China Glaze Classic Camel

Stay with me on this one.  When I saw this bottle, I wasn't too excited either.  It reminds me of vanilla ice cream that was frostbitten.  But Classic Camel from the Vintage Vixen Fall 2010 Collection is AWESOME.  I had to stop myself from just making this my entire manicure.


It almost gave me mannequin hands, which I'm not complaining!  Such a cool color packed with microglitter.  China Glaze describes it as khaki creme with gold micro glitter and boy, does it ever have gold microglitter in it.  


I used Seche Natural for my base, 2 coats of Classic Camel, and a top of Seche Vite.  My brush on this bottle was a bit weird - almost like a fan brush - flat.  But that actually made application easier.  Go figure.

See!  Buttery yellow awesomeness!

Do you SEE that microglitter?!


Here's one in indirect sun.

Calm, cool, collected.


Finally a shade picture to finish you off:

This was when I was seeing mannequin hands but not quite in the pictures.  Either way, this is a fast favorite - and a yellow at that... without the problems of yellow!  YAY!

China Glaze [official website] can be found online through several etailers, including my favorite Head2Toe Beauty [official website], Sally's Beauty Supply [official website] as well asTransDesign [official website].

Disclosure: The product[s] in this post was [were] provided to me by the company for consideration.  For more information, please read this post.

China Glaze Goin' My Way?

I constantly say that I'm looking for a good neutral office color polish, but I don't work in an office.  I have the awesome gift of getting to work at home, so no one is going to give me a tsk if I show up at my computer wearing bright blue neon polish.  Regardless, I'm still looking for some good neutrals.


I have to say, at first, I was kinda "ho-hum" about the entire Vintage Vixen collection until I remembered that this is a FALL collection.  Now, Texas doesn't really have a "fall", but I did live in Oregon for awhile, so I remember leaves changing colors and falling down.  Once I remembered that, I was all excited for this collection again.


Goin' My Way? is listed as brown frost with copper shimmer and that's pretty much dead on.  I used Seche Natural for my base, 1 coat of Goin' My Way? and a top coat of Seche Vite.  This formula was interesting - no pooling in my cuticles but it seemed a tad thick runny at first, if that makes sense.  I worked it out.


As you can tell in the sun, my camera went OOH SHIMMER, so you see a lot of copper in these pictures mixed with the brown frost.

But in the shade, oh yum that brown frost comes alive.  This is a good office color to me.

Look how rich that is!  Reminds me of a chocolate bar.  Mmm chocolate.

China Glaze [official website] can be found online through several etailers, including my favorite Head2Toe Beauty [official website], Sally's Beauty Supply [official website] as well asTransDesign [official website].

Disclosure: The product[s] in this post was [were] provided to me by the company for consideration.  For more information, please read this post.

China Glaze Foxy

Do you see this?!  I was pretty excited about this color when it came in.  Apart of the Vintage Vixen collection, Foxy is as a burgundy frost with shimmer.  At first, I wondered if my Foxy and Riveter Rouge had their labels switched!  The bottle itself is so pretty!  I don't think I should take pictures at this time of day though with the sun nearly directly overhead - it makes my bottle pictures awkward.

I took another picture of the bottle so you could see the pretty shimmer but let me tell you, I didn't think this was a frost!  Actually, I'm horrible with finishes, so I'm going to link you now to Lacquerized and her amazing post on finishes [click here].

Anywho, now for pictures!  I used a base coat of Seche Natural, 2 thin coats of Foxy, and a top coat of Seche Vite.

I can see the "frost" now, because of the brush strokes, but WHO CARES?  I love this red - and there's an added amazing bonus.

Gold tones in the sun!  I'm a huge fan of anything red gold, and this polish is just that for me.  

Reds and I don't do well in the shade I'm learning, so I took an indirect sun picture (note how you can't see my pinkie finger?  It's all blown out in sun, heh).  I had to fight myself from making this a whole manicure - I really want to get this whole collection out first.  Plus I have so many more polishes to swatch still!  ^_^

I would buy this polish again, hands down if nothing else, for the gold shimmer tone.  Lovely lovely lovely.

China Glaze [official website] can be found online through several etailers, including my favorite Head2Toe Beauty [official website], Sally's Beauty Supply [official website] as well asTransDesign [official website].

Disclosure: The product[s] in this post was [were] provided to me by the company for consideration.  For more information, please read this post.

China Glaze Riveter Rouge

Launching July 6th, the Vintage Vixen Fall Collection looks pretty amazing.  Even though FedEx seriously attempted to crush my package (and I made the carrier list that the box was seriously CRUSHED before I'd sign  for it), all my polishes were happily in their boxes.  Riveter Rouge is listed as a "deep red shimmer" but do you see what's in the front of my bottle?  GLITTER.  Oh yes, glitter.  Teeny tiny silvery gold microglitter.  HEART.


I used a base coat of Seche Natural, only one coat of Riveter Rouge, and a top coat of Seche Vite.  The formula was pretty awesome - no pooling but it wasn't too thin.  After looking at my sun pictures, I could have probably afforded a second coat, but I was just too excited.

As you can see, the microglitter isn't as defined on the nail as it is in my bottle but look at that red!  It reminds me a bit of China Glaze Drive In from the Retro Diva collection, but I know they aren't exactly the same.  There's a bit of brush strokey ickness in this color but it's totally tolerable.  I just recently buffed my nails, so it's not my natural ridges.

Check out the back of my bottle - all that microglitter is gone!  It's like it all floated to the front of my bottle, possibly in shipment.  Oddly, this reminds me a LOT of the Specialty/Glitters & Cremes collection that China Glaze came out with... tons of glitter in the bottle, not so much on the nail, but still beautiful.

In the shade picture, you can really can't see the glitter or the brush strokes at all - just a nice pretty red shimmer.  How many reds can one girl have?  Well this girl can have this one too.  Happy camper!

China Glaze [official website] can be found online through several etailers, including my favorite Head2Toe Beauty [official website], Sally's Beauty Supply [official website] as well asTransDesign [official website].

Disclosure: The product[s] in this post was [were] provided to me by the company for consideration.  For more information, please read this post.

Glitter Comparison

I have a problem with shiny objects.  I see all the glittery pretty objects and my mind goes to La La land.  I will almost always buy rainbow glitter nail polish, even though I have tons of it.  I haven't EVEN gotten to all the rainbow glitter polish that China Glaze came out with for the Specialty collection, also called Glitters and Cremes.  Oy.  Deliberately blurry picture ahead!

China Glaze Polar Ice is from aforementioned Specialty/Glitters and Cremes collection.  China Glaze Fairy Dust is from Fashion Fairy collection.  Cover Girl City Lights 430is apart of the Boundless Color and is considered a top coat.  It was made to replace the discontinued Cover Girl Continuous shade Quicksilver 130.  Finally, Savvy Femme Couture "Touch of Glitter" was at my local Sally's in their summer displays.  These were all under $5 (more like $3.50, but I can't find my receipts so I'm guessing).


I knew that trying to post these on the nail bare, wasn't going to work.  Instead, I took a single coat of CND Blackjack over Seche Natural, and then just one coat of each glitter.  Here's the result.

As you can see Polar Ice has this blue/green flash to it, with large square glitter.  Fairy Dust and City Lights are totally dupes - both have the same coverage, the same amount of glitter.  Touch of Glitter is horrible.  Very sparse glitter.


I really liked Polar Ice so I took a super macro shot for you.

Yay!  Ultimately, Cover Girl City Lights was cheaper than China Glaze Fairy Dust BUT I only found one bottle of Cover Girl City Lights in my whole town and I had to literally sit on the floor to find it.  China Glaze Fairy Dust is in CG's core collection at Sally's (which is also at eye level and higher at my store).  I am pretty frustrated with Savvy though.  I have another bottle of it up on my untries and I just want to chunk it.  What's your favorite glitter from my 4?  (PS: this is just 4 swatched... I have like 10 more rainbow glitters including a bar glitter.)

Zoya Gilda

As soon as I saw this color, I immediately thought Wizard of Oz - did anyone else?  Gilda was apart of the 2010 Sparkle collection, and listed as "fashion pink sparkling metallic."  I'm still not sure why they considered this to be the "metallic" collection.  I'm still going with microglitter.  Pictures in the sun don't even remotely show how pretty this color is.


I used a base of Zoya Anchor, 2 coats of Gilda, and a top coat of Zoya Armor.  This polish was so pretty, went on like a glove on my nails - very nice, very soft.

My sun was setting at this point, so I snapped a quick sun picture so you can see how pretty this shines.  The pink is more reddish but did have a blue flash to it, which was quite awesome.

I adore microglitter or glass fleck or whatever - it's just so pretty.

Here in the shade, you can see that blue flash I was talking about - it comes from the glitter - quite cool.


Zoya [official website] can be purchased on their website for $7/bottle.

Disclosure: The product[s] in this post was [were] provided to me by the company for consideration.  For more information, please read this post.

Claire's Mood Daring/Innocent

Oh back to Claire's.  This was another one of their Mood polishes that I didn't think I'd like all that much.  As you can plainly see in my bottle picture, It looks like "Daring" is a greyish color (and in the hot Texas sun, the bottle looked like it too), and the "Innocent" color looked like a whitish cream color.  Unlike "Calm/Wild", this was a creme polish, not a glitter.


I used a base coat of Seche Natural, 3 coats of Daring/Innocent, and a top coat of Seche Vite.  Imagine my surprise when I saw this.

Um what?  Now granted this is in the sun, but that's no creme, that's butter yellow.  The tips almost look greenish grey.  It reminded me a tiny bit of a banana, but I was going to roll with it.

In the indirect sun, you can start to see more of that butter yellow/olive green color again.  Now this was actually the next day (I applied it at night) and frankly, I had a bad day that day.  Lots of construction type work, so the polish was starting to chip and peel just a bit.


Now here's the fun part.  I went into my bathroom and ran the water.  First, I used super cold water to get the "Daring" color to show up.

That is totally a weird yellow green!  Not grey at ALL.  I'm so confused.


Next I used some hot water (ow) to get the "Innocent" color to show up.

This color is definitely a buttery yellow, not a white cream.


I turned off the water and was able to snap a slight wet but very true picture of how my nails looked most of the day.

Overall, I was pretty happy with this one.  I love my glitters, but sometimes I can love a creme too.  Again, this was $5 but they seem to constantly have the buy one, get one half off deal.


Claire's is available world wide or online [official website].

American Apparel Dynasty

I kind of missed the American Apparel craze in my lifetime.  That's what happens when you live in a small city and well, we all like to eat BBQ and Mexican food (oh man, valley tacos are amazing).  In fact, American Apparel was just one of those things that didn't exist in my small world.  When they came out with their nail polish earlier this year (or was it last year?), I wasn't quick to jump.  Then all the bottles were recalled voluntarily, so I really wasn't jumping.


However, this past spring, I was at a very upscale mall with my Married Friends (as I call them) - E & B.  E (husband) gets slightly irritated with my nail polish collection and tells me I can't buy anymore, but it's nuts.  B was pretty fascinated by it, so HAH.


Anyway, we found an American Apparel, and I rushed inside to see if they had nail polish.  Now, I don't fit in their clothes.  Not even close.  Well, maybe I'd squeeze into an XL, but whatever.  Back to the polish.


I grabbed 3 bottles as they were 3 for $15, but that's about where my love affair ended.  They've just been sitting on my shelf.  The bottle is a bit awkward for me - it's very tall and slim but still the standard 0.5 Fl oz - tall bottles mean tall brushes, and I kept thinking I was somehow going to knock over the bottle when I'd pull the brush out, but we're okay.


Dynasty is a light purple, almost lavender creme polish that is pretty much my favorite color ever, so I was pretty excited about this color.  The formula wasn't too bad on it either - a little thin but not pooling into my cuticles.  


I used a base coat of Seche Natural, 2 coats of Dynasty, and a top coat of Seche Vite.

I feel that in the sun, on my nails, it turns into more of a mauve purple, but it's still a very pretty color.

Here in the shade it's kind of just there.  Nothing too special, but at the same time, a nice pretty color.  I think I was just so underwhelmed after wearing that crazy gold brown Wet n Wild.


American Apparel nail polish can be purchased in their stores or on their website [official website].

400 Followers Giveaway!

Woo!!!  Thank you again to everyone who reads my blog.  Now that I'm officially up to 400 Followers via Google Connect, it's time for another giveaway!  (I like giveaways, what can I say?)


Before I start the signups, I have a starter poll to see what you'd rather see.  It's pretty simple... either I'm going to have 4 winners with a smaller prize amount, or 1-2 winners with a larger prize amount... which would you rather have?  Please vote below ^_^

Would you rather have more winners w/smaller prizes... » make web polls
Tags : giveaways

Wet n Wild Rustic

After my frustration with Claire's, I decided it was time to try another brand for a bit.  I really love that Wet n Wild is only 99 cents for these bottles - it makes my wallet even happier.


Rustic is a brown gold shimmer that looked like it could be a really pretty color to wear in the evenings.  I used Seche Natural for my base, ONE COAT of Rustic (!), and a top coat of Seche Vite.  The formula was amazingly awesome - perfect coverage in one happy, even layer.

Holla.  This color almost looked a little orange brown in the sun than yellow brown, but it was still just so pretty to me!  I was really happy with this one.

In the shade, the shimmer dies down to a pretty little soft shimmer, almost like a wood grain.  Again, I couldn't be happier with this polish - I really want to go look at the rest of the line that it available in my drug stores.


Wet n Wild is located at a variety of drug and grocery stories.  You can use their product finder on their website [official website].