Indie Spotlight: Paint Shop Polish Fall 2014 Matte Collection

*Paint Shop Polish products provided for honest and unbiased review*

Hello, everyone!  I hope you're all having a great weekend so far!  Any baseball fans out there?  There's a heck of a World Series going on and, though I'm much more of a football fan, I'm pretty excited that the Royals are in it.  I'm from Kansas and this is the first time they've made it to the WS in 29 years!  That's something to be excited about, right?  Anyway, on to the polish!!

Paint Shop Polish is an indie brand based out of Pittsburgh who's been making polish for about a year and a half.  I was lucky enough to swatch for Candi in the past (here's a link to that post) so when she asked me to swatch a few polishes from her Fall 2014 LE collection, I was thrilled to accept.  I've got 4 polishes from that collection to show you today, so let's get to it!

Cherry Berry is first up.  A raspberry colored jelly with a satin, semi-matte finish, Cherry Berry is a great fall color!  And since it's a jelly, the squishy factor is high and would be fun to play with in a jelly sandwich.
 

This is a fairly sheer polish and I'm showing 5 (!) coats to get the opacity you see in these photos.  Of course, it could be easily layered over another polish if you don't want to deal with that many coats.   The formula was smooth and easy to apply, no real issues to report.

As I said before, Cherry Berry has a semi-matte finish, as do all of the polishes I'll be showing you today.  You can choose to keep that finish or add a matte top coat to bump up the effect or even a regular top coat to make everything all shiny.  Be careful if you choose to leave the natural finish of the polish, as they do take a while to dry without top coat.

Next up is Bad Romance.  This is a hard color to describe and it's showing up much more neutral in these photos than it actually is...my camera fails yet again :(  A heather grey base with pink to lavender shimmer, Bad Romance is just plain pretty.  It's one of my favorite colors of the 4 and I don't think I have anything else quite like it.

Bad Romance is opaque in 2-3 coats and I'm showing 3 with no top coat here.  Another nice formula with no streaking or dragging issues.  I wish I would have used a matte top coat on this because I think it would have looked spectacular, but I'll have to save that for another time.
 

Bad Romance is a great, soft polish that would transition well from work to whatever you have planned after.  The color is unique but not in-your-face...I think you'll catch yourself staring at your nails a lot with this one ;)

No Plain Jane is an orchid metallic with a bit of blue shimmer.  You know I love a purple polish, so this one is a bit of a no-brainer for me.  

Opaque in 3-4 coats (I'm showing 4 here), No Plain Jane has a smooth application and I experienced no issues at all with the formula.   Of the 4, NPJ has the least satin finish I thought so I'd definitely recommend a matte top coat if you want to emphasize that.

 A pretty color and a good formula, what more could you ask for?

Last but not least (especially since it's my favorite of this post) is Blue Steel.  The name of this polish makes me giggle because all I can think about is Zoolander...I'm not sure if that's what Candi intended when she named it, but there it is nonetheless.  Blue Steel is a gunmetal grey with shimmery bits throughout...love, love, love this color!  Especially for fall!

This is the most opaque polish of the bunch, almost a one coater though I'm showing 2 coats in these photos.  The formula was near perfect with no streaking or dragging and a beautiful finish.  If you're tempted to pick up only one of these polishes, Blue Steel is a must-have!

All of these polishes are currently available on the Paint Shop Polish Etsy site for $5.50 for a 5ml mini bottle and $10 for a full size 15ml bottle.  This is a Limited Edition collection so don't wait to grab any you may like, they won't be around forever!  Be sure to follow Paint Shop Polish on Facebook to keep updated on new releases and other important info!

Thank you so much for reading and I hope you enjoyed this post!

ABC Challenge: K is for Klimt

Howdy, everyone!  I simply cannot seem to get more than two posts out a week these days..dunno what my deal is.  Anyway, to start my ABC Challenge post, I first have to send out a huge THANK YOU to Liz from A Mani Maniac.  Some of the girls from the Challenge participated in a secret St. Paddy's Day polish exchange and Liz drew my name and hooked me up with some fantastic goodies that will feature in future posts.  Thanks again!

On to today's manicure!  We're on to "K" in the ABC Challenge this week.  This was a tough letter for me.  I have very few polishes, either by brand or by name, that start with "K".  I decided to go with an inspired look and some nail art today.  One of my favorite artists is Gustav Klimt.  His colors, subject matter and symbolistic style appeal to me.  Many of you are no doubt familiar with The Kiss which is probably Klimt's most famous work.  If this is the only work you know from him, I urge you to Google him and check out some other images.  They're just beautiful! 

Today's manicure is inspired by Klimt's Hygeia.  A detail of a three part oil painting, Hygeia was unfortunately destroyed in 1945 during the final days of WWII when the castle where it was stored was burned by retreating SS troops to prevent it falling to Allied forces.  Nice little art history lesson for you.  War is bad, destroys pretty things!

Ok, on to the nails!

 

I'll include a polish list at the end of the post and I won't bore you with all the details here.  I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.  Is it immediately recognizable as Klimt-inspired?  Maybe not.  However, when you see the detail in Hygeia's  robes, I hope you can see where I was going with it.

The accent nail is inspired by her hair.

This was really a fun manicure and I was glad to have a chance to do some nail art! 

Polishes used:
Red, Red by Wet 'n' Wild Wild Shine~cherry red creme
Diva on the Dunes by Jessica~bright red/orange creme
Pull Over by Sinful Colors~bright yellow creme
This Is It by Sinful Colors~shimmery gold with holographic flecks
Black and Brown Sharpie

Please take a moment to check out the other ladies in the ABC Challenge.  You can find them via the thumbnails below!  Thanks so much for reading!

Fucshia Jelly Sandwich

Hi there!  I've been lazy, lazy, lazy about keeping up with my blog and my nails in general, as you'll see from the following photos.  Time just seems to trickle away these days!  I have a quick post for you tonight, so let's get to it.

I probably should have saved this one for my ABC Challenge this week as we're on to "J", but it's so pretty I had to post it!  This is a jelly sandwich (hence the relevance to "J").  I started with 2 coats of Wet 'n' Wild's FastDry in FucshiaRama, followed by a coat of Collage Overlay by Seche.  Then I topped everything with another coat of FuschiaRama.
 

If you've never tried this technique, I highly suggest it.  Nothing shows off the wonderful squishy-ness of a jelly like a sandwich!  There's also the surprise factor since you can never be sure how the glitter you choose will look under a layer of jelly.  So fun!
 

Have you tried this technique?  What did you think?

Thanks so much for reading!

LynBDesigns Sacre Blurple and Boardwalk Empire

Howdy, everyone!  I know I've been AWOL lately, but I'm working on reorganizing and resorting my polish stash which is a huge project.  I'm using an inventory app on my phone to get a handle on my collection, and maybe to get a rough idea of how much it cost me.  I'm not sure I want to know lol

Anyway, last week, I received a shipment from LynBDesigns.  She had a sale going in February where her whole etsy store was half price!  I couldn't resist!  Especially since she has a whole collection named after one of my favorite movies of all time, The Princess Bride.  The polishes I'm showing in this post are not from that collection, but my ABC Challenge post may contain some :)

I started here with 2-3 coats of Sacre Blurple, a gorgeous deep blue/purple jelly.  The color of this polish is AMAZING!  I wish I had thought to take photos of it by itself.  It's fairly comparable to Revlon's Royal, but with a bit more violet to it.  The formula was great, it was opaque in 2 coats, with some touch ups here and there and no staining when I removed it.  This is my first experience with LynB polishes and I couldn't be more pleased!

The second polish here is called Boardwalk Empire.  BE is a royal blue jelly base packed with purple and blue small shreds, and a mixture of teal, silver and blue hexes.  I'm sure this polish could be built up on its own in about 3 coats, but I decided to layer it here.  SB and BE seem to go hand in hand, don't they?

Again, the formula here was lovely.  I can't wait to try the rest of polishes I picked up from LynB, and I'll definitely be checking out her etsy store more often!

Thanks so much for reading!

Love & Beauty Gradient

Howdy everyone!  I mentioned in yesterday's post about my nail polish buying spree over the weekend...I was supposed to be on a "no-buy".  Yeah, that didn't work out so well lol However, since I bought new polish, I have a fun little manicure to show you today using a couple of the polishes I picked up at Forever 21.

Forever 21's nail polish line is called Love & Beauty, and, as luck would have it, I love them and I think they're beautiful! (See what I did there, huh, did ya?)  This gradient was created using L&B's Blue/Green and Purple polishes.  I'm not being descriptive there, Blue/Green and Purple are actually the names on the back of the polish bottles.  Blue/Green is a really lovely duochrome that shifts from emerald green to teal to bright blue.  You can see a bit of purple and gold shift in the bottle in the photo above.  I didn't find that those shifts translated to the nail, but it's a beautiful polish regardless.  Using a sponge, I dabbed some Purple on the tips of my nails.  Purple is a really deep magenta-y purple almost metallic polish.  To pull everything together and add a bit of depth, I applied a coat of Nicole by O.P.I in Top of My World, an opalescent micro glitter in a clear base. I think ToMW added just the right touch of sparkle, even if I do dislike their bottle and brush.

....more after the jump....

Sugar Rush with a Side of Bombshell

Howdy everyone!  Sorry it's been a few days since I posted, it was kind of a crazy weekend.  I put myself on a "no-buy" for last week and then broke it all over the place at Ulta on Friday and then Ulta again and Forever 21 on Saturday.  Forever 21 had a half off of clearance prices sale so I got a bunch of polish for $0.49 a bottle!  I'm excited to try out their polishes as that was my first ever trip into the store.  I'll be going back, I'm sure!

Additional to all the polish I bought over the weekend, I did get some nail mail as well.  I received my Add On from Julep (however, never got my Maven Box, so I'm a bit bummed about that) and, much more exciting, my first ever order from Darling Diva Polish!  I first saw this polish featured over on Lucy's Stash.  You can see the review that caught my eye here.  The polish that really stood out to me was Sugar Rush and I've done a little manicure with it!  Take a look:

You can see Sugar Rush is on my ring fingernail.  It's so fantastically magical!  My very first indie polish and what a great choice!

....more after the jump....

Heavenly Manicure Two Ways

Hi there!  I'd like to welcome my new readers as a few of you have joined over the last couple weeks.  A special hello to the lovely ladies from the ABC Challenge, you girls are making my day with all your nice comments on my first submission, so thanks!

Today I have a fun little manicure to show you.  A while ago, I hustled to my local Walgreen's to grab a couple of Revlon's new polishes including Heavenly, a dupe for Deborah Lippmann's Stairway to Heaven.  Heavenly has square blue/purple/green iridescent glitters mixed with orange/copper/red iridescent glitters in a milky base.  The only thing to do with a polish this lovely is to layer it over a darker base color...which is what I did!  Whaddya think?

....more after the jump....

ABC Challenge: C is for Color Club

Hi, all!  I'm a little late to this party, but I've joined the ABC Challenge hosted by Kimber at Kimber's Lacquer Korner.  They're actually into the 3rd week, "C", but she was kind enough to let me join anyway.  I'm looking forward to this Challenge as the rules are pretty relaxed.  Basically, it's a weekly manicure posted on Wednesdays.  The only rule for the manicure itself is that either the brand, color or technique has to start with the letter of the week; in this case, "C".  Super relaxed and super fun!

So this week, "C" is for Color Club.  While strolling through Marshall's with my oh-so-patient and wonderfully fantastic boyfriend the other day, I came upon their polish section which never fails to disappoint.  I was lucky enough to pick up a mini set of 4 duochrome Color Club nail polishes for $4.99!  They're so very lovely!  Take a look:

Unfortunately, neither the packaging nor the bottles had any names or numbers to reference, so I'll just have to make them up as I go along.  I decided I wanted to use the green, purple, and blue polishes and do a gradient for this challenge.  Here's what I got:

....more after the jump....

Ikat Manicure

Howdy, everyone!  How's your weekend?  I'm having a decent one so far, despite the fact that I have to work every day.  One day I'll have a job that doesn't require weekends, and that will be a glorious day!  Ha!  I really can't complain too much though.  Even working two jobs, I have the time to do my nails...what more can a girl ask for?

Today's manicure is a technique I've been wanting to try for awhile now.  Ikat is a dyeing technique used in fabric weaving.  The threads are tied off and dyed in a specific pattern before being woven into a beautiful fabric.  I took a few weaving classes at SAIC and found that I really enjoyed the whole process.  I never got to try ikat and I'm kind of glad because I'm pretty sure I don't possess the patience required to create such a precise weave lol  However, ikat manicures are very easy!  Here's what mine looks like:

I started with a coat of Peachy Keen by China Glaze, a one-coat peach creme.  After that dried, I used a small paint brush and short strokes to create the diamond shaped pattern, making sure to leave the edges a little rough.  I used China Glaze in First Mate (a dark navy creme) and Nina Ultra Pro in Blue La La (a denim/turquoise/blue creme) for the darker parts and a white striping polish for the light bits.  I adore the way this turned out!  I can't wait to try the technique with some different colors.  You could use any contrasting colors with this technique, although it seems to work best if your background color stays fairly light colored.

A detail shot:

Such a great visual impact for such little effort...I love it when things work out like that!  What do you guys think?  Have you tried an ikat mani in the past?  Any color combo suggestions?

In other news, my very first giveaway is still open for entries and will be until the 22nd.  So hop on over the giveaway post and enter if you haven't already!  It's super easy to enter and you could win 3 full-sized Julep nail polishes!

Thanks so much for reading!

Pretty Glitter Manicure + Giveaway News

Howdy, everyone!  Once again, I've fallen behind in posting.  It's mostly laziness on my part; I'm having a hard time getting into the swing of things in the new year.  However, my fabulous boyfriend is cleaning my kitchen for me so I can get some stuff done online.  Isn't he great?

I have a really simple, but really pretty, manicure for you guys today.  Here's ya go:

 ....more after the jump....

Two Manicures and a Missing Dog

Howdy, everyone!  I hope you all had a great holiday, I certainly did!  I got to spend a week back home in Kansas with my family.  It's always so great to see everyone, but at the end of a week I'm ready to get back to Chicago and my own bed! 

I have a couple of manicures to show you today.  I'm way behind on posting and am trying to get back into the swing here, so I hope some of you are still out there reading.  The first manicure is one I wore for a few days in Kansas.  My stepmom loved it and couldn't get over how pretty it was...I felt the same way.  Here's a look:

.........more after the jump........

O! Christmas Tree Manicure

Hello, hello!  Two days in a row with a post, shocking, I know!  I hope everyone's holiday season is turning out well so far.  I've got my first holiday function this Sunday night with the crew from my job.  I'm trying to get myself into the spirit of things this year, so I've got another holiday manicure for you today.  This manicure is not my own design, as I found it on Pinterest and for once, the link back actually worked.  You can see the original design here on Laatikollinen lakkaa.  Aaaand here's my version:

 So adorable, right?!  I started here with 2 coats of Ulta's Salon Formula Nail Laquer in Diva, a pretty holographic glitter in a light pink shimmer base.  I used Wet 'n' Wild's French White Creme for the "snowbanks" and dots of falling snow.  The snowbanks were done using a method similar to Nailside's Freehand Cloud tutorial.  For my accent nail, I used painter's tape to create a long triangle shape and then filled it in with e.l.f. in Green Machine, a dark green creme.  I quickly went over GM with Wet 'n' Wild's FastDry in Happy Holidaze!, a teal multi-glitter jelly from their Party Rocks 2012 Holiday Collection, to add some sparkle and depth to the tree.  My tree topper is a silver star from Wet 'n' Wild's Stars and Stripes.  The ornaments on the tree are done with a dotting tool and e.l.f. in Cherry Bomb.

Overall, I thought this turned out great.  I love the sparkle that Diva adds to the whole mani and the nail art came out great!  Here's a close up of my accent nail:
 

I hope you enjoyed this manicure as much as I did.  Check back for more holiday nails before Christmas!  Thanks so much for reading!

Baby Pink Manicure

Howdy, everyone!  How's everyone's week so far?  Mine started great, had a dip in the middle, and is now back on track lol  And no, the dip had nothing to do with the election...although I think most politicians are dips!  Ha!  Ok, ok, enough of that...on to the nails!

Today I have a super girlie manicure for you to check out.  I've made a couple of trips to Walgreen's and Sally's over the last couple of days so I have tons of new polish to try out.  Yay!  Most everything I bought contains glitter, since everyone has their holiday collections out right now.  I had a hard time deciding which sparkly goodness I was going to try out today and this is what I chose:

...more after the jump...

Faceted Glitter Gradient

Howdy everyone!  Tomorrow is Election Day here in the U.S. and you'd think I might do a themed manicure to celebrate that fact.  I didn't.  I hit Walgreen's the other day and grabbed 5 new polishes and not one of them was red, white or presidential blue, so I did something completely unrelated.  That being said, if you're registered, please go vote!  You've got no right to complain about who wins if you don't!

All of the polishes I picked up were glitters and most were somehow holiday related.  So let's get the party started!

....more after the jump....

Nail-aween Challenge 1: Water Marble

Howdy!  As promised, I have my first Nail-aween Nail Art Challenge challenge for you today.  Wow, that was a mouthful!  The first challenge is a water marble.  Everyone loves how water marbles look and everyone hates doing them.  The technique is time-consuming, polish-consuming, and sanity-consuming.  So I cheated.  Here's a photo:

*more after the jump*

Happy Accident

Howdy everyone!  We're halfway through the week, how's everyone feeling?  If you're like me, you can't wait for Friday.  I actually have the day off Friday and I'm thinking I might go get a massage.  I received a gift certificate to a local spa for my birthday from a friend and I'm thinkin' it might be time to cash it in.  

I wanted to put up some photos of my nails today.  This is a good example of how mistakes can often become happy accidents.  I was trying out a new stamping plate and instead of getting the whole design, I only got a partial.  At first I was frustrated, but then I decided I like the abstract feel of the partial stamp anyway so I stamped all my nails that way.  Here's how it came out:

I started with 2 coats of Peachy Keen by China Glaze (another from my weekend Ulta spree) and stamped over top with Luxe from Orly.  Luxe is my favorite gold of all time.  It reminds me of the look of gold leaf or foil and the effect is just marvelous.  I thought the color combo worked well here, too.  It reminds me of that marble with the gold veins running through it.  So you can see the original pattern of the stamp was a bunch of stars.  I'll give this pattern another try with a thicker polish and see if I can get a clearer outcome in the future, but as far as oopsies go, this turned out alright.

I'll be posting my first manicure for the Nail-aween Challenge tomorrow so be sure to stop by and check it out!  Thanks for reading!

31 of 31: Recreate a Favorite Manicure

Howdy, all!  Well, it's finally the end.  The 31st day of the 31 Day Nail Challenge has arrived.  I'm a little sad that it's over, but mostly I'm just relieved (and a little proud) that I made it all the way through!  Today's challenge was to recreate a favorite manicure.  I have lots of favorite manicures done by other bloggers.  There are so many great ones out there.  I knew I wanted to try my hand at stamping some more and I knew I wanted something simple.  Let's face it, I'm exhausted after doing all these manis every day!  So I chose a sweet stamped manicure from pshiiit.com's blog.  I'll include a photo of her's at the end.  I'm unable to find the original post for this manicure, every time I try to link back through Pinterest it just takes me to her home page.  Here's my version:

I started with one coat of China Glaze in First Mate and then used  Wet 'n' Wild's Wild Shine in French White Creme to stamp a swirly heart design on top.  This set of stamping plates worked a lot better for me, so I'm finding that not all plates are created equal. I did have some trouble with my top coat on this one.  My bottle of Seche Vite needs to be swapped as it's getting kind of gloppy.  Here's another view:

And here's the original:

As you can see, my stamp is not exactly the same as her's but I still think it turned out pretty well.  I had a lot of fun with this challenge and I'm glad I followed through with the whole month.  I'm not in a rush to do it again though lol  However, I will be participating in a Halloween Challenge for the month of October.  Check back for more info on that soon.  Thanks so much for reading!

4 of 31: Green Nails

Howdy!  It has been a long, long day and I have several more of those coming up.  So, this is going to be a rather short post today.  Day 4 of the 31 Day Challenge brings us green nails...I took the opportunity to swatch something that I hadn't used yet.  Take a look!

This is another of the polishes that a lovely customer brought to me at work a couple of weeks ago.  My very first Dior polish!  Dior's Waterlily is a lovely minty, sea green with a hint of shimmer.  It also happens to be scented, which was a surprise to me, and I actually quite like it.  It's a floral scent, though it smells a bit more like roses than lilies to me, but whatever.   And you can't argue with that color...it gorgeous!  Coverage was good, fully opaque in 2 coats.  What I didn't like about this polish?  The formula is terrible.  Gloppy, thick and hard to work with.  Now, I don't know if it's just my bottle since I don't know if the person who gave it to me had used it previously.  Even so, this color came out for Spring of 2012, so unless this bottle had been sitting around with the lid off, I can't see any reason for it to be this thick.  I also hate the brush.  It's a wide brush and I never have very much luck with those.  So, while I'm thrilled to have this in my stash, I won't be rushing to spend my hard earned cash on any other Dior polishes any time soon.

Tune in tomorrow for some blue nails!  Thanks for reading!

K-S-U Wildcats! Manicure

Howdy, everyone!  In case you didn't know or aren't sports oriented, today is the college football opening day.  Thanks goodness!  I love football.  In particular, I love Kansas State University Wildcats football, and since we're currently winning our game 51-9  we just won our game 51-9 over Missouri State,  I'm thrilled to post my football inspired mani here!

Isn't it cute?!  I started with 2 coats of Sonia Kashuk's Rock Star and added a layer of Purple-xing by Nina Ultra Pro.   Then, I made stencils with blue painter's tape for the "Power Cats" on my thumb and ring fingers.   Power Cats are KSU's mascot symbol.  To make the stencils, I put the tape directly on my computer monitor over the design I wanted to trace.  I traced them with a pen and then moved the tape to a hard surface and used an X acto knife to cut out the stencil.  I waited until the base color was completely dry and then used the stencils to apply some white acrylic paint.  Using a dotting tool and a striping brush, I created the designs on my other nails.

Here's a closer look at the Power Cat design:

I'm so glad we won today!  It was a shaky start but hopefully we'll finish the season like the second half of that game!

As always, thanks for reading!

Go, Cubs, Go!

Howdy, everyone!  I spent my evening at Wrigley Field watching the Cubs take out the Pittsburgh Pirates.  We scored 9 runs in the 5th inning, it was pretty exciting!  I'm from Kansas originally and we don't really have much of a baseball team (sorry, Royals...I keep hoping you'll get it together, but I'm still waiting!), so I didn't grow up watching much of it.  In the last 5 years, since I've moved to Chicago, I've been to more games than I had in my entire life up to that point.  It's a lot of fun to live in a city that loves sports so much!

Anyway, since I knew I was headed to the game today, I decided I needed Cubs appropriate nails to cheer them on.  Here's what I came up with:

I started with 2 coats of Julep's January and then drew out the Cub faces with a white nail art pen.  Then, using a large dotting tool (which in my world is a round, plastic-ended sewing pin stuck in the eraser end of a pencil) I filled in the shape almost to the edge with Wet 'n' Wild's Fast Dry in Saved by the Blue.  Using MAC Vestral White and the large dotting tool again, I made the shape of the Cub's muzzle.  I added eyes and noses using a smaller dotting tool (again with Saved by the Blue) and there you have it!  The folks at the concession stand loved them and I got several compliments at work on them.  I think that's the best part of nail art for me, the way people react when they hear I do them myself.  It's always fun when people can appreciate the way you express your creativity :)

Thanks, as always, for reading!