Kleancolor Swatch Spam

Hi ladies! I've gotten in the habit of typing up these posts ahead of time and being able to edit them the day of and post and boy, is it helpful! Anyways, today I decided to post the swatches of my Kleancolor haul from a little while back. As many of you indicated, I included bottle pics indoors under my normal room lighting, then the swatches are in natural light.

 (Bottles above, swatches below) Left to right: Holo Pink, Holo Green, Sparkling Cosmos (my surprise favorite of this bunch), and Leaves Jingle. Two coats each.

 (Bottles above, swatches over Sinful Colors White on White below): City Never Sleeps, Blind Date, Afternoon Picnic (it does have other color glitter chunks in it, they just didn't come out over this swatch), and Chunky Holo Purple.

 (Bottles above, swatches over WoW below): Disco Ball, Shooting Star, Midnight Seduction, and Kiss Goodbye; two coats each

 (Bottles above, swatches below): My Valentine, Party Fever.

So ladies, what's your favorite? I love the chunky glitters, so Afternoon Picnic has to be my absolute favorite, if you made me pick one!

xoxo,
Amanda

Appreciation Monday

Hello my dears :) I just got home from a Blink 182 (my boyfriend's favorite band) concert and I'm kinda wiped, but I wanted to make a quick post (which, in retrospect, is taking me longer than a normal post somehow). I'm taking a time out from polish tonight...today... this early morning because I just wanted to give some shout outs to some lovely ladies and blogs I'm into. Often in the blogging community, we take for granted the people who help us along the way, comment frequently, or are just sweet to us, so I wanted to take some time to honor those people for me.

• Kirsten from Glitta Gloves: a sweetheart who helps me with all my newbie blogging questions. She's also a fellow holo/glitter fiend and co-founded Pink Wednesdays.
• Jacki from Adventures in Acetone: Jacki and I met through the Facebook group, Polish-aholics Anonymous (which is awesome, by the way- go join!) and she's become one of my top commenters, which means a lot to me since she has a thriving blog herself and she's a stay at home mom! So thank you Jacki!
• Emily of Embellished Nails: I found her through PaA also, and we discovered we actually live pretty close to each other! So here's to newfound polish addict friends who can go dusty hunting :)
• Kirshten of KK Nails: she's another one I met on PaA and she's been commenting a lot as well! It means a lot to me to have people like Kirshten comment and realize my 37 readers (and growing!) are actually live people who take time to read what I have to say!
• Dana of Polished Claws Up: she's relatively new to blogging, recently got engaged, and is a super sweetheart! I'm proud to say I'll be her first polish swap so I'm fairly excited to help her get involved with all my blogging buddies I've made!
• Ellen of Lacquertopia: my British friend with a fellow love for Jersey Shore! She even dedicated one of her posts to a mani I kind of inspired, which you can read here. We started talking on twitter and this girl and I have so much in common! It's been great getting to know her!
• Janna of Clever and Colorful: Janna allowed me to guest post for her while she's in Spain and is one of my first twitter friends. She's so nice and definitely worth checking out!

So thank you ladies! To anyone I may have missed, please let me know if you're reading and enjoying and I'll add you to this post or a future one I make. But know I am grateful and I'm looking forward to 50 followers and a giveaway so stay tuned :)

xoxo,
Amanda

Guest Nails: Sarah Edition

Hi lovelies! This post is dedicated to my lovely friend Sarah who lent me her nails for an evening so I could show you on my blog :) You may have seen Sarah comment as "smileviolet" so feel free to say hi or compliment her on her lovely nails and painting job!

Anyway, I dug out my stash and let Sarah pick, and she decided on Mad as a Hatter (thanks again Jamie!). I told her she probably needed to layer it, and we collaborated to decide on Color Club Alias as her base color with two coats of MAAH on top.

There you have it! I think Alias was the perfect choice. Both had the same purpley-grayish base which made them blend in together and covered up any bald spots MAAH may have left on its own. Sarah really enjoyed it and couldn't stop looking at them! I think they are pretty traffic stopping! What do you think?

xoxo,
Amanda

Boyfriend's Pick: OPI Melon of Troy

Hello my loves! Quick post for today because, for some odd reason, I only took one picture of this polish and it isn't pretty enough to warrant re-swatching when I have a dozen Kleancolors I could be wearing :)

My boyfriend was sitting on my bed as I debated what color to paint my nails, as happens about once every three days with us, and I decided, again, to let him pick. He liked OPI Melon of Troy, which is a corally-orange, pink... okay, it's a melon color. It has a ton of shimmer to it, and for some reason my camera took that shimmer as "okay, let's have this polish look orange regardless of the lighting", so that's what I got. I really need to train my camera better.

So there you have it, a slightly-dusty OPI polish in my collection that I wore for approximately one day and took off. What do you think? Worth a second shot?

xoxo,
Amanda

Zoya Reva

Hello m'ladies! First off, I hope all of you have Zoya.com accounts because they're once again treating their fans to some free polishes: buy one get two of your choice free! It ends today though so hurry! I picked Neeka, Savita, and Yara as my three and my boyfriend's mom is picking three that she'll let me swatch, so I'm excited! She already got hers, but I didn't get mine yet :( Hopefully today!

Anyway, I was inspired to try Zoya Reva since it's been sitting in my untrieds under my mounds of non-work appropriate polishes and, actually, I kind of just stuck my hand in the bottom of the bin to see what I'd pull out from underneath the glitter and holo. I'm glad Reva came with me!

Reva is a sparkly, glittery red. I believe it's cool toned, but I'm really just terrible with the whole warm vs. cool debate and I wear both because I just wear whatever I like and those damn temperatures can leave me alone! Hmph. Anyway, it kind of reminded me of the Ruby Slippers from the Wizard of Oz and now I'm a bit peeved they didn't name this Dorothy. But whatever. I digress.

 With flash.

In "natural" light. (True color)

As you can see, Reva is one of those polishes that kind of glows from within. It was really sparkly and I wore it to work for a day or two and really enjoyed her. I'm not the biggest fan of red, but this one was nice and I'd definitely wear it again. It goes up in my top two reds with OPI Red Dazzle :) I think I just need glitter to make red better for me! LOL

What are your thoughts? Did you use your Zoya promo yet? What colors are you getting?

xoxo,

Amanda

Mardi Gras on my Nails!

Hello my dears! Today I have for you an unintentional Mardi Gras mani. I really just wanted a different color on my nails, since I keep leaning towards pink, purple, and blue, and out popped this green beauty from a brand I don't see on blogs often: Misa. I love Misa for many reasons, one being that it is Big 3 Free and especially because it is vegan-friendly (I'm not vegan, but I love animals and I definitely support any company that respects animal rights). This is Misa, The Grass is Greener on My Side, which is a green shimmer that can be built up to opacity in three coats.

As you can see, because I am a glitter fiend and couldn't resist, I added Ulta Pinata-Yada-Yada on top to give it some flair.

I must say, I was a little disappointed in Pinata-Yada-Yada. The pictures above are THREE COATS OF GLITTER. Can you believe how sparse that is? I ended up having to dot and blot and dig and make sure that the glitter somehow got onto the nail, but it was a pain. The bottle looked like a little glitterbomb topcoat and then it came out with five glitters per nail? I was unhappy, to say the least, but now I know for when I want five sparkles on my nail (rarely) that I have a polish to turn to!

In the end, I decided to cover it up and apply La Rosa black crackle from NailDeRoyale.com and I loved the outcome:

Have you had similar experiences with Pinata-Yada-Yada? Have you tried Misa? (If not, I suggest you do! It's available on Transdesign.com)

xoxo,
Amanda

Pink Wednesday: NFU OH 63 AND YES IT REQUIRES ALL CAPS

Hi hi hi hi! Today I'm super excited, can you tell? What gave it away? The all caps? The tons of questions? My overly enthusiastic greeting? Well, I have good reason to be excited. I'm going to show you the gloriousness of Nfu Oh 63, which is the pinker one of the holographics. It was pure love at first sight.

*drools* LOOK AT ALL THAT LINEAR HOLOGRAPHICNESS. Okay, admittedly, this may be more exciting for me than some people since I missed out on all the China Glaze linear holos, but still! LOOK! AT! THIS!

And just because I'm making a point, here's a close-up of my thumb so you can see the rainbow effects:

Okay, sorry. I went temporarily crazy looking at these pictures. I will return to normalcy now.

(But seriously, it's worth the $12.50 with shipping included on fabuloustreet.com to order these. That's all I'm gonna say.)

xoxo,
Amanda

The Rest of My Recent Haul Skittles

Hello again my lovely readers :) How is everyone today? I decided to skittle swatch the rest of my recent hauls and I realized a few things: 1. I am obsessed with nail polish. I know, I know. Who saw this coming? Well, apparently not me when I ordered like 700 polishes all in a week and actually verbally yelled YES! in my front yard when I saw a package. 2. I like purple, a lot. It replaced pink as my favorite color, I think. At least in terms of nail polish... Anyway.

Left to right, starting with thumb is: Catrice Dirty Berry, Ingrid 351, Essence Bella, Catrice Purplelized, and Deborah Milano Knock Out Violet.

Then, because I had about 900 glitter topcoats I ordered, I added those on top. From left to right, starting with thumb: Essence Circus Confetti, Essence It's Purplicious, Essence Edward (aw, Edward and Bella), Essence Black and White Make Me Holo (which, as you can see, did not make it holo, but did give it a cool pearlized effect), and Ruby Kisses All Purpled Out.

Finally, I decided to try out my Essence magnetics and the final polish that I couldn't fit elsewhere. The magnetics are cleaned up kinda, well, crappily, because I was so busy trying to get the magnet to them to get a pattern with no luck.

Left to right, ending with thumb: Essence Magic Wand, Mystic Wish, Miracle Shine, and Hex Hex!, then Deborah Milano Love at First Sight.

And because I still had more glitter topcoats, here are the metallics with glitter. Left to right: Florimar 010, Essence Hello Holo, Essence Julia (Kirsten, it's SQUARE GLITTER), and Essence Blair.

In conclusion, I'm in love with Essence and everything they do.

If you made it this far, kudos to you! Do you guys like the pictures of the bottles, or is it too much? I like seeing them because, well, they're sparkly. And pretty. And I like pretty and sparkly and colorful. But is it too much for you, as the reader and not as me, the blogger who is obsessed with glitters?

xoxo,
Amanda

Holo Haul Skittle Swatches

Hello ladies, today I come to you with a serious warning. Caution: this post will contain many swatches of holographic polishes. If you are prone to fainting or lemming for polishes, I suggest you turn back now. Also, as you may have noticed from the title, I am feeling somewhat alliterative today, so watch out.

So between Nfu Ohs and my package from Dolores, I got five holographic polishes. And I have five fingers. Coincidence? Nope. So I decided to swatch some skittles to show them all off and also to point out the lack of purple-ness that is Nfu Oh 64.

Below on the thumb is Magnetic Shimmering Silver, pointer is Magnetic Powerful Purple (okay, these alliterations aren't me, the company really named them this), then middle is Nfu Oh 64 ("purple"), ring is Nfu Oh 63 and then pinky is Nfu Oh 65.

 Indoor to show the holo. (Powerful Purple is kind of a holo dud. Not linear, kind of scattered, still pretty. So when I had to sacrifice one of my fingers to hold the bottle non-awkwardly, Powerful Purple got the axe.)

 Here they are outside in sunlight, which shows the colors (and my streaky paint job on the pinky, that's what I get for doing this quickly in poor lighting) pretty well. You can see my middle three kind of all blend together and look like they're a series of the same color but, hey, maybe this is inspiration for a holo pinky purple ombre!

And finally, outside in the shade. Shows off the difference in the colors really well. PP is clearly violet purple, whereas 63 and 64 are pretty similar colors.

Favorites? Thoughts on 63, 64, or PP?

xoxo,
Amanda

Pixel Aqua-Escence and Fauxnad

Hello my lovelies! My post for the day is one of my Pixel polishes, Aqua-escence. Name aside (this is not a color I consider aqua) the color was decent. Applied kind of streaky, this is three coats, and it did even out but it just wasn't that interesting. The shimmer in the bottle translated but not well, and it just came out kind of blah. For some reason, it reminded me of Zenon, from that Disney movie from my childhood, and her crazy space outfits. Anyone else remember that, or am I incredibly old and senile?

And how do us nail polish addicts fix "blah"? We add Konad! So I used BM plate 208 and a Sally Hansen Jade Chrome polish. The outcome was nothing short of awesome, despite my less-than-stellar Konad skills:

I hadn't stamped with a metallic before, so I was unaware of how awesome they truly were, although I had heard rumors ;) Now I am a true believer! Bring on the metallics! I also love the swirl pattern. For some reason, I've always loved swirls and whenever I doodle that's what I draw.

How do you feel about this combo?

xoxo,
Amanda