More nail swatches

Hey everyone. Hope you guys are doing well! Okay, so when I did that charity event last Saturday, unfortunately I got some nail polishes nicked...like at least 5 or 6. C'mon, we're supposed to be there for a good cause! Anyway, I thought I'd pick up some new polishes to replace the ones that I lost. I'm only showing you guys the ones that I haven't swatched for you in past, cuz some of my faves were taken, too :(

Here are the swatches, enjoy!


Both Orly...top: lemonade, bottom: snowcone


Both Orly...top: crush on you, bottom: cotton candy

Both Orly...top: gumdrop, bottom: thorned rose

Both Orly...top: lollipop, bottom: wild wisteria (sorry about the blurry pic)

Both CND...top: tropical coral, bottom: girlie pink


Both China Glaze...top: rich & famous, bottom: chiaroscuro


Both China Glaze...top: for audrey, bottom: flying dragon (neon)

China Glaze: awakening


That's it for now, just a quick one. Hopefully soon I'll be posting some tutorials on how to paint your nails and on doing french manicures soon!

Nail polish haul and swatches! Part 2

Hello again you guys! So Here I am with part 2 of the swatches. I was looking at the pics and I kept thinking that I swear I bought more than this, so I'll have to check around my house later. Anywho, just to let you know in case you haven't checked out part 1, the bottom 1/3 of the nails has Essie's matte about you top coat on it, which is why it's...matte.

So I picked up 3 nail polishes from American Apparel. Yes, I clothing shop. I've only tried this colour, so from what I can tell it took me 3 coats to get it to be completely opaque. I could have gotten away with 2 coats, but I did 3 anyway. I thought it would be bumpy at first once I finished all the coats, but I applied top coat and it smoothed out quite nicely.

I don't really own too many blues, but I like this one.

And is it me or does every colour that looks like this get named peacock?

I got these next 3 polishes I got from Sally Beauty Supply. I love this peachy colour...reminds me of summer.

So does this one.

They were having a buy 2 get 1 free on the polishes, but you have to pick them from the same brand. I was having a hard time picking the 3rd one, so I just grabbed this one. I didn't want to spend all day there staring at the very small collection they had. I'm not normally into metallic/frosty/sheen type colours, but maybe I'll feel like rocking this sometime soon!


Okay, that's it for now. Hope you guys liked the swatches. Take care and good nite!

Nail polish haul and swatches! Part 1

Hey guys, so I've been MIA for a while cuz I had my first written exam in my nail class on things like sanitization/sterilization, bacteriology, structure of the nails, manicures, pedicures...yikes. I didn't know what to expect so I'd been studying really hard. I really wanted to do well and I got...98%. Woot woot! Let's just say it was a lot easier than I was expecting though. We were given an hour to complete it and I finished in under 20 minutes. I stayed in the class for an extra 10 minutes pretending to review it so my teacher didn't think I was nuts. Haha, oh well.

And my teacher had some "clients" come in so we could give them lounge pedicures. It would have been our second time doing them, so we were all a bit nervous. We were told that one of the clients was an esthetician who performs lounge pedicures daily. Great. I was like, you watch. I'll get her. My teacher directs my "client" towards me and I think, yup. She's an esthetician. Nice skin, perfect brows...Great. When I had a free minute near my teacher, I was like, yah...I so have the esthetician. She laughed and said I was hilarious. It was at that point that I KNEW I had her. And I did. But she was really nice and said that I did extremely well and that she was really pleased with her pedicure although she said that she came in with no expectations knowing we'd hadn't really had a lot of classes. She said that my massage pressure was really good and that I'd do really well out in the working world. That made me feel really good, since I was shaking the whole time. HA. Maybe next time I won't feel like screaming the entire time I'm performing a service.

Anywho, enough about that...so in the last few days I've picked up quite a few polishes (call it a new obsession). I'm not allowed to wear gels, acrylics, gel polishes...I can't even wear nail polish when I perform nail services in class because I have to remove polish from clients hands so I'd just end up smearing my own polish all over my client. So I have 5 days of being able to wear nail polish and in that time I usually wear 3-4 colours. I switch almost everyday! I'm fickle like that.

Lately I've been on a hunt for a good matte nail polish. But then I thought, why not just get a matte top coat? So I did some research. Essie has one, but the closest Essie retailer that would carry that product is like an hour away from me (downtown). China Glaze has one, but no one around here carries it. Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics carries one, but I hesitated on getting one at the IMATS and SO regretted it. I get a discount from them for being in a nail program but the shipping is expensive, especially for jsut one polish. So I thought Essie would be the best bet. But I was out shopping at the mall when I thought I'd go into Winners. I was looking for black shoes and clothes for school...I was about to skip the makeup section, but then I remembered who I was and lo and behold...

There it was. My jaw dropped. The Essie matte about you top coat and it came with a realy cute gray polish. It was like $12, which is only like $1-2 more expensive than the top coat by itself and it meant I didn't have to go downtown. PLUS then had my absolute fave nail oil ever. It usually retails for $9-10, but they were on for less than $5 so I grabbed the last 4 there. Mee hee.

Here is that gray from the duo. It's hard to tell, but I used the matte top coat on the bottom 1/3 of the nail so you could see what it looked like (I did that for all the swatches if you're wondering.) Geez, I hope you guys can read my messy writing.

This one is from the OPI Hong Kong collection.

And this one is from the HK collection...

This one, too...

AND this one! haha.

This one is from Rimmel. My teacher says I should never use drugstore polishes cuz their quality isn't as good, but since I'm only using them for one day at a time, I figure I can get one or 2!

Yes, so I did get 2.

Okay, so I didn't want to overwhelm you with pics, so part 2 is on its way! Don't forget to enter my giveaway if you haven't already. It ends in 2 hours (or whenever midnight is for you in your country, whichever is later). Thanks guys for reading!

A few OPI and Orly swatches for you guys...

Hi everyone! So first, just wanted to say that I'll be at both the IMATS and the Spa and Esthetics shows this weekend in Vancouver, Canada. I don't know if there are any of you lot out there who are locals and are checking out either show...but if you are, and you see me, please say hi! I'd love to meet any of you out there, but unfortunately, I kind of feel like I'm the only Vancouverite out here who's so obsessed with nails and makeup...in the blog world anyway! haha. If you are going to the IMATS, I'll be there most of the day on Saturday and for part of the day on Sunday with a press badge on (so I'll be kind of hard to miss) and not that I think any of my readers will be there but if you do see me and say hi and you're the first person to do that this weekend, I'll be giving out a little goodie bag. And if I can't get rid of it on the weekend, maybe I'll have to use it as a giveaway or something :) Moving along...

So just wanted to show you guys some swatches of a few nail polishes I've picked up in the last week. Sally Beauty Supply was having a buy 2 get 1 nail polish free thing, so I went to grab some Orly polishes. Orly is not really a brand that's easily accessible here in Vancouver, Canada where I live, so these are the ones that I gravitated towards. I wanted to see how it applied and how long a manicure can last with these. So I grabbed 6...2 of which are repeats and were put my current giveaway (<----click there to enter, it's super easy!) The colours are, from left to right, Pink Slip, Basket Case, Petit Four and Alabaster Verve.

And here are 2 coats on my nails, swatched in the same order. No base coat, no top coat in case you're wondering. Just the coloured polish. This pic is with no flash. It's hard to see, but all the colours are a flat colour (no sparkle or sheen) except for the pinkie finger (Alabaster Verve) which has a sheen to it.

And with flash. I think that the Pink Slip is meant to be one of those semi-transparent colours, but I piled it on...I think with one more coat, you can get a milky pink. Btw, the 2 fingers in the middle...Basket Case and Petit Four are the ones in the big giveaway prize. And if you're wondering which polish made it on my hands and feet this week? The ring finger, Petit Four. I love the looks! (Stares at hands adoringly...)

And I also picked up a few OPI polishes in pink. Pink is like 94% of my nail polish collection! Haha, I always grab for pinks, so why not roll with it?

On the left is I Think in Pink, and on the right is Italian Love Affair.

And swatches in natural light. Pink Slip has no sparkle of any kind, and Italian Love Affair is a frost...

...Which you can see better in this pic. Sorry, I didn't clean up since I was just swatching and not planning on wearing a different polish on each nail ;)

So far I really like the application on the Orly polishes. I've only been wearing it for 3 days now (no chipping so far) but we'll see. I'm usually so rough on my hands, but since starting my nail course I've been moisutrizing like a mofo and wearing gloves when I wash dishes which you should always do! I never ever did that. There are 2 things I usually never do when I wash dishes. I usually never wear gloves and I never put my hands under anything except pure cold water. Ever since I was a child. Anywho, I find that my polishes last a lot longer and my hands look so much better. There's nothing worse than tired, chipped polished hands (and I've been guilty of that more than a few times!)

Okay, so I hope you guys found the swatches helpful if you're looking for a new polish or 2. Talk to you guys soon!