bad my right hand never looks as good as I'd like, otherwise you could see the other half of the nail sticker adorning my other hand.

I'm happy to report that the sticker lasted beautifully for the entire 6 days that I wore this manicure. The actual placement of the sticker was easy as pie. I cut the sticker in half, rounded the edges a bit to fit my nail, followed the instructions for placement and didn't have any trouble. I used a coat of Seche Vite on top to maintain the longevity of the sticker. I don't think you could really use it without some sort of topcoat on top.

The polish I used for this mani is Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Reflection Frost, a polish that I think I bought when I was in high school, which was...a while ago. This was two very easy coats. It's a faintly duochrome-y greyed out lilac taupe color. I'm not the greatest describer of colors so I hope that makes sense. Anyway, I've put plenty of pictures up so you guys can see for yourself what an interesting color this. It seemed to go well with the particular nail sticker I picked for this mani. If this post instills a burning desire in anyone to possess this polish, I think you can still find it on Ebay for a VERY reasonable price.

This last picture is something I hope to show you with most of my posts. I have realized that pictures taken in my car look very nice but also give you a flavor of what the mani looks like "in real life". So, here's the real life picture of this mani from my car! :-)

Thanks for sticking with me through this whole post. Again, check out the nail art items on the Lady Queen website. I have one other item that I need to review soon. Standard shipping took a few weeks so I wouldn't choose that if you're in a hurry to get anything. The specific nail art wraps can be found here. If you do decide to get anything, you can use the code "AQLC15" to get 15% off your items. Thanks for looking!!

Stash swatch - Andrea Fulerton Kylie

Hello everyone!

We are back to swatches from my stash and I just adore the polish I am going to be showing you guys today. I never thought I would have strong feelings about a white polish. I never imagined I would wear white on it's own. It's always been a nothing sort of a color to me. Something that works as a base for other polishes or to be used in nail art but nothing that deserved recognition of its own. Until this one, Andrea Fulerton Kylie.

This white is almost jelly like with fine microshimmer particles of lilac and silver, giving it a bit of a duochrome quality. It's very shimmery. It took me three coats for opacity.

Can you see the lilac glints in the pictures above? Isn't it divine? I'm such a huge fan of this polish and I'm really glad I picked it up! What do you guys think of white manicures? Boring or amazing?

Independence day with Zoya and OPI

Hi everybody! I'm taking a break from my swatch posts to show you what I did for the Fourth of July this year. It's a simple mani but one I'd been thinking about for a while. Ever since I bought my Zoya Pixie Dust polishes, I had always thought that Chyna and Liberty would be great colors for the Fourth of July, and they are!

The red texture is Zoya Chyna and the blue texture is Zoya Liberty. I also created an accent with OPI Don't Touch my Tutu sandwiched with Icing Blue Ice. Blue ice has small silver glitter, larger shiny blue hex glitter and holo stars. The holo stars in that polish definitely needed to be fished out. 

Isn't that sparkle lovely? I just love the Pixie Dusts. Every time I put one on, I feel the need to buy immediate backups! I'm so sad they are discontinued. They could have come out with textures in every shade on earth as far as I'm concerned! What are your guys' thoughts on textures? Are they here to stay. Do you still have a love for them?

Here is a bonus pic of me modeling this mani in front of my older little man, who is playing at his newly assembled water table this weekend.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!