NOTW: Duochrome

This is one of OPI's new colors from their fall San Francisco collection. A lot of other brands have come out with a polish similar to this, but from reviews I've seen OPI tends to be the favorite.

This polish is a deep grey color with a purplish/pink and blue/green duochrome. I really have to say I'm loving this polish. The formula was great, very easy application and it was pretty opaque with one coat. All day I've been staring at my nails, seeing how they look in different light. I see myself wearing this one a lot this fall/winter!

If I'm not too crazy busy this week (this is the last week for the remodel at my mom's house and I've been over there cleaning a lot) then I plan on doing a mini tutorial type blog. If not then it will happen next week!

OPI ~ Peace & Love & OPI

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Starting NOTW

If you can't figure it out, NOTW stands for Nail of the Week. I want to start this to make quick posts of my manis. Obviously if I do something more art-y then I will post a tutorial, but for my quick easy ones I want to post them so I can track my progress and whatnot. Hopefully you will want to check them out too! I'm only going to post one pic and it will probably just be taken with my phone. I'll also post a couple of sentences telling you what I thought of the polish. Thinking of maybe doing a rubric type thing so that it goes faster. I may end up posting the pic on Facebook or Instagram too. I'm really wanting to use Instagram more often and I think this will be a good way for me to not only incorporate it more but also force me to post in my blog more regularly. I typically change polish once a week so I should have one of these posts a week (I'm hoping).

Thank you guys so much for taking the time to look at my posts, pin them, and give me feedback. I really appreciate it and I'm starting to actually get views on my blog which I think is amazing. It would be so cool for this to actually turn into something awesome!! I really appreciate all of you supporting and helping me with this. Please share this blog with your other polish loving friends! 

Many of you already saw this, but I'm going to post again. I thought this polish was pretty awesome. The sequin type things make the polish very thick which I like because then it doesn't run all over your nails. I like the concept and the color. They have an orange one like this that I think would be awesome for Halloween. I do think though that for a "drugstore" polish it was kind of expensive. You only get .23 fl oz and I spent $2.99 on this (at Target). A normal size polish is .5 fl oz.

Maybelline Color Show Polka Dots - Drops of Jade

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Some places to visit!

I have been on a quest to find websites that sell OPI at discounted prices and so far I really haven't found much. It's hard to find websites that sell them at all, let alone at discounted rates. During my hunt though, I did find a ton of websites that sell China Glaze, Essie, and more. This did excite me and honestly this is why I own so much China Glaze now and why I prefer them over OPI.

In regular retail stores the cheapest I've found China Glaze is $5.99 at Sally's (with their club card). Online though I've found them around $3 a bottle, and factoring in shipping it averages to around $4 a bottle. Still way cheaper, and the selection is much more amazing!  In all my searching I have found two websites to be the best. I will describe each one. Some things are the same for each site, but there are some differences.

HEAD2TOEBEAUTY (click me!)

China Glaze averages for around $3.25/bottle. Some are a little more depending on the type of polish. INCREDIBLE selection....you can find polishes from collections from like 3 years ago. After shipping, bottles are about $4.00-$4.15/bottle. Does sell other brands such as Essie and Orly, but they are sold at regular retail rates. Able to sell collections as soon as they are released; almost always has them before stores. Sells manicure accessories for awesome prices as well as skin care and hair care. Has a continuous 5% off sale (it's not much, but it's something!); just type in the first three letters of the month you are in and then 05 after it. Ex. SEP05. Ships internationally. I experienced quick shipping.

TRANS DESIGN (click me!)

China Glaze averages for around $3.25/bottle. After shipping, bottles are about $4.00-$4.15/bottle. Some are a little more depending on the type of polish. Pretty good selection, but Head2ToeBeauty has a much wider, larger selection. Does sell other brands such as Essie and Orly, and they ARE sold at discounted rates. They sell Essie for $4.00 (retails for $8).  Orly sells at $4.25.  Able to sell collections as soon as they are released; almost always has them before stores. Shows previews of polish collections/items that are coming soon. This website seems to mostly sell nail polish/supplies with a few other products. Ships internationally. I experienced quick shipping.


I have a running wishlist of polishes that I want to get from these sites. The biggest thing about buying online is to make sure you are looking up swatches since you aren't able to see them in person. Another option is to go into a store and look at them. A great retail store to check out is Beauty Brands. They have the largest polish selection that I have found. I've gone in there a few times to look at them in person and then I was able to add it to my list or take it off if I didn't like it. But ya know...I'm also a little crazy because now since my collection is getting rather large I really have to take the time to figure out if I already have a shade close to what I'm looking at because the last thing I need is two colors that are like 1 shade apart. So you may just be able to buy and not worry about it, haha!  But really, at least looking at a swatch online will give you a better color representation to figure out if you want it or not.

Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

It's like I feel the beach on my nails!

I took these pictures this morning. Blue skies, warm weather; perfect day. Then mid-afternoon the clouds rolled in, the rain, wind, and hail came and it turned into a pain. We got 3 in. of rain in less than an hour. Flash floods, leaves everywhere and a flooded basement. Luckily Ty was able to pull a lot of the water up with a Rug Doctor. Now I'm doing my blog post because why not? Haha. It was a crazy day, that's for sure.

Since Sept. is my birth month Ulta sent me a $10 coupon. I strolled in and went straight to the nail polish. I REALLY REALLY want OPI's Alcatraz...Rocks (a liquid sand) from their new fall collection, but of course they didn't have it. I did decide though that I was going to purchase a liquid sand since the only liquid sands I have tried were Wet n Wild and they weren't the best. I've heard OPI has a great sand formula so I wanted to check it out. I decided to go with one called Tiffany Case which is a gorgeous light blue color with silver shimmer in it. 

I have to say that everyone is right. Fantastic formula. I wasn't sure if I was going to like a textured polish, but I think I do. Since it's textured, the polish was very thick which actually made it incredibly easy to apply. It dried pretty quickly too. The little tag on the bottle says not to apply a top coat. I did my mani last night and decided to leave as it with no top coat. The tag also said it would dry matte, and it did to an extent. Since it has silver glitter/shimmer/whatever it is, it was still fairly shiny. 

I wanted to see how the polish would change with different top coats so this morning I applied Seche Vite on my pinky and OPI Matte Top coat on my ring finger. I like the finish the best without any top coat. The Matte really just dulled everything and muted the silver shimmer and the Seche Vite made the silver much more noticeable and obviously made the whole nail very shiny. The top coats also made the nails feel a little smoother and not as rough. 

It's hard to see the differences in the picture, but they are much more noticeable in real life. 

My nails feel like sandpaper. I'd have to say that the only thing I'm really not liking about this is that since it is rough my polish does get caught on things which is slightly annoying. Outside of that though, I think it's great! At least now I'm not scared to purchase polishes like this. 

 Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.

Shop your discount stores!

I really can't believe that my last post was three weeks ago....I've been pretty busy with my mom coming into town a lot and then I had my LA trip, but now that's all over I can get myself into a routine (hopefully)! Time is flying by right now. My ultimate goal is to get to two posts a week. Right now I'm aiming for once a week and once I can get that down then I want to get another post in. Writing the post itself isn't hard, but taking all the pics, the editing, painting my nails or anything I have to do is what takes all the time. I just need to find a balance that works for me.

Anywho.....

Go check out discount stores!! I've seen OPI, China Glaze, Orly, drugstore, and many other random brands at these places for great deals! I honestly never thought to check there for polish and/or makeup items, but they do have them! Sorry if you are thinking, "uh, duh Katie!!" and you have known this forever, but I am just joining the loop!!  Some places I've checked are Ross, TJMaxx, Big Lots, Marshall's and Gordman's. Marshall's and Gordman's selection though was pretty limited. However, you can find some great polishes at these places. Some places sell the polishes individually and other places you buy them in a pack. I'd say the only cons to shopping at discount stores is that they have very limited selection and if they are in a pack you may only like 2 colors in that set and don't want the rest. But I still think it's worth it to look into it.

And before we get into the pics, I have sad news to tell you. I broke a nail. :( Rather I bent my nail (on Brendan's head of course) and it bent so far back that some of nail came apart from my skin. Aaaaaand it had to happen the day I was planning on doing my swatches for this post (which was a little over a week ago). I did my swatches anyway but I didn't paint any on that nail because putting polish/remover on an open wound would not have been a great idea!! So you will see a really really short nail in these pics! Also, I have two tutorials I really want to do, but I'm gonna have to wait a few weeks till my nail grows back. I'm sure I'll find something to blog about until then!

All polishes have 2 coats except for one which I will mention. Overall, I loved the formulas, colors, and variety that I got in this set!

Man, I'm rambling today, see what happens when I don't post in forever, haha. :) Onto the swatches......

This is obviously what the package looks like. I loved that I could get a wide variety of the different lines! And how can you beat $5.99 for 5 bottles of polish?  You could spent $5.99 on just one of these bottles at full retail value. Great deal!

I love that Let's Dance is in a clear base, makes it much more versatile. Pretty light blue and silver chunky glitter. While I personally would never wear Duchesse Lace on it's own (since it doesn't look very good with my skin tone), I love the sandy nude color for nail designs.

I LOVE the bright green in B-right On! It's not a neon, just an in-your-face bright color. Very unique in my opinion!  While LCD is pretty, you can see how sheer it is, which was disappointing. For this swatch I used 4 coats and still didn't get much build up in color. HOWEVER, the blue duo-chrome in this polish is so pretty that it totally makes up for the sheerness. The pictures really do not do it justice. I'm not sure if you can find the HD polishes anywhere? I haven't seen them much, but also never really looked for them either. 

This is such a pretty color! Chocolate shimmery brown is the best way to describe it. With fall coming up too, I think this would be a great color to wear. Loved the formula on this and may have to try some more from the insta-dri line. My only complaint is that the brush is wide and the neck of the bottle is narrow (see pic). I felt like I didn't have much room to move the brush around.

 Thanks for checking out my post! Much love and polish!

Know anyone in the Denver Metro Area that needs handyman, tradesman or A/V services? Have them check out www.tysdesign.com! Competitive pricing and customer service tailored specifically for you!

Disclaimer: All items shown were purchased with my own money. All opinions are my own and honest.