Revlon 'Romantique'

Today, I have a snapshot of a mani that I wore last week. I was feeling like doing something neutral, and demure, so I went with Revlon 'Romantique':

'Romantique' is warm powdery pink creme polish. For me, this type of shade is perfect for when I'm not in the mood for a lot of colour. It's absolutely beautiful, and makes for an elegant mani. As can be expected from most Revlon classic shades, the formula for this polish was great. It applies cleanly and smoothly, and dried quickly.

OPI '15 Minutes of Flame' - Hollywood Collection for Spring 2021

Today, I have another polish from the OPI Spring 2021 Hollywood collection. This beauty is called '15 Minutes of Flame':

'15 Minutes of Flame' is a stunning metallic fuchsia polish. On the OPI website it's tag line is that "this fuchsia nail polish has a flair for the dramatic" - it's so true, the polish is very bright, and eye-catching, with a shimmery finish that reflects light in such a way that the polish seems to glow from within. 

I found the formula on '15 Minutes of Flame' to be a little tricky to work with, but I feel it's still worth it for the gorgeous colour and shimmer pay-off. The coverage is really good, and if you have a smooth nail surface, you might be able to get away with one coat. When I used one coat, it applied well and dried easily, but did nothing to hide the surface imperfections on my nail. 

I decided to go for a second coat, but that's when I ran into problems with the formula. After a few attempts, I found that it's best to give a fair amount of dry time between coats to ensure that the first layer is dried thoroughly before applying the second. This seemed to minimize bubbling. And also, if applying two coats, it's probably best to give a good amount of dry time before doing other activities, or going to bed. The first couple tries, I did my nails about an hour before going to sleep, and woke up with a little bit of smudging.

All in all, I really do love '15 Minutes of Flame' - despite how careful I had to be when applying it. It such a fun, and flashy colour and finish. I'm looking forward to more great manis with this awesome shade!

Zoya 'Mae'

For today's manicure, I did a swatch of Zoya's 'Mae':

Zoya's website describes the polish as a "warm magenta pink with a micronized metallic pearl finish, reminiscent of vibrant Mediterranian flowers". I love how fun and girly this polish is! This is a great 'Monday Morning' polish, that helps bring a little cheer to the start of the work-week! Now that many people are working from home, I guess every polish is now 'work-appropriate' - so why not go for colours that bring a smile to your face! 😄

 

Sinful Colors 'Gold N' Roses'

For today's post, I have a swatch of 'Gold N' Roses', a shimmery rose gold polish from Sinful Colors:

The polish applies quite thin, so I used three coats of polish for this mani. The final look was pretty -  very soft and elegant. However, it was a little too neutral of a look for my mood at the moment, so I decided to try to jazz it up by adding some nail gems!

'Shades of Coral' Manicure

 

For today's mani, I decided to a skittles manicure using a dark, medium, and light shade of coral. I used three polishes from Essie's Gel Couture line to accomplish this look: 'Sizzling Hot', 'Signature Smile', and 'Couture Curator'. I'm calling it my 'Shades of Coral' mani! 

I actually really enjoyed this look. It's fun and summery, but also sweet, and playful! For some reason, it kind of reminds me of 'Strawberry Shortcake' - the cartoon, not the dessert! Perhaps little green and white accents would complete that look... hmmmn... that could be a fun mani idea for the future!

Revlon 'Girly'

 

Today I have a quick swatch to share of a Revlon polish that I purchased years ago. It's called 'Girly', and it is a pink crelly loaded with purple, pink, and fuchsia hexagonal glitters. At the time of it's release, Revlon had made a bunch of crelly glitters like 'Whimsical' and 'Facets of Fuchsia', some of which were dupes of popular Deborah Lippmann polishes at the time. 'Girly' was one of the original creations in the release. The swatch picture above is two coats of the polish.

Swatch: China Glaze 'Ahoy!'

Today I have a swatch of China Glaze 'Ahoy!', a very pigmented fuschia crelly polish with gold shimmer particles.  Apparently,  'Ahoy!' was originally released as part of China Glaze's spring 2011 'Anchor's Away' collection, but I think it may have become part of the permanent collection, as I'm pretty sure that I purchased it well after 2011.

'Ahoy!' is truly quite lovely. The cool-toned, dark pink shade is beautiful, and is suitable for any season. And to top it all off, the gold shimmer really adds dimension to the finished look of the polish. All in all, it is absolutely stunning!

Swatch: KB Shimmer 'Take the Punny and Run'

I was going over some old photos in my archives, and I found a few usable shots that I had not yet posted on the blog. This swatch was one of them from way back in November 2015! This polish is called KB Shimmer 'Take the Punny and Run'. It is a pink to green duochrome flakie polish with a really pronounced shift.  The polish is absolutely gorgeous, and reminds me of springtime! 

In the bottle shot below, you can also see a bit of blue in the flakie reflection, but that doesn't really seem to translate to the nail. You can see the orange, yellow and green reflections quite clearly however... I guess that technically makes it a multichrome polish, then! Anyways, whatever it is called - it is simply stunning!

Mani Refresh: Holo-Glitter Topped Pink Shimmer Nails

I wanted to refresh my mani from the last post, so I decided to top them with a holographic bar glitter polish, to give a bit of a princessy-vibed mani!  The polishes I used were Nicole by OPI's 'You're an Angel', and Kleancolor's 'Starry Night'. For bottle shots, you can see 'You're an angel' here, and 'Starry Night' here.

This combination was certainly fun to wear and look at - even for such a simple manicure! Plus, it was a really great way to refresh a manicure that I had reached the point of boredom with. The pink polish that serves at the base polish in this manicure, had been my previous manicure. I wanted a bit of a change, but I wasn't keen on completely removing my nailpolish and starting over, either. I decided to just add a coat of the glitter to revitalize the mani without doing a lot of work!

Swatch: Nicole by OPI 'You're an Angel'

Today I have an 'Oldie but Goodie' nail polish swatch to share. This manicure features Nicole by OPI's 'You're an Angel'. 'You're an Angel' is a medium-toned, golden-pink shimmer polish which is so unbelievably beautiful both in the bottle and on the nail, that it took quite a few tries to get a semi-accurate photo - and even so, the pictures in this post aren't really doing the polish complete justice. The polish appears much warmer, and reflects a bit more golden-pink in person. I think a lot of the difference comes down to my ambient lighting being warmer than the lighting I use for my pictures.

I really used to love the Nicole by OPI brand. They carried a lot of fun, youthful, and trendy polishes that were great quality, and readily available at pretty much any drugstore. You could really count on NOPI to find something somewhat unique, innovative, and original, or just plain gorgeous! And they did so many fun collabs: Modern Family, Gossip Girl, The Kardashians, Justin Bieber, Selena Gomez, Carrie Underwood, etc... They were so culturally relevant! I really miss that line! 

If they ever decide to bring back the NOPI line, the only thing I think I would appreciate them changing is the awkward bottle shape! It is super cute to look at, but it's just a bit of a pain to store!

Revlon's 'Plum Seduction'

Today's post is another swatch from my Revlon Collection. This is shade 917 'Plum Seduction'. This polish is a bright plum crelly polish that dries to a wonderfully shiny finish. This manicure was so bright and fun - I truly enjoyed wearing it!

Morgan Taylor - Tickle My Keys

Today I have a swatch of 'Tickle My Keys' from the Summer 2019 Morgan Taylor Rocketman collection. It's a gorgeous, super bright pink polish that is just so much fun to wear! I recently picked this polish up on clearance. I really love how vibrant this polish is. It looked so amazing in the bottle that I just had to put it on my nails now - even though it's fall!

The polish not only looks great, but it has a wonderful formula that spreads evenly, dries relatively quickly, and gives full coverage in 2 coats.  All in all, I'm really happy with this polish, and look forward to wearing it both on its own, as well as featuring it in nail art in the future!

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear 'Posh Plum'

Today I have another quick post featuring a simple manicure. I hope to get back to doing nail art soon, so hopefully I'll have some cool nail art to share in the near future. This polish is called 'Posh Plum', and it is from the Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear line. I noticed this looks very similar to 'Pulsating', the polish that I posted about a couple entries ago. 'Posh Plum' is not an exact dupe, as it is just a touch bluer than 'Pulsating', but they still are quite close.

Rimmel 'Pulsating'

Today's post is on an 'oldie but goodie' polish that I've had for years. It's Rimmel 'Pulsating'.  This color is so bright and eye-catching, that I accidentally purchased it twice!  Back when I used to buy most of my polish at drug and department stores, I would frequently browse the nail polish racks to see if anything caught my eye. Apparently this polish did on two separate occasions, because I didn't even know I had two bottles of it until I was organizing my polishes some time later! In my defense, the purchases were long enough apart that the branding had been redesigned, and the colour number had changed - so it's a little bit more understandable that I had forgotten that I already owned the polish when I bought the second bottle!

I'm currently using the older bottle (colour number '811') as my toe color. Now that 'Cherry Brandy', my previous pedi polish is used up, I'm working on using this one consistently as a pedicure colour until it is used up as well. You can faintly see the fill line in the picture below (on the left) - I'm about half way through!

Kleancolor 'Starry Night'

Today I have another 'Project Polish' nail polish to share. It's by the brand KleanColor, and is called 'Starry Night'. I really didn't expect to like this polish on my nails, but after putting it on, it really grew on me. When I first tried to wear this polish years ago, I think I tried it as a topper over another colour and I didn't like the way the combo looked. That experience may have tainted my impression of the polish. This time, I wore the polish on its own.

'Starry Night' is a holographic bar glitter polish in a translucent pink base. I find when worn alone, the polish's soft pink base makes this a more subtle way to wear a blingy glitter polish, and gives an overall 'fairy-like' and/or 'princessy' vibe as a manicure (which I for one can certainly appreciate, on occasion!). I even got a compliment on this polish!

This is actually the only 'KleanColor' polish that I own. I purchased it many years ago at a clothing store that had a small display of polishes. Glitter was really in at the time, and I remember buying this polish along with some 'L.A. Girl' polishes from their 'Glitter Addict' collection, a collection of glitter toppers in practically every colour of the rainbow.

Jelly Belly + Sally Hansen Insta-Dri 'Bubble Gum'

Today I have another polish from the Jelly Belly + Sally Hansen Insta-Dri collaboration that was released earlier this year. The colour is called 'Bubble Gum' and it is a vibrant, cool-toned pink:

This pink is so bright and fun - perfect for the summer! I've really enjoyed the creme polishes that I've used from the Jelly Belly + Sally Hansen collection so far. Previously, I made a post about another polish from the same collection, 'Very Cherry'. Both of these creme polishes have great formulas, and are easy to apply. For me however, it's the vivid, candy-themed colours that truly make these polishes so awesome!

Zoya 'Alegra'

Today's post features a manicure using Zoya's 'Alegra':

This polish first came out in Zoya's Summer 2010 'Sparkle' Collection, however, I got it during Zoya's last black Friday sale as part of the 'Fa La La La La' Holiday Quad Gift Set. It came with 3 other polishes: 'Dakota', 'Sarah', and 'Veronica'.

In real life, the polish was a bit more sparkly, and a bit more pink-leaning than it appears in the photo.

Zoya's website describes it as "a fuchsia pink sparkling metallic".

The colour, and the formula were great, and I think the shade complemented my skin tone rather well - I find this to be true for most jewel tones. Overall, I really enjoyed wearing this polish!

OPI 'Say Hello Kitty'

Today's post features the special edition polish from OPI's 2016 Hello Kitty Collection. The shade is called 'Say Hello Kitty':

This was really fun to wear. The polish is so bright, shimmery and girly - it just really made me happy every time I looked at it my nails! The polish came in a box set with swarovksi crysal bows. One day, I'll have to create a Hello Kitty themed manicure so I can use the bows... 

Pink Nails!

Today's post is another where I forgot to keep track of exactly which polish I've used!  It's from the L'Oréal Paris Vernis a l'Huile line of polishes, and I think that it is most likely the shade called 'Rose Bouquet', but again, I'm not completely sure.

Whatever the shade name is, it's really pretty! If I'm able to confirm the name at a later time, I'll come back and edit this post.

One day I would like to do a detailed post reviewing and swatching the polishes that I have from this line.  I tried this line of polishes for the first time last year, and I quite like them. I did a post on another shade, 'Rubis Folies' earlier. 

Neutral Mani

Today I'm sharing a neutral, subdued and understated mani that still has a bit of style and creativity.

I don't typically do a lot of neutral manicures as I tend to favour fun and colourful looks that 'pop', however, I like to switch things up every once in a while too.  I actually was quite surprised by the neutral base colour that I used, 'Tickle my France-y'.  I had it in a miniature size and I'm pretty sure that this is the first time that I've used it.  I really liked how the colour worked with my skin tone. I was so impressed that I even went out and purchased a full sized bottle!  

I did a little bit of stamping on my nails using Uber Chic Beauty's 'Texture-licious plate 01', for a little bit of visual interest. And as an accent nail, I did a glitter gradient using Sally Hansen's 'Big Money', and then placed 3 nail gems down the middle of the nail for a bit of added bling.

Polishes Used

Polishes Used	Stamping Plate Used
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri 'Silver Sweep'	Uber Chic Beauty - Texture-licious-01
OPI 'Tickle my France-y'	Uber Mini Nail Stamp Plate
Sally Hansen Gem Crush 'Big Money'

I really like this textured stamping plate. It's such an easy way to spice up a simple mani without doing a lot of design work. Sometimes I want to paint my nails, and would love to do some nail art, but I'm not inspired to design an entire themed look. I'm thinking that these texture images would be perfect for those times. They should also be great for making textured backgrounds to double stamp, or place a decal over. I'm going to have to keep these handy to use a bit more frequently!