Ulta For Bitten & Urban Jungle

I stopped at Ulta on my way home from work and picked up a few Ulta polishes. I love their brand, and application. I've never had an issue.

Here is the 1st one I got, For Bitten. It looks to be a duochrome in the bottle, but I had a hard time seeing it and capturing it on camera.

For Bitten

Urban Jungle
Oh how I love this!!!! I have a hard time wearing greens, but this is perfect for me!! I will be wearing this a lot! Just look at this beauty!!!

can you tell who the favorite child is????????? Sorry For Bitten, Urban Jungle needed more pics!

The Pen is Mightier Than the Sword!

Giveaway Day Number TWO!!

Today's prize is another Sally Hansen treasure- and I debuted them on my blog on DAY 8!! That's right-

Prize #2 is a set of the Sally Hansen Nail Art pens!!

To be eligible, here's what you gotta do:

NUMBER 1- Be a follower of the Daily Nail - and I'm curious - tell me how long! :)

NUMBER 2- Tell me what you would draw with the nail art pens if you could draw anything on your nails! 

That's it! Just leave it in the comments, and I'll select the winner randomly!! :)


Entries must be received by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time, Oct 16.

I'll start:

"I have been following The Daily Nail blog for 367 days, both through Google Friend Connect and Twitter!  I would draw the band members of KISS with my Sally Hansen nail art pens...oh wait.. I did. ;)"

Products up for giveaway were provided by the manufacturer, and can be purchase at CVS, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, ULTA, K-Mart, Target, and a million other locations, both brick-and-mortar and online!

Get Acquainted with Accessorize Nail Polish!

Accessorize

Accessorize, a store that sells mostly accessories, also took a spring into cosmetics. Normally, when I see stores like this taking a plunge into nail polish, it's not that big of a deal, shimmers and cremes, that's about all I see, with the occasional weak holo. Imagine my surprise when I saw what Accessorize busted out!

Not your traditional red creme

Ok, it's pretty obvious: the finish and colors of some of these babies strongly remind me of the Orly Cosmic FX collection, and judging from the pics, I think it's safe to say there are some dupish polishes in their range. I don't really mind though, the Cosmic FX collection was my favorite of the entire year (so far), I just can't get enough of these. And...do I see a possible MAC Bad Fairy dupe there?! I'm not really dazzled by their bottle design, but oh well! Accessorize is also selling your traditional red creme, but I made a selection from their current, more surprising, offerings:

These polishes cost £4.00 (4.50 EUR or 6.45 USD) each for a bottle of 10ml. Not cheap, but not steep either. I'm not sure where you can find Accessorize stores, but I do know there are over 240 stores in the UK and 600 internationally (located in cities such as Paris, Madrid, Milano, Roma, Lissabon, Moscow and Amsterdam). You can check out there store locator over here or shop online.

What do you think of these? Too dupe-y or glad to meet them?

Ciaté - Silhouette

From the vault

Hi guys! How are you all doing? Sorry for the lack of updates, I've been really busy. Thankfully I found some older pictures of a gorgeous polish on my hard drive, so let me introduce you to one of Ciaté's prettiest vampy shades: Silhouette.

Ciaté always hits my soft spot, the bottle is too cute, the little ribbon, the font, I love it all. British sophistication for sure! The color is quite dark, a very rich and warm dark brownish red. It looks quite brown in the bottle, but it's leaning towards red once on the nail. The color acts a bit like a chameleon, because it shifts between red, brown and even a bit purple, depending on the lighting. I can't get over how glowy it is, so pretty.

Application

Application was pretty easy, two quick smooth coats without any trouble. I did experience some bubbling, but only on my thumbs, how weird is that? This polish has decent staying power too, I remember wearing it for at least 4 days without chipping, I did add a layer of David top coat, and then I took it off.

Ciaté polishes cost £9.00 for a bottle containing 13.5ml. You can order them from www.ciate.co.uk

China Glaze BFF Holo funky french & a BFF mixup

I started off by using an imitation verison of China Glazes BFF. This may be old news to some, but as of now there are 2 different versions. A bright pink and a muddy reddish/tanish/pinkish. Some have even thought they were just a batch of mislabeled TMI's , but as you can see, they are just duds. I even contacted China Glaze about this, and they are declining any knowledge of a formula change.

Here are the 2 versions - The one on the right is the REAL one. 

Now here they are, with TMI in the middle

On to the fun. Here is one of my favorite types of manis!

I used the same technique as I always do, which can be found here

Thoughts, Prayers, Positive Vibes Needed.

Hey all, I need a favor.

The daughter of one of my readers (and all-around great people I've had the pleasure of knowing...and mother-in-law to someone close to me) is in Intensive Care right now. I'm sure that any warm fuzzies, prayers, thoughts, positive vibes, and whatever else awesome you can karmically send her way would mean a lot. It's a super scary time right now!

Thanks!

-M

You COMPLETE Me.

Before I get into the actual giveaway part of this post, I want to explain how I chose what products to give away. I wanted to give away products from companies that I've used during most (if not all) of my blog project. In the coming days, you'll see ZOYA (because after all, ZOYA was the catalyst to this blog's beginning!), Sally Hansen, China Glaze, Seche, Color Club, Lush, and even a handmade nail polish necklace from the amazing GingerKitty Designs! (WHICH IS GORGEOUS!!!)

Today's Prize is:

10 (yes, TEN!)

randomly selected Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure polishes!

To be eligible, here's what you gotta do:

NUMBER 1- Be a follower of the Daily Nail - and I'm curious - tell me how long! :)

NUMBER 2- Tell me your FAVORITE Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure polish, and why you like it so much!

That's it! Just leave it in the comments, and I'll select the winner randomly!! :)


Entries must be received by 11:59 p.m. Pacific Time, Oct 15.

I'll start:

"I follow The Daily Nail on both twitter AND on blogspot! I've been following for 366 days! My favorite Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure is a four-way tie between Hidden Treasure (obviously), Fedora, Sequin Scandal, and of course, a mainstay in my nail art- Lavender Cloud! I love them all because they are unique, pigmented, and the brush shape provides FLAWLESS application!"

Products up for giveaway were provided by the manufacturer, and can be purchase at CVS, Walgreens, Wal-Mart, ULTA, K-Mart, Target, and a million other locations, both brick-and-mortar and online!

Nicole Di-Vine is Divine

I know, I know, many out there have refused to even buy the Nicole polishes due to the bottle shape reminding them of either a saggy boob, or a pregnant belly. I agree, the bottles aren't the best, but my love for polish, never discriminates. If I like the color, it's coming home with me. So I have a few Nicoles in my stash. This is a great fall color. It's a deep berry/purple with some hidden shimmer in it.

There's No 'I' in Blog.

Thank you all so much for being a part of my life this past year, all your emails, comments, etc. mean the world to me. (even if I suck at returning them- I'm working on it, I promise!!)

I am looking forward to starting year 2 with you!!!

Keep an eye out later today for the first giveaway post!!

OPI Burlesque Collection: Simmer & Shimmer!

Today I'm showing you my breast-cancer awareness manicure. I read on Delta Cephei's blog about a promotion Etos (a Dutch drugstore) is doing to raise awareness for Pink Ribbon. (www.pinkribbon.com) They ask women to paint their nails with one accent nail: a pink pinky. When you get questions about why your pinky is a different colour you can explain about Pink Ribbon and what people can do to support them. So, please take a moment to check out the links above for more information on Pink Ribbon.

I loved this idea so I decided to use Simmer & Shimmer to do a mani myself. I used Viva la Diva #71 on my pinky.

Compared to Absolutely Alice, Simmer & Shimmer is a bit more silver and it has multi-colored glitters instead of just blue and gold. There is fuschsia, orange, yellow, green and gold which make it feel like a party in a bottle. Contrairy to what you might expect after that statement it is not an "in-your-face" glitter. Somehow OPI manages to make glitter polishes seem subdued and demure. Apart from it being glitter of course. lol



This is the sort of glitter polish I'm pretty sure wouldn't have caused my late grandmother to throw a hissyfit and kick me out of the house while yelling at me I was the whore of Babylon and believe me, my grandmother wasn't easily satisfied. Just kidding! (No I'm not.)

Giant thumb!

Anyway, back to the polish! I did four coats of Simmer & Shimmer but honestly, that fourth coat was my paranoia kicking in. Macro setting and all.... I could see some of my bare nail through it if I looked closely but from a reasonable distance the glitter took care of that. On the pinky I used two coats of Simmer & Shimmer and two coats of Viva la Diva #71 because I wanted some of the blue glitter to shine through and pull the look together.

Drying time was short as can be expected from glitters. The surface was a little bumpy after the first coat of topcoat so I added a second one to make it smooth. 

Removal was normal for glitters. A pain if you try to do it the old fashioned way but with the foil method it was a breeze! I did find some stray glitters on my hands (and on my face, my hair, my couche, the floor, and on boyfriend etc. lol) but that is just the price we have to pay for wearing awesome glitters.

Thanks for looking!