Welcome back!

Hi there! Welcome back! Not only to you but to me as well! It has been a long time hasn't it?

Almost two years, well if I had let this go to October it would of been. However Happy 2018 to you all I hope that your New Year has started off great. Mine has been so-so not terrible but not amazing, but I do believe its only bound to get better! 

This right here maybe one of the starting points. If you are reading this post and thinking, didn't this used to have a different name, you would be right. Seven years ago next month on March 18th to be exact is when I first started blogging and created My Nails. My Polish. I was 23 years old, had no clue about painting my nails, makeup, skin care, editing, you name it; I was a noob. I was heavily into reading nail polish blogs and seeing swatches of new collections and thinking at one point that I could put my two cents into this ring and start a blog. And so I did. You can still go back and look at my first post if you want and cringe at how bad my cuticles were or how I had no idea about clean up. 

Over the next few months to years I fell in love with nail polish and was posting mostly about it, then I transitioned into beauty products and fell head over heels in love with that and slowly nail polish kind of faded away for me. Don't get me wrong I still look at it in the stores, or swatch posts when new collections come out and I ogle over them but painting my nails just wasn't doing it for me any more. 

In the last couple of years blogging and Youtubing in themselves kind of faded away for me. I wanted to make them a priority and put my heart and soul into them, I still do. Sadly life has had other plans that showed me I needed to put away the blog and YouTube, I wasn't in love with them anymore I was getting bored and it was beginning to feel like a chore, a chore I didn't have time for and well in this blogging world if you want to be any sort of successful you need to put the time and effort in. I didn't want to put out crappy content or half-assed posts, so I stepped away. 

I have been still somewhat active on social media, not a whole lot, mostly Instagram where I even changed my name there but now it will be changing back to a blog Instagram. I do have a personal insta that will be staying private for me. 

This revamp of My Nails. My Polish. has been a long time coming, I wanted to change everything a while back but decided not to. This 'new' blog will be a bit about everything. Things like, life, beauty, relationship stuff, fashion, home, and things in between. 

I did say on snapchat earlier that I didn't think I would be getting back into making videos anytime soon. I have a lot I want to do before I venture down that path again. So I'm getting back to my roots where I started seven years ago. Be prepared for lots of photos and long post to sit and read through with a cup of tea or whatever drink you prefer! 

I hope that you guys will continue to follow along as I get back on my feet and see where this new adventure takes me. 

Until next time! 

Nicole

Getting back into nail art: My Fourth of July Manicure!

Hello loves!! Happy 4th of July! I hope you are having a great holiday weekend if you are celebrating and if your not celebrating I hope you are having a lovely weekend!

So this past week I was in the mood to finally do some nail art, and had even more ambition to do a 4th of July manicure!

I have done any type of nail art in a very looonnnnggg time. So long that I have even forgot how to do a proper dotticure. Hopefully this manicure will inspire me to get back into doing some nail art in the future.

For this design all I knew was I wanted to have my thumb,fore finger, and middle finger, have red and white stripes and my ring and pinkie fingers to be blue with silver stars.

I suck at free hand striping, (even when I was doing nail art more frequently) so I instantly went for some chevron guides I had from a kit I bought at CVS a while back when I wanted to buy some guides for a french manicure I was doing.

So I painted the first three fingers with Wet 'n' Wild's Wild Shine polish in white. I used two coats to make it nice and opaque and even,  I don't think these have names just numbers, but I'm sure you all know the one I am talking about. I then used Julie G's polish in Cabana Boy, which is one of the best blue polishes I own, on my ring and pinkie fingers. It is literally a one coater, but I always go in for a second coat just out of habit.

After letting these colors dry for a good long while, I carefully placed my chevron guides and took China Glaze's Cranberry Splash to make the red stripes. Now Cranberry Splash is not the first red I would of picked, but I realized I actually don't have a red creme polish. If anyone has any recommendation's I would appreciate it greatly!

After successfully creating my chevrons and cleaning up I wanted to place some silver stars I had on my nails but they didn't sit right and looked bad ( at least to me), so I took them off and replaced it with some dots in Celeb City by Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear.

I'm not a huge fan on how the silver dots came out, I like I said I completely for got how to do placement for them!


I am really happy with it overall though. It was a lot of fun getting back into some nail art, and seeing the idea I had in my head actually translate to my nails!

And here is a complementary 'claw' hand photo so you can see all of the manicure.

I hope you guys enjoyed this post and finally seeing some nail art up in here!!
Have a great day guys! I'll talk to you soon!
<3 Nicole

My First Lipstick: Rimmel London's Airy Fairy.

Nothing to Disclose

Hello loves! 

Do you remember that one piece of makeup you bought and just fell in love with? For me it was Rimmel London”s Airy Fairy. I remember trying to decide which Rimmel Lipstick I wanted to have and  my mom help me decide. If my memory serves me correctly I was going out for a huge dinner with friends and wanted a nice nude lipstick and Airy Fairy was the winner. 

I still have that tube of Airy Fairy believe it or not, I probably should get rid of it seeing it is a few years old. I have bought a new tube of it, after looking high and low for it. 

Seriously its the hardest lipstick to find.Of course I could find it online, but who wants to pay for shipping for one stinkin’ lipstick?  I finally found it at Walgreens in a permanent display, where as places like Rite Aid and Walmart had gotten rid of any traces of it. 

If you are just starting out in experimenting with makeup, or trying to just find some classic lipstick shades for your kit, then Airy Fairy is one you should buy. Its affordable and beautiful. 

I would describe the color as a pinky/mauve nude with shimmer, but its definitely heavier on the pinky/mauve then nude, and the shimmer isn’t noticeable on the lips. It just helps gives it that sheen on your lips. 

The consistency is creamy and smooth, and a swipe or two across the lips gives you a nice coverage. Wear time is like all normal lipsticks, where if your eating and drinking throughout the day its more than likely you’ll need to reapply after a few hours. I have always found it comfortable on my lips and never drying. 

For a lipstick that runs anywhere from $4.97 on Walmart's website, to where I got mine at Walgreens at $5.79, its definitely one my wallet won’t cry over me buying when I need a new one! 

I hope you have a great day and I’ll talk to you all soon! 

<3 Nicole 

Fitness Journey Update: Bye Bye Soda!!

Hi guys!!!

Today I'm here with a Fitness Journey Update! April and May were 'plateau months' as I like to call them. I wasn't seeing a lot of changes, but just kept working at it.

During the month of May I started a fitness challenge that Lucy had on her YouTube Channel. She had also done one in April but I didn't get into it. She also doing one this month called Tone Every Zone, where 6 days of the week you have new video to tone a different area on your body. I remember she put up a pole on Twitter asking what area's we liked to work on and after all was said and done she chose, Thighs, Abs, Butt, Arms, Bust, and Back. For myself I'm working on thighs, abs, and arms, those are my problem areas.

So far I really like it and after doing the first few days of the workouts my inner thighs hurt for days afterward. It was awesome, that's how I know it worked for me. On the other days for the Tone challenge that I don't need to work on, I just choose a different workout to do so I don't fall off the wagon.

Here's the current video I've been doing when I'm not doing the toning videos. All you need is a chair!


<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/bTb6LoDn5uI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>


So I'm sure many of you saw the title, bye bye soda. Yup, I have officially given up soda and its evil ways. Its actually something that I should have done many many moons ago. Sadly I wasn't really a coffee drinker so soda was my only form of caffeine.

I did some research about giving up soda and found that the best way is to ween yourself off because going cold turkey has negative side effects. I tried it once a long time ago, and the ginormous headache was just horrible. So I took the advice from the Internet and began weening myself. So whatever I was drinking I cut it down by half, telling myself I could only have a couple of sodas for the day, until I only allowed myself one soda at dinner for about two days and then that was it. No more soda.


I have officially been soda free for almost a whole week now! I feel awesome! I have also seen some weightloss too! Which I was informed by friends and family I would.

I have started drinking coffee in the mornings to give myself the caffeine my body was going to be lacking. I had some coupons for some K-Cups for our Kureig, so I bought my self some Starbucks coffee, and flavored creamer so I wouldn't have to add extra sugar,

I also got myself a new coffee mug to celebrate my new part of my adventure.

It was the only one left on the shelf at Walmart, and I absolutely love England, and London. Its on my bucket list of places I want to visit one day.

I have also gained some more confidence over the last couple of months, I tried on my bathing suit and I actually don't hate how I look, and I have more confidence in wearing shorts too. I was asked what I wanted for my birthday coming up July 3rd and I said I would really like to go shopping for some new clothes. Ive never been so excited for clothes before, I mean I love clothes but I guess having more confidence in myself makes it more fun!

 That's all I have for you guys today! If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask!

Talk to you all soon! <3 Nicole.

Covergirl and Katy Perry: Katy Kat Matte Lipstick Swatches.

Nothing to disclose, purchased by me.

Well hello there! Its been a little bit since my last post! I hope you all are well! I've just been busy working tons of hours since we are once again short staffed at work and who knows when my boss will actually decide to hire someone.

But today I am back with a look at some new lippies that have hit the drugstore. I have two of the new Covergirl and Katy Perry Matte lipsticks to show you!

I found mine at Rite aid and they were buy one get one half off! I did some research on these lipsticks and there are 11 shades total in the collection, the display at my Rite Aid was quite small, and only had about four or five shades on it. Pretty much all nudes, and berry colors. When I looked at Covergirl's website I saw that there are quite a few nude to berry tones in the collection with some bright pinks, an orange shade and even a charcoal almost black shade!

I hope that either my Rite Aid gets a more permanent display or I find the whole collection somewhere else.

So lets get into the two shade I have for you!

Reading on Covergirl's website, these are not completely matte lipsticks, Covergirl describes them as being a demi-matte lipstick, which is definitely true to one of shades I purchased.

I quite like the packaging on these and how easily identifiable these lipsticks are!. The outer tube itself feels like it has a rubberized coating on the plastic  which feels nice in the hand. The bright white color also draws the eye right in and will also make it really easy to find these in my makeup collection. 

Its great you can see a preview of what the color is on the bottom of the lipstick, even though I know Covergirl does this to all their lipsticks. Even if the packaging wasn't a bright color it would still make these easy to find.

They also put little cat ears over the names on each lipstick which is really cute and once again I will easily be able to find them and identify what collection they are from! 

Time for swatches! 

My camera did make the colors a bit darker than they are in real life so I did add some more light to the photos to get it to the right color.

Lately I've been on the hunt for that perfect matte nude color, most of my lip collection is nudes in some form or another but Sphynx is the nude lip I've been looking for, where its my lip color but better. I know i have said that about other nude lipsticks in the past but this one quickly became my top favorite as soon as I put it on. 

 Catoure is like if I bit down on my lips for hours to make them look more flushed. it is slightly darker than what the little color block on the tube shows, but I love dark lip colors anyway. Its a nice color thats not too dark to wear during the summer.  

I haven't had a chance to wear Catoure out yet, but I have worn Sphynx quite a bit. Sphynx feels nice on the lips, its smooth and creamy and in just a couple of swipes I have full coverage. Also like it says on Covergirl's Website it did not dry out my lips at all! On a day where I wear it to work I can usually get a good four to five hour wear time in between munching on snacks and drinking my water all day. When I wore it out on Saturday I got a pretty good almost all day wear on it since my mom and I were busy shopping and I wasn't really eating or drinking anything. 

Overall I really love these lipsticks, and after seeing some swatches of the other colors I most likely will invest in more next paycheck! 

I hope you guys have an awesome day! I'll talk to you soon! 

<3 Nicole 

Welcome to my Fitness Journey!

Hey guys! Long time no blog, I know. I know. How is your 2016 going? For myself I have to say so far that mine is going fairly well. Much better than years past I will tell you that. Even though I haven't been writing out blog post I have been taking lots of photos and trying out product so I can review them properly for you! 

Today though, I am introducing you guys to a new (hope to be) series on the blog. 

Over the years I realized I’ve come to not only love nail polish, and makeup, but also fashion and life style things. So here is a little bit of lifestyle! Today’s post is going to be about fitness, well my the beginning of my fitness journey anyway.

One of my top goals for this year is to get healthy. I briefly mentioned it my Year In Review, if you want to read all about 2015 feel free to click the link. Since my teenage years I’ve been in the overweight/plus size category and have tried every which way to loose weight. Whether it was by dieting, (which never worked), or joining the gym on and off since I was 15. Honestly going to he gym makes me feel self conscious, I always felt like everyone stares at you and silently judges. Its definitely not the scene for me. 

I think my failures also had a lot to do with the fact I wasn’t putting my health as a priority. WHICH IS NOT A GOOD IDEA BY THE WAY!  I used to make it a priority that my family, and friends came first, I’ve always said I’m a people pleaser, if others are happy then I’m doing my job. 

But I since realized that I had to start taking care of me, which most people agreed, some didn’t. But if I’m not good health, how can I help others?

In July of last year I started working out and (sort of )  watching what I was eating. I got inspired when I saw Anna Saccone ( from the SacconeJolys) talk about how she hired a personal trainer to help her meet  her fitness goals. Anna put out a video with her trainer Lucy Wyndham Read and I fell in love with it. It was simple, and I could do it in the privacy of my own home whenever I wanted. 

So of course the next thing I did was buy some brightly colored workout clothes. I feel it makes me want to workout more if I have cute clothes to do it in.

I love picking out workout gear that has motivation sayings on them
even if they are kind of cheesy sometimes.

I then started doing the one video when I had a spare moment. I had yet to check out Lucy's YouTube channel and see all the awesome videos she posts! l I’m not gonna lie there were maybe one or two weeks that went by where I didn’t workout at all because I was lazy about it. I could name all the excuses, I was too tired, its too hot outside, I worked late, etc. However when I did finally do a workout I felt amazing!

If you are looking for new at home workouts to do then you should definitly checkout Lucy's Channel! I should go into what kind of workouts Lucy does, she does what is called a H-I-I-T workout or High-Intensity-Interval-Training Workouts. You may or may not have heard of them. In most of Lucy's videos she shows you a HIIT move then a toning move. Basically HIIT workouts get your heart rate up to burn calories,then brings it down a little to tone, then right back up again to burning calories. I hope I explained that right. I have never sweat so much after a workout in my life!

Heres a pretty sweaty selfie from after a workout last summer.

 But like any beginner you can’t push yourself too hard, your body has limits and if your not used to working out, you could injure yourself. At first I only did as much as my body could,I modified the workout to suit my range of motion and so on.  Now seven months later my stamina and range of motion have increased greatly and now I am doing four separate workouts in one shot!

Heres a link to Lucys Youtube Channel so you can check out her videos for yourself!


My current routine goes as so: 

1.Warm up routine

2. 4 minute thigh routine

3. Love HIIT Workout.

4: 180 Ab rep workout. 

In total its just shy of a half an hour. Sometimes I change up the videos so I don’t get bored or repetitive. Lucy has so many videos to choose from you could do a new work out routine every day! 

Over the last seven months I have definitely seen a change in my body. I haven’t lost as much weight as I would like to, but I’ve noticed I’m toning up my body which is nice. What I have to work on now is my diet. Cutting out sugar, and crap foods is hard, but I don’t want to cut them out completely I’m trying to find a balance. 

I know this is all going to take time and is not going to happen overnight. I’m not looking for that; “I dropped 100 pounds in a year”, I want to do this my way, and at my own pace. 

I plan on doing monthly updates to hold myself more accountable. If anyone out there has any tips or advice, please leave a comment below!! 

I hope you all have a wonderful Friday and a even more magnificent weekend! 

Happy New Year!! Maybelline Color Show: Pretty In Peach.

Happy 2014 you guys!!

I hope your new years eve rocked. I spent mine at home watching Netflix, eating good food, and definitely reflecting on the year. But its a new year now and time for new beginnings!

So today's polish is by Maybelline, they release some new Color Show Polishes back in December and they just hit my Rite Aid just before New Years. I picked out one color from the display that caught my eye. It was one of the brighter colors.

Its called Pretty In Peach, and the color is exactly as the title says. I love me a peach colored polish. I think though that this is only maybe my third in my collection ha ha.

I have quite a few of the Color Show polishes, mostly of the limited edition ones but none the less I overall really quite like them. The quality is good and the collections that Maybelline puts out always gets me to get at least one, otherwise if I got all of them every time I would be broke!

This polish looks florescent in the light but is not a neon, its just a beautifully bright color. You can achieve opacity in two coats with this polish. The first coat isn't nearly as streaky as some creme polishes are. The formula is not thick but thick enough that if you had a pretty steady hand and could balance the right amount of polish on the brush you could maybe get a thin one coater!

I took so many photos of this polish, that it was hard to narrow it down to just four, usually I only get two-three good shots.

I feel like that these Color Show Polish bottles are a little bit heavier than the limited edition ones. It might just be me but who knows. I am definitely looking forward to seeing other colors in 2014 from Maybelline.

So if there is one polish to pick up from the new Color Show's to help brighten up your new year and winter, this is a winner!

Till next time
<3 Nicole

L'oreal Paris: Royalty Reinvented.

Good morning!

Hope you all are having a fantastic start to the weekend!

Today I have to show you a new L'Oreal Nail Polish! L'Oreal recently launched a line called " Le Nouveau  Riche   TRENDsetter collection. It consist of six to eight new shades of nail polishes. The display at my local CVS only had the six. That kind of disappointed me because I really wanted to see the three metallic shades included in the set. Guess I'll be hopping over to Walgreens soon to see if they have it. Usually I go to Rite Aid for the newest collections but my local one is slacking lately. :(

So this collection like I said above has three metallic shades and six pastel crème shades. If you want to read more on the collection you can head on over to Nouveau Cheap's blog for all the deets.

Out of the six crème shades available to me I picked out the purple crème called Royalty Reinvented. I wanted to grab more but at $6.49 a pop I had to say no, I did however have $1.50 in extra bucks so it knocked it down to $5.51(including tax) in the end.

The reason I bought yet another purple nail polish is because I don't have many pastel purples, the only one this is even remotely close to was my very first pastel purple from OPI when they released their Shrek Collection. Funky Dunky is the name and its actually darker than RR and matches my winter jacket perfectly.

I'm always cautious when wearing a crème polish due to brush drag, spottiness, the usual. This polish is most certainly among the average crème colors, the first coat was sheer but by the next coat the opacity quota was met making Nicole a very happy girl.

Immediately wanted to layer something over this and with it being the start of the new year I grabbed for my Tasmanian Devil Confetti Polish and added one layer over top. Who doesn't like colorful sparkly nails?

*All photos taken in indoor lighting. No flash. Two coats with top coat and glitter. The last photo is the more IRL color.

 

This combination reminded me of a robins egg. Now I know usually robin's eggs are blue with black splotches, but we can say this is its oddball cousin who is the wild child of the family.

The one thing that I did notice today while I was out killing time in Wal-Mart while my mom was doing laundry was that the pastel purple from the NOPI Selena Gomez collection look awfully similar to Royalty Reinvented, and one of the glitter polish which is multi-colored is an exact dupe of the Confetti Polish in these photos! And to mention price point, usually at Wal-Mart L'Oreal polishes are $4.97 versus the $7 dollar price for NOPI.  I was kind of excited to buy some of the Selena polishes and did buy one of them today and I'll feature here soon.  Is it weird that I'm glad there were dupes in that collection from what I have so I didn't have to buy? ( As I type this I hear my wallet's cries of joy).

Do you own any of the new L'Oreal Nail Polishes
Nicole.