Cult Cosmetics Classic Collection

Ok, so I had the coolest mani to show you all this morning, and guess what? Instead of emailing to myself from my phone, I frigging deleted them!!! Ugh!!! They were super cute purple ones with hand painted details.  I hope you all are as mad as I am right now,  because I think I might have steam shooting out my ears.


Remember when I said I have the worst luck ever with sub boxes? Well, when Cult Cosmetics changed their box from brand names to their own line in October,  I told them to take a hike. I got an email not too long ago saying that my order had shipped... *blank stare*. After several emails to their customer service line and attaching confirmation of cancelation emails,  I was credited the charge and bonus! I got to keep the polish they sent me.

I got the Classic collection,  which is 3 colors and a set of Mash dotting tools. Love the tools, I previously only had one tool I picked up from Sephora, and I used a sewing pin with a yellow plasic ball at the tip for my big dots. These will definitely come in handy.

The polish... Cult claims that these are "one and done" polishes,  meaning they only need one coat for full coverage.  I didn't find that as being the case. And of course,  as my luck would have it,  one of the polishes I got is a red.  Ugh. (Although it's free... I can't really complain).


This is El Matador,  a bright red creme. I found this to be slightly more warm toned than expected,  and although I probably could have gotten away with one coat,  I wouldn't have due to some patchiness.

Lighting : shade

Lighting : full sunlight

Next is Boneyards, a charcoal grey creme. Better on the opaqueness of the formula,  but again I used 2 coats for the same reason as above.

Lighting : full sunlight

And finally is Stay Gold, a golden glitter topper. Totally not my cuppa tea. I placed one coat of Stay Gold over El Matador.

Lighting : shade

Lighting : full sunlight

These weren't terrible,  and if I would have gotten some different colors,  I might have a different tune... but we all know how I feel about red, and dark greys are ok, just tend to make my skin tone feel a little washed out.  My other concern is that the brush is huge. Like HUGE. These make OPI look like Essie. With OPI, I feel as though the large brush isn't as full to make application on tiny nails difficult. For me, I have extremely small nail beds. (My pinky nail is only about an 1/8 of an inch- my thumb: 1/4.) I don't have a ton of trouble with OPI, but I think that's why I use so many Essie polishes, because their brush is smaller. These Cult brushes were not only big, but thick. I had a lot of clean up to do due to this. If you have larger nails, great. I think these would work extremely well for you. For me, it was somewhat of a nightmare.


I know some friends that love this line, but I'm still on the fence. What are your thoughts?  Cult Cosmetics polish can be purchased here.

April

Happy Merry Christmas!

Hey guys! I can't believe Christmas is here already.  I've got an action filled two days ahead of me,  so I've been taking it easy so far. One thing that I'm uber excited for? I found an app that you can catalog all of your nail polishes! You take a picture,  name the bottle, name the brand and then label the color and polish type. You can then sort later by any of those categories.  Brilliant.  I have an Android,  so the app is Nail Polish, Your Collection and is FREE!!! I'm about halfway through it all.

Here's a screen shot of most of my Essie's.  I tried going by brand at first, but gave up and started logging by color instead.

So, anyways,  here is probably my last Christmas mani to share!! I went simple,  but yet something that would make a statement.

I like water marbling,  but I'm not a fan of an entire hand worth of it... too busy. So why not do just an accent nail of marble?

The red is my new favorite,  Signature by Seche. I then used some random red glitter top coat to make it sparkle. The green is Zoya Hunter, with a Sinful Colors green / gold topper. Both are used in the marble,  with my favorite My Boyfriend Scales Walls by OPI.

I'm really digging the simplicity plus the sparkle.

Let me know what you think!

Merry Christmas my gawkers. Have a wonderful day with your family and friends.
April

Christmas Polka!

Sooo excited my chickadees! !! Today is the last day of work for me until after Christmas.  I need to do some major baking and shopping,  so looking forward to that!

I've got a little something different today.  Definitely more my style.

I've decided to call this midnight snow globe. Base is one coat of Essie Licorice, and then a slew of white dots. Go back over the dots with red and lime green, voila! Accent nailamajig is L'Oreal Sparkalicious. This is great beginner nail art.

Ah, glitter nail, how I have missed you.


I'm sure that I will have a few more Christmas manis before the holiday,  so stay tuned.

5 pm countdown is on!!!!
April

Boughs of Holly

Fa la la la la, la la la la!!!

I can't believe that Christmas is almost here. I have another quick Christmas themed mani to share today.

I have always liked the combo of lime green with red for Christmas,  just to give the traditional a little boost. I free handed the holly on and added the stripes. I'm kind of missing some sparkle here, so I'm not sure how long I'll keep this one on. But I'm definitely looking forward to only working 3 days this week for a long holiday weekend. Which is good, because I haven't done much shopping.  Yikes.

On another note,  I stopped by Ulta on Sunday because I have a coupon for 20% off of the Prestige brands, which hardly ever happens.  I of course wandered to tge polish section and picked up 3 China Glaze,  a clearance Zoya and two Seche Vite polishes. I have never tried Seche Vite lacquers,  only the top and base coats. Um, this stuff is amazeballs. Totally one-coaters. The reds thatbi own are all jellys or crellys, and I didn't have any cremes. The Seche Vite red is so fantastic. I'm totally sold. Plus they were buy one get one free. Boom.

Have a wonderful day!
April

December Babies are the Bestest

Today is my my birthday!!! I am one of those people that love attention,  and one of my favorite sayings is that people should be like me, and think ABOUT me more often.  Lol. I also typically take the entire week of my birthday off, but I didn't this year. In past years I did all of my holiday baking that week, but you know what?  That's just too far away from Christmas and things went stale by then. So I'm celebrating all week instead.

I have always disliked having a December birthday.  My family members gave me the shaft and did the whole "I just combined your birthday and Christmas gifts together" thing. Yeah, no you didn't,  and gee whiz, a sweater?  Thanks. (Said from my 8 year old self) So it's sort of my mission to make December birthdays awesome.  Fail. It also tends to be severe weather on my birthday. When I turned 21? Two feet of snow. The follow up date a week later? More snow. One more week? Ice. Screw you, I didn't want to go out anyways!  Same for my 30th. Ice. It was supposed to snow last night a few inches, but it looks like we got missed.. I'm shocked because I swear there is a curse, which is December 11th.

Well regardless,  I needed to change my polish and whip up a birthday / holiday look. I've got consecutive holiday parties starting Thursday and going through Saturday,  so the less that I have to change it out, the better for this week.

I wanted sparkly and a cupcake.  Because who doesn't love cupcakes?

I typically try to disassociate my day with Christmas,  but with all the festivities this week, that wasn't an option.  Plus I can remind people that its my birthday week until I change it. Ha!

So,  nothing totally special,  but it's a nice look.

On another note,  my broken nail is growing quite nicely.  Hopefully by the end of the month I should have it back to a decent length.  Does anyone else have horrible issues in the winter with their nails just wanting to snap off and chip?  I mean, I have that issue all the time with  my pointer fingers, (you'll notice that they are always shorter than my other nails) but I'm sure that the dry winter weather isn't helpingmy nails. Tips are appreciated to get me through! !!

So cheers... and remember that December babies need a little extra love.
April

Christmas Plaid

Hello and happy Friday!!! Apologies for my absence in fall. Not sure why I didn't create posts... I still of course did my nails and took pictures,  so I will probably do a SPAM post of a ton of older pics.


Today I want to share my first Christmas mani. I was inspired by the Polishaholic,  which is the first nail blog I ever followed and still look up her swatches when I think about purchasing a color. I was thumbing through Instagram and saw a snippet of a red plaid thumbnail- she was actually posting a pic of a trio of mini polishes from Zoya,  but I was blinded by the plaid.  I say to myself, self- I think this is fantastic and you need to do it.


So then I had to figure out how to get a layered look with the plaid stripes. I tested it out, and this is what I came up with.

I die. I love this so frigging much that I might cry when it chips or when I take it off. All of the nails feature a base of OPI MY Boyfriend Scales Walls,  and the ones that are still that grey-white have a top voat of Essie's Pure Pearlfection . Now for the plaid.



Base is the same white, and then I used a tan color for the medium toned stripes, dark green for the darker ones, and a red on the green nail. Then taking a jelly-ish red and a jelly green, swiped that on top over the stripes. I finished them off with a thin white stripe on top.

I'm officially obsessed.  I'm so pleased how well these turned out. I can't wait to do more.

Also, I almost completely snapped off a nail the other day (thankfully on my non-swatching hand). It was bad. Prepare yourself for this pic.

I used the tea bag method to repair it. Glue the nail back in place, cut a piece of the bag to fit the break, glue that on. Buff, glue, repeat.  Add clear coat,  buff. Repeat.  I basically made a fiberglass patch. Its still hanging in there and seems pretty sturdy!  I can't believe it worked. Here's the after:

Be back soon with the spam I promised.   =)
April

Day 30, a Tutorial

One day left. I can't believe I have made it!!!

When I re-discovered nail polish,  I found several different ideas and blogs. One of my favorites was the Louboutin Nails.


If you have been living under a rock, and don't know what a Louboutin is, its a delightful fabulous shoe that the soles are red. Awesome story,  the first pair that were red bottomed were painted with nail polish!


The tutorial that I found had you first paint the underside of the nail with red. I used an Essie polish (A-List) because the brush is narrow,  and it dries quickly.  Then it said to paint the first coat in white so that the red pops and shows easily with the dark top. After that dries, paint on the black. I used two coats of Essie Licorice.

I wore this one day earlier,  and I would walk up to people and show them my black mani. I was like, isn't this pretty?  I would get the blank stare so then I would turn them over. Wait for the wow.

Its one of those fun surprises that you get to show people.

I totally plan on doing this again, but experiment with other colors.  And actually,  today I added a matte finish top coat, and I am really digging it. There's something about black polish that I think looks so classy. Which is weird, because its black!


So, thoughts? Are you as nervous as I am to attempt to remove this one? Ha!
April