Ruby White Tips Kim

Hello! I have a real treat for you today!  It's the most gorgeous, delicate, complex, neutral polish I have ever seen.  It is in no way boring, and pretty much everyone will stop you and ask you what polish you are wearing.  At least, that's what happened when I wore it :)  It's Ruby White Tips in Kim.  Lets just go straight to the photos!

Direct Sunlight

Direct Sunlight 

Direct Sunlight

I also have an indoor picture and a macro, to show just how complex this unassuming little neutral is :)

Indoors Artificial Light

Macro- Look at the subtle holo scattered and tiny flecks of pink scattered around!

So that's Kim!  You can buy Kim and other Ruby White Tips beauties HERE!  All pics are of two buttery smooth coats. With almost no cleanup!  See you all again soon! xx

Untrieds Marathon! Classic Barielle Elle's Spell and Myrza's Meadow

Hi all! Did I tell you guys that I'm doing an untrieds marathon of sorts?  So many polishes just sitting there, being beautiful and unloved.  So sad!  So we will fix this, yes? Yes! This is also helping me weed out what to give away and what to keep.  My give away box is woefully small, so I need to beef that up.  Anyway, on with the polishes!  Today I have two "classic" Barielle polishes.  I say classic because they are well known, and have been around for a while.  But like a classic, they never get old.  First up is Barielle Elle's Spell, which is a gorgeous red jelly rainbow flakies.  The flakes are mostly orange,yellow, green changing but, in certain lights you can see blue and indigo.  Flakies seem to love lower lighting best. This is one coat of Elle's Spell over Fingerpaints Expressionist Red and three thin coats on it's own on the ring finger.

Isn't she a beauty?  This one is just so gorgeous I had to give her a beauty mark in the form of a small rhinestone. :)

What do you think of the stone?  I think it's pretty cute, and I might add it to all my swatches as sort of "my thing".  Lets see one more :)

Next up I have Myrza's Meadow.  This is a apple green jelly with lots of scattered holo glitter.  Green? Check. Jelly? Check. Holo? Check! So cute and fun, this is one of my favorite polishes.  

I got a little tiny dent in the middle nail that I didn't notice until I uploaded these photos.  Just ignore it and enjoy the polish! LOL!

And one more for good luck.

Isn't she adorable?  Well, that's all for today.  I will be back soon with many *many* more untrieds. :)  What do you think of these two?  And what are your thoughts on the stone on my accent finger?  Should I have that as a signature type of thing or is it kinda cheesy?  Don't be afraid to say it's cheesy if you think it is! Ok? Ok! Love you guys and I'll see you soon! :)

Friday Face-Off! Zoya Tinsley vs. Tiffany

Indirect sun

Hello my lovely readers! This is a new feature that I plan on doing every Friday, where I pit two similar polishes against each other and see who wins. Although, I have to be honest here and say that I will probably be unable to ever call a polish a "loser". They are all beautiful in their own way, says the nail polish addict... Haha! Another reason that I'm doing this, other than I love doing comparison posts, is that I'm trying to thin out my stash a little bit and this will help me decide whether or not I *need* both polishes. Today we have two Zoyas in the ring. Tinsley and Tiffany. Tinsley is from the Summer 2013 Irresistible collection and is described as "A full-coverage, rose gold foil metallic." And is classified as both warm and cool. Tiffany is from the Flame collection and is described as "Pink, peach and light copper toned foil particles accented by flecks of gold foil." The description of Tinsley should pretty much be the same as Tiffany, as I wouldn't call Tinsley a metallic. They both have a heavy helping of gold particles (I always want to call them platelets, because that's what they really looks like!) and the base on both are in the pink family.

Tinsley is on the left and Tiffany is on the right.  I took most of the pictures outside on a sunny-ish day, so that I could get the truest colors.  On my hand, Tinsley is on my thumb, middle, and pinky fingers, and Tiffany is on my index and ring fingers in all the following pictures.

Direct Sunlight

Direct sunlight

I was very surprised when I uploaded these pictures, as I was sure they were going to be much closer looking than they appear in the photo.  But I had been looking at them mostly in indoor artificial light.  And let me tell ya, when you are inside, they look pretty much identical.  I even asked a few people to look at my polish and tell me if they notice anything different about them.  No one could tell a difference.  Being a polish junkie, I could tell that Tiffany had a bit warmer base, but the gold in both of them pretty much obscures the differences in the base colors.

Lets take a look at a couple indoor photos in the ol' light box, shall we?

Lightbox

Lightbox

Pretty close eh?  And lets see how they look in indirect natural light.

Indirect natural light

Still quite similar.  Which do I like better? It's a tie. (you knew I was going to say that didn't you?)  I love them both, I love the warmth of Tiffany and the more saturated pink in Tinsley. Do I need both? This time yes.  I don't give away my Zoyas.  Ever. Haha! The formula was pretty much the same on both, but with Tinsley being slightly more opaque.  So what do you guys think? Which do you like better? Is it a tie for you as well?

Let me know what you think of this new feature, do you like it, hate it, or just meh about it?  If you like it, I have a comparison of a Pure Ice and Dare to Wear polish to show you next week. 

Until next time, my beautifully polished friends!

*These polishes were bought by me and all opinions are mine.  Good or bad, I will always be truthful to you, my readers. :)

If you haven't tried Zoya, I highly recommend that you do! They have great sales, the polishes are fantastic and they always have new and innovative collections. If you click my link you will get a free bottle of Zoya with your new account and if you buy two more, you get free shipping! Share The Love With Zoya

Tri-Polish Challenge Day one

Hello again!  Today I have a mani that I did for the Tri-Polish challenge that is being hosted at The Crumpets Nail Tarts.  What the hell is a Tri- Polish challenge you ask?  Well, it's a rather brilliant and fun challenge. What the idea is, is you're given three colors, this month it's coral, green, and purple.  And you have to pick three polishes of those colors and use them in a mani.  There will be four manicures done with these colors and you must use at least 2 of the assigned colors in all of the manis and one mani needs to include all three. You may also use white, black, gold, silver and glitter toppers.  But the three polishes that you chose cannot change. A little complicated to explain, but I hope you get the idea.  I must admit I was a little skeptical about this at first, but I love the concept now! It really forces you to be creative and do things you may not have thought of before. So on to the pics! For the first day I chose to do a plaid, and incorporated all three colors plus white to break things up a little bit.  The three polishes that I'm stuck with for the next 4 manis (I say stuck with, because it's so easy to say oh, this purple would be better than the other one I chose, but nope! You must stick with the ones you chose! Hard!) anyway, the three I chose are China Glaze Surreal Appeal for the coral color, Pop beauty in Row for the green, and Color Club Disco Dress for the purple.

I like how this came out! I used my new Orly striping brush and a cheap-y striping brush for the lines, and you can tell which lines were made with the cheap one! So in the future I will only be using my Orly brush, but other than that I'm happy with it! :)  Lets see what the other did with the challenge! 

Until next time! 

Julep Feb. Box Part 2 - Finally!

Hello all! Sorry for the incredibly late post for these swatches!  I am so used to doing all my posting on Facebook now, that I forget to come over here.  But, I plan to do a lot more swatching and I think it's good to have them in both places, so keep watching out for posts! Also, the Tri-Colored Challenge has started on The Crumpets Nail Tarts and I will post them here as well as on Facebook. I will explain what the hell a tri-colored challenge is in my post ;) It's really a brilliant and fun challenge! Anyway, on with the polish!

First up is one of the holos. This is Ginger, Which Julep describes as a sand holographic. It was really hard to photograph the holos in this box.  The holo isn't a strong linear one, but not quite scattered either.  It's a beautiful color, and the soft holo makes it look kind of fuzzy. In a good way. I will definitely wear this again.

One more pic of this beauty!

Such a pretty neutral with a little kick!

Next up is Rebel. The other holo from the box. Wow, 2 holos from Julep! Way to go Julep! Now if you could get the holo just a wee bit stronger...

Rebel is a silver holo with the same very soft and fuzzy holo that Ginger has. The formula on this one was a little chalky but not too bad.  It was workable.

Again, this was very difficult to photograph and I'm sorry for the crappy pics :/

Next let's take a look at Joan.

Isn't she gorgeous?  Julep describes Joan as raspberry plum with rose gold shimmer. It's definitely a deep raspberry but on the nail, it looks like there is both brighter pink and gold shimmer.

Again, crappy pic but beautiful polish. Formula was great too.

Along the lines of Joan we have Marion, which Julep describes as smoky blue with silver shimmer. Smoky blue? Huh? Ok, I don't know what they were smoking but I would describe this as a vivid, saturated teal with a bit of dustiness from the shimmer. It looks more teal in person than in the photo here.

Good formula on this one too.
Next up is Ellie.

Julep describes this one as opalescent seashell pink with holographic shimmer. Umm, yeah. No. On it's own this is definitely seashell pink, a frosty pearly seashell pink.  This was 4 coats. The holographic shimmer they were talking about? I didn't see any of that. Perhaps they are referring to the opalescent pearly finish.  I knew this would be better layered so I tried it over some of the cremes.

Thumb is Ellie over Laura, index is over Claudette, middle is over Julianne and I have completely forgot what the other two are! LOL! I'm sorry!  But I think it looks very pretty over Julianne (the middle) and just might wear it again that way. Maybe.
Lastly is Oscar.

Julep describes Oscar as an ultra chic multi-dimensional gold glitter.  Yep, it's gold glitter and it's quite nice too. This is two coats over Laura except on the index finger which is one coat. If it looks like it's patchy it really isn't.  It lights up and dies down in when you move your hand. Almost the way a duochrome does, if that makes any sense.  I'm by no means a glitter expert, so I'm not sure if there are a lot of glitters that do this, but this is new to me and a really neat effect.

Well, that'd be all for today! Whew! I know these pics are really quite crappy, and I really do apologize for that.  I have a new camera now and hopefully I will be putting out better pics!  Until next time polish lovin' friends! :)

31 Day Challenge- Skittle!

Oh hai there ;) Day 7 of the 31DC is Ombre or Skittle. I chose to do a skittle. What is a skittle you ask? Good question! A skittle is when each nail is different. Whether it be all different colors or different patterns, etc. I chose to do different designs on each nail.

I didn't originally set out to do a checker board pattern on the thumb.  I initially just did the 3 down the center, and then decided to do the whole thing. So it's a little wonky!

I started with a base color of Color Club's Disco Dress on the thumb, middle, and pinkie nails and Studio M's Grape Escape on the index and ring.  They are the most perfect vibrant true purples I've seen.  And I looked high and low on the interwebs and asked around in polish groups to find just the right purple(s). These are it baby! They are very similar to each other except Studio M is a little more red based and *slightly* deeper in color than the Color Club which is more vibrant.

This is the most accurate picture of the colors, but it still isn't showing how truly purple the colors are.  I took pics of just the purples before the nail art and it turned out straight up blue. *sigh* I know it's hard to photograph purples correctly, but c'mon! I didn't bother keeping the pictures as they looked nothing like the true color. Anyway, this is my skittle.  There are many like them, but this one is mine. LOL, a little Full Metal Jacket reference there.
Other colors used are all Sinful Colors:
Sweet Nothing, Innocent, Lavender, Candy Coated and Sweet Tooth.

Check out the other talented polishers below and see what they did for day 7!

31 DC- Day 6 Favorite Color Family

Hello again! I'm going to make this quick as I have lots more to do! Day 6 of the 31 Day Challenge is Your Favorite Color Family.  If you know me from some of the polish groups on Facebook, then you probably know I love all things earthy, mossy, murky, and unusual.  If something is described as a "pretty/ugly" color, I'm sooo there! While I truly do love all colors (really! Every last one of them! except some shades of bubble gum pink) I love the ones below the most.

I think this ended up looking like toads skin, or pebbles. It's kinda ugly, it's different, and I like it. :) Let's see what the others used as their favorite colors, check 'em!