Category: Blue Nails

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Favorite Polishes: Bizzare Blurple.

I’ve been trying to make an effort to go through my stash, and wear polishes I don’t wear as often. Sometimes I get a little too excited about new polishes, and forget about my old favorites.

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This is Bizarre Blurple, but China Glaze. It’s a darker purple base color, filled with itty bitty blue micro glitters. I’ll be honest, I bought this polish just because of the awesomeness of the name. I got it on a 3/15 clearance sale at the Chatters by my work in the beginning of the year, the same time I picked up my bottle of OPI’s My Boyfriend Scales Walls. I needed to grab two more polishes for the deal, and when I saw the name I was like “Yep! Mine!” However, the second I put it on my nails I realized just how beautiful this polish was. I’m a sucker for purple and blue polishes, and this is the best of both worlds!

It also makes a great base for nail art.

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The above manicure is from back in January, when I first picked up this polish. You can see the blue micro-glitters a little bit better in the flash. Just looking at this old picture makes me remember why I love it so much. Different lighting just changes it so much.

Have you ever bought a polish based strictly on its name? I have to admit–not the first time I’ve had to have a polish because the name was just too perfect. God, if I could get a job naming polishes, I would be set!

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Krazy for Kozmic Colors.

There is nothing I love more than a good nail polish deal. While I wish I could afford every single polish from every single collection, my paycheck just doesn’t allow for it. That’s why I’m always looking around for awesome polishes at a deal.

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My Mom actually found these Kozmic Colors polishes for me at our local Dollarama, for a mere $1.50 for the three. I’ve never bought any of their polishes before, but I’ve always noticed them when browsing there nail polish selection. I have to say, it’s kind of crazy how much Dollarama has to offer! I’ve found OPI polish strips, Revlon polishes, and NOPI polishes there in recent months, and even that As Seen on TV stamping kit for $3. I was really curious to see how the quality of these Kozmic Colors polishes would compare to others in my stash, as–according to what I’ve seen on other blogs–they are exclusive to Dollarama.

I decided to swatch the blue creme polish first, as I already have colors similar to the other two.

There are no names on any of the polishes, and each set that I saw there contains three square shaped mini polish. Of the three in this group, two of theme were metallic polishes, and the blue was a creme polish. They had many other sets to offer though–glitter, and metallics, and cremes, and jellies (oh my!).

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First off, can I just say this polish has an awesome application. It’s smooth, and streak free, and reaches almost full opacity in one coat if you apply it thick enough. (For my swatches, I used two.) I’m not even sure what to call the color. In person it’s a deeper blue, but in pictures it comes across almost as a sky blue. When it dries, it’s not quite matte, but almost a satin-like finish. I should have taken a picture of it before I applied my top coat, but sadly I didn’t think. Silly me! Adding top coat gives it a gorgeous shine though, so either way this polish is a win. It will definitely be going in my Summer polish stash.

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So what do you think of this Kozmic Color polish? Do you have any experience with off-brand polishes–were they nail wins, or nail fails?

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Simple Nails: purple & gold.

Sometimes I just don’t have time to get complicated with my manicures, for whatever reason. After rocking my Spiderman nails for two days, I needed to paint something new, but I was feeling under the weather so I had to come up with something quick, but still pretty.

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The polishes I used for this manicure were:

  • ACO by Ardene in Sea of Beauty — my gorgeous base color.
  • Layla in Golden Touch (from the soft touch collection) — golden shimmer.
  • Essence Gel-look Top Coat.

Oh man, I love the combination of these two together! Sea of Beauty is just the most perfect blue ever. And Golden Touch is one of my favorite polishes to layer over other polishes. It just jazzes up a manicure, and adds a nice shimmer. Love!

Also, you can see from my ring finger, I’m still having trouble with my Essence top coat–even though I applied the quick dry drops over the top coat, it obviously didn’t dry soon enough for me not to nick my nails. It makes me sad, because the top coat has excellent lasting potential–a good two days with no chipping, which for me is awesome since I work in retail and use my hands for 8 hours a day. =(

 

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Spiderman… Spiderman… Nail Art!

So I don’t know if you knew this, but The Amazing Spiderman 2 comes out this weekend. I’m a total superhero girl–although I am more of a DC girl than Marvel. That being said, I wanted to mark my excitement over the new movie in the best way I know how–nail art.

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This manicure was inspired by the Nailasaurus, and her amazing Spiderman nails. For my version, however, I started with a gradient. I painted my nails first with Revlon’s Spidey Sense, which is from their limited edition The Amazing Spiderman 2 Electric Chrome collection. Then, using a make up sponge, I created a gradient with Super-Powered, also from the Electric Chrome collection.

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Next, I went through with my Stripe Rite Striping Polish in Black, and created my web on each nail.

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Tada! Amazing Spiderman nails. And probably the only time you will ever see anything related to Spiders on my nails… ever. I am not a big Spider fan, but for Spiderman I will make an exception. =) I topped it with a layer of Essence Gel-look top coat, followed by Essence Nail Art Express Dry drops, to speed up the process. They definitely seem to help with the drying process, thank god. No more sheet marks for this girl.

So what do you think of these Spiderman nails? Did I do justice to The Nailasaurus’ original design?

Who is your favorite Superhero? I think you can tell by my PJ pants who mine is. And one of these days I’m going to have to make an attempt at Batman nails too!

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31 Day Nail Art Challenge — Day 20: Water Marble.

Okay, so I can’t water marble.

I can’t do it. I don’t know how people can create such beautiful water marble manicures, but I am not one of them. However, I didn’t want to not have anything to show for day 20–except a whole bunch of failure–so I looked up “water marble without water” in google, and what did it lead me to? A dry “water marble” technique. Score! So it’s not your typical water marbled nails, but it was something I could actually accomplish so I figured that was better than nothing!

(If you’re interested, I used this youtube tutorial by cutepolish.)

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The polishes I used for this manicure were:

  • Revlon polish in Minted–mint green polish.
  • China Glaze in What a Pansy!–purple polish.
  • OPI in My Boyfriend Scales Walls–white polish.
  • ACO by Ardene in Sea of Beauty–baby blue polish.
  • ACO by Ardene in Kiss from a Rose–pink polish.
  • Sally Hansen Diamond Flash Top Coat.

Even though I couldn’t do a proper water marble, I LOVE these. They spring color combination pops on the nail, and I just love the swirls. Even though I only did it on two accent nails for this manicure, I think it would love amazing all on my nails, and I will definitely be trying it again so I can play with it more (and with more color combinations).

 

 

 

Also, I’ve been thinking about this challenge, and I have to admit I’ve started to feel a little confined by it. I started it so I would have inspiration, but lately I feel like it’s restricting the manicures I want to do. There is SO much inspiration out there, and so many manicures I really want to try! I still want to finish the challenge, and not be a quitter, but I think I will be spreading it out with some other manicure ideas. Especially as my brand new dotting tool set just arrived, and I’ve yet to be able to really play with it, and it’s begging me to do some awesome floral nail art!