What I've Been Wearing Lately: Color Club Eternal Beauty, Sally Hansen Sweetie & Illamasqua Facet

Hey everyone, I'm back! Today I have three recent manis I've worn and haven't blogged about to share with you!

I am officially done my second and final year of college and I won't be back in school until next fall for University. In other words, expect a lot more manis and posts from me for a while! :) This post will be relatively short (in words, not pictures!) because I have some errands to run and celebrating to do today because my boyfriend will be done school as well in a few hours! Some of these pictures are just taken from my phone because I didn't get to my light box until I had tip wear, or I never bothered to clean them up so I didn't want to take proper pictures! :P

First up is Color Club Eternal Beauty. This polish is an easy two-coater with a lovely formula and the holo effect is not altered by top coat! So gorgeous!

Next up we have Sally Hansen Sweetie, a gorgeous textured matte polish from their Sugar Coat line! This polish was also an easy two-coater and it wore so well! I do find that it takes a day or less for the sharp texture bits on the end of your nails to wear off, so be careful if you want to scratch your face and it hasn't been a day since you applied it!

Lastly, we have Illamasqua Facet. This polish is everything I wanted it to be and more and I'm really glad I splurged on it! It has gold and copper/orange shimmer and I think that's such a cool combo! It applied like butter and like the other two polishes in this post, it was an easy two-coater!

Excuse the sad finals week cuticles, I just wanted to include a macro shot so you can see the shimmer I was talking about!

Thank you so much for reading everyone! I'd love to know what you think of these polishes in the comments! I'll have a fun little nail art post using a Rainbow Honey polish up soon (see my Instagram for a picture)! Happy Thursday everyone! =)

Gradient with Glitter and Textured Chevron Nail Art!

Hey everyone! Today I have some gradient and chevron nail art to share!

Yesterday we went on a field trip to a hospital to talk to some genetic counsellors and it was really interesting. Interesting in the sense that after a month and a half of being in a genetics course I am seriously considering a career in genetics, or possibly even genetic counselling. Not so interesting in the sense that over the weekend our teacher emailed us the two PowerPoints we went through at the hospital and the fact that we didn't get to see the cytogenetics lab because the cytogeneticist was on holiday. Oh well, it was still much nicer than a busy three hour genetics lab!

Today nothing overly interesting has happened, though I did wake up twenty minutes before I had to leave for school. These are the days that I throw on a hoodie and a cardigan on top for warmth and don't even bother with a shirt haha. I'm very glad that my boyfriend woke up earlier and made us our morning teas in travel cups so I'm not still exhausted! Anyways, onto the nails!

For the gradient nails I started with two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls and a coat of top coat (because I wasn't sure what I was going to do yet so I wanted my nails dry so I couldn't mess them up)! I then sponged two layers of Essie Turquoise & Caicos and Essie Mod Square on my nails from a wet makeup sponge, and added a coat of topcoat to smooth out the gradient a little more. I do think it being wet helps to create a smoother gradient, and it doesn't soak up the polish as much so you save polish! I finished off with two coats of Black Sheep Lacquer A Letter to the New York Post and another coat of top coat!

The green to pink gradient was completely inspired by Steph Stone Nails on Instagram (link here)! It's a really interesting combination to me because green is my favourite colour and pink is my least favourite. I'm surprised that I like these so much because they're half pink! =P

For the chevron nails I just did two coats of Sally Hansen Lick-O-Rich (it's opaque at one but some parts are shiny and missing the texture bits) and two coats of OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls for the white lines! Lick-O-Rich dried really quickly and had a lovely formula, the only bad thing I could say about it is that it takes about half a day for the sharp textured bits on the edges to wear off, so try and avoid scratching up your face!

What do you guys think of this mani? I loved wearing it because the black nails were so bold and stood out even from far away! I also love a good gradient with a matte black and white glitter topper, so this is a win-win for me!

Thanks so much for reading everyone! Anything exciting going on with you guys lately? Let me know! Happy Tuesday!

Essie Lots of Luxe Swatch and Review!

Hey everyone! Today I have a quick swatch and review of a lovely new Essie textured polish called Lots of Lux!

I've had a rough week filled with the flu, some tragedies and now possibly a cold, so this will be a short post. I also have constant homework, studying and labs to do so I should probably work on those soon! On a happier note, I'll have swatches of Above the Curve's Valentine's Day Collection for you guys soon! They asked me if I'd like to do some reviews for them and of course I said yes; I absolutely love their polishes! I'm so excited!

Essie Lots of Lux is a blue metallic texture polish with black/dark blue particles, and purple and light green tiny glitters! The formula was perfect and it dried pretty quickly, and this is just one coat!

Since I've been pretty down and I haven't been up to writing this post, I actually can talk about the staying power of this polish. I've been wearing it since Wednesday night I believe, so two and a half days, and I only have the slightest tip wear near the middle of some of my tips. I also took these pictures almost twenty-four hours after I put it on and I can't see any tip wear!

Here's a picture of these with my lamps but without my light box to show off the shimmer!

Thanks so much for reading everyone, happy Saturday!

Textured Matte Hearts!

Holy crap, it's me!

So I am FINALLY back into nail art and nail painting period! I didn't feel like myself leaving the house with short bare nails, and though they're not long yet, I feel so much better about them!

Today I have some textured matte nail art to share, because I wanted to find a way to incorporate textured polishes into nail art!

For this look I used a small nail art brush to paint the hearts after my base colour and layer of top coat had dried.

Onto the pictures and colours used!

Purple base: Essie No More Film

Yellow textured matte polish: Sally Hansen Sweetie

Thank you so much for stopping by everyone! I'm thinking of doing the 31 Day Challenge at my own pace, is that something any of you would like to see? Let me know in the comments if you have any other suggestions! :)

OPI Black Shatter over Zoya Miranda!

Hello everybody! Today I have a crackle over textured polish look to share with you all!

I finally picked up some non-acetone remover so the next post you see from me will feature some Hex Nail Jewelry!

I broke my no-buy in a big way two days ago because a thrift store near my house had a 50% off sale for certain clothing items. I bought mostly fall clothes, so it was just back to school shopping right? :P I realized that I ended up getting 50% off of everything because the cashier lady must have messed up! Anyways, my friend Sarah and I decided to film our haul and film a little lookbook of us wearing the clothes! The videos will be up on her channel within a week, so if you're curious, here's her channel!

Onto the nails!

This is two coats of Zoya Miranda underneath one coat of OPI Black Shatter! How awesome does this look? This idea was brought to me by the author of Blueberry Nails, you can check out her blog here!

Thanks for reading everybody! :)

Zoya Miranda Swatches and Review!

Hey everybody! Today I have a swatch and review of Zoya Miranda for you all!

I've decided my relationship with textured polishes is a love-hate one only because they're so hard to use in nail art! I'll probably be taking this off soon and doing some cutesy nails with some of my new Hex Nail Jewelry charms so stay tuned!

I also have four new Black Sheep Lacquer polishes all swatched for you and one old one I decided to reswatch for the author of Blueberry Nails. I used it (First Polish on the Moon) without a white base this time to see how it looked and behaved! Once Erin names the last polish I swatched I'll be posting all of the swatches for you lovely people!

Onto the swatches and review!

Miranda- two coats!

This polish had a wonderful formula, and since the textured parts of this polish are of finer grit than other textured polishes, it was almost like applying a normal micro-glitter polish! One day I really want to try layering a new textured matte polish I picked up, OPI Solitaire, over darker textured matte polishes like Miranda for a lighter look! Having a light textured matte polish in your arsenal basically doubles the number of textured matte polishes you have, because you can easily make a paler version of any colour!

Thanks for reading everybody! :)

My Picks from the Sally Hansen Sugar Coat Collection: Swatches and Review!

Hello everybody! Today I have swatches of the five Sally Hansen Sugar Coat polishes I picked up from the States last month to share!

I'm going to go ahead and talk about the formula here because almost all of them had the same formula, I'll mention the differences under the pictures if there are any! These polishes were quite easy to work with as long as you applied thick coats (to get the polish where you want it and to not build a grit barrier and an uneven line). Most of these polishes are white-based and most of them took two thick coats (as thin coats aren't really an option with these polishes). Dry time was really quick and to my surprise, I like these polishes as much as glitter-containing textured matte polishes!

Onto the swatches!

Sweetie- two coats

Lick-O-Rich- one coat

You can see here what the finish of these polishes look like at one coat, there are shiny and smooth bits as well as gritty matte ones!

Sour Apple- two coats

Cherry Drop- two coats

This polish was a jelly polish, not a white-based creme like the other four Sugar Coats in this post. It was super opaque but at two coats it still had VNL because it's a jelly. This polish had a longer drying time than the rest, and it had a more subtle textured matte effect.

Sugar Fix- two coats

Thanks for reading and taking a look! :)