Review: Hard Candy Fierce Effects Eye Shadow Duos.

Good Morning lovelies! i hope you all are well!

Today I bring you a review on a new product from the Walmart exclusive brand Hard Candy! Every time I go to Walmart I always check out the beauty section and check to see if there is anything new, so I was so glad a few weeks ago to see that some of the newest Hard Candy products had made its way to my local Walmart shelves.

The first product I picked up that caught my eye was these new eye shadow duos called Fierce Effects. From what I saw at Walmart they have four different duos to choose from. Plus they all look like each color compliments the other in the pack.

The duo I picked up is called Slow and Steady, one shadow is a shimmery champagne color and the other is a dark brown.

Here is what the packaging looks like from Hard Candy's Website. (I accidentally threw mine out before taking a photo of it.)

Credit: Hard Candy Makeup. 

"Hard Candy Fierce Effects Shadow Duo Eyeshadow features a unique hybrid texture that is not a powder or a cream and provides velvety texture with luminous color. Each shade is intensified with a second pigment for a multi-dimensional pearl finish. With intense staying power, these cushiony silky pigments offer a comfortable, long-wearing formula." --Hard Candy's Description from their website. 

I would have to agree with Hard Candy's description of the Fierce effect duos, they are very soft and velvety smooth, and are very pigmented. As for saying whether they are a cross between a powder or a cream, I would say they lean more towards a loose powder pigment. 

These eye shadows remind me greatly of the L'oreal Infallible 24 hour loose eye shadows. The packaging is very similar and after doing some research I didn't see any information that L'oreal (or their parent company) owns Hard Candy. 

Here is what the L'oreal Infallible Eye Shadow I have looks like. 

And here are the Hard Candy Fierce Effects duos.

Inside the shadows the set up is the same too where you have a little disk with a handle pressing the pigment down so it doesn't go all over the place.

If you guys follow me on here or on Instagram or Twitter, you know I love my neutral eye shadows and its my go-to look 90 percent of the time. So it was no clue that I would love these eye shadows.

These are perfect for me when I go to work early in the morning, I don't have to keep switching back between different palettes and rummaging through my stash at 5am.

Lets take a look at swatches.

The first photo is of the duo in sunlight. The champagne color is my favorite of the duo. Its not just a shadow for your lid but I love using it in other looks as an inner corner highlight. 

Here are the colors swatched in the shade. I should also say that these are swatched over no eye shadow primer! How awesome is that? 

As for staying power, without primer, I've noticed with my combination skin they last about 4-5 hours. If I use primer I get about 6-8 hours of wear, especially if I don't touch my face. I have this tendency to hold my head in my hands or if I get an itch on my eye, I forget I'm wearing makeup and tend to rub. 

I think these duo's are great. I do have one request though and that is maybe making more colors available. Out of the four duos they have Slow and Steady and one other called Lost and Found are ones I would wear. Who knows though, maybe in 2015 Hard Candy will come out with more options. 

If you want to get your hands on these Fierce Effects Duos they are available at Walmart for $5 bucks! 

See you guys in the next post, <3 Nicole. 

*All products mentioned in my post are purchased by me unless otherwise stated. I am not affiliated with any companies mentioned above and I am not being compensated.*

45 Days of Untireds Day 5 L'Oreal Paris Royally Yours.

Good Monday morning! Is anyone not a fan of Mondays? I don't have an opinion because sometimes I work and sometimes I don't. But as a blogger everyday can be a work day ha ha.

Today for Day 5 of the Untried Challenge, I have a pretty pastel to show you. L'Oreal Paris released a spring romance collection earlier this year. I don't remember the exact name as I write this but when I do I will insert it here somewhere.

Today's polish is called Royally Yours, it is a pretty pastel blue color that almost reminds me of Hard Candy's Sky. If you want to see a comparison post then let me know below!

So I had seen this polish in its original display for a while, and they were all priced $5.99 which I believe is standard for a Rite Aid display, but I never had the urge to buy any at that price. I had other pastels that I could definitely find for much less.

When I stopped in Rite Aid last week I saw they had a ton of polishes on clearance, as they do when new displays and new stock comes in, at only $2.99 on clearance I couldn't resist picking up a couple of colors.

 I have to say the formula on this was a bit iffy for me. Even though it wasn't terribly humid out or anything like that, I found it to be really thick and even if you didn't wipe off the brush too much you still didn't have enough polish to do at least one coat across the nail. Then it would get streaky and you would have brush drag if you tried to even it out too many times.

The photos in today's post are three coats with top coat to even everything out.

Even after three coats and top coat you can still see a little unevenness on the end of my pinkie finger.

I'm glad I didn't pay full price for this polish. It is a lovely color and I would definitely use it for nail art but not so sure about a full on manicure again.

Don't forget to check out Adrianna's untried and Shaylad's on Instagram!
Do you own any of the L'Oreal Paris polishes from their spring romance collection? 

<3 Nicole

My Top 10 Polishes of 2012 Part One!

Good Friday morning lovely polish lovers!

Today I bring you for the second year My Nails. My Polish. Top 10 Picks of 2012!

We had some amazing polishes this year and it was so hard to pick the 10 that I wanted to feature. This year I came up with some guidelines to help narrow things down. The first guideline was to that the polish had to come out THIS year. Which obviously is appropriate. The second guideline that I had was that I had to have worn it and taken a picture of it. If I featured it on the blog even better. I think there was only one I never featured on the blog, but put up on Instagram. You'll see that one later.


Alright lets get started. This is the first five on my list, I figure one post would be super long and you the lovely reader would get to tired half way through.  This list is no particular order so I'm not saying that any polish is better than another. They are all my favorites from this year!

First up is a polish that I couldn't stop raving about this holiday season. It has definitely become my favorite red polish! That's right its China Glaze Cranberry Splash, from the Holiday Joy Collection.

When  this collection came out I wasn't really looking to get any of them, I wasn't impressed until I was looking at Kelly from Vampy Varnishes swatches and saw how it glowed and was just the perfect holiday red. I needed it and quickly added it to a list I had started on one of the E-tailer websites that I usually order from. A week or so later a trip to Sally Beauty with my mom let me get my hands on it sooner and boy was I glad I got it. Take a look (if you haven't already seen it in any other post I did with it LOL)!

Next on the list is a dupe of polish that I featured last year, but if you want this polish you still maybe able to get it through China Glaze. I picked Immortal from the Halloween Collection this year to be on my favorites list because I have never loved a grey polish so much in my life. When I first saw Immortal in Sally's I knew immediately that it had to be a dupe for Fright Night Polish in Phantom.

What I love most about this polish I the shimmer. Between the grey shimmer is a mix of blue and purple, its very subtle on the nail and can be seen well in the bottle.

This polish that I have for you is only my fourth Essie polish. I can't believe I have never bought more of that brand but the price tag always gets me. When Essie released their Winter Collection this year which is also named Leading Lady I knew I wanted at least Where's My Chauffeur!

It is a bright sky blue crème polish that looks like a certain runner up that will be featured at the end.

What I like most about this polish is the formula, it is on the thin side but that's okay, three coats achieves opacity. In the picture below I used it with Pure Ice Stop Flirtin'.

Earlier this year L'Oreal release a line of polishes that all have names that refer to one of my favorite places in the world next to home, is England!! I know I talked more at length in the post about my love for British Television and this polish just fits the bill perfectly. L'Oreal Brit Invasion is an amazing brownish taupe polish with copious amounts of golden shimmer. When I posted this on the blog it was one of my most viewed post! If I had to choose one polish to wear all fall this year this would of been it.

This year was the year of the Jelly Sandwich, many companies even right up to the end of the year were creating jelly sandwiches in a bottle. One company that jumped on that band wagon was Nails Inc. Sold at Sephora and on Nails Inc. website, these polishes were all the rage! They were even sold out for a time. In July I broke down and decided that I needed all of the Nails Inc. Sprinkles Collection. Now nail bloggers generally define a Jelly Sandwich as a sheer polish that is buildable layered with a glitter polish in between. Nails Inc. took it to the next level and used crème polishes with matte glitters. My favorite out of the four was Sugar House Lane. It is a neutral toned crème polish mixed with black and white matte glitter. It does look like the top of a chocolate frosted cupcake.

Okay so I think that is where we are going to stop for Part One of the Top 10. The next five that will be showed are equally amazing so just remember that! Most of these polishes are still available in some places. The L'Oreal polish you may have to go hunting for though I still found some in the Wal-Mart in the next town over from me.

So stay tuned for the last half of the list!!! Talk to you soon!
Nicole

Loreal Paris Nail Polish: Tea and Crumpets!

Good morning my dears!

Hope you all are well and ate lots and lots of turkey and did some Black Friday shopping! I went shopping on Saturday and scored five polishes off my wish list. They were never up here on the blog though b/c I'm horrible at updating those pages!

Today I have for you the last of the Loreal Paris Polishes from tr British collection. This one is called Tea And Crumpets. It is a fantastic nude color. Defnitly a palette cleanser for me. I don't have anything like this in my stash.

It's a very pale nude/grey cream that is opaque in 3 coats, the first coat is sheer and patchy but buy the second coat it starts to even itself out. If your too quick to apply each coat you can get some unevenness and visible brush strokes.

I plan on using this polish for the base color for some nail art ! I started over Thanksgiving trying out different designs and decided on my first tape mani. I haven't really attempted one because I always screw if up! But this time I managed quite well! Usually people use scotch tape but I didn't have that on hand so I used masking tape and just ran it over my hand once or twice and then placed it where I wanted it to go.

I then used China Glaze Pink Plumeria on the part that wasn't taped off. I have to say that the manicure is very work appropriate and just overall nice and clean. I feel like one could get away with wearing such a manicure in a more strict office setting.

Okay that's it for this post! Stay tuned for the next one and check out the pictures below! All taken in natural light!