Graceful Polish California Love Collection Review

Today I've got another review post for you. I was contacted by Grace who just recently launched her nail polish line called Graceful Polish. She asked if I would be interested in doing a review on YouTube for her and I obviously accepted this great opportunity. She didn't ask me to do a blog post, but I thought it would be nice to do. Come take a look at the swatches after the jump!

Essie Fall 2014 Nail Polish Collection ~ Dress to Kilt

It has been so long since I've done a blog post! My YouTube channel (Total Polish Junkie, naturally) has kept me really busy and I'm enjoying making videos a lot more than blogging, so I don't know how much I'll do on here anymore, but I do want to attempt to at least do one every once in a while.

Today I'm bringing you Essie's fall collection called Dress to Kilt. I don't know about you, but I am NOT ready for fall! I feel totally jipped on summer this year, and other than swatching these puppies, I am still going to be rocking the summer manis!

This is a 6 piece creme collection, and since Essie isn't my most go-to brand, I was a little skeptical. HOWEVER! I was put in my place with this collection. I did a live application video for this collection, so if you would rather you can watch the video (linked after the jump)....or you can read on for some pics and color descriptions!

China Glaze Highlight of My Summer

I know it's still spring, but I love summer too much and most of my manis are turning into summer ones instead of spring. Oh well! I have a fantastic color to share with you today! China Glaze Highlight of my Summer is a bright, bright, bright mint green color. It's so stunning! This polish glowed on my hands no matter what light I was in and somehow, someway made my hands look tan. Is that even possible?!? Haha. But really though I love this color. I think it would looks amazing on anyone. Since it is a pastel color and kind of a neon, it doesn't have the best formula, but it is workable! I did notice quicker tip wear/chips with this polish too. But man, that color makes up for all of that. 

I really didn't need to add anything, but I wanted to add some glitter so I used I'm a Go Glitter. The glitters are beautiful, but it was kind of meh for application. I wish the glitter was a bit denser and I picked up more on my brush in one swipe. But obviously it's workable! 

Inside lighting

Sunlight (outside)

Thanks for checking out my post! Peace, 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.

Bright Dots!

I absolutely love this mani! It came out so bright, pretty, and different. I really like using dots....so easy to do, so many different looks, and so amazing on the nail! I'm getting into nail art more and more. When I do a "normal" mani I feel so boring, lol. I need some color and life on my nails! I'm also starting to paint my nails more often. For quite a while I was painting them once a week, now I find myself painting them twice a week. I'm getting bored with my polish faster and need a change. Not a bad thing in my opinion, I do have plenty of polish to use!! Onto the polish...

Sally Hanson CSM Summerlime and Blue Crush

I have some limited edition Sally Hansen polishes to share today. I found them both at Walmart which is still the only place I have seen them. I had to give them a shout out though because of how awesome the formulas are.

Summerlime (green) has a strong shimmer to it which makes it a very pretty shade all on its own. You need two coats, but they are smooth, easy to apply coats. Very impressive! I'm not always the biggest fan of the Complete Salon Manicure line, but both of these are starting to change my opinion! 

Blue Crush has an even better formula and is a one coater. The formulas are so easy to work with that I hardly had to do any clean up because the polish went exactly where I put it. 

I decided to do a different kind of mani with these polishes, using a light pink jelly and a green and blue glitter for some added color. I actually really liked the turn out! It's different, but not so different it looks weird. You really need to go see these polishes for yourself! So pretty. 

Sorry for the wonky picture!

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.

China Glaze Mimosas Before Manis

I have to say I'm getting so much more excited for nail polish now that it's getting warmer out. I can go outside to take pics in the sunlight and I can pull out all of my prettier colors! I like my dark stuff, but I prefer the brights and neons much more. 

Nothing too complicated with this mani, just used some glitter on top of Mimosas Before Manis. Good formula on both of these! The China Glaze is such a beautiful color with just a hint of shimmer. I only needed one(ish) coat for the glitter too, pretty happy with the payoff. I love the glitter because it has so many matte pastel colors. It can be paired with so many different colors and still look amazing!

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.

Random Mani Catch Up Time

Being sick back at the end of Feb. really threw me off my game. I wasn't taking pics in the right lighting or taking more than one, and then I stopped blogging and now I'm way behind with my manicures. I'm posting a few different ones today just so I can try to catch up. None of these were my favorite, so I just kinda stuck them all together. My next ones coming up look way better in my opinion. So on to the manis!

Orly Snowcone with some fun glitter!

I have really been lagging with my blog lately...I don't know why either. I'm so behind with my manicures, I really need to get it together and get them posted! I'm getting much quicker at editing my photos and stuff too, so my posts don't take long...I'm just being lazy. :p

On a night I was feeling pretty lazy, I just grabbed some random polishes and told myself I would create a mani with it. These three colors were just sitting on my desk in front of me, so I grabbed them to see what I could do. Turns out, I love this look!  The colors are gorgeous and I love the colorful glitter.

KBShimmer - Toast-ess With the Mostest

When it comes to nail polish, I really shy away from the indie world mainly due to costs. They are more expensive and I can't get deals/use coupons like how I can with mainstream brands. However, I saw this polish and fell in love and I decided I could at least try a few indie polishes. This glitter polish is from KBShimmer and is called Toast-ess With the Mostest. 

This polish is a circle glitter bomb! It has teeny tiny glitter and even has some very large silver holo circle glitter. I LOVE the look that it creates on the nail. You do need to use a dabbing motion when you apply this glitter, but it's obviously very densely packed and you really only need one coat. This is still available on their website for $8.75. So go check it out!

China Glaze Sea Goddess Swatches

This collection came out about a month ago, and even though I'm a little late I still thought it would be nice to share this collection. The collection has a total of six shades, but I only purchased four.  I thought it would be fun to share my swatches and my opinion of these polishes. Oh, if you didn't know, these are all textured polishes too. Let's take a look and see how these work!

Simple St. Patty's Mani Using SinfulColors

I am FINALLY starting to feel better. I got a stomach bug and a really bad cold thing (both with fevers) back to back and spent over a week feeling miserable and a lot of time in bed. I finally felt good enough to do a mani, and I have to say sorry because I was lazy and didn't clean up my photo area so you are getting some photos I took with my iphone. Now that I'm feeling better I'll be cleaning up my office so by my next mani, I can have some *real* photos for you. Enough rambling about that....onto the post.

I am really starting to realize how much I love green nail polish. Lately, it seems that's all I keep grabbing and putting on my nails. But with St. Patrick's Day coming up, I thought using some green would be appropriate. I have another mani in mind already too.  I thought the gold glitter would look good with the darker green, but now I wish I had put it on the lighter green because I think it would have had more of a contrast. I LOVE the shade of the darker green and it had a pretty nice formula. It's a little crelly like, but it built nicely. The lighter green though is a little streaky and takes a little bit of effort to even it out. For my glitter placement I pulled out gold glitter from a mix with holographic glitter, so some of the gold has those glitters stuck to it too. It was nice using big glitters because it was easy to place and didn't take a lot of time (but I still had to do some glitter fishing!). I think this is a nice, clean, mani.

SinfulColors Exotic Green (darker)

SinfulColors Pistache (lighter)

OPI When Monkeys Fly! (glitter)

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.

NOTW: China Glaze Rendezvous With You

You know I really love a polish when I wear it twice! I have so much polish and when I wear just one color I like to try one I haven't tried yet. HOWEVER....I absolutely love this polish and this is the second time this year I've worn this color. The formula is amazing, it's a stunning shade, and it glows on your nails. Yes, glows. In dim lighting it turns into a mauve color and looks even better. I think it's the most stunning foil polish that I own. I really feel this is a must have shade for any nail polish lover. Aaaaand you can get it on Head2ToeBeauty (right now it's towards the bottom of page 2) for only $3.25. So go get it! Okay, I've typed enough, so let's take a moment to look at the awesomeness of this polish.

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.

Nail Polish Storage & Organization

This is a long awaited post. I've wanted to do this post for a while, but I wanted to wait till I had everything organized the way I wanted. It took some time, but it's finally pretty and organized. Hopefully this will help give you some of your own polish organization ideas. This is going to be pretty picture heavy, but I really want to show you everything that I'm using and how I have it set up. So let's take a look!

Kisses for Valentine's Day!

I was able to get one more V-Day mani in. I wanted this to have lots of red and of course glitter! Simple nail art, but still looks adorable! I got my inspiration from cutepolish on YouTube. I'm using two of her designs and just added coordinating colors. I used a striper and dotting tool to create the xoxo on my thumb, and a smaller dotting tool to create the lips on my ring finger. You can go check out her channel for some really neat designs!

I got a little lazy with my Cinderella hand...I've done so many manicures and swatches this week and it's made me a little polished out (I bet you didn't think that could happen, huh?) so I just did some glitter nails. Nothing fancy, but my hands go together so it's fine. 

Not a super long post, I just wanted to share what I did!

Happy Valentine's Day!!!

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.

Two Valentine's Manis

I have two different manicures for this post. One I did on myself and one I did on a friend. I like how they both turned out, and it gave me a lot of practice making hearts! Making hearts is fairly easy, but does take some practice finding the proper spacing and I did have to do some touch up so the lines look straight.
Let's take a look at what I did!

My First Splatter Attempt

I finally thought I would try my hand with a splatter design. It took some time, and made a huge mess (which you can see) but it actually turned out pretty good!

I seem to be on a purple and green kick...I need to change that and do other colors, but regardless I love this color combo. 

Keeping Healthy Nails

I've heard from a number of people, "I had my nails done at the salon for years (no acrylic) and they are in horrible shape" or "I can't paint my nails all the time because it will ruin them." I'm here to tell you that this doesn't have to be the case.

Using acetone, polish, filing, etc. is very drying and damaging to your nails and can cause a lot of issues and in effect, ruin your nails. That's why it's so important to take the necessary steps and time to care for yours nails so that doesn't happen. I've been painting my nails consistently for almost a year now and my nails are the strongest and healthiest they have ever been. I thought I would share some products I've used and what's worked for me.

Hydrate. Hydrate. Hydrate. Use lotions and cuticle balms/oils like there is no tomorrow. There are a million of them out on the market and you will need to find one that works for you. Two products I feel are just okay and will not be repurchasing is Julep's Essential Cuticle Oil and Sally Hansen Cuticle Eraser + Balm.  The oil is pricey (luckily I got mine for only a few dollars) and I don't think it's any better than any other, more inexpensive oils. The balm isn't that hydrating for me and there are better products on the market. I have heard amazing things about Essie Apricot Oil and I'd like to try that one next. Lush's Lemony Flutter is awesome. It is expensive, but it's hand made with natural ingredients; not to mention that it will last for a very long time. It's incredibly hydrating and smells good too. The only complaint I have is it's a little greasy, but I can deal. The Burt's Bee's Lemon Butter Cuticle Cream is good too. I haven't found any miracle hand lotion, and really find that just applying any lotion to your hands and cuticles helps a lot. I just grab any lotion I have lying around and hydrate my hands sometimes multiple times a day.

Lemony Flutter - Retail $16.95

NOTW: Julep Aisha║NYC Top of the Gold

Back to my dark, wintery manis....

I liked Aisha a lot more in the bottle than I did on my nails. It was pretty, but I grew tired of the color quickly. I only had this mani on for 2 days. Formula was thick, it applied evenly, but you had to make sure you had a lot of polish on your brush or it turned a little streaky.

I wanted to just use the Julep color, but it was boring so I needed to add something. NYC Top of the Gold is a really pretty gold flake glitter. It's a dupe for Zoya Maria-Luisa. The glitter is dense and I only used one generous coat on my nails. I like the look it created!

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.

NOTW: China Glaze Gaga for Green║LA Girl Sputter

This post has way too many pics for my normal NOTW's, but now that I have decent lighting to use in my house, I've been going a little camera crazy! I've been swatching like a mad man just so I can take pictures! I know, I'm not normal....but who is?

Anyway, I wanted a mani with some color due to all my holiday/muted colors I've been using lately. What better way to do this than with green and purple?

Gaga For Green is such an awesome green tone, not too dark, not too light. The formula is a bit on the sheer side, but it built nicely, formula was nice and it dried so shiny!  This pic has no top coat, I think it looks awesome!

Sally Hansen NEW Triple Shine

Sally Hansen recently came out with a new line called Triple Shine. Some colors looked promising, and others I felt were pretty blah and nothing spectacular. Although I didn't like the higher price tag, I thought I would pick one up to see how I liked it. The polish I bought is called Sparks Fly. This polish has a blue base with muli-sized silver glitters. Since this is a glitter polish, my review may not be fair to the whole line, but a glitter polish should still have a good formula. Unfortunately though, all I can say about this polish is yuck. Didn't like the formula, size, packaging or price. I layered this polish over OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls. Lots of pics and my review after the jump!

NOTW: OPI Underneath the Mistletoe

I actually did this manicure before Christmas, but didn't get around to posting it. This was one of those manicures where I couldn't stop looking at my nails! The red is OPI Underneath the Mistletoe and the glitter is OPI My Favorite Ornament. This picture does neither polish justice. The red is so sparkly and such a pretty red shade, I'm really glad I picked it up. :) The formula is a little bit thicker than I like, but not horrible. The first coat is kinda patchy, but it built nicely with the second coat. I had no problems with the glitter either. I'm normally not a red polish fan, but I really think this one is gorgeous!

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.

Snowflake with Essie Parka Perfect

It's funny...I wanted to do some type of nail design yesterday with a snowflake, and then it snowed outside! Gave me perfect reason to do the manicure I did. Pretty happy with how it turned out. I am in LOVE with my ring finger and think I'll be using that design a lot more often. It creates such a cool pattern on your nails!

I used Essie's Parka Perfect as my base. In the bottle this color is so pretty, a muted greyish blue with a hint of silver shimmer, but I'm not such a fan of this color on my nails. The formula was pretty hit or miss. Sometimes it went on thin and sometimes it went on thick and gloopy. It did eventually self level, but it took time and needed a little extra work while applying. The shimmer didn't come through at all, and I really wanted it to have that snow glisten effect, so I used Essie Pure Pearlfection (an effect top coat to add a sparkly iridescent shimmer). It's such a pretty effect!  I think this would look so awesome over so many different colors.

On my middle finger I used a black nail art pen and drew a snowflake. I could not, for the life of me, draw a snowflake using my left hand, so I don't have one on my right hand. :( Oh well. I used 6 pieces of striping tape to create the cross pattern on my ring finger. *drool* I used Zoya Pixie Dust London for the grey. The Pixie Dust line is their version of a textured polish. Using the texture on top gave it so much more dimension. It almost looks like I have an embossed nail.

I finally am able to use my light box, but it's not as easy as I was hoping it would be. I still have to play around with the lighting a lot. I do have a lot less glare, but I don't have as much light either. Nothing will compare to taking pics outside, but I'm hoping I can get it figured out enough to have decent looking pictures.

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.