Pure Ice: Deja Vu

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Y'all know I love inexpensive polishes and one of the best brands I have found is Pure Ice. They have a wide variety of colors and for under $2 you can not go wrong! I was lucky enough to get three PR Samples of Pure Ice First Love, Deja Vu and Jack Pot. 

Deja Vu is my favorite from the three, it is a gorgeous blue/purple, duochromy glittery goodness! On the nails it shows up a very vibrant royal blue, with a hint of purple and so full of glitter.

Is that not gorgeous?!?!?!? Wear time on this has been pretty good too, it would have been even better if I had took the time to wrap my nails. In all the swatches above I applied 2 coats which made the polish very opaque. Application was a breeze, went on very smoothly and dried rather quickly, by the time I was done with my second hand, my first hand was ready for it's second coat.

I do have to say this polish is even prettier in person, so if you can find it, grab it, you will not regret it! It's so pretty I just can't stop looking at my nails!

Valentine's Day Nails

Blogging from my phone today cause I wanted to show y'all my nail look that I had created for my anniversary and Valentine's Day, our anniversary is 4 days before. I am so happy with the way this came out! When I first got ready to do my nails I had picked out one stamping plate and two nail polishes, I ended up using three stamping plates and four nail polishes. 

The polishes I used were Jamberry and Raspberry Sorbet from Duri Cosmetics, Snow Me White from Sinful Colors and Mer-Magical from Pure Ice. The plates I used were plate F11 from Born Pretty Store; it's one of those French tip plates, Mash-48 I'm pretty sure I got this off Amazon and the last plate is also from Born Pretty Store it is plate number QA91. 

I used Raspberry Sorbet as my base color, I love these Duri polishes they dry super duper fast! On my ring finger I used the LOVE image from QA91 I made a 4 square checkerboard pattern using Jamberry and Snow Me White on the image, scraped it and then stamped it. I used the same technique for all the stamping in this nail look. I took the French tip plate and used the heart pattern and stamped my middle finger and also my thumb. After stamping I felt like there was too much 'blank' space between the stamp and the other part of my nail, so I filled that space in with Mer-Magical for a little bit of sparkle. For my little and index finger I used the Mash plate and stamped heart clusters. 

I am seriously so in love with how this turned out! I don't think I have ever used more than one stamping plate for one nail look, but now that I have I will do that more often. 

I hope y'all enjoyed this as much as I did!  Have a great rest of the weekend :)

Christmas Nail Ideas

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I think I am finally on the mend from this sinus/ear infection! Once I did start feeling better all I wanted to do was my nails LOL and lets just say, I should not do my nails if I'm feeling the least bit out of it.

I wanted to work on some Christmas nail designs/ideas and I knew I had some Christmas decals from Born Pretty and I figured that would be the easiest thing to do to my nails. I had a great idea in my head but I don't think that it transferred over well from my head to my nails. So the first thing I did was start out with a white base (Avon Iceberg) then I did the 'saran wrap' technique on all but my accent nail, using Cherry Merry from Duri Cosmetics. On my accent nail I added a super cute Christmas tree from the Born Pretty decals. I think my issue with this is that it's a whole lot of red and just a hint of green. I'm thinking instead of using red for my other fingers I might should have used green. What do y'all think?

This next Christmas inspired mani is a very simple subtle look that can be created using any nude polish as a base and adding a red, gold, or green glitter to the top. Here I used Shore Bet from Pure Ice for my base and Sinful Colors Gilded for my glitter. It is a beautiful red and gold mix of glitter that gives a little bit of life to the nude polish. I think this would be great for a Holiday wedding or an office party where crazy nail polish is frowned upon.

I have a couple more Christmas themed manis in mind, but not sure if I will get around to doing them before Christmas. I will try my best though :)

Now I'm off to catch up on blogs that I read, I have almost 2 weeks of catching up to do!!

Essence Me & My Lover, Plus More

Happy Friday! Today I have Essence Me & My Lover, courtesy of Lizzy! Love, Love, Love this polish! It comes off as a pinky toned red, hope that makes sense, with gold and what looks to be fuchsia colored glitter. Know what makes it even better?? It's a texture polish, Long Live Textures! The sparkle on this polish is beautiful but my camera did not want to capture it. Didn't help that my regular camera hates any shade of red or pink so I had to use my phone for all the pictures in this post.

Application of this polish was flawless, dried super fast, as I have found with all the Essence polishes I have. I applied 2 thin-ish coats. You can see a hint of the sparkle on my pinky

Me & My Lover reminds me of Ruby Mine by Sinful Colors, it was in their Crystal Crushes collection, I'll do a comparison post in the near future.

Also wanted to show y'all what I have on my toes, because I,m loving it! I used 2 coats of Duri's Peach Buzz, from their Tutti Frutti Collection, and topped it with a coat of Mer-Magical from Pure Ice.

Warning: TOES for those of you that do not like feet/toes ;) so just scroll by really fast to the next part of this post.

Finally today a little Friday Fun! My hubby had all week off from work and he decided to play a little pratical joke on me. I always take my wedding rings off when I do the dishes and I have a habit of forgetting to put them back on as soon as I get done with the dishes, and get caught up in other chores around the house. Well yesterday my hubby locked them up and hid the key from me LOL

I did finally find the key and was able to release my rings! Such a jokester!

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend :)

Sinful Colors Tidal Wave

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The other day I received a bottle of Sinful Colors polish in the mail from Pinchme. If you are not familiar with Pinchme here is what the site says about how it works:

"PINCHme gives you the unique opportunity to discover new products and try them for free. It's simple - you choose a product from one of our leading brands, and we then deliver it to your home or workplace for free. But be quick, we’ll reserve the products in your box for a limited time, to ensure that everyone has a chance of receiving the available products. Once you've tried, tasted or touched the exciting products we offer, you can leave your feedback. Start pinching now!"

The polish that I received was called Tidal Wave. When I first seen this in the bottle I didn't think I was going to like it at all, but once I got it on my nails, it's really pretty. It's a very pale sky blue, applies smoothly and dries quickly.

I wanted to add a little bit of sparkle to this so I topped it with Color Club's Starry Temptress Topcoat, but It didn't really give off much sparkle. I don't know if that is because that topcoat was designed to work with the Starry Temptress polishes, guess I'll find that out soon ;)

So when that failed I grabbed one of the new Pure Ice polishes I picked up from Walmart called Sparkling Seas from the Sparkling Seas Collection. Not really much of a collection if you ask me, it only has 3 shades. Anywho, these polishes are glitters with a slightly tinted base. The one I used today has a blue tinted base and I think it looks lovely over Tidal Wave.

Still not very sparkly, but I think it's okay. I'll do a more in-depth review of the Sparkling Seas Collection soon.

My post tomorrow will probably be rather late, Saturday hubby and I are headed to a motorcycle event for Veterans and I want to do a nice red, white and blue mani for the weekend!

Pure Ice Happy Hour

I'm finally back, did ya miss me? My allergies turned in to a cold that my hubby decided he would share with me, over the cold but the allergies are holding on.

Anywho today I wanted to share Happy Hour from Pure Ice with y'all! It's a gorgeous coral cream, that applied really nicely. Not sure about the dry time, it's been well over a week since I used this :/ I will have to say the wear time has been great, I just started getting chips, usually polish will chip on me much sooner, so very happy with that aspect of it.

I liked Happy Hour on it's own, but as usual, I  felt the need for a little bling, so I topped it off with ELF's Fairy Dust. It's been said that Fairy Dust is a dupe for Essie's Shine of the Times! I should do a comparison since I have them both.

 I do have another photo up on Instagram of this nail look if you want to check that out :)

Thank you to everyone that left a comment wishing me well :)

I hope you all have been doing well and I hope you have a fabulous day!

Tomorrow I will have a textured polish from Avon to share!

TIOT: Pure Ice Twinkle

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A quick Try It On Tuesday post today featuring Twinkle from Pure Ice. This is a polish that I seen swatched on another blog and I loved the way it looked so I set out on a search for it! It only took me like 3 months to find it LOL

Twinkle is a lovely peachy coral shade with gold shimmer, perfect for summer. As gorgeous as this shade is in my photo, I did have some issues. I'm not 100% sure if the issues were with Twinkle it's self or if it was because of the matte top coat I added to the top, which you can't even tell that I did that.

For me the formula seems to be a touch thicker than the other Pure Ice polishes I have used. Although I may have gotten a bottle that someone used to paint their nails in the store then put it back on the shelf, Yes that really happened. Hubby and I were in Walmart and I dragged him to the polish aisle with me and there was a teenager and I'm assuming her mother painting their nails then put the polishes back on the shelf. If you are someone that does that, please don't, when I buy polish from a store I expect it to be NEW not used.

Okay, I'll get off my soap box now. As you can hopefully see in my photos, I ended up with some air bubbles. I did have to apply 3 coats of this to get it to the opacity I wanted, so I don't know if that's what caused it or if it was in fact the NYC matte top coat.

I really want to say it was the top coat because I just swatched it on my nail wheel and it came out fine. May have to put this back in the Unworn basket and give it another try.

Hope you all are having a fabulous day and be sure to come back tomorrow for something really special!

St. Patrick's Day Nails

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I always tend to drag out my Green polishes during the month of March in an attempt to create a nice looking St. Patrick's Day manicure. This time around I ended up buying a new green polish, I was in Walmart and noticed a new display from Pure Ice called Luck of the Stylish. I picked up six shades from the display :/ I'll add a photo of the other four at the end of the post, I used 2 for this nail look.

I started out with 2 coats of Shore Bet, a nice nude cream polish, on all my fingers except for my ring finger.

For my ring finger I used 2 coats of Lucky Charming, a gorgeous green with lots of green and gold shimmer. One coat of this is fairly light and a little sheer, so I suggest using at least 2 if not 3 coats.

To finish this look off I used Blasted Gold, a crackle polish from Sephora by OPI that I picked up at Big Lots. When I got this I was not aware that it was a crackle polish, thought it

Mish Mash Challenge: Black and White

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The moment I received this snowflake stamping plate from Born Pretty Store I knew I wanted to use it for this weeks challenge, I was thinking night time snow! I love how my mani turned out and the plate worked great! I used my Konad scraper and stamper with the plate and the scrapper did cause the plate to get some scratches, I should really use a gift card, but I feel like I don't get as clean of a scrape with the gift card. The stamps came out really clear on my nails, I'm quite impressed with this plate and see myself getting a lot of use from it.

I used Pure Ice Blackout as my base color and used Snow Me White from Sinful Colors to stamp with. Snow Me White is my all time favorite white stamping polish, it works so good and does not seem to smear/smudge when I apply my top coat.

Wanted to add that this plate is only $2.99 at the Born Pretty Store and you can save an additional 10% off your order by using coupon code: SMBW10

Now let's check out what the ladies did for Black and White!

Mish Mash Challenge Week 25

Why hello there! Have you been missing me the past few Wednesdays? I have missed doing the challenge, but I've been challenged the last couple of months with some health issues (under control now) and the bitter cold this past week causing frozen pipes. But I'm here today and I have, in my opinion, a really cool manicure!

This week our theme/prompt was two colors we wouldn't normally pair together. Can I just say I have a hard enough time deciding on one color I actually want to wear, so I knew there was not hope of me finding two colors that I wouldn't pair together on a normal day, so I had my hubby go to my polish shelves and grab me two polishes :) I think he did a great job! He chose Wild Thing from Pure Ice and Why Not from Sinful Colors, definitely not two I would have picked for a manicure. The colors are not quite accurate, I took the photos indoors at night.

I decided to do a diagonal mani and accent (cover up the line) with some rhinestones. I really like the way this came out, but it's not functional. I could not use a topcoat because it makes the stones look cloudy so I lost 2 stones about 30 minutes after I finished them. Luckily I got the photos prior to that.

I'm really excited to see what the ladies did for this week! Check them out below.

Empties: November & December 2013

I did not get around to blogging about my empties from November, so I thought I would combine them with my December empties. I have quite a few as you can see from above, so lets jump right in.

Up first I finished two hand sanitizers from Bath & Body Works, Papaya Melon Scoop and Apple Wreath. The Papaya smelled pretty good, nice and fruity. Would have been a great one to use in the spring or summer. I love Apple Wreath, you can smell hints of apple and Christmas trees, and absolutely love the way Christmas trees smell. I was bummed when I ran out of it and I looked when I was in Bath & Body Works earlier this week and I could not find it or anything like it.

Up next I have three nail polishes, I used these to make Christmas ornaments! I used Glitter Wonderland from Color Club, Get Low and Lost in Vegas both from Pure Ice. These colors made great ornaments since they were shimmery. I used the Glitter Wonderland to make my best friend one since purple is her favorite color and I used the other 2 to make my Mother-in-Law 3 ornaments since her theme for her tree was burgundy and gold.

I also finally used up the Equate makeup remover wipes that I got back in September! I think these good removing wipes, they work just as good as the ones that I get from Big Lots and the Simple wipes. I finished up my Secret deodorant and a bottle of the ELF Mist and Set spray. I would buy all these products again, I already have a back of the deodorant and I think 3 back ups of the spray.

Lastly I have some hair products that I finished up. First up is the Salon Selectives shampoo that I picked up from Big Lots, honestly this was like the bottle of shampoo that would never end! I did not like this at all, the consistency of the shampoo was weird almost gelatin like. I felt like I had to use twice as much of it as I would any other shampoo just to get it to lather up good. On the plus side it smelled pretty good and was inexpensive. I would not buy this again. I also finished up two different oils, my Garnier Sleek and Shine Moroccan Argan Oil and my Macadamia Healing Oil Treatment. Between the two I definitely prefer the Garnier, I just feel like it worked with my hair better and it's about half the price of the Macadamia one. I would repurchase the Garnier Moroccan Argan Oil, but my wonderful husband bought me two bottles of it for Christmas!

Wow, I feel like that was a lot of stuff! Did you finish up any products the last few months?

Mish Mash Challenge Week 14: Pink

Welcome to week 14 of the Mish Mash Challenge! This week our theme was Pink and I actually did two nail looks because I did not like the first one all that much, it was a stamping mani. The one I decided to go with is a water marble using Sinful Colors Snow Me White, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Bubblegum Pink and Pure Ice Gossip.

Today you also get to see both my hands LOL they each came out so different I wanted to share them both. I think I like my left hand better though :)

Left Hand

Right Hand

Halloween Nails: Part 3

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Today I am back with the third and final part of my Halloween nails mini series. Today's look is a cute simple nail look I created using dotting tools!

To start off I painted my nails with green shade for my base. I had four greens in my collection that I thought would look great for this and I could not decide on which one I wanted to use so I used them all. On my index finger I used Wild Thing from Pure Ice, my middle finger is Free Spirit also from Pure Ice, on my ring finger I used Happy Endings from Sinful colors and on my little finger I use a bright neon green from L.A. Colors that does not have a name. I then took a white cream and put 2 dots on each nail, then came back with a black cream polish and a slightly smaller dotting tool and placed black dots on each of the white dots to create the eyes. I then took a smaller dotting tool and drew a horizontal line under the eyes and then made a few vertical lines across the horizontal line to form a little mouth.

I had a lot of fun with this series and I hope you enjoyed it too. Let me know if this is something you would like to see for Christmas nails as well.

Mish Mash Challenge Week 13: Rainbow

This week of the Mish Mash Challenge was a lot of fun for me because I got to try out a really, in my opinion, cool nail look.

I first applied a Sally Hansen base coat, once that was dry I applied a white crackle polish from Avon and let that dry completely. Then I used 6 different colors to make a 'rainbow' of colors on my nails over the crackle. I had around 25 polishes on my little polishing table trying to figure out which ones were sheer enough to let the crackle come through after trial and error I found my 6.

I used Sinful Colors Forget Now, Wet n Wild Sunny Side Up, Spoiled Mind Your Own Beeswax, Pure Ice Monte Carlo, Neon Green no name from L.A. Colors, and Sally Hansen Blizzard Blue.

I really like the way this came out and I plan on trying it again with just one color.

Mish Mash Challenge Week 12: Flower

I had a plan that I was going with that I seen on Pinterest, click the link to see the look I was going for and if anyone knows how to embed a pin in a blog, please let me know. I have tried copying and pasting the link that they provide when I click on embed, but I can not get them to work to save my life. Once I started on the dotticure flowers it went downhill. So I kept most of that look, but instead of dotticure flowers I used Mash stamping plate #42 and that turned out much better.

For my nail look I used Sally Hansen Blue Me Away! on my little finger and for the stamping. For my ring finger I used Ruffled Sheets topped with Beware, both from Pure Ice. For my other 2 fingers and my thumb I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White. I also added a rhinestone to each little finger, those I got from Avon. Never did a look like this before, but I really like it, something fun and different for me.

Beauty Bits: Pure Ice Glow in the Dark Top Coat

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If you follow me on Facebook you know that I bought a bottle of glow in the dark top coat from Pure Ice. I was originally looking for the one from Sinful Colors, but could not find it. I have spent 3 days, well I guess nights, trying to capture the 'glow' on my nails. Capturing the bottle glowing was super easy, but once it was on my nails my camera just did not like it.

For starters it does work, I was quite surprised.Once it got dark my nails were glowing, it was not a bright glow, but there was a glow there. Also through trial and error, I discovered it does not work on dark colored polishes, weird I know. I started out just putting it over the polish that I had on, which was orange and white (I had attempted a saran wrap mani, fail) and I noticed that the glow was brighter where the white polish was. I then put white polish on two of my nails and black on two, the white glowed, the black nothing at all happening there. So the lighter the color the better it's going to work.

For my pictures I held a flash light up to  my nails right before taking the picture in hopes to get a bright glow to capture, it looked so much brighter in person and even when looking at the display on the camera, but once I uploaded them it was like my computer ate the glow right off.

Started off with Black and White

White had glow, black did not

How the glow in the dark polish looks over black

Over Sinful Colors Snow Me White

Over all I think this is a fun polish and not just for Halloween. It applies smoothly and dries quickly. As you can see in the photo above, if you do put it over dark polish it leaves it looking speckled. I would not advise putting it over dark colors though cause it does not work.

Have you tried any glow in the dark polishes? What was your experience with them?

Pure Ice Glow in the Dark polish is available at Walmart for right at $2 a bottle.