Leftover Rainbows

Well, in all the hullabaloo of trying to keep up with challenges, I swatched far more rainbow-themed polishes than I'd realized. I'm only now finding the hidden folders of rainbows! Here's a few for today :)

Nfu Oh 66, which is the green holo. This is two coats and I took these in my lightbox, no base coat or top coat. The formula on these is tricky: WAIT between coats and you should be fine, but I was a bit impatient and you may notice some bald/thin spots. Or maybe you won't, because you'll be mesmerized by the holo.

I swear I also swatched the light blue one (65) but the swatch eludes me. I'm losing it. Anyway, it's like the green one but baby blue. :)

Deborah Lippmann Let's Go Crazy is a deep purple based rainbow glitter jelly. I got this for a ridiculously good deal on HSN for $8 back in the day (Amanda did too, because I told her about the deal. she's welcome.) I have to own pretty much all of DL's versions of rainbow glitter because she really started all of these shenanigans, and I love it.

These pictures are three coats and it's still pretty sheer but the glitter takes away from that, I think. I stopped at 3 coats because IRL this wasn't as patchy but, of course, lightboxes and bright lights are bound to show all the flaws.

Okay, done with rainbows for now... probably for a little while but believe it or not, I have even MORE swatches saved up. Rainy day vault photos, someday.

xoxo,
Amanda

Quick Post and Plug

Hey everyone! First up: I'm having a blog sale, I've made a list rather than taking photos since this will be easier to keep up with so please check it out. I have some black label OPI, lots of indies, some limited edition China Glazes, etc. I didn't list shipping because I'll figure it out on a case-by-case basis depending on country, how many you want, etc. but I'll be reasonable (starting around $2). Email me at az270890@yahoo.com if you're interested in anything! The document is here.

Onto the swatch of the day, an old one from when I was growing my nails out and apparently my cuticles rebelled. This is 2 coats of Julep Charlotte, a pretty purple creme.

I added Pretty and Polished Hello Dolly. There's two photos because the first one is the most awkward hand pose ever but shows the polish better than the second where my hand is normal *shrugs*

xoxo,
Amanda

A Tale of Four Zoyas

Good morning everyone! Well, mostly us North Americans. But good afternoon and good evening everyone else! Today I have a little story for you about Amanda (myself, not my BFF Amanda who gets a gratuitous mention here because of my third person use of my own name... you're welcome) and her obsession with purple. You may or may not be aware, my favorite color is purple. I love a good lilac, or an almost-white light purple, or a grayed out purple, or a deep purple, or... well, you get it. But apparently when it comes to Zoya, I want ALL THE LIGHT PURPLES. So here's a comparison for you.

Left to right in all picture is: Marley, Kendal, Heather, and Jaime.

Swatch below is the same order as above, 2 coats for Marley, Kendal - 2, Heather - 3, and Jaime - 3.

So you can see the most different one is Jaime, which is more pink-toned than the rest and has shimmer. Marley has a shimmer as well, I believe, that gives it an almost-frosted look. Both Kendal and Heather are straight-up cremes but Kendal is more gray and Heather leans more pink. Sorry the picture seems to cast a shadow on them but I hope you get the idea. Which is your favorite? I think mine is Heather! (Also, side note - no, I probably don't need to own all four of these despite their differences.)

xoxo,
Amanda

February Untrieds, Part Two

Hi everyone! Sorry I'm not very chatty this week... I don't want to bore you all with the introductory chatter all the time ;) I have another creme untried for you today! This is one of the new Butter London spring polishes, Molly Coddled. I got this when Nordstrom was doing a B2G1 and I got Trout Pout and Kerfluffle with it, which you'll be seeing soon I think.

Anyway sorry for that aside... I used two coats of Molly Coddled and the first picture is higher quality but the second is truer to the real color. No issues with application and it actually would have done fine with just one coat, but I'm an avid two-coater usually.

This isn't the last you've seen of this polish... MWAHAHAHAHAA! (That's an evil/mad scientist laugh, in case you didn't know.)

xoxo,
Amanda

Amy's Nail Boutique Review!

Hi everyone, I'm so excited today to bring you a review from Amy's Nail Boutique. Amy was kind enough to send me a bottle to review and it's a beaut! This is Polka Dot party, which is bright blue and magenta circle glitters and a couple sizes of white matte hexes. I layered this over American Apparel L'Espirit that Jasmine sent me for the look you see below:

Application on this was really easy, this is one coat and then I went back and dabbed a few off the brush in any bald spots. No issues with any glitters being harder to grab than others and the payoff is great, as you see above. This polish wasn't really thick like some glitters are so it was easy to work with without having tons of gloopy spots on the nail. I'm glad circle glitter is catching on because they're so much fun!

Amy's polishes can be bought on Etsy and are $4.50 for a mini or $8 full sized. She also just came out with a line of linear holos and has a great selection for $10 each! I'm contemplating an order with her already!

xoxo,
Amanda

Kitchen Sink Saturday!

Hey all, it's #kitchensinksaturday! I'm kind of behind on posts but give me a break because I'm sick. With what? Some mystery illness wherein I have a fever, soreness, sensitivity to touch, exhaustion, restlessness, a bunch of stomach issues... but not all at once. Just cycling through. My going theory is I am fighting a series of illnesses from my clients and whatever my body struggles to fight for that moment comes through but it's really not enjoyable.

ANYWAY I'm doing a Kitchen Sink Mani today which is a term Nicole came up with for a mani where each nail is different but they go together in theme. We decided to do a weekly KS mani for the month of January each Saturday and if you want to join, feel free! Here's my first one:

My mani had a sub-theme and that was "Polishes I Received for Christmas", and so ALL these polishes were gifts (I admit, one was a gift from me to me, but don't judge!). From left to right:

• Index: Nails Inc Westminster from Hannah with white dots
• Middle: W7 Salt n Pepper (2 coats), also from Hannah
• Ring: 2true #54 from Hannah as a base, then I did Illamasqua Jo'Mina on top of a tape mani which was from Wes
• Pinky and thumb: Pretty and Polished Tart from myself to myself ;)

There you have it... I guess my theme is loosely "purple" but I put blue and black and white in there... not to mention multicolored glitter... so I don't know. IT'S A KITCHEN SINK.

xoxo,
Amanda

Candy Lacquer Modern Love & Rarity

Blaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh hi. I don't have any energy to blog lately so I tend to do like 10 posts all at once and schedule them. I'm determined to be on schedule for the Glitter Challenge with Amanda and Madeline!

I ordered some Candy Lacquers back in the day and my bottle of Modern Love had a funky formula. Just really thick and no glitter came out... so I emailed Sandra and she offered to refund me or send me another polish while she reformulated it. I really just wanted ML, so I asked if she'd just send me a reformulated bottle, which she did, plus a bonus bottle of my choice! Now THAT'S customer service. I know I've said this a bazillion times, but Candy Lacquer is one of my top 3 favorite indie brands, right up there with Lynnderella.  SO ANYWAY.

This is the reformulated Modern Love over Orly Decades of Dysfunction. As you can see, it was awesomesauce. But then again, I love heart glitter. I HEART heart glitter, as a matter of fact!

Rarity is the polish I chose as my freebie and, let me tell you, it was so hard to narrow down but this was a great choice! I'll be honest and tell you I have no idea what this base is because I spilled acetone on my notepad specifying it, but I'm willing to say probably Essie French Affair? Sorry about that.

What do you think? I'm pretty satisfied with my choices, if I do say so myself!

xoxo,
Amanda

MyWholesaleFashion.com: Kleancolor

Hey, happy Sunday! I'm dreading work again tomorrow, my weekends seem to fly by! Anyway, I'm back today continuing my review for MyWholesaleFashion.com.

Today I have Kleancolor, which I've purchased before but haven't tried any of their cremes. Here are the colors I picked: Barbie Pink, Pastel Orange, Pastel Teal, and Plum.

These swatches are two coats of each in the same order as above:

Kleancolor is not as smelly as Nabi was, but isn't big 3 free either. Here's the ingredients if you want to check them out. I didn't find the scent overpowering but not pleasant exactly either. I would definitely wear these again, though, if that's any measure.

I really loved this pink in particular, but I loved all the colors. I'm glad I picked up Plum because I am usually so opposed to dark/vampy colors and I loved this color on me!

xoxo,
Amanda

December Untrieds: Essence Carrie and Mr. Big

Hey everyone! Day two of December and I am going strong! I wonder how Amanda and Madeline (note: new blog!) are doing... anyway, I'll stop procrastinating :)

Today I am lucky enough to have Mr. Big and Carrie from Essence's Nail Art Twins collection. I absolutely adore every single duo to come out of this line so I was certain I wouldn't be disappointed, especially since I LOVE Sex and the City.

Mr. Big is a purple-red creme. Perfect coverage in one coat, which I love. All of this line covers amazingly!

Then I added Carrie on top and voila! Instant nail art and beauty. a perfect couple :)

xoxo,
Amanda

Lazy 15: Favorite Color (bonus: Pink Wednesday)

Hey guys and gals! Happy Hump Day :) Not too much to say today so let's jump right in!

Today's challenge is your favorite color, and mine happens to be purple... but I also love pink. I was torn, what do I choose? And then I remembered a certain indie brand's spring/summer duo I purchased and realized I could cheat and show you both under the guise of being thorough and showing you a full collection at once. I'm sneaky, aren't I?

First up is Hare Rad Cloud, which is a purple base with pink, orange, blue, and purple glitter in it.  The glitter on this was incredible! I couldn't believe how much glitter was in that base considering how comparably sparse it looks in the bottle! Application was really easy, no fishing or pushing - just apply like you would any creme. This is two (or possibly 3?) coats with no base color.

Here's where Pink Wednesday comes in: The other half of the duo is Magic Mist, which is a pink base with pink, orange, blue, and purple glitter (she might have used the same glitters but different bases? whatever. looks good to me! haha). This base seems more like a creme to me and Rad Cloud looks more like a jelly. Both were easy to work with though Magic Mist was a little thick and I'll have to thin it in the future. This is three coats with no base. Also, excuse the glitter herpes, or GLERPES, as Amanda and I like to call them.

 

So there's my cheating way of showing you both my favorite colors. Check out what the other challengees came up with!


xoxo,
Amanda

Lazy 15: Water Marble

Hey everyone! I'm being really last minute typing this up the night before when usually I have posts ready at least a few days in advance now to make up for my schedule... but that's life! I'm watching Jersey Shore and not going to bed like I should be, but whatever ;)

Today's challenge is water marble and... groooooooooaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnnnnnnn.

I was dreading this challenge, I won't lie to you. Once upon a time I loved water marbling but it's so time consuming and wastes nail polish like whooooa so I was not imagining this would come out well... and I was right. It's bubbly and it smudged easily and never ever ever dried and ughhhh. I will not be doing this again anytime soon (probably not unless another challenge calls for it actually haha!)

I used Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Cherry, Cherry, Bang, Bang! (the dark purple/bottle I'm holding), Mattese Elite Pink Tutu (light pink), and Mattese Elite Attitude (blue).

So, there's that. A day of this challenge I am glad to have in my past ;)



xoxo,
Amanda

Lazy 15: Tape Mani

Hey everyone, today marks day one of the Lazy 15 Challenge! It's not too late to join if you'd like, just gotta do a quick mani today then you can pick up after the weekend with the rest of the challenge ;) *nudge nudge*

So this is actually my first ever tape mani... or successful tape mani? I think I maybe tried once before unsuccessfully and I'll admit, I wasn't really thrilled to try this because I'm not the most patient person alive and I was worried I'd try too soon and take my base coat off. Anyway, I knew holo always makes it better, so I started with Jade Delirio Rosa, a light-medium pink linear holo:

Then I added striping tape I recently got from Born Pretty Store in random laser patterns to get this look:

Super duper holo... mmmmmm!

With flash to show off the holo ;)

Finally, here it is in low light so you can see the actual laser mani itself.

There you have it! I hope you enjoyed! Check out the rest of the ladies doing the challenge with me :)



xoxo,
Amanda

Halloween Week Part 7: Halloween!

Happy Halloween!! This is my favorite holiday so I'm pretty stoked for today. I am handing out candy at my boyfriend's house so I'm fairly excited for that. Enjoy trick-or-treating! (Fun fact: there are no documented cases of strangers poisoning or putting razor blades in candy, only by parents... oddly enough.)

So the holiday called for something special: My first gradient! Megan sent me some cosmetic sponges in a swap, so I decided to use those and make something epic. And, um, I was close? Here's the colors I picked (the wand is my Migi pens, which unscrew to be normal, one coater polish!):

OPI Atomic Orange, OPI Funky Dunkey, and Migi nail art pens.

My base was plain white and I made a gradient going from white, orange, purple, to black, and I was mostly successful except the black didn't come out very much, and where it did... it stained my cuticles omg. I really liked the subtle effect though, it was really cool and I wish I had a good up-close shot to show you how it came out! (Although, if you're really curious, you could just enlarge the photos...)

And there you have it! Happy Haunting, Ghouls!

xoxo,
Amanda

Guest Post: Dolores from Colorful Bottle

Hey ladies, today I have a post from my lovely friend Dolores in Slovenia who swaps with me all the time so I can get international goodies :) We decided to do guest posts for each other to show off some of the stuff we got in our swaps, so check out what Dolores did and then check out her blog Colorful Bottle!

 

Hi!

I'm Dolores from Colorfulbottle and I got honoured to prepare a guest post for The Nail Polish Enthusiast!

When me and Amanda completed our last swap package we got a really crazy idea. We decided to prepare guest post for each other with our new goodies =). I really couldn't wait to make this post, but I sadly had some other obligations so I couldn't prepare my post as fast as I wanted to prepare it. Now I finally made it, and I'm really happy with the result =). 

It was really difficult for me to pick one polish out of so many new pretties in my stash, because of my BIG problem I decided to do a gradient( I got to use 2 colours and not all polishes match, so I ended up with only 3 possible gradient combinations), I used pastel colour for the base because Amanda once said to me, that it is probably my fault that she started liking pastel polishes. I also wanted to include glitter in my manicure, but glitter really isn't my thing. I also have to admit that I cheated a bit. I wanted to do soft stamping on top, but out of all gorgeous nail polishes that Amanda sent to me, there wasn't a pastel polish that would stamp great, this is why I ended up using KONAD special polish, 

Here is what I prepared:

 

 

For this gradient I used Orly Lollipop as a base ( 2 coats) and then I made a gradient using Color Club Mr. Socialite and Orly Lollipop

I upgraded my manicure with KONAD polish in pastel violet and BM 16

 

I was really satisfied with what I ended up with and I hope Amanda likes it too =)

This is all from me!

Thank you all for reading my post and big thanks to Amanda for hosting my post!

Have a lovely day!

 

 -----

xoxo,
Amanda

 

Lacquistry to the Rescue!

Hello again! How's it going? I hope you enjoyed your weekend!

I have a nail fail Cinderella story for you all today! I started with Sally Hansen Whisper, one of their Smooth and Perfect line which is anything but. This is, I think, four or five coats and it's still gross. It's frosty and sheer and terrible with my skin tone. Maybe layering it over white would have saved this on its own but nope. Didn't do that for this mani, so it's just this gross mess:

But then I remembered I have an entire Helmer drawer (plus a basket or two I haven't put away yet...) of indies, and one of them was this oldie but goodie, Lacquistry Frosty Marrow. Believe it or not, I was into indies far before it was huge (umm, hipster attitude much? sorry. it's true, though!), and Lacquistry was one of the first brands I discovered on Etsy.  I bought Frosty Marrow and A Friggin' Circus way back when but haven't used either yet, which is criminal. Anyway, I decided to try Frosty Marrow over the hot mess Sally Hansen and it definitely saved it!

 Frosty Marrow is lots of little iridescent glitters (one of my favorite things ever is iridescent glitter) in a clear base, and it's perfect for adding just a bit of glitter to a manicure. I actually wore this to work because it was pretty subdued but gorgeous.

Finally, here it is in low-light, which is what my hands are in most of the time since my office is in a basement and I rarely see the light of day during the week. I think this is one of my favorite shots of it! Definitely shows how delicate this mani was.

Thoughts? Do you own any Lacquistry?

xoxo,
Amanda

LynBDesigns The Girl Who Waited

Hiii! Happy October! ....I am so lazy.  I've had about 90 posts worth of pictures sitting around and I am just too lazy to deal with watermarking them. So, don't steal them, please?

Today I have for you an oooooooooooold indie I bought long ago from LynBDesigns. She had some sort of buy 3 get 1 deal so this was my free one and the one I liked most, actually. This is from a Doctor Who collection, but I don't watch the show so I don't quite get the reference of "The Girl Who Waited", but anyway...

TGWW is a frosty lilac base with microglitter and (drumroll, please) pink flower glitter! You all know what drew me to this. I've never seen bottles like this before, they are actually pretty awesome because they have a rubbery handle but they're a bit too tall to stand up in my Helmer.

For this mani, I wore three coats with two coats of Wicked Fast on top. TGWW is, unfortunately, a test of patience for me. It took a really long time to dry between coats and dragged really easily, so you might notice some imperfections in my painting this time.  I definitely had to fish for the flowers but the payoff was so so so cute! Not sure I'm a fan of the frosty base, but it was a cute girly look for sure. This was one of the more unique indies I've seen in a while (the clear base + glitter formula is the most common and this went outside the box for sure).

What do you think? The flowers are freaking adorable but I'm not sure the color looks so good on me and will probably be swapped away :( LynBDesigns are available in her Etsy shop for $8.50 and currently are buy 2 get 1 free!

xoxo,
Amanda