Kat Von D True Romance Poetica Eyeshadow Palette Review and Swatches

Here are the swatches from the Kat Von D True Romance Poetica eyeshadow palette. Sorry, my arm is gross and has freckles! From left to right: "Forgiveness" a super shimmery white with gold sparkles in it. I couldn't see the gold at all in the pan until I swatched it and I was very surprised at how much gold is actually in it! "Sand Timer" is a light shimmery sand/greige, that almost doesn't show up on my skin. "Chandler" is a super reflective rust, which I think is my absolute favorite in this palette. "Tijuana" is a black with purple and rust colored micro glitter. "Wonderland" is a glittery dark purple with light purple micro glitter.  "Shiba" is a greyish purple with the same light purple shimmer as "Wonderland". "Babe" is a super bright purple with an iridescent blueish sheen to it. This is my second favorite, because I love bright colors, but don't have any with a sneaky iridescent finish to it. And last but not least "You Alone" is the most matte of the bunch, a creamy off white, leaning on the beige side, having only the slightest bit of shimmer to it. Almost not even qualifying as a shimmery eyeshadow. It's an in-betweener. I think "You Alone" would be the perfect color in this palette to use as a base color from lashline to brow. 

 

Above: With Flash

Below: Without Flash

As for what I think: Not going to go into detail reviewing each shadow, but I'll just tell you what I think of the palette as a whole. First of all, I love the packaging. The outside panels are a cool matte metal with an embossed design and has a great weight to it. The inside has a huge mirror the size of the whole case and the eyeshadows are a large and generous pan size. It has a little well for the Kat Von D "Autograph Pencil" which is a super black eyeliner pencil, included in the set. The quality of the pencil is very smooth, creamy, and blacker-than-black. I have nothing bad to say about the eyeliner really, however haven't tried it out so can't report on its staying power or smudging. Some shadows are "better" than others and I can say that they are all really pigmented, they blend easily, they are interesting and fun colors, but the one bad thing is there is quite a bit a dusty fall out on most of the shadows. And I believe I'm losing quite a bit of product each time  I dip a brush into a shadow. I give it a 4 out of 5. There's a range of colors to make multiple different looks and they're pretty good quality blendable shadows. Other than it does create a fair amount of fallout, maybe that's why they give you pretty large pans of each color! :)

 This was given to me as a gift from my boyfriend's mom who gives pretty trendy gifts. Thank you!

ELF Matte Finisher Review (and some nail art)

I decided to try out this nail trend and I thought it best to buy a matte topcoat vs matte polish. That way I could make any of my polishes seem matte. I bought ELF Matte Finisher for just $2 on eyeslipsface.com and was pleasantly surprised at the quality. As I have read in reviews, it smells horrible!!!!! I couldn't handle it the first night I tried it out. In the picture that only shows 2 nails, I painted them all with Black Out by Sally Hansen. Then on my ring finger I did one coat of the Matte finisher then striped on regular glossy top coat in a zebra pattern. The difference between the matte and the glossy is subtle but very interesting to look at. Today, I painted my nails with Ash Wangsday, my franken, then did a black and white cheetah print leaving the ing finger solid as my accent. Then I layered a thick coat of the Matte Finisher and I'm not sure how I feel about matte over nail art. It smoothed the seams but not as well as with Seche Vite, so I just layered on Seche Vite on top, and it was like the matte never happened. All in all here's my review key points...
Pros:
Inexpensive
Does exactly what it says it does
Cons:
Horrible smell
Little streaky, unless you apply one thick coat

Hope this review helps you! Try it out if you haven't tried matte polishes or top costs because it's the best deal for its price.

OPI I Brake For Manicures Swatch

Merry Christmas everyone! I got a couple of polishes from my boyfriends stepmom today, one of them being OPIs I Brake For Manicures. I had time after my nap navidad to swatch it for you guys because it's a really interesting color but I'm not sure the pictures do it justice. It's a creamy dark grey/brown/purple that goes on smooth and opaque in just two coats. I love it. It's from the Touring America Collection which I loved almost every color of. It's a new shade for me, and perfect for winter! I'm glad I'm on a break from acrylics so I could easily swatch this on my natural nails!

I hope you can see the complex hue combo in this color- might add a sunlight pic later on. Thanks, Diane!

Do any of you guys have this color? What do you think of it?

Merry Xmas, followers!

Essie School of Hard Rocks Swatch

Ahhh I've had this polish for a few weeks now and haven't gotten a chance to swatch it out because my crap long acrylics and my 30 day challenge. But here's the scoop: School of Hard Rocks from Essie's Winter 2011 Collection is a creamy, slate blue/green/grey polish that glides on smooth and opaque in just 2 coats. I was sorta worried as it's been sitting upright in its drawer for at least 3 weeks and it had already settled at the thin liquidy stuff rose to the top. I gave it an extra few shakes and it was good as new. The first coat was transparent and streaky, but it coulda just been me, as my hands are very badly sore from 3 straight days of crocheting Xmas presents. I love the color, it is such a new shade of blue/grey/green (lol) that I really haven't seen before. I instantly felt like it was winter and it made me feel very warm inside. The only problem I have with this polish: when I was applying top coat, the polish started to rub off onto the top coat brush!!! And I'd had my nails dried for nearly 45 minutes! Maybe it was just this top coat, I'll let you guys know next time when I use a different top coat. But my review stands: this is a great new color!! I love it, and can't wait to try the other Winter 2011's from Essie!

Nail Mail Haul + Reviews

So this is my most recent and final nail art haul from www.banggood.com . They're located out of China, and like I said in my last nail haul from them, you're getting the same stuff you get off Amazon but for dirt cheap + no shipping. This 12 color hexagon set on Amazon is trying to sell for $17!! I got it for $3. 

The tiny jars ha twist on lids, as with most glitter pots, and there was only a small about of spillage. I wouldn't even call it spillage, it was just a few hexagons stuck to the larger container. I swept them off with a paper towel onto my glitter laden carpet and that was that. They are about 1mm (sorry I didn't have my ruler out to show you) and they are small enough to stick on to your nail with top coat and not have it be sticking out off the nail in one corner, also small enough to throw into a glitter acrylic mix (pic in my next post). But large enough to tell they are hexagons. The only problem I have with these is that some of them are straight metallic (red, black, silver, copper, pink/purple) and some are irridecent (pink, blue, purple, green, yellow, and clear/white). The only reason why I don't like that is because I was REALLY hoping the green would be a straight metallic green so I could do red/green/silver acrylic mix for Xmas! But I still have time before Xmas to figure it out or find a new green hexagon. LOL.....

These are 10 colors of striping tape that I also ordered... kind of an impulse buy because they were I think $1.50 for all ten colors? I just thought since I was ordering stuff, and everything takes so long to get here that I might as well stock up on stuff.

I'm not quite sure how I will use the stripe tape, but here you can see that it is very thin, but you can still clearly see it's pretty metallic blue color. As I was just testing the size of the tape on my nail and wasn't planning on leaving it there, I must report that it came off very easily and remained sticky, so if you place it in the wrong spot, it will be easy to pull off and move over.

The tape was so thin and hard to tell which color was which

, I thought while I had everything out during my nail mail photo shoot, I labeled all of the striping tape bags so it would be easy to grab the correct on quickly while doing nails.

And last but not least, a new set of double ended dotting tools (whose handles match my acrylic art brush set from my last haul) a wheel of flat backed pearls, and some 1.5mm and 2mm rhinestones, I thought I swore off rhinestones forever but these were too cheaply priced to pass up- I think each wheel was about $2 for about 24000 stones/wheel. And to answer the question you always ask: how do they hold up under top coat? They don't! Never do that! Rhinestones always look best if they are the very very last thing to apply! Even Swarovski crystals- you don't want to top coat those either! They lose their tiny facets under a layer of topcoat and therefore, lose their sparkle.

Here are my flat black pearls^^. Love them, haven't really seen them being sold before. I got these because my girlfriend Chrissy loves everything azn and cutesy so these are prolly going to only be used on her nails- maybe I'll take the red and blacks though. 

Oh yeah and I also got a pair of tweezers for picking up tiny things like Fimo slices, glitter shapes, rhinestones, etc. They were 79 cents each and they work great!

I hope you guys check out www.banggood.com because they are cheap, good quality, and they have free shipping!! Only took about 2 1/2 weeks to get here, but hey, I didn't pay a penny for shipping :)

Huge Post: Haul, Swatches, Reviews... (Pic Heavy)

This is OPI's "Crown Me Already" from the Miss Universe Collection (the silver and large hex glitter). And the blue is "Across The Universe " by Deborah Lippmann.

OK let's start with 'Crown Me Already': I'm not sure if it was just this bottle, it's my friend Megan's and she ordered it online and she said when she recieved it a little bit had leaked out a bit. Not sure if it was a little think because of the insane amount of glitter, or because of the leak, but it was pretty hard to apply, and seemed to PUSH more polish out of the bottle each time I put the brush back in. I love the glitter, love the sparkle, but it was pretty hard to smooth out the texture, even with Seche Vite top coat. I also used a toothpick to push the large hexagon glitters around to keep my cuticle line clean looking.

"Across the Universe" is a dream glitter polish. It only took 2 medium coats to opaque and despite it being loaded with hexagons, it went on smooth, and had a jelly-like finish. It was smoothed out instantly with only one coat of Seche Vite. This is also Megan's polish. I got to swatch these while dog-sitting her super awesome golden retriever, Lady. Hey Megan!

YAY 3D acrylic! I'll go into details about that further down the page, as this is a swatch review for Essie's "Raise Awareness". It's Essie's breast cancer awareness pink and it is a lil tricky. I did read another review of this polish saying it was streaky and it is. I feel like when I'm painting tips it's even streakier vs. whole nail application. So this is two coats. I love the color, it would be less streaky with 3 coats, but I don't like to have heavy looking tips. I think that this polish would be less streaky in 3-4 months as it ages and becomes a little thicker.

Here is my pink nail drill I just got yesterday from Beauties Factory. Check it out here. I got it for about $25, and actually this is my replacement drill for the one I just got last month and BROKE. Now for this review I would like to make it clear that I BROKE the drill the first time. It did not come malfunctioning. Good news: the BF pink drill has a one year warranty, and this one was sent to me for $10 fee and I got to keep my other drill, it's cable, and drill bits. As for it's power: it goes up to 20,000 RPM (super fast and powerful) but so far I haven't had to use it at it's max speed; it does the job on medium. I've successfully filed a nail I had to put on today, and carved out the moon tips from my squared off nails. It did a fine job, my tips are sharp and more defined that with my previous battery powered drill. See above, the moon tips in my Essie "Raise Awareness" pictures. The only down side I have seen with this drill so far: it gets pretty warm in my hand after long use, and once it has overheated and slowed down. I turned it off for about 5 minutes, and was able to use it just fine again. I would reccomend this to any beginners for use on home acrylic application. And these are my acrylic brushes that I got JUST for doing 3D kawaii japanese nail art!!! and this 12 color set of acrylic powder. The colors are pretty random, but I'm not too picky about that right now these are just for practicing 3D stuff. I only paid about $2.50 for the 5 brush set (free shipping) and $6 or so for the acrylics also free shipping. It only took about 2 weeks to get here from China, and they are good enough quality to do a few little bows and flowers.

The website is here and it's insanely cheap for decent quality nail stuff like rhinestones, glitter, etc. So you should DEFINITELY check it out. Free shipping from China to US and came in a super decent amount of time. The comtainer that the acrylics came it was a little dusty (as shown) but I just dusted it off with a paper towel after I saw how yuck it was in the photo. None of it was spilled in shipping, but it was just a little dusty with powder. The brushes are super cute and the bristles are a nice soft sable hair for acrylic application, and they clean as well as my expensive ones from Sally's.



Well, if anyone read this whole thing, kudos to you, and I hope this was helpful for someone!

Playboy Glitter! Mail's here!

Got my 12-color Playboy bunny head shaped glitter in the mail just now~ Had to post a pick for you guys-

I ordered it from an independent seller from a Chinese version of ebay sorta... It was about $9US but free shipping! I first found out these existed when watching a video on YouTube of a chick sorting through her nail storage boxes and explaining the products she used. When she pulled out some Playboy shaped glitter, I freaked out and went on a 2-day non-stop internet search to find these. The only other place I could find them was on a Chinese wholesale site that was selling them for about $5/set but you had to buy 100 sets. Finally I found this guy and was happy to pay $9 for them.

It looks like there's about 100+ of each color, so should last me... a lifetime.

The box is very durable and came in this bag. This was the "spillage" that had leaked out. Just a few pink and reds fell out into the bottom of the bag, but only took me about 3 minutes to sort them out and put them back in there place on the set. Then all the eyes that had been punched out had fallen into the bag as well (which is weird because all the containers were closed and they are very hard to open...) I saved all the eye punches in a small clear container for use in maybe a franken or some other nail art that calls for tiny holo dots.

Here is the size of one of the bunnies. It's about .5cm. They are small enough to be encased in acrylic-

I did this on my ONE white French nail that's on my left thumb. Y'all haven't seen the white tip because I've been painting over it this whole time during my challenge. I just filed it thinner to add more acrylic, added some holo white glitter from Martha Stewarts irridecent collection, then added some black stars and a blue bunny. Cased in clear acrylic. Filed, shaped, buffed, and glossed with Beauty Secrets Hardening top coat. Sweet! :) Can't wait to do a full set of these after this long 30 day challenge!

30 Day Nail Challenge - Day 1 - Red + 2 Quick Reviews

I've started the 30 Day Nail Challenge and day 1's category is RED. That's all it says. I actually hate red nail polish because it's my least favorite color, and even if I use a basecoat it stains my acrylics. I only have like 2 reds anyways and THIS ONE I actually bought for 4th of July 2010! (Wet N Wild - "Red Red") It was super thick but with a few drops of Beauty Secrets Nail Polish Thinner, I brought it back to life.

Quick Review on B.S. Polish Thinner: Works great, smells awful (duh), you get a lot for a few bucks, comes with a spout on the cap but you really need an eyedropper to be precise. Also I (stupidly) stored it on it's side inside my drawer and it leaked out and melted the rubber no-slip mat!!!

OK so what I've done here was a quick swipe across the tip in Red Red not completing a French smile line on one side. I completed the smile line with 3 black glittery stripes that intersect at the other side of the nail. Then I placed black holographic cut out stars and the punched out centers around the nails randomly and topped with a few coats of Beauty Secrets Hardening Top Coat.

My Quick Review on B.S. Hardening Top Coat: high gloss but needs at least 2 coats, takes a while to dry (at least 10 minutes for each coat), super fun huge ball-like bottle and about $2 cheaper than Seche Vite Dry Fast + it's a bigger bottle. I would buy this again if I when run out Seche Vite is not on sale. (This is why I decided to try it in the first place.)

And one more thing, readers: I still cannot comment on anyone's posts! When I write my comment it asks me to sign in again and repeats this over and over. If anyone knows what's going on, please help me! I really want to tell you all how much I love all your posts!!