Hello!

Hi guys!

So, it's been like five months. I wholeheartedly apologize. I have still accumulated massive amounts of polish, but there are a few reasons I just haven't been feeling the blogosphere lately:

1.  For my first engagement party in North Carolina, I got... acrylics. Gasp! One of my own nails had just broken right off and I wanted pretty nails for my engagement party. Everyone is looking at your hands, you know! Anyway, as a result my nails were completely de-stroyed. They've just now grown out all the way but they are still tiny little nubbins!

2. For a few months I was working two jobs, 60+ hours a week. When you have to wake up early to go to work, then get home from work and have to go to bed early so you can get up early and go to work again... well. Not only does time not permit blogging, but that doesn't exactly get the creative juices flowing, either.

3. I feel a little overwhelmed. While I try to keep somewhat current as to my collection, by the time I pick up a colour I feel like there are already a million other swatches of it out there with more beautiful photos than I could ever take. I really need to get over that. Even if it is an older colour, I could perhaps offer up an opinion that hasn't been considered before!

Also, I don't want this blog just to be about nail polish anymore. It was fun to start out that way, but it also became a chore. I want this to be a collection of all the small little facets of my life that amalgamate into one big shiny blog diamond. Of course I will still post nail polish related things, I have accumulated so many by now that I'm going to need a second Helmer!

But I'm also getting married and have a new job and there are lots of little things that catch my fancy and give me ideas and inspiration, and I want to share them with you. And with future me!

Anyway, I just wanted to say that my silence has come from feeling not good enough, but I've had just about enough of that feeling!

There is definitely more to come from me!

Revlon Selects - Nail Art Expressionist in Vincent Van Gold swatches and review!

Hey guys! Before I get into my review I just wanted to say I'm sorry I've been absent for so long! It was a crazy month at work and then it was Christmas and my boyfriend was here... and, well, let's just say he's not my boyfriend anymore! ;)

Needless to say, it's been a crazy whirlwind and now it's January and all settled down.

Anyway, on to the polish! Today I have another product to review from the Revlon Selects program! The Nail Art Expressionist collection is another double ended polish collection. One end is a regular polish and the other end has a very thin brush so you can do nail art with it. The colour I received is Vincent Van Gold, a purple shimmer polish and a warm yellow gold nail art polish.

First of all, can I just say how much I love purple and gold together? It's so royal and posh!

Okay, so we'll start with the polish end. It has a pink toned purple base which is jam packed with purple shimmer that has a blue flash to it. It's fairly pretty, but I'm not the biggest fan of the formula. While it is not too thick or thin and clean application was not an issue, it was very patchy and left bald spots. A thicker second coat left some bubbles upon drying (you can see these most on my ring finger). It is quite possible to make this work, but it takes a little more patience to get it right!

The gold nail art side was very nice. I tried out different nail art on each of my nails and I am pleasantly surprised at how pigmented and easily controllable this gold is! I am generally awful at nail art and I find that this makes it basic pretty simple and foolproof. As you can see, it's not the best for polka dots, but that's why we have dotting tools! My only gripe with this is that it has that sort of marbled metallic effect that some metallic polishes have. This is most evident on my ring finger where I attempted to do a half moon. Because of this I will probably stick to a french or stripe, something that doesn't require a lot of colouring in.

My overall opinion of this polish is good! I love the colour combination of the gold and purple. I love love love the gold nail art polish and how it is so pigmented and easy to use. The purple polish on the other end is so so pretty and, while it takes a little more patience to apply, it is worth it!

Would I buy this? Yes! Though the regular polish left something to be desired for me, I absolutely love the colour combo and the pigmentation of the gold. Please put out a line of solo nail art polishes, Revlon!

xo

This product was provided to me for review and I have given my 100% honest opinion! :)

Revlon Selects - Nail Art Moon Candy in Orbit swatches and review

Hey guys! Today it was sunny and I was like "Sweet, I'm totally going to have a swatching day!" So I get all my stuff ready and before I even get the first coat of the first polish put on... clouds. Honestly.

Anyway, today I have for you one of the polishes Revlon Canada kindly sent me for the Revlon Selects program! The Moon Candy collection is a series of double ended polishes. One end is a creme polish and the other end is an irregular shaped mylar flake in a coordinated colour. The one I have for you today is Orbit, a purple duo.

The creme side of Orbit is a deep, blue toned purple. It's a stereotypical grape purple, if that makes sense. Application of the creme side was nice. It was a little thin but nothing that couldn't be handled with careful application. The opacity was great; it was fully opaque in one coat! However, because this polish is so thin, it showed every ridge and imperfection in my nail. I would either use a ridge filler or more than one coat with this polish.

The flakie side of this polish is interesting. It's shards of mylar that flash blue and purple in a purple tinted clear base. I have seen mixed reviews of this, mostly leaning toward the negative, so I was anxious to try it out for myself. The flakes are sparse, that is for sure, but I like it. It is not too difficult to fish around in the bottle for more and place them where you want, which allows you to control the look of your manicure. The only thing I can say about this is that I would definitely put more than one coat of the creme under the flakie coat, because I had issues with some of the creme becoming patchy. The flakes also dry with a lot of texture. This doesn't bother me too much but if you need your nails to be smooth, you will need to use a thicker top coat. In these pictures I have the flakies on my index and middle finger, and just the creme on my ring finger and pinkie. One coat of each!

Oh my goodness I didn't realise how dry my hands were until after. Sorry guys!

I like this combination together, I think the blue flash of the mylar brings out the blue tone of the creme underneath. It is nice for this time of year when I tend to gravitate toward darker colours, but it is also nice that I can add a little sparkle too! I am definitely a sparkly girl.

Now I will speak to the bottle shape issue. Some people find the bottle top heavy while they are using a colour. It is obviously heavier than a regular polish cap because you are holding another entire bottle of polish, but I quickly got used to it and had no problems with application. All you need is a little patience and practice!

Overall? I think this is a very awesome idea that was mostly very well executed. I wish that the creme were just a little bit thicker so I could use just one coat and still have my nail ridges and imperfections hidden. I also wish that the flakie sizes were just a liiiiittle bit smaller. I think that if they were smaller, they would curve to the nail a little more and maybe wouldn't leave so much texture. I also think a more uniform size of flakie would look neater. The big pieces just look messy or sloppy to me.

Would I buy one of these independently? Well... yes and no. It would be price dependent. I like most of the other colour combinations that Moon Candy comes in, I just am not the biggest fan of slightly sloppy look of the mylar top coat.

Thank you again Revlon Canada! I'm having so much fun doing this!

Bonus: My girl kitty Molly wanted to be in a picture! Here she is!

xo

*This product was provided for review. I have given my 100% honest opinion! :)

Color Club Halo-Graphic!!!!

Hey guys! Only two weeks until Christmas! I'm so excited because my boyfriend will be coming and staying for a whole week!! I'm counting down the days for sure.

So today I have Halo-Graphic for you from Color Club's 2012 Halo-Graphic collection! I actually received this a few weeks ago and have been dying to post it, but I wanted some sun to take some proper pictures of the holo. I waited and waited and it has just been cloudy. Sooo I tried to improvise as much as possible with my camera flash. Here we go!

Halo-Graphic is a pale pink with a very strong linear holo. The formula is just excellent! Not too thick or thin and not at all patchy! I used two coats with no top coat, because I have heard that most top coats dull the holo effect.

Here it is in the bottle and then a swatch just in some normal cloudy daylight! It's pretty and feminine, and you can just see a wink of the holo.

And here it is with flash (aka pretend sunlight)! It's so crazy! The first time I put it on I just kept staring at my nails all day!

So obviously I love this! This is my first holo polish. I had seen so many on other blogs where it was said that application was a nightmare and they show every nail imperfection. If that was true then Color Club really reinvented the wheel, because this is awesome!

In other news, I received my Revlon Selects package the other day! I am super excited to try out all the lovely things in there! Keep your eyes peeled for some reviews of that stuff, plus I may or may not have a couple more holo polishes in the sidelines... ;)

xo

Quick NOTD and some exciting news!

Hey guys!  Today is my mom's work Christmas party and I'm her date! Free dinner and drinks, yesss! I wanted to do something a little festive on my nails, so I chose to use OPI's Danke Shiny Red from the Germany collection earlier this year with OPI's Goldeneye from the Skyfall collection as my accent nail. I really love this combo, it is so glowy and nice! This picture was taken with my phone as it is dark out now and my camera has an aneurysm in low light. Anyway!

Now for the exciting news! A couple of posts back I mentioned the Revlon Canada Selects program. I applied and crossed my fingers, and earlier today I received an email saying I had been chosen! I am so so excited! They will be sending a package soon and then I will have awesome new goodies to review for you all. Thank you so much Revlon Canada!

Have a great weekend guys! I'm off to stuff myself with prime rib. Mmmm.

Color Club Holiday 2012 Winter Affair Collection and inadvertent NOTD

Hey guys! The other day I got my very first nail mail (that I didn't buy myself)!!! My lovely friend Brenna sent me some lovely holographic polishes! I would love to show them to you but there hasn't been enough sun for me to take pictures to do them justice. So while I am waiting for a nice sunny day, I have the Color Club Winter Affair collection to show you!

I first saw these in Sally's just after Halloween and fell in love with the colours, but I couldn't bring myself to spend knowing that I could buy whole Color Club collections in Ross in the States for $8. But then! I was reading another blog by a Canadian (I can't remember which, I am so sorry!) and heard that Winners has those collections. I went with my mom and luckily found it for $15! A bit of a price increase but still better than $8/polish. My mom actually bought it for me for Christmas, but I wanted to show you guys so I snuck it away for swatches! Anyway! On to the good stuff!

Berry & Bright is a gorgeous red polish which is somewhere between a shimmer and a glass fleck. I think this is so pretty and festive! It's a nice change from the billion red cremes that come out around this time of year. This is two easy and beautiful coats with a perfect formula! So pretty.

Next up we have Glitter Wonderland, which is a shimmery purple. The base is pink toned but the shimmer is lovely and blue toned to give this colour a lot of depth. This is two coats. The formula was alright. I found it to be a little patchy but perhaps I just didn't wait long enough between coats. It's still pretty! Not something you would expect in a holiday collection, but I like that! It's refreshing.

Moving on, we have Ho Ho Holly. I LOVE this one! It's a gorgeous warm toned green packed with gold shimmer. Oh man I just love it. Two lovely and perfect coats. It just glows! Enjoy this one!

Next up is Glitter Sparkle. This polish is a warm toned purple just jam packed with purple and holo glitter. I don't really have much to say, I will let the pictures do the talking. I love it! This is two coats.

Two more to go! Next we have Winter Affair. This is a sort of maroon shimmer. It's beautiful! Perfect for the cold and dark winter weather. Not much else to say! This is two easy coats.

Last up is Snow Flakes, which is a flakie top coat. It flashes green, orange, and red. It is awesome! The flakies are nice and small and lie nice and flat. I put it over top of Winter Affair to show you guys and I ended up loving it so much that I made it my full manicure! This is one coat of Snow Flakes over two coats of Winter Affair. :)

Well, that's about it! I really liked this collection. There were some colours that are definitely expected of a holiday collection but some surprises as well! The standouts for me for sure are Ho Ho Holly and Snow Flakes. Which ones do you guys like? Also, I heard the rumour that some people have found a scented version of this collection? Weird!

Revlon Colorstay Rain Forest and Coastal Blue... and a comparison!

Hey guys! I know I've been gone for a long time and I will have a nice long rambly explanation at the end of the post, but for now I will get the good stuff out of the way!

Just today Revlon Canada posted on on Facebook that they are starting a program called Revlon Selects! If you tweet or have a youtube channel or a blog, like their page here and check out the program! You could be selected to test and review new products!

In honour of that, I have two colours from the Colorstay line to show you. First up is Rain Forest. I picked this up a while ago when I was staying in NC. It is a gorgeous yellow toned green with large glass flecks! I used two coats here and they were just so easy. No flooding, no dragging. Beautiful. :)

Next up is Coastal Surf. I love love love this colour! I was browsing Imperfectly Painted earlier in the summer and she said that everyone needs to own this polish. I love a good blue creme so I didn't need much persuading, but I was convinced I already had something similar to this. I was wrong! This is a beautiful bright creme that is just plain old blue. No purple or green tones to be found, which makes it a unique addition to my collection. I will agree that everyone needs this! Also, my hands didn't change colours from the first pictures... my camera is just awful at picking up colours properly a lot of the time so I have to do a lot of fiddling to make them colour accurate. Sorry!

When I saw Rain Forest I was immediately reminded of Glittering Garland from the 2011 holiday collection from China Glaze, so I decided to do a comparison! On my index and ring fingers I have Rain Forest and on my middle and pinkie fingers I have Glittering Garland. They are similar, but not exactly the same! Rain Forest is more yellow toned and the glass flecks are larger than in Glittering Garland. Do you need both? Well, I do! A more sane person might do with one, though. If you missed Glittering Garland and are kicking yourself for it, I think Rain Forest would be a fine substitute.

Now for the boring part: the reason I was gone. There are several, actually. The biggest one I guess was my move back home. I was in NC and got used to a whole different life down there, only to have to leave and readjust to my normal life back at home. I was lucky enough to be hired back at my old job so that was nice, but I did and still do miss my boyfriend and it makes me sad and unmotivated... blogs are a lot of work! But I feel pretty well adjusted now. Back to the grind.

The second biggest reason would be my job. Not only do I work a lot and mostly during the day (I don't really have good enough lighting to take pictures at night, working on a light box), I work in retail. Anyone else who does knows that it is unforgiving to your nails. Broken nails, torn cuticles... basically any nail horror you can think of can and will happen. When you are trying to keep your nails and cuticles somewhat nice to show the world, it is near impossible with a retail job! I just decided that I don't care though. I will do my best and that is all I can do.

I'm back now, and that's the important part. I missed all two of you who follow me! :P