Pretty & Polished Sugar in a Sundress

Hey all! It's Hump Day, so how about a little glitter to liven things up! Today I have my first Pretty & Polished nail polish to share with you, Sugar in a Sundress. This is a polish from their Country Girl Swag collection and was released last spring. I picked this up during a sale-- I think for for Daylight Savings when there was a 50% off promotion! Hard to resist those, haha. I had actually eyed this glitter for a while because I am a sucker for anything blue and I love the blue/yellow combination. Sugar in a Sundress is a pale yellow crelly with bright blue and indigo glitters.

Sugar in a Sundress had a good formula, and was pretty easy to apply. The glitters came out easily on the brush and were easy to place on the nail. I am pretty sure I used two coats here, but it might have been three. It does need a top coat, as most glitters do, to make it shiny, but I was impressed at how nicely it went on, especially with the light color base.

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I'm not in love with these photos, but you can at least see the glitters nicely! This was my first experience with Pretty & Polished and I have to say that I'm happy. Sugar in a Sundress is a fun glitter and I am a sucker for this color combo. This applied nicely and looks great. I am a big fan! I have another couple of polishes from Pretty & Polished and I look forward to using them!

Illamasqua Marquise

Sorry for the lapse in posting-- we traveled out of town last week to visit family and celebrate our birthdays. That was just exhausting so I didn't get anything written up for Friday or today. Oh well. That's life, right? Today we're back with a "Texture Tuesday" post from my new favorite brand: Illamasqua! Today I have Marquise, which is what Illamasqua calls a "shattered star finish" aka a sparkly, glittery texture-- very similar to the original Zoya Pixie Dusts. I would call Marquise a coral orange with a strong gold sparkle.

Marquise has an absolutely fantastic formula and is practically a one coat wonder. I used two coats, of course, to make sure I had complete coverage! The formula was smooth and not too thick and was easy to apply, no issues at all. Like most textures, Marquise dried down quickly. And even better, it was super easy to remove! 

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I am in.freaking.LOVE!! with this polish. It was perfect in every way! Illamasqua has very quickly worked their way up to being one of my favorite brands. I will definitely be bring you more Illamasqua polishes in the future and looking for more opportunities to snatch them up. (Please Hautelook, have another sale!) Happy Tuesday all!

KB Shimmer Big Tan on Campus

Summertime means sunshine and sunshine means... holo polish!! Today I have KB Shimmer Big Tan on Campus, which is from last year's Early Summer collection. I snagged this one while it was on sale and took these photos awhile ago (since February, yikes), but predictably the pictures have been sitting around, forgotten until recently. Which is not a terrible problem to have, but it does sometimes mean that things don't get on the blog in a timely fashion! Anyway... Big Tan on Campus is a bronze/tan base with a nice linear holographic finish.

This isn't the first KB Shimmer polish I have used, but every polish I have used so far has been wonderful and Big Tan on Campus was no exception. This was exceptionally easy to use and went on smoothly in two coats. The holographic finish is strong but not overwhelming. At first I wasn't quite sure if I was going to like this, but I really liked it on my nails! I think this could make a good pedicure for the summer.

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Unfortunately, Big Tan on Campus is discontinued, but KB Shimmer has a ton of other really awesome polishes available and I would highly encourage you to try some of her polishes if you haven't already!

Cirque Colors Dear Dahlia

Today I have my first Cirque Colors to share with you today! I have Dear Dahlia, which was originally released in a trio called the Kontiki Collection (which was limited edition) and then more recently it was re-released as part of a Nike Pop-In Collection at Nordstrom, which was also limited edition. Dear Dahlia is described as a "fuchsia jelly with multi-dimensional shimmer." The shimmer picks up as predominantly green.

Dear Dahlia has a jelly formula and is definitely a little on the thick side, but not unmanageably so. I used three coats here and my camera picks up some visible nail line, but it's not as noticeable in real life. This does has have a really nice squishy quality to it. I only had one major issue with this: there were some weird black spots that showed up on my nails when I painted. Not a lot of them, but I'm not sure it was some unmixed pigment or some other contamination. It wasn't too bad, but I was a little disappointed because this brand has a very high-end vibe and it was a little disappointed that this happened with my first experience.

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My photographs aren't spectacular but you can really see the green shimmer is. It's so gorgeous!  All I wanted to do was stare at my nails. Dear Dahlia is a perfect summer color!

Two-fer Tuesday: Nerdlacquers!

Veering off from my typical polish posts, today I am bringing you some fun glitters! I have two Nerdlacquers to share with you. I would consider Nerdlacquer to be one of the original indie polish makers-- she was definitely creating some very unique polishes before there was the large explosion of makers and indie polish became a more mainstream thing. After a long absence, she returned to the nail polish world, but still has fairly sporadic restocks, though when I have bought polishes from the store they have arrived in a timely manner and I haven't had issues. I picked up these two polishes in a random restock and finally decided to swatch them. (I have all the Star Wars polishes as well, but am saving those for December-- The Force Awakens, omgyay!)

Crunchy Frog, inspired by Monty Python, is described as a "rich Swiss chocolate brown, lightly killed, and delicately topped with the finest grass green, olive, and lime glitter. The sprinkling of silver white is the bones." I think the color combination is cool, and while this applied fairly easily, I had a lot of trouble getting any of the 'bones' aka the large silver glitters, onto the brush and so there aren't any on my nails. Wah wah. I used two coats here and a shiny top coat to smooth everything out.

Exterminate, inspired by the Daleks from Doctor Who, is described as a "deep blackened bronze with golden, blue, and black glitter." This is a really fantastic polish and applied like a dream-- I didn't have to do any fishing for the glitters. The black glitter in this case is micro glitter, which is not my favorite (at least in black, I feel like it looks random) but it worked here. I used two coats and a top coat here!

Crunchy Frog: 

Exterminate: 

Of these two, I think Exterminate was my favorite. I like the gold and blue in the brown base and it applied smoothly and I didn't have to try to fish for any glitters, like I did (and failed) with Crunchy Frog. But my bottle of Crunchy Frog is truly in desperate need of a good shake and I didn't have enough time. Maybe if I can get the glitter redistributed it would be easier! I also wished I had photographed these in natural light, because I feel like you would be able to see the glitters better-- maybe some day I will reswatch! I hope you enjoyed this post! I think these polishes are a lot of fun and they are definitely unique to my collection.

If you are interested in perusing what Nerdlacquer has to offer, polishes retail for $10 and are only available on her site. She restocks pretty sporadically, though there is a small selection of polishes currently available, including these two if they strike your fancy!

Zoya Tomoko

It's Monday and time for another Zoya Pixie Dust! Confession: for awhile I was getting Zoya Godiva and Tomoko confused. Which is not really fair of me, because they are definitely not the same. Tomoko was originally released as part of the Fall 2013 collection and is described as a "romantic champagne silver with a matte, textured, sparkling metal finish." This is pretty spot on. Tomoko definitely has a more sparkly, metallic look to it than Godiva, which is a more beige neutral.

As with the previous Pixie Dusts, Tomoko was easy to use. I think I used two coats here-- this was a little on the sheerer side just due to the nature of the lighter color, but two coats still gave good coverage. It dried quickly and wore really well, as these textures tend to. This one was a nice sparkly metallic, especially if you want to spice up a neutral look.

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Another hit from the Pixie Dust line! It really is a bummer that Zoya decided to discontinue this line-- I hope that some day Zoya will revamp the line or bring it back.

Rescue Beauty Bonne Journee

Today I have a polish from Rescue Beauty's latest collection, Je t'aime! Je t'aime! collection. I love France (have only been there once but would go back in a heartbeat!) so I was excited when this collection came out. The first polish I have from this collection is Bonne Journee, which means "good journey" in French. Bonne Journee is described as a "happy rose pink with blue undertones and a hint of copper." The description also says it has a "shimmery satin finish." What this translates to is metallic.

As a metallic, this type of polish is prone to brushstrokes, but the brushstrokes don't bother me as much as the formula did-- it seemed very thin to me, and was not helped by the narrow brushes these bottles feature. It was very sheer in the first coat (although I think this is pretty common with metallics) and I ended up having to use four to get the coverage I wanted, which was disappointing, because I think the color is gorgeous. 

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I actually don't hate this-- usually brushstrokes are not my cup of tea, but this polish is extremely pretty. I just wish that the polish had been more pigmented because the color is gorgeous. It reminds me of this gorgeous photo a friend took in southern France-- bonne journee indeed!

Birthday Manicure!

I'm 32 today!! Yikes, how did that happen?! Hahaha! I still have trouble accepting I'm an adult sometimes. But here I am anyway! Luckily, I can say that my life is pretty good so really, aside from being another year older, I don't really have much to complain about. It'll probably be a pretty quiet birthday-- we're going out for dinner to our local brew pub and then we'll have a bigger celebration later on because my husband's birthday is in another 8 days! June is always a busy month around here.

For my birthday manicure, I went with something simple in my favorite colors: blue and gold! So I used two new to me polishes: Illamasqua Serenity and Zoya Maria Luisa. Serenity is a gorgeous medium blue with a rubber finish and Maria Luisa is a gold flakie topper. They were both easy to apply so this got thrown together fairly quickly, which is always a good thing these days!

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It's not much, but it's fun! I really like the blue and gold combo and I'm excited to use Maria Luisa over some other polishes!

NOTD: My First Blobicure!

I have something fun today! My husband and I were invited to enjoy a Seattle Mariner's baseball game in a suite on Monday, and I knew immediately wanted to do a fun themed manicure! The Mariner's colors are navy blue and teal, and luckily I had the perfect polishes on hand to play with: MAC Monday Blues and Washeteria. As the name implies, Monday Blues is a deep navy blue and Washeteria is a gorgeous teal creme. Perfect! It's like it was meant to be!

This was the first time I did a blobicure, so I was worried about screwing it up--smearing the blobs together or that it would terrible. Luckily, this technique is super easy-- I think I went a little too conservative and should have actually added more blobs. I decided to mix things up by including an accent nail as well.

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This was so much fun! I really like this technique and it was easy to do. Lazy nail art at its finest! I was really pleased with how this turned out and can't wait to try it again!

Two-fer Tuesday: Sinful Colors Pinata Blast Glitters

I have something fun to share with you today! These are two polishes from Sinful Colors from the Fierce Fiesta display: Baila Baila and Mamacita.There were actually three of these glitters, but the third one had bar glitter so I passed on that one. This is actually only part of the Sinful Colors Summer collection; if you are interested in what else is being offered, I would check out Nouveau Cheap and her post on the collection. Both of these polishes are glitter toppers and meant to be worn over a base color because they will never be opaque by themselves.

Baila Baila (bailar means to dance in Spanish, so baila baila would be "dance dance") is a mix of blue and coral hexes, with white and lime green micro glitter in a clear base. Here I dabbed one coat over Julep Marcella:

 

Mamacita (this name reminds me of the Straight No Chaser song Donde Esta Santa Claus?) is a mix of blue, red and pink hex glitters with white mirco glitter in a clear base. Here I have dabbed one coat of Mamacita over Julep Brandis:

These are fun! Easy to apply and a nice mix of springy colors. And the price tag is great too! If you like glitter toppers, I would defintiely recommend searching these. I especially think Baila Baila has a unique color combination. The glitter base is a tad thick, but that seems pretty common, and it was pretty easy to get glitter on the brush and dab it around the nail. I tend not to play with glitter very often but I'm glad I snagged these two! Does anything from this collection strike your fancy?