Accessorize Ladybird

Over the next few posts, I'll be showing you swatches of another brand from the UK that I picked up during my trip to London a couple of years back. I found these polishes very very interesting because I normally don't wear polishes like this. After trying these on though, I won't be so quick to dismiss other polishes that look like these in the future. Today's polish is Accessorize Ladybird. Yes, I know. With a polish that looks like this, why wouldn't it just be called Ladybug? I don't know. I checked it a few times just to make sure.

This is a red jelly polish with uniformly sized small black matte glitters. Which very much gives it a bug like feel. I really really wasn't sure about it when I started putting on the first coat. The glitters were spread out unevenly, it was lumpy, it looked weird. After the third coat though, I started to really like it! In fact, the longer I kept it on, the more I liked it!

You can see from looking at the bottle that it actually has a dark base and it did look a little darker than this on my nails in real life. All in all, this was a win for me and I am looking forward to wearing this polish again in the future.

Thanks for looking!

Born Pretty Holo #3 over Barry M Shocking Pink

      I have a really yummy holo polish to show you guys today! Over the last year or so, I have found a new love for really bright pinks. The bolder the better and this particular combination fit that bill perfectly!

      I had bought a bunch of Born Pretty holographic polishes a while ago and have just now started trying them all out in my effort to swatch my entire stash. This isn't exactly a proper swatch though, since it's over Barry M Shocking Pink. The Born Pretty polish had looked a little sheer with one coat so I wondered how it would look over a really bright pink and it didn't disappoint! This is two coats over the Barry M pink. I'll show swatches of that in a different post.

These polishes come in a 6 ml square bottle. The short cap does make handling it somewhat awkward but the polish itself does not have any formula issues and the bristles themselves are long and flexible enough to make application relatively easy.

The holo flame in these polishes is not particularly strong. It is pretty apparent in certain indoor lighting or bright sunlight but fairly non existent in other lighting. That being said, the base color in this particular shade was so lovely that I really didn't mind. I wore this for almost a week without getting bored.

Although the product here is something I bought myself, I have recently been contacted by the Born Pretty Store to review a sample of some of their other products. I don't have those products right now but I do have a discount code you can start using. Use "PRK31"  during checkout to get 10% off your future purchases and look out for my review of more products on this blog at a later date!

These polishes and other Born Pretty products can be purchased on their website. Looks like the price of some the polishes have gone up somewhat since I bought them a couple of years ago, which is a shame. Most of them still look reasonably priced, especially with sales and discount codes that are available.

Barielle Belly Dance

       I have a very simple manicure for you today. As you may have noticed if you follow my blog for any length of time, I very rarely do nudes. It's not that I don't like them. I just don't gravitate towards them when trying to decide what to wear each time.  I usually save my nude shades for when I need an understated look, such as for interviews, etc. So, when I began swatching my Barielle polishes, this shade really took me by surprise. Since I haven't needed to wear a nude in a while, it really surprised me how simple yet elegant my hands looked when I wore this. This is Barielle Belly Dance. 

The formula was good. It only took me a couple of coats for goot coverage and it was very easy to clean up. The accent nail was done with Barry M Rose Quartz glitter. I'll be showing you that one again with a different manicure in a later post.

And, that's all!

Stash Swatches - some Boots 17 polishes

Today I have more swatches from my stash! We are on to my Boots 17 polishes. A little over two years ago, I went to visit my cousin in London. I was thick in the middle of my obsession with nail polish at that time. Ok, alright, I'm still in the thick of it but I've moved past buying polishes indiscriminately now. I'm pickier. I don't buy a ton of polish all at one time. I only get the special ones. Back then, all I cared about was adding to my hoard. So....we ended up there during the winter holidays and we went shopping on Boxing Day. Lots of sales everywhere! I had warned my husband that I was going buy "some" nail polish and he obligingly indulged me and promised not to say anything. I don't think he was expecting me to walk out of those stores with multiple bags of nail polish! The store clerk at a Superdrug asked me if I was going to be starting my own nail salon. I was way too excited with all of my new loot to be embarrassed but I think my husband was a little. Oops. 

Anyway, as a result, I ended up with a few colors that I'm now realizing are either dupes or just not very flattering! This first polish is a fine blue metallic microflakes in blue jelly like base called Navy Glint. It looks metallic in the bottle but applies like a jelly, if that makes sense. I wasn't too happy with the formula. I have a lot of dark blue metallics so I ended up purging this one. As the bottle says, it's a "Fast Finish" so the application was a little tricky since it seemed to dry almost before I had finished applying it. 

This next one is a weird bright brassy gold metallic color that I didn't think looked very flattering on me. I kept it because I want to try stamping with it. It does have a mild duochrome effect with it getting darker and more antique gold looking at the edges. This one is called Fury.

Finally, this one is a close dupe to the Chanel Peridot type colors. This was three coats and has that gold to green duochrome shift. I know the Peridot rage is all over now but I do still like this type of color. I'll have to compare it to Jessica Iridescence to see how close of a dupe it is. I don't own the original Chanel. This one is called Potion.

Again thanks for looking. Are you guys enjoying my stash swatch spam so far?

Barielle Snow Day with holographic sparkle

I'm not usually a fan of silver or grey by itself on my nails but I've found out that if I add a little sparkle or nail art, I like it much better. Barielle Snow Day is a metallic silver color that is the base for this particular mani. I used three coats for complete coverage. It does tend to show brushstrokes which did put me off of it a little bit. I tried to sponge on the last layer to try to get rid of those brushstrokes but it ended up having a speckled look to it that I disliked as well. 

So, what did I do? Love and Beauty "Silver" to the rescue!! This iteration of "Silver" is actually fine holographic particles in a clear suspension base. Much like China Glaze Fairy Dust. Didn't keep me from getting Fairy Dust as well. I think the particles are just the tiniest bit larger in the Love and Beauty polish. It did the trick! I liked it much better all sparkly like this.

I bought the Barielle as part of a set of six from TJ Maxx. You can find them online as well. In future posts I'll show you the swatches of all the Barielle polishes I own so far. The Love and Beauty polishes can be found in Forever 21 stores or on their website.
Again thanks for looking!!

Stash Swatches - some A England polishes

I decided sometime towards the end of last year that I was going to create swatches of all the polishes I own. I now own such a boatload of polishes that this project is going to take me years! But, I do have a few under way already. I have my polishes organized alphabetically so that's how I started swatching them. I might not stick to this rule though. I'll never get to my Zoyas! First up are the four A England polishes I have. All of the polish are very opaque holographic polishes. The holographic quality is more scattered than strongly linear and I wasn't really able to get some of them to show that well this time around. They were all either one or two easy coats. These polishes are opaque enough to be stamping polishes.

This first picture is of A England St. George, a wonderful teal holographic polish.

This is Lady of the Lake, a really pretty shade of purple.

This gorgeous blue polish is Tristam. There is a slight purple tone to it, making it almost blurple looking in certain lights. Blurple is one of my favorite colors!

Finally, this is an older swatch that I've shown on this blog before. I'm showing it here again for completeness sake.

I think it will be interesting to see if I'm able to get my entire stash swatched. I haven't put any deadlines on it so I could be doing this for a long long time to come....

Green on green dots with Urban Outfitter Smush

Oh man, did life get suddenly busy as I'm looking for daycare for my older son! Who knew the waitlists could run so long at some of these places? Kicking myself for not starting earlier but then again, not sure how I could have started earlier with how busy I was. I hope, I hope, I hope we get a good daycare for him!

Anyway, on to the polish!! This is an old old manicure that I'm just getting around to posting now. This is Urban Outfitter Smush. I decorated it with some dots with a few other green polishes. You can see all the polishes I used below. The Sinful Color polish is San Francisco, an awesome shimmery dark green.

Even though I wore this a while ago, I remember that Smush was not super easy to work with. Might have been my skill with application or how I tired I was but I remember being very unhappy with how much dragging and streaking I was getting. I'm going to have to try it again sometime to see if that issue is still there. Another thing I remember is how awkward it was for me to hold the bottle and take pictures. It's a fat cube! That being said, the shape is kind of cool and unique.

Again, thanks for looking! Until next time!

Sinful Color I Love You

From the very beginning of my nail polish obsession, I knew that I loved purples. It's probably the color I have the most and I need very little reason to buy more. Sinful Color I Love You was one of the first purples I bought but it took me forever to actually wear it. It has a purple jelly base with microglitters/microflecks that I believe are duochrome purple/gold. It's super pretty and I just love this color!!

What I didn't love so much about this polish was how sheer it was. It took FOUR coats to get sort of opaque and get rid of the visible nail line. Tip shrinkage was inevitable with Seche Vite. Normally, that would keep me from using it again but then again, really pretty purple!! I'll just find a way to make it work with layering or jelly sandwiches. I love the color way too much!

Meanwhile on the home front, working on looking for good daycare options for the older son while trying to figure what the heck the rash is on my baby son's face. He is seriously cute but this rash is very much not :-(

Do you guys have any polishes that you might have otherwise purged if not for how amazing you think the color is?