Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all who celebrate!  For those who don't, happy belated Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Merry Festivus, Happy Solstice, Happy Yule, and just a plain old Happy End of the Year to everyone!  Normally, I do comparisons on Thursdays, but I'm going to show you guys a few of my Christmas manis from this year instead!

Purchased, Gifted, or Made by Me

Christmas Ornament Mani

I used three Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquers as well as a gold Sephora pen for this design.  For the undies, I used Untrodden Snow.  For the holly and leaves, I used Mickey Smith Defending the Earth and You Just Want to Mate?!  I modeled this manicure after my all time favorite ornament that we used as our inspiration for all of the decorations in our house!

Christmas Tree Mani

I apologize for the photos on this one because, honestly, I took them with my iPhone, lol!  Here, I used Literary Lacquer's 1000 Christmas Trees and Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer Grandpa.  To make the Christmas Tree, I used some striping tape and the LL.

Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy Mani

For this manicure, I decided I'd go with something bright, flamboyant, and not quite Christmasy, per se.  For this mani, I used Smitten's In October We Wear Pink topped with accents of Lynnderella Sugar Plum Pink from the 2012 advent LE collection.  This is another pic taken with my phone, which I haven't quite mastered due to my shaky hands.

Tacky Winter Sweater

I did another untraditional mani, but this time I went with a polish based off of the love of tacky winter sweaters, which happens to be the name of this polish!  BEGL Tacky Winter Sweater is a hot pink crelly base packed with snowflakes, diamonds, and glitters in various other shapes.  And yet another mani taken with my phone instead of my real camera!

Matte Glitter Gradient

For this mani, I used OPI Feel the Mo-heat-toes Green topped with a glitter gradient with Lynnderella Merry Ferry, and then topped with NYC Matte Topcoat.  Again, I apologize for this photo because I took it on my phone!  Here, I'm showing off my mani with a lovely beer by the Bruery called Seven Swans a Swimming, which is an amazing Belgian Quad!

Christmas Skittles

It's a very Lynnderella Christmas!  For this look, I used BEGLs, and RBL, an OPI, an EvP, and a metric-butt ton of Lynnderellas!  From thumb to pinkie - OPI L.A.M.B. topped with Lynnderella Change; BEGL Grandpa topped with Lynnderella Happy Holodaze; BEGL Siren's a Special Snowflake topped with Lynnderella Holo-day Hearts; RBL Gondoliere topped with Lynnderella Fire in the Jelly; and Elevation Wuyi Mountain topped with Lynnderella the Mindful Heart.

Candy Cane Tape Mani 

For this mani, I decided to go with a classic look that I've been seeing around town (i.e. on IG by Nail Polish Wars and Pointless Cafe- I know there have been more, but I can't find them now!).  I used two coats of Blue-Eyed Girl Lacquer Dogwood because it has that shimmer that really makes it look candy-like.  I then topped it with Seche Vite, used my striping tape to tape off some lines, and topped that with BEGL You Just Want to Mate?! and another coat of Seche Vite.

I hope that everyone has a lovely and safe holiday season!  May your new year be better than you expect and happier than you hope!

Rescue Beauty Lounge Aqua Lily and Lynnderella Thank Blue!

Man, last orders were out in record time!  Although, that kept me from blogging pretty much all week last week, so I'm sorry!  Tonight's post will be picture heavy and information light because, yet again, I'm pulling from some older swatches before I wrote down my opinions on application after every mani.  That being said, I am so much in love with this mani that I will be rewearing it again!  Hey, maybe I can do a challenge for myself to re-wear some of my favorite manis and polishes one month!  Next month, I'll be working my way through my untried Enchanteds and Elevations as I'm working towards starting to purge some of my preciouses.  My stash is overwhelming, so it's time to make room!  So, let's get to it!

[I purchased these polishes myself.]

For this mani, I used three coats of Aqua Lily with a glitter gradient using Thank Blue.  They are a perfect match, so it was a really nice monochromatic look.  I topped it off with a coat of Gelous and a coat of KBShimmer's Clearly on Top.

Thank Blue is made up of teal and silver glitters in a clear base.  This polish is so jam packed with glitters, that you definitely need an extra coat of topcoat to smooth it all out.  You can also wear this on its own in three coats, if you really wanted to.  

Aqua Lily is a lovely medium teal creme with a strong pink/purple flash.  Sadly, the flash is much more prominent in the bottle than it is on the nail.

Loving this blurry shot so you can see just how much holo goodness is in Thank Blue.  It's sooo stunning!

You can see the pink shimmer sneaking out in the middle of the nail towards the left.

You can purchase Rescue Beauty Lounge polishes at their store here.  You can purchase Lynnderellas at their stores here and here.  Sadly, both of these have been discontinued, so you'll have to look for them on blog sales if you want them!  So, what did you think?  Do you like to do monochromatic gradients or glitter looks?

[I purchased these polishes myself.]

Happy Halloween Everyone!!!

If you didn't know, my store is having a sale right now, and since I'm a dumb dumb that doesn't understand that technology stuff, the fixed code will be up until midnight tomorrow night.  All orders will receive 13% off with the promo code "Halloween" - so click here to order!  Also, there are only a few more hours to get your donations in to I Need a Lighthouse (or you can send them to me via paypal if you'd rather).  More information on that is located here, here, and here.

Ok, we won't be doing a Comparison Thursday today since it's Halloween, which is my FAVORITE holiday of the year.  Instead, I'm going to show you some of the Halloween looks I've been rocking this month.  Bear with me as these photos were taken with my iPhone and might not be the best quality coupled with the fact that my nails are a right mess. Without further ado, and in no particular order, my Halloween manis!

**All polishes were purchased by me.**

Lynnderella Are You a Good Witch over Rescue Beauty Lounge Piu Mosso.

Witch is a clear based polish with a blue shimmer and glitters in all sorts of shapes and sizes but that focus more on the darker side of the spectrum.  Part 1 of the Lynnderella Halloween inspired Twin Set.  Piu Mosso is a deep navy creme with a strong copper shimmer.  

Lynnderella Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun over Wet 'n Wild Fantasy Makers Darkest Hour, Once Upon a Time, and Ghouls Rush In.

Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun is a clear based polish with a pink to blue shimmer and multicolored glitters.  Part 2 of the Lynnderella Halloween inspired Twin Set.  Darkest Hour is a plain black creme.  Once Upon a Time is a silver foil.  Ghouls Rust In is a really nice bright orange jelly.  

Lynnderella Gotta Love Brains with Illamasqua Raindrops.

Raindrops is a grey based polish with silver-grey flakies.  Gotta Love Brains is a pale grey base with a pink shimmer and hexes and squares in silver, purple, pink, and blue.  This is two coats of Raindrops and three coats of GLB without undies.  I wasn't sure how I'd like either of these, but this may be my favorite non-art mani this year.

Lynnderella All Hallows Eve over Elevation Torres del Paine.

All Hallows Eve is a green polish with various shades and sizes of green and black glitters.  Torres del Paine is an amazingly luscious green creme that is opaque in one coat.  Flawless application!  I took it to the next level by using NYC Matte me Crazy.

Orange Gradient

I used 5 different polishes following this technique to get this look.  I was absolutely IN LOVE with this mani.  It's just sooo pretty.  I used (from cuticle to free-edge): Elevation Matsuda, Deborah Lippmann Footloose, China Glaze Riveting, Elevation Sarychev, and Elevation SBP Llulluillaco.

Candy Corn Holo Gradient

I used the same technique as the one above for the gradient (from cuticle to free-edge): Model City Polish Corn Maze, OPI Coral Reef, and Indigo Bananas Do You Have a Flag?  I then stamped on my accents with Konad Special Black using my new Bundle Monster Holiday plates (BM-H07, BM-H06).

So, if you celebrate it, what did you do for Halloween?  If not, what was your Thursday mani?  I'll be doing something a bit different next month, so check back tomorrow for that.  Also, please be aware that the Depression Awareness Giveaway will take time to verify as I will be awaiting the information from the charity, so please be patient as I get all of the verification information in.

**All polishes purchased by me.**

Comparison Thursday: Teals with Pink Flash

It's only fitting that I show you a comparison using one of my newly acquired Indigo Bananas polishes since I've been gushing over them for the past week.  Even though tonight's polishes aren't even near dupes, I did want to give you options to other polishes that have been discontinued.  Thus, tonight, we're going to take a look at teal polishes with pink flashes: Rescue Beauty Lounge Aqua Lily, Liquid Lacquer Lounging Lily, and Indigo Bananas Telephasic Workshop.  I will have proper reviews for each of these polishes at a later date.

Each of these polishes has a teal base with pink flash.  However, you'll notice that the teal base is very different in each polish.  Let's take a look at these guys a little closer.

RBL Aqua Lily

Aqua Lily is a teal leaning green with a pink sheen that shows up in certain lights.  Application was easy, but the polish is much thicker than I had anticipated.  It wasn't so thick that it needed thinner, though.  This was two coats by itself topped with Liquid Lacquer No Time quick dry top coat.  The pink in Aqua Lily is much more obvious in the bottle and didn't translate very well to the nail.  That's the only true negative about this polish.  Sadly, Aqua Lily has been discontinued.  I had to purchase mine from a swap group on Facebook.  If you see one for going under $30, grab it as quickly as your little hands can snatch it up!

Liquid Lacquer Lounging Lily

Please excuse the ravaged cuticles...  I had a picture with mass quantities of cuticle oil, but it turned out blurry.

Lounging Lily was Melissa's, Liquid Lacquer's creator, attempt to make an Aqua Lily dupe.  It's lighter in color, leaning more sky blue than green.  The pink flash is much more noticeable than in Aqua Lily, but the base is much more translucent.  This is three coats.  It looks a little wonky because I got waaaaaaay too much top coat on the brush when I was applying it.  It pooled and got a little goopy because of it.  Lounging Lily was also a tad on the streaky side.  Once I had three coats, though, the streakiness was gone.  The base is close to OPI Sonic Bloom or Sinful Cinderella, but it's decidedly more teal than those two.  Like most Liquid Lacquers, Lounging Lily is from a batch of 30, and I'm not sure if she has anymore bottles left.  However, Melissa is super nice and communicates well, so I wouldn't hesitate to contact her to see if she has anymore left.

Indigo Bananas Telephasic Workshop

Telephasic Workshop is a dark teal base leaning dark blue instead of green with a blue to pink shift.  Pigmentation is high, so I only needed two coats.  Application was easy without pooling, dragging, or balding, and it dried quickly.  The pink and blue flashes aren't like the sheen you see in the Lilies.  Instead, it's a larger particle size giving it a greater shift.  It's funny, most chromes are much more vivid in the bottle than on the nail, but that's exactly opposite of Telephasic Workshop.  It's much more vivid on the nail than in the bottle.  It's simply stunning, and I've decided to use it for a wear test for the brand.  For once, I'm not getting bored with the color before the end of the wear test.  As I've said the past 3 days, you can purchase Indigo Bananas polishes at her Etsy store.  Also, you can follow Andrea on Facebook and her blog for news and updates.

Check them out side by side.  Be prepared for picture spam.  It was a bit difficult to pick up the color shifts.

It wouldn't be fair to make a statement of which I think is the best because each polish is just different enough to make it worth having all three.  However, if you're not looking to have the limited edition or discontinued label and you don't mind having a darker base, I definitely think that you could get away with purchasing Telephasic Workshop to at least somewhat squash your lemming for those other DC polishes.

Which is your favorite?

*I was not financially compensated for this post. I received a sample (Indigo Bananas Telephasic Workshop) for review purposes. The opinions are completely my own based on my experience.  For more information, please see my Disclosure Policy in the tab above.*