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!

Broadway Gradient

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As you know I am trying to chip away at this massive pile of untried nail polish, so today I have not one but two colors for you!

Today I have two polishes from Broadway Nails, Sour Apple and Easter Annie. Both of these are cream polishes and a little on the thick side, once I seen how thick they were I opted to do a gradient mani and they worked amazingly well for that.

I started off by getting one of the wedge shaped makeup sponges and letting water run over it then squeezing it out, this helps to not have to use so much nail polish. I set my sponge to the side and painted all my nails with Avon Iceberg, a white nail polish. Once that dried I began working on my gradient, I did them all the same way with the exception of my ring fingers, I flipped the colors just to change it up a bit ;) I topped everything off with some Salon Perfect Cosmic Dust, which my camera refuses to take a good photo of. I can not for the life of me get a good shot of all the sparkle that it contains!

I really love the way this came out, I even had a little old lady comment on them saying "look what beautiful nails"!

I get to work the day shift on Saturday and have Sunday off so I will chip away at this pile a little more over the weekend!

Review: Born Pretty Nail Wraps

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Nail wraps, stickers, decals, whatever you want to call them are such an easy way to achieve an awesome looking mani, that looks like it took forever to do, in just a matter of minutes! I love using these types of products when I don't have time to actually paint my nails, these I can just stick on and go.

When I saw these on the Born Pretty Store's website, I had to have them, they are very cool and different looking in my opinion. They are the Shimmering Powder Color Changing Full Nail Sticker. These come in 8 different colors, I chose style M149. I love how inexpensive these are too, only $2.88 each, plus you can save an extra 10% by using code: SMBW10

I found these to be very easy to work with, just like any other nail wrap, you simply peel it off the paper, stick it to your nail and file off the excess. Since my nails were not long enough to get the full gradient effect from the wraps, I chose to alternate them by flipping them around. I think it looks really good. They also last a good while, I applied mine on a Saturday and wore them till Thursday and I only have minimal tip wear. I did apply a clear top coat and that may have helped them to last as long as they have. I feel like I could have wore them for a several more days, I just wanted a change LOL, I would get these again!

Hope you all have a great weekend! I'll be back on Monday maybe with a polish haul ;)

Update: Broadway Nails Gel Strong Ultra Violet

I'm a few days late on getting this up, but I did want to update y'all on the wear time of the Broadway Nails Gel Strong Polish.

I applied this polish on the 14th and I took this photo on the 18th. So about 5 days of wear, I'm thinking not too bad, because usually after about 2 days my nails are chipped bad. This only chipped in the areas where my nails were peeling, mostly on my thumb, other than that I only got tip wear for the most part.

Very happy with the wear time on this polish, but still kinda bummed about the drying time. I do think I will try another color and see if the drying time is any different with it.

Super short post, going to go enjoy the rest of my day off :)

Maybelline Color Show Lasting Lilac

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Today's polish comes from the Maybelline limited edition Vintage Leather Collection, it is Lasting Lilac. I'm not really sure why they wanted to call this line Vintage Leather, to me it's just polish with a matte finish and some metallic looking shards.

Lasting Lilac is slightly sheer, and the first coat was rather streaky, I ended up using three coats to get the opacity to a state I was happy with. I love the shade of this color, it's not lilac at all, but more like a grapey purple. It looked okay matte, but I wanted something shiny so I did add a glossy top coat to it. Obviously since it is a matte finish it did try super quick.

I like this polish for it's super quick dry time and the color, I don't know that I would ever wear it matte, to me I think it looks better shiny. I found this at the Dollar Tree so for $1 can't really say anything bad about it!

Tomorrow I'll be back with Ring the Belini from Sinful Colors Citrus Twist Collection.

Back In My Gloria Days

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Back in my Gloria Days is from the Modern Family Collection that Nicole by OPI put out. I found this little gem at TJ Maxx quite a while back for $2! I really don't know why I have not used it sooner, it is absolutely gorgeous! Love the shade of purple, but in the light you can catch hints of blue and sometimes some pink! I used 3 coats and it dried fairly quickly.

I also removed my acrylic and tips and just reapplied some acrylic to my natural nails to make them a stronger since they have grown out some since having the tips on. The acrylic is a lifesaver for my nails, I don't have to worry about them peeling on me now!

Hope you all have a great rest of the week! I will be out of town till Sunday unless I get trapped away from home because of snow, which according to some weather reports, it's a very likely thing that I might :/

TIOT: Wet n Wild Deception

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A while ago I picked up all the polishes from the Wet n Wild Street Art Collection and I have been trying to get them all tried out. This week I tried out Deception a gorgeous purple jelly! When I did my nails I wasn't really feeling a glittery look, so I took a different approach to the 'Jelly Sandwich', I did some stamping in between the jelly layers!

I started out with two coats of Deception, letting each one dry completely before moving on. Next I took my Konad Stamping plate M57 and Sinful Colors Snow Me White and stamped on the zebra pattern. Topped that off with one more coat of Deception and then some topcoat.

Just to look at it, it looks like I stamped with a lighter purple color, but it is in fact a jelly sandwich. I love love love this manicure and will be trying out some different stamping patterns and stamping colors with it in the future.

I seen this fun little nail polish quiz floating around and thought I would give it a try, basically you are trying to guess the correct color of a swatch, I was impress I got silver. Give it a try and let me know what you get.
http://www.nailpolishcanada.com/swatch

Off to run some errands, but I shall return tomorrow with some 'polka dots'!

Essie Full Steam Ahead

Happy Friday! Today I was planning on posting a beauty product review, but since the weather has been so nice I could not stay indoors, had to get out and enjoy it and needless to say I didn't get around to writing up the review. So instead I'm sharing Essie Full Steam Ahead with you :)

Full Steam Ahead is the only actual nail color I have from Essie, I do have a couple of their Luxe Effects though. FSA was a super easy formula to work with, no streaking or other issues. It is a little on the sheer side, in the photos I used 2 coats and I feel like it could have benefited from a third coat. My photos make the polish look a shade or two darker that what it really is.

In any case, it is such a lovely lilac shade, would be great for a spring or Easter manicure. In the bottle it appears that it has a lot of silver shimmer, but once you have it on your nails it's not quite as noticeable.

For me this is just an okay polish, mostly because I wish that it wasn't so sheer and that the shimmer showed up better. It did dry fairly quick and wear time has been great too! I've been doing housework, been outside planting flowers and I only have minimal tip wear.

Imagine a shade darker than the photo below and that is the true color of Essie Full Steam Ahead.

Hope you have a great weekend and I'll be back on Monday with a new post, just not sure on what yet. The weather is supposed to turn yucky again so I'll have plenty of time to get it sorted out :)

Essence Break Through & China Glaze Fairy Dust

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Today I am showing Break Through from Essence that I received from Lizzy! Stop by and check out her blog, she has a different nail post everyday, I look forward to her posts each day!

I'm just going to start off by saying I love this Essence polish! Such a gorgeous mid-toned shade of purple. The application was wonderful, I think due partly to the brush. It's one of the wider ones that has a nice subtle curve to it that really fits nicely around the cuticle/nail bed. I also love that this polish dries super fast. I really like it because it has a jelly like texture/finish to it. Once I put it on I could not stop looking at it.

Here is a quick shot of the brush:

I thought I would add some glitter to it by applying China Glaze Fairy Dust. Indoors and in the shade Fairy Dust just looks like silver glitter, but once you get it under some light, especially out in the sun, you can see all the holographic glittery goodness. My pictures do not do the sparkle of Fairy Dust any justice.

The following photos I took with my iPhone, they are out of focus, but that really shows the sparkle better and makes the color look more accurate :)

I could just stare at it all day LOL, but I have a ton of other things that must get done.
Next week I'll have a couple reviews on some beauty products, a nail look, and possible my March favorites/empties. Hope you all have a fabulous weekend!

TIOT: Zara

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Back in the beginning of January I made a purchase from Zoya, they were having an awesome sale 3 polishes for $12, who can pass that up! One of the polishes I purchased was Zara, a beautiful shade of purple full of gold shimmer. Zara is one of those rare polishes that looks just as gorgeous on the nails as it does in the bottle, if not better.

The formula on this polish was great, no visible brush strokes or balding of the polish. It was pretty much opaque with 2 coats, but I went ahead and use 3 coats. The first coat dried pretty fast, each additional coat took a lot longer, but was so worth the wait!

Indoor Lighting

Indoor Lighting 

All the following were taken outside in the sunlight

OMG how gorgeous is Zara? Love it!
Next Tuesday I will be trying on Happi also from Zoya!

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?

Mish Mash Challenge Week 1: Purple

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I'm so excited for today, as I am starting a new weekly nail challenge with some wonderful ladies! This challenge is called the Mish Mash Challenge, basically because it is 30 weeks of random nail challenges!

For week one the challenge was Purple. I chose a polish that I don't think I have worn before, Amethyst by Sinful Colors. It is a beautiful medium purple cream polish. I thought it was a bit blah by it's self so I added Essie's Luxe Effects in Shine of the Times on top of it. I really like the way it came out.

Be sure to stop by and see what the other ladies did for purple!