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

New Year Snowflakes

Before my husband and I left for a quick New Year trip, I wanted to stamp some snowflakes with one of my new Bundle Monster plates.

I used Konad White, and BM-323. This is over the China Glaze Refreshmint + Piggy Polish Tic Tac Toes that I posted about earlier.

Its so cute together!

Okay, I’m getting my giveaway ready to post next. 🙂

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

Vampire Lace

When they had the Orly Haute Look sale, I got Au Champagne half-off. I had a feeling I’d be able to stamp with it. I’m so glad I was right! It just has the frostier look than a silver.

The burgundy is an old Maybelline Colorama polish called Vampire Seduction, and it somehow still applied really well, like it was still new.

The image was from the new Bundle Monster 2012 set, plate BM-323.

And I have to add… I am LOVING Vampire Diaries this season. 😀

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. 🙂

Add some blood to the lace…

I know I did blood spatters last year too, but I just love it… probably has to do with how much I love Dexter?

I used the 60 second Rimmell polish in Rapid Ruby and the Konad plates m13 and m21.

I have an awesome vampiress costume and no where to wear it… Halloween snuck up on me. I’ll probably watch scary movies with my fiance and eat chocolate though, which I can’t complain about of course. And his Mom gave us glow sticks. haha! I’ll be playing with those!

I’ll probably pick the giveaway winners tomorrow, so you still have all day to enter! 🙂
http://shimmerspark.com/posts/halloween-giveaway

Lacey B&W French

I did this one yesterday before going out to meet my parents, fiance, and fiance’s family for dinner. I love how well we all get along and have fun…

I can’t believe I was able to just do a french tip on my own nails instead of having to put pink first… its because of the Illamasqua Base Coat, I swear! It has kept my nails from getting stained! Now that I’ve used it all month, the stained part has grown out to the end and my real nails look normal again. I love that base coat so very much, thank you Illamasqua!

I used Orly – White Tips, then stamped the fishnet design from the konad plate m79 and finally, the straight ribbon strip from a rectangular essence stampy plate, with Konad – Black Pearl.

One of my most favorite nail bloggers is having an OMG giveaway, you gotta go see it. She always does the coolest things with her nails too!
http://www.emeraldsparkled.com/2011/10/2nd-blog-birthday-giveaway.html

Nails for my New Orleans trip! :)

This took forever, but I love how it ended up! I wish it was sunnier so I could get a better picture, but here it is for now…

This is a layer of OPI – Black Onyx, a layer of Nicole by OPI – Nicole’s Nickel, a stripe of Black Onyx on the top corner with OPI – Sanguine on top of that black stripe, then the bow stamped with Konad white!

I also put the Shellac base coat first, then at the end I did the Shellac top coat and cured it 2x so that this will last… hopefully at least a week and a half or 2? 🙂

I love that Konad bow plate, I need to use it more often. It is m7.

(I’m adding a black with silver glitter nail art striping polish to the Halloween Giveaway, I thought it would be a good one to go with those!)

Tuff Scent Giveaway!

If you haven’t seen my last post, go see it, I gushed about this brand a lot!

I was going to give away 1 bottle to 2 people, but tuffscent.com was so generous and sent me an extra free bottle, so I’m going to actually choose 2 names and the first winner will get 2 bottles!

They are:
Truth (pineapple kiwi-scented), Guardian Angel (china lily-scented), Wisdom (grapefruit-scented)

When you enter, I’m going to ask you what your top 2 choices would be so that when I pick both names, I’ll try my best to send you what you wanted most.

As always, you get an extra entry for posting about the giveaway, since it helps me connect with more awesome nail polish addicts I wouldn’t get to find any other way! 🙂
Here are a link and picture you can use -> http://shimmerspark.com/posts/tuff-scent-giveaway & http://i1090.photobucket.com/albums/i378/hollycoffeebean/giveaway-tuffscent.jpg

I’ll end this one on August 31st.

Anna Sui Polishes

I really only bought these because I had to have the bottles… aren’t those so precious!?

Then I was surprised by the polish! I didn’t know this was one of the features but it smells like roses!!! It smells so good!

This one is called Snow (or 013). It is a sheer, shimmery white with some flashes of red and I think I notice a little flash of blue too?

Even the top of the bottle looks like a rose!

This is the 2nd one I got. It is called Sky (or 107). It is blue with glitter and large square chunks of silver glitter too!

You can get these online at Urban Outfitters or of course you can search on ebay or for a swap!

ManGlaze – Mayonnaise & hot pinks to stamp with!

This was some experimenting I did before the french manicure that I posted in my last post!

First, I put a layer of ManGlaze – Mayonnaise on, so that I could see what these hot pinks were going to look like over white!

Here is a swatch, its a matte white polish with some shimmer!

Here were my hot pinks and one neon green I was going to try while I was at it:

From left to right, those are Color Club – Screamin Fucshia, Konad – Psyche Pink, Sally Hansen – Sonic Bloom, a Kiss nail art polish in Bikini Coral, Revlon Scented – Raspberry Rapture, Sally Hansen – Orange You Cute, Zoya – Ali, Illamasqua – Lament, Diamond Cosmetics nail art polish in neon green, Essie – Pink Parka, and Zoya – Lolly

The 3 on the right didn’t work at all (Diamond Cosmetics nail art polish in neon green, Essie – Pink Parka, and Zoya – Lolly)! But all of the ones on the right did!

Here they are stamped with the new bundle monster plates!

OPI – So Many Clowns… So Little Time & Step Right Up

I had to do a side by side swatch for these because they were so similar! If you put them side by side, you can see that So Many Clowns is a warmer-toned eggshell white and Step Right Up is a very light pink.

Both go on like sheer jelly polishes, so I wanted to show you what it looked like with 2 coats and what it looked like with 5 coats.

From Left to Right, So Many Clowns 5 coats, So Many Clowns 2 coats, Step Right Up 2 coats, and Step Right Up 5 coats:

I will probably only keep Step Right Up because if I’m going to wear a sheer jelly white, I’d rather it be pink toned because the warmth of the So Many Clowns kind of enhances the little bit of yellow stain I have from wearing dark polishes a lot of the time.

I Juggle Men was my favorite from this Femme De Cirque collection though, which do you like the best? 🙂

I made Easter cupcakes with the Peeps! I’ll post a picture tomorrow with my comparison of my newest pastel blues!

Pinks with hot pink shimmer…

I saw the new Spring displays that Maybelline just put out and wanted to swatch the pinks because they both have the hot pink hidden shimmer inside! Pink Halo and Pink Glimpse.

I picked up both from these:

Then I grabbed my Zoya – Barbie and Nicole by OPI – You’re an Angel to compare them since they all have hot pink shimmer in them.

Left to right, You’re an Angel, Pink Glimpse, Pink Halo, Barbie

Since the hot pink shimmer only shows in the sun I had to get that photo in direct sun. It was still hard to show the shimmer inside of Barbie, so now I feel like I don’t like it as much… her hidden shimmer is a little too hidden.

You can see the hot pink flash the most with Pink Halo, that one is more of a sheer. Pink Glimpse is my favorite though, the bottle that I’m holding. It is a nice white and pink frost with the hot pink shimmer inside and leaves no visible nail line. It is the prettiest to me! I think I’d wear that one with the Pink Halo over it to intensify the pink flash… sounds perfect to me. 🙂

Happy St Patrick's Day!

I started out with Femme Couture – Garland, like I planned, but using the dotting tool didn’t work out, so I just konad stamped a shamrock in white… then it was kind of too out there white, so I put a coat of China Glaze Emerald Sparkle over it so it just kind of looks lighter green! And more sparkly!

ha! What an awkward hand pose to get my thumb corner in there.

We’re going to look at an awesome reception venue tonight and hoping that we like it since it is also on the short list of places that are affordable!

Then we drink German beers! I got us 3 kinds from 3 places where we drank good beer when we were in Munich. I know its an Irish day, but I shall celebrate it like a German!

Finally found time for a french!

I always love french manicures because they look so clean. I always use the Revlon Post Trauma treatment as a base because it is the most natural healthy pink tone I’ve ever found to cover up the yellowish stain on my nails from the dark polishes I wear.

If I’m lucky and my nails aren’t stained at the time, I’ll do the method where you just paint white on the tips and use the brush with polish remover to make the smile line perfect and clean, which is SO much easier and faster.

Most of the time I’m not so lucky and have to do this method… I’ll do my base coat of Nail Tek hydrating 3 or Citra 3, then the Revlon Post Trauma for the pink. I let it dry for a while or I use the Color Club Vivid Top coat which is fast drying hard top that is much thinner than Seche Vite. Then I use those sticky nail guides on top of the pink to make the white tip.

Those are the only two methods that work for me personally!

This time I stamped the little vine with Konad Black Pearl and used the dotting tool to make that berry glittery dot with LA Splash Glitz & Berry, which is SUCH an awesome glitter polish! 🙂

Everyone kind of has different french manicure methods, so tell me yours! Some people freak out about putting those sticker guides over the pink polish, but as long as you let it dry completely or use a fast drying hard plasticy coat like Seche Vite or Vivid, it really never causes a problem! I just don’t like using the Seche Vite in the middle layers because its so thick and I don’t like thick blobby nails at the end… I prefer to put the Seche Vite on last just to protect the stamped design and dot!

Some people like to make the white tip with the brush and then fill in the bottom with pink. I do NOT know how to do that. haha! I can’t just fill in the bottom with pink and not get it on the white or make it look weird, so I gave up that idea.

Del Sol – Flirt

I feel like such a dork being so excited about these, because I used to pass them up… but I saw them at our new Walgreen’s and grabbed 3 of them for $10.

This one is Flirt. It seems a little boring without sun, but at least its a nice shimmer with white reflection so it looks clean. This picture kind of shows my yellowy nail underneath though, eek! Maybe next time I’ll wear it over white.

So in the shade, when you get a tiny bit of sun, it starts to look a pretty peach-ish pink…

But then in the sun, it is an awesome metallic shimmery pink! And it got so dark that I have no visible nail line anymore!

The others I have are First Kiss and Ruby Slipper so those will come later.

My happiest Valentine's Day!

I gave myself this ridiculously bright pink V Day konad and took this picture:

I used China Glaze Sneakerhead, added white konad hearts, and then covered it with this stuff, which is pretty clear with bright pink sparkly shimmer…

Then last night after dinner, my boyfriend and I went to walk at the beach and now I’m engaged!!!

I have to take pictures with my actual engagement ring soon, but right now we are having issues and it is at the jeweler’s so I only have a picture with my wedding band now! Its floral and has like 3 leaves, each with a little diamond, and then a dot repeated, I love it so much.

I know I’m not supposed to wear the wedding band until the wedding, but I’m so excited that I have to wear something on that finger until I get my engagement one back! haha!

Dexter blood spatters!

This is my favorite konad so far… I love Dexter, so the blood spatters were SO fun. I’ll be doing this again next Halloween! 🙂

I used the Sally Hansen Insta-Dri red, almost all of those Insta-Dri polishes work great with konad!