Review: Crown Brush HD Set

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I received this 6 piece HD Cosmetic Brush Set made by Crown Brush from iFabbo, it comes with a pro powder, tapered blush, deluxe contour, crease blender, chisel shadow and a detailed liner brush. The set also comes with a mirror, set of tweezers and a case. You can get a set in Orange, Purple, or Blue/White, this set of brushes retails for $69.99, but are currently being offered for $27.95, which I think is a great price for this set of brushes. The brushes themselves seem to be made really well and they are seriously some of the softest brushes I have ever felt. I have had no issues with them shedding, I washed them when I first got them and have used a few of them several times and washed them at least once since and still have had no issues with them. They also have a nice density to them. Crown says they are great for applying High Definition cosmetics, liquids, creams and powders.

I have used the Pro Powder to apply bronzer, the Chisel Shadow to apply powder and cream eye shadows, and the Crease Blender the most. I love how fluffy the crease blender is and the shadow brush works great for applying  the powder and cream shadows. I really like the case that comes with the brushes, great quality and will make a great traveling case!

I would have liked to seen either a flat topped brush or maybe a stippling brush in this set, just to have something to apply a liquid foundation with. I do feel that this set of brushes would make a great starter set for any one. I usually get ELF Brushes from the studio line and they are $3 each so $27 for a set of brushes of this quality plus a case for them is an excellent deal in my opinion.

Crown Brush has been making brushes for over 30 years and their brushes are Vegan friendly. You can check out this fabulous brush set here.

Have you ever tired Crown Brushes before? Would you purchase this?

TIOT: Uncle Si's Beard

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Today I am super excited about my TIOT nail polish! If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I finally found a Duck Dynasty display (yes I'm a huge fan!) at my local Walmart. I had seen several colors online that I wanted to get if I ever found the display, once I did find it, it was picked over pretty good but I was able to find 2 of the colors that I wanted. So today I bring you Uncle Si's Beard!

Uncle Si's Beard is a light gray jelly base with black and white hex, bar and small round 'glitters' in it. I really like this first off because of the jelly base and secondly because it is such a light color. In my swatch I applied 3 coats plus a top coat. I like the lightness of it but if you wanted it darker you could always apply another coat.

I want to wish all my readers a very Merry Christmas! Enjoy this time with the ones you love and remember the reason for the season!

TIOT: Zoya Tiffany

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Today I will be sharing the other polish that I got in my great Zoya deal that I told you about a few weeks ago. This is Tiffiany, a rose gold color with fine gold glitter in it. For me this polished looked much better online than it does in person, it's not one of my favorites. I also think that it looks better in the sunlight than it does indoors.

Do you have this color in your collection?

Christmas Tree Nails

I was able to get my computer to stay turned on long enough to transfer some of my files to our other computer and I made sure to grab the file that had these Christmas Tree nails in it. Since I've only gut nubs now I thought this would be a really cute look for Christmas and I was able to do it with a dotting tool and one small brush.

I started out with Sinful Colors Snow Me White and painted all my nails with this for my base. Then I took a dotting tool and made a yellow dot at the top for the star, then I dotted on some green polish to form the shape of the tree and lastly I used a brown color on a small nail art brush to make the trunk of the tree. I think that you can really make a lot of different looking trees with this design, all different colors. I wish I had thrown some red in mine, but hindsight its 20/20 LOL

Another Update

December has got off to a bad start for me, Sinus infection at end of November, now I'm suffering from an allergic reaction to something, I have no clue what. Also the computer that I have all my blogging images on is on the fritz and does not want to stay turned on. So I'm gonna be MIA a little longer :/

Please bear with me as I get these issues worked out and I'll be back blogging up a storm :)

MIsh Mash Challenge Week 19: Around the World

I'm back after taking an unwanted week off from blogging with week 19 of the Mish Mash Challenge. Our theme this week was Around the World, and I have been hanging on to some Fing'rs Heart 2 Art nail tattoos that are maps just for this weeks challenge. If I had not ran across these at Walmart sometime ago I really don't know what I would have done for this weeks challenge.

Today you get a rare look at my right hand! I had two different sets of map tattoo papers, but I like the kind that I put on my right hand better, so that is what I went with. Also please do not pay any attention to the shape of my fingers, that is what cold weather, being sick and not taking care of your nails and cuticles will get you :/

This was a really simple nail look to get, I painted my nails with Sinful Colors Snow Me White and applied the tattoo paper. Easy Peasy :)

I am really excited to see what the other ladies did for Around the World! Be sure to stop by and check them out too.

TIOT: Zoya Payton

I am so excited to share with y'all today my new favorite polish, Payton from Zoya! Normally I would not even consider purchasing Zoya polish because for me it's a little expensive at $8-9 a bottle, but back at Halloween they were offering a deal that I could not pass up, buy one get one free, plus free shipping. Two bottles of Zoya for $8 versus $24.95 (that's for 2 bottles plus shipping), don't mind if I do LOL

Payton is a gorgeous plum color jelly with holographic specs in it. When I looked at this online I just thought it was glitter then when I got it and swatched it, I fell in love! Payton looks super stunning in the sunlight, but is also very beautiful in indoor lighting as well. I took several pictures of this polish, but I don't feel that they really do it justice. Here are the best ones. Each one is 2 coats with a top coat, I feel 3 coats looks much better.

Indoor Lighting

Direct Sunlight

Direct Sunlight

Direct Sunlight

Isn't that a gorgeous polish? Do you have Payton in your collection? If not would you like to add it to your collection? They other polish I got from this deal was Tiffany, I will be showing that next Tuesday.

Update

I hope you all had a fantastic Thanksgiving! I'm finally starting to feel better and ready to get back to blogging, I have missed it and all of my readers! I have a few posts in mind for next week, including my November empties and favorites. I will also be working on my Christmas nail designs some in the next week, I only have nubs to work with so I've had to scrap some of the ideas I had. Guess I'll be keeping my nubs for a while too, I've went back to playing my guitar and can't do that with long nails, so hope you guys don't mind my little nubbins :)

I'll leave you with a couple of photos:

These are some Christmas ornaments I made using nail polish. Love the way they turned out!

Our little Christmas tree. I would love to have a big one, but I have a hard enough time keeping one of my cats out of this one. One cat wants to chew on it and the other one doesn't want anything to do with it.

TIOT: China Glaze It's A Trap-eze

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Before I get to the TIOT, I wanted to let y'all know I will be MIA for the rest of the week. I'm a little under the weather dealing with a sinus infection. Hopefully by next week I will feel better and can get started on Christmas nail designs.

Now today's TIOT is another China Glaze polish! I went a little wild on Amazon LOL It's a Trap-eze is from the Cirque du Soleil World Away Collection. On one hand I like this polish, because it's a really different looking polish, but on the other hand I don't like it because it is a pain in rear to remove! Glitter Everywhere!

Swatches are 2 coats, but I should have used 3, which is a pattern I see forming for China Glaze polishes. It's A Trap-eze is a glitter bomb in a milky white base. The glitters range in size and color.

This polish was easy to work with, there was no need to spend a lot of time manipulating the glitters in to place. There are a few glitter bald places on a couple of my nails, but I think a third coat would have eliminated that issue. For removal I highly recommend the foil removing process, on my left hand I just soaked some pieces of a cotton ball and placed them on my nails and had to scrub to get all the glitter off. On my right hand I soaked pieces of a cotton ball, placed them on nails, then wrapped foil around my nails, made it 100 times easier to get all the glitter off my nails with out having to scrub them. I do like this polish, but it will not be one that I wear often, just because of the removal process.

Haul: Sinful Colors

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I love Sinful Colors nail polish and for me the best place to find them is at Rite Aid, and the closest Rite Aid to me is like 30 minutes away in the opposite direction I usually run my errands in, so I don't get there as often as I like. Lucky for me I had an errand the other day that took me that way, so of course I stopped in to see if I could find any of the Crystal Crushes textured polishes. I found that display plus another one called Glitz & Glittered, I got two polishes from each collection. From the Crystal Crushes I got Treasure Chest, a beautiful Turquoise color with some gold shimmer and Ruby Mine, which is a pretty cranberry pinkish color also with gold shimmer. From the Glitz & Glittered Collection I got Charmed, a super pretty silver glitter polish that has a small amount of pink and blue glitter mixed in. I also got Gilded which is a mix of gold and reddish/pinkish glitters in what appears to be a very very light grey almost translucent base.

L-R: Ruby Mine, Treasure Chest, Gilded, Charmed

L-R: Charmed, Gilded, Ruby Mine, Treasure Chest

I think the glitter polishes are going to be great for Christmas manicures and I just love the texture and color on the Crystal Crushes, can't wait to try them out!

Do you have any of the Crystal Crush polishes?

Mish Mash Challenge Week 17: Grey

Happy Wednesday! This weeks Mish Mash Challenge theme was Grey. I was feeling a bit uninspired this week so I headed over to Pinterest, I had remembered pinning a nail look from fellow Mish Masher Simona over at Light Your Nails that I have been dying to try out!

For this look I used Seduce Me Strawberry from Avon as my base, because I needed a little color and topped it off with Status Update from Color Club, for this weeks Grey color :)

Please excuse my 2 nubs, as they had an unfortunate accident.

TIOT: China Glaze Creative Fantasy & Sinful Colors I Love You

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For today's TIOT I have two polishes; China Glaze Creative Fantasy from the Cirque du Soleil Worlds Away Collection and I Love You from Sinful Colors.

Sunlight, no Flash

Sunlight, with flash

Creative Fantasy is a beautiful purple jelly and I Love You is a purple glitter in a translucent purple base. These just went together so perfectly, almost as if it was just one polish! The only thing I did not like about Creative Fantasy is that even with 3 coats, when I took my photos you could still see my nail line, this was only noticeable in photos. I still really like Creative Fantasy, make me want more Jellies in my collection!

I will admit I used Creative Fantasy in this Gradient Manicure, but I still felt like I should classify it as an untried, because that manicure was just a little sampling :)

What are some of your favorite Jelly polishes?

NOTD: Square Studs

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Here lately I have been getting more and more into nail art and have been loving the looks of nail studs. The ones I am using today come from KKCenterHK and are called N.NAIL Studs Square Laser Purple 3mm. I have tried round nail studs before and liked them, but I really like the looks of the square ones, I feel you can do more with them. The only problem I have with these is I tend to fidget with the studs until they fall off.

I really love the purple holographic look that these have!

I decided to use Fing'rs Heart 2 Art Stop Metalling in My Business for my base color and made a simple look using the studs.

I'm considering trying these with either a black cream polish or a purple cream polish.

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Review: KKCenterHK Rubber Stamping Plate

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I have seen these rubber stamping plates while browsing on the web and I had always wondered about them, so I decided to give one a try. I got the N.NAIL Heart Rainbow Kiss Star Flower Footprint Soft Stamping from KKCenterHK. The tops of the plates are made of plastic and then the bottom side of the plates are made of soft rubber. 

These plates work a little different from the metal ones, you still apply polish directly to the plate, but instead of using a scraper you just wipe the whole plate across a paper towel to get rid of the excess polish. I had to wipe the plate a couple of times to ensure that all the excess was gone, but I still ended up with what looks like smudge marks on my nails from a little bit that was left on the plate that I could not get off. After you have wiped the plate off you take the plate and use it as your stamper to stamp the design on your nail.

I feel like I need a little more practice with these types of plates before I can get my stamping to look good. Just like when I started stamping using the metal plates, I needed practice for that too :) I will say I like these rubber plates because I feel like there is less clean up, you don't have to bothering with scrapping it with the scrapper then cleaning that off each time, then having to clean the plate and the stamper. Much easier to have it all in one. I would also recommend that before using the plate you take a Q-tip with some polish remover on it and give it a good swipe to get any lint off that may be clinging to it.

Here is the look I got with my very first time using this plate. I'm sure you will be seeing me use this plate in more nail art posts.

Base color is Duri Grey Area and for my stamping I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White

Have you used stamping plates like this before?

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Review: Perlier Imperial Honey Body Butter

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Received from iFabbo

Perlier Imperial Honey Body Butter is a thick white cream, formulated with the rare honey of Black Bees and Royal Jelly. Claims it nourishes skin with moisture, leaves skin pleasantly scented with the sensual notes of honey and oriental woods, and is good for year round use.

I say it does 2 out of the 3 things the makers claim it will. For me this did moisturize my skin really well and I do feel that it would be great for year round use because it absorbs in to the skin fairly quickly and does not leave you feeling greasy. Left my skin feeling super smooth and moisturized. The one thing that it did not do for me was leave my skin pleasantly scented wit the sensual notes of honey and oriental woods. For me this body butter has a really strong scent to it that is sickly sweet, my husband and I both agree that it smells like something we have smelled before, but we can't put our finger on it.

This would be a great moisturizer if you can get past the scent. I will probably continue to use this, but only on my legs when I wear pants and I will wash my hands right after I apply it, so I won't have to smell it. I also think for the price of this product the packaging was a little on the flimsy side.

This is not a product that I would recommend, only because of the scent of it, but if you like scents that are really sweet smelling you might like it. You can purchase Perlier Imperial Honey Body Butter on HSN, $40 for 6.7 fl oz of product. Use the following coupon code to get $5 of your Perlier Purchase on HSN.com: iFabbo5

Have you tried this body butter? What were your thoughts on it? What is your all time favorite body butter?