Packing up and moving (to a new blogger blog)

Hey there! Just wanted to let you know that I have started a new blog which is geared toward both makeup AND nail polish. I liked the title better, and it actually matches my blogger address, so I will be posting there from now on. Please come and visit!

Made Up and Polished


I hope to see you there!

-Jackie

Bloglovin

I am now on bloglovin, a directory of all kinds of blogs. It's a great place to find blogs about anything you are looking for.
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My first Julep Maven box!

I got my first Julep Maven box in the mail a few days ago. I have to say that I am impressed!

So, for my $19.99 (actually I had a coupon so I think this was $5 making it an even better deal) I got 2 full size nail polishes, in Anne (the purple creme) and Maria (pink foil). Their polishes sell for $14 a piece so it's already paid for itself and then some. And these are colors I will actually wear. Also pictured is a sample of their hand cream that was also in the box.

In addition to the polishes and the sample, I got a full sized Glow On Age Defying Hand Brightener. That sells for $32. I have yet to use it but it does smell good. I have a few other hand creams I want to use before starting another.

I am very happy with this Maven box. The polishes apply very nicely, 2 coats was perfect coverage. I am sure that since this was in introductory box it's a worth a bit more than the regular monthly boxes will be, in fact I decided to skip on my first regular box. But that's part of the beauty of this program, if you don't like the box they are going to send you for the next month they give you plenty of time to skip it and not be charged for that month. You also have the option to send it to a friend as a gift or choose a different box.

Here is my referral link if you would like to check it out and take a look around their site.
Julpe Maven

Hurry Up and Enter today!! Valentine Kisses Mega Giveaway

click here to visit Valentine Kisses and enter the mega giveaway

I was making my regular visits to the blogs I follow and looking for some new ones and found this great giveaway (not to mention a great blog to follow). Entries end today, so hurry up and do a little reading while you're over there!

2 Dupe Options for Zoya Phoebe

I am assuming that Phoebe has been discontinued, since it's no longer on Zoya's site and I've seen it clearanced out at a few Ulta stores. But if you didn't get a chance to grab one I found a couple ways to duplicate it.

Phoebe can be recreated by using a matte topcoat over either Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Brisk Blue or SH Xtreme Wear in Blue Me Away! Blue Me Away! Is definitely a more true dup, the Brisk Blue comes up a little lighter. BTW I am using Hard Candy Matte-ly In Love over the two Sally Hansen polishes.

So there you see. If you didn't catch it while you could but you want the look of Zoya Phoebe, you now have a couple of easy drugstore duplicates! And even though there is an extra step it's actually a little easier. I had to apply 4 coats of the Zoya, but did 2 coats of the SH polishes topped with one coat of the matte topper.

Nicki Minaj OPI Manicure

I was at Ulta this weekend and took a look at the OPI Nicki Minaj collection. Most of the colors were not for me, but I did really like the pink and black glitter ones so I picked them up. If you'd like to see the full line, polishaholic has the whole line swatched right here.

The colors I got are Pink Friday and Metallic4life. Pink Friday is a pretty basic pink. In fact I think it looks a lot like I Think in Pink. I plan on doing a comparison of them soon. Metallic4Life is 3 sizes and shapes of silver glitter in a black base. It's completely awesome.

Gelous is what I use over really chunky glitter.

I went for a really basic manicure, using the pink for an accent nail.

As you can see, the glitter really shines on this polish. It is rather bumpy but the Gelous cuts it way down.
Anyone else get any of the colors from Nicki Minaj? The other polishes just weren't my style. Yellow/green looks terrible on me, I already have too many teals that look like this one, the other glitter has glitter bars in it, which I do not like, and I have never been into the Shatter/Crackle looks. So I'd say overall this collection is not really for me, I was able to get a couple really nice polishes out of it.

Helmer, how do I love thee!!

One thing I have read on many many nail polishes is the IKEA Helmer for storing polish. Well, now I too am singing it's praises. It's AWESOME!! I can't tell you how great this thing is. The polishes can all stand up, which is the best way to store them. I don't have much more to say about this that isn't just gushing praise, so I'll just show you a couple pictures and tell you that if you are able to get one you will definitely not regret it!

Ta da!! The Helmer.

Top drawer has all my China Glaze, MAC and Zoya polishes.

Julep Maven program-Check it out!

I was just reading through some other blogs and I found out about the Julep Maven program. You sign up, take a quiz to match your style, then every month for $19.95 they send you a goodie box with over $40 worth of stuff!! The cool thing is that you have lots of options with this program. If you don't like what they have chosen for you, you can choose something else. If you want the to send that month's box to someone else as a gift, they will, for no extra charge! If you just don't want anything you can skip a month, and if you decide it's not for you, you can cancel at any time. Here is a link where you can read more about it and take the style quiz and see what they have to offer.


http://www.julep.com/?r=18624178

I just ordered my first box, and I can't wait to share it with you when it arrives!

Sally Girl Series: Mango Tango 812040 & So Disco 812030

Finally! One of my Sally Girl polishes actually had a name on it!! The majority of them don't, so I have to search the Sally Website for the name. So Disco is actually labeled, yay!! I hope this is a new trend.

First I put on Mango Tango, a medium tone orange color. It's like a fall orange. This picture is 4 coats and you can still see a bit of VNL.

Then, just so I could keep on polishing, I put on some So Disco glitter. I just love glitter. But I have never had such a hard time photographing one!! I don't have the benefit of natural light and I have tried everything, this is the best I can get.

With flash.

No flash.

I think the next thing on my list of things to do is moisturize, when did my nails/hands/cuticles get so dry?? Yuck.

Revlon Colorstay 2012 - Update

OK, it's now been 5 days since I applied this and it's still pretty much perfect. I did have a small chip on my thumb but I think that was more an issue of a crack in my nail than the manicure. All the other fingers look fine. Barely even any tip wear. The only problem, for me, is that it's boring to wear the same manicure for 5 days!! And I can't sit here and swatch my polishes just for fun like I like to do sometimes.

So if you need a mani that stay for days, definitely try this. I am also going to do a couple more experiments, one wearing the Colorstay polish with other base/top coats and another wearing the Colorstay base/top coats with different polish.

Here's a picture of five days of wear. Sorry I got so bored with it I put some China Glaze Glam on the tips, but I think it's thin enough (I didn't finish) that you can see the tip wear or lack of it. And unfortunately you can see where my cat managed to scratch me right at the cuticle on my picture hand!! I obviously need to do something about them anyway, they all look horrible. But the polish is good. :)

Revlon Colorstay 2012

I saw a huge display of this stuff at CVS the other day. It promises a gel-like shine for 11 days. The small print tells you that this is if you use their base coat, polish and top coat. All they had was the colors here, no base or top coat. Tonight I was at Walgreens and found the display with everything. I just had to try this out.

I remember the old Colorstay nail polish. It came in a bubble pack of a color and a top coat, many of which were glitter. I actually still have a bottle of the top coat and it smells like plastic so bad (and always has) I remember why I hardly ever used it.

So I have better hopes for the new stuff, and I picked up the base coat, top coat and 3 colors. I am going to test it out and see how long it really lasts. I will keep you updated. The thing I find odd is that Revlon does not have any information about this polish on their website yet, and I wanted to link to it. I don't get that. If it should ever go up I will put a link to it. There are several colors in the new line.

Here is the top and base coats and the three colors I got: Rain Forest, Amethyst and Cafe Pink.

Amethyst

Cafe Pink

Rain Forest

Base and Top Coat

I did my manicure on Saturday, finishing about 2am, so far, so good. I was really looking forward to using the green but sometimes I can't keep the darker shades on my nails for too many days. I'm not really a dark polish person, even though I like it, so I tend to wear it less often and for shorter periods of time. So I used the Cafe Pink for my test run. I did have to use 3 coats but it smoothed out really well and I think it looks nice.

I will keep you updated about how long this lasts, etc...

Sally Girl Series: Luv It 812049

I've been wanting to get swatches of all my Sally Girl polishes out there. I love these little things. They have some great colors, and at $.99 a piece they are a great way to try out colors that you might not want to buy a full bottle of. The only thing I don't like about them is that the name of the polish is not on the bottle, just the SKU number. I usually go through the list at sallybeauty.com to match the number to a name. I will just randomly pick a color each time and post about it. Enjoy. First up is Luv It, sku 812049, a glittery blue.

Luv it is very sheer, so you need a few coats to make it really stand out.These fingers took at 5 coats to get it even this.

On my thumb I tried my new holy grail color to use under sheers and glitter , Powder Puff (I have a whole post coming on that soon), and then 3 coats of Luv It.

Looks better and more even to me. And that's my first Sally Girl polish post. More come!

Dupe of the Day

I've been inventorying my polish collection and testing the each out as I list them. China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Mint Sorbet are definitely very close. If you have on you definitely don't need the other. The Sally Hansen is just a touch more green, but it's a very small difference. Formula wise they both go on about the same.

New Wet n Wild Megalast polish - On a Trip

Wet n Wild has come out with a new bottle and new brush as well as some new colors. My store didn't have many out, but I did get one. I really like the new brush. They call it a Manicurve Pro Brush. It's a lot like the brushes in the Sally Hansen complete salon manicure bottles. The size of the bottle has gone from .30 fluid oz. to .45. The color I got is called On a Trip, and it's number is 213C. It's also one of those colors that is hard to capture in photos, turning out much more blue than it really is. It's actually a more like a darker lilac creme.

WnW On a Trip - 2 coats

Taller, squared off at the top and 50% bigger than the old one.

And the new brush

Have you tried the new WnW Megalast? I really like the brush a lot better, and the formula was really easy to work with.

Happy New Year everyone!!

I hope we all have a wonderful new year and that 2012 brings us all happiness, health and all our wishes come true.

Christmas Haul polish part 3: The end....?

OK and we are almost done with the polish posts!

First off we have the China Glaze polishes. Sally Beauty had a beautiful holiday collection out but I only got a few of them, but the ones I got I absolutely adore!!

China Glaze L-R Love Marilyn, Crackle Glaze in Haute Metal, Laurlei's Tiara and Some Like it Haute

This is my first crackle purchase (actually my 2nd, but I returned the 2012 stuff that was total crap). I'm just not that into the crackle look. I'll keep it around if I'm ever in the mood for it, but I don't think I'll be reaching for it that often.

Sally Hansen's Gem Crush line has duplicates for many of these colors. The red one is almost exactly the same jut the red is a little brighter, however the glitter in it is spot on. Gel Crush also has a straight on dupe of both Lorelei's Tiara and Some Like it Haute.

Up next are just some random glitters I got:

These polishes are (L-R):
Spoiled - Shuffle the Deck, Nicole - Love Your Life, Nicole - Rainbow in the S-Kylie, Nicole - Snow-Man of my Dreams, Sinful Colors Nail Art - Fashionista and Spoiled - Trust Fund Baby.

These next ones are some new ones I got from the Spoiled by WnW line at CVS. These retail for $1.99.

Colors L to R are: Shaken Snow Globe, Magic Carpet Ride, Black Mamba and Plenty of Fish in the Sea.
I normally don't care for black polish but I love Black Mamba, it's got enough shimmer in it to lighten it up into something very wearable for me. All the colors I have tried so far have very easy application and wear well (though I usually change my polish too often to really test that factor). Here's a swatch of 2 coats of Black Mamba.

Next is just some random polish I had either left over or got (I had some major extra bucks to spend) o were given to me after I took the other pictures:

 
The first polish is Essie luxeffects in Pure Pearlfication, essence @holographics.com in Gagalectric, SH complete salon manicure in Purple Pulse, Wet n wild megalast in Caught Red Handed, and Revlon in Radiant

I have one more picture to take of a few things i got since my last shopping trip. I swear I have go on a no-buy for a while after I get just a couple more thing i have been looking at.

Here we go (L to R):
Revlon Temptress (75% off at CVS)
Sinful Colors Nail Art in Bad Chick
Sally Hansen (75% off at CVS)
L'Oreal nail color in Eiffel For You
Revlon Top Speed in Pink Lingerie (75% off CVS)
Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Wine Not
Sally Hansen Hard as Nails in Sturdy Sapphire
Salon Perfect Steel Rose
Salon Perfect in Silver Mint
and
Revlon in Dreamer

So that's it for the holiday nail polish haul. Between Clearance, gift certificates and CVS Extra Bucks I actually didn't spend too much! Now it looks like I've got some manis/swatches to do.

I hope you all had a lovely holiday and have a wonderful New Year!!

Christmas Shopping Haul, polish part 2: The sets

The first set I got was this Sally Hansen Insta-Dri minis set. I got this on after Christmas clearance for $3. By the way you can click on all images to enlarge.

I had to try all the colors to see how they came out and whatnot. I have to say I was pretty impressed. I even like all the colors, before trying them I was a little leary about the orange and green/yellow (I can't quite tell) colors.

But I think they all look pretty good.

Next up Wet n Wild coloricon glitter polishes. Granted I'm missing a couple from the full set, but they were colors I would not wear (gold) or an exact dupe of something I already own, so I didn't bother. What I did like about these is that most of them have interesting glitter in them, it's not always matchy matchy.

My cat Trixie likes these too! They are nice for glitters, the glitter is pretty dense, and doesn't take too many coats to make a full glitter nail. I got these at Walgreens, $3 a piece.
Colors are, L to R: Rockin' Rubies, Cost Is No Issue, Believe Me, It's Real (i love that the larger glitters in this are purple, goes nicely with the blue), It's All In The Cut, Back Alley Deals, and Diamond in the Rough.

Next up is the Shades of the Season tube they had for sale at CVS. I got this for half price so I paid $5. And I had a $5 extra bucks coupon so really I got this for free!!

This one is called the Glitter Collection. There are no color names on these polishes, but I put them back in the tube in order to talk about them. They are all glitters, but the bottom 4 are very sparse glitter. I will use these as a top coat over other colors. The other colors are awesome. I love them all, they go on like a dream, have light glitter, good pigmentation and only needed 2 coats.

After I went to the store for something a few minutes ago and decided I'd get the other set of Shades of the Season, the "Classics".

I haven't tried any yet, but if I even like half of them as much a I like those in the glitter collection it will be well worth it.

OK, we are almost done (with part 2 at least), with one last collection. This is from Color Club, it is their glittery Vixen collection. I found this at Walgreens and it was $7. There were 2 other collections there as well but the colors in them were all similar to stuff I already have.

The colors in this set are Sex Symbol, Magic Attraction, Sultry Diva, Art of Seduction, Sexy Siren, Object of Passion and Tru Passion. I did already have Tru Passion but it's a nice color so I don't mind having an extra.

Well, that's it for part 2, stay tuned for part three, coming soon!!!

Christmas Haul, part 1

Well, in these last few weeks I have managed to do more shopping for myself than for anyone else, haha. But I did finally get my shopping done on Christmas Eve after a marathon 9 hour day of shopping. So for part one, I will show you some of nail polishes I got for myself and for Christmas. It's actually a little embarrassing. I did have some store credits and gift cards from last Christmas that I decided I'd finally use. Money has been tight and if I get them when I have money I don't spend them so I will be able to make myself feel better when I don't have money. It's burned me a couple of times because I've waited too long to use them and they have expired. I actually had a gift certificate to Urban Outfitters for like 8 years and by the time I needed to use it they had moved on to gift cards and couldn't even process the old school paper certificates. Oh boy. Anyway, here's the start of the nail polish end of things:

I had to break these down into several pictures, there were too many :-O First off, the minis:

 I did label them on the picture but if I make it big enough to read it throws everything out of whack so I'll just post the names here:
(L-R) Orly mini Oh Cabana Boy, Essence Colour & Go You Belong to Me, Hard Candy blue glitter, HC matte purple glitter, HC lime glitter (these were Christmas special minis that did not have names listed), and Orly mini Blue Belle.

 Next up are the Revlon polishes. You can see a lot of them are marked 75% off. These were from CVS and made them roughly $1.37 a bottle.

Click to enlarge photo

Colors from left to right (including those slightly behind the others):
Blue Lagoon, Whimsical (glitter), Princess, Starry Pink (glitter), Powder Puff (matte suede), Sublime Strawberry (scented), Ruby Ribbon (matte suede), Orchid and Fire Fox (matte suede)

Next up we have the Sally Hansen Complete Manicure:

Click to enlarge photo

Colors left to right are: Fairy Teal, Hidden Treasure, Himalayan Blue (<3) and Thinking of Blue.

Here are the rest of the Sally Hansen polishes I got:

Click to enlarge photo

Colors: Xtreme Wear in Purple Potion, Xtreme Wear in Rockstar Pink, Gem Crush in Bling-tastic, Diamond Strength in Lilac Chantilly, Gem Crush in Lady Luck and Hard as Nails Frozen Solid.

OK That's enough for now. This post is long enough and I still have lots more to show you. I want to head out and hit the after Christmas sales for a bit, so I will post more polish porn in a bit. Hope everyone had a great holiday!

Two Less Lonely (Purple) Glitters

As I was working my way through my purple collection tonight I realized that I have 3 colors that are virtually identical. Nicole's One Less Lonely Glitter (Justin Bieber collection, oy) has 2 nearly dead on matches in L.A. Splash Sparkling Lavender and Color Club Tru Passion. The Color Club definitely comes out the best after 3 coats. In person, you can barely tell the apart. Now none of them will be too lonely.

Impromptu Orange polka dot mani

I was bored and playing around with my orange polishes, also pulled out my dot tool for a trial run, and this is what I came up with.

I used Zoya Tiffany on the middle and pinkie fingers, and N.Y.C. Classic Coral Creme on the pointer and ring finger. Dots were made with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Whirlwind White.