New Year's Eve Mani!

Hi everyone! HAPPY LAST DAY OF 2011!

Today I'm going to show y'all my chosen New Year's Eve mani. I opted for something relatively simple instead of a glitterbomb like I was originally thinking of. Tomorrow I'm going to show the first half of my top 20 picks, and hopefully on the 3rd I'll show you the last half (I'm kind of waiting for some polishes to arrive so I can hopefully include them on the list... if you follow me on twitter, you probably have some kind of idea what those polishes are) :P


Anyhow, I'm hoping this post won't be too wordy... so let's have those photos, shall we?

Sorry for the crappy clean up and stuff. My New Year's Eve mani is two coats of Cult Nails Hypnotize Me over Time Traveler. This is super pretty, and not surprisingly Hypnotize Me is one of my favourite Cult Nails polishes ever. ;)

That's all for today! I hope you all have an awesome New Years! Happy 2012 everyone!

Marisa

Cult Nails Time Traveler

Hi everyone!

Today I have one of the polishes from the Cult Nails Winter 2011 collection for y'all!
Time Traveler is a navy blue creme that is just awesome. I found it easy to control and it dries with a great shine. Actually, you can see the lamp post outside my house reflected in the polish in one of the pictures!

Alright, that's all for now! I need to get back to working on my Top 10/20 list for 2011. I know I should have made a note of all of the awesome polishes that I've acquired, but I thought a mental note was good enough (clearly that isn't the case cuz I'm having trouble remembering all of them now!)

Thank you for reading and have a fantastic day! <3


Marisa

Models Own - Aqua Violet

Hi everyone!

I hope you all had a great Christmas! All I can say right now is bring on 2012!

Today I have another polish from the Models Own Beetlejuice collection. Aqua Violet is a spectacular duochrome that shifts from light blue to purple.

Sorry for the blurry pictures! My camera for some reason decided to misbehave and all of my pictures turned out slightly blurry.

The above photos are Aqua-Violet layered over a generic black polish. I've worn Aqua-Violet by itself too, but I think I prefer it over black.

That's all for now, thanks for reading!

Marisa

Happy Christmas! More attempted nail art!

MERRY CHRISTMAS and HAPPY HOLIDAYS everyone!!

It's the most wonderful time of the yearrrrr!

Here is my Christmas nail art for y'all to see (and probably laugh at)! I'm no good at nail art at all, actually maybe I should make improving my nail art skills one of my new year's resolutions. :P

I accidentally smudged Frosty's nose.. so it kinda looks like he's sneezing! haha!

Happy holidays everyone!

Marisa <3

My attempt at Holiday Snowflakes!

Hi everyone! Happy Christmas Eve!

Today and tomorrow I have some attempted nail art for you! I'm super horrible at nail art, just so you know. :P

Without further ado.. here are some attempted snowflakes for y'all!

White and silver snowflakes over Cult Nails' Time Traveler as a base colour.

Thanks for reading! I hope you all have a fabulous Christmas!

Marisa

Something festive!

Hi everyone!

Today's post is a festive mani I did for my sweater party a few days ago!

I actually just realized that I haven't actually worn many of the Zoya polishes I got in the summer (bad me!), so hopefully the next time I don't know what to wear, those will be in my mind somewhere!

Today's post features Zoya's Ivanka and Kimmy!

Unfortunately, the colour of this picture is a bit more blue tinged. Ivanka (the green) is a super shiny, awesome money green colour )so less blue than it appears in this photo) and Kimmy is a firey golden-red which actually is really stunning in person. The only downside to this mani was that Kimmy managed to stain the crap out of my ring finger even though I used basecoat. Still very pretty though.

On my other hand I had the reverse, so I had Ivanka as an accent finger. None of my pictures really turned out though.. so sorry about that!

Happy holidays everyone!

Marisa

Picture Polish Bombshell and Glitter ball

Hi everyone!

Today I have a gorgeous blue shimmer polish and an awesome glitter polish from Picture Polish to show y'all!

Bombshell is a super pretty royal blue-almost navy shimmer polish. It's easy to apply, and the brush is nice and flexible. Glitter ball is a pretty glitter topcoat which kind of reminds me of OPI's Servin' Up Sparkle (which was included in the Serena Williams sets that were released in the summer). Hmm. Comparison to come at a later date!

Picture Polish Bombshell

Picture Polish Bombshell

Picture Polish Bombshell with 1 coat of Glitter Ball

I actually really like the pairing of Bombshell and Glitter Ball. It reminds me of the night sky, or of snow falling down. :D

Bombshell and Glitter Ball can be purchased from http://shop.llarowe.com/ , which is run by Leah Ann LaRowe. Leah Ann is the official US stockist for Glitter Gal and A England. She also sells Ozotic Pro polishes, Picture Polish, HITS, Ludarana, and Lynnderella polishes!

Thanks for reading everyone! <3

Marisa


**The product(s) featured in this post were provided to me for review purposes. The opinions expressed in this post are purely my own. For more information, please see my Disclosure Policy.

Models Own - Gold Green

Hi everyone!

As promised, here is another polish from the Beetlejuice collection!
I just got my marks back for this semester, and I'm a bit bummed by the mediocre semester I had. It really sucks to feel like you did well in one class only to get the grade back and be surprised by how.. average you did. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm not really in the mood for rambling too much, and I really need to schedule some posts (we leave on the 22nd) so the next few posts won't have as much talking (which can be a good or bad thing :P)

Here's Gold Green layered over a generic black polish. I thought that layering it over black would help make the colours show stronger, so here it is!

*swoon* Such a pretty, pretty polish.

Thanks for reading everyone! <3


Marisa

Models Own Emerald Black

Hi everyone! Happy Saturday!

Just a short and sweet post today, I really need to run off and get some stuff ready for tonight! I'm going to a holiday sweater party tonight.. this is my first time going to a sweater party so I went and bought a sweater at a thrift store.. it's super ugly lol :D

Anyhow, today's featured polish is from the Models Own Beetlejuice collection that was recently released. It's filled with awesome duochromes!

This polish is the least duochromey out of all of them though, it's more like black with emerald shimmer... but it's still really pretty!

 
Pictured above is 2 coats of Emerald-Black. Pretty right? The green isn't too subtle, so I can actually wear this polish without having a pure-black nail polish freakout (for some reason, I can't wear pure black cremes).

If you think this polish is gorgeous, I can't wait to show you the rest of them... they're just made of win. The only thing I don't like about these polishes is that they have toluene in them, which I try to avoid at all costs. Of course, I find this out after I ordered them, so.. I guess it couldn't have been helped, but I really really wish that they would switch to a toluene free formula.

Anyhow, the rest of the Beetlejuice collection will be posted sometime during this coming week. I'm also going on a trip with family to a ski resort, and I don't know if we're going to have internet available or not. I'm going to schedule some posts for that week (22-29) but I'll try to pop in if I can manage to find internet!

Happy a great weekend everyone!

-Marisa

Giveaway Winner!

Hi all!

Sorry for not posting for a while, but my finals are finally over! I know that usually people are super excited about the semester being over and such, but I find that I'm more or less either just super tired, or my brain is just numb. :P

So, today's post is about that giveaway I had a while ago! We have a winner!

And the winner is... justoneofakindx!!!

Congrats! I've sent you an email, so please respond! If I don't get a response from you in 48 hours, I'm going to have to pick a new winner!

Now that I'm on my holiday break, I promise I'll post more frequently!

-Marisa

Guest Post #2 by Jennifer

Hi guys! For all of you who are unfamiliar with who I am, I'm Jennifer, Marisa's sister. I've done one guest post before a while back, but this is only my second one. Usually I do them when Marisa is plagued with exams, shuts herself in her room, and unintentionally neglects her blog (Marisa says sorry), which is the case right now. In fact, I've barely seen her outside of her room even thought my room is diagonally across from hers on the same floor. It's funny how that works. Anyways, I'm just here to add some life to this blog drought.

A couple of weeks ago, we got some polishes from the Models Own company in Britain. The bottles kind of look like super-sized Joe Fresh bottles, but the colours sent to us were very pretty and thus I have nothing to complain about. The colour I'm featuring in this post is Pinky Brown. It's a nice red/ purple - gold/ bronze duo-chrome. The application was fairly good. If I can remember correctly, my nails in this photo had two coats of the polish for it to be opaque.

Pinky-Brown - Models Own

The next manicure is actually one I did quite far back ago, during the summer. I really liked Deborah Lippmann's Glitter in the Air polish, but I found that it was a bit sheer on its own, so I decided to layer it on top of some polishes (in this case, Planks a Lot by OPI and Lemon Fizz by China Glaze) to create a pastel-coloured semi-glittery manicure. It kind of reminds me of Easter. I put about two to three coats of Glitter in the Air on top of the base colours just to get a good amount of the glitter distributed evenly on each of my nails.

Glitter in the Air - Deborah Lippmann

Planks a Lot - OPI

Lemon Fizz - China Glaze

That's basically about it for this post. I do my nails quite often, but I rarely go on the computer (which is strange, seeing how I'm 14 years old and all of my other peers generally spend hours on the computer) and I'm often too lazy to transfer the photos from my phone to the computer. Since school has started, though, I've been preoccupied with school and so that has left less time for my nails to be pampered. I also play volleyball and other sports, so that didn't (and doesn't) really help at times. However, I'm not playing any sports at the moment as volleyball season just ended and I wasn't very interested in basketball, so my nails get a fair amount of good treatment from me. The other reason why I'm not very active at the moment being is because during volleyball I may have re-torn my knee ligament... It's been hurting for the last two weeks since volleyball has ended and as I'm typing this it is still hurting. Hm, maybe I should see my doctor..

Anyhow, enough of my random rambling. There's one more picture that I wanted to show y'all, and it's pretty funny (in my opinion, or else I wouldn't have taken it.). Here it is:

Darth Vader has a secret liking for nail polish. Does he use the Force to attract the bottles?

This was taken in the late summer, when I would do my nails so often that I would be too lazy to put away the bottles and instead leave them on my night table. Coincidentally, the Darth Vader bobblehead that we bought from the Smithsonian Air & Space museum in D.C. was also on my night table. Somehow the bottles just naturally ended up accumulating around the vicinity of Darth Vader. As you can tell, Marisa and I are Star Wars fans (or else we probably wouldn't have a bobblehead, t-shirt, paper weight, etc..). Who would have known that the gift shop in the Air & Space museum would have so much Star Wars paraphernalia? We were going to get a Yoda backpack too, but we were kind of running out of time.. I just found this scene funny. The contrast was very comedic. 

I hope you found this guest blog entertaining! Well, I at least hope that it put a temporary end to the lack of blog posts. Marisa has, as I said when I began this post, been plagued with final exams and so forth, so she hasn't gotten around to consistently posting on here. She apologizes! Her last exam is on December 14th, and she'll do her best to announce the winner of her giveaway on the 15th. 

Thanks for reading! 

- Jennifer

Glitter Gal Frappe

Hi everyone! Happy American Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekend!

Wow, it feels like I haven't blogged in forever! ...oh wait, I haven't. Sorry everyone!
I've been crazy-busy with with end of semester really weighing down on me. Luckily, I'm at a bit of a reprieve from my bajillion projects and exams, so I'm here to show you one of the most AWESOME polishes ever.

So, today's polish is Glitter Gal's Frappe! This was released in mid-August along with Light as a Feather and the stunning Lizard Belly, which I took pictures of in this post. Frappe is a milky-pink (with a touch of lavender in it maybe) linear holographc polish. Pictures coming right up!

And now another for good measure..

Urgh. I know I've said this a lot about Glitter Gal's Holographc polishes, but seriously, how can any holographic polish lover not like this polish?

The breakdown:

Advantages:
- It's absolutely gorgeous
- Dries relatively fast with a nice shine
- Surface of dry polish is SUPER SMOOTH. I couldn't stop touching my nails because they were just so smooth. (I've mentioned this before comparing the formula of Glitter Gal holographic polishes with Nfu Oh holos, which dry with a more matte finish)
-Holographic effect is very strong

Disadvantages:
-It is a bit sheer, I used 3 coats in the above pictures

Overall, I really love this polish. It is a bit sheer, but the quick drying time makes up for the extra coat.
I'm generally not a pink girl (most of the time it doesn't really do anything for my skintone), but this milky-pink and holographic combination is a huge winner in my books. My Top 20 list (which doesn't exist on paper yet) welcomes yet another holographic polish!

Anyhow, what do you all think? Gorgeous or what?
Frappe and other Glitter Gal polishes can be purchased from http://shop.llarowe.com/ for $14 / 9mL bottle, which is run by Leah Ann LaRowe. Leah Ann is the official US stockist for Glitter Gal and A England. She also sells Ozotic Pro polishes, Picture Polish, HITS, Ludarana, and soon will also be carrying Lynnderella polishes! (gasp!)

I have a huge pile of polishes that I've gotten that need to be swatched, but the weather is not helping me get that done at all. Here's to hoping that the sun will come out sometime this weekend!

Again, I hope you all have a fantastic weekend! Make sure you eat some Turkey/Turducken/Pie/DeliciousThanksgivingFood for me! ;)

p.s. - I haven't finished verifying all of the entries of my giveaway yet, since I've been so busy. I'm trying to finish ASAP and will hopefully announce the winner soon!

-Marisa

**The product(s) featured in this post were provided to me for review purposes. The opinions expressed in this post are purely my own. For more information, please see my Disclosure Policy.

Giveaway Closed!

Hi everyone!

Just a service announcement this time, but my holiday giveaway is now closed!

Thank you all for entering and also for all of your lovely comments!
I'll be verifying all of the entries and annoying the winners soon!

Thank you all!

Marisa

Cult Nails - Unicorn Puke

Hey everyone!

Sorry for not posting sooner! I had my last midterm today, and from now on I just have papers and finals! Yay!

I'd like to thank everyone for being absolutely fantastic, and I'd just like to remind those of you who haven't entered my giveaway yet to enter! It will be open until the 11th (this Friday!) until 11:59 PM!

Anyway, onto the polish of the day!

I am SUPER excited to show you all Cult Nails' Unicorn Puke! This polish is also being released with the Cult Nails Super Powers collection as Clairvoyant (same polish, different name and the bottle will be different). I managed to snag Unicorn Puke during its presale and it finally made its way to my house last week!

What can I say? This polish is GORGEOUS. I mean, multicoloured flakies in a purple tinted base? Yes please! I've been lemming is one since Maria first posted a picture of it wayyy back and it definitely doesn't disappoint. Anyway, enough rambling talk and time for the pictures!

The above photos are all one coat of Unicorn Puke over 2 coats of Finger Paints - Art of Theft. Isn't it fab? This is definitely going on my top 10 list (which I haven't made yet but have been thinking about)!!

Anyhow! Now it's your turn! What do you think? Are you going to pick up Unicorn Puke/Clairvoyant when it comes out? As of this time of posting, the Super Powers collection is still available for presale at the Cult Nails website!

Thank you for reading!

Marisa

Glitter Gal Blue 3D Holographic

Hi everyone!

Sorry for not posting in the past two weeks, one of my close relatives passed away and it has been really hectic! On the plus side, the majority of my exams are over until December, so I will (hopefully) be not as stressed for the next few weeks! Yay!

Anyways.. The polish that I'm sharing with y'all today is the amazing Glitter Gal Blue 3d Holo! :D

I purchased this polish at the same time I bought Lizard Belly from Llarowe. I'm really happy I ordered this one too! It's so gorgeous! I think Glitter Gal makes the best holographic polishes around. I mean, I love the Nfu-Oh holos, but they dry with a weird matte-ish texture which I really dislike.. the two Glitter Gal polishes I own both dry super glossy and smooth. I like.

Gah. Isn't it gorgeous? The only downside to this polish is that it is a little sheer.. pictured is 3 coats.

Glitter Gal polishes can be purchased for $14 from Llarowe! Her shipping is super reasonable, and she also stocks A-England, Ozotic Pro and a bunch of other awesome HTF in North America brands!

Also, if you're going to head over to her website.. one of my pictures of Lizard Belly is on her header! OMG! This is so awesome! If you're reading this, thank you so much Leah Ann!

That's all for now, thanks for reading everyone!

-Marisa
*The products featured in this post were purchased by me, and any opinions expressed in this post on said products are my own.

Glitter Gal Lizard Belly

Hi everyone!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while again, but school has been really draining lately. I'm in the middle of my semester, so that means I have a crapload of projects and exams to do/study for ><

That being said, I'd like to thank all of the people that have entered my giveaway so far! I've read all of your comments and I have to thank you all! You guys are all so fantastic! <3

So.. onto the polish!

I bought Lizard Belly and Blue Holo 3D (in a later post) from Llarowe in late August, after seeing swatches of them both! Lizard Belly caught my attention first, since there aren't many dark holographic polishes around, AND this one is green! Awesome combination? YES!

I had pictures of this already edited, but I was really unhappy with how they turned out.. so of course they were redone yesterday when the sun came out for the first time in a long while!

Anyway, enough rambling and more pictures..

Gosh, isn't it gorgeous? Pictured above is one coat of Lizard Belly over Nfu Oh 569 (I layered them because the Glitter Gal does come in a pretty small size.. and I'm cheap so I wanted to conserve as much of it as possible ;D )

I'm so glad Llarowe sells Glitter Gal.. I wasn't planning on getting any since the shipping from Australia (ordering from Picture Polish) would have been a complete nightmare! She has also expanded and is now selling A-England, Ozotic Pro, Picture Polish and a few other gorgeous polishes that would be more difficult to get anywhere else. Also I should mention that her shipping is super reasonable!

That's all for now! I'll try to squeeze in a post later this week but I can't guarantee it :(

Oh, by the way, if you haven't entered my giveaway yet, the link is here, and it's open until 11/11/11!

Marisa

**The polish in this post was purchased by me, and any links are meant to be for the convenience of the reader!

Holiday Glitter-A-Way! Open until 11/11/11

EDIT: This giveaway is now closed!

Hi everyone!

This post has been long in the making.. but finally everything is here! Hurrah!

So, since I'm going to be super busy for the next few weeks, I'd like to make it up to y'all by hosting a small giveaway for the holidays! Yay!

Please continue reading for more details!

Some quick OPI Muppets Comparisons..

Hi everyone,

Just a quick post of some comparisons I did on a nail wheel for today.. basically Monday - Friday is like a marathon for me. I start out slow on Mondays (my early day).. but every day for the rest of the week is like a race.. and then on the weekend, hopefully I have free time for myself and also to get ready for the next week.

Anyway, some pictures and a few words!

Left to Right: China Glaze - Ahoy!, OPI - Meep-Meep-Meep, China Glaze Strawberry Fields

If you make the picture bigger, the difference between Ahoy! and Meep-Meep-Meep is more apparent.

 Left to Right: Cult Nails - Iconic, OPI - Pepe's Purple Passion

The colour of Pepe's Purple Passion is more purple than Iconic, and the flakes in Iconic are much more noticable. Iconic also has some gold shimmer in it.

Left to Right: OPI - Warm and Fozzie, Color Club - Wild and Willing

Sorry for the crappy picture.. this was the best one out of the bunch I took :P
I think these two actually look pretty awesome together.. they remind me of Fall!

Oh yeah, and just a little extra.. Amanda from The Nail Polish Enthusiast asked me a little while ago about how close China Glaze's Blue Year's Eve was to OPI's Swimsuit.. Nailed it! I don't actually own Swimsuit, and I figured it'd take me a while before I could borrow it from one of my friends that actually owns it.. so I did one of those crappy tape comparisons. Sorry for the crappy comparison, but I hope this will help some people out..

Left to Right: OPI - Swimsuit.. Nailed it!, China Glaze - Blue Year's Eve

That's all for now.. Have a great day everyone!

Marisa :D

Select picks from the OPI Muppets Holiday 2011 Collection!

Hi everyone!

I seem to be getting lucky with my local nail polish store.. it seems like they're putting out a lot of things pretty early! I just happened to stop by the store to buy some tweezers, and I noticed that they had the whole collection out. :D

I was originally only planning on buying Gone Gonzo and Fresh Frog of Bel-Air, but I ended up getting a couple of other ones too.. in the end I got Gone Gonzo, Fresh Frog of Bel-Air, Meep-Meep-Meep, Warm and Fozzie, Pepe's Purple Passion, and Rainbow Connection.

It was also a nice-ish day for swatching, so I swatched them pretty much right after I got home. I'm adding Rainbow Connection to the giveaway prize (which should be announced in the next week or so.. I'm waiting for one more polish to come to me in the mail!) so I don't have swatches of that!

Like the last post.. this one is going to be a bit long.. so I'm going to put it under a cut again :D

China Glaze Winter Ice set and Twinkle Lights for Winter/Holiday 2011

Hi everyone!

Sorry I didn't manage to post over the weekend, I was totally going to post this yesterday, but daylight left me before I could take a picture of the last polish.

I found these at one of my usual nail polish haunts while I was out looking for some goodies for a giveaway. I'm still working on the prize for the mentioned giveaway.. there's one particular polish I want to include but I haven't gotten it yet. When I do, I'll write up a formal giveaway post. :D

I was expecting them to have the Halloween collection out, but they didn't.. and they had these out instead! I had a pickle of a time trying to decide which polishes to get (I loved these ones, but I feel like I should have gotten at least one of the Christmas cremes.. ah, maybe next time), but in the end this set was purchased with Twinkle Lights and some extra stuff for the giveaway!

I have a ton of photos for this so I'm going to try something new and try using a cut. Let's hope it works!

OPI DS Extravagance

Hi everyone!

I actually managed to lug my laptop to school today, so I'm just doing a quick post with some pictures I've had on my computer for a little while now but haven't gotten around to posting yet.

So.. here is DS Extravagance!

Easy to apply and also dried fast!

These pictures are a bit old (the last edited date on these gives me August 20nd) so if you're wondering why my nails look different than in my last post.. well.. that's why.

That's all I have for now. Aside from all of the school stuff (which keeps me busy most of the time) I'm trying to figure out how shipping polish internationally works. I'm thinking about doing something fun for Halloween! :D

-Marisa

My Current NOTW - Glitterbomb

Hi everyone!

My schedule won't really allow for many breaks to change up my mani, so I've been coping by just doing something I think is totally awesome on the weekend and keeping it on throughout the week.

The (left hand) mani for this week was more or less the result of the awesome Summer weather more-or-less turning into nasty Fall rains overnight. I don't have anything against Fall, but I really hate it when the weather just changes overnight. I need these things to happen gradually.

I just noticed that my hands are playing Summer/Fall right now. I just chose a colour and put it on my right hand a few hours ago and it's this really nice brick red by Wet N Wild which reminds me of Fall leaves. OMG. I just put this on a few hours ago and I ALREADY have tipwear?! Okay. This is coming off. LOL.

Anyway, back on topic.. the left hand mani is the one I was going to show you now, so I should get around to showing you soon. ;)

Ah, a glitterbomb to end the Summer. Perfect. I did this randomly on a nail wheel when I was bored, and I found it intriguing.. so it graduated to my nails. :P

For this look, I used:

Base: China Glaze Calypso Blue (I'm afraid to take this mani off for fear that my nails will be smurfy underneath even though I used basecoat)
Glitter: Nfu Oh #40, #56. Cult Nails Hypnotize Me, Nubar 2010, and this Kiss Nail Art polish which is mostly purple glitter (I can't remember its name/if I ever saw a name).

Hope you all enjoy! I'm diggin' glitter right now!

-Marisa

Nfu Oh Holo Spam

*sneaks in*

Hi everyone!

First of all, I'd like to apologize for being such a bad blogger and disappearing from the blog for a few days (okay, almost a week). I've been REALLY busy with my school schedule for this semester, which pretty must goes from 8:30AM-6:30PM every day of the week except Mondays, and most of the time I have to spend the few hours before I go to bed preparing for labs for the next day. I'm putting off preparing for tomorrow's lab right now to let you guys know what I'm up to.

That being said, I'm probably not going to be posting as often until this semester ends (which is in December), but I'm hoping to sort out some shipping issues and do some fun things!

I may also have some guest posts during the next few months, so y'all can all look forward to that!

I really don't have that much time right now to type out a through post, so I'm hoping you guys will be good with pictures and maybe a few words for a little while.

Nfu Oh #61 Shade and Sun:

Nfu Oh #65 Sun and Shade:

Nfu Oh #66 Sun:

That's all for now! Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to type up a longer post without being rushed. :)

Thank you for all reading! <3

-Marisa