Rescue Beauty Lounge Scrangie

Hi guys!

Sorry for mysteriously disappearing on y'all lately! I've been hit by the end of semester plague, so I've been working my butt off on some projects and haven't really had much time to type out a post.

I might disappear again on and off for the next few weeks, so I probably won't be posting much until all of my final exams are over!

I'm going to leave you with my #1 Rescue Beauty Lounge lemming... Scrangie! It's beautiful and unique, and I haven't seen any polish that's a really good dupe. I've seen a bunch of violet purples with blue shimmer and stuff, but this one has some green in it that the others don't have! Enjoy!

Thank y'all for reading! If you guys have any questions at all, I'll be on twitter! Tweet me!

Marisa

Butter London Knackered & Bossy Boots Swatches and Review

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Cult Nails - Toxic Seaweed

Hi everyone!

Just a short post today, since I just realized that I have a bunch of things to work on (start on my presentations, paper, study) since the end of the semester is coming up. I kind of just realized that it's almost the end of March and the semester ends in the beginning of April and now I feel like running around yelling. ;P

So, I won't go into much detail on this polish, since it's gorgeous and the pictures will speak for themselves! Actually, I don't think the photos really captured the beauty of this one. It's also limited edition, so... you know what that means. :P

Thank you all for reading! I'm hoping this anxiety will pass soon so my next post can be more coherent. :P

Marisa

Cult Nails Baker

Hi everyone!

Today I have Cult Nails' Baker to show y'all today. I only purchased 2 of the polishes from the latest collection (this is going to change with the next few collections- I have my eyes set on all of them x_x), mostly because I'm not really a nude person. I was wiffle-waffling on getting either Mazo or Baker along with Toxic Seaweed, but I ended up getting Baker. In retrospect, I should have gotten Mazo (uh-oh, lemming alert!).

First of all, Baker is a gorgeous polish. It applied very nicely, evened itself out, typically the formula I've come to expect from Cult Nails. This only reason why I don't love this polish as much as I should (and it deserves!) is because the colour is probably the closest I've ever come to mannequin hands before, and it's kind of unnerving.

Unnerving or not, I think I'll still wear this polish again. I probably just need to adjust to the colour, and I'm thinking this would look great with some stamping on top!

That's all for now, thanks for reading!! :D


Marisa

Current NOTD

Hi everyone!

I had my last midterm today and I just feel really.. drained. I need a nap.

Sooo, a short-ish post today. This is a mix of stamping/random tape colourblocking. I've really been into stamping lately, so you'll probably see more of that in the upcoming posts and such.

This is another image from the N.Nail B65 plate (SPPMB65) from the e-shop KKCenterHk, which I reviewed in this post. I used China Glaze's Kinetic Candy for the design, and Recycle for the base. I then used tape to make some random triangle-y bits. Triangle-y bits? Yeah, my brain is fried.

Sorry for the dry cuticles etc, winter is definitely the worst season for my skin.

Hope y'all enjoy! You can purchase this stamping plate from can purchase this stamping plate from the KKCenterHk online store. In the meantime, if you use the coupon code livelylacquer (valid until January 31, 2013) you can get 10% off your purchase! Yay!

Thanks you reading! I'm going to take that nap now :D

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.

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

Sunday Swatch Spam: Back to Boho Edition

Hi everyone!

I'm sure most of you have seen this collection about a billion times now, so I won't say too much about it now!

Artsy Craftsy: One of my favourites from this collection. Evergreen green creme.

Blue-Topia: Smooth, pigmented navy creme. Easy to apply but I can see this leaving nails looking smurfy, so 2 coats of base coat just in case!

 Boho Mojo: Eugh. Frostier than Frosty the Snowman.

 Earthy Angel: Nude creme. Another one of those colours that make my hands mannequin-like. Pretty, but still kind of freaks me out a bit. I would need to wear this one with something on top.

New Bohemian: Another variation on a Tiffany Blue. One of these days I'm going to need to dig all of these colours out and do a comparison. I'm a sucker for these colours.

Nomadic in Nude: Another nude colour, but I prefer this over Earthy Angel.

Nouveau Vintage: Another one of my favourites for this collection. Verry pretty look that reminds me of aged bronze.

 Rad Nomad: A blue-grey creme.

Rebel Spirit: I think that this is a very dark brown that looks almost black, depending on the lighting. 

Red-ical Gypsy: I actually liked this one a lot. Smooth formula, pretty berry-red colour.

 Shabby Drab: Dusty-ish cornflower blue. A colour I will probably be reaching for a lot in the summer!

 Voodoo You Do: Another frosty colour, although definitely not as frosty as Boho Mojo. With careful application you can avoid having super obvious streaks. Not a polish I'd put on if I were ever in a rush though. :P

Hope you all enjoyed the swatch spam! Happy Sunday!

Marisa

Franken Friday!

Hi everyone!

I made this franken a few days before Valentine's day, but haven't shared it with y'all until now! This is currently unnamed since I can't really think of anything good. Any suggestions? :D

This is a magenta-pink shimmer with orange-gold-green flakies!

That's all for now, happy Friday everyone! Have a good weekend! :)

Marisa

Review: N.Nail Stamping Plate B65

Hi everyone!

Today I'm going to review a stamping plate I received from KKCenterHk, an online store based in Hong Kong that sells beauty supplies. I have been on a foreign nail polish kick lately so I'm really excited to be able to bring you all this post, since they also sell a lot of brands that are unknown to me and have some exciting polishes available (like magnetic and glow in the dark ones!).

I have also been wanting to try stamping more often, but I don't have access to many full nail designs (which I generally prefer). In short, this was an awesome opportunity.

In my package from KKCenterHk, I received these two items:

 An N.Nail Scraper and stamper set (JR1055)

And the stamping plate! This is the N.Nail B65 plate (SPPMB65).

I used the center image for my stamping adventure!

I used China Glaze's Lemon Fizz for the base, and Cult Nails' Vicious for the stamp. Sorry about the smudging, I was a little heavy handed putting the top coat on and it managed to smear some of the design. (Doh!)

PROS:
- I had no difficulty using the stamping plate. The images I tried came out very well. This random broken up/messed up parts of the images are more or less my fault (for being a newbie at stamping).
- Images on the plate are very cute -I can actually see myself using this plate fairly often. I also didn't really think I'd like this image from the product picture on the website, but it's actrually quite cute. from far away this design reminds me of lace on my nails.

CONS:
-The stamper itself is kind of small, but it is usable. I generally prefer longer handles because it just feels like I have a better grip on things, although my positioning still needs some work anyhow. :P
-The scraper. I found the blade too short. it's around 2-3mm from tip to plastic handle, so my excess polish usually ended up getting stuck on the lower bit of the handle and was really hard to clean from the little ledge between the blade and the holder. After the first few tries, I ended up going back to using one of my old cards to scrape away the excess polish.

To conclude, I found the quality of the stamping plate to be very good (in my opinion). I'm not sure if $4.74 USD/plate is a decent price (in comparison to other brands) because of my inexperience with stamping plates in general, but I think I wouldn't hesitate to purchase more of these plates (and possibly some other goodies) from this store.

You can purchase this stamping plate and many other beauty items from the KKCenterHk online store.

Thanks for reading!! :D

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 Dosh

Hi everyone!

My last midterm is coming up (it's next Wednesday), so I might not lurking around on twitter or the blog as much as I usually do (I'm there but you just can't see me most of the time!)... never fear! I have a folder that's getting pretty huge with unposted pictures, so I'm going to get some of those scheduled after I type this post out. There won't be as much commentary or rambling going on in the post (which can be a good thing depending on who you ask ;) ) but I'm going to try to get them all scheduled for every other day or so. I also have some presentations to work on (and present) later on in March, so you may see some posts experimenting with some more work friendly colours.

Anyhow, today we have a polish that I wasn't sure would work well with my skintone, and I'm still not completely sold. It's one of the first Butter London (along with Victoriana, coming later) polishes I've tried though, and so far it doesn't seem too shabby. This is three coats.

I'm on the fence about getting the Black Knight (I should get it though... the name alone is enough for me lol). Okay, I'll probably be picking that up sometime. Did I mention that I'm on a absolute no-buy at the moment? You're probably going to see a lot of polishes added to my wishlist for now... I'm really lemming those upcoming Cult Nails collections... sigh.

Hope you enjoyed my rambling for today! Thanks for reading!

Marisa

Illamasqua MILF

Hi everyone!

I'm glad you all enjoyed my Peacock Feathers mani, I tried to do some more nail art yesterday, but I don't think it turned out as well this time around. I may get around to posting it sometime next week! :D

Just a super short post today, I recently added this post to my stash after hunting for Load (which was another huge lemming of me). I'm super glad I bought this polish, since this has become my favourite polish ever! Formula wise it can be a bit tricky to apply, but it's still manageable, and I really love the colour!

Maybe I just like this colour because it looks a lot better on my skin (it's yellow based) compared to the usual minty blue based greens.

Either way, it's gorgeous. I love it. :D

Thanks for reading!

Marisa

Peacock Feathers

Hi everyone!

I'm SUPER excited to be showing you all this mani I did after my exam on Tuesday!

I'm really proud of this one... I think this is probably the best nail art I've done to date. I discovered during the making of this mani that thinner is basically my best friend when it comes to nail art. I'm going to try to pick up some different shape/sized brushes next time so I can play with them!

Onto the nails! I had this idea is my head for a while now, but haven't really had the time to sit down and try it out until Tuesday. For some reason, I kept thinking about using a black striper to outline the vein of the feather, but I'm not really sure where it came from. I might have been inspired by someone else's nail art, but I can't really remember definitely. The rest of it came from looking at pictures of peacock feathers and a lot of experimentation.

For this manicure, I used:

China Glaze - Electric Pineapple
Color Club - Artsy Craftsy
Orly - Lucky Duck
Orly - Stone Cold
Unknown gold foil (I broke the bottle when I first bought it, so it's in a random mini bottle now)
Cult Nails - Time Traveller
Black nail art polish

I'm overall really happy with how this turned out! In the last picture, my thumb is what my original idea kind of looked like- you can't really see it in the picture, but I was originally thinking about using a bunch of awesome multichrome glitters/multichromes/duochrome polishes to make the peacock feather, but I ended up going with a creme based design.

What do you think? This manicure actually makes me kind of excited to try out some other nail art ideas I've had in mind! The next on my list is trying to do a watercolor painting-like method. I have NO idea what kind of design I should do, but I'm excited about trying out a new technique. Of course, this will probably be after this mani chips to death. ;)

On the same note, if you guys have any suggestions on what kind of inspiration/nail art ideas I should do next please drop me a line on twitter or leave a comment here! I'm working on setting up a Facebook page (finally) too, but it'll be pretty bare bones for now!

**EDIT - The Facebook page is now up and running! I'm still working out a few kinks -need to figure out how to get Networked Blogs to publish my recent posts, but other than that it seems like it's doing fine! Click here to check it out!


Thanks for reading! You guys are all AWESOME!

Marisa