Random Swatch Sunday!!

Here are some swatches of some polishes I've acquired fairly recently.  Please excuse my dried out cuticles.  I live in Tucson, AZ and it was dry as dry could be and hot as hell up until the last few days and my cuticles have been paying for it.  

It has no name, btw.

Someone had given this one an unsuccessful try at the store.

Nabi brand magnetic polishes are availble right now at Walgreens for around 5 bucks I want to say.  I bought several of these a few months ago on Amazon.com here.  While fairly inexpensive for a magnetic polish, they have a terribly weak magnet and no guard.  I had to use the magnet off of my Color Club magnetic polish in order to get a decent result.  Regardless, this is a really sweet color and complimented my skin tone rather well.

Next up is China Glaze's Flying Dragon (NEON).  It's a matte polish and while pretty, I'm not a big fan of matte polishes due to the fact that they chip so easily.

3 coats - Matte 

It's actually more vibrant in person.

Even better with a coat of SV. 

I topped it off with a coat of SV once I saw that I was getting some tip wear.  Nice!

Here are some of last season's Misa's from the Surreal Escape Collection.

Stunning is right!!

Color-shifter extraordinaire.

Close, but not quite.

From Sally Hansen's Gem Crush Collection -

From the China Glaze Magnetix Collection- I don't know the name of this one.  

Icing Magnetix - Magnetic Nail Polish from Icing

I was lucky enough to get the heads up today from one of my favorite polish bloggers, the PolishAholic, that the accessory store, Icing, was selling magnetic nail polish.  Of course, I ran to the mall immediately and picked up their last 4 magnetic polishes, of which I did a quick skittle swatch for you today to get a peek.  They were buy 1 get 1 half off, regular price $9.00 each and there are four different colors, none of which have names on the bottles. 
All of these are 2 coats and the blue one has a top coat of SV as it looks a little on the dull/matte side without it.

So what do you think?  I think you can't beat the price considering the Layla magnetic polishes I bought were $15.50 a pop via internet order and they didn't have the nice little mess up guard on the caps like these do.  I know China Glaze has their magnetic collection coming out soon, but I am not sure what the pricing will be like on those.  I have a feeling they'll be around $12.50 or so, but I hope they are less.  I like that I achieved full coverage in 2 coats and that these the colors and designs are interesting enough.  My favorite was the pink/rosie one and it's squiggle design, followed by the gold one (which looks way more cool in person).  Now the one negative I do have about these was the brushes.  In a nutshell, they sucked.  They were all wonkey and twisted up.  I think out of the 4, only one was normal. Despite this, I managed to get around the irregularity pretty easily, especially since right now my nails are so short (due to a middle finger nail casualty I suffered last week). 
I really hope you can find these gems for yourself.  If you can't find them right away due to sell-out, the sales girl my local Icing told me that it was their first shipment of Magnetix, so I imagine they'll be restocking soon.  I also observed that Icing actually has a pretty damn good selection of polishes and nail skins that are very reasonably priced.  Who would have thunk it?  Not me.  I avoid the mall like I avoid people with the sniffles.  I still haven't tried nail skins, so that just might be something I'll pick up on my next haul. 
Edit - so apparently the magnetic cap on these polishes pops off so that you don't have to struggle flipping over a loaded brush with cap and hovering it over your wet nail bed. Bonus points!!!!

Btw,  today's nail haul included 3 American Apparels I've been jonesing for, 2 of the new Special Effects flakeys from Finger Paints that I picked up at Sally's and a new butter London from their spring collection, that I grabbed at Dillard's.  I can't wait to get all these swatched soon!

Until next time...

Candy Corn Mani for Halloween

So I'm a day late, but I say better late than never.  I wore this manicure Sunday and Monday for Halloween.  I must say it's one of those manicures that you want to look at in a Monet-like fashion...which is from far away.  Because up close, it's kind of messy looking, but it was my first try, so I think I get a pass.  Here we go!

You will need a white polish, yellow and an orange polish.  The more saturated and more opaque the polish, the better. 

The first step is to cover the nail with the white polish and let dry thoroughly.

Then, you paint the nail with the yellow polish starting from about 1/4 of the way up or so from the cuticle, covering the white completely.  You may need two coats and it doesn't have to be perfect.  Again, let dry.

Finally, paint a stripe of the orange polish starting at the lower edge of the yellow- where the white and orange meet, taking up the center third of the nail, more or less.  I had to paint perpendicularly against the nail with a super steady hand in order to the get the stripe to be as even as possible and I didn't sweat it when it got on my skin.  On my mani, I had to use several coats of the orange in order to even things out and in order to reach maximum opacity on top of that yellow. 

After all coats are nice and dry, top it off with some SV for super shiny results and then clean up those edges and cuticles and you're done. 

Here are the polishes I used for this manicure.  Sinful Colors are usually available at Walgreens and Target.  I found mine at Walgreen's for $1.99 a piece and the Sally Hansen orange was also purchased at Walgreen's for not much more. 

I can't wait to try something new next year.  :)

Magnetic nail polish, finally!!!!!

So I have been lemming (refer to the glossary!) magnetic nail polish for about a year now, but there hadn't been a magnetic polish sold in the states for some time.  All the blogs that I read where magnetic polish was profiled were from bloggers in the U.K. or U.S. gals who had done some awesome trading with polish lovers from overseas.  Well, the wait is over and magnetic nail polishes are in the states and are a-plenty in various brands and colors. 

I am very pleased to say that I am the owner of 2 magnetic polishes by Layla that I purchased through http://www.aveyou.com/ who had a $1.00 shipping promotion for purchases $50.00 or more ( I bought several of the SpaRitual polishes from their fall collection that I'll be swatching soon and are GORGEOUS).  I was so giddy and excited to get my package in the mail and put a full manicure on immediately in Golden Bronze.

For those of you unfamiliar with magnetic nail polish, the polish has tiny magnetic particles in it and the polish cap has a built in magnet that will put a simple design on your nails when you hover the cap over a wet coat of polish. The more layers of polish, the more intense the effect. You can see a Layla tutorial here: Layla Magnetic Nail Polish Tutorial to really get the idea.  P.S.- the lady's accent in the tutorial cracks me up and I question if it is a real accent or a just put on.  Anywho, Layla has a simple stripe design, while some other brand polishes will have a star design as well as the stripe as a choice.  Either way, the effect is really something that I never seen and find to be truly mesmerizing. 

So, for you today, I have my first try at a vertical stripe mani, which was very subtle and gave a look of almost a tiger eye stone to my nails.  I got many compliments while wearing this manicure and thought the color and effect was to die for. 

And then I tried to mix up the lines and the intensity...

The above effects were acheived with 2 coats of nail polish, which was nice and easy to apply and had the perfect consistency.  The top mani photos had a top coat of SV and the second mani had none.  And just so you know, the Layle Magneffect bottles are a little bit smaller than the average bottle of nail color and at aveyou.com they are $15.50 a pop.  Kind of pricey to some folks, but to me, the price is totally worth it based on the results.  I'll be swatching Purple Galaxy in the near future and have a feeling it's going to be just as, if not more awesome than Golden Bronze.

Until next time.