Zoya Chyna over Blair

I put a layer of Chyna over Blair so that it looked a little darker than the normal ruby red slippers color of Chyna.

Happy Valentine’s Day!

Zoya – Blair

I’ve already swatched Blair but I really loved this red apple that I found while I was wearing Blair again!  

So here’s another swatch!

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.

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

Party Hearty

I finally unpacked my nail polish and found my China Glaze Party Hearty, just in time for our work Christmas party. It was awesome, they had it at a nice hotel, bought us and our dates food, drinks, and even cab vouchers!

Anyway, I had to swatch with my right hand for once since my left hand still has a short ugly nail that needs to grow.

I started with OPI Germanicure to have a darker base, then covered it with China Glaze Ruby Pumps! I left my toes like that, but on my nails, I added a layer of Party Hearty. 🙂

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I also got a cool set together for my next giveaway! It will include China Glaze, Essie, Nubar, Color Club, Milani, Duri, Del Sol, Nox Twilight, and even a Lynnderella!

Yep, I’m going to giveaway this sweet thing – A new, unused, unswatched, virgin Snow Angel!

Christmasy Swatches

After going through all of my posts to update links for my new server, I kept my favorite Christmasy swatches aside to put in one entry. 🙂

I might as well try the cool WordPress “Gallery in a post” feature!

RGB – Crimson

LA Splash – Glitz & Berry

Deborah Lippmann – Ruby Red Slippers

Ciate – Dangerous Affair

China Glaze – Ravishing Dahling

From left to right, Femme Couture – Garland, China Glaze – Gussied Up Green, China Glaze – Emerald Sparkle, and China Glaze – Peace on Earth

OPI – Every Month Is Oktoberfest

My husband’s birthday was on Saturday. I took him to the Magic Castle in Hollywood! We had both wanted to go but had never been, and I was lucky enough to get an invite from a magician’s wife. 🙂

We got all dressed up and I wore this on my nails and toes…

OPI – Every Month is Oktoberfest!
It is so gorgeous! Just as sparkly as Germanicure, but more on the wine/burgundy side.

Actually, the shimmer is a really warm and sparkly red, but the base is so blue that it really makes the polish look more plum or burgundy on the nail. When you actually pull the brush out and see the base, its very blue.

These are the only two I got from the new Fall collection and I LOVE them both!

OPI – Germanicure

Okay, so fall colors are my absolute favorite… and I LOVE some of the new OPI fall polishes!

The first one I tried is this gorgeous, glowy, dark, rich red called Germanicure!

 

If I have a red like this, it certainly isn’t as glowing as this one. Its like one of those cars you can’t stop looking at because its dark but the paint is like glowing from underneath. That’s what it reminds me of!

OPI – DS Reflection

This is the ONLY color I own that I can describe as a *perfect* red pink!

All of my other red pinks or pink reds I had like China Glaze Sneakerhead were just too bright, too red, too magenta, too sheer, too something. But not this one!

Its also a DS, so its gorgeous and glitzy. Its a reddish base with pink and coral particles. Kind of ruby red grapefruity! Its a holographic too.

This doesn’t always show up, but there is a slight buttery summery yellow flash that you get with this one at times. I could capture it more easily in the bottle.

Not a new color, but if you haven’t tried it, you should… its awesome. 🙂

China Glaze – Ahoy over Duri Night – Before Christmas

I love the way Ahoy looks but its too bright for me, so I layered it over a darker jelly-ish color that had gold glitter in it.

Its awesome because the gold glitter just shines through as a bright sparkle along with the pink glass flecks that are in Ahoy!

This was Duri – Night Before Christmas by itself…

LA Splash – Glitz & Berry

This is one of my most favorite and most used polishes. Its so perfect for some reason! The glitter is not too chunky or too sparse, the base isn’t too clear or thick… and the price is amazingly perfect too, I must say.

They sell these glitter polishes at Ulta. You can also get these on CherryCulture.com or probably some other online shops!

I took one while I was out too!

I wore it in DC, to the award ceremony at the Air & Space Museum! It was a really formal event and I thought it would go perfectly with my black dress. 🙂

I also wore it for our Love Story video we filmed to play at our wedding reception.

Nail Foils – My video of trying it for the first time!

It was so much easier than I thought, I love this stuff so much!

Again, this was the swatch for this:

My Valentine's Nails! Cherry O's nail foils!

Okay this was my first time using nail foils so I made a video! I didn’t get to edit/upload yet but I wanted to at least show the swatches for now.

Aren’t they neato? I think I love nail foils!

I started with China Glaze – Long Kiss, because it was a similar red to put underneath. (I hear you do that in case there are “bald spots”.)

It looked so similar to Heart of Africa to me, but when I looked really super closely, Long Kiss was more of a warm-toned shade and Heart of Africa was more of a wine-toned shade. Very similar though, see?

I even love the adhesive that comes with nail foils! When you layer it on, it looks so UV, like purple and blue and oil-slick-ish.

I got the foil and adhesive from dollarnailart.com. (Careful, its addicting!)

Have a Happy Valentine’s Day! I can’t wait to eat some chocolate cake. 🙂

Happy Valentine's Day! (And Elle's Spell over Black)

I am actually wearing China Glaze – Long Kiss right now because after my shower I want to do a nail foil! I got the red one with the O’s, and its my first time trying foils. All of the tutorials said that it doesn’t last long so I will have to do it on my lunch break or after work.

For now, here’s a swatch I took a week or so ago of Elle’s Spell over black. My regular well-lit swatch didn’t really show how pretty the red firey flakies are, so I had to go with a shadier swatch.

I never did get the Nfu Oh version of this, I had the blacker based one and didn’t like it as much, this redder-based mix is so awesome!

I also got Max Factor – Fantasy Fire! The Unicorn Pee dupe! My amazingly fun, generous, and awesome friend Jill in Europe just grabbed one for me while she was getting me a few of the essence Vampire Love polishes and surprised me with it! I can NOT wait to swatch that one. I might have to make a video like I’ve been wanting to do lately…

Oh, I said I’d post the new OPI and Zoya purples comparison though, didn’t I? Okay, that will come next. Unless I post my V Day foils first, then it’ll be right after that. 😉

NARS – Saratoga

I was going to do the new OPI and Zoya purple comparison but I already packed my memory card and camera in my suitcase… I’m off to Colorado Springs today for a 2 day meeting about the next version of my software.

It was snowing there yesterday! I had to go and buy a long wool coat and gloves to go with my scarf and beanie. haha! I’ve been in California since I was 4, so I’m a huge wimp about the cold. Wish me luck. 🙂

Anyway, here is NARS – Saratoga! I found it too light and bright for me since I like darker, richer colors, so I swapped it to Gemma almost immediately. It is like a raspberry tone.

It is really pretty though, and the light really catches all of the warm glints inside!

I’ll be back Saturday. Time to grab my luggage and Xanax for the flight. Eeek.
(Oh, and Wooden Shoe Like to Know didn’t really match my new dark gray jacket and the clothes I’m taking, so I went with Teasey Does It!)

Hits Mari Moon – Unconventional (and wordpress dropping GFC?)

This one is SO awesome! I love that its a work-friendly polish too because all of the colors it flashes to are normal colors like purple, red, plum, magenta… so I can wear it all I want without wondering if it’ll be appropriate in a meeting with military folks and everything. 🙂

At the least red angle, it looks like a dark plum purple. I just think this is so gorgeous.

I heard that wordpress blogs aren’t going to be able to use Google Friend Connect anymore soon! Is that really true? Mine is a wordpress.org blog… I actually moved mine from wordpress.com to self hosted wordpress.org so that I could use Google Friend Connect. ha!

So either I’ll have to figure out another change, or a lot of us bloggers are on wordpress and we’ll all move to bloglovin’ instead anyway?

If so, I added bloglovin’ following on my sidebar so we can get going with that. I’ll look for yours on bloglovin’ too so I can add yours there.

I love how this one shows your follower count, although right now mine is 6 so its a sad little cute number. haha

(Just when I thought wordpress.org gave us all complete freedom! Argh.)

I keep wanting to make a “My favorite things” video for you guys and see what yours are so I don’t miss out on other awesome stuff… I was going to include nail products but also hand and cuticle stuff and even fragrance, hair products, eye shadow and lip gloss. I’ve never even made a video that shows my face! Maybe I won’t be such a stranger. 🙂

Merry Midnight over Goin My Way!

This turned out SO cool! I layered 2 coats of OPI – Merry Midnight over 2 coats of China Glaze – Goin My Way.

I like how the brown underneath counteracts how bluish Merry Midnight can be.

Out of direct light you can see more of the flakies.

Peppermint Tips!

Oh, I had SUCH high hopes for using the Bundle Monster plate BM 220!

As soon as I got it, I couldn’t wait until winter to use it. I ended up making quite a mess instead of the cute little peppermint tips I kept dreaming up. haha!

I did a coat of white first, then put some red over it (Rimmel Rapid Ruby) and stamped with the Konad white, so that the red would show through the gaps. It just didn’t show up as cleanly as I thought it would. Then I tried to go back over the messed up spots with white. When I tried to clean up the smile line with the brush, the red started kind of bleeding out of the bottom too, so I finished it up with the white line.

It was still a mess so I thought putting a coat of the Sally Hansen Diamonds would help since its just clear glass fleck and might smooth it out a little?

Ugh, I hope to be able to do this again and have it look like a lot less of a mess. 🙂

RGB – Crimson with Snowflakes!

Merry Christmas!! 🙂

Here is RGB – Crimson with snowflakes stamped in Konad white. The plates were m59 and T37.

I hate these awkward ones where I try to get my thumb in too. haha!

The polish is such a dream! Its the perfect dark red that still looks really red and its a jelly!!

petites – galaxy

I had to try this one when I saw the bottle. This was just a swatch, so it seems a little gritty, but when I wear it, I bet it’ll be prettier with a top coat!

Its a burgundy with silver glitter. It isn’t too sheer, so it only took 2 coats to be done, I just think it needs a top coat.

(My skin looks weird because I took that next to my window and the shadow of the screen shows up. ha!)

Right now I’m wearing BB Couture – Napa Valley Red and I keep forgetting how amazingly gorgeous it is until I wear it again!