OPI - Elephantastic Pink

Hi everyone! Here's a fresh, fun summer color for you. I've been feeling a strong itch for pinks and corals lately, maybe because they remind me of summer so much. This has been sitting in my untrieds for a while and I was happy to give it a try. If there's one thing you can trust OPI with, it's pinks and reds. I think they make every shade of those known to man!

Elephantastic Pink is, well.. pink! It's a nice simple pink creme that's slightly yellow-based and pretty darn bright but not quite neon. There's not really much else to say than that. My only complaint was that it took 3 coats and my eyes still see a tiiiiiny bit of VNL. The formula was good and I like the color but frankly, there are a million pink cremes and I'm sure I can find a dupe that's fully opaque in 2 coats with no problem. With colors like these, I have zero tolerance for even slight problems. I'm really trying to keep my collection to its current storage so I don't hesitate to get rid of colors I'm not completely in love with.

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Essie - Navigate Her

Hello there! Here's a quick post of a new color. Navigate Her is a recent release from Essie for Spring, and I think it's a great fit for the season. It's a slightly yellow dusty light green that makes me think of pistachios and mint milkshakes and fresh, tiny tree branches. It's fun and clean. :) I know I've complained about Essie's formula in the past and I still wouldn't say it's one of my favorites, but I've learned how to deal with it. This applied fairly easy for an Essie. The first coat was streaky but the second evened things out nicely. It will look uneven before you put on top coat but these Essie cremes seem to just need some time to settle down and get smooth.

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Essie - Van D'Go

Hello everyone! Whew, it's been a hectic week. Glad I finally found time to get a post together. This is a polish I recently received in a swap. Van D'Go is a peachy pink, not too orange to look odd on my pale skin but peachy enough to be different than a regular pink. This did take 3 coats with some streaking but, well.. it's a light pink. What else do you expect? I'm not the biggest fan of Essie's formula in general anyways, but it's tolerable for this. It's a nice, fresh, girly color that I think would look great with some stamping or other art on it. I was tempted to use my Hello Kitty stickers but I'll save those for another day. :)

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Essie - Turquoise & Caicos

Hi everyone! Back with another post. I recently did some more purging & reorganizing of my collection and while I was moving my Essies, I decided to give this a shot. T&C is, well.. turquoise! It's got a strong green hint to it but still has that nice greenish-blue mix to it. The color is great but the formula is lacking. Opacity took 4 coats for me and I can still see a little bit of my nails. I know that with long nails, I'll generally need an extra coat or two sometimes to fully cover VNL but 4 coats.. not a fan. Especially not since this reminds me a lot of China Glaze For Audrey which, if memory serves me right, will give me a pretty similar color in 2 or 3 coats. T&C also ended up with a few sheet marks and bubbles, which I'm not a fan of. Overall, I'd say it's not bad but not unique enough to merit putting up with the problems I encountered. I've always been on the fence about Essie because the formula can definitely be hit or miss and this was, unfortunately, a miss.

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Nicole by OPI - Midnight Snowfall

Hello there! Today's polish is a bit of a chameleon. Midnight Snowfall came out in Nicole by OPI's holiday collection last year, along with Fell From The Tree and a lot of other great colors. However, it's a bit hard to pin down! You can see under this bright light, it looks definitely blue. However, in other lighting it looks like a rich, slightly dusty purple. This is a blurple polish if I ever saw one. Kinda cool. The only downside is some formula problems. You can see a few patchy bits here and there and I got a load of tipwear on this after only 2 or 3 days. I used 3 coats. Thanks to TA from Color Me Cagey in the comments on  my last post for suggesting dark colors on nubbins, this looks much better than light yellow!

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Sally Hansen - Model Behavior

Hi there! Today's polish is a super fun, cheery color. Model Behavior is a polish that came out in the Spring with the Prabal Gurung limited edition collection. I don't own a lot of these Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure polishes simply because the core colors aren't terribly exciting. The limited edition collections tend to have much better colors. This is a deep sky blue that looks so fun and bright on the nails. If I were any good at nail art I'd definitely paint some puffy white clouds and a big bright sun on here. It's a simple color, since it's a creme, but it's still pretty unique to me and definitely worth having. The formula is fairly even but slightly thin, I needed 3 coats to get full coverage.

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Color Club - Ms. Socialite

Hi everyone! Today's post was brought to you in part by Paillette, who recently had a giveaway. I won one of the prizes, the Color Club Rebel Debutante set! This polish is from that set. Ms. Socialite is a reddish-purple creme. I wasn't sure how I would like it since I usually like blue-based purples but I'm trying to push myself out of my normal range of colors and try new things. It applied really smoothly and covered pretty well in 2 coats, though I probably could have used a third to fully even things out. It's definitely a rich fall-type color and it's grown on me.

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Essie - Pretty Edgy

I'm back! How's everyone doing? Miss me? :) My swatch for today is a super-fun color and definitely one of my favorites. Pretty Edgy is green, green, green! It does pull ever so slightly blue on me but that may be my coloring. I think after putting on PE I've made my peace with the Essie jelly-creme formula. Sometimes it can be frustrating due to streaks, but on the whole it's smooth and is definitely the shiniest polish formula I've seen. My nails look like they're dipped in green glass. This covered nicely in 3 coats. I know it might seem a little out of place to have such a summery green in September but Summer doesn't end around here until late October, at least! Even then, I wear what I want to wear regardless of season. :)

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Sinful Colors - Innocent

Hello! I've got a new favorite to show you today. Sinful Colors make up almost a whole drawer on their own in my collection for a good reason, they have great colors and pretty good formula for really cheap. I love greens so I had to get Innocent when I saw it. It's a very interesting color.. very yellow, slightly murky. I think dirty chartreuse is the best way to describe it. It's certainly bright! The formula is a jelly-creme, meaning it can get streaky on you if your coats are very thin. I did one thin coat and then one thick coat on top. Since the formula is on the thin side, the thick coat did run into my cuticles a little bit but I always do cleanup anyways, so it wasn't a big deal. It evened out nicely with a great shine that only got glossier when I added topcoat. I really love these slightly unusual colors and I'm glad that Sinful Colors is there to bring some diversity to the drugstore nail polish range.

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Orly - Lemonade

I am SO VERY HAPPY to bring you this post today! This color satisfies a long-time desire of mine: an opaque and easily applied pastel yellow. Both pastels and yellows are noted for being difficult, so when you combine the two you generally get disaster. This was true for the first pastel yellow I tried, Sinful Colors' Unicorn. Streaky mess. I looked around on the internet for a good while and found some contenders. I picked this polish up at the store the other day and came home to put it on with some trepidation. Heck, I was even getting angry in advance expecting it to apply awfully. The first, very thin, coat was somewhat streaky but not too terrible. I decided to do a rather thick second coat after waiting about 5 minutes to prevent the first layer from dragging and SUCCESS! That's what you see here, pure buttery sunshine perfection. I really sort of don't want to take it off but I will, of course. At least I know I have a little bottle of pretty pastel yellow waiting for me. :)

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Sally Hansen - Coral Fever

Hi everybody! Sorry again about the late posting, it's been tough getting sunshine to snap pictures in lately. This is Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Coral Fever, part of the limited edition Spring collection. I wasn't particularly excited about any of the shades from swatches I saw but I ended up getting this, Model Behavior, and Delphinium when I saw the display at a local store. I generally like the SH CSM polishes, they go on smoothly and have a BIG WIDE BRUSH which is great for my wide nails. Coral Fever was a good example of SH CSM quality, pretty well pigmented and went on nicely in 2 coats. The drying time on its own is pretty fantastic, too! Just maybe 5 minutes after I painted my last nail and finished cleanup but hadn't applied topcoat yet, my mom wanted me to help her take out and play with my rats. I had her open the cage so I wouldn't dent anything and stood there playing the 'my fingers are made of lava, don't touch anything' game until one of the girls went tumbling onto the floor! I scooped her up quickly and I know my nails brushed against her, the carpet, and a wooden bed in the process but when I went to examine the damage.. there was none! My nails were perfectly glossy and unblemished. High-five, Sally Hansen.

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Zoya - Kelly

Kelly was a huge hit last year, showing up nearly everywhere as a big fall color. So what do I do? Put it on in the middle of a standard Florida June summer, duh. :) I've never been a traditionalist and I don't plan on starting now. I wanted something neutral and dark but not black, so I reached for Kelly. I am very, very pleased with it! Highly pigmented and went on in two easy coats. It's a deep grey with a definite blue hint in the base. In the shade it even looked like a straight up dusty deep blue but in the sun you see that it's genuinely grey.

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How do you feel about wearing dark colors in the summer or bright colors in the winter? Do you stick to the general rules or do what you feel like?

China Glaze - Life Preserver

I've really been liking bright, bold colors for summer and this is no exception. Life Preserver is a nice strong orange color that really pops without being neon. It went on nicely in 2 coats which is always a plus. Next time I might layer Fresh Squeezed on top of it for some sparkly, juicy goodness!

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OPI - Stranger Tides

Stranger Tides is an interesting color, unique for sure. It's a light creamy dusty yellowish-green. I was concerned about the yellowness when I applied it but it doesn't really translate onto the nail much, hooray! This is the only color from the collection that I really wanted so I'm happy I got it. This was 3 coats.

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Nina Ultra Pro - Salsa

Wow! It has been a long time since I've worn a green polish. This is my first experience with Nina Ultra Pro and I'm very happy. I think you can only find these polishes at Sally Beauty, I picked it up a while ago. This is a really great green that went on in 2 coats on most of my nails, 3 coats on one or two of them. I'm surprised at how nice   it looks on me because it's a fairly yellow-based green. Normally anything yellowy looks a little odd, but this is great! The color reminds me of a green pepper's skin, very fresh looking. I was surprised at how glossy this ended up being, too.

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OPI - Done Out in Deco

Still trying to get back on a regular posting schedule, please forgive the recent lack of updates! This is OPI's Done Out in Deco. I really loved the color in the bottle but it has a jelly-creme consistency like Essie tends to and as a result it clung to my ridges and had some bald spots. I'm sure it's a great polish if you sit down and work with it but I'm not a fan of having to baby my polish application. It's certainly a beautiful color though! Perhaps I just apply polish too hastily. This was 3 coats.

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Essie - Mint Candy Apple

Here's a fun little spring manicure for you. Essie Mint Candy Apple is a nice mint green color but it suffers from the same watery streakiness that Borrowed & Blue does. You have to let it flow onto the nail, not paint it on. It did go on in two coats though, so that's always nice. I did have some dings and bald spots but it didn't matter too much since I was planning to decorate it anyways. These nail decals are from Sally Beauty Supply and are made by Cina. Really easy to put on.

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Have any spring plans? Looking forward to the Easter bunny's visit tomorrow?

Essie - Borrowed & Blue

This color makes me so very happy! Part of Essie's new bridal collection, Borrowed & Blue is the perfect pastel blue for me. I really wanted to love Hard Candy's Sky but it was a streaky, terrible mess. B&B has its own problems but with a careful hand and two coats, you get great results. This is a perfect color for spring and would be a great base for some spring or summer related nail art.

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Sinful Colors - Boogie Nights

So I love/hate the name of this polish.. It's so fitting but it got the song stuck in my head! Oh well. Boogie Nights is a beautiful orange-y coral that still has just enough pink in it to keep it looking good on me. When I first applied it, it made me think of melon candy. It's a jelly-creme finish that leans more jelly which you can see here by my visible nail line after 3 coats. Normally VNL would bother me a lot but I love this color so much I'm willing to give it a pass. It's perfectly summery and super glossy! I filed my nails down into a rounded almond shape since my nails tend to curl a lot when they grow long and the corners will break if you look at them. So I figured, hey.. no corners, no breaks! It's worked out great so far. Can you tell any difference?

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Let me pick your brains for a second.. Would you like to see what things I'm gathering for a 50 follower giveaway as I pick them up, or should it stay a surprise until I hit that number? I'm ITCHING to do a giveaway but haven't quite got the numbers yet! Perhaps it'd be motivation? :) I'll tell you a little secret about it, there's two hard-to-find polishes in the prize bucket as of right now..

Sinful Colors - Last Chance

I'm back! Today's swatch is a new color from Sinful Colors called Last Chance. Sinful doesn't seem to come out with new colors too often so it's exciting when they do. This is a great example of their polish. It's a beautiful deep hunter green that could honestly go on in one coat if you were very careful. I was surprised at how pigmented it was. If you like greens I'd highly recommend this color. I'm happy to have this because a lot of deep dark greens are so dark that they become black, like OPI's Here Today... Aragon Tomorrow or the famous NARS Zulu. This is dark but still definitely green.

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