Candy Lacquer: Random Picks

I'm very excited to share a few polishes from an awesome polish maker whose colors I've finally tried (after eyeing them for ages!), Candy Lacquer. Her fun and fanciful color palettes, often reminiscent of delicious sweet treats, offer a delightful assortment of colors and sizes that give excellent depth and variety to her polishes.

Blushing Winter Dawn Nail Art

Lately I've been wanting to do more themed/inspired nail art, to celebrate winter and the holidays, using my favorite colors of the season: the soft, cold, and snowy shades of winter. So I put together this manicure inspired by the beautiful blue and pink frosty hues of a winter sunrise.

Dia de los Muertos: Sugar Skull Nail Art

Autumn is my absolute favorite season! Cozy sweaters and warm spices, red and golden leaves, pumpkin everything, and delightful & spooky holidays like Halloween and Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead)! Ever since I first saw Sylvia Ji's beautiful calavera girls some years back I've wanted to do some type of sugar skull inspired make-up or art, so this year I've made my first attempt at a bit of calavera/Day of the Dead nail art!

Femme Fatale Cosmetics

Femme Fatale Cosmetics is a brand whose beautiful polishes I've admired and coveted for some time, and when I discovered that nearly all of them are inspired by (probably my favorite video game) World of Warcraft, I pretty much lost my mind with utter nerdjoy. So I was fairly ecstatic when I found out that I would receive polish samples to review! Prepare for a ton of photos and some serious nerd-citement in today's post!

Darling Diva Polish Call the Doctor and Denim Mitten

Doing a bit of a "pink and blue" theme today with these two awesome Darling Diva Polish glitters, Call the Doctor and Denim Mitten!

Darling Diva Call the Doctor over China Glaze Fancy Pants

Call the Doctor is jam-packed with prismatic circle-y goodness! It's a mix of small to large black, white, pink, and fuchsia circles and holographic silver micro-glitter in a slightly pink-tinted base. This is such a great color combo that looks good over tons of different polishes, I love it!

Different Dimension: You've Got a Friend in Me

The "Toy Story" movies are such delightful stories, and really fun for all ages! I think the same goes for glitter, especially these, inspired by the charming and lovable Buzz Lightyear and Woody. Here is a playful duo of polishes sent to me by Different Dimension, To Infinity and Beyond! and Reach for the Sky!

Zen Pool Nail Art

This week I decided to finally try out my nail art brush set with some "real" nail art! Jen's Nail Files is hosting a nail art contest (which ends tonight!) where participants create an interpretation of one of Darling Diva's polish names. I chose one of my favorite Darling Diva Polishes, the beautiful Zen Pool.

Hot Mess Lacquers: A Sprinkle of Versailles

How about a preview of a few upcoming Hot Mess Lacquers polishes? Inspired by the Queen of Cake herself, here is a trio of decadent Marie Antoinette colors!

 Source: Muna

Liquid Lacquer Cherub and Collide into You

As soon as I spotted these two glitters it was instant love! Here are a couple of gorgeous polishes I recently bought from Liquid Lacquer, Cherub and Collide into You.

Liquid Lacquer Cherub over China Glaze Keep Calm, Paint On

Spoooky in the Spring!

It's no secret that Halloween is basically my favorite, and I love all things scary and frightful, especially if it's also a little silly. And while the spooky season only lasts a little while, I love to enjoy it all year round! Here is a fun and fearsome mani with China Glaze Immortal and Sonoma Nail Art "Here Lies Robert."


Sonoma Nail Art Here Lies Robert over China Glaze Immortal

Katniss & Chroma glitters

Here are a couple of lovely polishes from China Glaze's Hunger Games & Chroma Glitters collections, Fast Track and Prism.

China Glaze Fast Track (aka Katniss)

I'm not usually a big fan of gold or neutral polishes, but this one really intrigued me. I love the texture, and, surprisingly, the color as well. Even though I think it's more flattering on warmer skin tones, I still love how it looks on me.

China Glaze Prism

You really can't see the duochrome in this one, but it's there! A very subtle shift from blue to purple, and of course all of that crazy rainbow glitter. I think I layered this over Essie Lapis of Luxury, since it's a little sheer, but I can't recall! Anyhow I really love this one as well. It's very fun and festive, and different from other polishes I have since I've only recently gotten into the wild glitters.

· · ·

Also, I am so super excited for the new metallic duochromes from China Glaze, their Bohemian Luster Chromes. They're supposed to come out in July-- I really hope it's soon!

Spoiled & Lush

Recently I picked up a few polishes by Spoiled, a new CVS exclusive brand made by Wet n' Wild. There were a few that were very lovely, but the one that really stood out for me was Are Mermaids Real?

Spoiled Are Mermaids Real?

This polish is an eye-catching purple shimmer with tons of gold sparkle, in the same vein as Zoya Faye and Orly Oui, but the purple is much more grape-y. I know we've seen a lot of polishes with a similar look since last year, but I really love them all.

Spoiled Are Mermaids Real? + China Glaze Luxe & Lush

The next day I topped AMR with China Glaze Luxe & Lush, a really cool shredded iridescent glitter from their Hunger Games collection. I think it looks particularly awesome with the gold in AMR, and although I used two coats of topcoat, it could probably use more still to fully smooth it out.

Ring in the Bling

Essie's Winter collection, Cocktail Bling, had a stunning assembly of colors that complemented each other beautifully. I regret not buying a couple of the others, but the one I did make sure to get was Cocktail Bling-- a pale grey creme with a subtle blue quality.

I also recently found a couple of the new Finger Paints flakies, and decided to layer Flecked (greenish flakes) as well as China Glaze's White Cap (gold bling) over Cocktail Bling, to gild the lily so to speak. And love love love it.

This is a creme I don't think I'll tire of. It makes me think of delicate Lladro figurines and ladies in elegant 50's dresses. As it happened, I was watching 500 Days of Summer while doing this mani, and loved all of the dresses Zooey Deschanel wore in a similar shade. I feel like, in the movie, it acted as some kind of color cue for when they were happy and really connected. Very much enjoyed this combo, and the movie!

Nom nom layers, ft. the delectable Nubar Indigo Illusion

As if this color weren't absolutely stunning all on it's own (metallic teal/green/pink duochrome), adding tiny gorgeous gold sparkly-ness all over it seemed to add a whole extra dimension of awesome. Sample:

Nubar Indigo Illusion with China Glaze White Cap

Oh yeah, that just happened. Please excuse my messy cuticles...

Needs moar pictures. Click to embiggen!

Mmm, tasty! Hope you enjoyed this colorful concoction. ♥

My Fruitful Pursuit of Strawberry Fields & How I Learned to Read

I'm really not much of a pink polish person. Give me a muted, cool-toned color any day of the week, but warm brights? No thanks. Then there was Strawberry Fields-- mouth-wateringly bright, yummy pink with gorgeous little gold flecks. So summery, fun; cheerful and girly. From China Glaze's Summer collection, last year? Well, shoot. I didn't expect to find it at my local Sally's or Ulta, but I still skimmed through the colors.



Finally I started looking on Ebay, but darn those shipping costs! So I waited, and pined, and stared at swatches of others wearing it. A couple of weeks ago I checked out another nearby Sally's, and noticed China Glaze polishes were on sale-- score! So I actually went through and read each and every polish name, to see if I was familiar with any of them.



Hang on, what's that? Strawberry Fields? ...Here all along? *Grabs bottle and hangs head in embarrassment.*



So then I learned 1) how a color appears on the nails what the actual bottle looks like can be entirely different from one another and 2) when in doubt, read the names.