Day 5: Nail Polish Advent Calendar

Day 5 has come! I will share with you today another glitter.

Ulta Hide and Go Sequins. This was originally a mini in last year's holiday set. This year on Black Friday I found a full size bottle of it in the 5 for $5 bin.

It's a pretty dark blue jelly color with bits of blue glitter and blue, green, and silver hex. Application was usual for this style of polish. A little hard to work with.

Super Macro!

Alix Avien - 187 Jelly Blue w/ Silver Glitter

Today I have a special polish for you. I won this in a giveaway put on by My Little Vanities. Alix Avien is a polish from a Turkish company.

187 is a cerulean blue jelly with bits of silver glitter. It applied really nicely in three coats. It's so squishy too! I'm going to have to cut this a bit short now. I've been sick the past few days and thought I was better yesterday. Then I woke up this morning, even sicker than before. Been a bit behind on blogging and wanted to get this up before I pass out for the rest of the weekend.

Really great close up.

A little lighter than Essie Starry Starry Night but it's close enough and I think prettier that I don't feel the need to want Essie SSN anymore. What do you think?

Cult Nails - Quench with Special Guest Kiko 232

I'm back today with another Cult Nails polish. This time it's Quench a lovely blood red jelly. My favorite color is red so I'm very partial to red nail polish. Quench is so squishy and applied very nicely. This is probably my top red at the moment. I had a problem when I flooded the cuticle on my index finger. Totally my fault but almost impossible to clean up this type of red without staining everything. So sorry it's a bit stained around my cuticles. :(

I've acquired a lot of nail polish recently. I've been wanting to start trying layering over the different colors with Kiko 232. So that's exactly what I did by putting one coat over Quench. Kiko 232 is a white iridescent flaked glitter. Very lovely sparkle finish, but I'm not sure if I like it over red. I think it will look better over pastel colors.

Kiko nail polishes can only be found in Kiko Cosmetics stores in Italy, Spain, France, and Germany. They retail for 3.90 Euros. I wish they had a store in Switzerland.  Milan is about 3 hours away from Zurich and I really think a store like Kiko would thrive, but I guess they have their reasons.


As I said yesterday... Cult Nails polishes retail for $10 and shipping is reasonable. I messed around on the checkout to see shipping prices and for the US 1 polish to ship is $3 and 2-4 polishes were $5. For Europe shipping for 1 polish is $6 and 2-4 polishes are $8. The shipping prices make me happy since companies often overcharge you for shipping.

Maria has expressed that Cult Nails will have a few promos every once in awhile so if you would like to keep up to date with that you should sign up for Cult Nails email updates on the website's front page or keep up with Cult Nails' twitter.

OPI - Big Hair… Big Nails & Too Hot Pink to Hold ‘Em

Saturday my friend took me to a beauty supply house on Saturday. Which enabled me to get the last two OPI Texas jellies to complete the 6 jelly finish collection they released. I also purchased a few other items that I'm sure will show up on here eventually.


To see the other Texas Collection polishes you can check out my swatches of them here.

First up is Big Hair... Big Nails. I used three coats for this and it applied like a dream at each coat. The polish is not liquidity at all which is amazing when you consider how sheer it is to create the jelly finish. I would best describe this shade as a coral that leans orange. On my nail wheels I have it in orange.

Too Hot Pink to Hold 'Em is a lovely hot pink jelly. I used three coats for this and like the rest of the OPI jelly colors this applied beautifully.

A Few OPI Texas Jelly Finish Swatches

Well, today I couldn't help myself and swatched four colors from the OPI Texas collection. All four are the jelly finish or sorbet as OPI is calling it. I used three coats for all of these. I'm in love with all of them! They are so squishy! You can still see VNL at three coats, but it's barely noticeable and I think it works with the style of the polish.

Y'all Come Back Ya Hear? is a vibrant orange. Besides being a sheer jelly it applied very nicely and the build up to three coats was very easy to do.

 

Houston We Have a Purple is a vibrant, almost neon purple. I love the name on this one because Houston is my birth city. Same nice application as before aka perfect!

Do You Think I'm Tex-y? is a very pretty vibrant pink, almost like strawberry jam on your nails. 

Guy Meets Gal-veston is the coral of the bunch and my favorite of the colors I've shown today.

So what do you think of the OPI jelly/sorbet finishes?

I really love them and will eventually purchase the other two to add to my ever growing nail polish collection.

Some OPI Texas Skittles & Bottle Pictures

I received my TransDesign order today. Along with some other goodies I purchased 6 polishes from the OPI Texas collection. Since I received these from UPS after 7pm I didn't have any natural light. So I took a few bottle pictures and did some quick skittles. There are four jelly's, one shimmer, and one creme. I used three coats for the skittle pictures.

Y'all Come Back Ya Hear? (jelly)

Houston We Have a Purple (jelly)

Guy Meets Gal-veston (jelly)

Do You Think I'm Tex-y?

I Vant To Be A-Lone Star (shimmer)

Don't Mess With OPI (creme)

Do You Think I'm Tex-y?, Guy Meets Gal-veston, Houston We Have a Purple, Don't Mess With OPI

Do You Think I'm Tex-y?, Guy Meets Gal-veston, Houston We Have a Purple, Don't Mess With OPI

MNY 265 - Red Jelly With Subtle Holo Glitter

I showed a preview picture of this bottle a while ago and today I finally have some swatches of it to show you. This MNY 265 and it's a cherry red jelly with a subtle holo glitter suspended in it. It's a gorgeous color and if you have access to it you should definitely buy it.

MNY stands for Maybelline New York so you may be familiar with the brand but the MNY section is only available in Germany, Norway, and Sweden from my understanding. It's also available here in Switzerland. They have a wide range of cosmetics in many colors. I would say that the prices are cheap when you compare it to the regular Maybelline line, Nivea, and Loreal. Most of the products are between $4-7 USD. I believe this polish was $3.95 CHF.

I tried my best to capture the whole, but like most things, it's better in real life the in the photos. I used four coats of polish.

Natural Light

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Essence - Back to Paradise

Today, I will be showing off a really pretty dark green jelly from essence called Back to Paradise. It's part of a limited edition summer collection called Return to Paradise. So if you really like this I recommend you start hunting for it now or it might be too late.

I used three very thin coats on my little nubbin nails. :) I filed them down really short this week. I prefer my nails medium length most of the time and then every once in a while I like them really short. I cut them because in two weeks I'm getting married and I wanted my nails to have a fresh start to grow for the next two weeks.

So here is Back to Paradise...

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Thanks for reading! Hope you all have a nice weekend.