*Nothing to Disclose*

     Well, the temperature has dropped to below zero here on quite a few occasions lately. It was -14 when I woke up yesterday morning. Which means winter is in full effect, my nails and skin are suffering from the extreme cold and Christmas is just around the corner. That means it's time to break out some seasonally inspired manicures! I thought with the severe cold and snow predicted to hit my area over the weekend it was only fitting to share with you the frozen snowflakes manicure I wore this week.

*Press Sample*

     This week on the blog I will be sharing with you the upcoming Brain Scan Collection from Parallax Polish. This 7 color collection will be available for purchase in 3 finishes ( matte, scattered holo and soft linear holo) for a total of 21 polishes. Yes, you read that right 21 polishes! No I won't be showing you all 21, I'm not sure my fingers could handle that much acetone, but I do have a nice variety of the 7 colors. I've decided to break this review up into 3 posts with each post focusing on the 3 finishes available. First up is the Soft linear holos, and a little behinds the scenes info about this collection. 

*Nothing to Disclose*

     It's Monday again! How the heck did that happen? I swear it was just Friday! Well, the weekend is over and I hope everyone had a good one. I spent most of mine taking care of a sick child. Thankfully he is on the mend and I'm back to reality. Which means back to work for the first time since early June. One of the perks of working for a school is having most of the summer off, the downfall is not getting paid 2 months out of the year. (ouch!)  But I am looking forward to getting back to work almost as much as I was looking forward to wearing Cinna-Mocha from Carpe Noctem Cosmetics. Which is unfortunately discontinued. 

     I have been seeing so many swatches of this great cocoa, chocolate brown polishes lately,  drooling over them, and cursing my lack of a paycheck along with my no buy and then I remembered I had Cinna-Mocha in my collection. A gorgeous milk chocolate brown with subtle shimmer. 

     Application on the first coat was a little sheer, but even and full opacity was reached after 2. Like most shimmer finish polishes, Cinna-Mocha suffers from brush strokes. Although they aren't quite as obvious as my camera would lead you to believe. 

*Nothing to Disclose*

     Happy Humpday everyone! How's your week going so far? My kids keep telling me that they have run out of things to do and are constantly bored. I guess we are in for a long summer. While I brainstorm ideas to keep them entertained why don't you take a look at today's blog post. I've compared 4 popular silver nail polishes to see how well they work for stamping. The polishes I tested are Sally Hansen Silver Sweep (Insta-dry line), Zoya Trixie, Essie No Place Like Chrome, and Sally Hansen Celeb City (X-treme wear line). Just how well do these silver polish staples work for stamping? Let's take a look.

*Nothing to Disclose*

     I hope everyone had a great weekend. The weather was so nice here that some friends and I got together for a BBQ and outside games. I might have even gotten a slight tan! I love the warmer weather and everything that it brings. For today's post I'm doing a comparison of white nail polishes and how well they stamp. You might remember my previous post about black nail polishes or you might not it was quite a few months ago. I sort of got sidetracked when it came to making this a series. oops! 

     For this comparison I used Konad stamping white, Sinful Colors Snow me White, Milani White on the Spot and Finger Paints Paper Mache and image plate SH213 from Shandy. Just like last time I wanted a design that had a lot of detail to it to really see just how well the polishes would work.  Let's take a look at my results. For this test I used Sally Girl Curfew as my base color. 

     As you can see there are a few patchy spot in the Konad design. This is due mainly to user error. I scraped a little too hard and removed a lot of polish. I didn't notice it until after the image was already on my nail.  Not the most accurate for testing I know but I think you can still get a good idea of how it works so I decided to not re-do it. 

     All 4 polishes stamp well but they have different opacity to them. Surprisingly the Milani has the most opaque image even though it was the thinnest when applying it on the stamp. Sinful colors did the next best job as far as a crisp clear image goes.  The Konad and Finger Paints seem to be equal in opacity.

    

   Over all based off of this experience Id have to say that Milani White on the Spot is the best nail polish for stamping out of these 4. Even beating out the stamping specific polish from Konad. Impressive considering it's also the oldest of the 4. I've had this bottle for almost 3 years now. What so you think of these results? Are you surprised at which one's stamped the best?  Do you have a favorite white polish to stamp with? Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing! 

*Nothing to Disclose*

     
     It's the Second day of the Christmas Nail Art Challenge and today's theme is Christmas trees. I had a heck of a time trying to come up with an idea for today's theme.  I wanted to go for something different again and attempted a few different ideas. But fancy nail art was just not in the cards for me today. After 4 failed manicures I finally settled on a French twist with stamping.





*Nothing to Disclose*

   
     Ugh, It's Monday. Who here wasn't ready to go back to work? I'm hoping today's post will help take some of the edges off of those Monday Blues. Why? Because it's the gorgeous multi-chrome, linear holo also known as KB Shimmer's Rolling with the Chromies.

    

*Nothing to Disclose*

     Welcome to Friday! What do you think of the new look to my blog? It's so much brighter now. I wanted to make sure you noticed it. Anyway on to today's post.

     Most of us love the look of a stamped manicure. But when you're first starting out it can be hard to do. I know one of the problems I had was finding a good polish to use.

     In this post, I've compared 4 black nail polishes to see which one works the best. I tried to use a variety of price points so that everyone could find one to fit their budget. The polishes I used in order from pointer to pinky are Konad Stamping Black, Finger Paints Black Expressionism, Pure Ice Black Rage and Zoya Black Swan.



*Provided for Review*

      Today I have for you the second part of the Ellagee Stained Glass collection. Don't worry if you missed Part 1 you can catch up here. For this post I have Milk Glass, Ruby Glass and Cobalt Glass to share with you.

     First up is Milk Glass. A very shiny slightly creamy transparent polish that is perfectly named.

   
     Just look at how soft and squishy it looks on the nail. Of course, I had to do some stamping between layers again.


     I stamped with Red Angel plate RA-116 and Sally Hansen Color Foil Rose Copper. I really like the way this turned out but I think the image was a little too big for this to look right. Shown here is 4 coats of Milk Glass

     Next I have Ruby Glass. A shiny transparent hot pink jelly polish. Don't let the hot pink part scare you away though. After 2 coats Ruby glass started to deepen to a nice rich berry color.

   
     The application was again smooth and easy. Here I have Ruby Glass shown with 2 coats alone.


     For the stamping here I used Knoad stamping white and Red Angel plate RA-111. This image fit nicer on my nail than the first. I have a feeling that if Id placed them a little closer together it would look like a shadow. Shown here is 3 coats of Ruby Glass.

     And last but not least we have my favorite of these three. Cobalt Glass is a shiny transparent blue that darkens with each coat.

     So pretty. I'm glad I waited to swatch this one last because then I could continue to wear it. And it looks even better with some stamping set between layers.

 
     Again I used Knoad stamping white but this plate is Red Angel plate RA-109. Shown here is 4 coats of Cobalt Glass without top coat.

     So there you have it 3 more polishes from the Stained Glass collection by Ellagee. There are still a few more polishes in this collection and I look forward to sharing those with you a little further down the road. Thanks for stopping by and Happy Polishing!


     *Nothing to Disclose*

  
     Today I'm sharing with you a manicure I wore to a wedding last weekend. No not the wedding of my good friend Alissa who you might remember from my recent gradient post, but another friend who got married. I knew I wanted to do a fun, special manicure that went with my dress.

     I knew I had to do something special for this night. The girls that I was going with take a very active interest in my manicures and I wanted to impress them. Well the most impressive nail art technique currently for me is the leadlight technique.

     For those of you unfamiliar with leadlight it's really quite simple. It's just like coloring pictures in a coloring book but with a stamped image and sheer nail polish.

   

     I started off with a base of Finger Paints Paper Mache, then stamped with Konad special black using Bundle Monster plate BM-318. The flowers reminded me of the flowers on my dress without matching them exactly. I then took my smallest dotting tool and filled in the centers of the flowers with OPI I'm Never Amberrassed from the sheer tints collection.

*Provided for Review*