Polish Gifts #2 + Layered Reds

Here are the other polishes I received during the holidays.  The American Apparel polishes were Christmas gifts from my friend Judy.  The Color Club polishes which I believe to be from a Pardon My French set were gifted to me via my friend Dawn from her brother's girlfriend.   It's all the colours minus Si Vous Please. 

And that's it for polish gifts this year.

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I used two colours from the Quo by Orly mini set,  Garnet (left) and Red Hot (right).  Pictured top right is both colours swatched on their own with two coats each.  Red Hot is pretty pigmented and one coat would have sufficed.  As for Garnet, it's pretty sheer, on the nail by itself you'd probably need three coats for opacity.  For the mani I did one coat of Red Hot and one coat of Garnet.  Then I used some water decals that look like they could have been hand painted.

Polish Gifts #1 + Grey Glitter Snowflakes

Long time no write.  Not because I was super busy or anything just that I haven't been photographing my nails much.  I didn't really paint my nails much during the holidays. When I did do my nails they usually didn't last all that long.

Hope everyone had a happy holiday and a good start to the new year.  To start off this post I have a pic of a set of mini polishes of Quo by Orly polishes that my friend Amy got me for Christmas. (Hi Amy, that was your shout out, though you had to wait a while for it, thanks for the polishes.)

Quo by Orly polishes are available at Shoppers Drug Mart stores and I had never tried them before so this set was a great introduction to them.  No pictures of any of them yet, but I will get on it.  Ah I just realized that the bottom of the pic is missing the names for the bottom row.  D'oh.  I'll list out all polishes.

From left to right, top row:
Very Vixen, Mystic Night, Garnet, Precious, Sapphire Sparkle, Cold Stone, Rock Show, Rock Star and Night Sky.

Bottom row:
Turquoise Moonlight, Celestial Star, First Class, Filthy Rich, Red Hot, Wine and Dine, Old Hollywood, Love Game and True Love.

Most of the polishes are glittery or shimmery and seems like they may work best as layering polishes.  However 3 thin coats will get you full coverage with minimal or no bald spots.  The tiny brush is not to my liking, but that's OK.

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Next up nails.  I did this some time last week.

Base colour was two coats of American Apparel Echo Park.  I forgot to include Konad special polish in white in the photo, but that's OK.  Used Konad white to stamp with and plates SH17 for the snowflake on the index finger, RA 119 for the thumb and ring finger and HB23 for the smaller not so well stamped snowflakes on the middle and pinky fingers.  I also did some glitter snowflakes with Color Club Sugarplum, but they didn't turn out as nice as I thought they would.  They kind of just looked like blobs of glitter on the nail.  Topped everything with CoverGirl Boundless Color in Disco Dazzle.

That's it for today. 

EU Gifts

Long time no post.  I've just been kinda lazy and haven't really been taking pics of my manis in the past week or so.  So I now have a post that should've been posted sooner.  Some polishes from London and Paris from my friend.

At the end of August my friend went to London -> Brussels -> Paris for vacation and she picked up a few polishes for me.  I had wanted greens, oranges and yellows and this is what she gifted me.  Three Barry M polishes, three Top Shop polishes and three various French polishes.

Here are nail wheel swatches.  Some look like dupes of one another, but still different.  Kinda smudged Top Shop Bee's Knees so it looks rather sloppy in the pic.  All the polishes were really nicely pigmented.  Two or three (yellows) thin coats were needed for full coverage on nails.  Great polishes all around.

Here's a swatch of Barry M Spring Green on my nails.

My hand looks really tan in this photo, but the green looks lovely.

Early Christmas Pressie

On Sunday I exchanged Christmas gifts with my friends and naturally we opened up our gifts right away and this jar of polishes was given to me from my friend J. Lots of goodies inside. I will slowly go through them and use 'em each for a manicure. I've already used two polishes, see below.



One coat of Revlon - Cherries in the Snow with Nicole by OPI - Spark My Mistletoe layered over top. Quick and easy holiday mani. Can't go wrong with red for the holidays.