45 Days..45 Untried's. Day 1: Colormates Florida Sunset.

Hi guys!

So my very best polish friend Adrianna from Morie's Nail Art has decided that the best way for her to get back into blogging is for her to make up her own challenge. She has pulled out 45 of her untrieds and plans to feature one everyday for 45 days!

I decided to jump on the challenge wagon and join in on the fun. I certainly have 45 untrieds and definitely feel this will help me keep to blogging and stop slacking!

So for day one, my untried is Colormates Florida Sunset. Its amazing the little gems you can find at the dollar store. I want to say I acquired this polish sometime last year, I think I posted an Instagram photo of the haul I got at my local dollar tree. To say its a gem though, you will have to read on.

Colormates is definitly one of those unknown brands (to me at least) but this color is very pretty to say the least. So for a buck I think I'll keep it.

Florida Sunset is a bright almost neon pink creme. It doesn't dry matte so you know its not a true neon, but its pretty bright as you'll see in the photos.

The first coat of Florida Sunset is on the tad streaky side, if you try to go over the polish more than a few times you will also get dragging. On the second coat things were still kind of off, I think it was due to the humidity in the air but the polish seemed a little on the thick side. By the third coat things evened out a little and top coat helped even out the rest.

As much as I like this color and it didn't freak out my new camera, ( like all my other ones do.) I'm not sure if I would go through all the trouble to wear it again. I'll have to try it when either the humidity disappears, which I highly doubt or in the fall when the weather turns cooler. Or heck I might have gotten an old bottle, you know how beauty products at the dollar store are not always so fresh.

I know you can find Colormate polishes online, I think I saw some on eBay and they were relatively cheap. I didn't see any for a dollar, but three or four.

Always keep an eye out at your local dollar store if you are interested in finding Colormate polishes. Sometimes you might even find a well known brand that you thought you would never find.

So thats it for day one of 45 Days Of Untrieds, I hope you enjoyed and stay tuned for tomorrows post!

Oh and don't forget to check out Adrianna's blog which is linked above.

 Did you ever find any secret beauty gems at thedollar store? Comment below!!!

<3 Nicole

Dandelion nail art inspired by a tattoo.

Well hello there, and happy Monday! Hope your weekend was good, it was sort of rainy at the start here in NY but got better.

Today starts my much needed two week vacation from my overly frustrating and stressful job! I can't tell you how excited I am! Right now as you are reading this I am currently preparing to leave for Florida tomorrow morning! I will be gone for the whole week and plus some. I do have blog post planned for every other day until I get back. Plus I will be doing updates on my nails because I am going to be testing out some Sally Hansen Salon Effects  Real Nail Polish Strips! I am planning on putting them on today so the updates will start tomorrow!

I decided to wear the Sally Hansen Nail Strips because it would be much easier then trying to decide what type of design or stamp to do, only to have it ruined a few days into my trip. Since I am only bringing a carry on with me I don't plan on packing any polish. Also it will be a great way to see if these really work, I've used them in the past but never got to keep them on long enough to see if they lasted the 10 day claim on the package!

So on to today's post. Today my nail art is inspired by my best friends tattoo she got about a month ago. My best friend who I also consider my sister is a new mom to a gorgeous 9 month old baby girl and she was going through a rough patch and getting her tattoo was a way of getting through it. I won't go into any details about since its no ones business, but the tattoo itself is gorgeous.  It is a dandelion that has its seeds blowing away in the wind and turning into birds. It also has a saying on it but I'm more interested in the dandelion turning into birds. I too am actually considering getting a similar tattoo this year, no saying just the picture.

So since my amazing blogger friend Alaina over at The Little Canvas just happened to do a dandelion nail art post, I used her tutorial to get my dandelions perfect. If you haven't seen her picture by picture tutorials of some of the nail art she does you need to click the link above to check her out!


So I started with a base color from Colormates called Stormy Weather. Its the perfect blue-grey polish that has some shimmer to it, it was the perfect background for these dandelions.

Once the base was dry using my thin striper brush and Wet 'n' Wild's Black Crème I followed Alaina's steps to achieve the perfect dandelion stem, then with another nail art brush one that was more flat and shaped to a point I dipped that into Pure Ice Superstar a  white polish and dabbed off the excess just like Alaina says to and created my fluff ball dandelion and the seeds  that were drifting away.

Now to add in my own twist I went back to my black thin striper and dipped the tip into the black and created a few bird outlines for where the seeds turned into them and they were free to fly away!. Once they were all dry I added my top coat and I was done.

Please excuse the pink hue on my middle finger and on the end of my index, the polish I had on before was a very bright pink that stained a little.

Each picture has been taken in natural (cloudy) light with no flash. Out of all the free hand nail art I have done which  is a quite a bit this is my favorite of all time! I seriously love this manicure so much I kept this on all weekend until today! This is also the first free hand that I have done that I didn't mess up using my non-dominant hand! My right actually looks like my left its unbelievable!

I hope you guys enjoyed this post and this nail art! If you want to recreate blowing dandelions don't forget to check out Alaina's blog which is linked up towards the beginning of the post!

So until I have an update on the nail strips or Wednesday when the next scheduled post goes live,
have a great day!
<3 Nicole

Dollar Store Finds: Colormates: Little Blue Box.

Good Morning!

Today I am bringing you another Dollar Store find! I'm so glad that I keep checking my local Dollar Tree for nail polish, seriously every couple of weeks there are either older Sally Hansen's or a random brand that I have never heard of but so far each polish I have gotten there works out well. Plus the fact that my wallet isn't screaming at me is pretty good too!

The polish I have is called Little Blue Box, and its from a collection called Colormates, by a company called Diamond Cosmetics. Now I went and looked up Diamond Cosmetics and found their website and saw that the colors I purchased are not available on their site anymore. So once again we find ourselves in the land of discontinued polishes, which is not technically a bad thing!

My Dollar Tree had quite a few colors, mostly shimmers and cremes, and a few nail art polishes as well, I picked up three of those. I purchased a Teal color that has some shimmer to it, a gold glitter that is named 14K and a Tangerine color.

However pushing our focus to Little Blue Box (which I'm abbreviating to LBB for the post) is as you may have guessed it by the name it is indeed a reference to Tiffany's. Now we know that China Glaze has For Audrey, but whether they are dupes I won't know since I stupidly don't own it.

I can compare it to my Tiffany's box that I have had since I was 16 years old and my aunt gave me a beautiful necklace from their. I have to say its pretty close! I feel maybe because my box is almost 10 years old that it could have a little discoloration and the nail polish is a little lighter, but either way its the same color by a few shades.

LBB's formula is okay, not anything spectacular by any means. First coat was a little streaky but I think that had to do with how much polish I had on the brush. The pictures above are three coats and no top coat. This is definitely going to be a nice creme to do some stamping over or some sort of nail art!

So that its for this post! Stay tuned for the next one!
<3 Nicole