Random Post: November Empties

Hey all.  It's that time again!  It's time for us to go through my beauty trash, you know the fun stuff.  This month is a lot shorter than last month, I only have eight products this month, so at least we know I'm not just pouring them down the drain. ;-)

1. Dead Sea Elements Wet Cleansing & Make Up Remover Towelettes (60 pack):  I randomly bought this at Marshalls because I was out.  They were fantastic.  I only had to use one towelette when I took off my make up, and let me tell you, I wear a fair amount a make up.  I didn't even have any trouble taking off my mascara.  Would I repurchase?  If I can find them again, I totally will.

2. Bath and Body Works Pink Chiffon Triple Moisture Body Cream: This is a thick cream that I prefer to use when my skin is particularly dry.  It does a good job of that and doesn't leave me feeling sticky or leave a gross film behind.  Pink Chiffon is also my favorite Bath and Body Works scent, since they discontinued all the original classic scents including Mango Mandarin, but that's a different rant.  Would I repurchase?  Yeap!

3. Garnier 5 Sec Blur Skin Renew Instant Smoother: Now I have obvious pores on my nose and forehead, they're probably even considered big.  So a pore filler or blurrer have always been a part of my make up process.  The 5 Sec Blur does exactly that,  it will not fill your pores, but it does diminish the appearance of them.  It also is a large size and lasted me a long time.  Would I repurchase?  As soon as I can find it again.

4. Cinema Swatch Lacquers Deleted Scenes Polish Remover in Chocolate Orange: In case you have not heard, Deleted Scenes is a pretty popular indie polish remover because it has a bunch of extra nourishing stuff and smells really good.  It was good at removing my polish quickly and left my cuticles feeling moisturized and smelling good, but jeez I flew through the bottle.  I felt like I used it up a lot quicker than other ones.  Would I repurchase?  If I had an infinite polish budget, than sure, but I feel like my beloved pink Sally's Beauty remover was just as good and I get so much more product for less money.

5. Julep in Myrtle: I got this in a random Julep box at some point and was thrilled because the formula was smooth and it was opaque in nearly one coat.  Until I noticed that I had two dupes for it in my collection, specifically OPIs Big Apple Red and Essie's Size Matters.  Would I repurchase?  Nope.  Not when there are readily available dupes that are significantly cheaper and give more product.

6. Julep Matte Top Coat: This was a good matte top coat, it went on smoothly and there was no shrinkage.  Would I repurchase?  Just like Myrtle, not because there are cheaper and larger options.

7. Nourish Organic Moisturizing Cream Face Cleanser: I got this in an Ipsy bag randomly and over all I enjoyed it.  It foamed up well with my Clarisonic and left my face feeling clean, but the smell of it was very unappealing.  Though it probably was not bad enough for me to stop using it.  Would I  repurchase?  Possibly.  I have a fair amount of face cleansers in my stash to try out.  If I don't find something I love more than I will probably be picking it up.

8. Different Dimension Cuticle Oil in Jolly Rancher: Oh my goodness.  This stuff smells AMAZING.  It makes me want to chew on my fingers because it smells delicious.  I adore cuticle oil that comes in little pens like this one and this one may have been my favorite.  Would I repurchase?  As soon as I finish the stash I have now, I may only be buying this one from now on.

As the usual kind reminder, these products were purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have companies send me free stuff to review them. ;)

Untried Wednesday: Julep Karen and Autumn

Guess what today is guys!  It's Mr. LacquerVixen's birthday today!  Yay!  We're taking him out to shabu shabu tonight for which I am super excited for.

This is Julep Karen.  It is a peachy orange shimmer, almost a frost.  For the pictures I used two coats and was pretty okay with the opacity.  I still have a touch of VNL on my pointer, middle, and ring fingers, but I was okay with it.  Mainly because I was planning on topping all my nails with the glitter in the next picture, but then Mr. LacquerVixen said accent nails instead.  I guess I can let him pick on his birthday.  So then maybe I should have gone back for the third coat.  I don't own anything like this in my collection.  I'm not an orange person, as I've said before, and I strangely don't own any peach colored polishes, but this color I really like.  It's delicate and seems almost neutral with my skin tone.  

On my thumb and middle finger I am wearing Julep Autumn, a glitter top coat with orange and red hexes and tiny silver specks.  In the picture I only used one coat and it dispersed evenly over the nail.  It may be able to reach complete opacity if you were to top it over red polish and maybe use three coats.  I think that it would look best as a topper though.  If it was too dense, the colors of the glitters would blend in too much and it wouldn't look as unique as it does.

As the usual kind reminder, these products were purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have companies send me free stuff to review them. ;)

Hard to Find Friday: Julep Sophie and OPI The Living Daylights

Fridays are always exciting aren't they?  You have a weekend to look forward to and hopefully lots of fun plans, or just the single plan of sitting at home marathoning the current city that you are obsessed with of Real Housewives, playing with some new pretty polishes, and having a nice cold cider.  At least that would be my perfect weekend plan.  :-P

Today I have two polishes for your viewing pleasure, Julep Sophie and OPI The Living Daylights.  In the strictest sense, The Living Daylights is the only HTF polish here today, but I had gone searching for Sophie on Julep's website only to find that it was sold out and on sale.  If it hasn't been discontinued already, I suspect it will be soon.  So that counts as HTF right?  Though I had originally picked it because I thought it would look good as a base for The Living Daylights.

Julep's Sophie is a mushroom gray taupe cream that was opaque in two coats from the Trina Turk Fall 2012 collection.  The second coat was mostly to fill in a couple of bald patches, but it did paint on pretty well.  I think it is a good solid neutral color to have, but it may not be all that unique.  I bet you could find something similar pretty easily, but if has not been discontinued and you can find it on sale, it would be a good color to pick up.  In case you did not already know this, Julep polishes come in .33 oz bottles which is about the same size of a normal mini polish.  The usual Julep polish runs about $14 a bottle.  Now there are ways of getting it cheaper, like Mavens get their bottles for $11.40 and they do run some good sales that leave the bottles any where between $3-5.  Normal priced, these bottles are too expensive and the Maven prices are a bit much for me.  Secret Sales are the way to go with these polishes. Julep does have some amazing one coat cream polishes, so if you are looking for any, hold out for a sale!

OPI's The Living Daylights is a glitter polish full of turquoise, silver and copper hexes from the James Bond Holiday 2012 collection.  It is pretty unique and I feel like I don't really have anything quite like this in my collection.  I got a fair amount of hexes on my brush in one go, so no fishing for glitters here!  I did find that as soon as a hex touched my nail it was near impossible to position it around my nail.  They stuck on pretty quickly so the ended up clustering on my nail a bit.  The clear base was a little bit thick, so maybe if I thin it out it would be easier to use and place the glitters a bit more to my liking.

As the usual kind reminder, these products were purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have companies send me free stuff to review them. ;)

Random Post: June Empties

Hey all, it's that time again!  It's Empties time!  Super exciting right?  Today I have nine products that I have managed to finish over the course of the past month that I want to share with you guys.

1. Beauty Secrets Pure Acetone (16 oz)- This is the house brand at Sally's Beauty Supply for regular pure acetone.  It works well on removing polish.  I usually just use it with glitter polishes and to clean up the edges of my nails.  As a result, it lasts forever.  Would I repurchase?  Yeah, next time I'm at Sally's I will.

2. Clean and Clear Morning Burst Body Wash Charge Pomegranate & Orange Zest- First off, I love the scent of this.  For lack of a better word, it is juicy.  Pomegranate and orange is one of my favorite scents.  It foamed up nicely and I felt sufficiently clean after the shower.  Would I repurchase?  I bought this at Big Lots on sale, so I don't know if I'd be able to get my hands on it again, but if I did I would.

3. Macadamia Natural Oil Deep Repair Masque (3.3 oz)- OMG I love this hair masque, so much.  It makes my hair so soft, silky, and smooth.  I used it once a week during my usual maintenance routine and I loved it.  It is pretty pricey for my blood, so I rationed it like crazy.  Would I repurchase it?  As soon as I get a chance I will!  Who needs groceries?

4. Julep Instant Warming Foot Scrub with Natural Pumice- I got this in my very first Julep Maven box ages ago and finally finished it.  It is a pretty decent scrub and did a good enough job, but I didn't think it was anything special.  It did warm when I rubbed it on my feet, but I didn't love it.  Would I repurchase?  Nah, I could probably find something better for cheaper. 

5. L'Oreal True Match Super Blendeable Concealer in W4-5- I really like the L'Oreal True Match foundation, I find that it is the liquid foundation that matches my skin tone the best.  I bought this concealer hoping that it would match my skin tone as well as the foundation does and it does a good job.  I had no problem blending it into my skin and it stayed around for a good while.  Near the end of the day it started fading away.  With a touch up, it lasted all day.  Would I repurchase?  Yeah, as soon as it is on sale I am there.

6. Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion- Ah, the ever popular UD eyeshadow primer.  This thing lasted FOREVER and it was great.  My eyeshadow lasted all day for the most part.  I think I got some creasing on some particularly hot days, but I was very happy with product.  I did have the old bottle, so I was able to use the doe foot applicator.  The new squeeze tubes don't seem as nice for application.  I'm always afraid that I will squeeze the tubes too hard and squirt out half the product.  Would I repurchase?  For the product itself, I would.  I'm not a fan of the new packaging, but if I cannot find a comparable product in a container that I'm not afraid that I will accidentally squeeze out a bunch of product at once.  

As the usual kind reminder, these products were purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have companies send me free stuff to review them. ;)

Fourth of July/Captain America Nail Art

Happy Fourth of July my American buddies!  To everyone else, look Captain America nail art!  :-D  If you follow me on Instagram, then you've seen my original version of my Captain America nails.  I decided to tweak them for the holiday.

My pointer and ring fingers were painted with three coats of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in White On.  It was a decent white, and if you were careful with the brush strokes, two coats would have probably been fine.  I did the red stripes with striping tape and OPI's Big Apple Red.  Big Apple Red is my go to stock red.  It is a good, classic red and goes on opaque with two coats.  My middle finger is Sinful Colors' Endless Blue and pinkie is Julep's America the Beautiful.  For my thumb, I used my red, white and blue polishes to paint Captain America's shield.  Finally the big white stars are actually from a star shaped paper punch from the scrapbooking section of Walmart.  :-)  I painted thick coats of white polish on a sandwich bag.  Once it was dry, I pealed off the paint and punched the star shaped holes out.  I pressed them on to my still wet polish and voila!  Easy nail polish stickers!

May Nail Art Part 1

May was a good month for me when it came to nail art.  I was actually pretty proud of the stuff I managed to pull off.  If you follow me on Instagram, then you've seen these already, but here you get a more in depth description and mini review on some of the polishes.  

For this first mani I used Julep's Janel.  Janel is a really pretty raspberry color and it took me two coats for this level of opacity.  Julep.com describes it as a frost, but it just looks like a cream to me, which is good, because I just can't seem to find any frosts I particularly like.  Also, I adore raspberry polishes.  They're like the perfect combination of red and pink, which are my favorite polish colors.  For accent nails I drew a black, white, and silver glitter starburst in the corner.  On my other nails I just did a coat of ORLYs Shine on Crazy Diamond.

To top it all off, I pulled out my Julep Freedom Polymer Top Coat.  I hadn't used it in forever and I could not remember why.  The day after I did this mani, I remembered.  The top coat just PEELED OFF.  Not my polish, put the Freedom Polymer stuff.  I sat there and sheets of clear polish just chipped off my nails.  Does anyone else have this issue?  Also it was kind of gloopy and didn't smooth over my nails evenly at all.  So if you looked at them, it was really obvious which parts hadn't been able to get some.  And it wrinkled on the base of my nails too.  Maybe I just had a bad bottle, because it looks like most reviewers loved it.  

For this next look I have to show you guys starts out with two coats of Picture Polish's Majesty.  It is described as a taupe/pink/nude color with a holo shimmer and no glitter what so ever.  I love this polish so much that I was almost sad to paint a design on top.  But I do love the final look of these guys, so I don't really regret it.

For the petals on these flowers I used my nail art brushes for the first time.  How exciting!  The petals are done in Illamasqua's Load, which the very sweet boytoy got me.  I have discovered that I love off white polishes and Load is white with a tinge of yellow, so yay.  The brown polka dots and edging of the center of the flowers is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Haute Chocolate and the yellow is Hit the Lights from Nicole by OPIs Selena Gomez line.  

So as I write this, I notice just how LONG this post has gotten.

Want to see the rest?  I will post a part two!

Julep Spring Mystery Box and Spring Bunny Mani

Sorry I've been away for so long guys!  I moved, got a new job, and have been stuck in training for the past three weeks.  Things are finally starting to slow down again, so I'm back!

So after having a Julep subscription for five months, I finally went out and ordered one of the their Mystery Boxes.  I talked myself out of the Christmas and New Years ones, which I regret because they had nifty bags and it looked like the stuff people got was worth it.  The Valentine's Day box, from my understanding, kind of sucked.  I guess people got a lot of repeat and similar colors.  So I finally bit the bullet and got the Spring Mystery box.  All in all, I was pretty happy.  I got three nail polishes, Lauren, Camille, and Ashley, face and hand sunscreen, a nail file, nail polish remover pads, and hair ties.  Totally worth the $25 I spent on it.  

I wanted to do a spring mani using the polishes I got and I kept seeing bunnies on Instagram, so I felt like trying something new.  I painted my nails with two coats of Julep's Ashley, a pale orange with gold shimmer and used China Glaze's White on White for some polka dots.   Then I did a coat of Camille on my thumb and pinkie.  I kind of love Camille.  It's a clear chunky glitter  that almost looks holo and totally reminds me of the fake snow in snow globes.  It makes me want to do nail art inspired by the collectable snow globes from Fallout New Vegas.

And finally, on my ring finger I painted a bunny using my dotting tools.  The white is the same one I used for the polka dots.  His little blue eyes are Sally Hansen's Calypso Blue, and his nose and ears are Zoya's Sweet.  I painted on his whiskers with a black striper.  

I was really proud of myself for actually being able to pull this one off.  People kept complimenting them and were surprised that I had done it myself.  :-)

Julep Maven March Box

It's that time of the month again!  Julep Maven boxes are being delivered and I got to play with my new colors last night.  The March colors were inspired by a childhood favorite, sidewalk chalk.  The colors are pretty pastels that are great for Spring. 

I chose It Girl this month, partially because I really like Simone and Shanae, but mostly because I didn't want the Rock Star hand cream at all.  I just can not stand floral scents, they just all smell gross to me.  The box ended up including Simone, Shanae, and Teri, along with a Strawberry Mint lipbalm. 

Simone is a lilac color with the barest hint of a blue shimmer.  It's visible in the bottle, but on the nail, the shimmer dissapears.  Shanae has the same shimmer, but in a pastel mint color. Teri is different from the others, only in the sense that it is not quite as pale.  It is creme, coral color.

When I first opened my Maven box, I knew that I had to do something involving all the colors.  Eventually, I decided on just doing diagonal stripes.  First I painted my nails all in Teri, then did a line of Simone, Shanae, and painted the very tips in Teri again.  To give it that complete chalk look, I added Julep's matte top coat and called it a night.  Teri painted on solid in one thick coat.  Simone and Shanae took two medium coats.  I love the way the colors ended up looking together.  Maybe next month I'll use all three again and braid them together. 

To finish this post off, I thought I'd throw in my most prized piece of sidewalk art.  When my mom found it in our backyard, she was annoyed.  But whatever, I regret nothing!!

Julep Cindy Swatch

When I first started getting in nail polish, I spent a whole bunch of time reading blogs, and on Pinterest.  I kept hearing about Julep, and their Maven program.  Come on, $20 a month for at two to three nail polishes that are trendy and chosen to best fit your style?  It's a steal!  Especially considering that they're fabulous colors and good quality.

At some point I got Cindy, I don't remember if it came in a box or as an add on.  I just remember picking it because I didn't have any green polishes and it was sparkly.  For the longest time it just stayed in my nail polish case and for whatever reason I never picked it up.  Well I finally used it and it is fantastic.
Cindy is a grassy green jelly with tiny green and gold glitter, though it is a little hard to notice the gold in the picture.  I had to do three coats to get this coverage because at two I still had a little bit of a visible nail line.
I got a ton of compliments on this color.  My favorite was "I like your nails because they're my favorite color.  Green, like money."

JULEP MADISON AND ESSIE BUTLER PLEASE SWATCHES

It has been brought to my attention that painting two accent nails is the new trend.  To me, that just means that I don’t have to pick just one polish whenever I paint my nails.  :-)

When I got home from work last night, I thought Julep’s Madison would be a good accent to Butler Please.  So at 8 pm I started painting my nails and at 11 pm I jumped into the shower before bed.  Imagine my surprise when I noticed that all of the nails with Madison were smudged.  The Essie polish was perfectly smooth as always, but for some reason Julep failed me!

In the bottle, Madison is a bright pink neon and on the nail it looses some of the rosy hue.  In the picture it looks almost orange, but then that might just be the fault of my iPhone.  I am actually really sad that it took so long to dry because I love Julep.  Some of my favorite polishes have come from Julep Maven boxes and they always seem to last the longest with the least amount of chipping.

Butler Please is probably one of my favorite blues, and I do adore blue polishes.  It is a cobalt blue creme.  It dried with almost a matte finish, but with a top coat it was super glossy and awesome.  I wish I had gotten it sooner and had stamped it with silver snowflakes for a holiday manicure.

In the end, I still love Essie and I’ll give Madison another chance another day.  Hopefully, it’ll dry better next time.