Ninja Polish - Passion Shift: *swoon*

Big day today so here is a quick review of an AMAZING polish.

Today I have Ninja Polish's Passion Shift. It is a gorgeous polish that shifts from purple to blue(although my photos only show off the pretty purple a bit more) filled with holo glitter. Application was an easy 2 coats, although one coat was almost enough. Went on like room temperature butter(that's a good thing ;) ) The polish is currently sold out, but you can get it over here.

eXtra Special Nails. You Wont Get It.

Maybe I will explain these nails later, but I like them at the moment because most people wont understand them. Just a select few ;) That makes them eXtra Special.  This was mostly done with acrylic paint.

An InLinkz Link-up

Kiko Wisteria: You may not be the best polish, but at least you aren't a horrible person

Well I had...a day. First half of the day was great. Second, not so much. Long story short, got onto a commuter train, and some annoying guy who was with his son, asked if he could use my phone. I said no, for multiple reasons. One being I just didn't want him using my phone. Anyway, he got angry at me and started going off and calling me the N word, and saying how horrible black people can be. And this went on for a while. I was livid. It took a lot for me to not say anything. Long story short I contacted security, and technically I can press charges for harassment, but I'm not going to. I don't want to waste my time on filth like that. I will say I felt bad for the son(who was for sure biracial[not black though]), who was telling him to "Shut up" the whole time.

Now for the polish. This is two coats of Kiko Wisteria, a periwinkle textured polish, sans shimmer. I honestly didn't know how I would feel about this. I love textured polishes, but never loved the look of textured without shimmer. I always though it looked like a bumpy wall, but I decided to wear this today because I do love the colour. Honestly, I actually really liked it at first. I think it looks good on the nail, but from a far. I think textured polish in general looks better when it's not right in your face. What I didn't like about it was the dry time was it was longer than any other textured polish I own, and it got DIRTY from the dark foundation on my face. Which was impossible to wash off.

Overall I don't hate this polish, but I don't love it. Maybe I can find something artsy to do with it!

Well look what we have here: Poison Claws

Even when I don't post on here for a while I am pretty much always taking photos of my nails when I do them. And I always upload them, and I'll say to myself "I'll write about you eventually".  Usually I get around to it, but today I have a manicure that I TOTALLY forgot I did till looking through my photos.

First is Dior Poison. This is a beautiful deep purple cream. It falls in that almost black, but not category. In person it is VERY dark, but it is clear that it is purple. Application was super easy 2 coats, as it is with all my Dior polishe's. To finish it off, and add a little flair, I added some Barry M Majesty. I think these two colours go together perfectly. And it's manicures like this that make me miss my longer nails.

Wild Weather

I need a rain jacket guys. I am the kind of person that prefers overcast and drizzly days, but I hate that my jacket isn't waterproof. Because then I end up feeling cold, even when it's somewhat warm outside. I will say despite my hatred for hot weather in general one of the things loved about when I was in Trinidad was that the weather was so warm the rain was like a shower.

Speaking of things that are cold, my cold is MUCH better. It appears that it wasn't a bad cold, as it never got to the point where I felt like I needed to lie in bed wish tissues by my side all day. While it wasn't a horrible cold it still sucked any extra energy I had to spare, and I just could not bring myself to do my Wild nails for my A-Z Challenge on time. So here they are finally.

Because I was still feeling under the weather when I did these I wanted to keep them simple. They are really fun leopard print nails. I used Picture Polish's Mad Magenta for a base,  and Barry M's Majesty and Zoya's Dahlia for the spots. It was quick and easy!

No top coat

Top coat

Art Deco: Third Times The Charm?

So I have a cold...again. This is my THIRD cold THIS YEAR. I know exactly who I got each cold from, but at the same time I probably should be treating my body a bit better so I'm not so susceptible. I really wanted to do my A-Z challenge yesterday, but I just feel too blah to do anything fun with my nails. So here is a mani I did a few days ago using my Catrice polish I just reviewed.

Since I have been wanting to do more nail art the past few weeks, but I have been super busy, striping tape, has coming in handy. It can be quite time consuming, depending on the design, but I find that when using it for accent nails you can get away with doing more creative designs without taking forever.

I wore Catrice's Oh My Goldness for a day, but after that first day, I just knew I had to add some art deco to it. It just felt like it was calling out for it. The designs weren't hard to do, but they were a bit tricky trying to get everything even when using my non dominant hand. The rhinestones are from KKCenterHk. I think it's safe to say that I am really loving this manicure.

Catrice - Oh My Goldness!: Best brush ever.

Today I have a polish brand that is new to me. Well new in the sense that I had never tried it, only heard of it.  It's Catrice Oh My Goldness! It's a densely packed glitter/shimmer in a clear base. I only needed to coats, but I added a third for the photo. I was a bit unsure of the colour at first. While its name indicates gold, it leans towards a coppery orange. Once I put it on I ended up loving it. I think it looks great on me, but I'm not sure it will look good on all skintones.

My favourite part of this polish would have to be the brush. Right when I started using it I KNEW it was my new favourite brush. Now my nails aren't wide, but they aren't tiny. I personally like wide brushes over skinny brushes, they are easier for me to use. This brush was a wide brush, but not too wide. The thing that made me love this brush was the flexibility of the brush. It wasn't too floppy, or too stiff, which meant I had perfect control. This meant it wasn't too wide for narrow nails, like my pinky. And at the same time I meant I also got good coverage on wider nails because the brush spread out just enough to easily paint them without ever feeling limp.

Overall I loved this polish, and would love to try out some more from them. Do you guys have a favourite?

Ok, THIS post is late: Things are getting hairy

So I have missed a few weeks of the A-Z Challenge, but one week I didn't want to miss was unusual. I feel like in the past I did a lot of weird manicures and I kind of miss doing them like I used to. I though this would be a great time to try something I had been wanting to give a go for a while. And since I was busy the week of this challenge I never did it until the other day.

Back in December someone in a Facebook group I'm part of posted a video that shared 3 nail polish tricks. One of them involved making a striping brush out of your own hair. I thought that would be great to try with my hair, my natural hair. My hair is currently a bunch of different textures, so I decided to cut a little over an inch long coil from the end of my hair(after I cut it I stretched out the coil and it was over 7 inches long. Not surprising as it's curly and I have shrinkage), and tape it to the end of another brush handle. Then I went to town painting with my own hair. First I used pink and orange acrylic paint, then I used Orly Charged Up for the purple. Obviously because my hair is curly I'm not going to get stripes, but I did like the design I ended up with. It was like a combination of splatters and flowers :P

 The "brush" I used :P

Smooth Braiding

I don't own a lot of Essie's. Actually there's a lot of brands I don't own a lot of, but when it comes to Essie I tend to stay away on purpose. I find their formula can be his or miss. The only time I ever buy an Essie polish is if I think the colour is super unique. This is one of those times.

This is Essie's Smooth Sailing. A STUNNING periwinkle blue, with fine flecks of silver, blue and pink. This is probably tied with Lots of Lux for best Essie formula. It was 2 easy coats, and it evened out really well. Funny story about this polish, I hadn't worn it in years because I wore it when I had some tests done at the hospital, and it always reminded me of the hospital after that. But when I was looking at it in the bottle the other day I thought "F**k it! It's too pretty not to wear!".

 

I also did some nail art that used this polish. I tried out this braid look. I had literally seen it(or variations of it) 4 or 5 times the past week on various social media platforms I follow, so I had to give it a go. I used striping tape, but the lines aren't as crisp as I would have wanted them to be, but as I learnt it's much harder when you start using more colours at once. You need to move much, much faster. For this I used Essence Oh My Glitter(which I need a new bottle of because it's amazing), Sally Hansen's Piqué Side, and of course Essie's Smooth Sailing.

I'm not late!!!: V is for Valuable

For oce I had my A-Z nails done on time, but I will be honest with you. I was just lazy and didn't take photos till hours after I did my nails. And if I'm going to be 100% truthful I still haven't taken photos yet :P

*takes photos*

I finally took the photos.

This week the letter was V and the word Valuable. Originally I wasn't sure what direction to go in, and was thinking of using a polish that valuable to me. Then I realized that I haven't done proper nail art in a while. The more I thought about it the more I started itching to do more some! So my inspiration today is something that is valuable for a number a reasons, The Rosetta Stone. On it there is text written in Hieroglyphics, Demotic and Greek text. Since the Greek text was the easiest to copy I just did that. Also mine doesn't say anything, it's just random letters. I wish I had used a lighter gray, but I still like how it turned out.

 

 

An InLinkz Link-up

Incoco Minimalist Collection Pt. 2: Lots Of Lines

Sorry I'm posting this later than planned. I have just been super busy! Today I have the second half of the Incoco Nail Appliqués from their Minimalist Collection! Part 1 is over here.

The ones I have for you today are Echo(A black and white linear and geometric design) and Finale(Converging and intersecting purple lines on muted gold). The application was super easy as usual, even with the cutting I had to do so some of the appliqués fit properly. These were my two favourites from this collection. They felt like simple nail art, that had just the right amount of a creative twist.

If you like these and would like to buy a pack you can get them over at Incoco's website, where they retail for $8.99(USD) each.

 

*Products sent for honest review.

And now for something completely different.

Sort of.

I mean it's still beauty related, so it's just different.

As I said in an earlier post I have been getting more and more into makeup these past few months. One of the things I have learnt I love is lipstick. I just like wearing it, rather than going crazy with the eyes. I also find eye looks get hidden behind my chunky glasses. I have also fallen head over heels in love with matte lipsticks, and if it starts out liquid then even better! But one of the problems with it is your lips NEED to be in the best shape possible when wearing them. Which is why I bought this!

This is the e.l.f. Lip Exfoliator I bought from FTB Beauty. It's a lip exfoliator infused with Vitamin E, shea butter, avocado, grape and jojobaoil. As you can see the tube looks like a stick of lipstick, but be warned it does not retain it's form once you start using it.

This works like magic! To use it I first moisturize my lips with something heavy duty, like petroleum jelly, and let it sit for 10-20 minutes. Then I wipe some of it off, take my lip exfoliator and pass it over my lips in a circular motion, removing all the dead skin. Finally I wipe it all off followed by applying lip balm to rehydrate them. My one negative comment would have to be that it wobbles in it's packaging, but that is easy to deal with so long as you don't twist the whole tube of product out.

*ACK! I scheduled this post for yesterday, but only saved it, so my posts are now a day behind :(