NPC: Blog sale AND Discontinued!

Hey everyone!  Look at me, getting caught up!  Wednesday's NPC prompt called for a polish from a giveaway or blog sale.  I never win giveaways (booooo), but I have been buying quite a bit from blog sales recently, so I grabbed one from someone's Storenvy sale.  After I had this on, I looked to see what today's prompt was.  It's "Discontinued", and I realized this polish works for both!  Here is Ozotic 515:

515 is a bright blue linear holographic.  It's much stronger in real life than in my pictures.  Unfortunately, the whole Ozotic line has been discontinued, so I'm glad I grabbed this in a destash!

There are two Inlinkz below since this belongs to two prompts.  Be sure to checkout everyone else's manis from the past couple days!

An InLinkz Link-up

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC: Texture

Whew!  I'm getting caught up!  Mondays NPC called for texture, so I decided to use some new "Liquid Sugar" polishes I got from Icing.  I ended up with a pretty pastel rainbow!

From cuticle to tip, these are "Dreamsicle",  "Peppermint", "Lollipop", and "Pixie Stick".  I love the sugary names!

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC: Glow In The Dark

Hi everyone!  Sorry for the absence.  My finals are over now!  Now I have a few days off, then clinical rotations start Monday!  I'm excited, but I do kind of wish I had a little more time in between to relax.  Oh, well, I guess I'll never get a break in the "real world"!

Here is my NPC from last Friday, "Glow In The Dark":

I started with a base of Elevation's "El Cap" and covered a couple accent nails with Ozotic 902.

 "El Cap" is a beautiful bluish purple with pinky-purple shimmer.  Unfortunately, the original formula is not available anymore.  There are two versions of "El Cap II", each more blue than the last.  They are great too, of course, but I loooove the original.  Ozotic 902 is a purple shimmer with a bit of blue duochrome effect.  This is part of the "Sugar" collection, and I love them all.  They look great no matter what you put them over.

For the glow in the dark effect I added Contrary Polish "West Bottoms".  This adds just the smallest amount of green with some glass fleck shimmer.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to show up in the dark!  I don't know if I needed more coats or what, but here is the best I could do.  You can see the bottle glowing at least!

This next picture is in the dark with flash, which okay, doesn't show off the GITD effect, but I really liked the way it turned out!

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 11: Least Expensive

Hi everyone!  So I'm a day behind again, but only because I posted my Mean Girls mani yesterday instead of this one!  Yesterday's nail polish challenge prompt was "Least Expensive".  Well I definitely have a few that were gifts or gifts with purchase, but I thought I'd do one of the cheapest that I actually paid for.  Sinful Colors, Wet n Wild, and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear are all great brands that can be found for about $0.99, so I went with a couple unused Sinful Colors.

"Song of Summer" is an avocado creme.  This was such a great formula for 99 cents!  This is one coat here.  I've been really into greens lately, which is odd for me.  Green and yellow are usually my two least favorite nail colors.  But I feel like this is actually neutral enough that you could wear it to work. 

My ring finger and thumb have a coat of Sinful Colors "Rain Song", a pale purple to green duochrome.  I thought this would turn out more purple, like it is in the bottle, but I guess since I layered it over green, it pulled more green.  Next time I'll have to try it over purple!

Sinful Colors can be found at Walgreens, Walmart, and other pharmacies I think.  It's usually $1.99, but Walgreens often has sales for 99 cents.  What are some of your favorite "cheap" brands?

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 10: Most Expensive

Hi girls!  Okay, I kind of love and hate this prompt.  Love it because otherwise I probably wouldn't have dared to use this precious, but hate it because I don't want to admit how much I paid for it!

Here is Enchanted Polish "Ciao Milano":

Unfortunately it was rainy and overcast when I took these pictures, so the true beauty doesn't really come out.  "Ciao Milano" is a blue-teal-purple duochrome glitter.  This is two coats over a black base.  I have a bracelet from Gosia with this polish on it and I've had people ask if it was a mood bracelet because it kept changing colors!  That's what actually started my lemming for this polish, and like other Enchanteds, it's super hard to get.  It was restocked a couple weeks ago, but I missed out on it and no one knows when the next restock will be, if there even is one!  So I bought this unopened bottle from someone in a Facebook group...for $35! :x   Worth it though!  This color is so much prettier in person!

This next picture is a little blurry, but it shows off the color-changing glitter a little more!

What's your most expensive polish?

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

Had to Have It, Still Haven't Worn It.

Hi everyone!  Okay, so I lied last night.  I didn't get my second post up.  We went out to dinner with my parents and I was so tired when we got home that I went straight to bed!  I'm exhausted today too even though I got plenty of sleep last night.  I'm not sure what's going on, but I hope it's just allergies so that when I go to the allergist on Monday we can get it sorted out!

So yesterday's NPC prompt was "Had to Have It, Still Haven't Worn It".  When I saw that, I immediately thought of the first Zoya Pixie Dust collection from last spring.  This collection came out shortly after I had a bad experience with Zoya's customer service, so even though they were available on the website, I didn't want to order them from there and risk something going wrong with my shipment.  So instead I called Ulta over and over again asking if they had the Pixie Dusts in stock yet! When they finally did, I went by and picked up most of the collection and the girl at the checkout asked if I had been the one calling about them!  Well, after wanting them so badly and having them for over a year, I've only worn one of them.  So here's Zoya "Nyx", which I had to have, but never wore:

"Nyx" is a textured grey-blue base with tons of silver shimmer.  This is two coats.  While there's a little bit of VNL in my pictures, it's not visible in real life.

I love how this sparkles and shines in the sun!

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 8: Boutique

Hi everyone!  I'm behind on my Never-ending Pile Challenge!  I don't even have a good excuse, I've just been really tired this week.  So this post should have gone up Wednesday, and I'm hoping to get another post up tonight.  Two posts in one day for you!

Today's (or Wednesday's) Challenge called for a boutique polish brand.  The definition of a boutique brand changes a bit depending on who you talk to, but to me it means a brand that is not a large wholesaler (so not OPI, Essie, etc), but is larger than an in-house hand-poured indie brand.  So some examples are I Love Nail Polish, piCture pOlish, and Rescue Beauty Lounge, which is what I used!

Here is RBL "Abi":

 "Abi" is a chartreuse creme with a hint of silver shimmer, which did not come across in my pictures.  I was surprised by how much I liked this on me.  I could not get a color-accurate picture of this.  It's much lighter and more yellow-toned than it looks in my pictures.

I decided to add some stamping with MoYou Landscape Collection plate 06 since I haven't done any in awhile.  I used Butter London "Lillibet's Jubilee", a lilac foil.  "Abi" is a bit closer to real-life color in this next photo:

Thanks for reading!  I'll try to get my next post up later tonight!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 7: Drugstore

Hey girls!  Not too much to say tonight; I am tired.  My allergies have started acting up, so I think that might be why.

Anyway, today's NPC prompt is "Drugstore".  I tried three different manis before I did one I liked enough to share.  So here is a new polish from Revlon, "Mayan Riviera":

"Mayan Riviera" is from the brand-new Haute Rocks Pebbled Texture collection.  I hadn't heard of these, but I saw a display at Walgreens and loooved the glitter, so I picked up a few.

"Mayan Riviera" is a milky-white base with green, gold, pink, blue, and silver glitter.  There's a little bit of everything in there!  This is 2-3 coats.  The glitter payoff was pretty great, but a few nails had some bald spots after two coats, so I added a third.

This is meant to be a textured polish, but I added a coat of Nail Pattern Boldness "Glitter Food" to smooth it out, and then sealed it all with Seche Vite.

 Bottle shot to see all the glittery goodness!

I'm so excited to see a drugstore brand branching out a bit more into fun glitters and textures!

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 6: Indie

Hi everyone!  Today's NPC prompt was an easy one: Indie.  I have TONS of untried indies, so I reached into my way-way-back pile and came up with Darling Diva "Space Beetle" and Colors by Llarowe "Black Gold, Texas Tea".

"Black Gold, Texas Tea" is a rich black holo.  The formula was great.  Could have been a one-coater, but I added an extra for more depth.

I don't even know where to start with "Space Beetle"; there's so much going on in this polish!  At it's base it's a silver holographic, but then there's added duochrome microshimmer, so in different lights it looks silver, brownish red, lavender, or green.

Two more polishes I'm glad I finally got around to trying!  Hope everyone out there has a good weekend!
Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 5: Jelly

Hi Girls! Hope you're having a good week!

Today's NPC prompt calls for a jelly. I originally had a totally different manicure ready to show you, but I didn't really like how it photographed. When I put this on, I realized it counted as a jelly too! Here is Contrary Polish "Make Believe Reality":

"Make Believe Reality" is a minty translucent jelly with lilac microshimmer.  Unfortunately, the shimmer didn't come out to play in my pictures, but it's beautiful in person!

"Make Believe Reality" is from the new Love Lyrics Redux collection, and can be found at llarowe.com.

Check out the other bloggers in this challenge below!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 4: Frost

Hi girls! Today's NPC called for "Frost". I knew I probably had a couple frosts, but I actually had to open my polish spreadsheet and ctrl+F to find them. The first one I found was totally dried out, boohoo. But I did find two other frosts in my Julep collection. Here is "Piper":

"Piper" is a sort of minty-sort of Robin's-egg blue frost.  The formula was really good as far as frosts go.  It didn't show brushstrokes, but did show every imperfection on the nail, as you can see on my index and middle fingers!  These next two pics show off the frostiness more.

I'm sort of conflicted about this one!  I like the color and I think it works with my skin tone, but the frostiness turns me off a bit.

I went to the Botanical garden for a health fair the day I did this mani, so I decided to add some flowers with my other frost, Julep "Sandra", and used Julep "Lexie" for the centers:

"Sandra" is a pink frost, although you can't tell in these pictures.  I can definitely see myself wearing this on my toes this summer!

What do you girls think of frost polishes?

Here is a bonus daffodil picture from the garden!

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 3: Random

Hi everyone!

Today's NPC prompt called for a random untried, so I grabbed blindly and came up with Sinful Colors "Faceted", which is a glitter top coat.  So I grabbed randomly again for something to put it over and came up with Julep "Lacey"

"Lacey" is a gorgeous midnight blue shimmer and "Faceted" has bar glitter and small hex glitter that's sort of a gold to teal duochrome color.

I'm so glad I tried "Lacey"!  My clinical rotations start next month (eep!) and I'm definitely going to have to tone down my nails when I'm on site.  "Lacey" is a perfectly professional color that still has something special to it.  I'm sure I'll be using it a lot more!

I was just going to use "Faceted" on my accent nail, but I liked it so much I decided to put it on all my fingers!

 This picture really shows off the duochrome flash of "Faceted":

Thanks for reading!

An InLinkz Link-up

NPC Day 2: Pastel

Hi girls!  Happy Wednesday!  I hope you've been having a good week!

Today's NPC called for "Pastel".  I have plenty of untried pastels, but I knew exactly which one I wanted to use today!

Check out what polishes I used after the jump!

NPC Challenge Day 1: Glitter

Hi everyone!  I'm in a Facbook called The Glittah Pirates, and today is the first day of our Never-ending Pile Challenge!

The point of the Challenge is to try some of your untried polishes that have been sitting around since the beginning of time!  Today's theme is "Glitter".  Well that's easy enough.  I just reached into my big box of untrieds and the first one I grabbed was a glitter.  Here is piCture pOlish "Mardi Gras"

"Mardi Gras" is a mix of teal, magenta, and silver glitters in a clear base.  Here I've layered one coat over Julep "Charlotte".  I could have done another coat to get more glitter coverage, but I kind of liked how it looked at one coat :)

I'm loving this glitter, but I think it would have *popped* more over a different base.  Oh well, now I know that for next time!

Thanks for reading, and I'll see you Wednesday for "Pastel"!

Checkout the other girls in this challenge below!

An InLinkz Link-up