Rainbow Honey July Mystery Bag Review & Swatches!

Hello my lovely readers! Today I have a review of the Rainbow Honey Mini July Mystery Bag (link here) to share!

I am officially back from Switzerland! I'm very happy to be back to my light box and sister's nice camera so I can get back to blogging! The trip was really amazing and it was so great to hang out with our friend Anna for a month. Surprisingly, I only picked up two polishes while I was away (both by the brand Kiko) which I'll be blogging about soon!

The night we got back I was super excited to learn that I'd come home to a package from Rainbow Honey! In addition to the mystery bag I got three new polishes to review, so keep an eye out for another Rainbow Honey post very soon! Above you can see the adorable packaging their mystery bags come in!

Everything came packaged very well so there's no need to worry about of ending up with broken bottles or product explosions.

As you can see, everything is also packaged close together so there's no way for any products to bang into each other with any considerable force!

Did I mention you get a whole lot of stuff for a small amount of money? These mini mystery bags retail for just 10 American dollars plus shipping! Shipping is free if you spend 50 dollars or more for America and 75 dollars or more for Canada, and you better believe I made sure to spend at least 75 dollars last time I ordered haha! Also, if you spend 65 dollars or more you can get this mini mystery bag as a free gift which is awesome!

This month's mystery bag came with three mini (5mL) polishes, a 4mL eau de parfum rollerball, a 29mL cooling gel and a 4.25g scented cuticle balm. All three body products are in the scent midori; a fresh melon scent! 

The rollerball perfume goes on easily and dries quickly for a nice light summery scent! The cooling gel is very effective, if you don't fully rub it in it stays wet and continues to cool you off for quite a while! It has some really pretty and subtle blurple and green shimmer flakies that makes it extra summery, as well as the same delicious scent as the perfume!

Finally, the cuticle balm is thinner than most, (which I absolutely love!) non-greasy, and fast absorbing! It does that thing where most of if sinks in but you're left with a layer of protection from moisture-loss which I really love! You can see above and below how nails and cuticles freshly swiped with pure acetone look with (thumb, middle finger and pinkie) and without (index and ring finger) the cuticle balm on top!

This cuticle balm adds hardly any shine to pictures even when it's freshly applied so I think it's going to be my new go to cuticle product before I take pictures! I also really love the formula so I'll probably by using it all the time!

Now, onto the polishes! Each mini Rainbow Honey polish comes in a tall skinny bottle with a long and skinny brush that picks up globs of polish full of glitter really well!

First up we have Viridis, a clear-based glitter topper stuffed with shimmer, microglitter and full-on glitter in various shapes, finishes, colours and sizes! Some of the glitters are partially transparent so this beauty will look different over different base colours! Here I've layered one coat of Viridis over two coats of Revlon Espresso, no top coat.

Like I said, what you see here is only one coat of this polish because the glitter is so densely-packed! This is also the result of hardly any dabbing, mostly just applying the glitter topper as if it was a normal polish!

The dry time seemed really awesome and the glitters were so smooth and flat that I didn't even see a need to use top coat for these swatches!

Next up we have Chemical Plant, a very densely-packed clear-based shimmer polish. Despite the clear base I was able to reach opacity in just two easy coats! The shimmer in this baby consists of rose gold/copper coloured flakies, much smaller pink shimmer and even a small amount of blurple shimmer! When the light hits this polish its shimmer mix gives it a duochromey look which is pretty freaking cool!

What you see here is two easy coats and a coat of top coat!

Again, dry time was good and application was awesome!

Finally we have Deep Heart Sea, a slightly green-tinted medium blue jelly with intense pink to blue multichrome shimmer and a whole bunch of matte and pearl finish glitters! The base is a little more green and a little more dark in the bottle than in these pictures, mostly because with all of the glitters you don't need the base to be opaque for the whole polish to be opaque... know what I mean? There are even some white heart glitters thrown in as you can see on my pinky nail, so cute!

The formula on this one was a little thicker than the other two but still entirely manageable! The added thickness gave me more control and it didn't dry so fast that trying to cover your whole nail turned the polish into a gloopy mess. Basically it was a really good consistency for something so packed with glitter!

What you see here is two coats and a coat of top coat!

Whew! You've made it to the end of this massive photo-heavy post! Rainbow Honey included a 20% off coupon code for me to share with you guys to use on your next order! Enter MIXTAPE20 at the checkout before August 31st to get 20% off your order!

Thanks so much for taking a look everyone! What do you think of these polishes or products or Rainbow Honey stuff in general? I love it all and I really think they make polishes unique to other indie brands! I'll be back with one more Born Pretty Store review and one more Rainbow Honey review soon so stay tuned! Happy Sunday! =)

Deborah Lippmann Hannah & Taping with Black Sheep Lacquer Purple Planet!

Hey everyone! Today I have a swatch and review of Deborah Lippmann Hannah as well as some simple taping nail art to share featuring a lovely Black Sheep Lacquer multichrome!

Today I've been enjoying another lazy morning with my boyfriend since he has Thursdays off. I'm especially glad about it because I've had a migraine all day that started last night, so I definitely wouldn't want to be running around! I took a Tylenol earlier but I don't think it really touched the pain. Oh well, I'm happy just laying around because standing up and moving around is mostly what's hurting. Anyways, onto the nails!

I played around with a bunch of different lightings, camera settings and poses this time around, and I'm still not sure what I like the best. The pictures with a white or brown background were just kind of for fun. I took them outside of my light box on full automatic settings, but they actually turned out better than my light box swatches!

I do think I'll be wanting to use my light box for my pictures, I just need to figure it and my camera out a bit more :P. I plan to spend more time fiddling with it today or tomorrow and I hope to make some decisions!

I found that custom white-balancing the pictures on the white background was easier to do and more accurate, so I'm feeling very tempted to go back to that. I didn't include any of those pictures here but maybe I will in my next post. I'd really love to hear your guys' thoughts on all of this! It would help so much!

Now, onto these nails specifically! I started with two easy coats of Deborah Lippmann Hannah; a gorgeous dusty dark green creme. It had a perfect formula and was super quick-drying! I also absolutely love the brush Deborah Lippmanns have, they're thin and kind of small and so dang easy to work with and get nice rounded lines at the cuticle!

Speaking of cuticles, this polish did stain my cuticles a little bit. I'm pretty sure that was because I had just pushed them back and they were a bit dry though!

The next day I decided to add little accents using Black Sheep Lacquer Purple Planet. I purchased it a while ago and I have been really excited to try it! I think I'll swatch it and have a post up about just it later this week!

Another decision I'd like to make is whether to use square pictures or pictures with the normal dimensions. Square pictures show up bigger on my blog and they're so easy to Instagram! What do you guys think? I'd really love to know!

I can't get over how pretty and how multichromatic Purple Planet is! I can't wait to get up some proper swatches of it!

Sorry for all the pictures here guys, I kind of went nuts!

Thank you so much for reading everyone! Again, I'd love to have your input on backgrounds and picture shapes because I'm pretty indecisive! :P Let me know what you thought of these nails in the comments too! Happy Thursday! =)

Butter London Knackered Swatch and Review!

Hey everyone! Today I have a bunch of pictures of Butter London Knackered and a review to share!

I meant to get this post up Monday but after such a long day, a midterm and a busy weekend I was just exhausted! Then last night and this morning I had to finish up a computer science lab! I finally feel better today though because I slept really well last night. Our term papers were due Monday for genetics and I'm just realizing now that I don't have to worry about it anymore and I can relax a bit!

I recently discovered yet another way to procrastinate! :P Have any of you heard of Candy Box 2? It's my new obsession. I'm a bit stuck because I can beat the Bat King and the Devil no problem, but I think I have to save up a billion lollipops to buy the Sorceress' hat to progress any further. Anyways haha, onto a ton of pictures and a review!

Knackered is a GORGEOUS (and I usually refrain from using caps) multichrome polish with small silver holographic microglitter! The base is a blue-grey metallic colour but the multichrome shimmer shifts from green/turquoise to purple and pink and since there's so much of the shimmer it only looks blue-grey in very low lighting. It usually looks green or pinky purple!

It is a bit of a sheer polish so I ended up applying four thin coats (and a coat of top coat) for the opacity you see here. I know that sounds pretty darn sheer and like it would be a pain to apply, but the formula is so lovely and it's so fast-drying that it seemed like applying a normal two or three coat polish. I absolutely love Butter London polishes and I love their brushes!

Like I said above, the formula was lovely. It dried fast, self-leveled, applied like butter, and was only slightly brushstrokey. That's just what happens with multichrome polishes and it was hardly noticeable as you can see from the pictures!

Another super awesome thing about this polish is how dang holographic the tiny glitters are. This polish is so unique and I really think the holographic glitters make it so much better! All of the pictures taken on my chair (the grey background) are in indirect sunlight and the glitters still look holographic! They also look holographic in my light box (black background) and my light box is where holo things go to die! Craziness!

I know when I read something's a four-coater I think it's totally not worth the effort, but the formula on this baby is so good that you really shouldn't let that discourage you! You could also use three  thicker coats and get the same opacity!

My dad even thought this polish was freaking awesome, everyone I showed it to did in fact. I wore this for four days and it did chip a little, but I think that was because my actual nail got a little chip in it.

Overall I think this is a beautiful polish that is totally worth the money (17 dollars plus tax here in Canada) and a perfect present for anyone into nails!

Thank you so much for having a look everyone, I'd love to hear what you think of this polish in the comments! I'll try to prepare some posts for the next two weeks because finals are about to start and I'll be busy again! Happy Wednesday everyone! =D

Black Sheep Lacquer Hecate Swatch and Review and Brushstrokey Distressed Nail Art!

Hey everyone! Today I have a swatch and review of a new Black Sheep Lacquer multchrome called Hecate to share, as well as some brushstroke nail art using a few more Black Sheep Lacquer duo/multichromes!

How has the start of your week been going everyone? I've finally caught up responding to your comments and I'll try and stay caught up from now on! I'm feeling a bit better now that I've had some time to process some sad things so hopefully I can respond to your comments in a more timely fashion from now on! That said, let's get on to the nails!

Hecate is a turquoise (to blue to purple) to pink multichrome stuffed with a whole lotta shimmer! At extreme underwater angles it can even look like it shines orange or yellow!

Please excuse the clump of soap and cat hair in the above picture! I really wish I had noticed it at the time because other than that it's a great shot!

This baby had a lovely formula, it was almost a one coater (I used two) and it dried super quickly! The consistency was perfect so the only complaint I could see regarding this polish is that it does dry a little brushstrokey. I sponged a thin layer of Hecate on top of my second coat to eliminate the brushstrokes, only because I've never tried that before! The following picture is it without the sponged layer so you can see how it looks on its own!

I think I like it better straight out of the bottle and it seems to be more multichromey this way! In the future I'll definitely only wear it on its own!

I applied one coat of the top coat I always use (Essie Good to Go) on top like I always do when I'm going to wear a polish!

The next day I went in with a few more Black Sheep Lacquer duo/multichromes and did a brushstrokey nail art look! I was inspired by Chalkboard Nails' distressed nail art tutorial and Will Paint Nails for Food's distressed jewel toned nails!

The Black Sheep Lacquer polishes I used (other than Hecate) were Purple Planet (which I ordered recently and have yet to swatch), Zaftig Zombie, and Forbidden Fruit!

This is already the second time I've used some Black Sheep Lacquer duo/multichromes for nail art so they're definitely versatile! They're gorgeous on their own and gorgeous together!

Thanks so much for reading everyone! What do you think of Hecate and this brushstrokey nail art? I'd love to know! Happy Tuesday! :)