Love & Beauty Textured Polishes, @ Forever 21

I always love to check out the nail polishes at Forever 21! They're super cheap and usually pretty good, and sometimes are even dupes of more expensive or hard to find polishes (like the "pink speckled glitter" that was a dupe of OPI I Lily Love You.). Recently I came upon a few new textured polishes on their site, and decided to give them a try.

Love & Beauty "Black Glam" (or "Purple/Gold"), no topcoat

This is "Black Glam" or, the more generic name on the actual label, "Purple/Gold". Black Glam is a beautiful mix of gold, pink, copper, magenta, green, and purple glitter flecks in a dark aubergine base. It's basically a cross between OPI's "Vesper" and "Alcatraz... Rocks"-- the base is the same deep violet/eggplant as Vesper with the multi-colored sparkle of Alcatraz, and it looks freakin' awesome!

Dupe of a Tart

One of my favorite low-cost polish brands is Forever 21's line of polishes, Love & Beauty. It can be a bit of a gamble with formulas, but they certainly come out with some fantastic colors. Here is one I picked up a couple of months ago, Seafoam Blue, which looks like a seafoam version of OPI I Have a Herring Problem/Zoya Skylar. Check out those gorgeous glass flecks!

Love & Beauty Seafoam Blue

Crack-tacular and Zombie-rific!

I've been out of town with my husband visiting with his family for the past two weeks, and we had an awesome time! But I did miss out on doing more spooky manicures, so I tried to make up for it the other day with some zombie nails-- BRAAAIIINS!

Love & Beauty Mint Frosting + Fantasy Makers Glow + Sinful Colors Black Crackle

Oh, Shift!

Today I'd like to share with you one of Girly Bits' outstanding color-changing topcoats, Shift Happens.

Love & Beauty Dusty Blue + Girly Bits Shift Happens

Matte About Lilac

Here is another beauty from my swap with lovely blogger HappyBerryNaiad, a gorgeous shifting Lilac from Elianto.

Elianto Lilac

Adjusting some attitude (with a hint of mint!)

While patiently waiting for my Lynnderella wishlist to go through, I thought I would see if I couldn't recreate one that I was really lusting after, Attitude Adjust-Mint. This awesome polish is a mix of iridescent & green large glitters, all different shapes and sizes, plus an amazing green microshimmer, as well as many other awesome little treasures all jammed into one. Well, mine isn't exactly like that, but here's what I came up with.

Diamond Cosmetics Oh Tiff! + Hard Candy Breakup + Love & Beauty Light Green (aka L.A. Girl Crowd Surfing) + Pure Ice Heartbreaker

I was really lucky to come across a dusty bottle of HC's Breakup at Wally's; it has such amazing iridescent glitter that shifts from orange-gold to green to lavender in the shade.

While I was very pleased with this layering combo, it's definitely no dupe for Lynnderella's. And having recently acquired my own bottle (yaaayyy!) I can see there is a lot more going on in Attitude Adjust-Mint, and I absolutely love it. Here are a couple of bottle pic swatches (in direct light & shade):

Soo mesmerizing right?! I'm actually wearing it right now, so I'll be posting pictures of it soon to compare.

Spring Colors

Thus far I haven't really tried much in the way of nail art. I've made attempts at dotting, some taping, and a few glitter gradients that looked pretty decent. So I thought I'd try some free-hand design, and I think it turned out rather well!

Bottom to Top: Wet N' Wild All in the Cut, Zoya Rica, Love & Beauty Aqua Blue + Zoya Rica & Reece and Diamond Cosmetics Don't Teal My Heart Away, Zoya Reece + L&B Aqua Blue

I'd still love to get my hands on some Konad stamping plates for more intricate designs, but simple flowers and dots were really pretty easy.

I mainly photographed my right hand because of the ultra-fail on my left (as seen above), which is rather sad considering I'm right-handed. >.>;; But the problem is that I didn't wait long enough for the flowers to dry and ended up smearing my design, very boo!

My inspiration for this mani was from the upcoming colors for Cult Nails Divas & Drama Collection, here's a sneak-peek that Maria posted. Can't wait for that flakie!

Now You Sea Sparkly Pink!

Ah, layering. Why have just one color when you can have several, all at once? As much as I love the shade of L'Oreal Now You Sea Me, I couldn't resist adding one of my favorite shimmery duochrome-y polishes, simply named "Blue Multi" from Forever 21's line of polishes, Love & Beauty. Oh, *and* I put CND's Crimson Sparkle over that, just to give it a little more sparkly.

L'Oreal Now You Sea Me + Love & Beauty Blue Multi + CND Crimson Sparkle

So much duochromatic shimmering goodness! I am love.

But wait, there's more! I decided it also needed some pink glitter as a "subtle" accent.

+ Forever 21 Blossom

Mmm... glitter jelly sparkle sandwich!