Current Nails

I found out early in December that OPI was coming out with a Hello Kitty collection. I am a bit of a Hello Kitty fan and I just knew that the collection was going to be fun and girly and that I would want to pick up some of the shades. I first found half of the collection at Sally’s the day after Christmas and I picked up two of the shades. The one that I am currently wearing is Charmmy & Sugar and it is the glitter polish of the collection.

  
Charmmy & Sugar has a light pink, pearly base  with pink, blue, and silver holographic glitter. Immediately I was in love with this shade and while definitely not dupes for each other, it reminded me of Teenage Dream from the Katy Perry collection. The formula of this polish was fantastic, especially for a glitter polish. It is opaque on its own two coats. The glitter evenly distributes itself and no extra work is needed to get the glitter on the nail. Glitters can tend to be on the thick side, but I did not find that to be the case with this polish.

  
I absolutely love this polish. I think that this is going to be one of the more popular polishes from the collection due to its uniqueness. If you think you want this polish, I wouldn’t wait too long to decide to pick it up.

Current Nails

I made a trip into Ulta last week and found a couple of the China Glaze Holiday polishes on clearance. I actually wanted a lot of the collection but could not find them anywhere. Luckily one of the polishes I found was one that I had really been wanting and it was Don’t Get Elfed Up.

  
Don’t Get Elfed up is a dark, blackened teal base with a brighter teal micro-glitter running through it. I found the formula on this polish to be super runny. I definitely had to make sure that I cleaned the brush off well or I would be flooding the nail with too much polish. It goes on very sheer on the first coat but it built up to full opacity in two coats.

  
I really do love the shade of this polish and find it to be quite unique. The formula was not the best on this polish but it is definitely something I can work with. If you can find this polish, I do recommend picking it up.

 

Current Nails

Today I have an Essie nail polish to share with you. I am still digging darker nails, but this shade is not vampy like the previous two have been. Ignite the Night is a graphite polish with black and silver glitter. Every time I see this polish I think of Firework by Katy Perry because of the line that says “you just gotta ignite the light, and let is shine….”

Ignite the Night is a glitter polish that can be worn on its own. It builds up to full opacity in 3 coats but I think a lot of people would be fine with only 2 coats. The formula is super easy to work with. It has the right consistency, so it does not run everywhere but it is not thick and goopy either. It makes painting your nails so easy because it doesn’t flood the cuticles and it can easily be manipulated. It also dries pretty quickly as well. Notice that in this photo I have not cleaned up around my cuticles. I took this picture before I was done painting my nails to send to a friend. The reason I don’t have after pictures is because this nail polish starting come off in whole pieces. Like the entire nail would come off at once. The wear time on this polish was horrendous.

I don’t know if this polish is still available and easy to find, as this is yet another polish that I found on clearance. I might have a lot of nail polish, but it is very rare that I pay full price for a polish. With this polish in particular, I am very happy that I did not pay full price for it. This nail polish did not even last 12 hours on my nails and all I did for most of that time was sleep. I don’t recommend this polish to anyone.

Current Nails

Textured nail polish is my go to when I don’t really feel like doing my nails or I know I will be doing something the next day that is going to be extra hard on my nails. Textured polishes do not need a top coat and they tend to wear pretty durably on my nails. Of course you can always add a top coat to cancel out the textured finish and give a nice shiny finish to the polish. The shade that I am sharing today looks beautiful with a top coat and without a top coat. Zoya Tomoko is a champagne, gold, and silver glitter polish. It is a stunning shade. Ignore my lack of cleanup. I was super lazy the evening that I painted my nails. 

  
I find that I usually need to do 3 coats with this polish to make it fully opaque but the formula on this is easy to work with. I find that some of the textured polishes can be thick and goopy and hard to work with but that is not the case with this polish. It has a nice consistency and is easy to work with; you can spread the polish very easily on the nails. It dries kind of slowly, so make sure to allow a decent amount of time between each coat to help with the drying process. If you want to top coat Tomoko, I recommend using Gelous Nail Gel and then your top coat so that the polish does not eat up too much of your top coat. Gelous also does a really nice job of smoothing out the texture.

  
Sadly, Zoya discontinued the Pixie Dust line, so Tomoko might be hard to track down. But if you come across Tomoko, I highly recommend that you pick it up. I love the glitter mixture and when you top coat, your nails just glow and shimmer. I am very happy I picked this polish up when I did.

Current Nails

If blogging has shown me anything, it is that I go through nail polish phases. Once I use one brand of nail polish, I tend to wear a few polishes from that brand in a row. I went hard with Zoya, then several Deborah Lippmann, and now I am onto Essie apparently. I bought Mint Candy Apple a while go but I hadn’t really been in the mood to wear it until now.

  
The formula on Mint Candy Apple is better than I expected it to be. For it to be a classic Essie, I expected it to have that classic, awful Essie formula as well. That formula tends to be sheer and thin; Mint Candy Apple was on the thick side and it was bordering on slightly goopy. I used two coats to make sure it was even and not streaky, but this was not the most self leveling polish. I recommend being more careful on your second coat to make sure that it is even. Mint Candy Apple is actually a little too on the blue side of mint greens for me. It is definitely a pretty color, but I like the mint greens that are more on the pistachio side of mint green if that makes any sense. Since I wasn’t really feeling Mint Candy Apple on its own, I added one of my favorite glitters, which also happens to be from Essie. I put Set in Stones on top and it actually took down some of the blue in Mint Candy Apple. Set in Stones is a really easy glitter topper to work with. The brush manages to pick up a good amount of glitter and you can pretty much just paint your nail with it. You don’t have to be too precise with placing the glitter because the brush picks up all of the glitter sizes and does a decent job of distributing them. You just need to ensure that you have a nice amount of polish on the brush and are not skimpy with it.

  
I am in love with this polish combination and a mom and her daughter at work could not stop going on about how pretty my nails were. I can see myself wearing Mint Candy Apple more in the future and I know I will definitely be reaching for Set in Stones again. What is your favorite mint polish?

Current Nails

Today I am sharing with you another one of my all time favorite nail polishes and this one is surprisingly not from Zoya. I was feeling a little down yesterday and wanted a little pick me up, so I decided glitter nail polish was the way to go and there are few prettier glitter nail polishes than this one from Deborah Lippmann. Just Dance is a gorgeous bright blue glitter polish.

   
 Just Dance is described by Deborah Lippmann as an intense aqua, and intense is correct. It is such a bright and fun nail polish color. It is an aqua blue jelly base with with micro glitters of the same shade and the larger glitters look like they are actually silver to me. They appear lighter than the other glitters, so either they are a silver or a lighter shade of the blue mixed with the jelly base. I did use 3 coats for total opacity and evenness but I believe most people would be satisfied with 2 coats. This polish dries very quickly and wears very, very well on me.

Deborah Lippmann nail polishes certainly are not cheap by any means. I usually only buy Deborah Lippmann nail polishes when they are super unique shades or if I find them on clearance. I have never seen a dupe for this nail polish before so it is really unique and beautiful. If nail polish is your thing and you don’t mind the $20 price tag, this polish is definitely worth every penny.

Current Nails/Mini Haul

Hello everyone! Today I thought I would share my current nails and do a mini haul and review for you guys! Recently, Ulta had Butter London polishes on sale for $9.  Butter London has never been one of my favorite nail polish brands. I have owned a handful of their polishes over the years and they have been nothing but a pain for me. They have been sheer and have had a tendency to chip very, very quickly on me. You must be asking yourself why I thought it was a good idea to buy more of them then. Well, there have been a few colors that I have been eyeing for years and have not been able to find dupes for but refused to pay $15 for a polish I knew there was a good chance I would not like. Therefore, with the sale, I caved and picked up the ones I had been eyeing. I picked up Fiver (which is the one I was really dying to have), Molly Coddled, Cake Hole, Fruit Machine, and Sprog.

(top-Sprog, Fruit Machine. Bottom-Cake Hole, Fiver, Molly Coddled)

Since Fiver is the one that I have been lusting after since it came out, you know that when on my nails the night that I bought them.

It most certainly was love at first swipe. This color is a pistachio mint green that does not have a lot of blue in it like most other mint greens tend to have. I tried for years to find a good dupe for it and was unsuccessful. It is a very unique and gorgeous shade. I am also happy to report that this opaque in 2 coats and I wore it for 2 days on its own without any chipping-a record for me and a Butter London nail polish. On the third day, I wanted to do something different with my nails but was not ready to take Fiver off. So I decided it was the perfect time to add Essie’s Rock at the Top to the mani. It is a gold and slightly silver glitter topper.

I absolutely love how this turned out. These two polishes go gorgeously together. Two days later and I am still rocking this polish combo with minimal tip wear and no large chips. I am very impressed with how Fiver has worn and am thinking that perhaps the key to wearing Butter London is to only wear their cream polishes. But I will make that determination after testing out the others that I have picked up. Of course, the other key is that I have been wearing this with the Deborah Lippmann Gel Lab base and top coat which is freaking amazing. I love it and even though it is expensive, it is definitely worth the money!

 

Updated Current Nails

Yesterday I shared with you that I had just painted by nails with OPI’s Pink Friday. After looking at it for a day, I felt like my nails were just missing something so I opened my drawer back up and OPI’s Teenage Dream was calling out to me to put it on top of Pink Friday. Teenage Dream was from the Katy Perry collection and is one of my all time favorite polishes. I even debated about buying a back up of it.

Teenage Dream is a holographic glitter in a clear pink base. It has a smaller silver glitter and larger holographic glitter in it. The polish can be built up in 2-3 coats and be worn on its own, but it works well over polishes as well. Over Pink Friday, it tones down the pastel in the polish and just slightly deepens up the pink. The finer and smaller glitter works really well with the girliness of Pink Friday. The glitter does not overwhelm the polish or the nail and the pink can still clearly be seen.

All in all, I am really liking this combination and Teenage Dream gave me just what I was missing from Pink Friday. Sometimes I can get bored with just a simple cream polish on my nails and it is nice to have colors like Teenage Dream on hand that can totally spice up a manicure without overpowering the look. If you can still get your hands on Teenage Dream, I definitely recommend picking it up.