Nail Rock Caviar

*Sent with my January Birch Box

Who's up for some hard to find, but easy to use caviar nail polish?  I know I am! Okay, not really, but on with the show.

I was a bit dubious of this when I got it in my Birch Box last month. I like the color well enough, but that caviar.  Ugh. I decided that I wanted to try new textures with my polishes this year and gave it a go. These are my results.

So a word about the color, it's a great green called Neptune Green.  I was afraid it would stain, so I used a couple base coats and took it off as soon as I was done swatching.  I didn't want to take any chances.  I get a bit paranoid about nail staining.

I have to admit, they did a great job of pairing colors for this.  I love the pink and teal beads for the caviar effect. It's easy to do, you just stick your wet nail in the little pot of beads provided. After you've done that you press the beads into your nail and you can even top it with a top coat.  I'll admit, I failed to read the instructions, so I didn't press the beads into the polish.  Even though I had a total directions fail, I knew I didn't like the beads.

I wish there were a way to get the look of caviar nails without the caviar aspect.  I love the mottled tiny dots look of my accent nail, but I can't stand the texture.  I'm getting better I can wear a liquid sand or pixie dust type polish like nobody's business, but after five minutes I was picking these beads off my nail.

I tried to find more information about Nail Rock, but everywhere I looked I came up dry.  Their website wouldn't load and nothing was working.  That made me a little upset.  If you're going to put a product into a sample box like Birch Box, it would be nice if there were accurate information given.  I don't think that's asking too much.  That being said, it could just be my internet connection, Lord knows it's not the best.  

Here's what I've found about this product. You can find it on the Birch Box website, and you can try your hand at loading their website.

How I Store My Nail Polish

*Not really sure how to label this one as there are some that were sent to me for review, I was gifted some, and of course I bought a ton of them.

It seems likes eons ago that I got the request for this post, but in reality it was only two weeks. When I came up with this idea I had wanted to get polish racks to hang on my walls, but I figured out that I needed seven to hold the majority of my collection and I just couldn't handle that cost.  In fact, I still can't handle that cost and I don't have that much wall space.  My solution was to use what I had and buy a cheap bookshelf from Walmart.  The total cost of my project was 16 dollars plus gas.

Here's a general overview of my bookshelf situation:

Top shelf: Indies separated into swatched on the left and unswatched on the right.  I know it's really technical.

Second Shelf: Mainstream polishes that are more expensive. OPI, China Glaze, Essie, butter London, and some others that I can't remember.

Third Shelf: These are all my store's prototypes and retired colors.  I had the photo boxes already and just put my polishes in there.  

Bottom Shelf: Books, these are overflow from my three other bookshelves in my room.  I love books as much as I love my polish.

As you can see, the bookshelf isn't really made to hold the weight of all of the polishes. When I got my bookshelf I wanted a way to store more polishes on each shelf and still have them be seen.  My solution small flat rate boxes.  I've used a mixture of recycled ones and new ones, and the best part is, they're free and easily re used for their original purpose.  For the first tier I taped them together with the short sides facing out.  For the second tier I taped them with the long edge facing out.  It created the perfect steps for my display and let me store a bunch more polish.

On my top shelf I used shelf gripper to hold the polishes in place as my Oscar likes to hop up on shelf and into the window above. He still knocks them over and when he knocks a bunch over I take it as a sign that I need to reorganize.  As you can see, these are my indies. They're not sorted more than into swatched and unswatched, and as I look at the photo I can see a couple that Oscar must have knocked over and they got put back by someone who didn't know they were already swatched.  Such is life.

For my last photo I have my most conventional storage option.  My Rite Aid was upgrading to a new Sinful Colors display and gave me this one.  It helped that I went to school with the manager's son. This is reserved to my cheap polishes and ones that I don't have a lot of.  The entire top shelf is Sinful Colors.  I can't help it, they're cheap, but really nice quality.  As you can see, I have room to grow.  Yay for that!

So, that's how I store my polishes.  If you see any you'd like me to blog about let me know. The wall color is Embellished Blue by Behr, just in case you were wondering.

Mentality Mattes

*Purchased for the purpose of review with my own money.

I'm going to make an effort to get back into blogging mode.  I've had a nice break, but honestly, I've missed this.  It gave me a place to write about something I love and not bore my family with all of my nail polish talk. They're still pretty bored by it, but this does help.

Today, I have two polishes from Mentality Polish.  What I love about them as a brand is that they make really great colors that are affordable and still unique. First off I have Tempest, which is a gorgeous deep red/burgundy color.

I had to show you what this looks like with top coat.  It's stunning, and oh so shimmery.  The top coat bring out all the depth of shimmer and maybe even a little magic.

Tempest was opaque in two easy coats and was a dream to wear.  I'm not usually a matte polish fan, but this was great.  It wasn't too matte, and could easily be changed with a top coat.

I also have Virginia, a light blue frosty shade that has hints of green.

I added topcoat to this one as well, but wasn't as impressed with the appearance.

Virginia gave me a little trouble.  It was a bit thick, and didn't dry properly.  I've never had this issue with Mentality before, so I'm pretty sure it was just fluke.  I was able to get full opacity in just two coats, and a nice shine with topcoat.  It just doesn't photograph as well, as Tempest.

Overall, these polishes were a dream to work with and I can't wait to try more from their brand.  You can fine them on Facebook, and at their Big Cartel Store.

I bought these with my own money and all opinions are my own.

Anne Kathleen Yuletide Collection.

First off there are no words for how sorry I am that it's taken me this long to post again.  It's just been life craziness and sales craziness and now Christmas. But enough about that, onto the polish.

This is my second review of Anne Kathleen polishes and I'm so pleased with this colors.  They're the perfect sparkly Holiday colors that a girl needs. To start with I have Nieva which is a gorgeous iridescent glitter topper.

I used one coat over a red jelly polish and I loved the effect.  The glitters in here shimmer with greens, blue, purples, golds, and even pink.  The formula was a bit thick and gooey, but that's what you get with any all iridescent polish.  I think this is the perfect snow globe on the nails look. 

Aurora is next and looks like perfect freshly fallen snow, and I love it.  It's a shimmer white base with tons of small iridescent glitters.

I used three coats of this to get full coverage and then I added a coat of Nieva on the ring finger for a bit more sparkle.  How can you not want more sparkle?  The formula on this was a bit thick as well, but it was definitely manageable. 

Overall, these were great polishes to work with and you would not believe how smooth these dried.  They're like glass they're so smooth.  If you're interested in Ann Kathleen polishes check out the links below.

Store: http://annekathleen.com

FB fanpage: https://www.facebook.com/AnneKathleen.ExploreBeauty

Twitter: http://twitter.com/AnneKathleen_EB

Instagram: http://instagram.com/annekathleeneb

Pinterest: http://www.pinterest.com/AnneKathleenEB/

Spectrum Cosmetics

 *Purchased with my own money

I'm back! I didn't think I was going to have time with my new job and vacation planning, but I did. So yay!

Since it's October and the time of Halloween is fast approaching I wanted to get this post up and running.   It's Spectrum Cosmetic's Sleepy Hollow themed collection, and I know that when I think of Sleepy Hollow and Ichabod Crane that Halloween comes to mind.  Actually, Johnny Depp also comes to mind, but that's a whole other story.

There are six colors in the collection of which I have three.  The three I picked are all shimmery polishes and all equally stunning.

Ichabod-

I love this green, olive like but metallic and shimmery with a hint of grey.  It's complex and irresistible.  I did three coats although two coats would have been sufficient for full coverage. There was one small issue. When I went to apply Ichabod for the first time, it came out with some pigment lumps.  I added a couple mixing balls, gave it a good shake, and all seemed well.

Shattered Pumpkin-

There are no words for how intense this orange is.  It's flaming, it's so hot. As soon as Spectrum put up a photo of this collection I knew I had to have this color, I'm not usually one for an orange, but Shattered Pumpkin is out of this world.  I again did three thinnish coats.  The formula on this polish was a bit thick as well as also having a few pigment clumps.  I used a little thinner and some balls and got the issues straightened out. 

Headless Horseman-

This color is a bit of a mystery to me.  It looks like it could be a deep brown base, but it also could be black. Either way, the bronze shimmer in this is to die for.  This polish to me is Fall. It's leaves falling from trees, wrapping up in a blanket to read a good book, sitting down with a gigantic cup of tea.  All good things. Headless Horseman was opaque in just two coats, and didn't have the slight issues the other two colors had. 

These three colors are now staples in my Autumn nail polish collection, and I can honestly say that I didn't have a single color like them.  I urge you to go check out Spectrum Cosmetics on Etsy or on facebook.  

*Disclaimer: I bought all three polishes with my own money and all opinions given are my own.

All Holo's Eve Halloween Limited Edition Polish

I'm sad to say that this post will be my last one until the middle of November.  I recently started a new job and I'm planning my trip to Chicago.  All of that combined together doesn't leave much time to blog.  Now onto the polish fun.

Yes, I did it again.  I made another LE polish.  I was so impressed with how well Fluffy Pumpkin went over that I wanted to make a new one.  I was hit with the need to start decorating for Halloween and so I wanted to make a polish for Halloween.  All Holo's Eve is a gorgeous medium bluey purple flake polish that has flashes of pink (hard to photograph) and intense linear holographic.  I'm in love with this color that I've worn it three times.  That's a big deal for me.

Sadly, there are only two pictures I can show of this beauty.  I wanted to take more during day, but my nails broke that night.  I've had a recent bad experience with some cuticle oil I won.  I've had five nails break in the last two weeks. So not fun...

Can you see the holo in this polish?  It's scrumptious, and although you can't see it there's a pink shimmer that's to die for.   I used three coats, but it was really opaque in just two.

All Holo's Eve will be released on October 11th at noon EST, and there will be a giveaway post to go along with the release.  There will only be 30 numbered full sized bottles released, and they'll cost 10 dollars plus shipping.

My Nail Polish is Poppin's October Giveaway

Hey guys, I just wanted to let you know about a giveaway I'm a part of.  You have a chance to win two polishes of your choice from my store or a myriad of other great prizes.

a Rafflecopter giveaway