NOTD #4: Holiday Glitz

Winter and the holiday season means dark nails and dark lips!  My singing group is performing at a few holiday parties this year, so I’m excited to glitz it up this month, starting with my nails!

I started off with a base coat of Pacifica’s Red Red Wine.  This is a polish I received in my September 2014 ipsy bag, and I LOVE it!  It’s very opaque and applies without streaks, but I like to apply 2 coats so it gets a little darker.  My only issue is that it stains my nails like crazy, even through a base coat, so I have to make sure the base coat is completely dry before applying or I will have red tinted nails for a while!  Bonus points for being “7 free,” aka free of parabens, phthalates, toluene, xylene, camphor, formaldehyde, resin, and animal byproducts.  The brush is vegan too!

The glitz is e.l.f.’s Gold Star.  I’ll be posting my e.l.f. haul this week, but one of the items I bought was a 10 piece nail polish set, which included this pretty gold glitter polish.  I just wanted a few pieces of glitter, so one coat was more than enough.  I love the way it looks!

Polish: Pacifica Red Red Wine
Accent: E.L.F. Gold Star
Base: Wet n’ Wild Wild Shine base coat
Top: Seche Vite Dry Fast top coat

Let me know what you think!

xoxo

 

NOTD #3: Rose Gold

I haven’t posted in forever!!  I have quite a bit of time off this month so hopefully I’ll at least get some subscription box posts up!  But for now, here’s a quick Nail of the Day!

Like most of the beauty world, I seem to be obsessed with rose gold, and that obsession has spread to my nails!  Rose gold is perfect for the holidays and I think it looks really good on medium/olive skin tones.  Here’s what I’m wearing:

Polish: Essie Buy Me a Cameo
Accent: Milani Club Lights
Base: Wet n’ Wild Wild Shine base coat
Top: Seche Vite Dry Fast top coat

Essie describes this polish as a “frosted mocha,” but I think there’s enough pink in there to call it rose gold.  It’s one of Essie’s better formulas and applies like a dream, with 2 coats being more than enough for opacity.  I did an accent with Milani’s Club Lights, which has large and small chunks of light pink and magenta glitter.

Let me know what you think!

xoxo

 

NOTD #2: Truth or Flare

Just a quick post today!  I’ll have my June ipsy post up in a couple days, as well as a review of a palette I just purchased.  But for now, nail of the day #2!

Polish: Essie Truth or Flare
Base: Wet n’ Wild Wild Shine base coat
Top: Seche Vite Dry Fast top coat

This polish is part of Essie’s new Summer 2014 line, and I fell in love with it as soon as I saw it.  It is a gorgeous dusky cornflower blue, which I think is perfect for summer!  It applies like a dream and self-levels, as many Essie polishes do.  It is opaque and creamy, but two coats are required.  Definitely a new summer favorite!

xoxo

 

NOTD #1: Peek-a-boo Pink

I paint my nails often, so I thought I’d start a series of “Nails of the Day” aka NOTD!  Today I am wearing Covergirl Outlast Stay Brilliant nail gloss in Peek-a-boo Pink.  It is a sheer bubblegum pink, and if you look very closely, there is shimmer throughout the polish.  I bought this polish a couple months ago from Target on clearance for $1.50, since Covergirl was discontinuing this color.  Covergirl polishes are typically $4.99 at Target.

I have to say, I am not the biggest fan of Covergirl nail polish.  The cap is square, and the brush is situated at an odd angle to the angles of the brush, so it is extremely awkward and uncomfortable to hold the cap and apply the nail polish.  This formula is quite sheer, but two coats were plenty.  Apart from the weird cap, it applied very easily, it was not goopy, and it even self-leveled.  While it’s not my favorite polish, it is a very pretty shade and it is a relatively inexpensive polish.

For base coat, I really like the Wet n’ Wild Wild Shine Protective Base coat.  It costs 99 cents at most drugstores, and it has really made a difference in the time my polish lasts.  I can usually go 2 full days with zero chipping, sometimes even 3.  By the 4th day, there is some chipping around the edges of my nails, but it’s still generally intact!  If you’re looking for a good but inexpensive base coat, definitely check this one out.

My top coat is the best top coat EVER, Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat.  If you’ve never used this top coat before, what are you waiting for??  I buy it on Amazon for $5-6 and one bottle lasts a while.  It dries extremely fast, and paired with a base coat, keeps your manicure chip-free for days.

Let me know what you think in the comments!  This will be my last post for the week, more to come next week!

xoxo