EC's New Year's Eve mani!

New Year's Eve manicure, the finished product!

As promised, here's my NYE mani. The amusing thing is, I'm not even going anywhere tonight. The BF and I are just hanging out. But I thought I should at least have sparkly nails! This combo is two coats of a LE L'Oreal polish called Silver Star. I got this maybe 2 or 3 years ago, so it's definitely not available. I do know that Fingerpaints has a silver that looks just like this called Easel Come, Easel Go, sold at Sally Beauty Supply. Then I applied two coats of China Glaze Nova (see pictures of Nova alone in my post about the CG glitters). This combo reminds me of a disco ball! All pictures are with flash, there was no natural light left when I got to this today!

L'Oreal Silver Star alone, two coats



Happy New Year to all the nail fanatics out there and thanks for reading!!!

P.S. Good news- the Nubar Prisms (a.k.a. HOLOGRAPHIC) collection is available for purchase now! Check it OUT!

Cold Outside? Top Hand and Nail Tips for Winter!

Ahhhhh lovely Connecticut. It's currently pouring snow outside and quite cold. I don't know if any of you readers are lucky enough to live somewhere warm, but for the rest of you, here's a post about how to keep your hands and nails in good shape during the long cold winter!!

Tip #1 WEAR GLOVES!
This tip is probably the most important. You MUST wear gloves/mittens/glittens (lol) when you go outside during the winter. Even if it "doesn't look cold out" or "I'm only going out for a minute". All of the hand cream in the world will not help you if you don't wear gloves! To help you remember to wear gloves, keep them in a highly visible area right by the door. If there isn't somewhere to keep them near the door, put a pair of gloves in your purse. I don't know many women who leave the house without their purse, so you should always have a pair of gloves! Find a stylish pair on Zappos!

Tip #2 HAND CREAM!!!
This one seems obvious, but I have a few tips within a tip here. First, before you put on the aforementioned gloves, put on a nice layer of hand cream. Then, put on your gloves and leave them on until you reach your destination. When you remove the gloves- taaa daaa! Moisturized hands! Second, keep various hand creams near you all day. Many stores (such as Bed, Bath, and Beyond) sell small or travel-sized hand creams. Buy several and keep them in your purse, car, at your desk at work, next to your computer at home, near wherever you watch TV at home, and next to all the sinks in your home. This brings me to my next tip!

Tip #3 MOISTURIZING HAND SOAP!
I know the temptation these days is to use anti-bacterial hand soap. However, most of them are very drying, and doctors say regular soap and warm water with vigorous washing gets rid of germs the same as anti-bacterial soap. My favorite moisturizing hand soap comes from The Body Shop. This time of year, I love their Merry Cranberry hand soap. A little later in the winter, I'll probably be washing with Satsuma hand soap. See both of these products in a cute sink-side set, including hand cream, here. If you're looking for something a bit cheaper, try Softsoap Milk Protein and Honey hand soap (available at drugstores and supermarkets).

Tip #4 WEAR NAIL POLISH
Ha! Like I have to talk you into this one! Seriously though, nail polish locks moisture into your nails. In the winter, this is even more important. Moisturized nails are healthy nails. If you don't have time to fix chipped polish, try wearing just a base coat on your nails. I'm currently loving Sally Hansen Nail Quencher Hydrating Base Coat. As an added bonus, this base coat has completely prevented any staining from dark or heavily pigmented polishes.

Tip #5 CUTICLE OIL
You know how you start using heavier face creams in the winter? Same thing with your nails. If you don't usually use a cuticle oil, you should definitely try one during the winter. Nothing moisturizes like an oil. My favorite cuticle oil is Creative Nail Design's Solar Oil. It smooths cuticles, smells like almond cookies, and also dries your polish quicker! Buy it at 8ty8beauty. Nubar also has a variety of oils that I have yet to try, but you can bet I'll be ordering one or two very soon! Look for a review on this oil soon.

Hope these tips help, especially on a snowy day like today!
Happy New Year's Eve! Stay tuned for my New Year's Eve manicure later today!!!

Intro to Nubar!

This is EK's first post on this blog ever. Hello, everyone!

So for my birthday EC bought me just about my favorite present ever: polish by NUBAR!! Two from Nubar's Going Green collection and three from the Chocolate Truffles collection. Let me just say this right now: WOW! I loooove these! The formula was great- thinner, almost more liquid-y than that of China glaze or OPI, but it applied beautifully. Each one was perfectly opaque after just two coats and was so shiny it didn't even need an additional top coat. These are basically my new favorite polishes EVER.

EC's note- Nubar nail lacquers are free of formaldehyde, toluene, and DBP (phthalate), like Zoya polishes. They are also certified (by PETA) vegan and cruelty-free.

So here we go!
From Going Green:
Reclaim
Absolutely beautiful, the holo showed up in almost every light. I couldn't stop staring at it while at work!

Reclaim (mattified!)

I was really hoping for some holo to show through but I was only slightly disappointed. Though there isn't any holo or sparkle, I love the frosty matte green that Reclaim becomes when mattified! I used China Glaze Matte Magic to mattify Reclaim.


Wildlife

This one is TOTALLY my favorite! I couldn't capture the intense duochrome that's present in this polish but HOLY COW this perfectly captures all the elements of wildlife in a bottle; green, browns, gold, even purple in some lights. The formula was so smooth and was perfectly opaque in 2 coats. I'll probably dream of this polish<3


Chocolate Truffles:
Chocolate Caramel
This polish was one of my favorites. I don't have many brown polishes, but I sure am glad I have this one! Constantly sparkling and shimmering, this caramel color made me crave chocolate!

Cherry Cordial
Loved. This. This was a light brown with a slight purpley-gold duochrome when it catches the light. So beautiful. It makes me think of the chocolate-covered cherries I got for Christmas!

Raspberry Truffle

I cannot describe how ultra gorgeous this polish is. The deep purple base had teeny pinkish-purple glitters in it that made the polish look like it was glowing, almost like embers in a fire. So beautiful.

Nubar polishes dried fairly quickly, as well as super shiny. I would definitely recommend a nice top coat, though, if you work a lot with your hands...my typing gave it a little bit of tipwear. Other than that, these are my new faves! So shiny, I kept getting distracted when doing something! Love them.

Nubar Nail Lacquer can be found at Nubar for $7.49.

Zoya Reverie Spring 2010 preview!

I am fortunate enough to have these promotional pictures of the Zoya Reverie Spring 2010 collection! These were sent to me by my media contact at Zoya, Erin Giddings-
ART OF BEAUTY ZOYA – QTICA – QTICA SMART SPA www.artofbeauty.com.

The Reverie collection features six gorgeous spring colors:
Laney - moonlit silver metallic
Adina - duochrome violet metallic
Reece - gilded rose metallic
Happi - pink blush metallic
Gwin - sunny melon metallic (featured in the above picture)
Lana - rich red metallic

Like Zoya's other nail lacquers, the Reverie collection is long-wearing and free of toluene, camphor, formaldehyde and dibutyl phthalate. And now for the preview pictures!

Reece

Adina

Laney

Happi

Lana

Now for the polish featured in that beautiful promotional picture-
Gwin

These spring beauties will be available in January on Art of Beauty. I personally can't wait and plan to order them all! I love spring collections, they always seem so happy! I am most excited for Gwin, Reece, and Adina. I love duochromes and purple, so Adina is right up my alley! It looks like Reece has that little bit of duochrome I saw in other Zoya polishes. It seems like the gold in it will really show up nicely!

What do you think of these? Which ones will you be ordering?

An Introduction to Zoya Polish, Part I

I know there are a lot of nail polish lovers out there who have yet to hear of a little company called Zoya. I know this because I myself am very new to Zoya polish. Zoya is only sold on Art Of Beauty or in very exclusive salons and spas, so you can't just run to your local Ulta and grab a few bottles. However, I am going to show/tell you why ordering these polishes online is SO worth the shipping cost!!

Zoya nail polish is natural and free of formaldehyde, toulene, dibutyl phthalate and camphor. They have over 300 gorgeous colors to choose from and the polish has been voted the longest lasting natural polish by various magazines. Zoya also releases four seasonal collections a year. Need another reason to try their polish? They very often have AMAZING deals and offers, such as their recent Black Friday deal, or should I say Green Friday? On Black Friday (the Friday after Thanksgiving), if you ordered $20 or more from Art of Beauty, you received SIX, yes I said SIX, FREE green Zoya polishes. Let me repeat. SIX. FREE. GREEN. How would I pass that up?

So, without further ado, here are the SIX FREE GREEN Zoya polishes I got with my Green Friday order (all pictures taken with no flash unless otherwise noted).

Zoya Suvi, two coats

Suvi is a dark green shimmer. Although it is very dark, it is definitely green in all lights and never looks black. Application is just smooth like butter and amazing. I love this polish, it reminds me of gardens (shimmery gardens?). I took one picture with flash to show the shimmer-

Zoya Suvi w/flash

Zoya Veruschka w/flash, two coats

Veruschka is one of Zoya's Matte Velvet polishes. Matte Velvet means the polish is a matte finish, but has some shimmer to it. I think the above picture shows you what that looks like pretty well. Zoya's Matte Velvets are kind of similar to OPI's Suede finish polishes, except the Zoya polishes contain finer shimmer. Veruschka is just gorgeous in my opinion. Stunning. Unlike other matte polishes I have tried, this one actually wears very well. My mom is like the ultimate wear-tester. She washes her hands constantly, is always doing things with her hands, etc. This polish lasted about three days on her with only minor tipwear and no chipping! Mattes usually are good for a day or less. Application was great on this as well! Sometimes mattes dries so quickly you can't apply evenly, but this one had no such trouble. Definitely a new favorite of mine.

Zoya Veruschka w/flash

Zoya Irene, two coats

Irene is yet another gorgeous green. This is a kind of army green shimmer, with a little bit of duochrome effect. The duochrome is very slight golden/orangey tint, but adds a very interesting twist to this polish. I don't own anything like this polish. Application and wear were fantastic on this one as well.

Zoya Irene

Zoya Midori w/flash, two coats

Ahhh Midori. I just LOVE this color. I remember when Midori was first advertising a lot. I loved the color of the drink back then, and I don't even drink. Thank goodness somebody turned it into a polish! I think the picture with flash shows the shimmer the best, but it makes the color a little brighter. The color of the polish in the no flash picture isn't really right either. It's too dark and flat. This is one of those polishes that doesn't show up properly on camera. But if you love green or unusual polish colors, ORDER MIDORI NOW! Application and wear were wonderful!

Zoya Midori

Zoya Tangy, three coats

If you like Midori as much as I do, you'll probably like it's lighter, more yellow cousin Tangy. Oh, I had a little party when I saw Tangy, I'll admit it. I'm sure this polish isn't flattering on everyone's skin tone, but I choose polish colors that I love, not that flatter my skin LOL. This is a very bright, yellow-green shimmer with a little of the duochrome effect that Irene had. Very slight, but it's there and adds dimension to the polish. I did three coats with this one because two wasn't quite opaque enough for my liking. Application and wear lovely, like the others.

Zoya Tangy

Zoya Envy, two coats

Last, but not least, is Envy. Envy is a dark green creme. In some lights, it could appear almost black, but I found it looked green the vast majority of the time. If I had to pick a least favorite of all of these greens, Envy would probably be it. But only because I am not really a huge fan of cremes. This polish is still gorgeous and fills a need for a dark green creme that doesn't venture into blue or teal territory. Application and wear were good. I always think cremes are harder to apply than shimmers for some reason, but as cremes go, the formula on this was excellent. I took these pictures next to a window, but the sun was going away, so this one is a bit blurry. Lovely Connecticut, we have like 4 hours of sunlight a day right now.


Overall, I got six polishes for free and am absolutely in love with every single one! The formula on these is fantastic, the wear time is definitely as good as OPI, if not better, and these colors are drool-worthy! These six polishes are my first experience with Zoya and I have already fallen in love with the company. I can't wait for their next seasonal release! buy Zoya polish at Art Of Beauty! I also recommend following Zoya on Twitter and becoming a fan on Facebook if you want to hear about amazing offers like the Green Friday deal.

Next up... Zoya Intro Part II, seven non-green Zoya polishes! (yes, I already have 13 Zoyas and I just started ordering from them the day after Thanksgiving).

Last Minute Gift Ideas!

If you're looking for some last minute stocking stuffers for the nail polish lover in your life, why not pick up a mini polish set?
A great choice is Color Club's set of four mini holiday-themed polishes.


Color Club Wonderland Holiday minis

This set includes Under the Mistletoe, Yule Love It, Wonderland, and a clear top coat and is $7.95 for four .25fl oz. polishes. Pictures taken without flash, unless otherwise noted.


Under the Mistletoe

Under the Mistletoe is my favorite of this collection. It is a light, bright, springy green jelly base with small, dense glitter packed into the polish. I love this for Christmas, it's kind of a fresh alternative to the same old Christmas colors, but I think I'll also be sporting this come springtime.
This is three coats. The polish was even on two coats, I only went with three for a little more opacity. I loved this so much, I didn't want to take it off to review the other colors!


more Under the Mistletoe


Wonderland

Wonderland is probably my least favorite in this set, but it is still pretty nice for the holidays. Wonderland is small, dense silver glitter packed into a clear base. I think for me personally, this would be best as a topcoat over another color. That's just me, I hate sheer polish. It is nice and sparkly and like Under the Mistletoe, it goes on very evenly. This is three coats.


Yule Love It

Yule Love It- Color Club is right, I LOVE it!! This one is pretty much tied with Under the Mistletoe for first place in this collection. Sadly, my pictures don't really capture how gorgeous it is! The real color of this polish is much brighter, almost glowing. Yule Love It is the same small, dense glitter of the other two in a red/pink jelly base. This definitely leans pinkish (kind of magenta actually), so it has the same "alternative Christmas" feeling as Under the Mistletoe. I will definitely wear it all year long. My mom picked this as her Christmas day polish! This is just two coats.

The top coat included in this set is pretty good! Decent drying time, nice shine, and held up very well over a few days. It's not super fast dry like Seche Vite, but that makes it last longer. In all of these pictures, I have one coat of the included Color Club topcoat over the polish. This set is available at a Beauty Plus Salon in a mall near you.

If no stores near you sell Color Club, I also received a Sally Hansen Salon mini polish set that is available in drugstores. It includes four Sally Hansen Salon Mini Nail Lacquers, plus a top coat. My set was the "dark" set and contained a navy blue, deep red, medium red, and an almost black purple. All of the polishes are shimmery and great for the holidays. I have yet to try this set, but Sally Hansen Salon Nail Lacquers are always long-lasting and opaque in two coats. These sets are $9.99 for five .17fl oz. polishes and are available at a CVS near you.

Just want to let you know about a few great posts coming up on the blog:

China Glaze Glitters Part Two

An Introduction to Zoya Polish

Non-polish: Lush Cupcake Face Mask

and.... OUR FIRST EVER CONTEST! So stay tuned!

HAPPY HOLIDAYS TO ALL (hope you get lots of polish!)

China Glaze Glitters Part 1!!

Finally, I have swatches of some of the China Glaze Specialty Collection (a.k.a. GLITTERS!!!!!). This collection features 50 glitter and chrome polishes that China Glaze is releasing a handful at a time. This combines two of my favorite things in the polish world- China Glaze and GLITTER!
If you're not familiar with China Glaze polish, hurry up and buy some!! China Glaze has a huge range of amazing colors to suit any polish taste and has a long-lasting, easy to apply formula. The company really seems to listen to polish fanatics as well. They constantly include green polishes in their collections and even re-released an old collection (The Wizard of Ooh Ahz) due to fanatic demand.

Before we get into the amazing glitters, a quick note about the pictures- I do realize that some of these are blurry. However, with glitter polish, it usually seems that the best way to capture both the color and glittery-ness is in a blurry picture. Also, my fingers look really red in some of these, but I was afraid to do anything about that because I thought it was more important to show an accurate picture of the polish color, as you're not planning on buying my fingers. All pictures were taken with no flash standing next to a window, unless otherwise noted. All polishes are shown with Seche Vite top coat. And now, the glitter bombs!


Nova with flash

First up is Nova, a silver glitter polish with small and medium size glitter pieces. The medium size pieces are those gorgeous holo/color changing glitters that make the glitter look like rainbows. Nova can easily be worn alone (this is three coats) or as a topcoat. I am planning on wearing this over a silver polish for New Year's Eve!


Nova close-up

I think the above picture really shows the rainbow-y effect, as well as the size of the glitter.



Meteor Shower

Next up is Meteor Shower. This is a dark blue polish with silver glitter. EK and I were really excited for this one. However, the dark polish kind of hides a lot of the glitter, so it's not quite as glittery as I would like. With that said, once you are aware that it's not the glitter bomb of the year, this is still quite a pretty polish. I did two coats of polish for these pictures, but if you can manage to evenly cover your nail in one coat, this glitter might show up better.


Meteor Shower close-up



Medallion

Now for an EK/EC favorite- Medallion. Medallion is a bit like Nova in that it contains two different sizes of glitter. Medallion, however, contains more of the small glitter and that makes it a better stand alone polish than Nova. EK and I wear this one alone all the time (this is three coats). It also looks great over another polish, see below one coat of Medallion over two coats of Barielle Pin-Up (this would be a great holiday look).


Medallion over Barielle Pin-Up


Medallion close-up



Luna with flash

Next up is another favorite, Luna. Luna is a blue-ish silver polish with the same medium holo-ish glitter as Nova. If you took the glitter out of this one, it would be a frost finish blue-ish silver. With the glitter, it is just gorgeous. I had a really hard time capturing this color on camera however. I don't think my picture quite does it justice (shown with two coats)!



Carnival Lights

I don't know how many favorites we're allowed to have in one collection, but Carnival Lights is yet another favorite! I really love this polish!!!! This is a deep pink, almost mauve, jelly polish with the same medium size holographic glitter as Luna and Nova. This is a little bit sheer (shown with three coats) and normally I hate anything sheer, but I just love this color with this size glitter and the jelly finish of the base. Stunning!



Bad Kitty

To be totally honest, I am fairly certain EK and I bought this next polish just for the name. Bad Kitty is a sheer hot pink jelly base with small iridescent glitter pieces. I like this color and glitter combination a lot, but it is pretty sheer (shown with three coats). If you don't mind sheer polishes, this is gorgeous!


more Bad Kitty


Overall, I love China Glaze for giving us so many amazing glitters!! Some of these polishes have worked their way into very regular wear for both of us. EK wears Medallion just about every third mani LOL. Since we purchased these polishes, I have worn one at least once a week, every week.
Now, the semi-bad news, these do not seem to last as long as the regular China Glaze polishes. I don't know why that would be, but I have experienced significantly less wear time with the glitters. They are also, like all glitters, a real pain to remove.
The good news is that these are gorgeous enough to put up with both of the factors if you, like us, LOVE glitter!!!! These polishes also dry very quickly, so they're great for the holidays when you're rushing around like a maniac, but you still want some sparkle!

Stay tuned for Part Two of the China Glaze glitters, including Blue Hawaiian, Dollhouse(<3), Ginger, Cosmic, and Electric Lilac!

Some China Glaze glitters can be purchased at your local Sally Beauty Supply (Find One), or view the whole collection at 8ty8beauty.

Les Impressions de Chanel for Spring 2010

Just heard about the polish in the Spring 2010 Chanel collection and thought I'd share quickly. The collection is called Les Impressions de Chanel for Spring 2010 and is filled with soft neutrals and natural-looking make-up.
Chanel is quite often a driving force in the world of nail trends. And for those of us who love bright colors, glitter, and green polish, I have bad news for you.
The nail trend for spring is nude/beige nails that almost match your skin tone! This trend is being seen on the runways of many top designers. Marc Jacobs, for example, had all of his models wear a different OPI nude polish to match their skin tone.
So it is not too surprising that Chanel's spring polishes are right in with this trend. The colors are:

Inattendu (nude)
Tendresse (pale pink)
Particuliere (medium grey-brown)

The only one I am at all interested in is Particuliere. It looks like a darker grey than any of the greys I already own, and it might be interesting. Grey was big last spring as well. I'm not over the grey trend yet, so I'm glad to see it back.
This collection should be available at Chanel counters sometime in January and online at Chanel.

How do you feel about nude nails? Are you excited for any of these Chanel polishes?

Edit: Temptalia, a great blog about make-up and beauty products, has nail swatches of Inattendu and Tendresse. Check them out here!
And here's Particuliere

Review: Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat

Seche Vite is a much written about top coat in the world of nail blogs. I bought this product at my local Sally Beauty Supply store after realizing that almost every nail blogger out there uses Seche Vite as a top coat. It isn't the cheapest top coat around, with some places selling it for $8.99 or even $9.99.

The Good News about Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat:
Seche Vite really lives up to it's "Dry Fast" name. It dries to the touch in about two minutes and seems to dry completely (to the point where you can resume all normal activity) in about 20 minutes or less. Seche Vite Dry Fast Top Coat is also very shiny and smooth. Polish immediately looks better with a coat of Seche Vite. Glitter polishes lose their chunky, bumpy feel with a coat (or two coats if it is a super chunky glitter) of Seche Vite.

The Bad News:


Tip wear after about 36 hours!

This is a picture of my nails with three thin coats of OPI Shim-merry Chic and one coat of Seche Vite. This picture was taken after only 36 hours of normal wear. I find this to be pretty typical wear time for Seche Vite. If you're looking for your manicure to last for 10 days or even 5 days, this is not the top coat for you. I have found that Seche Vite seems to last the longest with Essie nail polish. I have no idea why that would be, but my manicures with Essie polishes and Seche seem to last about 3 days, whereas OPI/China Glaze and Seche last about a day and a half. You can see in the picture that the tip wear isn't horrible, but I can't stand tip wear or chips at all! If I see tip wear, the polish comes off ASAP.

Overall, I see why this is a popular top coat amongst nail bloggers. It dries very quickly and is super shiny. Nail bloggers (myself included) change their polish daily or more often, so they aren't concerned about wear time.
For the average nail polish consumer, I'm sure there is a better option for long-wearing manicures! I will be testing several other top coats in search of a longer lasting mani, so I'll keep you posted.

Seche Vite is available at a Sally Beauty Supply near you or online at Transdesign.

Polish News

No reviews today. I am working on a post with a bunch of the glitters from the China Glaze Specialty collection. But I wanted to share some news I heard about two OPI collections coming up in Spring 2010.

The first one is the Hong Kong collection. In the past, OPI has released collections inspired by places such as India and Russia. This time the inspiration is Hong Kong. Now I have yet to see any pictures but one of the polishes is named Jade Is The New Black!! Sounds promising for us green lovers!

The next collection I heard about is Alice in Wonderland. This collection features two reds- a red shimmer and a bright red creme. BUT, this collection also has a blue glitter and a black-multi glitter! Yay for OPI giving us glitter! This collection will be available January 2010 in stores like Ulta.

What do you think about this news? Are you excited for these upcoming collections?

OPI Holiday Wishes

OPI releases a holiday collection every year, and every year it's filled with tons of red polishes (a pretty common choice for holiday nails), but they also include a few stunning shades that never fail to impress me.
This year's collection consisted of 12 polishes (6 of the 12 are reds):

Dear Santa- medium red with glitter
Smitten with Mittens- dark red with glitter
Comet Loves Cupid- bright red creme
Glove You So Much- shimmery deep red wine
Meet and Jingle- shimmery red
Crimson Carol- cool-toned red with microglitter
Holiday Glow- chocolate-y base with lots of small glitter
Ginger Bells- dark ginger creme (think of deeper colored gingerbread men)
Shim-merry Chic- bronze-y tan with glitter and iridescent flakes
All A-Bordeaux The Sled- a very dark brown/red creme, looks more brown than red
Sapphire in the Snow- purple-y blue creme
Merry Midnight- purple base with glitter and iridescent flakes


EK and I decided to purchase Smitten with Mittens, Shim-merry Chic and Merry Midnight. I later received Holiday Glow as a birthday present (thanks Ally!). I can tell you that Smitten with Mittens is a lovely sparkly red with very fine glitter. Pictures of Smitten with Mittens will have to wait until next week, as EK has it right now and her camera is MIA.
Now, on to the other three! All three polishes are shown with three coats of color and one coat of Seche Vite top coat. They looked fine with two coats of color as well, but I thought the third coat really brought out the sparkle in these!


Shim-merry Chic with flash

Shim-merry Chic is a gorgeous bronze/tan/gold polish with very fine glitter and large iridescent flakes. From any distance, this polish is a nice neutral color, very suitable for most work environments. But, up close, you can see the gorgeous rainbow-like flakes in the polish, making it an exciting color as well.


Shim-merry Chic indoors with flash

The picture to the left is a very accurate representation of the color of Shim-merry Chic. This polish is totally unique in my collection, due to the flakes and fine glitter. Shim-merry Chic is an excellent choice for those who like classic, neutral shades with some added interest!

Holiday Glow is another unique polish from this collection. I would describe this as a chocolate colored base with lots of silvery glitter, although OPI describes it as a charcoal polish with silvery glitter. When I look at Holiday Glow, I just think of delicious chocolate and I get a little hungry LOL!


Holiday Glow indoors with flash

This is another accurate picture of the color, it looks yummy doesn't it? Again, this is totally unique in my collection, gorgeous and really trendy for fall and winter.

And now... last, but definitely not the least, Merry Midnight!


Merry Midnight with flash

Merry Midnight is a stunning deep plummy purple polish with the same fine glitter and iridescent flakes as Shim-merry Chic. Purple with any glitter is a winning combination for me. Purple with glitter and shimmery flakes? FAVORITE POLISH OF THE SEASON! This is clearly a unique shade, no question there. The flakes are more visible in this polish than they are in Shim-merry Chic, since the base is dark and the flakes are lighter. I took a blurry picture with no flash that I think shows the size of the flakes best-


Flakes, no flash!!

This polish is a Must Have for this season. Personally, I would probably wear this on my tips in the fall, winter and spring, and on my toes year round!

Overall, the OPI Holiday Wishes collection features a few winners, as shown here, and six sparkly reds. Sparkly reds are always good, but eventually you will own enough of them and they become a little boring. Shim-merry Chic, Holiday Glow, and Merry Midnight are unique polishes that are great options for every polish lover, from the trendsetters to the more reserved nail fanatics.

Review: Lush Lemony Flutter Cuticle Butter

Lush Lemony Flutter Cuticle Butter

After reading countless glowing reviews of Lush's Lemony Flutter Cuticle Butter, I decided to drop the $13.25 on it during my most recent trip to the Lush store. Lemony Flutter comes in a 1.5 oz. black tub and the product is very rich, so you can make one tub last quite awhile.
The Good News about Lemony Flutter:
This product really seems to heal dry cuticles. I've been applying it at night before bed and waking up in the morning to much smoother, more moisturized cuticles. It is a great product to use at night for deep moisturizing, as it is very rich and creamy.


Looks so creamy and delicious! But...

The Bad News:
Lemony Flutter is very rich and kind of greasy for daytime use. It smells very strongly of lemon... and... something else...
My mom thinks it smells like Bandaids. I say it smells like elephant poop (or maybe the circus, in my mind the two smells are connected). Whatever it is, there's definitely an extra, rather unpleasant smell in there. That's the other reason I've been using it at night- so I don't have to deal with the smell!

Overall, I think you need to smell this BEFORE you buy it. If you can handle the lemony Bandaid/elephant poop, this is a great product for dry, rough cuticles. Personally, I think I'll keep searching for the perfect cuticle treatment.

Buy Lush's Lemony Flutter Cuticle Butter at a Lush store near you (find one) or online at Lush.

Quick note- I know the pictures are huuuughnormous when you click on them. I should have that fixed in a day or two.