Pure Ice Superstar. My go-to white polish!

Hello! Happy Thursday! I hope you all are well!

Today I am going to show you my go-to white polish! This is the polish I use as my base for all my gradients, attempts at watermarbles, some stamping and just to have as a good clean canvas!

I have tried many white polishes since becoming addicted to nail polish, my very first white polish I tried was Sally Hansen Insta Dry Polish in Whirlwind White. I had purchased it based on a YouTuber that I religiously watch and she had said it was her favorite white so I decided to give it a try. For the most part it is a great white polish. I'm not a fan of the brushes, but that's another debate or blog post in its entirety. By the time I got down to the last 1/3 of the bottle the polish began to get goopy and thick and just not usable anymore. Plus at that time I had no idea to go out and purchase polish thinner and make it like brand new.

The second white polish that I have tried is Sally Hansen Extreme Wear Polish in White on. White on is another great white creme polish but is a tad streaky, especially if you didn't have enough on the brush to cover your whole nail in a couple of swipes. I don't know if it was maybe the batch of polishes or if they were just really old sitting on the shelf but I felt White on got more goopy even when the bottle was almost full .

The third white polish I purchased was yet another Sally Hansen polish that was from the Hard As Nails Collection, and I can't remember the name of. This was the worst white polish by far that I ever purchased. To talk about streaky was an understatement, it took like four coats to be opaque and even then it wasn't really even and dry time was horrendous. Once again I was in search of a new white polish.

Now I could of purchased Sinful Colors Snow Me White, but no one around me had it in stock at the time, but then I saw that Pure Ice, which is typically sold at Walmart had a creme white polish called Superstar. I decided to try it, for a little over a dollar it was totally worth to give it a shot, Sometimes the cheapest polishes can be the best.

Boy did I find a winner with Superstar! If you are careful you can make this a one coater, other wise two coats is perfect. I have actually purchased two bottles of this so far, and my first bottle isn't even gone yet! My first bottle is down to the last third and its not even goopy or thick!

Here are a few swatch photos of Superstar!

Clean up with Superstar can be either good or bad. Usually I can get my cuticles clean and nice, sometimes it just doesn't happen. For my pick for favorite white polish Pure Ice Superstar is the winner!

Have a great Thursday guys!
<3 Nicole

Spoiled I Don't Drink Cheap Wine

Hello!

Hope you all are having a great weekend. I am spending mine like I always do, at work.

Today I bring you a polish I picked up at CVS from the Spoiled Collection made by Wet 'n' Wild. For $1.99 you really can't beat these polishes, such an awesome array of colors and glitters and finishes. This is called 'I Don't Drink Cheap Wine', and by the name you guessed it, its a wine colored polish. For some reason I don't own many of these types of polishes, but this fall I find myself by more and more of these polishes, and I do not consider it a bad thing. Okay maybe for my wallet it is. :)

'I Don't Drink Cheap Wine' took about three coats to be opaque. the first coat is really streaky, but by the second coat it help cleans it up. When looking at my nails in the light I could see visible brush drag, so I suggest letting each coat dry before adding the next.

This polish has a very nice subtle shimmer to it, sadly its only visible in direct light. As for a description of the color, in the store it seemed more berry looking, then in natural sunlight you can see ruby tones appear.

Okay so that's it for this post. Sorry it so short :( I'm trying to work on some fall designs to put up soon.  Hope you guys enjoyed it. Until the next post!
Nicole

Red Cheetah Nails. Rawr!

Hello! Happy Thursday!

Today's post is inspired by the concept of the Jelly Sandwich. I've explained what a Jelly Sandwich many times here on the blog, take a look at this post here if your not sure!

Taking the concept of the jelly sandwich I decided to try encapsulating a stamp instead! Same general idea just using a stamp in place of what would be glitter. It also makes me think of the amazing nail polish jewelry out there in the world!

Starting off I used one coat of Sinful Colors Ruby Ruby, a brilliant red jelly polish that is readily available in drugstores and now even Walmart, that's where I got mine from! Of course you do need to start off with a base coat before your polish so you can protect your nails. I recently purchased Orly Bonder about a month ago and have been using it in every manicure I do and it is wonderful! The coolest thing though is I've even gotten my mom to start using it, and now that she is retired (what a lucky duck) she is testing the waters on different color polishes too!

Bonder is a rubberizing base coat, at least that's what its described as being on the bottle, it dries super quick and definitely makes the polish smooth and stay on longer ( not that I keep my manicures on for longer than 3 days anyway).

OK so back to the manicure. Once the first coat of Ruby Ruby is dry, I took Wet 'n' Wild Black creme, my holy grail black polish for stamping, and stamped the cheetah/leopard print from the Salon Express Kit. Normally at this stage you would be done, add a top coat and bam, but no I went and added another thin layer of Ruby Ruby once the stamp was dry. It does dull the stamped design just a little but that's okay its what we want, the black creme is still very much see-able but it looks like its encased in the nail!

I tried this with a few other color stamps and white actually would of looked really cool, it gave a very subtle effect but not what I wanted. Once your top layer is dry add you top coat and you are done!

Take a look at the pictures if my long winded response confuses you!

Okay so I hope you liked this post! Stay tuned for more soon!

Nicole  

My very first Essie Polishes!

Hi everyone! Hope all is well!

Today for once I didn't have to get up at the butt crack of dawn to go to work, I love having a Saturday off! What is even better is work is kind enough to give me next Saturday off too! Apparently the customer service gods are shining on me :)

Today I bring you my very first ever Essie Polishes! I have always love the brand, always ogled at them in drugstore when they started showing up there, but at $8 a pop I couldn't justify buying one, when $8 can buy me like 5 of a more cheaper drugstore brand polish. Maybe its the bottle size that is intimidating to me, I mean I have walked into beauty supply stores before and walked out with an OPI Polish and there about 50 cents to a dollar more, so why have I waited so long???

 Yup I dragged my mom out of the house at 11:30 this morning solely to go to Big Lots to find some discount polishes since the rumours are flying around that you can find some really decent polishes there now. The only thing I don't like about Big Lots or as my mother kept referring to it as "Odd Lots" is that not all of them have the same items, and some store won't get the overstock that another store does. With all intentions full steam ahead I went in and prayed I would be one of the lucky ones.

The outcome of my trip? FAIL! Not really any polishes at all! A few sets of obscure Revlon Colors that weren't that appealing and a few of the Sally Hansen Nail Pens but no huge bins of discount make up items to dig through :( I became a sad panda.

So I dragged my mom down the road to the next shopping plaza where I knew I would be somewhat successful. Its got a Sally's, Five Below, TJ Maxx and Kohl's, Walmart, Rue 21. One of these places or more were bound to have some polish I want. Now I know I said I was on a 'No Buy' but looking at the calender I did a successful month of no buys, I actually started July 15th. but didn't start talking about it till almost the 1st of August. Today is the 18th so exactly one month and 3 days!

Although I probably will go on another month of no buy now since I bought a few. That's what I do at least. Well unless the new L.E. Maybeline Fall Fashion Week Polishes come out....

Anyway enough rambling! On to the polish. These are the two beauties I picked up at TJ Maxx!

These are Raise Awareness (pastel pink) and Infatuation (darker pink)!. I believe they are in the salon bottles since the caps have a large lower case E on them and the names are on the bottom and they don't have the Essie name in the white label like we see in drug stores today. I snagged these lovelies for $3.29 a piece! Score!

Here is the manicure I created with them!

Pretty self explanatory, I think every nail polish lover and blogger has done a manicure like this. Each color is two coats both reach perfect opacity. When I got Raise Awareness I thought like every other pastel pink it would be streaky but it was not at all, and no brush drag either. Infatuation is like a nice berry pink that I don't have in my collection from any one else! These pictures were taken in sunlight with a top coat. Oh and I used my new base coat today too! How many of you use Orly Bonder??

Okay so that is for this post! I do think I will be buying more Essie in the future, my Walgreen's has pretty much a full stock of all the colors and I desperately want Marshmallow, and Penny Talk!

Talk to you all soon!
Nicole!

Nails Inc. Sprinkles, The final two!

Good afternoon polish lovers! I hope you all are having a great day! I myself just got done with work about an hour and a half a go and boy could I go for a nap. 7:30 mornings are killer!

Today I bring you the final two Nails Inc Sprinkles Polishes, Pudding Lane and Sweets Way.

We shall start with Sweets way. Now when I saw swatches of this polish I initially like it, but for some reason when I swatched it on my nails I didn't like it. I had tried it once before over a white polish since the base on Sweets Way is milky white. Sadly that didn't look good either. I thought maybe by pairing them with a thin layer of a similar base color might help lessen the amount of coats you need to get the jelly effect but nope, not a chance.

Sweets way is opaque in three coats, and in dealing with a glitter polish three layers is quite a lot of glitter. This polish is also similar to Revlon's Whimsical and Deborah Lippmann Glitter In The Air only in the sense that the glitter color is the same baby pink, baby blue and silver. Although with Sweets way its all small round glitter and way more densely packed.

The pictures I have for you are three coats with a top coat in natural sunlight.

The final polish is Pudding Lane. I think that  this one is my favorite out of all of the collection. I don't have a blue this vibrant, or in this shade. Pudding Lane's glitter is gold and a darker blue glitter, which when the gold polish is mixed with the blue it almost looks like a lime green which is awesome. Two coats is more than enough to get this polish opaque. I suggest though with this polish to put on a couple layers of base coat because it DOES STAIN when removed. It doesn't stand horribly like Sally Hansen's Insta Dry Freeze but your nails will have a blue tinge to them.

Now the weird thing was that not all of the nails had the stain, its was like maybe 3 out of my 5 fingers. The way I removed the stain was by going back over my nail with a clean cotton ball and more acetone and then going into the bathroom and taking some soap (I used my Bath and Body Works Deep Cleansing) and a nail brush and gave my nails a good scrub. The little micro beads in the soap paired with the nail brush took off the stain in no time!

These pictures were taking in natural sunlight and no top coat.

So that's it for the Nails Inc. Sprinkles collection! I do really like these polishes and hope that more companies will continue the trend of all mixed together jelly polishes! I hope you all enjoyed this post , and I will talk to you all soon!

Nicole

Funky Fingers Pastel Swatches.

First off Happy Mothers Day to all the fabulous moms out there! I hope you all who are celebrating with your mom or if you are a mom are having a wonderful day! I too am spending the day with my mom. It was luck of the draw that I didn't have to work today even though they tried to make me!

Today I bring you swatches of some Funky Finger Polishes I picked up a few weeks ago at Five Below. I love that they do 3 for $5 polishes and 2 for $5 on there special ones ( usually crackles). I also found out from Alaina from The Little Canvas that the company that brings us Funky Fingers also brings us Color Club! How about that right?

So to start off there are three pastel colors that they have put out for the spring season. A lovely mint, baby pink and a lilac/lavender. All three of the pastels have a lovely gold shimmer that is very visible in the bottle. On the nail, well I get to that.

First up is the mint color called Mrs. Mint. Appropriately named this is the polish I had the worst time with. It is beyond streaky. Which is sad to say because its my first and only true mint color.

The formula is on the thin side, and can flood your cuticles easily. as you can see when  I tried to clean up my cuticles. When applying this polish you have let each coat dry practically completely or else you get major brush drag.

This is three coats, I can't remember if I put a top coat on for all the polishes or not. I'm going to say yes there is a top coat on these swatches though. Now for the bummer on the gold shimmer. I was so happy to see it in the bottle and then on the nail it gets lost. Unless you are in blinding sunlight you don't see it at all.

Next up is a favorite, mainly because of the name. The pink pastel is called Queen Cupcake.

This polish reminds me of Pink Friday by OPI or the Nicole by OPI Kardashian color. This polish is streaky as well but you don't have have each coat completely dry before adding another coat. A few minutes is more than enough and three coats is good for opacity. 

The last and final color is called Sugar Plum Fairy. Now I know that, the name is usually associated with Christmas, at least to me. I would of picked a different name for it. Out of the three though this had the best application. Yes the first coat is streaky but not nearly as bad as the previous two and its such a pretty lilac/lavender color that you could get a way with it all year round.

Two coats is good for this polish and the shimmer that isn't prevalent in Queen Cupcake and Mrs. Mint actually can be seen in this. The camera didn't pick it up but I could see it in real life.

Funky Fingers is available as I said in the beginning at Five Below. They always run specials for 3 for $5. It worth a trip in if you live near one.

Hope you all enjoyed this. Until next time.
Nicole