Pure Ice Crackle Duo!

Gooood morning my pretties!  I hope you all had a good Easter holiday weekend!  I know I did, I got to go home and see my family, it was great :)

I've got a cool polish duo for you today that I was sent to review!  It's a polish + crackle duo from Pure Ice called Pure Ice Lightning Crackle Duo!

First up is the base polish, a lovely, but unnamed, green duochrome/metallic! 

I was really surprised with the formula of Pure Ice, which I hadn't tried before.  Sometimes the cheaper drug store brand polishes have crap formulas, but this one was actually good!  It went on opaque in two coats (but I used three for pictures), and was actually very pretty.   I love the dark green and it's got an ever-so-slight duochrome to it and sometimes looks quite teal.  Overall, very pretty!

On top I layered the lightning crackle:

This polish cracked quite easily, but I wish that it cracked...larger cracks so you could see the green a little more!  I think the silver kind of overpowers the pretty green! Maybe thinner coats could correct this problem, though, it'd been a while since I used a crackle polish!

However, I really do like the look of silver crackle.  I never received the OPI Silver Shatter that I won in someone's giveaway (bummer!), so I was kind of psyched to try this.  I think it'd look great over other colors as well!

Have you guys tried any of the Pure Ice polish duos?  I haven't seen them in stores, but then again, I haven't been in Walmart for a while--and to my knowledge, that's the only place they sell Pure Ice!  Correct me if I'm wrong, though, ladies :)

Hope you enjoyed!

<3 Whitney

Funky Fingers Teal Scales!

Okay. So.  I was bored with crackle polishes for a while, but I have a new love!

And it is called Teal Scales!  I'm bummed because I bought this the day after Thanksgiving and went back to look for another bottle last week and they had no more!  I haven't been to the other Five Below, yet, so I guess I'll have to check that out sometime soon!

I first added two coats of OPI Designer de Better and then one coat of Teal Scales, beautiful!  I wish my pictures showed the full effects of this awesome polish.  The BF said it looked like dragon skin, hah.

Wee it's a beautiful combination of a shimmer metallic teal that transitions from blue to green in certain lighting.  I love it!  I need to think of some better polish combinations to show off it's beauty better--anyone have any good ideas?!

Have a great new year!  Hopefully I'll be able to post again before then :)

<3 Whitney

Pink Wednesday! Burst Crackle!

I know I've been kind of double posting lately, but I didn't have as much time to swatch before I went out of town as I'd liked.  Oh well!

Anyway for today's pink Wednesday I decided to try my pink Burst Crackle polish called Shimmering Heat OVER Revlon's Grapefruit Fizz from yesterday's post!  I thought since it was so translucent I'd add crackle to it and I thought the opposing pinks would look neat.

However since the pinks ended up being kind of similar it ended up looking like some sort of scaly pink snake skin, I can't really decide if I like it or not.  In person unless you look close it just looked textured, but you can see in the pics that it's scaly looking!

Zoom in for scaly effect

Lizardy

Overall I was REALLY satisfied with the Burst crackle!  I didn't use it until now because when I swatched it on a nail wheel it SUCKED, but it worked pretty good in person!  It went on very easily and I didn't have a hard time getting the perfect coat thickness for it to crackle nicely.  I also have a purple one and next time I go to the supply store I think I'll get orange if they still have it :)

That's it for now!  I'll be back tomorrow evening with a SURPRISE for all of you!

<3 Whitney

First attempt at a sponge mani!

Hey everyone! It's Monday and if you're a member of the Facebook group Polish-aholics Anonymous, you know that means it's time for a Nail Art Challenge!

This week's theme was sponge mani.  I attempted my first quite a few days ago and liked how it turned out.  Which is good because I was too busy to try another one!  Here is how it turned out:

I started off with a base coat of China Glaze Happy Go Lucky:

Old picture ;)

I cheated a little and used tape to make a diagonal line down the middle and painted Essie Watermelon near my cuticles and Essie Meet me at Sunset down to the edge of my nail.  When I removed the tape I think took a tiny sponge from an eyeshadow applicator and created the sponge look in between the two Essies!

Overall I really enjoyed how it turned out:

I got my inspiration from my glass nail file haha

Ta daaa!

And that's ALMOST all....until I added Funky Finger White Scales over top of it.  I can't believe how much I love this crackle.  And I really like the look of multi colors under the white crackle polishes!

Thin coat

Thicker coat of crackle

Well that's all folks!  Hope you enjoyed :)

<3 Whitney

Another BRIGHT Orange! Papaya Punch! + Another Attempt at Turquoise Crackle

Hey ladies!  I got a lovely sampler package sent to me by China Glaze this weekend consisting of Papaya Punch, Fault Line (Crackle), and Rosita:

Fault Line

Rosita

Sorry for the stock photos, it's dark here now and I'm too lazy to photograph them haha.  Anywho, since I already have Papaya Punch and Fault Line, I will be adding those to prizes for future giveaways!  Horray!

However, I realized when I received it that I still haven't reviewed Papaya Punch and since I'm super into oranges right now, I figured I'd try it out. 

Papaya Punch is a lovely bright orange cream polish from China Glaze's Island Escape Collection released earlier this year! Check out the (many, whoops) pics below:

Outdoor, sun

Outdoor, sun

Outdoor, shade

Outdoor, sun

Outdoor, shade

Up-close color

I love this shade.  Seriously, I didn't know how great it was until I put it on.  I'm glad I waited until I was a bit more tan.  I loved Essie Braziliant, but I moved that to my feet and have been wearing this as a mani for a few days now!  The formula is great and I love one and two coater polishes.  All the pictures above are shown with two coats.

I tried to again use the OPI turquoise shatter with this orange because I'm now obsessed with teal and orange together.  It didn't work out as well as I'd hoped, probably because I put Posche top coat on the Papaya Punch.  So I tried to just paint another coat of Papaya Punch over it today and then did the shatter, still didn't turn out as I'd hoped:

Eh overall I still like the color combo, but I'm still not super happy with the turquoise shatter.  I wish it broke up as well as the black has for me!

Did you guys pick up Papaya Punch earlier when the IE was released?  Any of you have better luck with turquoise shatter? Let me know!

<3 Whitney

Braziliant + Turquoise Crackle

Hey allll!  I did a guest post on Opal Steven's Blog today on crackle polishes, please go check it out!! 

Also, I just wanted to show you real quick my semi-crackle fail with OPI's Turquoise Shatter over Essie Braziliant:

My infamous right hand since the left looked like poop

Eh.  I think it was a good idea because I love the colors together, but I must've used too thick of a coat of turquoise shatter because I wasn't really satisfied with how much it crackled.  I wanted to see more orange!!  Overall I really liked the turquoise color, though, and I'll definitely be using it again!  I'll probably take this off tonight and re-do something else :)

Also, I briefly mentioned that yesterday I broke part of my pointer finger nail on my left hand and used the krazy-glue method of keeping it on.  It actually worked really well and I smoothed it out and everything but after showering and working with my hands a bit this morning it kind of went to hell and I broke the rest of it off :-/  I'm really bummed.  I don't want to trim all my nails down!  We'll see how it looks when I file it off later.  Ugh!


Well ladies, have a wonderful Saturday night...I'm going to spend it happily on the couch with The Boyfriend since this is the first Saturday night he's had off in months!  Horray!


<3 Whitney

G-L-A-M-O-R-O-U-S!

Ooh I know I said I'd update last night but I had to work on a last minute paper and then I needed to get to bed early for some interview stuffs this morning.

So I'm in DC, can't remember if I told you guys, and after I got in yesterday I hit up Pentagon City mall and went on a polish hunt!  Didn't really find anything except two glitter polishes from Icing.  Actually one of them was one of the Charlie Sheen polishes called Epic Winning (blue holo glitter) and the other was one called Gimme Some Glitter (pink glitter).  I'll probably use them for giveaways so I'll just post pics of them at a later date.  Trace at the TraceFace Philes just posted a whole entry about the Charlie Sheen polishes so check her out if you're curious!!

Anyway, so I think I found the most fabulous polish I have.  It's another polish from Icing called Glamorous.  I actually initially went into Icing yesterday to pick up another one of these for a giveaway but they didn't have anymore!  I'll have to check back in Ohio.  Anyway, it's a FABULOUS rainbow holographic glitter polish. 

My pictures do NOT capture this fabulous polish in it's entirety and the pictures actually make it look a little more transparent than it is in person.  However, after three coats of this stuff it's so glittery you can't even see through the shine to your nail :)

Outside where my camera failed miserably to see this wonderful holo

Caught a bit of it

Indoors with flash gets it a little better

Someone told me (I think Fiona) that you can take better pictures of neon polishes underwater, so I tried that with this.  You can kind of see the rainbow under water!

I'm pretty disappointed that I couldn't capture this well...but if you have an Icing in your area you should RUN, don't walk, there as soon as possible and pick this up, I promise you won't regret it!  And cosmetics there are buy 1 get 1 half off!!   Three coats made this polish insanely awesome.

I swatched most of my polishes on some nail wheels I bought the other day and when I swatched my crackles I used three coats of Glamorous for my base with OPI Black Shatter!  I loved it so much I decided to do a full mani of it.

 It looked awesome in the sunlight!  I didn't wear a top coat with this because I knew I only was wearing it for a day since it's not interview appropriate!  I desperately wish I would've put on a top coat in between the glitter and the shatter, though!  When I tried to take the glitter off by itself it was so rough it tore up my remover pads.  It was like I was rubbing them on concrete!  Glitter is hard enough to get off as it is because it gets everywhere, but this was just insane!  It didn't make me love it any less, though :)

Since I mentioned it, here is the swatch of most my glitter polishes (and some others), Glamorous is #18:

 

If you can't read my handwriting:

1) Wet n Wild Sparked

2) Ice Pinky Moon (someone told me this was a dupe of KleanColor, I would say yes it is, 100%)

3) LA Girl Head Bangin'

4) Color Club De-luxe-ious

5) Sally Hansen Celeb City (Looks an awful lot like ORLY Shine!)

6) Funky Fingers Down to Earth

7) Astral Lights Glow in the dark polish

8) DragonRhia franken!

9) DragonRhia franken!

10) DragonRhia franken!

11) NY Summer Royal Blue Glitter (Future giveaway!)

12) NY Summer Fuschia Glitter

13) NY Summer Multi Glitter (Future giveaway!)

14) Ulta Pinata-yada-yada

15) Funky Finger Sand and Stilettos

16) Funky Fingers Golden Coast

17) Funky Fingers Baby Baby Baby

18) Icing Glamorous

I was THRILLED with how the Funky Fingers came out.  Sand & Stilettos and Glamorous look similar in this picture but in person you can see some differences.  Sand and Stilettos is a much finer glitter size-wise but I think the holo in Glamorous is better.  I'll swatch them side by side on my nails in the future!

WELL lovelies, I won't be able to post again until Thursday after my final!  Then I'm done with school forever!  Weee :)  Have a great next couple of days!!

<3 Whitney