My Picks from the Zoya Winter Holiday 2015 Matte Velvet Collection!

Hi everyone! I'm baaack! How are you all doing today? I've been a little busy with school and work, but otherwise I've been good.
So a few days ago I caught wind of a brand new Winter Holiday collection from Zoya. A new Matte Velvet collection! Now, I really liked the last Matte Velvet collection, but back then I had a very small budget so I ended up missing out on most of them. So of course I had to snap these up. I ran out and bought 4 of them. I skipped on Honor (green) and Amal (red). So here we go..onto the swatches!

Sue is a pale champagne gold matte. It has some pretty subtle multi colored shimmer in it. Gorgeous!

Yves is a dark blue matte. This one was really opaque. I did two coats. I did have some minor staining with this one so use a base coat underneath it!

Iris is a warm purple matte. I really want to put a shiny top coat over it. It's got some fuchsia flecks in there that make it gorgeous! 2 coats.

Aspen is a shimmery white matte. I had the highest hopes for this one. This one is my favorite color wise. The crisp bright white looks like snow! But that being said..the formula was a disappointment. It went on thicker than the others and did not want to self level. You can see how it still looks a bit uneven in places. I used 3-4 coats.

Overall, I love this collection! My favorites are Iris and Aspen (although I wish that it had a better formula). Sue is pretty too but I'm not sure if it agrees with my skin tone. What are your favorites? Are you loving mattes as much as I am? Let me know, I want to hear from you!
As always, happy painting! :)

Dance Legend Roz (pic heavy)

Hi everyone! Sorry it's been a while since my last post. I'm back in school now and i've started a new job. Those things combined take up a lot of my time, but i'll keep posting whenever I can.

I’m very excited about the polish I have to show you today. For a long time I’ve had my eye on the brand Dance Legend. They have such gorgeous polishes but since the shipping pushes the cost over $20 for just one..I wasn’t able to get my hands on any of them. Until that is..I was going through a facebook nail polish sale group, and saw that someone was selling some. Naturally I jumped on the opportunity and bought five of them. Today I have the first one I put on to share with you!

This is Roz, a pink, gold, green multichrome from the Chameleon collection. Because it’s a multichrome of course I had to take a ton of pictures..

Now..onto my little review..

Application

Easy breezy beautiful. Haha I think I just channeled Covergirl commercials. But seriously, that's what the application of this polish was like. Two easy coats.

Look

I love it. When I first bought it I was worried that it would be too close to ILNP Nostalgia, which I already have. But it’s actually pretty different. Nostalgia has a distinctly red base and Roz has a bright magenta base. It’s gorgeous. It shifts from pink to gold to green effortlessly.

Price

Here’s where things get tough. These are expensive to buy directly from Dance Legend, since it’s an international brand. That puts the price up over $20 for it, and ive heard that shipping takes a while. I recommend checking out some of Dance Legends other stockists, and check blog sales and destashes on places like storenvy. Ebay also carries it for $19 with shipping.

Overall

I wish these were easier to come by here in the USA, because I’m in love with this brand! I will continue to look through destashes for them, and I recommend that you do too! They're great!

Happy painting!

Color Club Miss Bliss

Hi everyone! So..it’s August already. Wow summer is flying by so fast. It won’t be long before I start my new after school job. I hope that i’ll still find the time to blog!

So, when you think of the brand Color Club, what do you think of? For me, I think Halo Hues. The two collections are the stars of the brand if you ask me. I’m very excited about the brand new collection that’s going to come out sometime this year! Stephanie from Imperfectly Painted has wheel swatch pictures of them here.

So today I was in a Halo Hues mood and thought i’d show you one I have from the collection.

This beauty is Miss Bliss, and it’s a gorgeous pink linear holo. Here’s my short but sweet review..

Application

Pretty much flawless. I used two coats and it applied like a dream. It also dried really fast, which was a nice plus.

Look

I adore it. In low light it looks like a shimmery metallic and in direct light BAM it hits you with rainbows!

Price

$7.40 on Amazon. Also, if you live in Maryland, you can get it for $6 at Maxim Beauty Supply in Hyattsville. It’s where I bought my bottle.

Overall

You need the Halo Hues. They are awesome and a great addition to anyone's collection.
Happy painting! :)

Happy Elephant Nail Art

Hi everyone! How was your week? Honestly..I didn’t have a great one myself. Picked up some sort of virus so I had to deal with that while some other stuff went down in my personal life. So I was feeling pretty down a few days ago, and decided that I needed a pick me up in the form of some cheerful nail art. It took me a while to think of something happy to do, but I finally decided on elephants. Elephants are my favorite non pet animals, and baby elephants are even cuter..so I worked for a while and..

I ended up with an adorable design of a baby elephant making a rainbow. Is this not cute? I’m very pleased with it, and it definitely cheered me up.

The polishes I used were Butter London Petticoat for the base sky color, Sinful Colors Pistashe for the grass, an unnamed light grey shimmer for the Elephant, Sinful Shine Bottoms Up for the water he’s spraying, and the rainbow is made up of Revlon Cherries In The Snow, Deborah Lippmann Lara’s theme, Revlon Sunburst, Ruby Wing Green Peace, Rimmel London Blue My Mind, and Funky Fingers Riot. I also used black acrylic paint to do the Elephant’s outline and the ground.

So, what do you think? Does nail art make you happy?  

Textured American Flag Nail Art

Hi everyone! I hope all you summers have been going amazingly! As for mine, it’s been great. Last week I chaperoned a middle school mission trip, so that was fun, even though I broke a thumb nail working in an urban garden. It was worth the loss to help homeless people though (all the food we picked from the garden was donated to the local food bank), so i'm not complaining. Mission comes before nails. So anyway, as all of you Americans and probably even the rest of you know, yesterday was the Fourth of July. I did up doing nail art for it, but by the time I finished it the sun had gone down so I couldn’t take pictures until today! So here you go! My textured American Flag nails!

So to do this I first made the design in glossy polish, then went over it with textured. I used Sinful Colors Snow Me White, Revlon Cherries In The Snow, and Sinful Colors Endless Blue for that part, then went over the design with OPI Get Your Number (blue), Magazine Cover Mouse (red) and Solitaire (white). I think they turned out super adorable, although next year i’ll try to be more creative with the theme. I saw some amazing designs yesterday. Which reminds me, if you did a Fourth of July mani yesterday, please drop a link in the comments! I’d love to see what you came up with!

So, I hope you all had an amazing Fourth! Happy Painting!

Glitter Placement Strawberry Nail Art

Hi everyone! How is everyone's summer going? I just got back from a trip to Maryland myself. Anybody looking forward to any trips that you're going to take?
Anyway, I figured it's been a while since I've done any nail art, so that's what I have to show you today.
I present to you some glitter placement strawberry nails!

What I did is I painted my nails with a base of OPI Hey Baby, then painted Pop-arrazi Never Too Rich onto a piece of paper and picked up and placed the glitter with a toothpick to create the green top. Then I did the same thing with Elf Dream Maker for the seeds. I think this turned out really adorable. I love fruit nail art!

So, see you next time. Happy painting!

Funky Fingers Neon Shimmers!

Hi everyone! So, how’s your summer been going so far? I love summer. Classes are out, pools are open, and all the summer colors come out, particularly neons.

I have to confess something, I have a love hate relationship with neons. I love the bright colors, but often the formula’s are less than perfect. But I have found two that I love! Not only are they bright and pretty, they’re shimmers! That’s right, neon shimmers!

Behold the glory of these two Funky Fingers polishes.

All The Rave is a neon pink with orange shimmer. It dries to a matte finish, as you can see in the photos. Shown is two flawless coats. It was super easy to apply. I think it’s one of the best formulas out of any polish I own. It is that amazing.

Funky Fingers All The Rave Direct Sunlight

Funky Fingers All The Rave Indirect light

Glowstick is All The Rave’s yellow sister. It definitely lives up to its name. It’s an almost highlighter bright neon yellow with yellow shimmer. LOVE. This color is gorgeous and so bright! The formula wasn't quite as good as All The Rave, but still nice, especially for a neon yellow, which are known to often have formula issues. To get a completely smooth finish you need to do a few things. The first is to watch the brush, I found that I sometimes had to dip the brush into the bottle more than once to make sure I got enough to make a complete coat, if you don't do this it might go on patchy. Secondly make sure to let each coat dry before adding another. Thick coats have a tendency to bubble. Follow those instructions and it looks great! It can be opaque in three coats but I had to use four for a few nails. Note: In the shade picture it looks brighter than it is. It doesn't glow in the dark (unfortunately).

Funky Fingers Glowstick Sunlight

Funky Fingers Glowstick Shade

So, in conclusion, these are absolute must haves for anyone who loves bright colors. Also, good news for those who don’t have access to a Five Below store, these are available on ebay! Go here and here to buy them! I promise, you won’t be disappointed!

So, what are your favorite summer colors?