Yes, another fashion trend is creeping into the nail world. I love the ombre trend. Not so much hair wise, but I do love it in clothes. So when I saw a tutorial for ombre nails over on The Beauty Department I knew I had to give it a try!
I settled on a purple ombre nail. After digging through my Melmer I settled on using OPI Parlez-vous OPI!?, OPI Done Out in Deco and Essie Nice is Nice. I do love the way this turned out. For how I did it check below the jump!
Katie, my fellow blogger here on The Daily Varnish, sent me some fabulous nail mail last week. It was full of all kinds of goodies including Julep Sarah. We all know I’m a bit coral crazy, but I don’t have a coral glitter so I was excited to give it a try!
Julep describes Sarah as “sheer pink coral with iridescent glitter.” That is a fairly accurate description. The base is very sheer and has a jelly finish to it. I had to use 4 coats to get an almost opaque color. This does dry to a gritty kind of finish to a thick top coat is required.
Once nice thing about this polish is I was expecting it to be hard to remove, like other glitters. But it was actually very easy to remove.
I probably wouldn’t wear this on its own again. But I am looking forward to trying this over the gazillion corals in my collection.
The glitter is hard to capture on camera. So there are a ton more pictures below the jump!
Here I have for you a red nail polish that requires one coat. No…seriously…one coat.
This is a polish that my brother picked up for me while he was in Vegas (to check out all the goodies he brought me click here). It came in a three pack of mini polishes along with Pink Me Up.
Dark Hot Red is a nice mostly neutral…might be a tad warm…red creme. The color is nothing unique or exciting but the application is amazing. I am wearing only 1 coat in the swatch, which wouldn’t be so exciting if the formula was thick or hard to work with. But it’s not! The formula was lovely. It applied very easily and evenly.
This is a great polish to have around for a quick, classic manicure.
For more info on the brush and the set this came in check out my post on Pink Me Up. There is a bottle shot below the jump!
I’ve done posts on two of the major nail art trends for Spring and Summer; Border Nails and Caviar Manicures. But not until Ke$ha tweeted a picture of this manicure did I think to merge the two trends. Generally, I try not to mix trends because it’s just too much, but I just had to try Ke$ha’s manicure.
For the border nail part of the manicure I used H&M Pink Me Up for the pale pink and outlined the nail using LA Colors Art Deco in Black. For the Caviar nail I used Maybelline Express Finish in Black Onyx.
While this manicure was interesting I didn’t really love it. It really was just too much. But it was a fun manicure to recreate!
Sometimes impulse purchases turn out really well. Some times impulse purchases turn out really bad. Unfortunately, this was an impulse purchase that turned out really bad.
I picked up these nail wraps at CVS almost a month ago. The display is what caught my eye. At first I didn’t really know what the display was selling. I thought it might be a lip tattoo and nail applique combo. Then when I picked up the Blue and Gold Star package I thought maybe it was some kind of eye jewels or shadow along with the nail appliques. Turns out, the 
only thing included in the package is the nail appliques.
After I cleared up my own confusion regarding the display and packaging, I decided to give these nail wraps a try. The price tag wasn’t bad at $6.99 and I loved the metallic look of the designs which is a look that is not possible to get with just nail polish. Unfortunately, these were just more trouble than they were worth. A full review on the application, wear and removal of these nail wraps below the jump!
Yes. I am here with yet another coral polish. I understand I have issues. But coral is just so pretty! This particular coral is from Essie’s Summer 2012 Poppy-Razzi collection. I saw the display over the weekend at CVS and just couldn’t walk away without 2 of the 4 polishes.
Camera is a gorgeous bright pink leaning coral creme. When I say bright it’s not in your face neon bright like say SinfulColors Pink, but it is bright. Brighter than the swatch indicates.
The formula was good. It’s highly pigmented and has a slight jelly feel to it. The formula reminded me an awful lot of OPI Big Hair…Big Nails. I used 3 coats and did have a slight visible nail line, but to the naked eye it is not near as apparent as in the swatch. This dried to a semi matte finish, so a shiny top coat is definitely required!
Overall I’m really happy with this nail polish. I like that it’s bright and fun but not so bright that it looks kind of crazy. Especially on a pale person like me!
And just something kind of random….I don’t love the Essie retail bottle. But, what I do love is that the name of the polish on the bottle actually matches the nail polish color. I can’t be the only one that likes that, right? If you have no clue what I’m talking about there is a picture below the jump!
The only thing I love more than France is French pastries. So yummy! I was lucky enough to recently find a bakery in Charlotte that has amazing macaroons. I posted about it over on The Daily Varnish Extra so I won’t go on about it here, but when I tweeted a picture of my fabulous macaroons I realized the color combo might make a cute manicure. I gave it a try and I did end up quite liking it!
I got 4 flavors of macaroons so I used 4 different polishes to represent each. For the strawberry, or pink, macaroons I used Color Club She’s soo Glam. For the white aka almond creme aka my favorite macaroon I used Ulta Snow White. For the lemon macaroons I used Revlon ColorStay Buttercup. And finally for the mixed berry, or purple, macaroons I used Sonia Kashuk Purple Rain.
The combination of colors was pretty and perfect for Spring. I really enjoyed wearing this manicure!
So…..border nails have kind of become the new thing. Presumably it’s going to be big a big trend for summer so I wanted to give the look a try.
One thing that is great about this trend is that it is easy! All that has to be done to achieve border nails is to draw a thin border of contrasting color around the outside of the nail. Of course, nail art polish or a nail art brush is required, but otherwise no special tools are needed.
For my first border nail manicure I used H&M Pink Me Up as the main color and outlined it in black (the nail art polish I used was LA Colors Art Deco in black). I wore it for a couple of days and even tweeted that I wasn’t so sure about the whole border nails thing.
To really know my feelings on this trend I wanted to try it with completely different colors. So for my second border nails manicure I used China Glaze Towel Boy Toy as my main color and outlined the nails in white. I can honestly say I hated that manicure!
The one great thing about this trend is it is an easy way to kind of slap a band-aid on a manicure that has seen better days. My China Glaze Towel Boy Toy manicure had a bit of tip wear bur after I slapped on the white border it looked good as new.
I’m still not totally sold on this trend. But I don’t hate it. I think it has the potential to grow on me. What do y’all think about border nails? Let me know if you give it a try! The one tip I can offer if you do plan to try this trend is the thinner the lines around the nail the better.
Tons more pictures below the jump 
In honor of Katie’s semi rant like tweet regarding neons I thought I’d put on one of my favorite neons! Towel Boy Toy is from China Glaze’s Summer 2010 Poolside collection. The first time I did a post on this polish I was in Malibu on vacation so my swatch really didn’t do it justice. I’ve always wanted to reswatch this polish. Yes it’s 2 years later, but better late than never, right?
Towel Boy Toy is a very bright blue with subtle shimmer. It is a neon but it’s not as bright as most neons. The formula is a bit thin, so three coats are definitely required to get an opaque color. Because this polish is a neon a shiny top coat is definitely required! I used Rush 60 Second high shine top coat.
Why China Glaze Towel Boy Toy is a favorite: The color! It’s just pretty and a great manicure for the hot summer months.
Check out the macro shot below the jump to really see the shimmer
If you caught my Vegas nail polish haul post over on TDVE you already know this but for those of you who didn’t….my brother is super awesome and picked me up a bunch of polish from H&M while he was in Vegas (Charlotte doesn’t have an H&M…yet…sadface).
One of the things he picked me up was a super cute mini set with three (.1 fl oz) polishes. Pink Me Up is the first of the polishes I have tried. It’s a very flattering pale pink creme. For being such a light pink the formula was actually pretty good. The first coat was super streaky but it evened out after three.
This color isn’t necessarily my cup of tea but it’s always good to have a good conservative pink in your collection. Plus, my skintone is so pink, this is almost mannequin hands for me!
For pictures of the mini set, bottle, brush, etc check below the jump!
