Twinsie Tuesday: Tulips

This week we have a Twinsie Tuesday take as old as time: I tired to do nail art. It sucked. I cheated. The end. "I tried, it sucked, I cheated" is the Nailed version of "I came, I saw, I conquered."

Okay, so there's a little more to it than that. I found this really cool abstract tulip design that looked easy enough to do. I was actually pretty excited about it. I always have this eternal sense of optimism with nail art that this will finally be the time I can add something to my limited repitoire. It went well for about two nails and then it all fell apart--and not in a "so bad it's entertaining" kind of way (which I fully embrace). It just looked totally lopsided and ugly.

So I scrapped that idea and went with my emergency plan: find something mildly tulip-related and run with it. Enter OPI Kiss Me On My Tulips! It has "tulips" in the name. It's from the Holland Collection. It is the color of (some) tulips.




So here she is!

This polish is still fairly easy to find online (you can consult my handy dandy authenticity guide for shopping OPI online) if you like the look of it. Or it's quite dupeable, so that's an option as well. I'm sure I have a few shades just like this one in my collection, but they aren't named after tulips so we don't care about them--for today, at least. ;)

Alaina at The Little Canvas

Alice at Nail Art in Wonderland

Amanda at Amandalandish

Amanda at Fashion Footing

Amber at Nails Like Lace

Bridget at A Painted Nail

Chelsea at Nailed Blog

ChiChi at I'm Just Me...ChiChi

Claire at Kerruticles

Jessica at Blue Velvet Lacquer

​Lisa at The Polish Playground

Marisa at Polish Obsession

Marisa at Polish Those Nails

Megan at A Beauty in the Business

Róisín at Cuti-CLUE-les

Sara at The Call of Beauty

Sarah at Cloudy with a Chance of Lacquer

Savannah at Addicted to Polish

Sharon at Behind Green Eyes

Steph at Lovestruck Lacquer

Tiffany at Polished To Precision

Twinsie Tuesday: Glitter Placement

Hey guys! So today we are doing manis featuring glitter placement. I've got a couple baggies of loose glitter shapes, mostly from Lumina Lacquer. She includes them with a lot of her glitterbomb polishes so you won't have to fish in the bottle for specific pieces you want. Cool customer service touches like that are one of the many reasons I love indie polish!

For this mani, I used some skull and crossbones glitters that came with Seven Year Witch.

Pink: Zoya Shelby
Black: OPI Never Have Too Mani Friends!

I really need to do glitter placement nails more often. They're super quick and fun. Just grab some tweezers and you're good to go!

Alaina at The Little Canvas

Alice at Nail Art in Wonderland

Amanda at Amandalandish

Amanda at Fashion Footing

Amber at Nails Like Lace

Bridget at A Painted Nail

Chelsea at Nailed Blog

ChiChi at I'm Just Me...ChiChi

Claire at Kerruticles

Jessica at Blue Velvet Lacquer

​Lisa at The Polish Playground

Marisa at Polish Obsession

Marisa at Polish Those Nails

Megan at A Beauty in the Business

Róisín at Cuti-CLUE-les

Sara at The Call of Beauty

Sarah at Cloudy with a Chance of Lacquer

Savannah at Addicted to Polish

Sharon at Behind Green Eyes

Steph at Lovestruck Lacquer

Tiffany at Polished To Precision

OPI Look At My Bow!

Hey guys! Sorry for the lack of posts the past few days. I was battling a nasty stomach bug for most of the week, so I wasn't in the mood to blog or paint my nails. But I'm pullin' one from my backlog for you today, with OPI Look At My Bow! This is a cute bubblegum pink creme from the Hello Kitty Collection.

This has got a nice 'n easy formula. Above is two coats.

Like a lot of the Hello Kitty shades, this isn't a color we haven't seen before from other brands, but it's very well-executed for what it is and definitely worth picking up if you don't already have a similar shade in your collection--or if you're like me and just nuts for all things Hello Kitty. :) If you'd like to see more of Look At My Bow!, take a gander at this past Twinsie Tuesday post, where I used it as a base for glitter.

Twinsie Tuesday: LynBDesigns Benedict

We're doing a romantic theme this week, so I decided to bust out the heart glitter! I actually only have one polish in my stash that prominently features heart glitter and that's LynBDesigns Benedict. Benedict is a glitterbomb with small blue and holographic silver glitters and then of course the aforementioned hearts in shades of holographic blue, silver and red. I layered Benedict over OPI Look At My Bow!, a bubblegum pink.

Benedict is a cute polish, but I honestly feel like the glitter is too dense. I usually can't get enough glitter, but since this is designed to be a layering glitter, I think the overall look would benefit from allowing the base polish to peek through more. I wiped down my brush for each nail and I still felt like I was getting a ton of glitter each time. The end result can get a little crowded-looking--and this is with only one coat of Benedict. Oddly enough, I really had to fish for the heart glitters. There's so much small glitter that they get kind of buried.

I guess what I'm trying to say is I like it, but I don't love it. Anything with glitter is never a total loss. ;)

Alaina at The Little Canvas

Alice at Nail Art in Wonderland

Amanda at Amandalandish

Amanda at Fashion Footing

Amber at Nails Like Lace

Bridget at A Painted Nail

Chelsea at Nailed Blog

ChiChi at I'm Just Me...ChiChi

Claire at Kerruticles

Jessica at Blue Velvet Lacquer

​Lisa at The Polish Playground

Marisa at Polish Obsession

Marisa at Polish Those Nails

Megan at A Beauty in the Business

Róisín at Cuti-CLUE-les

Sara at The Call of Beauty

Sarah at Cloudy with a Chance of Lacquer

Savannah at Addicted to Polish

Sharon at Behind Green Eyes

Steph at Lovestruck Lacquer

Tiffany at Polished To Precision

OPI Let's Be Friends!

OPI Let's Be Friends! is a porcelain pink creme from the Hello Kitty Collection. If you're on the hunt for that perfect ballerina pink, this is the polish for you! It's not the most mind-blowingly original color out there, but maaannnn, it's pretty.

The formula is sorta goopy. It's not terrible, but you might need to do some extra finagling when applying. I think the end result is worth it though, because the color looks so crisp and clean on. I can see myself wearing this one a lot this spring!

OPI Small + Cute = Heart

OPI Small + Cute = <3 (I had to spell it out above to get Blogger to accept the HTML tag for this post, but the name is in fact stylized as <3 rather than the word.) is the most adorable shade of ballerina pink. It reminds me a little bit of one of my very favorite OPI pinks, Pink Friday from the Nicki Minaj Collection. Pink Friday is a lot more warm-toned, but they have this same kind of softness to them that I really like.

The formula is pretty nice for a pastel. It self-levels well and isn't too streaky. I used three coats for this mani. I apologize for the messy painting on my pinky. I had some polish peel around my cuticle line there.

I liked this one more than I expected to. Just like the name says, it's really cute! I think it'd make a great base for glitter too.

OPI Super Cute In Pink

We're continuing our journey through the OPI Hello Kitty Collection today with Super Cute in Pink, a magenta crelly. This shade is extremely similar to one of my favorite (and oldest--seriously, it's one of the first polishes I ever swatched here) Essie colors, Splash of Grenadine. I would go so far as to say that if you have one, you don't really need the other unless you're a huge fan of this type of shade.

For some reason, this photographed a little too pink on my nails. It pulls slightly more purple in real life. What you see in the bottle in the pictures above is more true-to-life. The formula here is a smidge sheer, since this is a crelly, but still reaches opacity in three coats.

Twinsie Tuesday: Dotticure

TT is returning from holiday hiatus this week with dotticures! I must confess I spent a good deal of time thinking of how to cheat my way out of this one, but in the spirit of the new year, I decided to give it the old college try instead...

...aaannddd of course that ended in a string of spectacular failures. I tried the bandaid method and turned out the holes aren't big enough...and my nails weren't dry enough. I tried doing sharpie dots and that actually came out great, until I put the top coat on and it completely destroyed everything. I debated using a dotting tool, but I find them terribly frustrating and by this point I just wanted to have presentable-looking nails, so...I cheated. *sigh of shame*

Enter Deborah Lippmann I'm Not Edible. This polish uses the exact color scheme and aesthetic I was trying to create on my own: pastel pink base with little black polka dots.

I feel guilty for not doing a proper dotticure but I'm hoping the cute polish will be penance enough. I'm looking forward to a new year and new challenges with TT! Hopefully you'll join us along the way for 2016. :)

                        

Alaina at The Little Canvas

Alice at Nail Art in Wonderland

Amanda at Amandalandish

Amanda at Fashion Footing

Amber at Nails Like Lace

Bridget at A Painted Nail

Chelsea at Nailed Blog

ChiChi at I'm Just Me...ChiChi

Claire at Kerruticles

Jessica at Blue Velvet Lacquer

​Lisa at The Polish Playground

Marisa at Polish Obsession

Marisa at Polish Those Nails

Megan at A Beauty in the Business

Róisín at Cuti-CLUE-les

Sara at The Call of Beauty

Sarah at Cloudy with a Chance of Lacquer

Savannah at Addicted to Polish

Sharon at Behind Green Eyes

Steph at Lovestruck Lacquer

Tiffany at Polished To Precision

Nubar Holiday Gala Collection: Review & Swatches

Hey guys! I wanted to start the weekend off right with some holiday swatches for you, so today we'll be checking out Nubar's Holiday Gala Collection! We've got four sparklies to talk about, so let's get to it.

Violet Sparkle is a violet glitterbomb. I like wearing polishes like this alone for a full-on glitter explosion, so I layered Violet Sparkle up to full opacity with four coats. Again, sorry for the cuts on my index finger. Most of these swatches were taken when the cuts were still healing. :-/

Petunia Sparkle is a magenta version of Violet Sparkle. I got soooo many compliments on this one. When the girl working the drive-thru window asks to see your nails, you know it's good. ;) This is four coats again.

Red Ruby Glitz is a classic holiday red shimmer, very much in the vein of China Glaze Ruby Pumps. Since this has a tinted base, it's much more opaque than the previous two glitters and only needed two coats.

The last polish is my favorite of the collection: Celebration Sparkles! This has rainbow hex and micro glitters. This is such a fun polish and would be perfect for a New Year's party! This is two coats over Sally Hansen Celeb City, a silver foil.

You can purchase the Holiday Gala Collection on Nubar's website. Which shade is your favorite? Do you have a holiday nail look planned out yet?


Disclosure: These polishes were provided for my honest review. For more information, please see my disclosure policy.

Twinsie Tuesday: China Glaze It's A Trap-eze!

Hey guys! It's been a minute, right? I know I've been an awful blogger lately, but I'm trying to get back in the swing of things. So what better way than Twinsie Tuesday? :)

This week we're doing manis inspired by our favorite foods. I looooooovvvveee eating, so this was a tough pick for me, hahahaha. But I decided to go with one of my very favorite desserts. Can you guess what it is from which polish I picked?

It's funfetti cake! I know, I know, it's not the most sophisticated choice, but I can't get enough funfetti, especially the frosting!

The polish is China Glaze It's A Trap-eze!, which I thought was the perfect representation since it's got a white base filled with multi-colored glitter. It's A Trap-eze! looked kinda messy with the first few layers, but it all came together nicely in the end. Most of my nails only needed three coats, but a couple needed four to even out some bald patches.

Please excuse the cut on my index finger. I nicked it at work last week and it's taking its sweet time healing. Flesh wounds aside, I hope you enjoyed today's post and that you'll check out my fellow Twinsies today too!

                        

Alaina at The Little Canvas

Alice at Nail Art in Wonderland

Amanda at Amandalandish

Amanda at Fashion Footing

Amber at Nails Like Lace

Bridget at A Painted Nail

Chelsea at Nailed Blog

ChiChi at I'm Just Me...ChiChi

Claire at Kerruticles

Jessica at Blue Velvet Lacquer

​Lisa at The Polish Playground

Marisa at Polish Obsession

Marisa at Polish Those Nails

Megan at A Beauty in the Business

Róisín at Cuti-CLUE-les

Sara at The Call of Beauty

Sarah at Cloudy with a Chance of Lacquer

Savannah at Addicted to Polish

Sharon at Behind Green Eyes

Steph at Lovestruck Lacquer

Tiffany at Polished To Precision

Review: Born Pretty Liquid Tape

Today's review features a product that I'm sure a lot of you have seen on Instagram and YouTube: liquid tape! Whether you want to use it for nail art or you're just a messy painter, this promises quick and easy clean-up around the edges of your nail. It works just like painter's tape: put it on, do your painting, then peel it off. It takes any mess around your nails right with it!

There are quite a few brands that offer some version of this type of product and the one I'll be reviewing today is from Born Pretty. You can check it out on their site HERE.

This pretty much has the look and consistency of glue. It goes on white, then dries clear. But instead of smelling like glue, it has an almost peach-like scent to it? That's what it reminded me of, anyways. I actually liked the scent a lot. Is that weird?

The brush is a nice size and you can see exactly where you put the liquid, making application simple. Just make sure you don't get any of it on your actual nails, as then it'll pull up part of your mani when you're peeling it off. If you do mess up and get it where you don't want it, it's easy to wipe away before it dries.

I used this to help with the clean-up of my WWE Natalya-inspired gradient mani. I gotta tell ya, I really like doing gradients, but I don't do them as often as I would like, because they are such a hassle to clean up. But this made it soooooo much easier!

Here's how my nails looked before removing the liquid...

...and then immediately after removal!

The liquid peeled off all in one piece on every nail. Removing it is really oddly satisfying. Ever put glue on your hands as a kid just so you could peel it off afterwards? Then you know exactly what I mean! If your nails are still wet, I recommend peeling with tweezers, but if they're dry, fingers will work just fine too. There's no sticky residue left behind, so once it's off, you're good to go!

I've seen products like this retail for close to $30, but the nice thing about Born Pretty's version (aside from how well it works) is the price: $3.99 for a 15ml bottle. It's a good-sized bottle and you don't need very much product at a time. So long as you keep it nice and sealed up, this should last a good while.

I can't recommend this highly enough! It works great and the price is a lot lower than many comparable products on the market right now. This is going to be a lifesaver for nail art or whenever I'm short on time and my mani has to look clean and professional so I can get out the door and go!

If you've tried this product or a similar version, I'd love to hear what you thought! And if you would like to purchase anything from Born Pretty, they offer 10% off for Nailed readers:

Disclosure: This product was sent for my honest review. For more information, please see my disclosure policy.

Twinsie Tuesday: Inspired By A Hobby/Interest

Welcome to another round of Twinsie Tuesday! This week we're doing manis inspired by an interest or hobby of ours outside of polish. I've mentioned a couple times on here that I'm a pro wrestling fan and I've even done a few wrestling-centric manis in the past. I always have fun thinking them up, so I wanted to do another one for this theme.

This time around, I wanted to do something that wasn't overtly wrestling-inspired, so I took one of my favorite WWE performers, Natalya...

 

...and made a manicure using her signature colors. Natalya is a member of the Hart family, a legendary Canadian family that has produced multiple generations of famous pro wrestlers. She is the daughter of Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart and niece of Bret Hart. Even if you've never watched wrestling, you might know Nattie from the popular E! show, "Total Divas," a reality (I use this term loosely, as some of it is painfully scripted) show about the lives of some of WWE's female stars. Her colors--and the colors of the Hart family as a whole--are pink and black, often with white accents. So I did a pink gradient topped with white and black glitter.

Light pink: OPI Pink Friday
Darker pink: OPI Kiss Me On My Tulips
Glitter: Cover Band Sticks 'n Stones

My boyfriend (a fellow Natalya fan) helped me pick the colors for this mani, so shoutout to him for helping me find the perfect pair of pinks. <3 I couldn't be happier with how this came out!

Hope you enjoyed another one of my silly wrestling manis. Be sure to check out my other Twinsies too--and help welcome our newest Twinsie, Claire!

Tiffany at Polished To Precision

Steph at Lovestruck Lacquer

Sharon at Behind Green Eyes

Savannah at Addicted to Polish

Sara at The Call of Beauty

Róisín at Cuti-CLUE-les

Megan at A Beauty in the Business

Marisa at Polish Those Nails

Marisa at Polish Obsession

​Lisa at The Polish Playground

Jessica at Blue Velvet Lacquer

Claire at Kerruticles

ChiChi at I'm Just Me...ChiChi

Chelsea at Nailed Blog

Bridget at A Painted Nail

Amber at Nails Like Lace

Amanda at Fashion Footing

Amanda at Amandalandish

Sinful Colors Pinky Glitter

Pinky Glitter: a hum-drum name for a pretty awesome polish. Pinky Glitter has a sheer light pink base packed with small and medium iridescent glitters. It makes for a very pretty, dainty-looking manicure. Couldn't you see a cartoon princess wearing something like this?

The only drawback to Pinky Glitter is how sheer it is. I think this is intended to be a layering polish, as it takes four coats on its own to reach semi-opacity. But at least it has a nice consistency to it, so build up, while time-consuming, isn't a complete ass-ache.

Pinky Glitter instantly became one of my all-time favorite Sinful Colors shades, so shout-out to Amanda for sending it my way! I'd love to try this over a neon pink next time I wear it.

Twinsie Tuesday: Essie Hip-Tide

For this week's Twinsie Tuesday, we were tasked with doing a matte and shiny combo. I've gone on record as not being a huge fan of mattes, but I do love me a good satin. So I thought a satin polish, which is sort of in between shiny and matte, would be a nice way to showcase both finishes.

I went with Essie Hip-Tide, one of the shades from the new Cashmere Matte Brights Collection. Hip-Tide is a perky satin pink with iridescent pink shimmer. (The former copy editor in me feels compelled to point out that the hyphen in the name here is completely unnecessary, but I digress...)

The overall consistency was nicer than with its collection-mate, Yespadrilles, but unfortunately I was still less than thrilled with the formula on Hip-Tide. It's sheer (what you see above is four coats) and I had a ton of bubbling. I'm sure you can see in the picture how bad it is. I don't recall have any bubbling issues with the original Cashmere Mattes, so I'm not sure why it seems to be such a problem with the Brights. I can work around a sheer or streaky formula, but bubbling is frustratingly difficult to conceal. A lot of times you just have to start over, but honestly the bubbling was so bad with Hip-Tide that I really didn't think it would make any difference.

I was also hoping the shimmer in this would be a bit more prominent like it was with Yespadrilles, because it's so stinkin' pretty in the bottle, but sadly that was not the case. This polish was just one big "nope" for me.

What do you think of Hip-Tide? And don't forget to take a look at what my Twinsies are doing today too!

Tiffany at Polished To Precision

Savannah at Addicted to Polish

Róisín at Cuti-CLUE-les

Marisa at Polish Obsession

Lisa at The Polish Playground

Lakeisha at Refined and Polished

Kristine at Pink and Polished Nails

Jessica at Blue Velvet Lacquer

ChiChi at I'm Just Me...ChiChi

Chelsea at Nailed Blog

Bridget at A Painted Nail

Amber at Nails Like Lace

Amanda at Fashion Footing

Amanda at Amandalandish