Essie: A Cut Above

I completely broke down and picked up two of the sequin top coats from Essie's Luxeffects line. I have been lusting after A Cut Above and Stroke of Brilliance for months now, but couldn't justify buying glitter polish when I don't wear it as often and I dislike the removal process immensely. However, both are so pretty in the bottle itself and the swatches I've seen make them both look so versatile, so I decided to end the cycle of denial and want, once and for all.

Here I have A Cut Above layered over Orly's Faint of Heart. Excuse the dryness seen, yesterday involved a lot of hand washing using soap that just draws all the moisture out of my skin. The soap was just too rough and there was no other alternatives.

A Cut Above is a rose toned pink glitter that consists of small round glitter plus hexagonal  glitter of differing sizes in a clear base. I only needed to use one coat to get the coverage seen in the photo. The application was nice although the glitter did move around a bit for me, but at least the glitter wasn't sparse on the brush. I also like the fact that the clear base wasn't a thick, gooey mess.

I don't go out of my way to choose Essie nail polishes most of the time because I don't prefer their formula or brush, but the Luxeffects collection has been really eye catching. I suppose it's about time I finally jumped on this bandwagon.

butterLONDON: Scuppered

I was totally naughty this past weekend and splurged on nail polish that I shouldn't have had. But my weakness is metallic foil types of polishes and when I came across butterLONDON's new holiday collection, I couldn't help but browse and fall in love. Most of the collection were glitter polishes, except for two, Scuppered and Jack the Lad, which are described as shimmers.

Scuppered is a deep copper foil with underlinings of magenta, plus two sizes of green glitter laced through. Can you see why I couldn't help myself? I never thought I'd be describing this combination of colors in one polish! There's so much going on with it, I had a hard time getting my camera to focus for photographs. The level of shimmer is also fantastic on this one, especially under sunlight.

The formula for this one is quite nice, if a bit on the thick side. But it did not at any point turn into a goopy mess for me. I did need a total of three coats for complete opacity, however, the drying time wasn't too long so it didn't prolong my manicure session.

When my nails catches the light just right, I can definitely see all the facets of Scuppered in play. It's such a pretty shade for fall and winter. I am just charmed with  it. I may be out $14 but I think Scuppered was completely worth it.

Revlon Nail Art Stencils: Stars

Today I have for you Revlon's Stars stencils! This time, I decided to use some shades from Orly's Cool Romance collection, which just came in the mail from HauteLook. I should probably just get rid of the app on my phone to prevent impulse buys like that one. After testing out the stencils a couple of times, the the result was certainly not what I had expected.

For my base layer, I used Orly's Artificial Sweetener and the Stars are done with Orly's Steel Your Heart.
I found that positioning the stars in a slight diagonal like I did in the photo below, looked the best. One of the downfalls with this particular stencil is that the star points do not turn out consistent, especially for the smaller star. When I look at the stencil itself, the star points all appear nice and even, but once I used it and peeled it away, I had points that are shorter or thicker.

I would have to say that this stencil didn't impress me as much as the bow stencil did. Although the outcome was admittedly cute, I had expected a sharper looking stars than what I ended up with.

If you want to give this stencil a go yourself, it will only cost you about $5. I purchased mine at my local Walgreens.

bareMinerals READY: Touch Up Veil

I have been a long time customer of bareMinerals. I've been using their mineral foundations since I was in high school along with their mineral veil. To this day, I still use their mineral veil to finish off my foundation routine, no matter if I'm using mineral, liquid, or cream foundation. So when I finally finished the last bit of my mineral veil, I decided to try bareMinerals Ready Touch Up Veil, which from what I understand is the pressed version of their mineral veil.

NYX Girls: Dreamy Glitter

Today, I have quite a cute and fun glitter to showcase. I personally like the NYX Girls line of nail polish a great deal and I am very excited that a local store is now carrying nearly the entire selection of polish shades. I have no idea why, but this particular stores sells them for only $1.25 a pop, but I'm not going to complain about quality nail polish for cheap.

Dreamy Glitter is a mixture of iridescent tiny round and hexagonal glitters, plus pale pink star shaped glitters all suspended in a clear base. The coverage is rather thin even though the formula is thick so you could definitely end up in a situation where you brush off all the glitter you had just applied trying to place those bigger star shaped glitters. In addition, those star glitters are tricky to coax out of the bottle as well. What is great about the formula is that there's enough time to work with the glitter since the clear base won't quickly turn into a streaky or gooey mess. That does mean that there is a bit more drying time needed, but not much.

Since I would usually automatically want to layer glitters like this over pastel type of colors, I decided to try the opposite. My base is Revlon Colorstay in Midnight, a deep teal creme. Although, I love the effect, photographing the color was a pain since teal type shades never come out true for me. However, in person, the combination is so whimsical and cute. The iridescent tone of the glitter takes on more of a golden and greenish glow because of my base shade. I did have to apply 2 to 3 layers of topcoat  though, which sounds excessive but the points on those stars are persistent in poking through and that can lead to the star glitter peeling off partially once a point gets caught on clothing and such.

If you're ever in San Francisco, I suggest you visit the Variety Shop, where I purchased my NYX polish and most of all my other NYX cosmetics too. L.A. Cosmetics and Red Cherry lashes are also available there among the hundred other random things they sell. They also have a second store a few blocks away on 7th Avenue which is just a newer version of their original store.