Sally Hansen Pacific Blue

Who loves blue? Me, that's who! Now, I've been resisting this color for months, I loved SH Xtreme Wear Blue Me Away as my favourite blue creme and I was a little afraid of finding something that tops it to be honest... Then I saw that SH Xtreme Wear Pacific Blue was a very close dupe to Nails Inc Baker Street! I'm a lover of blue, so I wasn't going to pass up this polish any longer and picked up a bottle. That was a great idea.

Same formula as on the Blue Me Away: thick, one-coater with a very shiny finish, super durable and doesn't like chipping, evens out great and it's very saturated. Now there's TWO blues that are my favourite, and they are both fighting for the first place.

What's your favorite blue?

Sally Hansen - Hard-core party and accent

Did someone say girly?

 I've seen this manicure done before and I wanted to give it a go - gentle pink and Milani gold glitter makes for a great combination. The SH polish was actually a pain to work with - too thin, pooled in cuticles and it dried very slow; took about 4 coats to get this color, but I liked the end result. If I had to use it 2 years ago, I would not have been happy. Another issue - the name! Who looks at this pink and calls it Hard-core party? Perhaps I'm nitpicking, but that was bugging me. Other than that, it's just another cool toned milky pink near-jelly which worked well for my purposes. I really loved this combination and will probably wearing it again - makes me feel super feminine.

What do you think of this? Would you wear it to work?

Gradient dots

It's time for gradient dots again! I used my Dear RUS color changing polishes for the dots and Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Blue Me Away! For the base color. You can see the subtle change in color between the tip and the base of the nail. I have done this before, but it's crazy to see how different my nails are! Better, stronger... the comparison shocks me. 

Sorbet Swirl

This one sounded like a good idea, but I messed up on the stamping a little. It looks okay from a distance though! The polishes I used were Sally Hansen Instadri Snappy Sorbet and Lightning stamped over it. Very opaque cremes, I keep acquiring these strictly for the stamping most of the time because let's face it - Konad special polishes cost a lot and some are not opaque at all (I'm looking at YOU, special gold). I did like the color of Snappy Sorbet though, it's an incredible mango-peach and the name really fits because it's really neither. It's just orange enough to be bright and a little pink to separate it from oranges in my book. The pinkiness keeps it looking surprisingly nice on my skin tone and this is a big plus that China Glaze - Peachy Keen does not have. I think layering some shimmer effects polishes over this polish might be a good idea. 

What are your thoughts on peachy polish? Did you find one that works with your skin tone?

SH Instadri wear Blue Away! with Revlon Whimsical

It's Whimsical time again!

Revlon Whimsical is something straight out of a dream - a milky jelly with a hint of blue and iridescent tiny glitters, along with pink and blue hex glitter - a treat for the eyes. I can't resist reaching for it every now and again, it is pretty much the perfect jelly and glitter polish I own. Here it is layered over SH Instadri wear Blue Away!, which is a one-coater light blue. Like all (at least in my experience) Instadris, it's a 1-2 coater opaque cream, dries very fast, not too shiny, so a topcoat helps. The worst thing about them is the chipping, but I do my nails every 2-3 days, so it hasn't been a big issue with me. With a jelly on top, it makes for a less harsh texture on the nail and a good backdrop for Whimsical. 

Despite being core, Whimsical is getting sold out every time I visit Superstore to pick up a backup. When I was there last week, it has TWO entire rows filled with Whimsical. Since I was moving and was shopping for essentials. I didn't get it... came back the very next day and they were all gone. What an elusive polish! I had no idea it would still be so popular. 

What do you think of it? Do you like glitter jellies or find them tacky?

Sally Hansen nail strips - Brattlesnake

I've been meaning to try these for about 5 months and have always been scared to take the plunge - mostly because of terrible previous experiences with other polish strips. These come in a little box with everything you need: little file and buffer, orange stick and the strips, sealed in a foil packet. These price is around 10$ Canadian, which is a lot for me, so I had high expectations of this product.

Brattlesnake is a khaki-brown snake print with characteristic rattlesnake rhombus design. Having met a few rattlesnakes in my life, I can say that this design is very similar to the real thing. The strips are big enough for my long nails with foil "tips" that you peel off the sticker with. If you have shorter nails, just cut them in half and now you have twice as many! After, you place it on a clean nail and file off the excess. I found that the worst adhesion was around the base of my nails and I made the mistake of lightly stretching it over my tips, sort of wrapping them. This destroyed the color on the tips in 2-3 days, I had a considerable tipwear probably because of that.

Here you can see the raggedy looking cuticles as a result of too much topcoat due to them sticking funny at the bottom.

Otherwise, these stayed on, did not peel at all (except a bit at the base where I fixed it with topcoat) and were a breeze to do! I have seen people do stress tests and these last for 2+ weeks when properly applied. I have a feeling I will be relying on the SH strips for vacation.

Pokemon nails!

Good morning! I think I'm a little overdue on video game nail art, so here's an easy one: Pokemon nails!

Those hours spent hunting down critters and catching them, adventuring through the same general premise no matter the generation, over 400 Pokemon to find and catch... can you find a more popular timesink? Those hours spent evolving, breeding, entering contests and battling were awesome, especially since it's cemented itself as a handheld must-have. I have long wanted to do Pokemon nails, but was lacking the perfect yellow and i finally found it - SH Instadry Lighting is what I used as a base colour for Pikachu and Revlon Fire/SH Instadry Whirlwind White for the Pokeballs. 

Here's a nice pic my mom snapped!

I've seen Pokeballs on nails many times before, but I still wanted to try them - it's relatively easy to make and actually looks like a really cool nail design to someone who has no idea what they are. I used tape to tape off a half of the nail, will with the other color and when dry, drew a line with black and using a dotting tool to put in white dots. Pikachu was drawn with the black nail art pen and dotting tools as well.

I want to attempt more Pokemon on my nails, especially the classics! any specific ones you want to see done?

Blue Pinstripe nail art

It's stripey time!

I am a big fan of this blue color I used as a base, Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Blue Me Away! and I really wanted to try vertical stripes again, so this mani was born. I find that vertical stripes really make the nails and fingers look longer, it's a pretty cool feeling! Again, BME applied like a dream, 1 coat and it was a solid sky-blue creme... dried fast, wore like iron and looked like candy! Best blue ever ♥

Spring Chevron nail art

I'm a bit behind in updates, but I wanted to share a tape manicure success I've had with masking tape!

I used China Glaze - Peachy Keen as a base and SH Instadry Whirlwind White and Blue Away for the taping experiment. Before when I did tape manis, I was using Scotch brand tape and had issues with tape getting left behind on the nail after I peel it off (even when I did it immediately ). This has caused me to shy away from tape manicures because they were a pain...until I got a helpful tip from someone on MUA telling me to use masking tape! Genius, I thought. It won't rip as easily and isn't as sticky. Needless to say, it worked perfectly. The tips aren't 100% even, but it came out better than I could've imagined.

What are your experiences with tape manicures? Have you tried em? Love or hate them?

Navy Stripes nail art

Horizontal stripes are my favorite thing to wear and now they're "in"! This means I get to stockpile stripey clothes like a boss. This also means I can give navy stripes a try on my nails! I used SH - Thinking of blue and the white nail art polish to do the stripes. The anchor was done with ORLY Luxe and a dotting tool. They turned out wider than I wanted, but I liked how vivid they looked.They sort of remind me of bees actually... it felt a little strange being distracted by my nails no matter what I did. Next time, I'm going to try making the stripes thinner, that should give it the look I really want. 

On my right hand I did something simpler, but I ended up liking it better! Same base polish, tapes off a white stripe and ORLY Luxe dots in the middle. 

 What are your thoughts? Have you worn horizontal stripes yet this spring? 

Navy Butterfly nail art - SH Thinking of Blue and Konad

This was actually my Valentine day's mani! I completely forgot it was coming, so I ended up having somewhat dark nails on Vday but that's alright...these came out better than I expected. The base color is Sally Hansen Thinking of Blue, which is my very first (gasp) navy creme. I really like this color actually, it's solid in 2 coats and wears well. It's not pure navy, as it has a little bit of grey in it, so it seems to be the color of denim to me. 

The butterflies are stamped with SH Instadry Blue Away; dots done with dotting tools, using ORLY Luxe. I haven't done butterflies in forever, I was loving this when I had it on. Thinking of Blue is a ridiculously pleasant color and it looks nice with my skintone, I'm looking forward to wearing it again!

What are your though on this color? How about the color combo?

Spring Sakura nail art (Cherry Blossoms)

Spring is not too far, so I've decided to pit some spring into my day with Sakura blossom nails! These are inspired by cherry trees, which blossom beautifully before the leaves come out!

I used Sally Hansen Instadry Whirlwind White, as well as Blue Away from the same brand.

The branches are made using an Art Deco black art polish (with a really skinny brush) and the blossoms are mostly OPI Pink Friday and some Elf Bubblegum Pink, using dotting tools. 

more pics!

I really like the way these came out! Just the way I wanted them to! I can't wait to do some more stuff with deco polishes!

Also, check out what I found in a Japanese candy store! It's Dragonball Z coffee!!

Frieza says sorry about the cellphone pic

Sally Hansen - Very Cherry

Sally Hansen Very Cherry is an interesting raspberry red foil with a nice drying time and good staying power.

This is more pink than red, but it does have a reddish look to it. 3 coats, nice formula. I found this to be a total twin of SH Xtreme Wear Deep Blue Sea both in formula and finish. It's the same metallic shimmer suspended in a differently colored base. Here are the bottles side by side with comparison!

I also tried a few flakies over it, inter finger - nfu-oh 38 (iridescent flakies) middle and ring - Deborah Lippmann Stairway to Heaven, pinky - nfuoh 51.

Looks like flakies don't show up too well on foils! That was the end of my experiment.
What do you think? Which one do you like better, Deep Blue Sea or Very Cherry?

SH blue me away with DL Stairway to Heaven mattified! GOSH Matte Effect Top Coat

I was craving a matte topcoat and I grabbed the GOSH matte top coat to sate my hunger! I was wearing Sally Hansen Blue Me Away! (My favouritest blue creme ever) with Deborah Lippmann Stairway to Heaven on top. I liked it shiny, but I felt like the sparkle was too much. When I used the matte topcoat, it looked to beautiful and iridescent ... sort of like fish scales. This topcoat actually impressed me - I still don't have access to Essie Matte About You but from what I remember, it doesn't stay matte for very long (totally matte for a day, then starts looking shinier). This matte topcoat is wonderful! Went on nice, dried fast, I did not have any issues with it turning solid white and the best part is that it stayed totally matte for 3 days! I started noticing a change in surface finish after 3 days of washing, cleaning and typing. Nice. 

I want to do a comparison later on with Essie MAB, but so far I give it a giant thumbs up! It was only 6$ dollars compared to Essie MAB at 12$ as well, so big points for GOSH!

Navy vertical gradient glitter stripe

I decided to be a little creative with my nails - a glitter stripe in the middle!

I started with ELF - dark navy as a base, used SH xtreme sear Deep Blue Sea as the glitter gradient and the hex glitter in the middle came from my Daiso haul, one of those glittery polishes. All in all I think this turned out pretty good!

I used a makeup sponge to do the horizontal gradient, then glitter in the middle, then Seche Vite top coat!

 I had a hard time capturing the shine on the photos but they looked so nice in person. I think I might try this with a few more colours. 

Sally Jansen Xtreme wear - Red Carpet

with flash

no flash

Red Carpet is a dark red "jelly" with red glitter and a raspberry tint in bright light. It dries a little dark, very deep dark red, which weirded me out a little bit. I'm not a lover of vampy colors and this is a little too close to vampy for my liking. The redeeming feature is that the red glitter lights up when in a bright environment! The dark red becomes a raspberry red and very very sparkly. Red Carpet was a little gritty when it dried, which was a turn off. The base is not a true jelly but rather a transparent glitter base which becomes "flat" when dries. Topcoat helps it to regain a jelly look but it just isn't the same...another thing I noticed is after THREE hours I started to get pretty bad tipwear. There is no excuse! I use the keyboard at work, so next morning the first thing I saw? Chips. CHIPS AFTER LESS THAN 12 HOURS of sleep and then 30 mins if work. How is that possible? I used a topcoat and wrapped the tips but they still chipped. I've never had that happen before so early...This is a fail for me. Looks like this is my first Xtreme Wear disappointment.

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear - Deep Blue Sea

Uh oh, excuse the flooded cuticle!

Deep Sea Blue is an interesting addition to my collection: it is a dusty blue subdued foil! I didn't think it would come out so metallic looking but it did and it reminds me of icicles. Very pretty!

I wore this for 3 days, no chips, barely tipwear. Dried fast, took 3 coats for full color to show up. It was a little less shiny before the topcoat, but topcoat fixed it completely. This color also reminded me of jeans...as in it is a metallic denim-colored foil. I honestly really like and you know the best part? It was so EASY to remove! No acetone, to foil method...just off it goes. And that is one of the best things a foil could do for me.

SH xtreme wear - bubble gum pink and stripes!

here is my right hand

and my left!

This was a pleasant shock to me! When I moved without anything but boring polish and turns out that I can wear awesome polish, I was stuck on a no-buy...imagine by surprise when my mom, a woman who never touches nail polish EVER showed me that she has a little pink bottle she used on her toes once! Sally Hansen xtreme wear in Bubble Gum Pink was my savior and bright pink was something I craved.

 This polish is a bit strange, it dries with an almost waxy, plasticy finish and the shimmer makes it look even stranger...but with Seche Vite over top, the shimmer just popped and the pink became ridiculous! I didn't expect to love it but SV really changed that. This polish dries fast, a bit thick but not goopy and is opaque in 2 coats!

 I also did black stripes with tape, right hand's stripes can line up to form one stripe (coool!) and my left hand's stripes actually turned out leaning the other way...but I like it a little more. But no matter what I say, this was a ray in the dark for me, an unbelievable discovery that MY mom of all women would have a hidden, forgotten bottle of hot pink polish...amazing. I love you mom!

A very blue dotticure - SH xtreme wear - blue me away

see the subtle color change?

I had the chance to try my new dotting tools from bornpretty (review coming soon!) and oh my goodness, what a difference! I used to use a chopstick or a toothpick and this is much, much better. I really like Blue Me Away, it is...my most favourite blue. Perfect shiny sky-blue creme, 2 coats, dries SHINY and fast. Lasts forever, as well!

Dots are done in the Dear RUS blue mood polish I swatched earlier right here. 

Mmm...dots. expect to see lots of dots in the future!

SH Xtreme wear - Blue me away with Konad

This is an older mani from a while back before I started the blog. Blue Me Away is one of my favorite blues and it's just so happy and stark, I can't describe it ,so I will let the picture speak for itself.. Blue Me Away is a glossy creme that is opaque in two coats and applies like a dream. The color is the perfect sky blue. I stamped clouds with Konad and it turned out just peachy! I'm really happy with this polish, it lasts a while and doesn't wear down easily, as well as the low cost and great formula make this one a keeper. 

What is your favourite blue creme?