Essie Starry Starry Nights

Good afternoon my lovelies! Today, I am SO EXCITED to write this blog post! I have for you on this first day of December, Essie Starry Starry Nights. If you are new to the polish world, you may not know why I am so damn excited about this. Starry Starry Nights is a long discontinued polish that is lusted over by many, but owned by few. Some people luck out and find bottles of this polish at old nail salons, and some people just bite the bullet and pay upwards of $300 on eBay. I was very lucky to get my hands on this polish through a very generous swapper on MUA, as I thought I would never see this polish in my entire life. It is said to be based on Chanel's Ciel de Nuit polish, but over time has come to be just as coveted as the Chanel, if not more so. And for good reason - it is an absolutely stunning nail polish.

Starry Starry Nights is a beautiful midnight blue jelly polish with fine silver sparkles throughout.  The sheer, jelly quality allows the glitter to shine through and appear almost as the stars in the night sky would. It is beautiful. The application wasn't without flaws - the first two coats were as streaky as could be but the third coat evened everything out perfectly. It is an old, non 3-free polish which means it's a bit runny and smells quite strongly. Despite the glitter, it dried to a smooth finish and only required one coat of Seche Vite to provide a shiny surface.

There are several viable dupes out there, though some are just as hard to find as the Essie polish itself. Many people have frankened dupes using Wet n Wild Nocturnal, a deep blue jelly polish, with fine silver glitter. These dupes are all fantastic, so if you want to try your hand at the franken, you will more than likely have excellent results! I made a franken of it and was quite satisfied until I got the real thing. There's nothing quite like the real thing sometimes =) So girls, don't give up hope! You never know what you will find or who you will meet that will fulfill your greatest polish lemmings!

Anyways, here are waaaaaaaaaay too many pictures of Essie Starry Starry Nights. Here is 3 coats of SSN with one coat of Seche Vite. Don't forget to click to enlarge, you'll want to see the detail on this bad boy!

Outdoor, natural light

Indoor, artificial light

Thanks for stopping by! See you tomorrow =)

Pink Wednesday: Revlon Victorian with jelly snowflakes!

Happy Pink Wednesday everyone! Today I have for you one of my favorite jelly polishes, Revlon Victorian from this summer's Just Tinted collection. For those who don't know, a jelly is a polish that is sheer yet pigmented and creates a wonderful, almost juicy effect on the nail. Jellys typically dry quite shiny on their own, but Victorian dries to a satin finish so I had to use a topcoat to really bring out the juicy jelly-ness in this polish.

So, I woke up today and it was SNOWING! I was so excited, as it is the very end of November and we still hadn't really had more than a dusting of snow. I wanted to incorporate the first real snow that I have seen this year into my manicure today, so I stamped a few snowflakes on my ring finger and thumb as accent nails!

A popular manicure technique making the rounds out there is called a "jelly sandwich." A jelly sandwich is when you layer glitter under a jelly polish, giving the glitter a subdued, milky look to it. So today, I decided to do a Konad jelly sandwich! When I stamped the snowflakes on with my white Konad polish, it almost seemed too stark against the delicate shine of the jelly. To cure the problem, I added two more coats of the hot pink Victorian on top of the stamping and I absolutely LOVE how it turned out. Subtle, shiny, with a hint of winter goodness lurking underneath.

So here we have today's NOTD, 4 coats of Revlon Victorian with accent fingers stamped with Konad Special Polish in White. Enjoy!

These were taken indoors, with diffused flash to show the juicy, shiny jelly quality of Victorian. It appears a bit more red in the pics than it does in real life.

Here are a few outdoor shots to show the true hot pink color of Victorian =)

Thanks for stopping by! 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!

Check out my guest post on The Nail Polish Enthusiast today

Just wanted to pop in really quickly and let you guys know that I did a guest post today for Amanda over at The Nail Polish Enthusiast today! Amanda is one of my nail BFFs and I was honored that she asked me to do a post for her blog. Thanks girl <3  So check it out here:

BFF Week: Jacqui of The Scholarly Nail

Layla Magneffect Magnetic Effect Nail Polish in Silver Galaxy

Good afternoon my lovely readers! As most of you know, magnetic nail polish has replaced crackle polish as the hot trend in nails right now.  All magnetic polishes contain magnetic particles that make shapes when a magnet is held over the wet polish! Recently, Nails Inc. Magnetic polish has popped up at Sephora stores everywhere and people have been going gaga for it! I thought that I would show you a brand today that you may not have seen before.

Layla Magneffect has about 10 different colored magnetic polishes, and the color offerings are really pretty awesome. I decided to show you guys Silver Galaxy today, because it is the only magnetic polish that I know of that also contains glitter!

Silver Galaxy is a sheer, light silver magnetic polish packed with silver glitter. Since it is a bit sheer, I decided to layer it over Revlon Steel-her Heart, a very pretty gunmetal color. The Layla Magneffect polishes come with a magnet on the bottle that forms stripes when held over the wet polish, but I wanted to use my LCN star magnet with this polish because I feel like stars and glitter just go well together, no? Here's what the star magnet looks like:

I like how my manicure turned out, but I have to say that there is a bit of a learning curve with these magnetic polishes. First of all, the magnet MUST be held over the polish while it is still wet to make the design. Once it has dried a bit, it will not work. This means that you have to do each nail one at a time. No big deal. But the hardest thing I found with this magnet was getting the design centered. I had to start over a few times, and I'm still not exactly content on the placement of the stars on my nail. Its hard to see where the design is being placed with the magnet.

Overall, even though it takes some practice, I am a huge fan of magnetic polishes. They are fun to mess around with, and even if your final result isn't perfect, it will still look awesome! There is a good variety of colors out there, but what I would really like to see from magnetic polish manufacturers in the future is more magnet shapes. There are only 3 shapes out there right now: a wave patter (Nails Inc.), lines (LCN and Layla) and the star (LCN).

Anyways, here is Layla Magneffect Polish in Silver Galaxy! I did one coat of the Layla over one coat of Revlon Steel-her Heart. Hope you enjoy!

What do you guys think? Are you buying into the magnetic polish trend or are you not crazy about it? Any other magnet shapes that you know of? Let me know!

Have a fabulous day everyone! I'm sure a lot of you are out enduring the Black Friday madness! After working in retail for as long as I did and dealing with the crowds year after year, I'm perfectly content to stay home and do my shopping online.

See you tomorrow =)

Versatile Blogger Award

Happy almost Black Friday everyone! I hope all my American friends are enjoying a nice food coma right now =)

Yesterday the lovely Shannara over at Nails and Stuff gave me the Versatile Blogger Award. Her blog is so much fun, so definitely mosey on over and check it out if you haven't already =) Thanks girl!

There are a few rules with this award:

1. List 7 things about yourself.

2. Pass this on to 15 other bloggers.

But see, I'm all about breaking rules in life, so I'm just gonna go ahead and TAG EVERYONE because the nail blogging community is so wonderful, you all deserve it!

 I'm sure you are all DYING to know 7 things about me, so here you go!

1. My top 3 favorite shows of all time are: Dawson's Creek, Lost and Degrassi. Do you see the disconnect there?

2.  I have been a Girl Scout since first grade, and spent ever summer of my adolescence at Girl Scout camp. I actually just went back to my camp for an event a few weeks ago. Girl Scouting has been very important in my life, I want to have at least one girl child so that I can one day be a Girl Scout leader!

3. Besides nail polish, I also collect perfume and I even have a perfume bottle tattooed on my right wrist.

4. My overall career goal is to be a baker and an attorney. Torte Reform. Get it?!

5.  My wedding was Halloween themed and was featured in The Knot magazine.

6.  My favorite nail polish of all time is OPI My Throne for a Cranberry Scone. 

7.  As you could tell by my Thanksgiving post, I have a wiener dog. 2 wiener dogs, actually. I am obsessed with dachshunds, especially my 2 babies UZI and Arrow. I will never own another breed of dog. So yes, my husband and I are weird wiener dog people. 

And that's all folks! I'd love to hear about all of you, so again, please feel free to claim this award for your own! I hope you all had a delicious holiday and I will see you all tomorrow =)

Thanksgiving Nails: OPI & Apple Pie

Hello, and Happy Thanksgiving to all my American friends! I just wanted to stop by with a quick post today.

OPI & Apple Pie is often considered the ugliest nail polish in existence. It is a deep burnt orange tan color, so of course, I adore it! I was totally stumped about what to wear as my Thanksgiving manicure, but when my mom called this morning and said she wasn't sure she was going to make apple pie for the feast, I insisted that there "MUST BE APPLE PIE!" It just wouldn't be Thanksgiving without apple pie. So I thought this would be the perfect color to wear!

OPI & Apple Pie is from the 2001 World Collection, which means this polish is 10 years old! It is a black label polish (which I will show in the pictures below), so it is a non 3-free polish. Usually, I adore the formula of OPI black labels, but this one was not as nice as others I had experienced. It was a bit thick, which is fine, but it did not self-level AT ALL. This means that I had some very lumpy polish on my hand. It took a good 3 coats to smooth everything out. Not really a fan of the formula, but I'll keep it around as it is a unique color. 

Unfortunately, my nails and cuticles are badly stained from yesterday's Kleancolor Metallic Pink manicure. An amazing polish, but that baby stains like nothing else I have ever experienced! My nails are a nice shade of pink, and my cuticles are ORANGE. I tried everything to remove the stains: acetone, buffing, whitening toothpaste, whitening nail soak - even a scalding hot shower didn't do the trick. So, you guys will have to bear with me today. I only have a few pictures so as to spare you from the orange/pink massacre.

So here's, OPI & Apple Pie, 3 coats, Seche Vite topcoat, in natural light. In real life, its a bit lighter and less orange, but these were the best I could do in a short time today. Enjoy!

And, a bonus pup for you! This is UZI, and I am extremely thankful for this little guy today. Plus, my manicure matches the color of his fur =)

See you all tomorrow! Happy Thanksgiving =)