Wet n Wild - I Need a Refresh-mint with Nail Art

I bought this polish a long time ago and never used it. Man, have I been missing out! 

It really is a gorgeous color and I really love it, now I see what all the hype was about over this color. And it's dupe For Audrey. 

I Need a Refresh-Mint - this is a pale blue color that is reminiscent of Tiffany blue. It is creme and would likely look great with a matte topcoat. I used 2 coats for this.

I bought this for about $1.99 at Walgreens.

Not the greatest picture ever... and I didn't clean it up off of my cuticles, so it doesn't look all that great. 

It was actually my first time trying out this double ended Revlon Nail Art polish. It wasn't that bad, but it was top heavy, so it was a little hard to handle. The brushes are the same as any other polish, maybe a tad thinner, so I don't really see how they would be for nail art. 

The reason I decided to try it was I got it on sale at Walgreens for $1.99 where the regular price is around $1 dollars (Not $1, I meant to put $8), I think. Don't take my word on that.. I never looked too closely at these polishes before they went on sale. 

This polish is quite similar to Mermaid to Order by Sephora by OPI, but it does have more of a blue tone, whereas MtO has more of a green tone to it. 

I do like this polish more just because I like blue better than green. I do have both of these on a wheel, I can show them someday. 

Oh! And this is called Revlon Nail Art FrenchMix - Over the Moon. The other side is a really sheer pink with darker pink sparkles/shimmer. 

I used MASH 45 to stamp this. 

Pink and Blue Sparkles

I finally got my hands on Revlon Whisical! 

I saw swatches of it online months ago and ran out to my local Walgreens looking for it, but they didn't have it; no one in my town did. 

So I forgot about it eventually. But finally we got a super Wal-mart up here and they had it, but it was sold out... But the next week I went down and they had it! So of course I got a bottle. 

It is the most amazing glitter I own. It is such a delicate glitter, it's not overpowering to the color underneath, I love it! 

I chose to pair it with OPI What's With the Cattitude?

I have had this OPI for who knows how long and I have never used it... 

The formula was weird with the first coat, streaky and very thin, but luckily with the second coat it was all fixed and to full opacity. A few nails, however, I did need to do three coats where the brush pulled the nail polish. This is a creme polish. 

The middle finger I did two coats of the glitter to show what it would look like more built up, and to see if it would even go thicker. 

The glitter was actually a little hard to apply, it is suspended in a rather thin, very sheer, light blue shimmery blue base. The glitter kept wanting to migrate to the tips of my nails when I would just brush it on, but it didn't really want to pat on either. I did end up brushing this on like normal polishes and it turned out okay. A few nails have a bit of glitter up near the tips. 

OPI I got a while ago from a local salon, so I don't remember the exact price; probably around $7-8. 

Revlon was $3.95? Somewhere around there and I got it at Wal-mart. 

It was below $4.

What do you think of this combo?

Revlon - Emerald

Lately I've been looking for the perfect green; just green. Nothing fancy about it, I didn't want a light green or a deep green, or shimmer or glitter. Just green. 

And I finally found it.

Revlon Emerald - this is the perfect green. It is a creme and it goes on really well. This is one of there Top Speed polishes, and it did dry really well. I did only use one coat though, when I went out into the sun, it did need two coats because I did have spots where the nail showed through. 

I got this from Walgreens for $6.50

Black and Creme

I saw this design in an ad and just had to try and duplicate it, and I think I did a pretty good job. 

Here is the add:

Unfortunately, I don't have the pointed nails that really tie this look together, but my nails still came out looking good. I did match the colors pretty closely because Illamasqua is too expensive of a polish for me to buy at $17 a bottle from Sephora or $21.43 from Illamasqua.com

I used Revlon Top Speed - Cotton Sheets for the cream color and Sinful Colors - Black on Black for the black. 

I used Seche Vite top coat over these two.

I honestly thought that the hearts would have been harder to do, but I just used a small striping brush and dipped that into the bottle of Sinful Colors Black on Black to get a smooth line, and then painted the rest of my nail as usual. 

I bought the Revlon on sale from Walgreens for about $3.50 and Sinful Colors was $1.99 from Walgreens.

Dotted Purple

I swear this is the last time that I'll do this! Probably not... 

But I haven't had much time on my hands to do an actually full manicure with school and work and stuff, that to keep posting at least on a kind of regular basis I've just been making designs over my swatches. 

This one I got kind of lazy on, I wanted to do dots, and I thought I might do a gradient, but when I looked at my purples I'm missing a color in between to make the colors look cohesive. 

So I just used two colors and did them in two different sized dots radomly. I also still haven't gotten my dotters, so this was done with a small paint brush. 

Colors used: Base - Sinful Colors Let's Talk 

Darker Dots - Revlon Grape Icy

Lighter Dots - Revlon Gum Drop

The Revlon nail polish is their scented line and I will do a review on this line, or at least these two nail polishes, a bit later. 

Sinful Colors - $.99 (On sale, Walgreens)

Revlon (Both) - $3.27 each (Wal-mart)

Gold and Red

I finally used my striping tapes! 

But I got lazy and just used the red polish that I posted the other day. (Revlon Saucy) 

The tape was a lot harder to apply than I had origanlly thought. It wasn't very sticky, so obviously it didn't want to stick to my nails, but of course eveything else. When I finally got it onto my nails and in the right place and moved onto start painting some of the tape had started to lift, and I hadn't noticed. So my right hand is pretty messed up, because I had done that one last so the tape had plenty of time to be good and lifted. My left hand is still pretty good except for my pinky finger. Next time I will have to be wary of this. 

But I just put the tapes down in a cross pattern on all my nails, except for my ring fingers; there I just did typical french tips for something different and to show more of the red. 

I was going to do red french tips on the rest of the nails, for more color, but then I decided not to... I liked this look too much. 

The gold polish is Essie Good as Gold.
My firsy Essie polish ever! And I must say that I do like it, worth the price definitely. It went on with only one coat, even over the red and dried very quickly. I half expected it to start crackling with how it went on, because the formula reminded me of my crackle polishes; they go on thick and dry fast.

Essie - $8 (Walgreens, it is cheaper at Wal-mart)

Revlon - Approx. $5 (Walgreens)

Revlon Saucy

I fell in love with a post that I found a bit ago, that I ca't quite remember who made... But it had a Zoya nail polish called Carrie Ann in it. Needless to say that I just had to go out and find this polish. 

Well no one around here sells Zoya, unfortunately, but I think I did find something similar. 

I found: 

Saucy - A bright red with a gold shimmer in it. The polish is less orange in real life and more red, but with the gold in it, the camera wanted to make it go orange I guess... But it is a definite red and not orange at all. This polish did go on very smooth with only two coats. 

This is what Carrie Ann looks like: 

(image pulled off google)

Revlon - Appox. $5 (Walgreens)

Stained Nails

So I got stained nails a few polishes ago, when I had on the Avon polish because I didn't have a base coat. 

So my nails have been pretty ugly for about a week or two now and I've just been covering it up with more polish. Until now! 

I'll show you what I did step-by-step and what I used to get rid of my stained nails, for the most part.

And before and after pictures, so you can compare how they looked. 

(Left Hand)

(Right Hand)

So now on to what I used to get rid of this horrible green staining. 

This photo shows non-acetone nail polish remover, a small cup to put it in, a scrub brush,  a buffer/shine, cuticle oil, cuticle pusher, cutcle cutter, nail streghtener base coat, and hand cream; while not all of these things lead to removing stained nails, I thought I should add them in because it is part of the routine. 

First, I poured the a small amount of the non-acetone in the cup, which was only big enough to hold one hand at a time, and then soaked my fingers from 3-5 minutes. After this, while my fingers were still a little wet with the acetone I scrubbed them with the brush. And repeat with the other hand. 

Second, I buffed my nails with the nail buffer; this is the part that actually showed the most results. And then using the other side of the buffer (the side that is actually shown in the picture and says Revlon Crazy Shine) start to polish the nails or shine them. This will actually make your nails so shiny that it will look like your nails almost have a clear coat on them. 

Now the staining on my nails is practically gone. 

(Left Hand)

(Right Hand)

These pictures are after I cut my nails, filed them down, and cut the cuticles. 

Peachy Tips

I decided to do something different with my nails today, instead of just doing one color like I normally do for the swatches. 

I don't know how well it turned out... I've never done dots before and my hands were shaking pretty bad, so they kind of ran into each other... So they're not really dots; more like blobs.
And I was using a bobby pin to do these dots, because my dotters still haven't come in the mail.

I've used: Revlon Charismatic for the lighter shade, Jessica Eyes Wide Open for the tips, and Sinful Colors Why Not for the dots. 

Jessica - Approx. $6-7 (Make-up Counter at the Mall)

Revlon - Approx. $4 (Walgreens)

Sinful Colors - $1.99 (Walgreens)