Twinsie Tuesday: Rescue Beauty Lounge Santa Fe

This week, we're doing nails inspired by a city. I decided to go with a polish that was not only inspired by a city, but named for one as well: Rescue Beauty Lounge Santa Fe. RBL is one of my all-time favorite brands (RIP) not only because of their gorgeous polishes, but also the artistic inspiration  behind each shade.

Ji always has the best polish descriptions so I'll let her do the talking here, as she really conjures up the imagery behind this polish beautifully: "An aerial view of her imaginary Santa Fe--the baked earth tones of ochre with the shimmery glisteningly ubiquitous dotted greens." Takes you right there, doesn't it?

RBL always delivered fantastic formulas and Santa Fe is no exception. This is two coats.

If my memory is correct, this is the only orange that RBL ever released. But what a beauty she is!

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

Zoya Petals Spring 2016 Preview

I was a huge fan of Zoya's spring collection last year, so I've been curious to see what they'd have in store for us this time around. Zoya tends to go the route of offering both a creme and a shimmer version of each color in a lot of their collections, but they mixed things up this time around with the new Petals Collection. Check it out!

 

L to R: Leia,  Aster, Azalea, Zahara, Tulip, Laurel

I think Leia and Zahara both look super pretty! I'm a sucker for shimmers, what can I say. The collection is already available on Zoya's site, so expect to see it in stores soon!

Smitten Polish Mint Chip

Polish in general is of course a weakness of mine, but I am especially powerless to resist the lure of ice cream-themed nail polish. I own quite a few of them and I've got one to share with you all today: Smitten Polish Mint Chip. As you would expect, it's a pastel green with brown glitter (both square and round varieties), intended to resemble mint chocolate chip ice cream. Adorable!

The formula is a little on the thinner side, but not so much so that it's at all difficult to work with. I used three coats here.

I'm not sure if Smitten Polish still makes Mint Chip. I tried checking but unfortunately their site is currently on hiatus.

Twinsie Tuesday: Marbling

Hey guys. I missed last week 'cause I was out of town, but I'm back for TT this week for...ugh...a marbled mani. :-/ Marbling remains one of the most frustrating nail art techniques for me. I have never had the patience/technique required to pull off an actual water marble mani, but I do dabble in dry marbling from time to time. So that's what I decided to do this time around.

Index and middle fingers: Essie Cocktail Bling
Ring finger: OPI Never Have Too Many Friends with Essie Cocktail Bling
Pinkie: Urban Outfitters Silver Holo

I kept it to an accent nail, because something about all marbled nails looks a little too chaotic for me. Probably because I'm not good enough to purposefully create actual designs instead of just random swirls.

As for the colors, I wanted to keep them kinda winter-y. I made Essie Cocktail Bling, one of my very favorite Essie's, the focal point. It's such a cool color: sorta grey, sorta blue, sorta lavender.

Anywho, I hope you enjoyed today's post and be sure to head over to my Twinsies' blogs for what I'm sure will be some much more impressive marbled manis.

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

Deborah Lippmann Almost Paradise

I'm dying for spring to get here, but we keep getting snow! So I decided to channel some spring vibes with Deborah Lippmann Almost Paradise, the cutest pistachio creme. This came out as part of Deborah Lippmann's Footloose-inspired collection to celebrate the 2011 remake of the film, but I believe I picked it up a few years after that through Ebay. I was in the pit orchestra for my high school's production of Footloose (NERD, I know) so this polish brings back a lot of fun memories from that time.

If you're a fan of either the original or the remake, then you may notice this shade was inspired by the VW Beetle in both films. The formula is pretty much your standard pastel: a little streaky, but opaque in three coats. Sorry again for the jank cuticles. I dunno what is going on with them lately, you guys! I think it's this cold and windy weather.

I love this color. It brings me to a happy place of lying out in the grass with a good book and the sun shining down. If you can still track it down on Ebay or through a blog sale, I recommend it! Alternatively, DL did another shade for her spring 2014 collection called Spring Buds that is quite similar.

OPI Show Us Your Tips!

For my money, this is the best polish from the New Orleans Collection. I had to have it for the name alone, but the color itself is pretty fan-freaking-tastic. Take a look at this beautiful periwinkle shimmer!

Sunlight:

 Shade:

Please ignore my dry-ass cuticles. Anywho, the formula on this was disappointly streaky. The consistency itself is really easy to work with, so it's got that going for it, but it took three-and on a couple nails, four--coats to build up opacity and cover some bald patches. It wasn't a bad formula overall, just finicky.

I picked up two polishes from the OPI New Orleans Collection (this and Humidi-tea), but my wallet was greatful for the reduced haulage after snagging all of the Hello Kitty Collection. What's on your list from this set?

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.