Kleancolor Metallic Green

Quick post today!

Here's Kleancolor Metallic Green. Are you sick of these yet? I know I'm not! Metallic Green is probably my favorite of all the metallics. It's a glowy, amazingly metallic lime green. Application is easy, dry time is a bit longer but that's pretty standard for these polishes. 

Here's two coats of Kleancolor Metallic Green with one coat of Seche Vite. Enjoy!

Don't own any Kleancolor Metallics yet? Stay tuned, you may get the chance to own a few =)

See you all tomorrow!

Avon Olive Green Stamped with China Glaze 2030

Happy Thursday my lovelies! Hope you are all having a fantastic day so far =) Today I have a stamped manicure for you. It's kind of festive, but in a subdued way. I really like it, and I hope you all enjoy it as well!

For the base, I used Avon Olive Green. Olive Green is a supposed dupe for RBL Orbis non Sufficit, and though I don't own the RBL color to compare, I can tell you that Olive Green is an amazing color! The name is a bit of a misnomer though, because it's more or a dusty blue-leaning green than a true olive green as it has no brownish tones in it. Anyways, it's an awesome shade, olive green or not! Formula-wise, it wasn't my favorite. It was somehow thick yet runny at the same time, and I flooded my cuticles like woah while applying it and had to do some major damage control. However, the finish was smooth and dried amazingly quickly with a coat of Seche Vite, and since the color is fantastic, I'll be keeping this in my stash.

I did the stamping with China Glaze 2030 from the Khrome collection, which is the perfect gold stamping polish. It is a cool-toned gold as opposed to a more yellow gold, and I just adore it. If you are new to stamping, I suggest you seek out some colors from the both the Khrome and Romantique collection from China Glaze, they are superb for stamping! I used XL Plate B for my stamping designs. The pine green background with the gold circles kind of reminds me of ornaments on a Christmas tree. I really am digging how this turned out!

Here is Avon Olive Green, stamped with China Glaze 2030.

And here is 2 coats of Olive Green before the stamping.

Thanks for stopping by! See you all tomorrow =)

Island Girl - Big Island Volcano (and some Hawaii pictures!)

Last night I dreamt about Hawaii all night long. I've really had Hawaii on the brain lately. It's probably because I've been watching a lot of Dog the Bounty Hunter lately (Leland Chapman, will you marry me?) and because my friend Krista over Starlet's Nails is in Hawaii right now and has been posting amazing pictures on Twitter. My husband and I spent two amazing weeks in Hawaii last October for our honeymoon, and it quickly became my favorite place on Earth. There is just something about Hawaii that feels like home somehow. I can't wait to go back, and I hope that my husband and I will return several times throughout our life.

In Hawaii (and las Vegas) there are these stores called ABC Stores. If you are in Waikiki, there is a good chance that at any given time there is an ABC store 50 feet away from you. ABC Stores are a combination of a souvenir shop, drug store and convenient store all in one. In the four days that we stayed in Waikiki, I think we went to ABC stores about 100 different times! Anyways, at ABC, there is a brand of nail polish called Island Girl. The polishes are super cheap ($2.99 if my memory serves me correctly) and they have names of different Hawaiian towns and landmarks.  When we were there, I actually didn't pick up any of these polishes so my Hawaiian friend Kathryn over at Blush from Me to You sent me some. Thanks girl!

Today I have for you Big Island Volcano. Not only is Big Island Volcano my favorite of the Island Girl polishes that I own, Big Island is my favorite Hawaiian island, and the Volcano National Park was my favorite place that we visited on our entire trip =) Big Island Volcano is a GORGEOUS turquoise green with some lovely hidden shimmer throughout. As gorgeous as it is, the formula is one of the absolute worst I have ever used. My other Island Girl polishes are not nearly this bad. It was a horrible, streaky mess and did not self level at all, which means I have lots of lovely ridges in my manicure.

So why is it my favorite Island Girl polish then if the formula is so horrible? Well, because the color is AMAZING! The turquoise is so bright it's almost neon, and it just looks fantastic on the nails. And you guys all know that I'm an absolute sucker for anything with hidden shimmer, so there's that too. I did a thick coat of Seche Vite so that helped a little, but it's still not perfect. Despite the ridges and the minor bald spots, I still can't stop staring at my nails. I have nothing else like this color in my collection of over 850 polishes so you better bet that this polish is staying right where it is in my stash. I even want a backup of it!

Here's Big Island Volcano, 3 coats with 1 thick coat of Seche Vite. My pictures aren't the best today so please bear with me here.

And for fun, here are some of my favorite pictures of Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Enjoy!

Perhaps a better color for something named "Big Island Volcano" should have been a nice granite grey shade. Oh well, I'm not complaining! 

I hope you all enjoyed today's post. Have you been to Hawaii? If so, tell me all about it! If not, tell me about your favorite vacation spot =)

Twitter Swatch Requests: Hard Candy Pea Soup, OPI Two Plums Up & Essie Lollipop

Happy Saturday everyone! Hope you are all enjoying your weekends so far =)

On Thursday I asked some of my twitter friends to go through my stash spreadsheet and pick out a manicure for me because I was feeling super indecisive and couldn't make up my mind what polish to wear. I got three different answers from three lovely ladies, so I decided to do them all in this post!

First up is Hard Candy Pea Soup, requested Madeline over at Girl Germs. This is vintage Hard Candy (pre-Walmart) and probably came out sometime during the late 90's. I got this decant from a lovely blog sale, as I was in need of some green Hard Candy polishes to round out my collection but wasn't having luck finding any. I figured that a decant was the best I could do! Pea Soup is a yellow-green frosty shimmer, and it is relatively sheer so it took 3 coats to reach the color you see here. The formula was decent, your typical non-3 free texture and smell. It's not my favorite vintage Hard Candy polish by any means, but it is fun! Very evocative of the '90s, being a sheer, frosty light green. It just makes me want to go shop at Limited Too, drink some Clearly Canadian and watch Clueless =)

Anyways, here's 3 coats of Hard Candy Pea Soup, indoors.

Next up is OPI Two Plums Up, requested by Maria over at Nails Made Simple! Two Plums Up is an old black label OPI from the Hollywood collection from fall 1999. I am currently in the process of collecting the polishes from this collection, because as I mentioned before, my husband is a film maker and I am a sucker for anything film-related. Two Plums Up is a plummy-magenta color. It's a bit frosty but not so much as Pea Soup is as it has a nice shimmer to round out the brush strokiness (not even a word, ha) quality. I did 3 coats here, as it was a bit sheer and I wanted it to be nice and vibrant. I quite like this color, and although it's not something I would normally wear, I'm glad I took the time to try it out today =)

OPI Two Plums Up, 3 coats, indoors.

 

Lastly, I have Essie Lollipop as requested by my lovely Jamie on Twitter! Lollipop is from Essie's 2009 holiday collection, which was the collection that also contained Mint Candy Apple - the color that reignited my passion for polish. I had originally thought that Lollipop was a jelly, but it turns out that it is just a wonderfully shiny red creme. It only needed 2 coats to opacity, and the formula was perfection. Lollipop is an orange-leaning red, and I think it would look amazing on all skin tones. It is so vibrant and so squishy, and is definitely one of my favorite reds in my entire stash! I'm glad this was the last one that I swatched because now I can leave it on and admire its awesomeness!

Here's Essie Lollipop, 2 coats, indoors. Enjoy!!

So there we have it! I hope you have enjoyed these swatches. I am always willing to take requests, so feel free to take a look at my collection spreadsheet in the link at the top of the page (I fixed the link so everyone can see it now)! Let me know if there is anything that you would like to see =) I love hearing from you guys, so don't be shy!

Enjoy the rest of your Saturday and I will see you all tomorrow!

China Glaze Emerald Sparkle

Good afternoon everyone! Just dropping by with a super quick post today. I had to cut my nails really short due to a break, and I'm not too thrilled with them right now. Especially since the nail bed on my pinky fingers are longer than the rest and can never be as short as the others. It looks ridiculous!

China Glaze Emerald Sparkle is an amazing polish! I could not do this bad boy justice with my photography skills. It is a lovely forest green with green glitter throughout. So sparkly, so festive and a hands-down favorite polish of many people in the nail polish community. So check it out! Don't forget to enlarge to see the awesome detail this polish has =)

Also, just wanted to let you know that I added a link to the spreadsheet of my polish collection at the top of the page, so check it out if you would like! It took me all evening yesterday and all morning today to finish =) I will be adding my swap list very soon as well, so check back soon for that!

See you all tomorrow!

Rescue Beauty Lounge No More War - Swatches and Review

Good afternoon my lovelies! Today I have for you my very first RBL polish for you. I ordered in October from the BiB pre-order and ended up ordering 8 polishes! Now, for those of you not yet in the know, Rescue Beauty Lounge is a boutique polish company whose polishes are highly coveted in the nail world. Most of their polishes are limited edition, meaning that once they are sold out they are gone forever. Or, until Bring it Back comes around. Bring it Back is when RBL fans (or ReBeLs, as they are called on Facebook) vote on which colors they would like to see available for sale again.

No More War is still available for sale, and as far as I know has not sold out yet. It is one of those ugly-pretty colors that I just love so much! It is a murky, brown-leaning olive green cream. In some lights the green sticks out more, and in some lights (such as direct sunlight) the brown undertones really shine. I just LOVE this color. I have tons of olive/army greens in my stash, and not one has the baby-poop undertones that No More War has. There's probably some of you out there who are thinking "FUG, would never wear such a color," but I can't get enough of those baby poop colors.

As far as the formula goes, I wasn't in love. I know, I know, there's people out there that would swear up and down that RBL has the best polish formula out there. But for me, it was a bit too thick. It was kind of hard to get even, thin coats. Out of the bottle, I would have guessed that it was a 3-coater, but during application, the polish was so thick that 2 coats were enough. I do have to say that it was incredibly self-leveling, which meant that it there were no visible bumps due to the thickness.

Overall, after trying only one RBL polish, I'm still not convinced that the forumla is all that it's cracked up to be. However, I adore this color so I'll keep it in my stash and give all my other RBLs a chance to wow me with their formula.

Here is No More War, 2 coats, with topcoat, in various outdoor lighting conditions.

Thanks for stopping by!

Lynnderella She Lived in a Swamp over Wet n Wild Jungle Fever

Hi everyone! So sorry that it has been so long since my last post. Had a few midterms and papers due this week so I was pretty swamped with schoolwork. I have more midterms next week and the following week (ugh) but since it is the weekend I have some free time to share with you my latest nail of the day!

I started out with two coats of Jungle Fever, yet another polish from the extremely hard-to-find Wet n Wild On the Prowl Collection. Jungle Fever is a pretty yellow leaning olive green-ish foil with a tiny bit of brush strokes showing through. It was pretty thick and runny, so it was a bit of a PITA to apply. Thank goodness for my handy dandy clean up brush! Despite it's annoying application, it's a very pretty color and will safely reside in my collection =)

Then I did two coats of Lynnderella She Lived in a Swamp over Jungle Fever. She Lived in a Swamp may have been my absolute favorite from the first Lynnderella batch that I ordered, but there's a slight flaw that is keeping it from that spot. Unfortunately, the bar glitter in this polish has begun to curl. I haven't had this problem with any of my other Lynnderellas, so hopefully this polish is the exception. She Lived in a Swap is an absolutely stunning mix of light green and dark green multi-sized hex, micro and bar glitter in a clear green base. If only it wasn't for those darn curling bar glitters!

Here is Jungle Fever with two coats of Lynnderella She Lived in a Swamp, one coat of Gelous, and one coat of Poshe quick dry topcoat. Sorry, these pictures aren't the best because I had to take these at night:

And here's Jungle Fever alone (2 coats):

She Lives in a Swamp is the last of the first batch of Lynnderellas that I ordered. I hope you guys aren't too sick of them though, because I have another batch that should be arriving any day now =) As I have said before, Lynnderella is truly a genius when it comes to making glitter polishes and I am so excited to finally be able to get my hands on them. You won't be disappointed when you see the rest of them!