Serum No. 5 Gild Free NOTD

During the summer, I try to grow my nails out and kick my nail biting habit and thus far I've been pretty successful. What's helped is being out of school (stress causes me to bite my nails!) and trying to consistently paint my nails. I figure the more effort I put into painting my nails, the less likely I'll be to bite them. The polish also acts as a protectant against my extremely peely nails.

Now that I actually have nails, I do want to better show off the first indie nail polish I ever purchased, Gild Free from Serum No. 5 (from their Winter collection, a bit off-season for summer but it's absolutely beautiful). This is one coat of Gild Free over two coats of OPI Alpine Snow. Gild Free is an ivory crelly (cream jelly) with different sizes of gold glitter. Depending on how the base lays over the glitter, it can sometimes look copper to the light.


I feel out of the loop when it comes to nail polishes so do you guys have any recommendations for creams, shimmer, and glitter lite polishes from brands you like? I'd love to dip my toes into more indie brands!

OPI You Callin' Me a Lyre?

(I've been suffering from allergies and I'm hoping to get over them before I do any makeup looks so until then, enjoy my reviews and nail polish posts!)

I used to dance ballet so anything ballet related is automatically something I need. When I heard about the OPI New York City Ballet Nail Polish Collection, I knew I had to get my hands on one of the polishes. I went back and forth on which one to get but decided on You Callin' Me a Lyre? because it reminded me of the satin on toe shoes.

I got it knowing it was a jelly polish and initially, I didn't like it on my nails. I thought it looked fine on my shorter nails where the smile line hasn't started growing but on my middle and ring finger, it appeared strange to me. Years of nail biting has left my smile line starting really high up on the nail. As I kept wearing though, the semi translucent jelly finish kept sucking me in and now I actually like it on my nails.

It does take some finesse to apply this evenly. I had to be sure to let each coat dry thoroughly on the nail and to not apply too much on each coat. I believe this was about four coats topped off with Seche Vite.

Are you a fan of sheer or jelly-like nail polish?

OPI Mermaid's Tears + Silver Shatter

I love living close to lot of beauty supply stores because it means I get to buy the OPI Silver Shatter early :D I contemplated buying the rest of the OPI Pirates of the Caribbean collection but I managed some self control and bought only Mermaid's Tears. I paid $6 for the silver crackle and $4 for Mermaid's Tears.

These are really color accurate.

This is my first experience with shatter polishes but from my experience it doesn't seem as finicky as people made it seem. I experimented with applying the Silver Shatter over Seche Vite versus no Seche Vite and I didn't find a difference with the crackling effect. Just be sure that your nail polish is completely dry.

I apologize ahead of time for my cuticles!

I think silver crackle looks better when applied a little thicker. I found that it made the silver glitter a little more opaque and it makes for a nicer contrast against Mermaid's Tears. When I applied it a little lighter it looked too much like a glitter topcoat versus a shatter in my opinion.

Here's my left hand with the thinner crackle. I also experimented a little with application techniques. With the pointer finger I applied the crackle in dabs, the middle finger had it applied diagonally and the ring and pinky were applied like normal nail polish. Try to go as fast as you can.

Here's my seldom seen right hand with the thicker crackle.

Are you going to invest in the OPI Pirates of the Caribbean collection?

OPI Show it and Glow it! NOTD

Ahhh it's gorgeous, OPI doesn't do glitter polishes much but the ones that they do look amazing.

3 coats and there are still some spots on my pinky and index that aren't fully covered. *I revise to say that if you mix it around and are a little thicker on application, you shan't have any problems with opacity*. This kind of reminds me of OPI Mad as a Hatter without the dark grey tones in it.'

In terms of glitter density, it's a lot little sheerer than Absolutely Alice was as a glitter polish plus there were bigger pieces of glitter in the mix. I would have liked it to be as dense as AA but I can live with it. It looks infinitely better in person!

NOTD: OPI DS Extravagence

Still no luck with finding Zorro, but I'm hoping the craigslist ads will do the trick.

I got this polish from my mega prize pack and I was unsure as to whether I'd like it or not, I am not normally fond of colors this dark and red.

I was so wrong, this is such a fab color.



This was 2 coats over Nubar Foundation base coat and under 1 coat of Seche Vite.
I love it, the formula is so utterly perfect.

The end!

NOTD- OPI Do you Lilac It

I now know what a pain purples and lilacs are when it comes to photographing them. I tried so many different lighting before settling on photographing in daylight versus directly in the sunlight.



I think it's fairly true to color




Originally I got this to stave off my want of the Eyeko Lilac, which I should have gotten before they changed their definition of free worldwide shipping to mean UK and Europe unless you bought 35 UK pounds worth of makeup. So I shall be without it then.

Nails of the Day: OPI Absolutely Alice

I only recently got into doing my nails, and this is a color that I knew I had to have once I saw pictures. Absolutely Alice is a gorgeous blue glitter with sprinkles of gold glitter within it. It is a pain to remove but I think the look of it is so worth it!

Don't mind my messy cuticles, and click to enlarge, your eyeballs will love it