Cupcake Polish American Beauty Collection Swatches and Review

*Press Sample*

Cupcake Polish is coming out with a super holo collection called American Beauty. Each Polish is named after a city here in the United States and all of them are gorgeous strong linear holos!

I was sent three of these for review:

Cupcake Polish - Chicago

Chicago is an amazing, unique, stunning light purple. I have a TON of purple holos, but this one is totally different from all of them. It's kind of between pink and purple... maybe orchid? The pictures portray it way more blue-toned purple than it is in person. It's much brighter and pinker. And freaking awesome.

Cupcake Polish - Dallas

Dallas is a bright coral red base with amazing holo flame. I now have over 200 holo polishes and this is absolutely unique in my collection. Most of the red holos I have lean very pink/fuchsia, but this one has a little bit of both pink and orange which gives it the overall coral color. I'm not usually a huge fan of reds, but I think this is my favorite of these three.

Cupcake Polish - New York

New York is a vibrant teal blue. Although I have quite a few teal holos, this is one of the most saturated ones, and the holo is super strong without making it look greyed out.


All three polishes had perfect, easy to work with formulas. They were all almost opaque in one thin coat, and completely opaque in two. They have none of the dragging, patchy issues that some holos have and don't require any special base coat. I actually swatched all of these with no base coat because I'd been warned that they might stain some and I wanted to test. Honestly, I had very minor staining with both Dallas (red) and New York (teal) (none with Chicago), but all it took was an extra clean cotton ball and it all came right off. I think a single coat of regular base coat would probably help with that too.

I have to say, I'm incredibly impressed with these. I've been on a huge holo kick lately, and I've been scouting out all of the very best brands. Cupcake Polish is definitely one of them. There are three more polishes in the American Beauty collection:

Los Angeles - Pink
Denver - Green
Miami - Orange

(Swatches for these can be seen in the shop)

The American Beauty collection is going to be available (in somewhat limited quantities) in the Cupcake Polish shop on September 29th at 12pm Central time. They will be $12 for a full size bottle.

What do you think of these Beauties?? Are you as enamored as I am? Seeing as I only got mini bottles to review I will be in line for some full size bottles.  I'm dying for Dallas, Miami, Denver, and Chicago!!

(These products were sent for review.)

Stars and Stripes! (Well... Dots and Stripes, anyway)

Happy 4th of July!

I used Urban Outfitters Silver Holo (dupe for Color Club Harp on It) with Jade Vermelho Surreal on top for the stripes and Rescue Beauty Lounge Dead Calm with OPI DS Glamour on top for the blue base with Silver Holo dots.

Color Club Harp on It is still readily available right now, and Jade Vermelho Surreal goes in and out of stock on Llarowe and Ninja Polish. RBL Dead Calm and OPI DS Glamour are both discontinued and most likely going to be hard to find, but Glamour has some "dupes" being made more recently (one is Glamorous by Ninja Polish). Dead Calm is a dark blue creme, so there are probably some similar polishes out there.

Pixi Polishes: Swatches and Review

This is the first I'd heard of Pixi polishes. Here are three that are perfect summer colors:

(no topcoat)

(with topcoat)

Pixi - Vivid Coral

Vivid Coral is my favorite of the three. It's bright neon watermelon red-coral jelly that is mostly opaque in three coats and dries with a satin finish. The formula is nice and easy to work with, but it IS a jelly so it still shows a bit of VNL at three coats. But isn't it just SOO juicy? It makes me crave a watermelon Jolly Rancher!

Pixi - Very Violet

Very Violet is bright magenta purple creme that's completely opaque in two coats. A typical neon purple, but I actually don't have any in my collection to compare it to! It's extremely vibrant - much more that the photo shows.

Pixi Very Violet with one coat Max Factor Fantasy Fire

This makes an excellent base for Fantasy Fire that varies from the typical dark blues and purples. It is really glowy in person; you'll have to try it to see what I mean.

Pixi - Paradise Pink

The last one is Paradise Pink, a bubblegum pink creme. This one is quite cool toned and therefore doesn't really flatter my skin. The formula is wonderful: two easy coats and fully opaque. Nice color and application, just not my type.

Overall, I liked two of the three Pixi polishes I tried. I'd really like to see Pixi come out with a wider range of colors, though (greens, golds, and glitters please!).

Pixi polishes are available for $8 each on Target.com but they appear to be on backorder at the moment. Zappos has Pixi polishes as well, but none of the names seem to match, so I'm not sure if they carry these colors.

Tony Moly Galaxy: Swatches and Review

I finally caved in and bought the Tony Moly Galaxy collection. We all know how much I love glitter, so it was only a matter of time... At first I was only planning on picking up the two or three that were my favorite, but I'm glad I got all of them because most of the others won me over completely!

(shade)

(sun)

Tony Moly - Mercury

Mercury is made up of lots of small silver glitter with some sky blue and red mixed in. The base is slightly tinted grey, but it doesn't make much of a difference because the glitter is so dense. This is the most shiny of the set, and ended up being one of my favorites.

(shade)

(sun)

Tony Moly - Earth

Earth is a translucent navy blue base with steel colored micro glitter and small fuchsia holo glitter. It's not as sparkly as Mercury, but still incredibly interesting!

(shade)

(sun)

Tony Moly - Mars

Mars is a mix of small copper and micro orange glitter with a sprinkling of royal blue micro glitter that's not always apparent. In fact, I couldn't really see it in the bottle until I held it in the sun. I kind of wish the blue glitter was a tad bit more prominent but it's still a really awesome accent! I love brown and copper glitter so I figured this would be one of my favorites.

(shade)

(sun)

Tony Moly - Neptune

Neptune is a crazy blend of green glitters in a sheer green base. From what I can tell, it has olive/gold and forest micro glitter as well as medium grass green hexes. I love green polish and glitter, but didn't expect to like this one as much. I wish it had another accent color like the rest of them to add a little bit of pizzazz.

(shade)

(sun)

Tony Moly - Jupiter

Jupiter is comprised of small lavender and indigo glitter and medium cerulean blue holo glitters, but to spice things up it also has a sprinkling of copper micro glitter! I wouldn't be nearly as captivated if it didn't have the copper, but this ended up being one of my favorites as well!
*Aside note:  This one kind of reminds me of The Hungry Asian's Sea Creature because of Sea Creature's purple micro glitter accent amongst the teal and blue.  LOVE.


I was surprisingly impressed with this collection! All of them had wonderful formulas that were opaque in two coats (however, they all required at least a coat of Gelous and Seche Vite to make them glassy smooth) and they weren't too thick like some glitters can be. I was so enamored with the "accent" colors in all of them, especially Jupiter.  The odd thing about them was that none of the bottle actually have the planet names on them (in English, anyway). They are labeled GT01-GT05.  Also, Neptune is 04 and Jupiter is 05... weird.

My only complaint is that they didn't do one for ALL of the planets! MOAR GLITTER!

I bought my set of these off ebay and they range from about $32-35 for the set or $7-9 each.

Katniss, Girl on Fire: Hunger Games Midnight Release Mani

Edited to add sun pictures.

After re-reading the Hunger Games in the last couple of days, I was reminded that Katniss herself had her nails done for the interview directly preceding the beginning of the Games. In the book, Katniss says Cinna's team decorates her by "painting flame designs on [her] twenty perfect nails." So of course, I had to do a flame design.

(sun)

(sun)

(artificial light)

For a background, I used Orly Iron Butterfly. I wanted it to look a bit like smoke and ashes as well as being representative of District 12's coal industry. It's an easy one-coater matte black with silver shimmer, and it resembles China Glaze Stone Cold from the Colors from the Capitol collection.

(artificial light)

I wanted a flame design but I wanted it to look a little more natural than the typical hot rod flames. So I opted to paint the flames right over the charcoal instead of using a more opaque base. I started by freehanding the flame design in China Glaze Riveting, a red-orange glass fleck.  At first I'd planned the flames coming up my nails from the tip, but decided since Katniss was the girl on fire, the flames should be coming from her nails instead.

(indirect sunlight)

After doing all the red, I used Zoya Tanzy to fill in all the flames, leaving a bit of a red outline around the edges. I went over it twice to make it a little more opaque.

(indirect sunlight)

Lastly, I added some Milani Gold Glitz to the base of each flame (at the cuticle), to make it fully opaque and add a little bit of extra sparkle. It also toned down the fire to a bronzey-gold. Again, I didn't want bright hot rod flames, but more natural coppery flames.

(indirect sunlight)

I tried so many "versions" of flames (including the "hot rod type" which were made by painting black over the flames instead of the flames on the charcoal), but these actually came out exactly how I wanted them to.  I had a heck of a time trying to get pictures of these in natural light because the glare wanted to wipe out the flame shapes.

I won't lie, these were NOT easy, and it took a LONG time. But the result made it all worth it to me. I feel like the Girl on Fire.

Pretty & Polished - Jawbreaker: Swatches and Review

This was one of those days where I felt like I couldn't find something that I'd be satisfied with on my nails. Then I decided to try out Pretty & Polished Jawbreaker, and it was PERFECT.

(sun)

(shade)

Pretty & Polished - Jawbreaker

Doesn't it look JUST like those jumbo jaw breaker candies? I love how it gives the jelly/glitter sandwich look in just one polish. This is three coats shown, but it really only takes two coats to be fully opaque. You can also layer it over white to conserve it, but I recommend using a white jelly like Essie Marshmallow to preserve that squishy look.  The glitter is random, but is dense enough that it's not hard to get the nails looking "even" but still unique.  Just a wonderful polish!  I wish I would have gotten the full size instead of the mini...

Jawbreaker is available in mini and full sizes ($4.50 for 5mL and $8.00 for 15mL) in the Pretty & Polished Etsy shop, but goes in and out of stock a bit because they're all hand made. Be sure to check the shop regularly!

Clarins 230 / Max Factor Fantasy Fire Franken-dupe

This is a franken I made using the red to green color morphing powder I got from More Nail Polish (she is sold out of color morphing powders but also offers Spectraflair for frankening holo polishes. She has a link to someone who sells the color morphing top coats, though!).

There are a lot of pictures for this one! It is shown at two coats over Diamond Cosmetics Not Your "Hum Drum" Plum (a royal indigo creme).

The duochrome is awesome, but my favorite part is just the glowy red sparkles on the indigo background.
So insanely gorgeous!

Kind of a bad picture, but it shows the red and green togther!

Normally duochromes tend to show off their colors more in low/indirect lighting, but this one was even more vibrant in the sun! Check out the beautiful greens in this!

It also didn't show as much in the water as normal duochromes. Maybe I'll have to try and take a picture of it in water in the sun.

From the pictures I've seen, this LOOKS like a close dupe for Clarins 230 or Max Factor Fantasy Fire. I don't have either to actually compare, but I'm pretty sure it's the same pigment that they used (it's sort of a standard color change). What do you think? For those of you that have 230 or Fantasy Fire, do you think it compares?

The recipe I used was about three "scoops" (using a nail swatch stick) of powder with about a 1/4 bottle of Milani Rad Purple, a few drops of a blue jelly (like Barielle Berry Blue, but I can't remember which I used) and the rest filled with Glamour Base from TKB Trading (for glitter suspensions).

Zoya - NYFW Peter Som Collection: Swatches and Review

I'm not really sure what made me spontaneously buy the Peter Som collection from Zoya during NYFW (probably the fact that it was LE and had free shipping), but I'm glad I did!

Zoya - Audrey

Audrey is a pale, sheer pink jelly that has a nice glossy finish. This was the one I was most excited about because of its "revolutionary magical gel look." And the finish IS very nice, but the color is a bit uneven on its own. Not really streaky, but just more sheer in some spots and more opaque in others. Very light and feminine, and I like how it looks with three coats (shown).

Zoya - Katharine

My favorite of the collection. Katharine is a subdued plum/raisin jelly (it looks more eggplant in the bottle though) that is quite sheer on the first two coats, but builds up into a nice squishy jelly finish. For this swatch I used three thin coats, but I think it looked a little better the night before when I tried it with slightly thicker coats. Either way, it looks more even in person than in the pictures.  I love that this is a more dusty/greyed shade of red purple.  So chic and juicy.

Zoya - Evvie

Evvie is a very opaque dark sage grey creme. The only creme in the collection, it is completely opaque in two easy, thin coats. Again, very chic with a little bit of edge. Zoya really hits it home with their greens and this is no exception. I think it is also neutral enough to complement a variety of skin tones from cool to warm. Simple, but quite flattering.

Overall I'm quite impressed with this whole set. All of the shades are nice, and Audrey is so unique! Unfortunately, the set was limited edition for NYFW and is currently sold out, but I've heard rumors of these colors making it into the Zoya core line this fall or so.