Showing posts with label texture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label texture. Show all posts

Textured Tuesday: Mardi Gras

Not to long ago, I asked on Facebook and Twitter if anyone would be interested in doing a Textured Tuesday weekly thing with me? A few people responded saying it sounded fun, so I'm starting it. The premise is that I have way to many textured polishes, because I love them, so I want to push myself to use them more. So join me, just to show off a pretty textured polish or if you want to do some textured nail art, bring it on. Anything goes. Feel free to link your own textured manis below. The link-up will remain open until the next Textured Tuesday. 

So let's take a look at my mani for the first Textured Tuesday. 




I started with a base of L'Oreal's Hidden Gems. This polish had me really excited because in the bottle it has a duochrome look to it. Sadly that is lost on the nail so it's just a blackened base filled with teal microglitter and silver hexes. It's pretty, but I really wanted that duochrome in a texture polish. That would have been bad ass. 

AND...because today is Fat Tuesday aka MARDI GRAS, I did some nail art. This features OPI Honey Ryder (gold), OPI My Current Crush (purple) and Zoya Chita (green). 


Will you be participating in Textured Tuesday? I can't see what you all come up with.

Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee

*all polishes featured in this post were purchased by me

Julie G Holiday Frosted Gumdrops Collection

You might have seen on Facebook or Twitter that I recently got the entire Julie G Holiday Frosted Gumdrops Collection. I love their first collection, so naturally I wanted this in its entirety, and at $3.99 a pop, you can't go wrong.

The formula on all of these is stunning. 2 easy coats and they apply beautifully.




Ho Ho Ho is a pink leaning red polish.




Mistletoe is a sumptuous forest green. This one is by far my favorite. Look at it! It's so pretty!




Silver Bells is just that a straight up silver. However, the texture in this makes it awesome. 




Gift of Gold is an antique gold which when paired with the texture makes it beautiful. 




Sleigh Ride is a luscious rich royal blue. My gawd I love this one. 




Finally we have Sugar Plum Fairy. My pictures do not do this color justice. It's actually a much brighter  purple, but for some reason that wouldn't show on my camera. :-( 

Which one is your favorite? I love Mistletoe and Sleigh Ride. 

Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee

*all prodcuts featured in this post were purchased by me

Interview Appropriate Mani

I mentioned in my last post that I had to take my fun Halloween mani off for an interview appropriate manicure. This is the manicure that I wore for that interview. I went for something that has enough interest for me, but was mild enough, that it wouldn't draw undue attention.




This is Make Him Mine from the OPI Mariah Holiday Collection. As you can tell by the bottle it is a Liquid Sand (aka textured) polish. Make Him Mine is a champagney blush-toned pink polish made up of the small glitters with some larger hexes thrown in. The formula was awesome as are all OPI Liquid Sands, and it wore beautifully.

Now lets just keep our prettily polished fingers crossed about the job.

Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee

*all products featured in this post were purchased by me

OPI Liquid Sand in Alcatraz...Rocks

Do y'all remember when I used to be "ehh textured polish is weird, I don't know if I like it"? Well you can officially call me reformed. I LOVE textured polishes now. Like I luuuuurve them. Seriously. I think the last 10 polishes I bought have been textured.

Anyways, as soon as OPI started releasing pictures of the fall collection, I knew that Alcatraz..Rocks would be mine. I looked everywhere and everyone beat me to the punch, because it was sold out every place I looked. Well, I finally found it the other day, filled with glee I purchased it, ran home and put it on my fingers. And here it is.




Alcatraz...Rocks has a smoky deep purple base with amazing colorful flashes from the prettiest sparkles. Its incredibly difficult to capture on camera. I can see beautiful flashes of pink, gold, blues, and purples. This is by far my favorite textured polish that I own, and I have Zoya Carter (CARTER IS AMAZEBALLS PEOPLE).

Where are you at in the world of textured polishes? Love or hate? Which one is your favorite?

Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee

*all polishes featured in this post were purchased by me

Zoya Miranda

Remember on Facebook around the 4th how I told you about a promotion Zoya was having? I finally got my polishes from that sale, including my first ever Pixie Dusts, Miranda and Liberty. I've tried other textured polishes, but I had yet to try the Pixie Dusts.

I decided to wear Miranda first, because I was in love with the raspberry color. Without further ado, here it is.




Overall, I'm in love with this polish. Dry time took longer than with OPI or Julie G's but it didn't faze me. Miranda was also a lot finer, grit wise, than the other two brands. 

I can't wait to try out Liberty. And have ya'll see the Fall Collection for this line? My gawd...Carter will be mine. 

What are your favorite textured polishes?

Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee

*all products featured in this post were purchased by me

Getting my texture on...

Hey Lovies! Today is supposed to be filled with storms and I'm spending my day dealing with my phone company. Sounds fun huh? It totally is. ;-) 

Today, I've got some fun textured gradient nails to show you. I've been intrigued by the idea of doing a gradient with the liquid sand finish every since I got my first one, so I finally decided to give it a try. 




For this look, I've used a base of OPI Honey Ryder (gold) and then sponged on the tips with Julie G's Rock Candy (teal). I really enjoyed this look and the texture of the polishes made doing this gradient super easy. 

What do you think of the textured polishes? Still awesome or are you over it? I'm in the "still awesome" group!

Enjoy & until tomorrow, Amy Lee
*all products featured in this post were purchased by me

Tangerine Dream & Rock Candy

Hey All! I'm back today to show you the second installment of the Julie G Frosted Gumdrops swatches. Today I've got Tangerine Dream and Rock Candy to show you. 


Tangerine Dream is a very pretty orangey-yellow with tiny gold sparkles in it. Looking at this collection, I thought this would be my least favorite and I was pleasantly surprised. While I think this color will look better on me while I'm a bit more tan during the summer, I love it. 




Application for Tangerine Dream was easy, but it is a the sheerest of the six colors. I ended up using three coats here. As usual I waited in between each coat to minimize dragging. 

Next up we have Rock Candy. Those of you that know me in real life know teal is my favorite color. So its no surprise that Rock Candy is my favorite from the collection. Hello Gorgeous! Rock Candy is a medium teal with silver sparkles and larger silver hex glitters in the mix. 




Application was easy and you're looking at two coats here as well. I ended up actually swatching Rock Candy last and wearing it for a few days. I had no problems and only a small chip before I removed it. Removal of these polishes is easiest with the foil method, as the remove very similar to glitter polishes.

What do you think of these colors? Do you have a favorite?

Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee

*all polishes featured in this post were purchased by me

My Picks: OPI Bond Girls Collection

OH HOLY CRAP PEOPLE! I've been obsessing over this collection since they announced it a few months ago. I may have been that annoying girl calling Ulta asking if they were in yet. And finally...finally I got my greedy little hands on the four colors I wanted. Also, this means that I am now officially on the textured polish bandwagon. So yeah, that happened. Anyways, lets take a look at these pretties.


I picked up four of the six colors available. I've got Jinx, Pussy Galore, Tiffany Case, and Honey Ryder to show you today. Solitare (white with pink shimmer) and Vespa (dark purple) just really didn't do it for me, so I choose to leave them behind at the store. I'm sure someone else will give them a good home.

Lets talk formula first. Overall, these polishes were great. They apply easily, dry fairly quick, and don't disappoint. I know the directions say don't apply with a base coat, but I always use my Orly Rubberized Bonder under these and never have any problems.

Up first we have Pussy Galore. Bravo to OPI for naming a polish after the most controversial Bond Girl, namewise, out there. And let's face it, his girlfriends have had some jacked up names over the years (I'm looking at you Dr. Holly Goodhead).


I kinda wish I had waited a while longer to take this photo, because the ring finger doesn't look totally dry in this picture. Pussy Galore is a soft baby pink and while it isn't my favorite of the collection, it goes well with my skin tone. It's the softest of the four shades I picked and in my book, it's a winner.


Next up is Honey Ryder. Side story: I totally swatched these while watching Dr. No. Yes it was on purpose. I had to get in the mood right? Anywho... Honey Ryder is like the textured version of OPI Glitzerland. I didn't pull out my bottle to check, but I feel like they would be a perfect match. This is a warm shade of gold and I also love this softer shade from the collection.


Next up we have Jinx. I know this polish is everyone else's favorite of the collection, but for me it's in second place. It's a close second, but my heart is elsewhere. I love the shade here. It's leans red-orange-coral with gorgeous gold shimmer. It's classy but with spice.


And finally we have my favorite of the collection. This is Tiffany Case and boy do I love it. Never before have I been swatching polishes and been stopped in my tracks by the pretties. I ended up wearing this almost 2 full days before finally taking it off and swatching the others for you. This polish still has the fine glitter but unlike the others it also has some larger hex glitters in there and they give it some extra shine. 

I highly recommending buying at least Tiffany Case and Jinx from this collection, but I love them all. I'm so happy with my selections. And I have some nail art ideas involving these, I just don't know if it's possible. I see some experimenting in my future. 

Did you bring any Bond Girls home? I'd love to hear your thoughts. 

Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee

*all polishes featured in this post were purchased by me

Designs in the Sand

I've been on the fence about the whole texture polish thing. I have a few girlfriends who absolutely love it, but I've still been kind of wary about the whole thing. It seemed like a fad but I think it might be around to stay. Everyone is releasing collections, and I'm kind of in love with the whole OPI Bond Girls Collections (the colors at least).

I bought OPI's Can't Let Go from the Mariah Carey Collection forever ago, but it took me a while to work up the courage to try it out. And could I try it out like normal people and just wear it plain? Absolutely not...I wanted to see how it stood up in a design. So I got to playing in the sand.


For this design, I started off with a base coat of China Glaze Whimsical. This is a really pretty neutral duochrome that I thought paired well with the deep purple of Can't Let Go. Here it is with 3 thin coats on it's own.


I like this polish, it would be great as a neutral wear on its own, but if you aren't careful the brush strokes show. Next I layered in striping tape in different designs, then quickly brushed on 2 coats of the Liquid Sand polish. The result was great.


I really like how this turned out. It was one of those can't stop staring manicures. In fact it was a can't stop feeling manicure as well. I did the same designs on the opposite hand as well. 


As you can see, I'm a little derpy trying to hand model (hahahaha) for you with my dominant hand. I just couldn't get my fingers to line up right. Trying to take pictures with the opposite hand wasn't so easy either. 
:-/ Sorry for the blurriness. 

Overall, I like this look. The texture still weirds me out, but I like it in a strange way. Also, the purple is just such a gorgeous color. 

What do you think about texture finishes? Yay or Nay?

Enjoy & until next time, Amy Lee

*all polishes featured in this post were purchased by me

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