Hard Candy Glossaholic - Chill Out

I may have said this before, but I rarely EVER wear makeup. However, I TRY to wear lip balm/gloss as much as I can because I have this horrible habit of picking at my lips when they are chapped (which is all the time... because I pick at them *sigh*).

I was nail polish hunting at Wal Mart when I noticed these awesome flaky lip glosses by Hard Candy, so I figured I'd try one for only $5. Why not?

Hard Candy Glossaholic - Chill Out

One thing I didn't notice just by looking at them is the awesome HUGE applicator that it comes with! I mean seriously, this thing is about two and a half times thicker than most lip gloss applicators, and I think it's great (I don't know why, I just like it)! It does seem to have some serious suction behind it though every time I pull it out. Check this doozy out!

It actually looks really neat on as well! It contains both blue and orange flakies in a clear base - this is similar to Finger Paints Asylum or Deborah Lippmann's Edge of Glory flakies nail polishes.

**BTW... I'm desperately trying to find Asylum at the moment and not for ridiculous ebay prices... if your Sally's has them I'd love to buy one from you!!!**

Here is how Chill Out looks on:

The second picture shows how the orange flakies change to green at an angle - totally awesome! It won't add any color to your lips, but I kind of like that because you could wear it over your favorite color to add some sparkle!

Wet'n'Wild - Back Alley Deals

I love glitters, so when I found the Wet'n'Wild Ice Baby collection, I was thrilled. This one is one of my favorites: Back Alley Deals. It's hard to grasp just how vibrant this is without seeing it in person, but let me tell you, it is amazing!

Wet'n'Wild - Back Alley Deals

First of all, for some reason this doesn't dry as quickly as most glitters. And as it dries, it eats top coat like crazy! This is shown with a coat of Gealous with an immediate coat of China Glaze Fast Forward, and it was still lumpy. I ended up adding another layer of Gelous and Fast Forward after this pic, and it was STILL a little lumpy (though not nearly as much so). Oh well, I still think it's gorgeous.

Oh!  Also, check out my guest post over at Sparkly Vernis if you get the chance!  It's one of my favorite manis that I've done so far!

Jessica Cosmetics Peacock Queen Collection (Chanel dupes!)

Jessica Iridescent Eye

Chanel Peridot (index and ring) and Jessica Iridescent Eye (middle and pinky)

I had been starting to panic just a little recently because I was wondering if anybody really WOULD be duping Chanel Peridot, and I hadn't gotten a backup bottle (I'm reluctant to buy ONE bottle of $25 nail polish, but Peridot was just so special to me...). So when I saw this comparison over on Body and Soul, I was SO thrilled, hopped right on the Jessica Cosmetics site and ordered them all!

I would pretty much call Iridescent Eye a dupe for Peridot. If I didn't KNOW I had two different polishes on, then I wouldn't be able to tell the difference. Sometimes in particular light I think that Peridot might be the tiniest bit more vibrant than Iridescent Eye, but then I think it might be my eyes playing tricks on me or my mind trying to justify the $25 for Peridot, haha. Either way, if there IS any difference, it's NOT worth the $17.50 difference (AND the fact that the Chanel bottle contains less volume). I'm SOOOO happy to have my Peridot backup!! Here's another pic to remind you of the awesome color shift in this one:

Next up is Smoky Feather:

Jessica Smoky Feather

Chanel Graphite (index and ring) and Jessica Smoky Feather (middle and pinky)

Now this one I see a tiny bit more difference. To me, Graphite seems a little bit more sparkly or mirror-like, while the foil effect on Smoky Feather seems just the tiniest bit dulled. Not TOO noticeable, but I would probably be able to tell which was which pretty easily on a "blind" test. Still, is it worth the $17.50 difference? I don't really think so.

Jessica Bronze Tailed

Last up is Bronze Tailed. I don't have Chanel Quartz to compare it to because I was never even remotely interested in it from the swatches I saw. Now I've sort of changed my mind, and I'm REALLY happy I ended up ordering Bronze Tailed. Let's get this straight first: I HATE frosty finishes, but I LOVE pearl finishes (provided the brushstrokes aren't horrendous), and there is a fine line between the two. I would call this a pearl finish, and in my opinion, it's gorgeous if you can keep the brushstrokes to a minimum. I'm not sure why I didn't like any swatches I saw of it - maybe I thought it was more of a pink-brown? I dunno, but it reminds me of another favorite of mine that I should re-swatch: Misbehaving Mistress.

These all had nice formula, covering in two thin coats, although they seemed to be a bit more thick that their Chanel counterparts.

All three of these can be purchased on Jessica Cosmetics' site here, and I'm not sure if they are limited edition.

Did you get any of the Chanel Fall 2011 Collection? Will you be picking these up instead?

Butter London Tart with a Heart (layered)

First of all, I should give credit where credit is due: I didn't come up with this layering combo. The original creator of this masterpiece is Scrangie. In fact, if not for her post about these two polishes, I would never have bought or wanted Tart with a Heart at all.

If you remember, I had no interest in this set at all because I immediately deemed Black Knight "easily franken-duped." So I did just that, I frankened what I believe is a pretty close dupe (you can see it here on its own). But once I saw Scrangie's post where she layered the two, I just HAD to have Tart.

Check out the EPIC layered combo of Mid Knight (Black Knight dupe) with one coat of Tart with a Heart!

Mid Knight and Butter London Tart with a Heart

Incidentally, I had just a plain glossy black polish (China Glaze Liquid Leather) on for a couple days and it was showing major shrinkage from the China Glaze Fast Forward top coat, so I figured I'd quickly swatch this combo over it so I could put it up on the blog. Well, this is yet another example where I decided to go ahead and put it on every other finger and actually WEAR it for a couple days. Seriously, this combo is so awesome. Even though it made me spend $15 for Tart (on ebay), I love Scrangie for posting it. In my mind, it's worth every penny.

Sally Hansen Gem Crush - Big Money

Here is a quick picture of the polish I ended up wearing for New Years Eve. It's from the Sally Hansen Gem Crush Collection that can be found in drugstores now, and it's called Big Money.

Sally Hansen Gem Crush - Big Money

At first I didn't think I was interested in the Gem Crush line because a lot of them look like exact dupes of other recent ones (the Wet'n'Wild Ice collection and the China Glaze Eye Candy collection), but when I saw this in the store I had to pick it up. It turns out I LOVE it (of course I do - it's a soft gold glitter!!).  I'm pretty sure the light neutral gold in this one would flatter ANY skintone - light, dark, cool, or warm!  This picture took 2 coats and it applied very easily.  It's made up of champagne gold micro glitter and medium-sized light purple hex glitter, and was so super sparkly and elegant!

Also... I know I didn't finish my 12 Days of Christmas Nails, and there are all sorts of excuses I could give, but I'm not going to bore you. Maybe I'll try again next year. For now, I'm happy that it's 2012!

The 12 Days of Christmas: Day 9 - Night Snow

This is a variation of some nails I did a while ago, for the first snow.

Night Snow: China Glaze Up All Night with Nubar White Polka Dot

I liked it so much over grey that I had to try White Polka Dot over a navy blue. China Glaze Up All Night is one of my FAVORITE dark blue polishes because it always looks blue and not black, but it's nice and deep and dark. This reminded me of when it snows at night and you can see all the snowflakes against the dark night sky. I prefer it with only one coat of glitter (shown), but two looks nice as well.

I know a lot of nail bloggers are obsessed with black glitter, and I wanted to be too (as it turns out, I don't really like it much... but I love the new charcoal grey glitter from Deborah Lippmann... i think that's what I always WANT black glitter to look like). Instead, I'm so in love with white glitter. All of the white glitter I've seen is a silvery pearl white, and it's SO pretty. This one and Lynnderella's Snow Angel are perfect examples of awesome white glitters!

The 12 Days of Christmas Nails: Day 8 - Christmas Glitter

So I decided to go crazy and combine my two favorite Christmas glitters: China Glaze Twinkle Lights and Party Hearty!

China Glaze Twinkle Lights w/ Party Hearty

I LOVE this combination so much. It is SO blingy and blinding! It's not quite as yellow as it shows in the pictures, because they were taken in very low lighting. It's more of a soft gold color in person, and super shiny and sparkly. Needless to say, this was the biggest pain in the butt to take off... glitter EVERYWHERE!

My Black Knight Franken: Mid Knight

Sometimes I like frankening just to attempt to dupe something. I don't know what it is, but I do it with other things to (I like to try and replicate movie costumes that are as screen accurate as possible - I have an Elizabeth Swann dress, a Hogwarts school uniform, and I made Chief an authentic Obi-Wan jedi tunic).

I didn't even LIKE Butter London's Black Knight very much, but as soon as I saw it I thought "that looks like Rockstar Pink with a black jelly base!" so I HAD to try it.

Mid Knight - my BL Black Knight Franken-dupe

Unfortunately, I don't have the original to compare the two (in fact, the whole point of frankening it was to avoid paying $25 for the set). However, I think it looks close compared to Scrangie's swatches. In fact, Scrangie's post made me run off to ebay to buy the other half of the collection, Tart with a Heart, just to go with my franken... oh well.

The best part about this??  It is SOOOO easy to make at home!  I started with a base of China Glaze Liquid Leather (about half the bottle), and added in Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Rockstar Pink.  Because it didn't have quite enough blue in it, I added a little tiny bit of OPI Absolutely Alice.  The only one of those that isn't readily available is the OPI, but it is easily substitutable with another fine blue glitter like Pure Ice Strapless.  So there you have it - a cheap, easy way to get the Black Knight look!

The 12 Days of Christmas Nails: Day 7 - Golden Snow

I really wanted to do some type of snowflake nails, and here they are!  I was going to do silver snowflakes right up until the last minute when I switched it to gold.  And I'm glad I did.

Golden Snowflakes - Essie Marshmallow stamped with China Glaze 2030

Heehee, the name is supposed to be somewhat funny - just remember, seriously, to never eat golden (yellow) snow!! Now, I'm not very good at stamping, but I don't even care if the snowflakes didn't come out perfect. I call this a success. It just makes me smile and think of a beautiful winter.

For good measure, here is a picture of Essie Marshmallow on it's own, because this is how I wore it for two days before stamping it (it was taken in low lighting so it's a tiny bit blurry):

Essie - Marshmallow

KKcenterHK Foil Nail Decals Review

After trying out their French tip water decals, KKcenterHK sent me a couple more of their nail decals to review. These here are some of their foil decals:

I liked this design because it looked very "holiday" to me. It even kinda looks Dr. Seuss-ish - like wrapping paper you'd see in How the Grinch Stole Christmas. I'm not sure why it's listed under "flags," but it is. Here is the link to the product itself: M032

These applied like most other nail patches, except with these I had a bit of trouble with wrinkling. For the most part they look nice, and it's only up very close that you can even see the wrinkles. The photos show the gold parts as being a bit lime green, and they do show that color at some angles, but for the most part, the "ribbons" just look like a soft gold.

So here's the deal: they went on perfectly on some fingers (like my ring and pinky) and not so well on the others.  The difference is that my ring and pinky are "flatter" from cuticle to tip, like this:

My other fingers (middle, pointer, and thumb) are all more curved and that caused the foils to wrinkle up a bit.  See the curve?

The bottom line is, if your nails are nice and straight from cuticle to tip, then these will probably work very well for you.  However, if your nails are curved like some of mine are, then they'll most likely end up with a few little wrinkles on each nail.

That said, if you can handle the wrinkles, these would be pretty awesome for a Christmas party or a night out.  The package claims 11 days of wear (I don't know if I believe that, because the wrinkles keep them from sticking down tightly), but I don't know if I could handle them for everyday wear anyway.  The thing that bothered me the most was the feel of the tips when I put my hands in my pocket - it was kind of a weird scratchy feeling. 

Also a note:  Once I realized they were wrinkling, I tried using heat from a hair dryer to make them a little more elastic, and it seemed to help if I held the heat on right after applying it, before pushing all the edges down.  But it didn't help entirely.

Overall, I think these are pretty cool, but only really for a special occasion, not for everyday wear.  For pretty designs on my nails all the time, I'll go for Incoco or Sally Hansen Salon Effects (I have GREAT success with the 100% nail polish strips).

If you want to try these or any other nail decals, they can be found at KKcenterHK's website.

(These were sent to me for review.)