Nail-Venturous Robin Laid an Egg

Good morning lovelies! 

I have a quick post for you today to show you Nail-Venturous Robin Laid an Egg! Sadly, Amy has stopped making polishes but when she did they were probably some of the most difficult to obtain because they sold out so quickly! I always failed to get my hands on this one, and it became one of my biggest lemmings. Then NVL stopped doing polishes and I thought hope was lost forever. Finally, I was able to do a swap for it a few weeks ago and the two of us have been living happily ever after since.

NVL Robin Laid an Egg is a white base with yellow, magenta and aqua glitters. I AM OBSESSED! I have a penchant for jawbreaker-looking polishes, such as Pretty & Polished Jawbreaker and Dollish Polish Expecto Patronum. If it has a white, milky base with glitter, I need it! The formula on this was amazing, I did 3 coats here for opacity and one coat of Seche Vite on top and it was smooth as a baby's bottom! 

3 coats of Nail-Venturous Lacquers Robin Laid an Egg. Enjoy

Maybelline Color Show Downtown Brown

Good morning everyone! Today I thought I'd show you another new polish that came out recently from Maybelline called Downtown Brown. It is a limited edition shade from Maybelline's new Color Show line of polishes. There were a few other interesting ones in the LE display but this is the one that caught my eye, a lovely brown with green shimmer!

Instantly it reminded me of one of my favorite vintage polishes, Cover Girl Chocolate Mint so I had to have it! The lovely Rie over at Nails and Noms did an Instagram comparison of the two here: Chocolate Mint vs. Downtown Brown. They are quite simillar, and if Chocolate Mint is milk chocolate then Downtown Brown is the dark chocolate version =) Definitely different enough for me to own both, but I'm glad to have something in the same vein as the Cover Girl because they are both fabulous.

Anyways, I'm not too pleased with how the swatches of this one turned out but I'm going to show them to you anyways. I should have used 3 coats, but I only used 2 and when I took the pictures I noticed a few bald spots that I didn't see in real life. The formula was okay, nothing spectacular and kind of thick, but not unmanageable. Next time I will most definitely do 3 coats of this one.

Here's 2 coats of Maybelline Color Show Downtown Brown. Enjoy!

What do you think? Do you like brown polishes?

Thanks for stopping by and I will see you all tomorrow =)

Pretty Serious In The Night Collection - Press Release

Good evening lovelies! Please enjoy this press release from the amazing Pretty Serious cosmetics. Pretty Serious is a premiere indie brand created by the awesometastic Kaz over at Pretty Random. I'm so excited about this collection, it looks amazeballs! They went on sale tonight so check it out!!

~~~~

Consisting of six gorgeous nail shades, two fabulous new colour glosses and a spectacular new loose shadow, the In the Night collection really is what dreams are made of!

We are so pleased to introduce:

Claris - A beautiful milky pink jelly with tiny golden flakes.
Dream Delight - A smoky blue-grey jelly base, packed to bursting with silver glitter particles! Definitely delightful!
Elliot - A lovely sky blue creme loaded with multi-coloured micro flecks.
Into Dreams - A vibrant purple with delicious pink shimmer.
Nightmaren - A glowing, warm golden red.
Nightopia - A spectacular teal green with glimmering golden shimmer.

We also have wonderful new colour glosses to match our Claris and Into Dreams shades - Cotton Candy and Grape flavoured respectively, plus a stunning purple loose shadow packed with gold, blue, purple and red sparkle - rounding out the Into Dreams combo!

We are vegan friendly and cruelty free, as well as our nail polishes being Formaldehyde, Toluene, Dibutyl Phthalate (DBP) and Formaldehyde Resin free. All products are made in Australia from local and imported ingredients.All items are priced at $9.95 AUD and Pretty Serious Cosmetics ships worldwide. We also offer great combo discounts!

~~~~

Essence Grey-T to Be Here

Good morning lovelies! Today I have another polish that I picked up recently, Essence Grey-T to Be Here. GTBH is from Essence's newly revamped Colour & Go line which I picked up at Ulta. The display at my Ulta was pretty picked through but this was the one I wanted the most and I was able to snag this and two others.

Grey-T to Be Here is a grey creme polish with a lovely pink shimmer running throughout. The formula was great but I was disappointed to see that Essence had switched over to the trendy "wide brush" style, which I absolutely despise. I know a lot of people like these paddle-type brushes, but I feel like it makes application more difficult for me. The polish pools up on the sides of the brush and I find it much harder to apply polish evenly with this type of brush. However, these type of brushes have been taking nail polish companies by storm and there's just no getting around them anymore. I'm just going to have to get used to them, I suppose.

Despite the tricky application with the new brush, Grey-T to Be Here is a fantastic polish. I absolutely love the shimmer in this color so it gets an A in my book! Pink and grey is always a winning combo =) Here's 2 coats of Essence Grey-T To Be Here. Enjoy!

What do you think? Have you picked up any of the new Colour & Go polishes yet? How do you feel about the wide paddle brushes? 

Thanks for stopping by and I hope everyone has a splendid day!

NYC Peach Sparkle

Hey everyone! Today is back to school day for me so I have a super quick post for you!

NYC Peach Sparkle is perhaps one of the most glorious nail polishes of all time. I'm not normally a peach kind of girl (too many 90's decor flashbacks) but for some reason the moment I saw Peach Sparkle, I knew it had to be mine. Something about the amazing golden shimmer in this polish makes it special. I searched high and low for this one and finally found the last bottle at a Rite Aid last week and jumped up and down when I found it. Ahh, the life of a nail polish addict.

Anyways, here's 3 easy coats of NYC Peach Sparkle. Enjoy!

Here's some bonus wiener dogs to get your Monday going right.

Have a great day everyone, thanks for stopping by!

Retro Sunday Squared - Vintage Revlons!

Good morning my lovely readers!! Welcome to another edition of Retro Sunday Squared with Polished Claws Up! Today we decided to show you all some vintage Revlon polishes =) Revlon has done some pretty fantastic polishes in the past and are probably one of my favorite vintage polish brands.

I decided to show you gals two of my Revlon Color Illusion polishes for Retro Sunday this week. Color Illusion is a line that consists of duochrome, multichrome and shimmer polishes. I believe this line came out in 2002 and are pretty hard to come across these days. I had a hard time picking out which ones to swatch for you guys because the 7 or so that I own are all pretty awesome.

The one thing about these polishes is the formula absolutely SUCKS. Old Revlons are notorious for bubbling and long drying time, and both of these polishes had those issues. While I was swatching, I forgot to put a topcoat on my thumb and there was an insane amount of bubbles on that nail. Using Seche Vite helps with the bubbling, but it didn't eliminate it. Even with Seche Vite, they took a very, very long time to try. Overall, these polishes are essential for the vintage polish collector but I probably wouldn't recommend them to the casual polisher who just wants a fuss-free polish. But lets look at the pretties anyways, shall we?

~~~~

First up is Revlon Silver Switch. Silver switch is a multichrome polish that flashes purple, green and aqua. It is pretty sheer so I layered it over black for the swatches here. The colors in this polish are phenomenal! The color shifting in Silver Switch is quite strong and can be seen in any light. It reminds me a lot of Nubar Indigo Illusion, but more purple and less blue. I guess you could say it's kind of a cross between Indigo Illusion and the SH Emerald Amethyst that I had on here yesterday.

Here's 2 coats of Revlon Silver Switch over black. Enjoy - and please ignore the bubbles =)

~~~~

Next up is Revlon Plum Flip. Plum Flip is a magenta-y multichrome in the bottle, though the color shifting doesn't translate very well to the nail. I layered this one over black to try to bring the shift out but that didn't help much either. It was kind of a bummer, because it looked so pretty in the bottle. I was able to capture the shift a teensy but, but only at the most extreme angles. I swatched it without the black as well and even though the multichrome effect wasn't present, it was a really gorgeous color!

My pictures of this one just did not turn out too well since I was focused on trying to capture the shift rather than focusing on, well focusing my nails lol. Also, the bubbles were rampant in this one so try to ignore them again here in these pics =)

Here's 2 coats of Revlon Plum Flip over black, and then the last picture is 3 coats of Plum Flip on its own.

~~~~

What do you guys think? Would you hunt these down despite the less-than-stellar formula? Do you own any vintage Revlons?

Thanks for stopping by today and don't forget to check out Dana's Retro Sunday Squared post over at Polished Claws Up to see what vintage Revlons she has today!

Amber Ruby and Emerald Amethyst Nail Prisms - Vintage Sally Hansen Week

Happy weekend my lovely followers!! You didn't think I'd let vintage Sally Hansen week slide  by without posting any Nail Prisms, did you?! Today I have an amazing multichrome and an equally as awesome duochrome to share with you.

Nail Prisms are, in my opinion, some of the best polishes that good ol' Sally ever did and they should seriously do something like this again.  This line not only contains many gorgeous duo-and-multichromes, but holos as well. Duochromes, multichromes and holos, oh my!! These are long discontinued but are among the easiest vintage polishes to find and pop up on eBay, blog sales, and in discount stores all the time!

~~~~

First up is Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Amber Ruby. I first saw this bad boy on Scrangie and I knew that I had to have it! Amber Ruby is a fantastic multichrome that flashes red, bronze and green. There's not much to say about it, I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Here is 3 coats of Sally Hansen Amber Ruby. YES!

~~~~

Next up is Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Emerald Amethyst. Emerald Amethyst is an amazing purple-to-green duochrome. This is probably one of my favorite polishes in my collection because green and purple are my favorite colors and amethyst is my birthstone and are the side stones in my engagement ring! Also because it is pure amazeballs. Again, I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Here is 3 coats of Sally Hansen Emerald Amethyst. Enjoy!

~~~~

So what do you gals think? Nail Prisms - yay or nay?!

Thanks for stopping by! I hope you've enjoyed vintage Sally Hansen week =)

Reminder: I'm working on getting my blog sale back up, the first part is up HERE:

THE SCHOLARLY NAIL'S BLOG SALE. I will be adding lots more stuff in the next week!

Ruby Slippers and Star Sapphire - Vintage Sally Hansen Week

THURSDAY!! I have a quick post today to show you all two more glitters from the Sally Hansen vintage Hard as Nails collection!

~~~~

First up is Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Ruby Slippers. Ruby Slippers is a dense red microglitter in a clear base and it is fantastic. This is pre-China Glaze Ruby Pumps folks, and it may very well be the original ruby slippers polish! My guess is that it came out somewhere between 1996-2000. It could have been opaque in 2 coats but I saw my girl Dana layer hers over a deep vampy red and it was just absolutely stunning! I couldn't resist trying the same thing when I swatched it so that's what we've got here =)


Here is 1 coat of Sally Hansen Ruby Slippers over one coat of Wet n Wild Blackest Red.

~~~~

Next up is Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Star Sapphire. Star Sapphire is a sapphire blue glitter in a clear base. It wasn't nearly as dense as Ruby Slippers and isn't the type of glitter meant to be opaque so it is layered as well. The glitter pieces were a bit bigger and chunkier than the ones in Ruby Slippers so although they look similar in the bottle, Star Sapphire is quite different.

Another fun thing about this polish is that there were a few scattered pieces of red glitter in it! I have another Hard as Nails glitter called Shimmer, which is a green glitter that has a few scattered red pieces of glitter in it as well. I don't think the red glitter is intentional in these polishes, it probably just stuck to the lab equipment more than the other glitters and showed up in all sorts of fun places.

Here is 1 coat of Sally Hansen Star Sapphire over OPI Roadhouse Blues.

~~~~

What do you guys think? Thanks for stopping by and I'll see you tomorrow =)

Hard as Nails with Nylon Planetary and Reflective - Vintage Sally Hansen Week

Happy hump day everyone! I start school again next week (six classes, six days a week, ugh) so this week is just going by too fast for me!

Today I have two Sally Hansen Hard as Nails glitters to show you! I don't know if these glitters were from a specific collection, but there are a group of different colored glitters with holo glitter that have names like "Astral," "To the Moon," "Planetary," and so on and so forth. So I use the term "astronomical glitters" to refer to these polishes though I'm not sure if they were from an official collection or what. They are vintage Sally Hansens so they are long discontinued. I got these from a super generous ROAK from the lovely lady over at Another Bottle of Polish, but they are pretty rare and don't really pop up anywhere as often as other vintage Sally Hansens do. I know I probably sound like a broken record when I say this, but I wish Sally would bring these back!

~~~~

First up is Sally Hansen Hard as Nails with Nylon Planetary! Planetary is a magenta and holo glitter. In all these astronomical glitters, there seems to be greyish glitters in there that add a bit of dustiness to the overall feel of the polish. I'm not sure if it's due to age or what but all the pictures I've seen of these glitters look that way and there does not seem to be any bleeding because the base of the polish is clear. So, Planetary is a greyed-out magenta and holo glitter.

These glitters are super dense and it only took two coats for full coverage. I only used one coat of top coat, but if I was wearing it for a long period of time I probably would have done two to smooth out the grittiness a bit better. These glitters are pretty phenomenal and I don't have any like this in my collection. The greyed effect really lends to the outer space feel that these have.

Without further ado, here is two coats of Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Planetary. Enjoy!

~~~~

Next up is Sally Hansen Hard as Nails with Nylon Reflective. Reflective is a greyed out dark aqua and holo glitter polish. It didn't have as strong a holo effect as Planetary, but it was still prevalent. This had the same easy two-coat application and it was lovely to work with. Not much else to say about Reflective except it is another fabulous polish!

Here's two coats of Sally Hansen Hard as Nails with Nylon Reflective.

~~~~

So what do you think of these glitters? Do you love them as much as I do?

Thanks for stopping by today and I will see you all tomorrow <3