Serum No 5 Moonlight

Today is just a quick swatch post. I wanted to show this beauty off since she's been sitting in my drafts for forever. I'm determined to get all the drafts published soon, but I keep doing new mani's I want to show off too! #bloggerproblems 

Today I'm showing off  Serum No 5 Moonlight, a soft grey filled with the most beautiful shimmer. This was three thin coats and I can't complain at all! This polish does glow in the dark, but I have NO IDEA how to take those pictures. I tried and it was a huge fail. You'll just have to take my word that it's a bright green glow.  




That's it for today. If you know how to take glow in the dark pictures of polish....please tell me! Thanks!

Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee
*gift
Serum No. 5

Kate Spade Inspo: Pink and Red Stripes

If you know me in real life, you know that I'm obsessed with Kate Spade. I call her my girlfriend and if I only had to wear one brand of clothing for life, I'd go KS. So it was only a matter of time until I did a Kate Spade inspired look. In fact, I'm surprised it took me this long. I recently got a new phone case and well, this is where I ended up. 

I started off with a base of Bear Pawlish Peek a Boo! This is my first time using a Bear Pawlish and let me tell you .... it won't be the last. The formula on this was FANTASTIC!  It applied like butter and looks prettier. Peek a Boo! is a BRIGHT blue leaning pink holographic polish! 




I then went in with Polished for Days Beach Towel Vinyls for the stripes and sponged on two thin coats of Cirque Colors Rita. Rita is quickly becoming my go to red, I use it for everything! 





Voila! There you have it! My Kate Spade phone case mani! I'm totally in love with it! Even my hubs noticed and that is saying something. Are you ever inspired by a brand? I'd love to know who!

Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee
*self purchased

Bear Pawlish
Polished for Days
Cirque Colors

#StampingSaturday: Super Juiced

It's Saturday again and ya'll know what that means! #StampingSaturday. I'm currently running around Nantucket with family and having a great time. I'm sad we have to leave tomorrow, the end of vacation is always a bummer. Because I knew I'd be away this weekend, I prepped these nails early in the week. I'm totally in love with them. They are such a fun look. 

I started with a base of ILNP Super Juiced. This beauty was two easy coats. I actually wore it plain for just a day, because I couldn't cover it up at first. It's the most beautiful blue-purple, or blurple if you are a fan of that word, filled with magenta shimmer.




I then created a stamp decal with Uber Chic 1-01 and Mundo de Unas Tutti which was a perfect match for the shimmer in Super Juiced. Once the decal was dry I cut it into little strips of the pattern and carefully applied one strip to the center of each nail.




The more I try stamped decals, the better I get and the more I like them. Yay for new techniques! Be sure to check out all the other #StampingSaturday looks below, or join in! 


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Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee
*self purchased

#TheLacquerRing: Under the Sea

#TheLacquerRing is back with our second prompt for July. The art prompt this month is "Under the Sea". Having recently failed hard at a mermaid tail look I needed to redeem myself. So I'm having another go at it and I think this one was much more successful. 

I started with a base of Literary Lacquers Mirror of Galadriel. This is a stunning silver beauty that is filled with so many holographic rainbows I had a hard time getting a decent shot of it. It applied great, full coverage in two coats. 




After my base was dry I then applied Scale Vinyls from Polished for Days.  I sponged on a gradient of Painted Polish I'm on a Boat and Naughty Nautical. After peeling off the vinyls and spending hours cleaning off the stray glitters....I deemed this a success!! 




Be sure to check out all the other Under the Sea looks from AmandaLesleyJessicaNicoleVoniFrossoCynthiaShelby and Rei below. 


An InLinkz Link-up


Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee
*self purchased 

Daisy Chains

How's everyone on this fine day? I worked all weekend with not much of a break, but I did manage to sneak in a movie, Amy Shcumer's TrainWreck. I'm officially adding her to my celebrity best friend list. If you haven't seen it, hustle on over to a movie theater. One word....HILARIOUS! 

Today's look is a very simple one, but I really like it. I started off with a base of Model City Polish Vanilla Mint. This is a light green base filled with glitters in green, aqua, and turquoise. It's super pretty and the formula was great. 





Next I went in with my dotting tool and Sinful Colors Snow Me White to create some basic flower shapes. Finally I added center dots with Julie G Canary Islands.  There you have it....simple daisy chains! For how easy this look is, I really like the end result. 





Confession...I think a few of my daisy's look liked sunny side up eggs more than flowers, but oh well. Maybe I'll do a breakfast inspired mani someday!

Model City Polish

Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee
*self purchased

#StampingSaturday: Flowers in Paris

#StampingSaturday!!! These are always some of my favorite posts. Just a quick heads up, before we dive into the meat of the post. We recently started a Facebook Group for #StampingSaturdays. It's a great resource for getting the link up code, bouncing ideas off of like-minded people, and showing off your stamped manis! I'd love it if you came and joined us! 

Today, I started with a base coat of F.U.N. Lacquer's Midnight in Paris. This beauty is part of a Limited Edition 2015 collection. I've seen it worn over black, but today I choose to wear it in three coats for full opacity. It's hard to describe this shade, sometimes it looks green, sometimes charcoal, others purple. It's a chamelon due to the copious amounts of multi-chrome flakies that make up the base. Also thrown in are holo particles that give this rainbows in the light. 





Now...I realize that I hardly ever show you the stamping plates I use. Mostly because a) I bought them myself and b) they are a real bitch to photograph. However...this beauty was sent to me by The Born Pretty Store and let me tell you, they have upped their stamping plate game. I used the top right image for this look, and had NO issues getting the image to pick up. It covers the full nail and has crisp lines. I can't wait to play with the other images on here. If you want to check out this beauty you can do so here. You can also receive 10% off your order if you use the code: NFSQ10


For the stamp I used BPL-024 (above) and Mundo de Unas in Turquoise and Spring Green. I'm loving the way the green leaves look with the blue flowers. Totally reminds me of the spring gardens I saw all over Paris while visiting.





There you have it! Be sure to check out all the other Stamped Looks below or join in on the fun!

Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee
*stamping plate provided for my honest review
**polishes self purchased




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OPI ColorPaints Gradient

Sorry for the minor break in posting y'all! I had some technical difficulties with my camera not recognizing my memory card anymore. After some Googling, it turns out I wore it out. To much taking it in and out to get pics off for posts. Thankfully, I was able to get all my photos off no problem, but I couldn't get the camera to recognize it anymore. While I was dealing with that frustration, I had to be patient. BUT....solved and now I have new pretties to show you! WHOOP! 

So I showed your KBShimmer Foiled the other day. While admiring it, I had a thought. It would be the perfect silver base to try out my new OPI ColorPaints mini-set. For this look, I used OPI ColorPaints Pen & Pink and OPI ColorPaints Purple Perspective.  I wanted to try a gradient and it turned out very watercolor-ish. I started with a coat of Purple Perspective on the bottom 1/4 of my nail, then added another coat over that which went up about half way. I then switched to Pen & Pink, coating 3/4 of the nail and finally a second pass that covered the whole nail. For some reason the colors didn't give full opacity at the tip of each nail.





I really like the overall effect here. I can't wait to play with these some more. But here is my question...would anyone be interested in a tutorial video or photo of this? I'm thinking of branching out. Let me know!

Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee
*self purchased

Do You Need Both? - Metal Flakie Polish Dupes

It's been a long time since I've done a comparison post. A looooong time. I wore KBShimmer Foiled the other day and someone asked how it compared to Cirque Colors Mirror Mirror. I pulled them both out to compare and I pulled out a few other silver flake polishes that are similar as well. Today's line up includes the two already mentioned and F.U.N. Lacquer Pay Day (H), Literary Lacquer Felix Felicis, and F.U.N. Lacquer Pay Day.  Please be aware that this is a picture heavy post, so there is a lot to get through, as I was pretty thorough. All polishes have been shown with three coats applied and topped with top coat. 



Up first is KBShimmer Foiled vs. Literary Lacquer Felix Felicis. Foiled is the finest of the silver flake polishes. You get full coverage with this one in 2-3 coats and it is a beautiful silver color. Compared with Felix Felicis, you can see the FF is more gold toned with similar flake size but there are also bigger gold glass fleck flakes mixed in as well. These are most definitely not dupes.


Next we have F.U.N. Lacquer Pay Day vs. Cirque Colors Mirror Mirror. I totally thought these two would be dupes and they are in fact the closest out of all of them. My bottle of Pay Day is quite old, like original branding/bottle old,  so I don't know if there was color bleed, but it is a silver flake polish in a slightly gold base for me. On the website, her pictures show it as a champagne. Mirror Mirror is large silver flakes in a clear base. The flake sizes here are spot on but the colors are slightly off. I'm guessing if I had a newer bottle of Pay Day, they'd be dupes. Which is good news as you can still purchase Pay Day. 


Next we have the two Pay Days against each other. Pay Day (H) has the same flake size in a holographic base. Out of all the polishes this one reads the most silver. Pay Day reads gold in the tinted base.


KBShimmer Foiled vs. Cirque Colors Mirror Mirror.  These two are similar in tone and finish, but as you can tell Foiled has much finer flakes that Mirror Mirror. Foiled is like Mirror Mirror's little sister.


F.U.N. Lacquer Pay Day (H) vs.  Literary Lacquer Felix Felicis. These two aren't even close. The only similarity they have is that they both have other elements along with the metallic flakes.


KBShimmer Foiled vs. F.U.N. Lacquer Pay Day (H). These two are the most silver of the bunch. They have similar tone, but different flake sizes, not to mention Pay Day (H) has the holographic base.


KBShimmer Foiled vs. F.U.N. Lacquer Pay Day. These two aren't similar, you can tell they have a similar background, but that is as far as it goes.


F.U.N. Lacquer Pay Day (H) vs. Cirque Colors Mirror Mirror. These two have similar flake size but the bases are different. Pay Day (H)'s holographic base makes it read more silver while on Mirror Mirror the flakes in a clear base leans more platinum.


Literary Lacquer Felix Felicis vs. F.U.N. Lacquer Pay Day.  I think these two are the most similar in color, as they are both the most gold out of the 5, but there are fundamental differences. Obviously Felix Felicis uses a much smaller flake size and the addition of the glass fleck takes it further away.


Finally we have Literary Lacquer Felix Felicis vs. Cirque Colors Mirror Mirror. Mirror Mirror has bigger flakes and reads more platinum, while Felix Felicis is much smaller flakes, gold, and has additional glass flecks.


So there you have it! Do you need all of them, probably not. The good news is that all of these, with the exception of Mirror Mirror are still available. If you missed out on Mirror Mirror's limited run, Pay Day is a good substitute. Other than that, I'm calling them all quite different. I'll leave all links to the polishes below.


Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee
*self purchased
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