Catching Up

This is the last post before my giveaway ends in a little over 1 hour and a half. This is from a while back which I haven't been able to post and a lot of stuff is backed up but I'm trying! I'll probably show them off later since my nails are short again... wah! stupid work! >:(

Anyways, this is 1 coat of China Glaze White Cap over 2 coats of Seafoam Spray then 1 layer of top coat. WHAT A BEAUTY AM I RIGHT?! And I just had to show off my rings that day :) My 'love' and cheetah rings are one of my favorite rings!

Don't forget to enter into my giveaway! Please try to keep all entries in 1 comment please!

hope you enjoyed & happy polishing! :)

<3katherine

The New, Bad, Beautiful and Good

Hi all~ :) I hope everyone had a great New Years! Mine was alright, and I'm trying to work a bit more even with the lack of hours they gave me. This is my first post for the New Year! :) Anyways, onto nails~ today I'm posting the new, the bad, beautiful and good. The new? meaning new brand or something I haven't tried yet. The bad? Something that didn't come out exactly the way I wanted to, but it isn't that bad. The beautiful? The shades I picked out for today. The good? A pretty good nail art, since I haven't been doing that much lately.

First, here is the new and beautiful. Rimmel 60 Seconds in Night Before (#615). It's a dark purple shimmer with orange and pink iridiscent. The swatch is 2 coats and 1 coat of top coat. The pictures don't show the iridiscents well but you can kind of see it in the bottle. I've never seen these bottles until I went to Kmart, which I don't go to very often.

The pretty bad is the nail art I tried. I tried to make a flower but first the center white came out too much and I think I could've done better. But hey, I tried! And I'll probably practice some more. :P

Another beautiful and new is Wet N Wild Blackmail (#218). This is 3 coats; just to be safe for the color and missing spots and 1 coat of top coat. It's a black base jelly-creme-ish but more creme. It contains orange/copper glitter inside as well. Totally awesome and it was my first time seeing this one! So lucky I found it at Kmart :)

The (pretty) good? Penguin nail art! I've seen a lot of this recently, especially by Pan and I've been meaning to try it out. So I tried to make a bow tie and failed so I covered it up and not well enough and it swirled a bit with the pearl black nail art I used. But pretty good in my opinion! I gave him a sparkly nose, kind of like Rudolph :P

I picked up an extra bottle of Wet N Wild Blackmail for my giveaway that I will start when I reach 300 followers. I don't have the prize all picked out yet, but I will try to get some here and there :)

Anyways, I hope you all enjoyed & happy polishing!
<3katherine

[review|img heavy] Viva La Nails

So I received my sample pack from Viva La Nails a little while ago, and haven't been able to fully review them until now.

On the left is my review for the star glitters. I call this Reaching for the Stars. It reminds me about my goals and dreams that I have for my future (:x Corny I know). Anyways so the base for this is Borghese Tutti Gelati topped with open flakes of stars in light pearl pink and yellow from Viva La Nails.

To apply the stars, I used on a wooden cuticle stick with a dab of top coat to be able to pick up the stars individually and I created diagonal tips with the stars as well as a whole nail full of stars. :)

The name for this one is a lyric from a Ricky Martin song, and you could probably guess it, Float like a Butterfly and Sting like a Bee. :) The base is 2 coats of Quirius Cotton Candy.

The black butterflies are nail stickers had little rhinestones on it, which I thought they were really cute. It's really easy to take off and apply onto your nails and it isn't complicated and it does not bubble up or anything like that!

The other butterflies were a surprise to me. Does anyone remember when they were young and they would have those fake tattoos that you apply by just putting water and holding it onto your arm? That's what these butterfly nail arts are! At first I was trying to peel it off like a regular nail art sticker and then it hit me. These were adorable and they are sooo easy to apply! Just dab on some water with your fingertip and hold it there for a few seconds and voila~ you got yourself a butterfly on your nails! :)

This one I call it Home Improvement. Because from the sample back I used, it reminded me of the stones that people use to create a path on their lawn or backyard. :) The base is 2 coats of Sephora by OPI Never Enough Shoes.

To apply this, I simply took one of my fingers from my free hand to stamp some onto my fingertip and then sprinkled it on the nail. I did this carefully to create tips as well.

I really like this and I think I'm going to try to create a path with this in the future. :) Very easy to do it yourself

hope you enjoyed and there will be a further review on more products from the sample pack!

<3katherine

[* these were sent to me to review]

Swap & Mini Haul

A mini haul at the beauty supply store and one nail polish from a swatch. Sorry if I'm boring you with swatches you've probably already seen. I cut my nails yesterday because they were breaking a bit on the edges and hopefully they'll grow back soon. I still have some swatches that I took before I cut my nails so it won't be dead around here *hopefully*. Looking at the swatches makes me sad because I miss my nails! T_T

Essie Demure Vixen

dusty grayed out pink with a purple iridescent shimmer. 3 coats and no top coat. I've been lemming this a while and finally got my hands on it at a beauty store. The formula was a little thin but the third coat evened it out. It wasn't that bad applying it and it gave me no troubles. :)

OPI Cuckoo For This Color

medium jungle blue-green shimmer. 2 coats and no top coat. It's from OPI's Swiss Collection that I picked up in a beauty store by my boyfriend's pick♥ Application and formula was OPI great. :) One of my many favorites from their collection.

OPI I've Red The Script

first picture is one coat & no top coat and the second picture is two coats & no top coat. It's a one coater except that there's a small slight sign of VNL, but I'd still use it with one coat. Lovely color and I'm happy I swapped for this polish. :)

OPI Yodel On My Cell

medium blue with slight green shimmer. This is from their Swiss Collection also that I was able to pick up. My boyfriend picked this color out :)♥ The swatch is 2 coats and no top coat. AMAZING. I took the swatch pictures in my bathroom because the lighting worked better than my room. But for the rest of the pictures, the lighting worked better in my room, LOL. Anyways Amazing application and formula by OPI.

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

SH♥

Rite Aid has their sale again for most of the cosmetics for Buy 1 Get 1 1/2 off! Totally awesome and I decided that I should pick up more Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicures! :) Unfortunately, I'm still on a tight wallet right now so I only got 2. But no worries, I LOVE THEM and I hope you love them too!

Calypso Blue

an blue shimmer but it has an green iridescent shimmer. The swatch is 2 coats and no top coat. AMAZING! SERIOUSLY WHY DID I NOT GET YOU EARLIER?! I liked the bottle at the store but once I swatched it, I fell deeper in love, I swear!! Totally beautiful♥

Purple Pulse

a dark purple shimmer. The swatch is 3 coats and no top coat. On the second coat, I noticed that it didn't spread evenly to the tips, or maybe it's my eyesight! x: but I just wanted to be sure that it looks even. Beautiful! I don't have that many real purple, only lighter shades so this is a keeper! :) You could probably get off with 2 coats rather than me, 3 coats.

hope you enjoyed!

<3katherine

Scrangie

I haven't posted this one yet because I was hoping my bf would send me the pictures he helped take of my nails because my camera didn't pick up the beauty of it as much as his. Still, he hasn't sent it to me :( So I'm just going to post without them and edit it in the future.

my first bottle of Rescue Beauty Lounge! Scrangie was created by the popular nail blogger Scrangie with Ji from RBL. It's purple based with blue and green to create the color of a beetle's wings. I was surprised because as I was browsing RBL, I saw Scrangie and I rushed and ordered it. It arrived within a few days, and when I opened the package, I was kind of surprised that it was so small compared to what I thought it looked like online. It's .4 mL so there's .1 mL less than Essie, China Glaze and OPI bottles. But nonetheless it's definitely a must have for me! I think I might order a back up bottle in the future. It was released before and it sold out. Ji from RBL re-released Scrangie and another RBL. :) I'm happy I got this and I'm absolutely in love with this. The swatch is 2 coats and 1 coat of top coat. ♥♥♥

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

Prevail

Today I went to watch Despicable Me with the boyfriend and I loved it!♥ I thought it was funny and cute :). Before and after the movies, I went to 2 different Duane Reade's to get top coat since my Seche turned horribly thick & useless. At the first Duane Reade, there was no Seche :( but I picked up 2 bottles of nail polish, one which I never heard of before so I decided to try one out since the color looked really nice but it was $6 a bottle, kind of pricey for a drug store polish. After the movies, I went to the Duane Reade closer to the movie theater and found my Seche♥.

Swatches!

Essie Pretty Edgy

green, kind of hard to describe what kind of green but it's not very blue based though - that didn't help much, lol. The swatch is 2 coats and no top coat. For the nails picture, I used China Glaze Strawberry fields to create the strawberry and Pretty Edgy as the leaves of a strawberry. The seeds look like a fail, maybe because I rushed it and it looks awkwardly placed. Another time I'll redo the strawberry nails :P. Overall I like the formula, application, drying time and the color is unique in my collection since I don't own that many greens excluding mint greens. :)

Prevail See You In Chelsea

light sky blue with green shimmer. The swatch is 3 coats with no top coat and there's VNL. This is the brand that I'm unfamiliar with and as I googled it, I only found it relating to 'diapers' (drugstore.com) & Nubar. The price is eh, which made me hesitant but I wanted to try it out. So this isn't the type of nail polish to be the base coat but rather layered. I wanted to see which blue would go nicely under and here are the pictures. After layering them on top, I noticed that it was mostly a green shimmer than blue shimmer. You can't see it well on top of Essie's LOL or CC TMTYC but I like them best on those two, for the 'water' look that I'm looking for to do my nails with. :P

Thumb Claire's Fresh Water (4 coats), index American Apparel Peacock (2 coats), middle Essie Lapis of Luxury (2 coats), ring Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Fairy Teal (2 coats) and pinky Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau (1 coat).

As I was going home, the boyfriend and I were contemplating on ideas and he came up with the movie Titanic. Although I'm a noob at nail art this was a pretty good attempt. On my left hand I made the iceberg, though it doesn't completely look like one.. I'm most proud of it and the 'fail' Titanic, lol. On my right hand since I'm terrible with making nail art with my left hand, I tried to make a necklace relating to when Rose threw the necklace into the ocean. The pendent was kind of a fail but I do like the chain lol. Overall, it was a good experience and challenge for me because I usually do the same, similar or easy nail arts. :)

Used: China Glaze Ruby Pumps, Essie Chinchilly, Essie Lapis of Luxury, LA Colors Nail Art Gold Glitter, OPI Alpine Snow and Prevail See You in Chelsea.

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine

Double SOTD&NOTD

Yesterday I was unable to do the sotd & notd because after my classes I had to watch a Broadway show which made me end up coming home at 11:30pm-ish. So to make up for it, today's a double sotd & notd :)

Day 3 - looked at Ricky's but no urge to buy nail polishes. :] Hope I could keep this up and keep myself sane! :P

Swatches Of The Day (2):

(top - indoors; bottom - outdoors)

Zoya Ava : two coats no top coat, peachy pink. Ava is really cute and easy to apply. Really hard to capture in the sunlight since it kind of blended in with my skintone. But nonetheless, a good french manicure color! :)

Zoya Charla : I believe this is from Zoya's new glitter collection. it's turquoise blue glitter with iridescent green, yellow and blue-green colors seen in different viewpoints. My camera couldn't pick up the iridescent colors but it's soo beautiful. It's one of my favorites out of my Zoya batch. :)♥ The swatch has two coats with no top coat.

Nails Of The Day (2):

Zoya Ava

LA Colors Nail Art Black

LA Colors Nail Art Gold Glitter

LA Colors Nail Art White

Zoya Charla

LA Colors Nail Art Gold Glitter

(2) 6mm Clear Rhinestones

hope you enjoyed,

<3katherine