Reverie Nail Lacuqer Hot Chocolate + nail art

This polish has been sitting around in my stash for far too long without being shown off!  I won it in an Instagram giveaway from Reverie Nail Lacquer quite some time ago.  I think it's from the winter/holiday 2014 collection.  I actually did swatch it back then, but I never wrote up a blog post about it and forgot how many coats I used and everything, so it never got published.

Anyway, I decided to don this beauty again this week because it's the first week of autumn!  Huzzah!

Hot Chocolate is a truly gorgeous chocolate brown holo.  It's a bit sheer, so I have one coat of Hot Chocolate over one coat of Zoya Nyssa (which is a beautiful chocolate-milk brown creme).  Talk about chocolatey goodness!

This polish definitely makes me crave a steaming mug of hot cocoa.  You haven't lived until you've tried my Mom's instant hot cocoa mix!  Although hers is a lighter shade of brown than this polish. ;)

This first week of autumn has been infuriatingly cloudy and rainy, so I didn't get any sunlight pictures; but here's a direct light shot for you!  I absolutely adore the holo flashes in this.

I won this set of vinyls from mrspoole1128 on Instagram - aren't they great?  The red polish is Zoya India.  She's not holographic, but she's absolutely stunning!

This is the first of many autumn manicures that will be headed your way this year - but I do still have a couple of leftover neon manis to show you as well!  Since it's September 30, though, I'm thinking that the next month's worth of posts will be all Halloween-themed.  So stay tuned, because I have some great ones planned!

Independence Day Nail Art

Happy Independence Day Weekend, everybody!  And happy regular weekend to my non-American readers ;)

The Fourth of July was the very first time I tried my hand at nail art - you can see my 100% freehand, no-tools flag design in last year's post.  Ever since then, I've enjoyed playing with different designs to celebrate the holiday.

This year's design is inspired by Jamberry's wrap design  Black and White Quad.  I've been doing abstract designs for the past two years, and I kind of wanted to stick with that.  I'm also really proud of how not-yellow my nails are right now, so I wanted to show them off with a bit of naked nail art!

The colors I used are the same as always for the 4th: OPI An Affair in Red Square, China Glaze Blue Iguana, and Sally Hansen Hi Ho Silver.  My bottle of An Affair in Red Square is quite old and I didn't add enough polish thinner to it - so it was actually really hard to get even coverage across the tips of my nails.  It was so thick and gloopy that even with two coats of fast-dry top coat, plus a few coats of Zoya's quick-dry drops, AND washing my hands a few times in cold water, it was still wet enough to get dinged and smooshed after a few hours!  It may be time to retire this beauty :'(

So, after I'd painted the silver base on my left hand, I was suddenly struck with inspiration to use my Crackle polishes.  I tested the idea out on my right ring finger and I liked it so much that I went a little crazy with different combinations!

My silver crackle is Sally Hansen Fractured Foil, while the blue is OPI Turquoise Shatter.  I used the same red, blue, and silver underneath the crackles and decided to see what crackle looks like over naked nail because why not?  I think my favorite look on this hand, especially for the Fourth of July, is my ring finger.

What do you think of this mixed mani nail art?  Which style is your favorite?  Got any exciting plans for the holiday?  Let me know in the comments!

CDB Lacquer: Apocalypse Averted collection

I first discovered the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the 7th grade.  It was still airing its final season on TV, but I had to catch up on the first six seasons on DVD.  (Netflix was around at this time, but if they did offer instant streaming already, my family with its dial-up internet did not utilize it, and I didn't have much say over which DVDs we received.)  I quickly became obsessed and have since re-watched the show at least three or four times, plus several annual viewings of the three Halloween episodes.

When Cheyenne of CDB Lacquer released a Buffy-inspired collection last March, I knew that I absolutely needed all of them.  There was no way I would be able to buy just the blue and maybe one other polish, because that would feel too much like leaving out my closest friends in favor of only two of them.  So I got the whole collection in mini sizes, in order to save my wallet a little bit of the trouble.

Due to many silly reasons, it's taken me well over a year to finally get around to swatching all of these.  (You'll even get to see my old nail shape again!)  The polishes are long gone from cdblacquer.com, but they're far too beautiful for me not to share them with you!  Who knows, perhaps with enough demand Cheyenne will be incensed to bring them back to the shop.

I wasn't blessed with any sunny days at all when I was swatching these polishes, and they're all at least a little bit holographic!  Direct sunlight shows off holos the best.  Under my lamps, the holo glitters still look nice, but you don't get to see the rainbow sparkle very well.

Powerful Magics

"The magics I use are very powerful.  I'm very powerful."

That perfectly royal shade of purple, Powerful Magics draws its inspiration from the character Willow Rosenberg.  I think this color fits Willow perfectly.  It would compliment her fiery red hair very well, for one thing.  The holographic sparkles in this polish, which are subtle in indoor lighting but brilliant in sunlight, also remind me of Willow.  Like the sparkle, Willow's powers were subtle in seasons 1-3; then in seasons 4-7, she grew into herself, her confidence, and her power.

Two coats was enough for full opacity on this one, but I used three coats on my pointer and ring fingers just to see if it affected the color at all.  I think a third coat makes the color a little bit deeper and darker.

A Monster's Nightmare 

"I'm the thing that monsters have nightmares about."

This shade is inspired by Buffy herself.  It's a truly gorgeous shade of bright, ruby red.  I think Buffy would love this polish.  In the show, she mainly sported the delicate pinks and taupe-ish nudes that were so trendy in the 90s, but I think she would also really like this vampy color.  (Um, can I call this vampy if it's inspired by the Slayer??)

On the first coat, the color kind of reminded me of raspberry jelly!  I was tempted to lick my nails.  Two coats of A Monster's Nightmare is plenty for opacity.  I have three coats on my middle finger because my second coat came out a bit streaky (the downside of minis - tiny brushes tend to lead to uneven application).  I'm about 95% sure that the streakiness was only due to the small size of my brush, and not the formula of the polish.  As you can see, a third coat deepens the color a little bit, but not by much.

Removal of this polish is surprisingly easy!  With red nail polish, I usually wind up with red stains all over my fingers so badly that I have to exfoliate my skin in order to get rid of the red.  Not so with this polish!  My skin was nice and stain-free, and with two coats of base coat, my nails also escaped red staining.

He Sees All

“Seven years, working with the Slayer.  Seeing my friends get more and more powerful, all of them.  And I’m the guy who fixes the windows.  They’ll never know how tough it is, Dawnie.  To be the one who isn’t chosen, to live so near to the spotlight and never step in it.  But I know.  I see more than anybody realizes because nobody’s watching me.”

He Sees All is inspired by Xander Harris.  It's a lovely shade of blue-toned gray that reminds me of a starry sky.  That seems very fitting for Xander, in two ways: abstractly because his sight is as endless as the night sky; directly because many times throughout the course of the show, he speaks of his Christmas tradition of camping out under the stars to escape his dysfunctional family. 

As with the previous polishes in this collection, He Sees All is opaque in two coats.  I have a third coat on my pointer finger because a stray fuzzy forced me to ding up my second coat a little bit; as you can see, there isn't really a difference in color or glitter depth between two and three coats.

Bloody Hell

"Inspired by 'William the Bloody' aka Spike, a vampire who fights for his soul. Spike sacrificed his life in the final battle against the First Evil, permanently closing the Hellmouth."

If anyone in the show deserves a blood red color in their honor, it's Spike!  From his vampiric need for blood to his frequent British use of the expression "bloody hell," any time I see a vampy blood-red color I immediately think of Spike.

Bloody Hell leans a bit to the rusty side of the red spectrum, more reminiscent of half-dried blood than fresh blood.  But it doesn't look nasty rusty, because it sparkles!  Nothing that sparkles this much can truly look like a nasty patch of dried blood.

This one is the thinnest of the bunch, requiring three coats for full opacity. 

Apocalypse Averted

"Inspired by the several events that almost caused an apocalypse and were averted thanks to Buffy and her friends aka the Scooby Gang."

Throughout the course of the show, there were no less than eight apocalypses that the Scooby Gang thwarted off.  One could argue that there were more, and one would probably be right!

Apocalypse Averted has a clear base, and as a result it's very sheer.  I have two coats over my naked nail on my pointer finger; one coat over black on my middle; three coats over naked nail on my ring finger; and two coats over black on my pinkie.  Personally, I prefer the look of this polish on top of a solid color, but it does look good over the naked nail too!

This one is definitely the most holographic of the collection!  The microglitters are suuuuuper fine and holographic.  We're talking so fine that this almost applies as smoothly as a creme!

Macro at one coat over black

Angelic Demon 

"Inspired by Buffy’s true love, Angel aka Angelus. Angelus was cursed as vengeance for killing a member of a gypsy clan. They returned his soul, forcing him to live eternally in guilt over the countless crimes he had committed as a soulless vampire."

Angelic Demon is a thermal polish, which means that it changes color based on temperature.  When it's warm, it's significantly lighter than when it's cool.  I think a thermal polish is perfect for Angel because he's always so darn moody.  And blue makes it even better because blue is often associated with sadness, and Angel is definitely sad and broody most of the time. ;) 

This is my very first thermal polish!  I'm super impressed and may or may not have launched a new obsession.  My nails are so long now that, in a neutral state, the color is lighter near my cuticles and darker at my nail tips!  It's a lazy woman's ombre mani!

The shade of blue here is stunning.  When it's mediocre-warm, it reminds me of the blue raspberry jellybeans that were my favorite as a kid!  Angelic Demon definitely has that squishy look to it when it's warmer.  When it's cooler and darker, it is still gorgeous but loses a fraction of the depth to its dark pigmentation. 

What do you think of this collection?  If you're a Buffy fan, what do you think of the colors for each character?  Let me know in the comments!

Zoya Petals: Leia and Aster

I wasn't actually planning on getting any of this year's spring collection by Zoya, because I have so much nail polish that I'm running low on storage space.  But, inevitably, Zoya had an excellent sale that I couldn't resist - buy one Spring Fling Trio and get two free (sadly, that sale has ended).  I decided to keep one for myself and uh - do something else with the other two.  But every single set has at least one polish that I already own, so I ended up keeping one polish out of three different trios while setting the other two sets aside for, um, later use. ;)

The three polishes that I ended up keeping are Happi - a rather old one that I've been eyeing for ages - and Leia and Aster, which are both from Petals, the new spring collection.

Zoya Leia

Leia is a gorgeous pearly white.  Alone, she doesn't get opaque very easily.  I have one to four coats shown on my pinky to pointer fingers, respectively.  As you can see, even at four coats there is still plenty of visible nail line.  However, my pointer finger currently has some weird darkness under it that looks like a few small splinters (except it's not that, because they don't hurt and I never jammed my finger).  Those were plenty covered up at 3 coats, and barely visible at 2.  If your nails aren't as long as mine, two or three coats might suffice.

 

Leia has a purple and green microglitter flash in her (you can see it best in the bottom left corner of the bottle in the above photo).  On top of bare nails, you can still see plenty of white.  I decided to try it out over one coat of black on my thumb, and WOW!  The purple becomes less of a flash and more of a main color!  It pretty much only looks white at one very specific angle.

This color is really really pretty and I'd love to play with it over other colors some time - and it'd look great over a French Manicure!  It's definitely sheer enough that I'd almost call it a topper.  But, since it has such a distinct purple and green shimmer, I wouldn't just throw it on top of any random color without being confident that they'd match.

Macro at three coats

Macro over black

Leia's purple and green flashes come from very very fine microglitters - which you can see pretty clearly in the above brush shot!  I love it. 

 

Zoya Aster

 

Aster is a lovely shade of periwinkle-lilac.  There's a flash of blue and of pinkish-white in the form of superfine microglitters.  It's a very delicate color - have I been saying that a lot lately? I feel like I have - and perfect for spring.  I wish I had some lilacs to hold for a photo!

The flash of other colors isn't quite as pronounced in Aster as it is in Leia; Aster looks a bit more like your average metallic texture from a distance (and, sadly, to my camera).  But look very very closely and it's anything but average!

Aster is fairy sheer on the first coat, but the second coat makes it totally opaque (even on my talons).

 

Well, while I wasn't really in love with these colors online, I'm quite glad I got them!  I do have plenty of pastels, but Leia and Aster are very lovely and unique.

Do you have any polishes from this collection?  Which are your favorites?  Let me know in the comments!

Drippy Spring nail art

A few weeks ago, Deborah Lippman had an incredible 50% off sale on select shades.  I've been hesitant in the past to spend the whopping $18 per bottle on Lippmann polish, but since 50% off put it at only $9 per bottle, I was definitely willing to buy a few shades!  I ended up getting Don't Stop Believin', Build Me Up Buttercup, and Spring Buds.  The weather has been so gorgeous, warm, and sunny spring lately that I decided to use the second two polishes along with some of last year's Zoya spring shades in a manicure together.

I got these drippy nail vinyls back in October from a Mani of the Month box; the vinyls are by Nails Redesigned.  Naturally, I used them in some blood-themed manis for Halloween, but this time I decided to use some spring colors for a drippy, melty mani!

This was, I think, the first manicure I did after reshaping my nails from the awkward squared-round to a much more delicate round.  I'm much happier with the new shape of my nails - to me, they look more neat, they match the way my nails curve at the sides, and they even make my fingers look a little thinner!

 

The sparkly blue that I have on top of Build Me Up Buttercup is Zoya Rayne, and the sparkly purple on top of Spring Buds is Zoya Leslie.  Both are from last year's spring collection, Delight.

I just love this look!  The colors work really well with each other.

What are some of your favorite spring color combinations or nail art designs?  Let me know (or show me) in the comments!

St. Patrick's Day Giveaway!

I decided to take a peek at the nail polish when I was grocery shopping over the weekend, and when I saw the limited edition St. Patrick's Day glitter by Sinful Colors, I thought, hey, it's been a while since I had a giveaway!  So I decided to host this quick little giveaway.  Hopefully, the prizes will get to the winner in time for St. Patrick's Day!

San Fransisco

This one is just such a beautiful emerald green that I thought it needed to be included with the special glitter.

The formula is quite thin - I have three coats on my nails, and you can see that it's still a tiny bit sheer!  For full opacity, I'd recommend layering it on top of a solid creme.  (Black or a matching shade of green would probably look best!)

It photographed surprisingly horribly.  Under my lamps, it actually showed up blue!  This photo is much more color accurate, and I was standing in indirect sunlight.  For the photos under Feelin' Lucky, I was under my lamps and I had to edit the colors as best as I could.

Feelin' Lucky 

Feelin' Lucky is a really fun glitter topper.  Sadly, the shamrock glitters that you see so many of in the bottle are nearly impossible to get onto the nail.  It probably took me a good 5 minutes of fishing just to pick out the 5 glitters for this mani!  That's a bit disappointing.  But the other types of glitter are much easier to get on the nail, and they're still fun and St. Patrick's themed.

From left to right, I have it on top of San Fransisco twice, Salon Perfect Loopy Lime, and Salon perfect Sugar Cube.  The small green glitters show up much better on top of a lighter color!  Personally, I like it best on top of Loopy Lime - the bright green has a faint shimmer to it, so it adds to the fun effect of the glitter.

The glitters are quite spread-y, so during application it's best to dab the glitters on, rather than spread the brush across the nail.  This one showed up on my camera much more accurately than San Francisco did!

 

As a little bonus, each polish in the giveaway will come with a cozy crocheted by Kate's Crochets, which is unsurprisingly my crochet shop!  I have a lot of fun making these because they only take about ten seconds.  Okay no, not really, but they are quick and fun for me!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Giveaway Rules 

As in the past, I'm running this giveaway through Rafflecopter.  Enter through the widget above!

1. Prize is only available to residents of the United States.

2. Giveaway opens on Wednesday, March 9 at 12:01 am EST and ends Sunday, March 13 at 11:59 pm EST.  Winners will be contacted by 12:00 pm on March 14.  Once contacted, the winner will have 36 hours to respond and claim their prize or I will be forced to draw another winner.

3. No following and then unfollowing immediately after the giveaway ends.  Unfollowers will be noted and banned from future giveaways. 

4. Any posts for giveaway entries must be made public.  Private posts/accounts will not be able to be verified and therefore will be disqualified.

5.  The only entries required in order to be eligible to win are entering your location and e-mail.  All other entries, including re-posting images and visiting/following pages, are optional. 

6. Please be kind!  Anyone stirring up drama or being rude (to me or to other contestants) will be disqualified.

7. This giveaway is entirely sponsored by me, Kate of Kate's Nailing It and Kate's Crochets.  It has not been sponsored or endorsed by Sinful Colors or any of the platforms it is shared on (including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Google+).

As always, have fun with the giveaway and good luck!

Zoya Flair: Estelle and Aggie

When Zoya first released photos of their Fall 2015 collections Focus and Flair, I was a bit unimpressed.  I felt like I'd already seen most of the colors before, some of them even by Zoya themselves.  Then the first few blog posts on the collections came out, and to be honest, I still felt the same way about most of the colors.  They all look quite pretty, but they just didn't seem as original as most of the Zoya polishes have since I first started buying from them in spring 2014.  Maybe that just happens after you own 273 bottles of nail polish - it takes a heck of a lot more flair in a nail polish to make me say, "I need that!" than it did when I only owned 13 bottles.

But of course, I wanted the blue metallic, Estelle.  Do I ever not want the blue metallic polish in any given collection?  And Aggie, an intriguing colorshift metallic, looked so different and interesting that I had to have it.

Zoya Flair: Estelle

Estelle is an absolutely gorgeous shade of blue.  Let's face it, to me, every shade of blue is gorgeous, and I think I say that about every shade of blue polish I ever review.  Estelle is probably the closest imitator of sapphire that I've seen - many have imitated the color pretty well, but few have gotten the brilliant sparkle of the stone.  The way the polish sparkles on my nail kind of brings out their curvature - but not in a weird, "her nails are really bendy" way.  It's more of a "this polish has tons of depth and really reflects the light" kind of curvature.

The first coat of Estelle is quite sheer, but the second coat yields perfect opacity.  A lot of Zoya's darker metallics are almost one-coaters, but not this one.  I almost always use two coats anyway, just to make sure the line bordering my cuticles looks good, so that's not a big deal for me.

I really love the texture of the metallic.  It's incredible how many different types of metallic nail polish there are!  I've actually been meaning to create a guide to the different types of metallics, but now I kind of feel like there are just too many to document.  But definitely let me know in the comments if you would like to see a guide to the different textures!

Zoya Flair: Aggie

Aggie is definitely the most unique polish in this collection.  Its colorshift looks very striking in the bottle, with hints of blue-green at the edges, but on the nail it isn't quite so shifty.

In different types of light, it looks very different.  It's a warm gold, almost leaning copper, under my yellowish lamps, but as I was washing my hands in my white-lit bathroom, it almost looked like a chocolate brown.  The blue-green shift that I see in the bottle doesn't really show up at all on the nail, nor did it show up in my pictures.

The photos on Zoya's website are actually very accurate.  You can see the greenish hues in the bottle shot, but not on the swatch photo or the pool of polish.

Aggie's formula is very nice.  It's thin, but not watery, and opaque at two coats.  Very nice application, which is no surprise with Zoya.

Even though this polish wasn't exactly what I expected, I still really like this color!  It reminds me of the changing autumn leaves.

Zoya describes the texture of both of these polishes as "liquid metal," and I totally agree with that.  They're both so sparkly and smooth!

Do you have any of the polishes from this collection?  Which is your favorite?  Do any of them feel like dupes to you?  Let me know in the comments!