Ulta A Tail of Two Cities

Hi girlies! (Ew, "girlies"? I need new synonyms for my greetings) How is everyone's week going so far? This summer is killing me: every day it's nice, I'm working! Ugh. Anyways, today's polish is Ulta, A Tail of Two Cities (at least, I think it is. Ulta doesn't label the bottles so the packaging says the names from left to right on the back, so I figure it's left to right looking at it from the back, but other blogs have it left to right from the front... so who knows. It's the pink one! haha). This is one of the mini polishes I showed you from the Under the Sea collection.

Here it is indoors:

And outside in the sunshine:

As you can see, this polish (whatever it's called) is a pinkish-red with gold glass flecks in it, a la Ahoy! by China Glaze. I liked the base color of this better than Ahoy! but both are gorgeous.

What do you think?

xoxo,
Amanda

Swatches Galore

Hello my dears! I couldn't hold out any longer... here are some swatches. One was Mad as a Hatter, which I couldn't wait to do anyway, but a reader requested MAAH and the Ulta set swatched, so here we go!

I couldn't make a decision about MAAH, so I decided to try layering it over a few polishes. I used varying degrees of purple. From left to right, we have MAAH on its own, MAAH over Ulta Celebutante, MAAH over China Glaze Harmony, MAAH over OPI Not like the Movies, and over OPI Have You Seen My Limo?. This is two coats of MAAH over all the bases.

On its own, MAAH is too sheer for my taste and the more coats you add, the easier it chips. I decided to use ChG Harmony because that seemed to look best, although I realize it makes MAAH look more purple than it really is.

Here's my mani with MAAH over ChG Harmony... sorry for the messy cleanup. No matter how much you clean up with glitter, there's always some pieces left behind that are impossible and I didn't see these little pieces until the pictures were on my computer :(

So what do you think? I loved this. The base color plus 2 coats MAAH was perfect: beautiful, sparkly, and not chippy! Exactly what the doctor ordered.

Next up I have the Ulta Under the Sea swatches. These polishes are gorgeous, I'm so glad I impulsively bought them. For $8, these aren't too bad although they are minis (but I never use full bottles of polish anyway, so...)

Left to right: Tip the Scales (purple), A Tail of Two Cities (pink), Mermaid in Heaven (orange), and Don't Be Shelfish (green - best name of the collection!).

And, above, here they are in the sun. You can see the glass fleck shimmer much better in this picture and how radiant they really are. They're a little sheer (these were 3 coats), but they do build up. I'm wearing Mermaid in Heaven as my mani and it's adorable! What do you think?

xoxo,
Amanda