As Seen On... Sara ♥'s Pretty Little Things

(This is a scheduled post. I'm on vacation!)

Good morning! If all is going well with my scheduled posts, this should be Wednesday morning.
I'm not sure what today entails for me in Toronto, but I'm sure there will be shopping involved.
Are you looking forward to seeing what polishes I get? I'm sure looking forward to buying them.


Today I have for you my second mani recreation. (And resulting failure.)
This one is from Sara at Sara ♥'s Pretty Little Things.
Sara is a nice British girl who has some British polishes that make me jealous.
(Also I am jealous of this clutch she got recently. It's a bit over the top but so cool!)
(And ALSO she recently got Ozotic 505 and 528 which is grounds enough to unfollow her out of insane jealousy but somehow, I still like her. Somehow.)


Sara posted this crack mani a few weeks ago that made me want to use my white crackle for the first time. 
But she used Barry M crackles which seem to crack WAY nicer than China Glaze ones.
I tried my best with what I've got! And half of it was awesome! And then... well... you'll see.

I started with one coat of Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Silver Sweep, and one coat of Hema Jip en Janekke to make it a bit more sparkly, because Sara's base polish was sparkly and pretty.


Then I added a coat of China Glaze Broken Hearted crackle!

I tried so hard to make sure it crackled well, and it worked so well! I applied it in small strokes all over the nail instead of long sweeps. That helps get a more defined crackles and less of a "shredded" look.


Awesome. Almost there. I can do this. Now lets add the white crackle in the same fashion and hope for the best...

WHAT? WHAT IS THIS?
Ew! Are you seeing this? Where is the crackle? What happened?!

This was my first time using China Glaze Lightning Bolt white crackle and holy crap, it sucks.
I was staring at my nails thinking "WHY AREN'T YOU CRACKLING?"
The formula was so runny, I flooded all my cuticles, and as you can see it's too sheer for this look anyway, even if it did work!
Maybe if I use it a few more times it will thicken and be more opaque and actually crackle... I don't know.
All I know is that this was a great big fail. And it started out so promising!!


Go check out Sara's blog and her properly functioning white crackle (if you don't hate her too much over her Ozotic babies.)

international swatch spam: my swap with PolishSis! part 1

Long before I had my own blog or even knew what GFC was, I had dozens of polish blogs bookmarked. I would visit them all every day and drool over their huge collections and beautiful nails.
One of the first polish blogs I found was PolishSis.

Recently she had a giveaway and I mentioned how much I loved the polishes in her giveaway. A few weeks later, Inge emailed me asking if I would like to swap for those polishes! How could I say no?

It was like Christmas when I opened the package!

Inge took the time to wrap them all so pretty! Ribbons and everything.
Of course, the insides were just as pretty as the wrapping. :)

2 Teeez, 2 Catrice, 2 Hema, and 1 Herome!
I'm going to save the Teeez pictures for tomorrow - I took a lot of pictures.

Here are the first 5 that I'll show you!

Herome W.I.C. - Jerusalem. Very pretty pink metallic! One coat, so this is good for stamping.
It is similar to China Glaze's Emotion but more saturated and brighter. It stamps well over light and dark:

The W.I.C. stands for World Inspired Colors. There are 79 colors all inspired by different places from around the world! There are even some Canadian ones!
(Why didn't they make one more polish so there would be 80 colors?! I'm sure they could have picked one more city! Haha!)

Hema Nailpolish - 09. This polish is so unique and pretty, it's a seafoam green shimmer.
It is pretty sheer, it needs 4 coats to avoid visible nail line (VNL.)

I have nothing else like this in my collection!
It reminds me of the other Hema I have, 18, but more opaque and a much prettier color!
That one looked cool over black, so I tried this one over black too!

It brings out this apple green colored shimmer! It probably looks different over all sorts of colors!
And I bet it would look awesome over a similar creme polish, like For Audrey or a mint color. I think that will be my next pedicure!

Hema Nailpolish - 11. OMG, I love this color! 3 coats.
It is a beautiful shade of teal with gorgeous shimmer! I didn't want to take it off when I swatched it!

Love love love. It is perfect for me and my teal-loving ways.

The little Hema bottles are so darn cute.

The China Glaze bottle looks like a monster compared to them!

Catrice - Forget-Me-Not. Are you seeing this?! So awesome!
2 coats of pure gorgeous purple foil shimmer.

So. Pretty. New favorite purple shimmer!

Lots of pictures because I love it so much!

I managed to snap the last picture in the sun. This is blindingly shimmery and sparkly in the sun!
Just gorgeous. The sunlight picture is the most color-accurate.

Catrice - Dirty Berry. Blue-toned purple with subtle holo! So awesome!
Lots of pictures of this one too, but the picture below is the most color-accurate.

This is 2 coats! I also got some sunlight pictures of this one to show the holographic shine.

The holo is very subtle, it's almost as if the polish glows a little instead of being obviously holographic.

I am in love with this one too!

Inge, you really blew me away! I love them all so much!
Hopefully your package arrives soon. :)

Look out for the Teeez Holographic ones tomorrow! (They're drool-worthy!)

german giveaway swatch spam part 1

Hi guys!
As you might have seen, I won 16 polishes from From Head To Foot, and Martina also included 2 more because she is sweet.

So I have 18 international pretties to try out!
Today I have 6 of them to show you :)

I'll start with my favorite so far.

Catrice - Sold Out Forever.
Pure awesome light green with very subtle green shimmer. 3 coats.

This is supposed to be a dupe for Chanel's Jade, so this polish got really popular and I think it is somewhat hard to find now. I loooove it. And I tried to find a dupe in my stash but I don't have anything quite like it!

Essie - Turquoise and Caicos, OPI - Mermaids Tears, Catrice - Sold Out Forever, China Glaze - Re-Fresh Mint, Sinful Colors - Mint Apple.
Nothing even very close! Sold Out Forever is a true apple green, Re-Fresh Mint is green but much lighter, while all the others are somewhat blue-toned.

This is Essence - All Access from the Multi Dimension line. Really pretty shimmery deep green. 2 coats.

I really like this one too. I seem to always like greens.

Essence - Meet Me At The Club from the Sun Club collection. These polishes are scented and this one smells terrible, haha. The scent is overwhelming, and I'm not normally bothered by scents. It smells like faux-blueberries. Like blueberry lipgloss but WAY stronger. 3 coats.
Apart from the smell, this polish is gorgeous, but my camera did NOT like it AT ALL.
I'm going to do something I've never done before and include a photo from google because I just could not get it myself.

Photo credit: http://talasiabeauty.blogspot.com/2010/10/nagel.html

It is a pretty purple with pink shimmer. It is on my toes right now! I love it. (Despite the smell.)
I think it might be similar to China Glaze - Senorita Bonita but not quite as shimmery. 

This is p2 Color Victim - Attraction. Pretty pink with violet microshimmer!
For some reason I love the bottle. 2 coats but pictures show that I could have used a third.

Pretty!

This is a polish from Hema. Martina said it is called Jip en Janneke but I can't see a name on the bottle anywhere. Pretty silver foil! Not very unique but I actually don't have another sparkly silver like this one! Mine are more metallic. So I like it :)
A bit sheer - 3 coats.

Hema - 18. This one is not very "me." I haven't tried out all the polishes yet, but I'm pretty sure this is the only one I don't like.
Mauve with gold shimmer. It's sheer - 3 coats and still sort of see-through.

I just don't think it really suits me. It sort of reminded me of a less-blingy Zoya Faye (which I don't like either, haha.)

However, it looks cool over black!

There you have it - the first 6 of my international goodies from Martina.
There will be 2 more posts sometime in the future to cover all of them :)