A England – Princess Tears

A pretty scattered holographic powder pink!

OPI – The World Is Not Enough

This one ended up being too light for my skin tone, but I loved the mix of taupe, pink and pewter that you can find in this polish!

I preferred it over black! On my ring finger, you can see it over black in this swatch. The hints of pink really pop out!

Jamberry – City Lights

Okay, these Jamberry wraps had me intimidated but it was actually so easy and took less time than a regular session of me painting my nails… plus zero dry time on the wraps really helped since I have a new baby!

This one is City Lights!

They lasted and lasted… after the 2 week mark I just wanted them off for a change but they probably would have gone another week!

Here they were after 2 weeks:

If you’d like to try them, all you need is a blow dryer to seal the wrap, a file to file the end off, and scissors to trim the wraps.

You can use one sheet for 2 mainicures and pedicures! One manicure left so many strips for later on:

You can buy them here!

https://hollycotta.jamberry.com

They sell 8-free polishes too!

Essie – Sheers To You – Treat Love & Color

Sorry about the lack of editing here, I have a newborn at home! 🙂 Best excuse ever!

Anyway, I wanted to try this treatment line for the longest time but kept putting it off. Finally, a CVS coupon plus a waiting period for my prescription led to me buying one of these!

Sheers To You looked pretty because of the pink shimmer but I couldn’t find any swatches… so here are some swatches! There must be some available online in case you want to see it too!

Not too much to see, but sometimes you still just must see. 🙂

Nfu Oh 63 for Kaley

Kaley wanted magical nails for Vegas so I put on Nfu Oh 63 over their Aqua base coat.

She saw my old nail transfer tattoos and wanted the little owls. It looks so cute!

OPI – Man of La Mancha over black

I always thought OPI Man of La Mancha and La Boheme were amazing on their own but since I’m going to Vegas, I wanted to put something pink over black… so this magic happened!
Man of La Mancha over black!

Zoya – Cana

I love this perfect, smooth, super-bright neon pink! 

I put it over Zoya Aspen (their shimmery matte white).  It is awesome over white to make the color pop.

It looks like it’s glowing. 🙂

OPI -Strawberry Margarita

I love this dark hot pink! It applies evenly and looks awesome!

My sweetie pie’s first manicure!

Kaley loves playing with all my nail polish bottles and I have been doing her toes for a long time. I usually do them while she is napping and she just wakes up with painted toenails!

I think she got so into it that she decided she could even sit still and be patient while waiting for it to dry. So I did her toes and her nails today for the first time.

She picked s-he stylezone 427, a pink holo! 🙂

OPI – Black Spotted

I have had Black Spotted for a few years and never tried it, so I finally opened it! 

I’ve never posted a pedicure here before, but I had to do this quickly as my little sweetie pie napped… Didn’t have time to do toes and nails!

I started with half neon yellow and half neon pink, then I applied it on top.

The awesome neon colors are from the China Glaze Lite Brites. Whip It Good (yellow) and Lip Smackin’ Good (pink). Love these colors!

The tag on the Black Spotted bottle says to use a very thin layer. 

It came out looking pretty cool, but not the round spots that I expected after looking at other swatches online. I will be playing with this one again to figure it out.

When you have a 2 year old, you don’t have a lot of time to re-do your nails! You’re lucky to get to do them in the first place. 🙂

OPI Infinite Shine Lacquer – Pretty Pink Perseveres

Since I loved the Seche Vite gel– like lacquer, I had to try the OPI version also. It lasted me seven days, and for me that is a long time!
This one is Pretty Pink Perseveres. It’s my perfect opaque light pink because I have such light skin.

Seche Premier Colour

I have been wanting to try these gel – like polishes, and the girl at Sally beauty suggested this brand. Since they don’t have many colors yet, I just got the black one, Alter Ego.

I stamped with china glaze emotion.  I am hoping that since I used the proper base and topcoat for Seche Premier Colour, it will last at least a week!

The application was awesome. Two coats was completely opaque. It also dried very quickly!

Still loving Nfu Oh 63!

Kaley is finally starting to be able to nap by herself in the day, so I was able to paint my nails!
Maybe I can bring my blog back!

Color Club Revvvolution over Zoya Lo

I saw the Vivid Lacquer stamping plates and had to get some!

This image is from VL 005. Its the famous Lorem ipsum quote block in really pretty font!

It seems like everytime I wear Zoya Lo, I love the color but really want to stamp a gray or black over it. Color Club Revvvolution is black holo that stamps nicely.

OPI – Stay The Night

I know I’ve been pretty non-existent lately! Its for a good reason, but a reason that makes me unable to swatch nail polish for a while… I will explain later. 🙂

For now, here is a swatch from a couple of months ago that I’ve been wanting to post.

OPI – Stay The Night

I loved it in the sun! In the shade it looked pretty gritty so I added a top coat and although it took away the sand look, I ended up liking it better. It stayed on for quite a while because it didn’t chip off!

I think I’d like anything that was black and pink?

Zoya – Kissy

I was bummed that the Orly After Party just looked plain black most of the time, so I added 2 layers of Kissy!

I had never tried this one, and I was *so* much more impressed with it than I ever thought I’d be. I thought the holo rectangular strips would end up being like little strands of tinsel on your nail, but it is actually like each strip is a brightly glowing rainbow!

It sounds ridiculous, but you’d have to see it. Especially since we’ve been replacing our lights in the house with LED lights, every time those would catch my nails, I’d be staring at the rainbows.

Essie – Sunday Funday

This is the only one I got from the new collection. I was bummed at how it turned out to be too orangey of a coral pink. It dries darker than it looks in the bottle, and the glitter doesn’t show through very well.

Here’s the most accurate representation I got of it!

When I swatched it up close, it does show the glitter a little better though. Forgive the cuticle oil, sorry! 🙂

For a color like this, I think I’ll stick to China Glaze – Surreal Appeal!

China Glaze – Surreal Appeal Comparison

I had to get Surreal Appeal from the Cirque collection. It turned out to be the perfect pinkish coral creme that is bright but not a neon.

I grabbed 3 other China Glaze pinks and compared them all. The pinky nail is actually Flip Flop Fantasy but I hate that the camera can NOT capture that color no matter what I try. I went to Google Images to search for an accurate Flip Flop Fantasy swatch and there aren’t any! They all look like their cameras freaked out as well, so all I can say is…. go get it, its one of my most favorite polishes ever and you just don’t know what its like until you put it on your own nails. 🙂

Anyway, the others came out really accurately though! The bottle is Surreal Appeal, so you can see it ends up darker on the nail.

Here is a shadier swatch, followed by one with a little more light. Its Wicked Style, Sugar High, Surreal Appeal. Let’s just ignore the pinky. 🙂

After comparing these, I found I don’t even like Sugar High as much anymore, its a little too blue-ish for my skin tone.

Orly – After Party

This one is black with different colors of sparkles. It isn’t really heavily glittered, like Butter London’s Black Knight, its more like a pigment type of sparkle, if that makes sense.

I found that in the shade or from far away, it just looks black. But in the light, I love the colors that they chose to flash… teal, cyan, pink, purple… all of the great girly colors!

The colors are more apparent in the bottle than on the nail:

I also took a blurry-on-purpose shot that kind of showed the colors a little better!

Happy 2013 Giveaway! Featuring Lynnderella’s Snow Angel!

I know everyone wants Lynnderella’s Snow Angel, and even if you already have it, they are selling for a ton on eBay! So I thought it’d be exciting to feature that in my giveaway, since I have a brand new, unswatched, big round bottle of it!

I want to pick 3 winners again. So I’ll ask you what your favorite items are from these, and the grand prize winner will get 4, including Snow Angel! The 2nd place winner will get another 4 polishes, and the 3rd will get 3. Every time I’ve done it this way, I’ve been able to give everyone some polishes that they wanted most, so it was pretty fun!

Here is the list of the polishes in the giveaway! Click if you’d like to see google images swatches for each.

• Lynnderella – Snow Angel
• Color Club – Love Em Leave Em
• China Glaze – Material Girl
• Nox Twilight – Disco Darling
• Nubar – Cherry Cordial
• Kleancolor – Pastel Teal
• Duri – Lazy Days
• Milani – Digital
• Essie – Angora Cardi
• Essie – Pure Pearlfection
• Del Sol Color Changing – Ruby Slipper(Changes from silver glitter to red glitter in the sun.)

To enter, you can do one of two things, or both for an extra entry!

1. Use the giveaway picture and post/blog about this somewhere, put the URL to your post into the form.
Picture to use -> http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8222/8346691467_0d150cc61a.jpg
Link to the giveaway to use -> http://happy2013giveaway.shimmerspark.com

2. Become a facebook friend!
Here I am -> http://www.facebook.com/shimmerspark
(Just put your facebook name into the form, even if you were already my facebook friend.

I will pick the winners randomly, on February 10th!

If you don’t see the form load below this line, click here to go to the original post so that it will load for you…

♥
Holly