A Happy Day

To the left of this is a poll where you can vote on which brand I should feature next. A lot of them are companies from outside the US. I have a lot of untried polishes from them. So vote away!

The 18th was my birthday! I had a pretty nice time. I spent the afternoon in the city exploring and doing a little shopping. :) I kind of mapped out my day with Instagram pictures. I'm allibally on there if you would like to follow. I thought I would share my day with you through photo! See my NOTD here.

So I started my afternoon in the city by having a late afternoon lunch at Chick-fil-a. It's a great option to grab a quick lunch and some really tasty lemonade. They also have funny pictures decorating the place. Like this one where the cow is on the EL. ;)

 Then I proceeded to get back on the red line to get farther down state street. I conveniently ended up right outside the giant 4 story Ulta.

Where I promptly bought 3 bottles of shampoo on clearance for $1.99 each and some facial wipes that retail for $3.99. I ended up paying $7.10 for the lot of it. :) The wipes are awesome btw. They smell good, don't burn, and seem to be not irritating my skin.

Then I headed to Urban Outfitters. Where they had one color from the Models Own Beetle Juice Collection. It's Golden Green. They have this and two other colors from this collection on the Urban Outfitters website. Yes, it came home with me. They also had some other nail polish that was interesting.

Cute little sculptures. I'm fond of the owl ones.

After a little retail therapy I made my way down towards Millennium Park. Here is some of the stuff I saw on my way.

Newish Mural on State Street

Lightscape. The lights move in synch to the music.

Picasso Eye

Now I've reached Millennium Park. The first place I checked out was the Crown Fountain. It's these two pillars that have water featured in them and the faces change on one side of them too. I wanted to check this out again because they just turned the water on in the last few days. If you visit Chicago with kids go to Millennium Park at the end of your day or pack some extra clothes. It's too tempting to not get a little wet. ;)

Then the other thing to check out is the Cloud Gate aka the bean. It's a giant mirrored shape bean. Looks awesome and a popular spot for pictures.

Do you see me yet?

Here I am...

The architecture at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion is so neat.

The Wrigley Building

Chicago River

Marilyn

Birthday Frozen Yogurt.

At the Spanish restaurant Vera for dinner. It was delicious.

A interesting sticker. Google it... as it's an interesting website.

One of my birthday gifts was a Inglot palette. Love it so far.

Thanks for joining me on my birthday photo spam. :) You can see a picture of my NOTD here.

GOSH - Groovy Grey

You can see what I did for my birthday here. Don't forget to take the poll on the top left side.

This was my NOTD for my birthday. A  putty color from GOSH. It took two coats and applied very nicely. Dry time was great too. Be sure to vote on the poll to the top left. :)

My nails even inadvertently matched my purse for the day.

Here are some other photos I took a different day of the GOSH Display at Walgreens. For my past posts: GOSH - Ocean and when I first found the GOSH display.

Bubble Gum & Flamingo

Layla - Ultra Violet

Hello again! Today I have a polish that I picked up over the weekend from Ulta.

It's from the Layla Hologram Effects line. The display was behind the counter and I wasn't really able to explore the colors too much. Plus, I was really only able to afford one anyways. They retail for $15 but I was lucky to be able to use my 20% off promo they were going on.

There are 8 different colors and I picked out the purple one, Ultra Violet. I have a little display card that the sales lady gave to me that explains how to apply it. I've added that picture below. The blue color Ocean Rush is nowhere near as dark as the promo in this flyer unfortunately. They have a base file for about $3. I passed on it since it's basically just a buffer block.

I didn't use a buffer block before applying this since I was out of town. I just placed three coats on my bare nails without a base coat. Then I let it dry and never put top coat on it. Sadly, I had a major break on my one finger at the beginning of the weekend. So my nails look crappy

In the sun you can see it's got a spectacular holo rainbow effect.

For the easy availability in the US of this holographic nail polish it is probably in my opinion the best out there. The bottle contains 10 ML of polish. Which isn't too terrible when you consider some of the better linear holographic polishes are only about 5 ML. Application was really easy and I liked the brush.

Not in direct sunlight at all.

Here it is partially in the sun. The one issue of no base and top coat was that the tip wear was a monster of a problem. So be warned about that. I'm planning to go back to the Walgreen on State Street to get the GOSH Aqua Fix base coat that is supposed to be really helpful for Holo polishes.

So what do you think? Will you be heading over to your local Ulta to pick some of these up? Do you already have some? I will maybe eventually go back for the black and silver one. Overall, I was pretty impressed with the quality and I don't mind paying $15 for that.

GOSH - Ocean

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I'm going to show you GOSH Ocean today. This is a polish I picked up over the weekend at the Walgreens concept store on State Street. You can read about that experience here.

GOSH Ocean in the bottle looks like a duochrome, but once it's on the nails it is basically a really bright metallic turquoise. Even though the color doesn't shift much on the nails, it's still really pretty.

Application was great! I was really impressed with the formulas consistency. The bottle is really easy to hold in my hand while painting. The brush is thin, which for me is my favorite style.

Overall all I really like the nail polish line from GOSH. I see myself stopping in again sometime this month to pick another color or two out. I'm definitely looking forward to new colors that will reach the display at some point too.

There is definitely a perk about living in a big city. My Sephora actually stocks some of the more limited brands, the Macy's on Michigan has Inglot, and Walgreen on State has GOSH!

See you again soon!

A Day in Chicago

Hello! I've been MIA again. Life can get pretty busy as many of you know. I have some pretty exciting stuff to show you all. On Saturday I headed downtown to check out the Macy's flower show. Which then proceeded in visiting the Walgreens concept store that is next door. I have a photo below of what it looks like from the outside when I was at it a different night.

Check out the dancers from the Joffrey Ballet on floors 3 & 4!

First off this isn't like you local Walgreens. When I walked in it was quite shocking. The first floor is the grocery area. There are a lot of options to pick up some lunch to go. There is also tasting bar. They were sampling tequila at the time we were there. The second floor is where the LOOK Boutique and the other personal care items are.

The LOOK Boutique is pretty neat. I didn't walk around too much as I didn't have a whole lot of time. They have a nice area where you can get your nails done. There is a great selection of nail polishes to buy. They also had the other typical things you would find at Walgreens usually too.

But by far the best find of the day was when I spotted the GOSH cosmetics display. Did you spot it yet in the photo? Here's the close up.

GOSH cosmetics is a Danish company. This brand of cosmetics is mostly only available in select countries of Europe. We didn't have it in Switzerland when I left in September and I'm sure it's still not there. About this time last year it was introduced to a Duane Reade concept store in NYC. Well Walgreens bought out Duane Reade took the idea of the concept store and created one on State Street in Chicago. Where they thankfully brought over GOSH cosmetics!

I only bought nail polish. Two bottles to be exact for $7.50 a piece. Which is a really great price! The make-up looks nice and I will probably pick up a few pieces eventually. It's just priced a little high for what I would usually spend. I wanted look for reviews for some of it first before I buy. The display does get limited edition colors which is also great news! See my review of Ocean here.

Ocean & Groovy Grey

Well Walgreens was the unplanned stop but the real reason was to go to Macy's on State Street for the Flower Show. Which is going on at the flagship stores in NYC, Chicago, Philadelphia, Minneapolis, and San Fransisco and it ends this weekend.  The theme this year was Brazil. It's not very large but it was a very neat exhibit of rare and beautiful plants, flowers, and trees.

The really neat thing is that Macy's in Chicago used species of plants that the Garfield Park Conservatory really needed. After this weekend they will be donated to Garfield Conservatory so they can try to rebuild their plants they lost after a devastating hail storm last June. You should click on the link and check out the damage to the glass greenhouses.

The Macy's store on State is pretty impressive and was actually the old Marshall Field's. Unfortunately Macy's bought out the company and changed the name of the store. Regardless the place is huge. You could spend your whole day in it if you wanted to roaming through its 10 floors of retail space.

I bought a lacy dress.

Then a stop on Michigan Ave. to check out the Tulips.

A stop at Nordstrom Rack to pick up the Urban Decay Book of Shadows IV for $30

And finally my NOTD Barielle Falling Star.