Colors by Llarowe - Dirty Diana

Hi everyone! Long time no post!

Truth is, I've been in a nail polish rut over the last little bit. My last few swatching sessions haven't been going so great - I keep seeing little things I dislike in my photos and as a consequence I never want to post them and just say I'll reswatch them at a later date. Also, none of the big brands' summer collections have really been tugging at me. I've still been buying polish, just not splurging all at once on collections like I used to. I'm kind of excited about the Orly summer collection though (except that one with bar glitter).

Anyhow, on a different note... Today's post is from my last swatching session, and I deem it to be the most "postable" quality out of them all. Someday, I will get around to reswatching everything else. One of the things I didn't like was that my ring finger nail had this habit of flattening at the free edge and looking kinda like a duck lips on my finger. No bueno. I've changed my nail shape to a more rounded and natural shape, which (so far) I haven't been having duck issues with.

I probably wouldn't be posting this at all if I had the time to redo the photos, but I'm leaving on a short trip (few days) to Paris tomorrow, and I wanted an excuse to share the news. I'm hoping to have time to look out for nail polish while I'm there!

Anyway, without further rambling, here is Colors by Llarowe Dirty Diana!

Dirty Diana - Outdoors, Full Sun

Dirty Diana - Outdoors, Full Sun

Dirty Diana - Indoors, Artificial Lighting

I love this polish! I really need to remind myself to get more CbL holos. That might just bring my mojo back! Great formula, beautiful rainbows in the sun and strong lighting.

What do you think? Do you own any CbLs? Any recommendations for new ones I should add to my shopping list? So far I have Smooth Criminal, Mojito, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, and Dirty Diana.

As always, thank you so much for reading, and I hope you all have a great weekend!

Marisa

Colors By Llarowe - Mojito

Hi everyone, I hope you're all having a great Easter weekend!

Sorry for not posting more recently... I bought all of the Picture Polish Limited Edition polishes and had them swatched, but none of the pictures really turned out well and I wasn't really in the mood to swatch them again. I'll redo them, but it might take me a while.

The great thing is that all of my exams are done! Huzzah! I couldn't resist ordering Borealis (another LE Picture Polish shade) from Harlow & Co when I just happened to be browsing during a restock, so I ended up purchasing my first Colors By Llarowe polishes at the same time. I know that CbL is a pretty wanted brand at the moment, but I'd never had the desire to enter the crazy restock madness that always seems to accompany it. Luckily, there were a few shades that were still on the Harlow & Co website that appealed to me. We've had rain for most of the week, and I was away and unable to open my package, but today when the sun came out I finally decided to do some swatching.

I am SO GLAD I bought there polishes (I ended up getting Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Dirty Diana, Smooth Criminal and Mojito). Of course I reached for Mojito first!

Almost done raving now, just a short description of the polish and I'll let you have a look!

Mojito is a beautiful light spearmint-y green with a slightly subtle linear holo. But slightly subtle I mean not as holo as the Color Club Halo Hues and maybe as holo as the China Glaze Hologlam ones (or maybe more, I haven't really compared). I actually really like subtle holos, so I love this one to bits. Actually, I think this is one of my favourite green holos ever.

Okay, done raving. Here are a bunch of photos I hope will make up for all of the jabbering! :)

Artificial Light

Sunlight

Sunlight

Sunlight

Sunlight

Sunlight

Artificial Light

What do y'all think? Gosh, I am such a sucker for greens.

As always, thank you so much for reading! I hope I'll be able to get my game on and reswatch those Picture Polish shades soon!

Marisa

Picture Polish - Freya's Cats

Hi everyone!

Today I have a polish that jumped all the way up to the top of my top 10-20 of 2013 as soon as I took it out of the bubble wrap! Onto the photos!

Freya's Cats is one of the latest releases from Picture Polish in their blogger collaboration collection. It's the same finish as Cosmos (my swatch here) with the scattered, sparkling holographic flake-glitter-bits, but a different shade of blue. This shade of blue happens to be my favourite! Where I would describe Cosmos as a night sky blue-black, Freya's Cats is a saturated, indigo-blue (TARDIS blue, to all of my fellow Whovians). Formula-wise, Freya's Cats is fantastic - I used two coats for the swatches above. In my photos it looks a bit like you can see my nail line, but I can't actually see it in person.

I really adore this colour. My favourite shade of blue is pretty much vibrant, saturated primary blue (with a hint of indigo) like this polish, which just happens to be similar to the colour of the TARDIS. On a semi-related note, one of my dream nail polishes at the moment is inspired by a scene in an episode of Doctor Who. Maybe one day I'll manage to franken it, but for now it's my top secret brainchild.

Anyhow, enough rambling for one day! Thank you all so much for reading, and I hope you all have a wonderful week!

Marisa

Color Club: Eternal Beauty

Hi everyone, I'm back!

Sorry for not posting in a while, I've been really busy and stressed out about all of the final projects and exams I've had over the past few weeks! My last exam was Sunday, so now I'm freeeeee.

I can't wait to show you all of the new polish I've purchased, starting with today!

Talk about starting off with a bang! Today I'm featuring a spectacular holographic polish by Color Club. This is Eternal Beauty, and it most definitely is a beauty!

Isn't it fabulous? Eternal Beauty is a blue-violet linear holographic polish. The holo in this polish is amazing! I really hope Color Club makes more holographic polishes like the Halo Hues. I'm particularly lemming more vibrant holographic shades like this one.

I can't really explain how much I love this polish. I didn't have any problems with application at all, and the holographic effect and colour is to die for.

I'll stop going on like a whiny record about this polish now. I can't wait to show you all of the other polishes that I've accumulated during my hiatus!

As always, thank you so much for reading!

Marisa

China Glaze Hologlam Collection Part 2

Hi everyone!

I know, I know... I said I was going to post this soon after the first part of this collection, but mother nature has been annoying (as I mentioned in a previous post) and of course it was a beautiful day right after I posted said post. I managed to get all of the polishes swatched, but then of course my computer decides to be all stupid and not connect to the wireless. Long story short, I've gotten it fixed and I'm back! (EDIT: I started writing this a few days ago actually, and I thought my laptop was fixed at the time. It broke again when I was about halfway into this post).

So, here are the last 6 polishes! 5 of these 6 swatches were done in the aforementioned beautiful day and one was done when I swatched the last batch of holos. You can tell which one this was since all of the recent swatches don't include my index finger (I had an accident with that one and a bit of the corner came off). For some of these polishes I have more than 2 photos, so this is going to be another long one beyond the cut!

Picture Polish Cosmos

Hi everyone!

I know I haven't posted the last 6 China Glaze Hologlams yet, but mother nature hasn't been very kind to me. It has been raining pretty much non-stop all week long with absolutely no sun. I'll swatch the rest of the polishes as soon as the sun comes out, I promise!

Anyhow, moving on... the polish I'm posting about today is gorgeous! I definitely should have gotten this polish when it first came out, because it would have made my top 10 (or was it 20 that I did... I can't remember) of 2012. I'm probably going to have two lists for this year... an overall favourite polish list and the top ## of the polishes released in 2013. More on that when the time comes!

I love this polish so much. It reminds me of camping out in the wilderness away from civilization and staring at the millions of stars that you can only see in a really dark place. The glitter in this polish has a kind of coarse holographic feel to it, which makes it interesting in direct sunlight too. To be honest, I prefer the night sky look this polish has indoors and in indirect light more than the scattered holo. I haven't seen Essie's Starry Starry Night in person before, but this polish totally quashes my lemming for it. Oh, by the way, the formula is great too. Applies like butter. It's amazing.

Hmm, what do y'all think? I know there are a bunch of other polishes out there that have this same finish, but I don't know how much I'd like them compared to this polish. This one actually sends me back to memory lane thinking about some of the camping trips I had with my family and I think that's the reason I really love this polish (and it's pretty!).

That's all for today everyone! Thank you for reading! :D

Marisa

China Glaze Hologlam Collection Part 1

Hi everyone!

OH MY GOD, HOLOGRAPHIC POLISHES. I wasn't actually planning on purchasing the entire Hologlam collection initially. When these went on sale online, I was flabbergasted to see that they were $12.50 a bottle on Nail Polish Canada. That combined with the word on the e-street that these weren't as amazing as the OMG holos... well, you can see what I was thinking. I decided I would get maybe 2 shades max, but I decided to check out my local beauty supply (Secret Nail for those in the lower mainland) and I found these for $5.50 each! Long story short, I was all like, OMG NEED ALL NOW and ended up getting the lot of them. I actually got them for $5.50 each and a 15% discount on top - the only downside to this is that to purchase at these prices you need to get a membership, which is $10 and lasts for a year and is renewable. If you buy as much polish as I do from this place, it's really worth it.

Anyway, babbling aside, here are first 6 polishes (that I managed to swatch before my camera died) from this collection!

Glitter Gal Light as a Feather

Hi everyone! Happy December!

I only have one month left of my work term, so hopefully I'll be able to post more frequently after that! I'm going back to school next semester (starting in January) so I'll have more time for polish then! woohoo!

Anyhow, my goal for today is to finish my work report and get it out of the way so I won't have more stress about it later. That being said, today's post is pretty picture heavy so I'll leave the pictures to do the talking! Here is the fabulous Light as a Feather!

Thanks for reading! See you all soon (after I finish my paper D: )!

Marisa

Picture Polish Monroe

Hi everyone!

Sorry for the lack of posts lately, I've been feeling really unmotivated (so much that I haven't changed my nail polish in over a week! eek!)

Since I haven't changed my polish in a while, I have no new NOTDs to show y'all... so this post is coming from the vault-ish!

This picture might be a tad old, but the polish is still gorgeous. Unfortunately it's discontinued now, but you may be able to pick up a bottle somewhere... I'm not really sure how many are left or if it's all sold out now. Still very pretty though. I picked this up at Llarowe's birthday sale along with Mask-a-rade, since I couldn't decide on which one to get. I'm very glad I got both though, since they are both stunning!

Monroe is a a beautiful blood red jelly-ish with tiny sparkling holo particles suspended in it. The holo bits are really small, and make a gorgeous scattered look in the sun. This being jelly-ish, it dries super glossy and smooth (not to mention squishy looking!).

I was initially worried that this would be one of those red bordering on black polishes, but this turned out to be the perfect shade of red.... no too dark but not too bright either.

That's all for today! Thank you for reading and I'll try to do something to my nails today (along with work on my term paper haha)!

Marisa

Butter London Trustafarian & Dodgy Barnett (Fall/Winter 2012 Collection)

Hi everyone!

I am super excited to bring you two polishes from the Butter London Fall/Winter Collection 2012! I hadn't even HEARD of this collection before, but while I was in a polish store in my area they had these polishes out already! One look and I HAD to have them (in true hoarder style). I think there are three other polishes in the collection, including a brick orange-red, a black glitter, and a primarily magenta pink and blue glitter polish in a clear base.

Today I have Trustafarian and Dodgy Barnett to share with you all!

 First up, we have Dodgy Barnett:

I'm a little bit disappointed with my pictures of Dodgy Barnett - colourwise they're fine, but the holo definitely didn't appear in my pictures as much as they do in person. The shade picture is about right (there isn't much holo if any at all) but the sun pictures are a bit sad. In the sun, this polish is really similar to the not-so-bling-holo version of Colour Club's Worth the Risque. If you have that polish, you don't really NEED this one. For a good indication of the holo-ness, the blurry shot shows the holo the most (bit I do this it's a smidgen more obvious than that).

Trustafarian:

Trustafarian is a pistachio green holo. My pictures of this are a bit more holo-accurate. I love this colour. I don't have many holos, but I do own China Glaze's L8tr G8tr, which is kind of similar... L8tr G8tr is more lime green, whereas Trustafarian is a more subdued green with a touch of murkiness.

Overall, these polishes both required 3 coats for opacity. I had no trouble with streaking or balding (like the Nfu Oh holos without aquabase... shudder) and these dried glossy (not matte like some holos). I would categorize these polishes as being in between the crazy linear holographics like the China Glaze OMGs and the Nfu Ohs and the scattered linear polishes (China Glaze Kaleidoscopes). The finish and type of holo in these is really similar to the Color Club holographic polishes - they don't look holographic in shade or low light settings indoors, but in the sun they sure are pretty.

For me, I'm not too picky about how holo-y my holographic polishes are - I like the diversity in finish since I wear whatever I feel like. I tend not to like the more matte holos (don't like the texture), so these are good for me. :D

Overall, I'm pretty happy with these polishes. Dodgy Barnett is similar to Worth the Risque (the version I have) so I probably could do without it, but I really love Trustafarian. I'm excited to see Butter London releasing some holographic polishes, since it seemed like most companies were shying away from holos... hopefully this means that more holo polishes -can- be made (even if these aren't like the OMGs). I hope this means Butter London (at least) can make more polishes like this in different shades. If they do, I'd definitely buy them. I hoard nail polish right? :P

Thank you for reading! Have a great day!

Marisa

Glitter Gal Bronze 3D Sparkle

Hi everyone!

Ah, it feels like forever since I had the time to actually write out a post. It feels good to be back. I feel free, but I made myself a list of chores and things to do so I still feel like I have lots to do. :P

An update on the 1 year celebrations, all I really know right now is that I want to have a giveaway (but I still don't know what the prize will be). I want it to be themed, but I also want that theme to represent me (at least a little bit!). I'm still thinking about it!

Anyhow, today's polish post has been long in the making. I received a bunch of polishes in the mail a while ago from Llarowe to review, but the posts on each polish have been churning out pretty slowly. I was at first a bit hesitant about the Glitter Gal 3D Sparkle polishes, especially since I'm pretty much crazy about their holographic polishes - I just didn't really think that the 3D Sparkle polishes could compare to the gloriousness of the 3D Holographic line.

At some length, I picked up Bronze 3D Sparkle and tried it on. It's actually really amazing. Check it out!

Look at that sparkle? Isn't it fabulous? I would describe it as a clear-ish base with a lot of copper-y foil and holographic particles. It is a bit sheer, but I find that it reaches opacity in 3-4 coats without much fuss. If the rest of the 3D Sparkle polishes are like this, I think I'm going to need to add them to my wishlist. It's fantastic. I'm glad I picked it up this time around. :D

What do y'all think? Have you ever had those moments when you were SURE you wouldn't like a polish, only to try it and be smitten?


Glitter Gal polishes (and many other brands!) can be purchased from the Llarowe website. There are TONS of different gorgeous polishes there, so I definitely suggest you check it out!

Thank you for reading!

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.

Butter London Knackered & Bossy Boots Swatches and Review

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

A England Dragon

Hi everyone!

Another post that's short on real words, but hopefully will make it up with a gorgeous polish! Applies like butter, dries super shiny, pretty scattered holo! Here's A England's Dragon!

This is the absolutely perfect western dragon green. It even flashes gold. Gorgeous.

Marisa

Glitter Gal Suede

Hi everyone!

Today we have another polish that I really really liked and somehow misplaced the pictures! This tends to happen a lot, probably because when I edit a bunch of photos I end up wanted to post the best ones last.. and then I swatch more and they get lost!

Suede is another gorgeous holographic from Glitter Gal! The holographic effect in this polish is definitely more subtle compared to any of the other GG holos I've tried, but this one still has a special place in my heart.

The above is Glitter Gal Suede in direct sunlight. I really love how this colour looks on my skin. Super gorgeous, and I had no problems applying it! :D

Suede and other Glitter Gal polishes can be purchased from http://shop.llarowe.com/ for $14 / 9mL bottle or $20 for a full sized bottle. You can also find other AWESOME polishes at Llarowe, including some spectacular holographics, multichromes, AND the new A-England collection! I currently have my eyes on the Speciallita Hits no Olimpo collection, but I can't bring myself to splurge on those... yet. ;)

Thank you all for reading! Have a great Monday!


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.