Barielle Green Opal

Hi everyone! Here is another Barielle swatch. This is one of those weird/ugly/cool colors that may not be for everyone. It's a greenish gold metallic chrome color. I am not really sure it's for me. In the pictures I kind of like it but I'll have to wear it again to see if it's something I could be happy about. I certainly didn't have any problems with the formula. This was two pretty easy coats. Up close, it has these tiny microflecks of yellow gold glitter that do add some depth and sparkle to the shade. 

The above two pictures were taken in my light box and the picture below was taken in daylight.

So, in other news, we just celebrated my younger son's first birthday! When I look back on these posts, that statement is going to confuse the hell out of me. I took these pictures early 2015 sooo....yeah, I'm over a year behind on posting all my pictures. Like I said in a much earlier post, I'm going to be going back and forth between old and new manis as I try to get caught up with my backlog of pictures from last year. I can't believe I'm still so far behind!!
Anyway, back to my son. We tried to give him a small piece to eat after the cake cutting but the poor guy was so tired by then that it was a full meltdown. He didn't like the frosting on his fingers and that was enough to tip him over the edge. But, other than that minor wrench, it was a good day.

Again, thanks for visiting!

200th Post! China Glaze Reggae to Riches

Yay! 200th post!!!Compared to a lot of other nail bloggers, for the amount of time I've been blogging, that's not a lot of posts. But still, for something that I expected to drop off in a year or two, I'm glad I've kept it limping along. Maybe one day, I'll be posting more frequently. But for now, you guys get to see me very very occasionally.

In order to celebrate my 200th post, I wanted to post a special polish. Special because of the color (easily top ten for me) and also because of when I wore it. This is the polish I wore to the newborn photo session for my seven month old son. (Now you know how backlogged my pictures are too.) 

This polish is China Glaze Reggae to Riches. It's an amazing bright pink color with a very apparent purple shimmer that was fantastic to look at in the sun. 

The contrasting shimmer polishes always seem to be begging for a matte top coat so I did that after a few days. I wasn't disappointed!!

I've added a couple of pictures from that photo shoot where my nails are really visible. Isn't he the cutest little peanut?

Stash Swatch: Barielle Gelt Me To The Party and Out-grey-geous

Hi everybody! I've got a few minutes to show you a couple more swatches. Barielle polishes again. 

This first one is Barielle Gelt me to the Party. Looking at this color now, it really makes me wonder how close it is to Essie Leggy Legend from this year's fall collection. I'm not sure how I feel about this color against my skin so I don't know if I'll ever own Leggy Legend to compare. It's very interesting though and so I don't think I'll let go of it just yet. It has to be one of the most unique polishes in my collection. 

This next color is a very interesting one as well. This is Barielle Out-grey-geous. At a quick glance, it very much looks like I took a graphite pencil and colored all over my nails like I used to do in middle school when I got really bored in class. Except, you know, topcoated. It amused me, it was interesting. I'm sure I'd get bored with it somewhat quickly. Grey is not so much my thing...even though I have several shades of it. This one is a little more unique because of all those little gold sparkles in it. 

Ok, see you next time. I just realized it will be my 200th post!! Gotta make it a good one. I need to think about it. 

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?

Stash swatch - Andrea Fulerton Beatrice

Hello lovelies!

Another swatch post for you guys today. Today's polish is another Andrea Fulerton polish called Beatrice. First, let me show you the bottle shot.

I saw that in Superdrug and immediately thought, oil slick in a bottle...at a drugstore?? WANT!! So, I got it. Fast forward to two years later and I'm berating myself for still not having tried this gorgeous looking polish. So, I got a couple of coats on my nails, held my breath in anticipation of the magic....and nothing. 

Not that it isn't a beautiful color. It's a GORGEOUS color and if it had looked just like that in the bottle, I would have been very happy. But I was expecting an oil slick on my nails and all I got was this pretty purple. 

I even tried applying it over black. (Pssst, it's over black on the ring finger!) It gave the edges a darker look but, alas, no duochrome still. Oh well, I'll be happy wearing it as a purple color and look elsewhere for my oil slick look. 

In other news, I'll be going back to work on Monday after my maternity leave. I hope not to leave this blog in the lurch and try to do about a post a week but we all know how well that went last time. I'm happy to be going back to work but I'll miss my babies :-( 

Anyway, I'm sure all of you have stories of polishes that looked amazing in the bottle only to fool you once you wore it on your nails. What has been your biggest disappointment? Do you like wearing it anyway? I'd love to hear from you guys. Thanks for looking!

Stash swatch - Andrea Fulerton Foxy Lady trio set

Hello hello readers!

Casa de Nailaday has been a little chaotic this past week. Toddler boy started daycare last week and it's been an adjustment for all of us. I'm glad I started it a couple of weeks before I will be going back to work because dealing with a newborn baby, a clingy moody toddler and work would have been difficult, to say the least. To top it all off, the poor kid got a bug from his first week at daycare and has been feverish and cranky all weekend. My parents were over to hang out with the babies this weekend and we all just felt so sorry for him!

Anyway, it's time for another post! Today I'd like to show you a swatch of a polish "trio". I picked up this Andrea Fulerton Trio during my trip to London in 2012. (Yup, another one! We're not going to run out of these for a while.) This Andrea Fulerton Trio is called Foxy Lady. There are two polishes, one somewhat more sheer than the other. They are both wearable on their own. The third polish comes in when you layer the polishes together. This is the only trio from this brand I picked up. Let's see the polishes!

The color above is the more opaque polish in the trio. It is not a color I would chose for myself if it came alone. It's a metallic copper peach color that has a weird tendency to look sometimes okay and sometimes dated on my nails. My nails were pretty short at this time so maybe that was in favor of the polish. I think if my nails had been longer the color may have looked more dated. This was two coats and showed more brushstrokes than I would have liked. It did have a nice sparkle in the sun though. That part I liked.

The second polish in this trio is a strange one, in a good way. Overall the color could be described as a dark grey but it had shimmer in it that took it to a whole different level. I loved this shade!! Being the more sheer polish in the set, it did take three coats for complete opacity but I have several stand alone polishes for which that is the case so that wasn't a deal breaker.

More pictures of the second polish above. The shimmer in this one is beautiful. Head on, the polish is an elephant grey color but the microscopic particles in it tease you with a color shifting palette that runs from a light blue color to a fushia purple at the edges. This takes an overall simple grey to one that has a hint of purple in it all the time, making it look like a very dusky lilac. I loved wearing this one.

Finally, I did what I was supposed to and wore them layered to get my third polish. I wore the grey polish over the copper. I hated it. It doesn't look too bad in the pictures but in person I thought it was a disaster. The formula of the grey color wasn't so good that it went on completely streak free at one coat, despite my best effort. This caused it to look patchy and uneven over the peach color, so that sucked. I realized I disliked the peach color even more when it was grayed out like that. Finally, the duochrome quality of the grey polish was completely lost when layered over the metallic peach. So yeah, this is not how I will be wearing it in the future.

When I saw this in the store, I picked it up because the grey polish in this trio looked very unique. I was right about that. I could have done without the coppery peach and I was right about that too. I'm sure I could use it in nail art at some point in the future so I'll have to work on that.

Once again, thanks for looking and see you next time! Wish us luck with daycare! 

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?

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....

Polished by KPT Nostalgia

Hellloooo everybody!!

Today, I am super excited to show you an amazing thermal polish created by Katherine, owner of the Polished by KPT line of indie polishes. I used to not have all that many indie polishes. I started with Cover Band Sticks and Stones (remember that one?) and a bunch of Hare polishes, most of which have yet to make it on the blog. Not for any lack of love on my part, I just haven't got around to it. Then, something happened over the last few months and now I'm mad for indie polishes. They offer so much more variety and uniqueness to a polish collector. One the brands I was most impressed with and had to have a bunch of polishes from was Polished by KPT. I especially loved all her thermal polishes and today I'm going to show you one of them. This is Nostalgia. 

It is from The Required Love collection and is a dark purple fading thermal with a fine pink/purple to green duochrome shimmer. The picture above and the two below are taken outside in sunlight. I love that my nails are just long enough for the thermal effect to do its thing in this cool fall weather we're having. The warm color is an almost clear/nude color and the cold color is a blackened purple with green duochrome shift. The sunlight really brings out the shimmer. Coverage is amazing with total coverage in just two coats.

The picture below was taken in the lightbox and you can see the blackened edges a bit better. I had this on when I sat on a panel for a work thing and my nails felt very professional. I love that it is very safe for work but has so much going on!

I made a feeble attempt at some freehand flower art because I wanted to see how the changing color would look under the nail art. I'm not happy with the actual design. I'm going to have to try again with something less...amateurish. Maybe I'll do some stamping on it. 

Bottom line, I loved loved loved the polish and I can't wait to try the other colors. Also, I didn't have time to change for a few days and it looked virtually flawless on the fifth day! My topcoat is a 50/50 combo of Seche Vite and NYC Grand Central Station. I only changed it because, well, I can't keep anything on for longer than a week. I get antsy.

An amazing orange holo: Jade Uau!

Hi all! Quick post today. This is the base of the last mani I posted, Jade Uau! How incredible is this? I had to give it its own post. I got this polish from Ninja Polish. I love shopping from them. They have good customer service and I have always been able to trust my purchases from there. So far, everything has been shipped properly without any broken bottle disasters. 

Nubar Duochromes: Wildlife with black saran wrap design

Hello polish lovers!

I can't believe I'm getting a post before one week from the previous post! Having a child is wonderful but it's seriously a moratorium on free time for the forseeable future! A little update, last weekend we got some professional photography done with our little guy. I am so excited to see the pictures!! The photographer we worked with was wonderful. She had him quiet and mostly sleeping for most of the photo session, which was the better part of four hours. I was sorely tempted to ask her to come by at night and put him to sleep at bedtime too :-)

This is the last of the Nubar Duochromes that I have. To see the posts for the others, follow the links below.

                Indigo Illusion

                Purple Beach

                Iris Dust
                Moon Eclipse

Onto today's look. This is Nubar Wildlife. It has a pink/bronze shimmer head on with murky green edges. As the light shifts, you can see the shift towards brighter and brighter green.

I embellished this one a bit by adding black with plastic cling wrap. I painted it on the plastic and then carefully dabbed it onto completely dry base. On the ring finger, I added a coat of Jessica 18K gold flake polish.

And here are the collages and the video.