Black Sheep Lacquer Fire & Ice Swatch and Review!

Hey everyone! Today I have a swatch and review of a new Black Sheep Lacquer thermal called Fire & Ice!

How are all of my lovely readers doing today? I'm actually doing quite well despite the sad stuff going on in my life right now. It has been harder for me to focus lately (on school and on blogging) and I've been procrastinating even more and studying even less than usual. Somehow, I managed to get A's or even A+'s on my first three midterms (one for each of my non-elective courses; Organic Chemistry II, Spectroscopy and Genetics) and I've never gotten an A on an organic chem test before! It's the class I struggle with the most, but now that I know I can do well in it (i.e. get better than an A-) I might actually put in some more effort :P. Getting my marks back was a very welcome and happy surprise because I was worried I wasn't doing well and that I'd started off the semester badly.

Anyways, onto the polish! Fire & Ice is a clear/grey to lightish blue to purple/burgundy thermal polish stuffed with varying sizes of iridescent glitter! The iridescent glitter in this polish is such a lovely addition because it shines different colours when the base is different colours!

These first few pictures are of the polish in it's normal/warm state, or at least my normal/warm state!

Another cool thing about this polish is that the temperature of my house is warm enough to make it blue, so I got to see it warm up before my eyes when I took it out of the package!

This is what this polished looked like after I had stuck my hands in the freezer to grab a few ice cubes (to stick in a cup of water to cool my nails in for the rest of the pictures)!

The formula on this baby was amazing! I used three coats and each one dried insanely quickly, I don't think it would be possible to paint the coats too quickly and create bubbles! The glitters were perfectly suspended in the base and it was the perfect consistency for easy application! 

This polish did dry slightly matte (which looked really cool) but after top coating it it became extremely shiny! Like, shinier than my top coat ever makes things. Also, one coat of top coat is all you need for a glass-like finish because the polish is sheer enough that you don't need a crazy amount of glitter to see it all!

See what I mean about the iridescent glitters? They glow like crazy when this polish is cold!

Up close the tiny iridescent glitters almost look like holographic ones because of all the different colours they shine, so pretty!

Here the polish is in all of it's states at once so you can really tell how dramatic the changes in colour are!

I know I've bombarded you with pictures, but this is the last one, I promise! Here are macro shots of the different states all together so you can really see how the glitters change based on the base!

Thank you so much for reading everyone! Like I said above, I'd love to know how you guys are doing in the comments! I'd also love to know your thoughts on this polish! If you'd like to see some videos of this polish in action you can find some on my Instagram! Happy Friday!

Rainbow Honey Swatches and Review: Papillon and Magic Cake!

Hey everyone! Today I have a swatch and review of two lovely Rainbow Honey polishes to share; Papillon and Magic Cake!

I am still just absolutely exhausted from my two back-to-back midterms yesterday evening so I'll keep this short! How are you guys doing today/this week? Let me know in the comments!

I'll be hosting a giveaway once I reach 150 Tumblr followers, so you guys can follow me on Tumblr here if you'd like to see the giveaway start sooner! It will be open to the US and Canada only unfortunately, sorry guys, I'm a poor student!

First up we have Papillon, a clear-based glitter topper with silver shimmer, iridescent hexes and tons of different pink and purple holographic glitter (including the butterflies)!

Application was super easy and I only had to fish for a few butterflies, and I did all ten nails so that's pretty darn great!

What you see here is just one easy coat followed by a coat of topcoat, with two coats of Revlon Timeless for undies!

Pink is definitely not my colour and even so, I absolutely loved this polish! You can check out it's holographic awesomeness below in an Instagram video I posted a few days ago!

Next we have Magic Cake, another clear-based glitter topper, with tons of neon matte glitters in various sizes and a small amount of silver shimmer!

I apologize for all of the bubbles in this mani, I painted it pretty quickly pretty close to a fan and it definitely shows!

Application was just a hair trickier with this one as the glitters were slightly more difficult to move around and separate. I think that's often the case with glitter-packed polishes like this and it was still completely manageable!

For the base I used two coats of Sally Hansen Barracuda, and then I topped it off with one coat of Magic Cake and a coat of top coat!

For some crazy reason I didn't think I was going to like this polish, but I was SO wrong! The name is so perfect too! I'm currently wearing it and I like to imagine I have ten little magic cakes on my nails with light blue frosting and sprinkles!

What do you guys think of these lovely glitter toppers? I'd love to hear in the comments! As always, thank you so much for reading everyone! Happy Tuesday!

*These polishes were sent to me in exchange for swatches and an honest review.

Yume Lacquer Swatches and Review: Submerged Siren, Sunken Treasure, Queen Of The Ring and Photographic Evidence!

Hey everyone! Today I have a quick swatch and review of four Yume Lacquer polishes* to share!

Today was my first day back at school and as I expected, it was totally fine. I think I was just being a baby and enjoying my break so I really didn't want to go back haha! I already like all of my teachers and one of them is really funny! Anyways, let's make this quick and to the point because I just did pilates (sort of, there were bits I couldn't do) and I'm crashing. I swear she makes the Monday workouts the hardest of the week as if Mondays don't suck enough already! :P

First up is Submerged Siren, a shimmery and slightly duochromatic blue polish inspired by Sailor Neptune!

The formula was a breeze to work with as I've come to expect with Yume Lacquer polishes! I felt like there were a few clumps of unmixed pigment in mine (see my middle finger and thumb nail) but a coat of top coat would smooth that right out!

The fact that you can still see those bumps shows that these pictures are without top coat, and they're also just two coats of the polish!

Next we have Sunken Treasure, a charcoal grey polish with shimmer and different-sized glitters, inspired by Final Fantasy 5!

The formula on this one was slightly thick than the others but still entirely manageable! It's also pretty bumpy due to all of the glitters so I'd suggest a thick coat of top coat or two!

Like almost all Yume Lacquer polishes this baby was easily a two-coater, and I also slapped a coat of top coat on top to combat the bumpiness caused by all that glitter!

Next up we have Queen Of The Ring, a dark green crelly polish with long black bar glitter, inspired by Persona 2!

This polish was a little hard to apply, only because I was trying to avoid having a bar glitter stick out onto my cuticle or not lay completely on the nail!

What you see here is two coats plus two coats of top coat for maximum squishiness!

Lastly we have Photographic Evidence, a grey crelly base with tiny gold glitters throughout! I think my bottle wasn't fully mixed because as you can see, there were a lot of pigment clumps throughout the bottle.

The formula on this one was lovely as well, easy to control due to a slight thickness!

This is the only three-coater I received from Yume Lacquer and that's amazing for indie polishes! I didn't apply top coat over this polish so this is just three coats and no top coat!

Thanks so much for reading everyone, I hope you're all having a lovely time coming back to reality haha! Let me know which one of these is your favourite in the comments!

*These polishes were sent for swatches and an honest review.

OPI Christmas Sweater Nails!

Hi everyone! Today I have some Christmas/winter sweater nail art to share!

I accidentally planned the painting of these perfectly; I get to wear them from Christmas Eve to Boxing Day. Considering they're the most festive nails I've done recently I'm glad I decided to paint these today!

For these nails I started off with two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, a very, very light grey polish that you can see several pictures down!

I then went in with a lovely brick red creme, OPI Lost On Lombard and a small nail art brush! These nails are inspired by all of the Christmas sweater nail art I've seen recently, namely Lindsey's from Wondrously Polished and Margee's from Nailuminium!

Silly little reindeer shot!

I'm really getting into snowflake nail art so I'm super glad winter isn't over when December is! I watched MrCandiipants' tutorial for snowflakes before I did them last time, and though it's exactly how I would have done them myself I thought I should mention it! She's so hilarious, you guys should really check her out if you haven't already! I feel like I talk about her a lot but her lovely personality and original designs really inspire me!

Here are two pictures of my right hand, my four fingers and my thumb! I thought the execution of these was quite good (for my non-dominant hand) but the weird wrinkling and bubbles afterwards made them look a lot less nice. Oh well, live and learn!

What do you guys think of these nails? Thanks so much for taking a look everyone, I hope you're all having a lovely week! :)

Born Pretty Store Shell Studs Review and Beach Nail Art!

Hey everyone! Today I have a review of some super cute shell studs from Born Pretty Store to show you all!

I was recently contacted by the lovely Daisy from Born Pretty Store and asked if I would like to review some products from them, and of course I said yes! I've bought from them before and everything's always packaged really well and lovely to work with! I was sent three items of my choice so stay tuned for two more Born Pretty Store reviews and nail art using those products!

The adorable gold shells featured in this post can be bought here, there are slightly bigger ones and silver ones in both sizes available, I chose the 3mm gold ones. They are curved slightly to sit flat on the nail, so one coat of top coat is all I needed to cover them and hold them in place! I tested these charms to see if they were reusable by scrubbing one with non-acetone remover for approximately a minute, and they seem to be! The stud was the same gold colour and a little less shiny after the scrubbing, but a coat of top coat would easily fix that.

And now, how I did these nails! I started with one coat of Essie Sand Tropez for the sand, then dotted on some thinned out Sally Hansen Wet Cement and finally, smeared some thinned out OPI My Vampire Is Buff on top! For the water I used Essie Go Overboard, some thinned out smears of Essie Going Incognito, and lastly, a mixture of Go Overboard and My Vampire Is Buff for the waves! I then applied dots of top coat in the places I wanted the shells to go and stuck them in! A coat of top coat and some cleanup and I was all finished :).

I'm playing around with some hand positions that I've never tried before, but I'm trying to use most of the other ones I recently decided on too! Bear with me as I figure out which poses I like best haha!

Onto the pictures!

Be sure to check out their site for other nail art stuff if there's anything you're looking for! They have an amazingly huge selection of products so there's bound to be something for everyone! Also, don't forget to use my coupon for 10% off! This picture is also in my sidebar, so it's really easy to find from any of my posts!

Thanks so much for reading everyone, I hope you're having a lovely Monday! I'll have some indie polish swatches coming your ways soon, so keep an eye out! :)