Cult Nails Captivated

Cults Nails is a brand that is fairly new to the world of nail polish and what's so awesome about it is that was created by a nail polish blogger, Maria Morrison, over at R3 Daily. In addition, they are Big 3 Free and vegan friendly. Pretty cool, huh? Maria also seems really nice and down-to-earth (though I have never had the pleasure of meeting her) and she interacts with her fans a lot over Facebook and Twitter, which is great because we get sneak peeks into future colors of her line and get to see some of her creative processing. Additionally, I suspect a lot of us envy Maria (in a nice way!)-- because we all dream of colors we'd like to create but probably never will. This is my first review of a Cult Nails polish-- but I am lucky to have all of them, so you can look forward to many more reviews in the future.

Captivated is a polish is from Cult Nails Spring/Summer 2011 collection, Day at the Races. It's a sheer coral jelly polish that is absolutely packed with gold and coral glitter. Really blingtastic. The polish itself is a little thick, but not unworkable. Here I used Captivated over OPI's Mod-ern Girl. Considering that they are both corals, I thought it would work out well. However, the finished product ended up looking much more orange, but still really pretty.

A plethora of pictures await!

Artificial light:

Artificial light with flash:

Natural light - shade:

Natural light - sun:

Blurry because I think it's pretty:

Unfortunately, Captivated was a limited edition polish and is sold out, with no plans for its return. But, Cult Nails is having a sale this weekend in celebration of Labor Day and you can get 2 polishes for $15! Cult Nail polishes usually retail for $10.

OPI Mod-ern Girl

I saw this polish randomly at my local Ulta store and decided to snag it because it was a polish I hadn't seen before (at least in person). Mod-ern Girl was released as a part of OPI's Summer 2008 Mod About Brights collection. Mod-ern Girl is a red-leaning coral polish, though if you look at OPI website, they show it as a strainght-up orange polish. It is most definitely not just an orange polish-- it changes in the light so sometimes it looks very orange and sometimes it looks more red/coral.

What I didn't realize is that Mod-ern Girl is a jelly polish and pretty darn sheer. I used four coats to eliminate most of the visible nail line. It's a really fun polish-- very bright and definitely "on" for summer. I just wish it was more opaque. I used Essie's First Base base coat and Good to Go top coat. This post includes a few more pictures than normal, just so you can get a sense for how the polish changes.

Artificial light:

Artificial light with flash:

Natural light - shade:

Natural light - sun:

Preview of butter LONDON No More Waity, Katie.

Here I have a quick preview of one of butter LONDON's Fall/Winter 2011 polishes No More Waity, Katie. I was going to include this in yesterday's post but was feeling tired and so I didn't get around to it. While I was wearing Sally Hansen's Delphinium, I decided to break out No More Waity, Katie for an accent nail. I thought the glitter in No More Waity, Katie would match the base color of Delphinium. It's not an exact match, but I think they pretty nice together. I'll be doing a full review later on, probably when football season starts, since this is such a pretty purple. 

Artificial light:

Artificial light with flash:

Natural light - shade:

Natural light - weak sun:

Sally Hansen Delphinium

Delphinium is another polish from the Tracy Reese for Sally Hansen Spring 2011 collection. Being a purple addict, I had to get this one. It's a very creamy pale lilac color and I thought I would love it.

For reference, here are what delphiniums (the flower the polish was named after) actually look like:

You'll see that the polish clearly doesn't match any of the colors in this picture exactly, but it fits in to the overall scheme.

Overall, I felt Delphinium had a much better formula than Coral Fever did. It went on smoothly and I used three coats. Maybe it was because I had just used another Sally Hansen and was more used to the brush, because this seemed a lot easier to work with in the end.

Artificial light:

Artificial light with flash:

Natural light - shade:

Natural light - sun:

Looks nice, right? Well... I didn't really like it at all. This color seemed old to me and gave me old lady hands. I like how it looks in the sun, but I wasn't overly wowed by this color. Quite honestly, I almost think this polish works as a neutral. Hear me out! Yes, it is a purple polish, but it's a very "quiet" color. It doesn't really pop and just kind of subsides in the background. So for me, this was kind of a dud. Not because it's quiet, but because I just wasn't in love with the color.

Sally Hansen Coral Fever

Coral Fever is one of the polishes from the Tracy Reese for Sally Hansen Spring 2011 Collection. You saw this briefly in an earlier post, but since summer is such a fantastic time for corals, there was no I could let this languish in one of my polish drawers. Coral Fever is pink leaning coral. Or so I thought. This color is actually very hard to describe and capture-- maybe because it's basically balanced so well between orange and pink. I originally saw a review of Coral Fever over at All Lacquered Up and loved it-- it looked a little more pink and was super bright. Fast forward to breaking into my own bottle, and my version of Coral Fever looks a lot more orange. I was a little disappointed because I was expecting it be slightly more pink. However, despite my initial disappointment, it's still a great shade of coral.

My only other complaint is about the formula. Prior to this, I had only tried Sally Hansen's Gray by Gray, which had a really nice formula and I loved the wide brush, which is great for my wide nail beds. However, I felt very frustrated by the formula of Coral Fever. It seemed thick and I had trouble getting it to even out. I got away with three coats in the end and it looks ok, but I remember feeling very frustrated at the end of my manicure.

Artificial light:

Artificial light with flash:

Natural light - shade:

Natural light - sun:

As you can see, the color changes depending on the light. Sometimes it looks more pink (or even reddish) and other times more orange.

Julep Maven Program

The Julep Nail Parlor is a local Seattle business and they have recently started a new program for all the "beauty mavens" out there.

For $19.99 a month you get over $40 worth of Julep beauty products, including nail polish, treatments and other beauty products. Since this is a new program, there are lot of beauty bloggers with codes for half-off your first box.You also get 20% off all Julep products and free shipping on anything you buy. In addition, you can skip a month or choose to send a month to a friend, which is cool.

The first thing you have to do is head over to Julep's website and take their Style Quiz and find out which kind of maven you are. I got American Beauty, but there several other options, including Boho Glam, Classic (With a Twist), It Girl, and Bombshell.

Here's this month's box:

This month I got Alfre, a shimmery grey-purple from Julep's yet to be released fall collection and Cameron, an energetic, summer pink (so says Julep's website). I also got some of Julep's base coat. Julep's nail polishes and treatments range from $14-16 each.

I also got a full tube of Julep's Glycolic Hand Scrub to use! Awesome! This sells for $32.

All in all, not bad for $19.99 (and I had a half-off code, so really $10!). We'll see what happens with next month's box, which only includes one nail polish but some other cool goodies.

Essie Watermelon (and my last vacation manicure)

In a break from all the collections I've been showing you, I'm going to show you another one of the $1 Essie polishes I managed to snag from the Trade Secret near my parent's house in Portland. At the beginning of August we went on our annual Not Quite Camping Weekend with our friends-- which is basically an excuse to lay in the sun, swim, eat, drink and play games for a weekend. It's fabulous. Anyway... to celebrate the last vacation of the summer I decided to go with a nice pink and something quintessentially summer: Essie's Watermelon.

Watermelon is a deep blue-leaning pink. In the bottle, this pretty much looks like the inside of a watermelon. On the nail, however, I was a bit disappointed. Mainly because the polish on the nail does not reflect the color in the bottle, which was a major bummer. To me, this polish looked a lot more red instead of pink in most lights. This applied really smoothly, though I used three coats in total with Essie's First Base base coat and Good to Go top coat.

Artificial light with flash:

Artificial/natural light:

Natural light - shade:

Natural light - sun:

American Apparel Neon Collection Review

Sorry for the delay in posting-- my in-laws were visiting and even though they are very easy house guests, I didn't have a minute to spare for posting. Now that I've made it through all of the American Apparel neon polishes, I have a review/wrap-up post!

A rainbow of neon!!

These polishes are extremely bright and a lot of fun. However, the formula varies quite a bit from polish to polish. Neon Red, Neon Blue, and Neon Violet had the best and easiest formulas to work with of all the polishes, while the others tended to be streaky and need several coats (3-4) to even everything out and get rid of any patchiness. However, this may in part be to due to the fact that these three are less "neon" than the other four-- they are still very bright, but not quite as bright. Neon Blue, in particular, did not seem as neon as the other polishes.

Neon Red: 

Neon Coral: 

Neon Orange:

Neon Yellow: 

Neon Green:

Neon Blue: 

Neon Violet: 

I thought of all these polishes were a lot fun, despite the formula issues. My favorites were Neon Violet (despite the color inaccuracies of the photos), Neon Coral and then honestly it's probably a tie between Neon Orange/Neon Yellow/Neon Green. They're all great. $6 a piece, and they're available online at American Apparel.

American Apparel Neon Blue

And we've reached our last polish in American Apparel's neon collection. Neon Blue was added to this collection after the first six were released and I stumbled across this in June when I was shopping for a top for my father-in-law's 60th birthday. Happy day!

The formula on this polish was pretty good, similar to Neon Violet and Neon Red. It covered fairly well, but it was a little streaky. Three coats evened it all out. My one quibble is that this didn't really seem neon. It certainly is bright, but isn't exactly neon. And the blue is slightly darker than what you see in my pictures-- it looks lighter here.

Artificial light:

Artificial light with flash:

Natural light - shade:

Natural light - sun:

American Apparel Neon Red

The second to last polish from American Apparel's neon collection is Neon Red. This is a bright, neon red. The formula on this polish was much better than some of the other polishes in this collection. It had a nice thin, slightly jellyish texture that went on really nicely. Still, Neon Red was a little bit streaky and I needed three coats to even it out. It was still a little streaky, but in all honestly I was too lazy to put on another coat to make it perfect. Luckily, the camera doesn't seem to pick it up, so maybe it wasn't so bad. I think if I had been better with my application I wouldn't have had any issues. I used Essie's First Base base coat and Good to Go top coat.

My pictures make this polish look more orange, but in person it is much more red.

Artificial light:

Artificial light with flash:

Natural light - shade:

Natural light - sun:

American Apparel Neon Coral

Next up: American Apparel's Neon Coral. This is a red-leaning orange. Apparently I didn't write any notes down here, so I'm not sure how coats I used. Probably three, like some of the others. This was similar to the other polishes in this collection-- streaky, but eventually evened out. I used Essie's First Base base coat and Good to Go top coat. This is a really fun polish.

Artificial light:

Artificial light with flash:

Natural light - shade:

Natural light - sun: