Above the Curve Valentine's Collection Swatches and Review: UPDATED!

Hey everyone! Today I have swatches of the Above the Curve Valentine's Collection to share!*

I'm just going to start off by saying these all had perfect formulas and consistencies (apart from a little glitter settling) so I don't have to repeat myself throughout this post! Another thing I really love about this collection is that Shawn and Angel (the makers) didn't include a pink (because I don't really like pink on myself and it's my least favourite colour). Purples, plums and browns are definitely more my thing! I loved each and every one of these and didn't want to take them off as I was swatching, but stay tuned to find out my favourite!

UPDATE: I found an easy way to white balance my pictures using GIMP (a free photo editing program) so most of these pictures are now white balanced (it made the Sun and flash pictures worse)!

First up is All You Need is Love! Wine, a lovely plum-coloured polish with holographic microglitter and a bunch of different sized and coloured glitters!

What you see here is two easy coats and a coat of topcoat! I probably got less glitter on my nails than I would have from a perfectly mixed bottle but I love the look of it this way! I think it's harder for glitters to redistribute in small bottles because of the brush and mixing balls in the way!

This is my favourite from this collection! I'd love to know your guys' favourites in the comments!

Here's a shot of this baby in the Sun! Check out all the holographic glitter! Are you guys as in love with this as I am?

Next up is Circle of Love, a clear-based glitter polish with metallic pink and holographic silver microglitter and a bunch of circle and heart-shaped glitters in different sizes, colours and finishes!

This is one thick and dabbed coat of Circle of Love over one coat of American Apparel Mount Royal! Now that there is a bit of product gone from the bottle I think it will be easier to redistribute the glitters when I use this again! Even still, I managed to get quite a bunch of glitter on my nails including some of the hearts!

I was very tempted to keep this one on but I think I have to go on a bit of a glitter strike. Even when I use the foil method and have three or so coats of polish under a glitter topper my nails end up peeling where the glitters were! Then I have to buff my nails smooth and I've been buffing them probably more than is good for them. It's really frustrating, I wonder if I should go on a Nail Envy break and use it as directed for a few weeks. Do you guys have any advice for me? Let me know!

Next up is You Java Me Crazy (love the name!), a warm brown holographic polish!

You know what I said earlier about my peeling nails? Even after buffing them you can see what I mean in these pictures! Since this polish was so opaque (I only used one coat and a coat of top coat) you can really see the places my nails are peeling. Anyway, my peeling nails aside haha, this polish is another lovely Above the Curve one-coater brown polish like Friday the 13th, so naturally I love it!

Unfortunately the Sun went down before swatching these last few polishes so a flash picture and a picture above my light box is the best I could do!

Lastly, we have Truly Madly Deeply, a metallic and holographic warm-toned purple polish! I am actually wearing this right now (as I often do with one polish per swatch fest) and it's definitely unlike anything I own which I love! I've been trying to get a picture of this in the Sun all day but it only came out once and I missed my chance! I hope it comes out again, if so I'll post the picture on my Instagram!

What you see here is two easy coats and a coat of top coat, it was very easy to work with like the rest of this collection!

You can't see the holo effect too well here, but you can see it's metallic aspect!

Thank you so much for reading everyone! What do you think of these polishes? I think you could wear them year-round and that they're gorgeous! Happy Friday everyone!

*These polishes were provided in exchange for my honest review.

Black Sheep Lacquer Lips Like Sugar and Valentine's/anti-Valentine's Day Nail Art!

Hey-lo my lovely readers! Today I have a gorgeous Black Sheep Lacquer thermal called Lips Like Sugar to share, as well as some Valentine's/anti-Valentine's day nail art!

I've been getting increasingly excited about my upcoming giveaway! It's kind of funny because it seems like I was steadily gaining followers on Tumblr until I mentioned that once I reached 150 I would launch my giveaway haha! I'm now at 149 and I'm so dang excited to launch this giveaway so if you have a Tumblr and you'd like to follow me (link here) I'd be so happy! Anyways, onto the nails and buttload of pictures!

Lips Like Sugar is a shimmer-stuffed sheer light pink thermal polish that turns a dark coral colour when cold! I think my hands/fingers are so warm that the polish doesn't even look very pink when I'm at my normal temperature, it looks more like a nude colour which I love!

The formula on this polish was amazing just like all of the other Black Sheep Lacquer polishes I've been reviewing lately! It dried really fast and had a perfect consistency! What you see here is three easy coats and no top coat!

My camera cannot handle taking pictures of reds or corals, it freaks out! Does anyone have any tips on photographing red polishes? I'd love to know!

The shimmer really comes to life and appears gold when this baby gets cold!

I then decided to put some matte sweethearts on top with a mix of nice and not so nice sayings! These were inspired by these nails by Fab Fatale and these nails by Petite Marine! After I painted the hearts on and let them dry, I painted a coat of NYC Matte Me Crazy over just the hearts (not the Lips Like Sugar base).

The polishes I used here were: Julep Blake (yellow), American Apparel Office (green), Color Club Take Me to Your Chateau (blue), OPI You're Such a Budapest (purple), OPI Mod About You (pink) and OPI Lost on Lombard (red).

I couldn't be bothered to matteify the red letters, and that's why I decided to just make the hearts matte. Red polishes seem to smear on me no matter how long I allow them to dry and no matter the top coat, so I left the words/symbols slightly shiny!

I think the heart shapes came out better on my left hand, but funnily enough, I think the writing on my right hand looks better! I can't for the life of me write with my left hand, but apparently I can paint letters/symbols with it? So strange!

I'd love to know what you lovely people think of these in the comments! I quite like them, they're a bit girlier than I'm used to but I'm loving the sheer nude base with nail art on top! You may see some more manis like this in the future!

Yesterday my boyfriend gave me twenty dollars to buy something for me and something for him, so I picked up OPI Muir Muir on the Wall and bought him a mini grater and a knork(knife and fork combined)/spoon (does anyone get the Clone High reference? The knork episode? I LOVE that show). So that's what we did for Valentine's day! Do/did you guys have any plans for Valentine's day?

Thank you so much for taking a look everyone! Let me know what you think of these manis and whatever else you'd like to tell me in the comments! :)

Multicoloured Mosaic Nail Art Inspired by a Bouncy Ball!

Hey everyone! Today I have some fun multicoloured mosaic nail art to share!

Today was a fairly uneventful day for me, I did have an organic chemistry lab where we carried out an elimination reaction though which was fun! I'd love to hear what you guys did today in the comments, probably something more exciting than me huh? I'm getting more used to being at school again now that we've been back for a week and a half, and as I expected I'm enjoying school as usual! How are you guys feeling about school or work or both?

Last Friday night my family and boyfriend and I were checking out at Walmart when my sister and I noticed they had bouncy ball machines. We each ended up buying a small one and a large one and I loved my large one so much that I decided to recreate it's pattern on my nails! I thought about mattifying my nails to match the ball but matte nails don't last as long, and I feel weird about slathering them in lotions, balms, oils, etc as it partly removes the matte effect.

I started out with one coat of Revlon Espresso, a true one-coat black creme! Then from red to pink in rainbow order, I used: American Apparel Poppy, Color Club Almost Famous, China Glaze For Audrey, Julep Claire, Color Club Pucci-licious, and American Apparel Coney Island.

I used a small detail brush for the blobs and applied a coat of top coat on top! I find no matter how long I wait before top coating I always smudge my design a bit. For these nails I waited around an hour and a half to top coat after I'd finished and there still are a few smudges!

I apologize for all of the pictures here guys, I just really love this mani! I also found it a lot easier to paint than my first mosaic mani (link to the post here). I'm not sure which of them I like better seeing as they're quite different, I'd love to know what you guys think in the comments!

Here's my right hand!

Thanks so much for reading everyone! I hope you're all doing well and I'd love to hear about anything you'd like to tell me in the comments! Happy Wednesday!

One Year Blogiversary: Then and Now!

Hey everyone! Today I have a "then and now" post for my one year blogiversary to share!

I saw this awesome idea on Lindsey of Wondrously Polished's lovely blog (link to her post here)! It was hard to find anything very interesting that I did in the first few months of blogging because unlike Lindsey, I wasn't very good when I started my blog, and because of that I didn't try any advanced nail art. My picture quality is the biggest difference I see in these pictures, what do you guys think is my biggest improvement?

For this first mani I remember thinking all of the colours were too bright and intense for a watercolour look, and even when I redid them the other day I thought I should have made the colours even less intense. The funny thing was, rather than thinning the polishes out, I decided to sponge them on the first time I did these. It was like I was trying to do a design that involves a certain technique but I decided to use another technique and still call it the original design… I'm strange sometimes :P.

Here is the link to the post this first picture is from if you're interested! I used to write a lot less in my posts and write even more awkwardly than I do now haha! These are from January 2013 and while wearing these and before writing up the post, I picked up my first bottle of pure acetone for cleanup!

Here is my recent reattempt at this look! I used all of the same polishes as in the other post (American Apparel California Trooper, Essie Cute as a Button, Essie Bikini so Teeny, Revlon Mint Gelato, and Revlon Lemon Meringue) as well as a sheer white polish on top (Essie Waltz) to achieve a more pastel and watercolour-like look!

What do you guys think about the new version of these? To me they look like a blurred floral or houndstooth pattern!

The other mani I decided to redo for this post was a black to neon gradient look. Here is the original post from February 2013! There is a cute story behind these nails because my boyfriend at the time (and current one, we're still dating) told me in detail exactly how I should do these nails and which colour to do on each nail! I just painted a black base and asked him what I should do and this is exactly what he said, down to the ring finger orange accent nail :).

I remember noticing that if you just sponged on a neon colour once or twice it looked like a dark version of the colour, so it really isn't difficult to make a smooth gradient with sheerer polishes like neons. I'm not sure why I didn't think that was as important as it was at the time haha, live and learn!

I almost used the exact same polishes as I did last time for this, but I switched out the Orly black for a more opaque (one-coater!) black; Revlon Espresso. The rest of the polishes are the same, American Apparel Neon Yellow, American Apparel Neon Green, and China Glaze Sun Worshipper! I also switched top coats to a 3-free one because that's really important to me, and as I've said many times I use Essie Good to Go!

I totally screwed up the colour scheme here as you can probably tell, I got distracted watching a crazy movie! What do you guys think of this version of this mani?

Thank you so much for reading guys! I hope I can keep improving and doing posts like this every year! I also hope you've all had a lovely first week back at school and work! =)