Barielle - Elle's Spell

There are so many things wrong with the manicure I did using Barielle Elle's Spell. First off, my skin/cuticles are terribly dry. Second, I had a really hard time applying this and didn't really like it at first. Third the tip wear is terrible and this is only 12 hours after applying. Alight, now that was the bad, let's move on to the information and the good stuff about this polish.

Elle's Spell was released Winter of 2010 as part of Barielle's Holiday Hustle Collection. I was really excited for this polish when it was first released. It's a jelly red with orange-gold flakes. Red is my favorite color and with the combination of the flakes I thought the color was gorgeous.

It's pretty. But as I was applying all four coats I was really unsure if I loved it. The polish dragged and you can see that there are still bald patches at four coats. I'm glad I was patient to put four coats on because if I, didn't I would of taken it off within a hour. At three coats I thought it was the ugliest color ever, but with the fourth it switch to pretty. I'm doing to need to give Elle's Spell another try some other time. Maybe I was just having a rough time with my nails that day.

Hot or not?

Something Different Sunday - Make-Up Spam

On Friday my mom and I drove to Milwaukee to check out the mall. This particular mall has a Sephora store. I spent a while in there checking out the new stuff. When eventually I was at the clearance display and found this wonderful kit from Bare Minerals called Shimmer & Shine marked down to $45. I have been looking at this set for the few months online trying to decide if I really liked it or not. But when I opened it up at Sephora to check out the products I had to have it.

It's a really nice set of four eyeshadows (Shimmer (frosted cappuccino), Flicker (burnished violet), High Shine Gold Medal (pale gold), and High Shine Vapor (graphite)) Along with a black eyeliner, Full Tapered Blush & Eye Brush, two large lip glosses Sprinkles (diamond shimmer) & Twist (tulip pink), Clear Radiance All-Over Face Color, and Pink Petal Blush. The blush is not shown because it's really pink and thus I passed it on to my mom since I don't wear blush.


Besides the blush, I love all the colors and products in this set and can't wait to mess around with it a bit. I love the two full sized lipsticks especially Twist the tulip pink color.

Gold Medal

Shimmer

High Shine Vapor

Flicker

I also added to my Urban Decay eye pencil collection. Well, I'm new to Urban Decay eye pencils because I just got my first two about a week ago. They had a medium sized Urban Decay pencils in a little set of two for $15. So my mom and I each got one with different colors. Then we switched our colors in the set and I ended up with Stash and Rockstar. Then Friday I added to the collection the full sized version of 1999. I love all three of these! They just glide right on an last forever! I really want the anniversary set which contains 15 full sized eye pencils and sharpener for $92. The upfront cost is expensive but if you calculate it's only $6 a pencil far less than the usual price of $17. I'm going to start hinting this set to my husband and mom for a birthday gift. hehe

Rockstar, Stash, 1999

I've also started using the sample size of Too Faced Shadow Insurance that I've had hidden away for months. It's really making a difference in keeping my shadows on. So here are a few EOTD I've worn.

Liner UD Rockstar and Shadow Mushroom & Oyster Grey

Liner UD Stash and Shadow BE Queen Phyllis & Pussycat

Liner UD Stash and Shadow BE Queen Phyllis & Pussycat

Stylish Blogger Award & Any Polish Requests?

I updated my polish collection and added spreadsheets. You can find them at the tab above or click here. For the next 10 days if you would like to see a swatch of any of the polishes I own send me an email or comment on this post.

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I was awarded the Stylish Beauty Award from Paulina of A Place for My Nails and Jessica of Playing With Polish. Thank you ladies!

The rules of this award:

1. Thank and link the person who gave you this award.

2. Share seven things about yourself.

3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers

4. Contact these bloggers to tell them about the award

Things about myself:

- I'm an American living in Switzerland

- I just became obsessed with Urban Decay Eye Liners this week.

- Since getting a Kindle I've read four books in 6 weeks. That's 3 more than I read all of last year.

- I pull my blanket over my ear when I sleep.

-I love Diet Coke

-Have you checked out my nail polish excels? I'm a bit obsessive when it comes to cataloging and organizing.

I decided to award the following bloggers:

Hermetic's polish blog

Mire

Parokeets

Alexa Make Up

Lauren - From A to B and Back Again

The Nailventuress

Lendoxia

Čudoviti svet kozmetike  

 Pure Addiction

 Rugby beauty

 Bad Luck Baby

 Kate Wareing is too cool

 The Nail Polish Closet

 solensdanserinde

  (Squoval)icious!

OPI - Merry Midnight

I've shown Merry Midnight layered over reds. You can see how it looked layered over OPI Quarter Of A Cent Cherry here. But so far I haven't built up the color on its own. It takes a few coats since it's sheer. I used four coats. Merry Midnight is a deep eggplant purple base with flakes of blue and orange-red. Along with the flakes there are bits of small blue and silver flake glitter.

OPI - Katy Perry Collection

The OPI Katy Perry Collection is beginning to trickle into retail stores. Sunday I found the collection at Ulta and bought the two glitters and then yesterday at a Boston Store I grabbed the silver duochrome. I passed on getting the magenta one called The One That Got Away. I think I have enough similar colors in my stash. When I was at the Ulta on Sunday I ended up having to wait 20 minutes in the car before the store opened. The funny thing was that there were about 8 teenage girls waiting outside the door of Ulta for 15 minutes in 12F weather. I had no clue what was so exciting that you need to wait 15 minutes in the cold for the store to open. Well, when the store opened and I got inside they were all clustered around the new Katy Perry display. lol. Really!? The polishes are nice, but I'm not that obsessed to crowd in front of the store for it. haha.

Last Friday Night, Not Like The Movies, Teenage Dream

Last Friday Night is a sheer cornflower blue with bits of light blue iridescent hexagon glitter. I used four coats for my manicure and I still had a little bit of noticeable VNL. This polish is really thick and gooey. I love the glitter and the next time I use it will probably be over a light blue base.

Not Like The Movies is a silver duochrome there are flashes of pinkish-purple and green when you move your fingers around. The polish also has little specks of silver flecked glitter. Unfortunately, it's really sheer and I needed to use four coats. Sorry about the unevenness at the tips of my nails. I've been having problems with my nails peeling and with the polish being so thin it was hard to cover the patches.

Teenage Dream is a sheer light pink with little bits of pink glitter along with iridescent holo hexagon glitter. The formula is very thick and sheer so I needed four coats.

Along with the 4 regular shades OPI released they also released a polish called Shatter. It's a black crackle. I passed on it since I already own Barry M black crackle. I used the Barry M to show the look of these three crackled. It dries matte when you apply so I have pictures with both top coat and no top coat.

Last Friday Night

Last Friday Night

Not Like The Movies

Not Like The Movies

Teenage Dream

Teenage Dream

Georgia Haul

Most of last week and this past weekend I was in South Georgia visiting my grandparents. I also caught up on some nail polish shopping. :) I bought so much that I ended up having to ship it to myself! So I sent the box Friday with priority and it arrived today.

Before I show off my new finds. I wanted to share that in the next two weeks if you would like to request a swatch of a polish you should contact me via email or comment. At the moment I have access to my whole nail polish arsenal. I have a lot of polish and some of them I haven't been able to wear or swatch yet with pictures. So if you check out the my collection tab up top you can see what I have. 

The luckiest place for me was the Big Lots. They had a bunch of Sula polishes for $2.50 a piece. The interesting thing about these are the ability to remove them by peeling. I prefer removing with nail polish remover but it's a unique idea.

Naked, Watermelon, Dove, Kelly, Crush, Royal

The biggest find was the sets of Maybelline Colorama polishes. They were packed in sets of 3 for $2.

Ice Princess

Sonic Sunset & Ruby Rays

Look at the flakes!!!

Give Me The Chills

 

Emerald Frost, Steel Wheeling, Twinkling Toffee

Turquoise Seas, Vampire Seduction, Touch of Taupe

Candy Apple & Pure Sugar

Then I moved on and check out Sally's looking for clearance holiday polishes. Not much luck. :( I did find the China Glaze Peppermint Cuticle Oil. I also found this awesome pink glitter called Pom Pom.

Then I went to Rite Aid to see if there was anything interesting! I got two Jesse's Girls polishes. The purple Confetti looks fairly similar to RBL Scrangie and the blue Glee is probably similar to Zoya Charla but the light in the store drew me to it anyways.

Confetti & Glee

Then lastly, I checked out Ross for Color Club and got one of the sets from Untamed Luxury collection and the glitter vixen set that I've wanted for ages. The sets were $7.99 each.

Untamed Luxury

Glitter Vixen