Candy Nail Polish Freshmint, Egg Nog, Fruit Cake and Sugarplum!

Hey everyone, today I have four Candy Nail Polish polishes to share!*

Sorry about not posting for four days, I now have three weeks off between semesters so I'll definitely be able to post more! Maybe I'll even try to change my nails everyday and post everyday! :)

Onto the polishes! Three of these polishes are from Candy Nail Polish's Holiday Collection (link here if you'd like to see the other three polishes in this collection) and the fourth is an unreleased new polish! All four of these polishes had flawless formulas, not too thin so that cuticle flooding was an issue and just thick enough that the glitters were perfectly suspended and distributed throughout them. I let a few of them sit upside down briefly but I really don't think they needed it! They all had really smooth finishes on their own, even Sugarplum and Freshmint despite all of the glitter in them, and that really surprised me! I did layer one coat of the top coat I always use, Essie Good To Go, over each polish for an extra smooth and shiny finish. I was even more impressed with their formulas considering they're from such a new indie brand!

This is a very picture-heavy post because these polishes are so pretty, so let's get to it!

First up is Freshmint, a light green crelly polish with a slightly frosty finish and white matte hexes and shards, pink matte squares, lime green matte squares, blue metallic squares and hexes, and gold metallic hexes! What you see here is three easy coats and a coat of top coat, though it was just about a two-coater! The glitters in this remind me of candy, it's such an adorable polish!

Next is Egg Nog, an off-white/creme crelly with gold shimmer sprinkled throughout! I'm seriously in love with this polish guys, it's so delicate and beautiful and the name is so cute! I'm definitely going to wear this again soon with some nail art on top! Shown here is three coats and a coat of top coat but again, this was almost a two-coater!

Next up is Fruit Cake, a copper shimmer/frost polish with little rainbow glitters! The base looks too orange here, I really need to figure out how to colour-correct pictures! Shown here is two coats and a coat of top coat, and I also mattified it which you can see below!

Here's Fruit Cake with a coat of Julep's Matte Top Coat on top!

Lastly we have Sugarplum, a deep purple jelly stuffed with gold and possibly silver holographic glitters in various shapes and sizes! Show here is two coats and a coat of top coat. I posted a video to show the holographic glitters in action on my Instagram last night, here it is!

Thanks so much for reading everyone! Which of these are your favourites? Let me know in the comments! :)

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

Pretty & Polished Cuticle Balm Review: Pink Sugar and Lavishing Lemon!

Hey everyone! Today I have a review of two Pretty & Polished cuticle balms to share!

These two cuticle balms have vastly different consistencies and physical properties due to their different formulas, so I'll talk about their consistencies individually below!

The Pretty & Polished Pink Sugar Cuticle Balm melts easily upon skin contact and is quite greasy (which I love in a cuticle balm). It mostly soaks in within ten minutes of massaging your cuticles periodically, and it's incredibly moisturizing!

The scent is amazing and just as they describe it on the website, "Pink Sugar features notes of cotton candy, strawberry, vanilla and musk. It's a dreamy combination!" I haven't smelled any other pink sugar scent before so I can't say if it's like other pink sugar fragrances, but it smells incredibly lovely!

Next up is Pretty & Polished Lavishing Lemon Cuticle Balm! This one is a lot harder and more difficult to melt, even more so that the Burt's Bees Lemon Butter Cuticle Creme. I actually have trouble melting it if I've been out in the cold prior to trying to put it on. It's easy to scrape a tiny bit off the side to use though, so even if you're too cold to melt it, you can still use it! This leaves a thin layer of hardly greasy balm on your cuticles for about ten minutes without any extra rubbing in or massaging!

The scent is just simply lemon as you may have guessed, super fresh and lovely!

I really love having both of these on hand because either one or the other is great for any upcoming situation! For example, if I have a lab coming up I can use the lemon one because I know it will soak in fast and not be greasy!

Thanks so much for reading everyone! I have some indie polishes to swatch so look forward to those swatch and review posts! Hope you're all having a lovely Thursday! I have a final exam today, tomorrow and the next day (a Saturday!) so I will be the happiest Bailey ever sleeping in Sunday morning! What about you guys? Anything stressful or exciting coming up? :)

Black Sheep Lacquer Under The Bridge: Reswatched and Reviewed!

Hey guys! Today I have a better swatch of a polish I've swatched before, Black Sheep Lacquer Under The Bridge* (old post here)!

I've decided to break up the huge wall of text and the huge wall of pictures by alternating between text and pictures, I'd love to know whether you prefer this configuration or the old one in the comments!

This week and next are final exam weeks at my college, and I'm actually lucky enough to finish my finals this Saturday! So for me, this week is final week and I really want to crack down and study hard! Because of this, I decided to paint my nails with a pretty indie polish and leave it on for six whole days :O. I do have a Pretty & Polished cuticle balm review post to write up, so hopefully I'll still be posting every three days this week! All of my finals are back to back, so I've decided to do a subject a day so as to not overwhelm myself haha. Today's topic is cell biology in case your curious, and it's actually going really well. Quite surprising for a procrastinator like me!

Anyways, onto the polish! Under The Bridge is a gorgeous red jelly polish packed with large and medium-sized dark blue hexes, small matte white hexes, small dark blue squares, tiny silver and dark blue hexes, and who could forget, huge red circles! All of the dark blue glitters that are covered in the red jelly base appear purple and it makes them look so glowy and pretty! The base is darker and pinker in person, it's really difficult to capture reds accurately on camera! Other than having to fish for two of the four circle glitters I have on my nails right now, this polish had a perfect formula (no glitter clumping or anything) and I find fishing for glitters kind of fun anyways! I might have not even had to fish for any if I had let the bottle sit upside down for longer before polishing! What you see here is two coats of Under The Bridge and two coats of top coat for maximum squishiness!

I actually described one of my dream polishes to Erin and this is what she came up with, it's a beautiful take on my description and I absolutely love it!

What do you guys think of this polish? Super pretty right? I hope you're all having a lovely Monday, let me know what you'll be up to this week in the comments! Anyone else about to do some final exams?

*This polish was sent for swatches, though I have already swatched it.

Born Pretty Store Flower Water Decal Review and a Gradient!

Hey guys! Today I have some flower-covered gradient nails to share! I will also be reviewing the floral water decals seen here from Born Pretty Store!

Sorry about posting these late guys, I was crashing while editing the pictures so I decided to write it up this morning instead. I try really hard to post every three days but sometimes life (for me, school) gets in the way! I've been exhausted for the last week or so and I'm so glad today's the last day of school! Anything exciting happening in your guys' lives? Let me know!

A bunch of people from Will Paint Nails For Food's Beginner Blogger's Bootcamp Group Critique commented on my last post saying that my fingers were blurry and that it was a bit distracting, and I had seriously never noticed! When I saw my pictures after that, I realized I looked like some weird alien without any lines or wrinkles on my fingers haha! I increased the depth of field before taking these pictures and I think you can see some detail on my fingers now, what do you guys think? :)

For these nails I started with one coat of Essie Mesmerize, painted on NYX Girls Inkheart and Revlon Espresso, and then patted on mixtures of the two colours where they met! I think the gradient looks better and smoother in person, so I'm excited to improve on my gradient skills so they look good in pictures too! Lindsay from Wondrously Polished always does literally perfect gradients (they look like the ones you can make in a photo editing program) and often puts nail art on top, so these nails were definitely inspired by her! I really think it's an amazing and beautiful idea to use a gradient as a background for nail art rather than a plain creme!

As for the decals (link here, they're the BLE422 ones), I was completely silly at first and applied one like a tattoo, and of course the design was upside down and all black and white (see my left hand's thumbnail). I asked my boyfriend if he thought it'd be possible to slide them off and on to the nail so the designs would show, and he ended up trying it for me and it worked! I just wetted a reasonably soft brush (my cleanup brush), let the decal soak in water for 15-20 seconds and slid it off of the paper carefully and onto my nail! You can move them around once they're on your nail for a period of time (especially if you wet your nail first) so you certainly don't have to get the perfect placement right away! I decided to place two decals on top of each other on some nails and I think they look really nice layered! I accidentally crumpled and folded one up, and I was still able to flatten it back out and put it on my nail which really impressed me! The only negative thing I have to say about these is still totally avoidable; top coat can smudge the decals a bit but as long as you apply it carefully (as you would on top of nail art) they won't smudge! I was being very careless when applying my topcoat because I didn't think they would smudge, and they still hardly did! :)

Off-topic, but do you guys think I should spread my text out between the pictures so it's not a huge block of text and then a huge block of pictures? I think I'll start doing that so let me know if you'd prefer I didn't!

Onto the nails!

Here's the gradient I started with as a base!

My right hand!

If you're looking for any other nail art stuff Born Pretty Store is a good place to check! Here's my coupon for 10% off!

Thanks so much for reading everyone! Have any plans for the weekend? I'll be studying for the three back-to-back finals I have coming up and finishing a biochemistry assignment! :)

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! :)