Nails INC "Royal Botanical Gardens"

Hi everyone!  I can't believe it is the end of August already!  It seems like 2013 just started and here we are 2/3rds of the way through the year!  Since Summer is nearly over too I decided to break out one last super bright blue!  I picked Nails INC "Royal Botanical Gardens" which is this super gorgeous turquoise/aquamarine color!  This is my favorite color of all time and definitely my favorite nail polish so far this year!

Nails INC "Royal Botanical Gardens" has a really nice formula.  It wasn't too thick or watery and went on easily.  The first coat of nail polish looked a bit streaky but after the second coat the polish looked fantastic!  In terms of chipping I saw some minor tip chips by the end of day three.  And it wasn't until day five that I really got any massive chips.  I will say though I did go swimming twice with this nail polish on and I don't know if the chlorine messed the nail polish or not.  But five days is a great amount of time for a nail polish to last so I'm very happy with it since Nails INC nail polishes cost $9.50 (US) at Sephora!  (I do buy almost all of my Nails INC polishes at Sephora unless I can get a better deal elsewhere!)

Overall I am very pleased with Nails INC "Royal Botanical Gardens"!  I adore the color of the nail polish and how long it lasted before seriously chipping!  And I nice formula always makes life so much easier!

Thanks for reading my blog!  :)

Sally Hansen Magnetic "Ionic Indigo"

Hi everyone!  Happy end of Summer!  (Well not so happy for all of those going back to school!)  So I know that magnet polish came out a while ago but I finally got a hold of some at a reasonable price!  I found this Sally Hansen Magnetic polish at Wal-Mart in the sale section for under $5 (USA).

Sally Hansen "Ionic Indigo" is a magnetic nail polish in a fun denim blue color!  I love the color because it is different from most of the other magnetic nail polishes I have seen!  So magnetic polishes have a magnet on the top of the cap.  Each magnet has a pattern embedded in it, mine is the classic wave, which can be seen on the side of the cap.  The cap with the magnet is a faux cap that comes of the reveal a smaller cap which you hold while painting your nails.  It looks like this:

When I painted my nails I followed the directions on the bottle.  The directions on the bottle for achieving the magnetic nail polish look say:

1. Apply a clear base coat of nail polish.

2. Shake magnetic polish to activate.

3. Apply one thin coat of magnetic nail polish to all nails and let dry.

4. Apply a thick coat to one nail at a time and hold the magnetic cap above nail polish for 10 seconds.

5. Allow all nails to dry.

6. Apply topcoat.

I wanted to show you my nails along the way.  Here are my nails after the one thin coat of nail polish:

The nail polish has a great formula.  It went on very easily ad was opaque after one coat.  And to be honest this nail polish looks nice without using the magnet!  After allowing my nails to dry I went one nail at a time and applied a thick coat of nail polish and held the magnet above my nail like this:

(Sorry the picture is blurry but I had to use my timer to take the picture and this was the best I could get!)

I found that the magnetic pattern worked best with a thicker coat, as the directions suggest.  But that being said the magnetic pattern is very weak and hard to see on most of my nails.  I waited nearly 20 minutes before applying a top coat (Orly "Sec'N'Dry") but the pattern still smudged.  In the end my nails look more like dark wash denim jeans, where the color fades in some places.  As for chipping I was worried that the thick coats of "Ionic Indigo" would cause the nail polish to chip very quickly.  However "Ionic Indigo" lasted almost three days before I saw any minor tip chips! But by day five the tip chips started to get worse and my nails looked a little rough.  Removing the nail polish was easy and "Ionic Indigo" left no stains on my nails!

Overall it was really cool to try out a magnetic nail polish and the color before and after the magnet was pretty.  But the fact that the magnetic pattern wasn't very prominent was disappointing.  However since I was able to wear "Ionic Indigo" for five days before needing to repaint my nails I would definitely recommend Sally Hansen Magnetic nail polish!  I do plan on wearing Sally Hansen's "Ionic Indigo" again but maybe next time I will try wearing it without using the magnet just to change it up!

Thanks for reading my blog!  And I hope everyone has a great first week of school!  :)

You can try all this magnetic fun it is available to buy on Amazon (affiliate link)

Essie "Fiji"

Hi everyone!  I hope everyone has been enjoying what is left of their Summers!  I cannot believe how fast time is flying by!  The local schools are getting ready to start back in another week or two and it seems like just yesterday it was May!  So after wearing some super bright nail polish the last couple weeks I decided to go a little lighter and wear Essie's "Fiji."  A lot of people online talk about Essie's "Fiji" and say it is one of the best Essie nail polishes out so I couldn't wait to try it out!

Essie's "Fiji" is this gorgeous pastel pink/ baby pink nail polish!  It is just lovely and I feel very girly when I wear it!  Formula wise it was okay.  It was a tiny bit watery which meant that my coats of polish were thicker than I would have liked.  As well as being thick coats they are very uneven and my nails have a ton of streaking!  Also the thick coats of nail polish took quite some time to dry and even though I used a quick drying topcoat I still ended up with smudges on several of my nails.  In terms of chipping light pastel colors often seem to show chips easily, so I wasn't surprised that after one day I noticed some tip chips.  The chipping did continue to get worse but managed to look okay until the end of day four.

Overall I don't understand all the hype about Essie's "Fiji" because it chipped so quickly and since I couldn't get even coats of polish on my nails so the very pretty pink color didn't come out as much as it should have.  That being said "Fiji" is a very pretty color and I am willing to give this nail polish a try again!

Thanks for reading my blog!  :)

Try out "Fiji" for yourself by snagging it off Amazon (affiliate link)

Sinful Colors "Innocent"

Hi guys!  Happy middle of August!  Since it has rained so much this Summer all the trees and grass are super green, so I went with a matching green nail polish!.  This week I decided to try out a new to me brand of nail polish called Sinful Colors.  Sinful Colors retails for $1.99 (USA) a bottle and throughout the year can be found on sale at many drugstores for 99 cents!  I own a couple of bottles of Sinful Colors and they have been sitting gathering dust for a while and I decided that it was time to change that so I pulled out the brightest one I own "Innocent."

Sinful Colors "Innocent" is this very bright grass green color.  I love the color in the bottle, but I'll admit that after the first coat of nail polish went on I was a bit worried that "Innocent" might be a bit to chartreuse green for me.  However after two coats of color and a topcoat I really like the bright color of Sinful Colors "Innocent."  I found the formula to be fairly good.  It was just the tiniest bit watery, which made it too easy for the brush to soak up a lot of nail polish!  The result was that the brush was a bit hard to maneuver.  But "Innocent" was opaque after two coats and had no streaking, which is always nice!  As for chipping Sinful Colors "Innocent" lasted about three days.  We skipped minor chips and instead the nail polish started coming off in chunks.  I want to say that I am disappointed in how fast "Innocent" chipped but for a relatively inexpensive bottle of polish three days is actually pretty good!  However when I removed the nail polish my nails were stained green for well over a week after, so that was a bit disappointing!

Overall I am neither pleased nor displeased by Sinful Colors "Innocent."  The color is pretty and I did get several nice comments about it.  But the large amounts of chippings after only three days and how much it stained my nails is a bit sad.  I will most likely wear Sinful Colors "Innocent" again because of the fun color!

Thanks for reading my blog!

China Glaze "Grape Pop"

Hi everyone!  I hope everyone is enjoying what is left of Summer!  This week I decided to try out China Glaze's "Grape Pop" and just as the name suggests it is a fantastic deep purple color!  I purchased "Grape Pop" as part of China Glaze's four piece ombre set called Grape Expectations.  And I must admit that the fact that the name of the set is a reference to the classic novel Great Expectations is what prompted me to buy the set in the first place!  However I lucked out that all four colors in the set are very pretty!  Here is the unopened box set:

I was very surprised when I opened the box to pull the nail polish out and discovered that included with the Ombre set was 10 small sponges which can be used to create ombre nails!  (I haven't tried ombre nails yet but they are on my nail polish bucket list!)  Here is the open box and the sponges:

Now back to the one bottle I tried this week:  China Glaze's "Grape Pop."  "Grape Pop" has a great formula, which went on easily with no problems and was nearly opaque after one coat.  I used two coats to help even out the nail polish, which had some minor streaks after one coat but had none after the second coat.  As for chipping I'm not sure how long "Grape Pop" lasts before chipping because after babysitting for a couple of hours I looked down to discover that my nail polish had scratches all over it.  In the picture at the beginning of the post, if you look at the pointer finger (far left nail) you can see some of the scratches shinning in the light.  Over half my nails had scratches on them and looked awful so I was forced to remove the nail polish.

Overall I am very pleased with China Glaze's "Grape Pop" because the formula was nice and I adore the grape soda color!  However I am not sure how or why the scratches occurred, but I do plan on trying out "Grape Pop" again to see how the nail polish does.

Thanks for reading my blog!

Grab a full sized bottle of this nail polish for yourself on Amazon (affiliate link)

Deborah Lippmann "Mermaid's Dream"

Hi everyone and happy August!  I cannot believe how fast time is flying by!  Here in North Carolina it is hot as Hades, just like every Summer!  So to help cool me off I decided to pull out Deborah Lippmann's "Mermaid's Dream" which is this fantastic blue-green colored nail polish with glitter!  This nail polish looks like the ocean when the sun hits is!  It just shines and shimmers!

So I purchase my Deborah Lippmann polishes from Nordstrom's and they are outrageously priced at $18 (USA) a bottle!  I only own a couple of her nail polishes because of that!  However I purchased "Mermaid's Dream" on Black Friday 2012 and got a fantastic price of $10 (USA)!  (Which I thought was quite a steal!)  Formula wise "Mermaid's Dream" is a bit watery, but since it is a glitter nail polish that actually worked to my advantage!  The slightly watery nail polish actually went on quite nicely and allowed me to be ale to spread the glitter out evenly!  I was worried about the nail polish not being opaque because it is a bit watery, but that wasn't entirely the case.  After my usual two coats, "Mermaid's Dream" was about 80% opaque, but the nail polish was getting too thick on the nail for a third coat.  Before placing my topcoat on I noticed that "Mermaid's Dream" looked kind of textured due to all the glitter and felt similar to OPI's liquid sand.  I would recommend a topcoat be used on Deborah Lippmann's "Mermaid's Dream" to prevent the nail polish from snagging on clothes.  As for chipping well it started within the first hour or two!  My right thumb smudged and got wrinkles in it, which cannot be fixed except by repainting that nail (and that wasn't about to happen!)  As the day passed the chipping got worse.  Mostly it just rubbed itself right off the tips of my nails and even with a topcoat the nail polish still managed to snag on things, which of course caused large chunks of polish to fall off.  I would say "Mermaid's Dream" lasted about four days for me.  As for removing the nail polish that was a nightmare!  I had to scrub and scrub to get the polish off and even then the glitter wanted to stay on like it was done with super glue!  All in all I think it took about 45 minutes to remove Deborah Lippmann's "Mermaid's Dream" from my nails!

Overall while I like the color and the way "Mermaid's Dream" looks on my nails the fact that it was so expensive and still got ruined in less than a day is definitely not okay!  Add that to how long it took to remove the nail polish from my poor nails and I may not wear this nail polish again any time soon!

Thanks for reading my blog!