Julep Maven: April 2013 Classic with a Twist (Avery, Jackie) Swatches

I Bought This

I veered away from It Girl this month because I only liked 2 out of 3 of the colors.  Instead, I opted for Classic with a Twist, because I liked both colors and I wanted to try the cuticle serum.  And then I added on the 2 colors from It Girl that I did like, haha.  I'm quite happy with these colors because I don't really have brights and these will be great for the summer season. 

Classic with a Twist came with 2 polishes and the Nail and Cuticle Serum, plus a rock candy lollipop as an extra little something.  The 2 polishes in my box are Avery and Jackie, both cremes and both seem perfect for the upcoming summer!

Click for swatches.

SWATCH & REVIEW: Pahlish - Partridge in a Pear Tree

Happy New Year guys!  Sorry for the lack of posts lately!  I got busy with last minute shopping and gift wrapping right before Christmas, and then I kinda took a break from the internet, lol.  So I failed at the challenge, but I'm still planning to upload my last 3 days of the challenge sometime during this month.  After Christmas, I really didn't do much of anything the last week of the year except bum and catch up on some TV.  No swatching time at all! o_o;;

But I'm up and running again.  Today I have Partridge in a Pear Tree which is from Pahlish's holiday collection.  This is the one that first caught my eye when she released this collection.  I think it's a pretty polish that's complex and quite unique.  Also, it's very festive for the holidays!

This has a linen colored jelly base with fine red shimmer, burgundy hex glitter, and green square glitter.  I used 3 coats to achieve the opacity above.  It was easy to apply and I had no problems with glitter application (didn't have to do any fishing).  Overall, a nice polish and I really recommend picking it up while it's still available!  You can find it at her etsy shop.

Julep Maven: October 2012

I'm back with my October Julep Maven box.  I almost skipped this month, because most of the boxes came with crackle, and I didn't like the 1 box that didn't have crackle.   The crackle trend is pretty much dead, IMO, and I think many people felt the same way because Julep came out with another option this month and that is the Maven's Choice box.  It came with 3 creme polishes from the October boxes, but no drops.  I really wanted to try the drops, so I debated whether to get the American Beauty box or the Maven's Choice box.  The American Beauty box came with a dusty indigo creme polish named Eloise and an orange crackle named Sabrina, which I thought was a pretty unique color for a crackle and was the reason I was thinking of getting it.  But then I decided it would be better to just get Maven's Choice and add on the drops, since I was also going to add on Sofia anyway.  And ta-da:

l-r: lisa, eloise, keira, sofia, quick dry drops

Julep included several extras this month.  As you can see in the last picture, there's glitter!  I got orange and black, which is perfectly fine with me because it's October and those will be great for Halloween.  But I know some people got white and silver, which would have been nice and more versatile.  The other extra was candy corn, which is a Halloween staple, but I'm not a fan of it.  I'll probably give it away.  Anyway, I hope to do swatches soon!  At the very least, I will do skittle swatches if I can't do full hand swatches right away.

Also, I was playing with lighting and angles and stuff today, so that I can try to be better about swatching and photographing for this little blog.  (Maybe you can tell, by some of the over-brightness of the photos, lol.)  That's one of the main reasons my blogging schedule is so wonky.  By the time I get home from school and/or interning, it's already dark.  And that'll be even more so with winter coming up.  Can't believe it's already October!!

Until next time~

SWATCH: Julep - O Canada!

Today I have a swatch of Julep's O Canada! polish, which I added on to my Julep Maven box this month.  It is a glitter polish, with mostly small round opalescent glitter and sparse red hexagon glitter in a clear base.  You definitely need a base color for this polish, I think. For these swatches, I used Julep Kate as my base.  I started with 4 coats of that and then applied 2 coats of O Canada!  

in the shade

in the sun

in the sun, a better view of the glitter

in the shade

in the sun

I'm not in love with it...I think layering it over white doesn't really do the opalescent glitter justice, since you can't really see it.  Also, the white polish doesn't look so great on my nails, to begin with.  I'll have to try it with other base colors and see if it grows on me...As far as application goes, I think it's pretty hard to mess up glitter polish.  It's very forgiving in application, and I've never had a problem with applying a glitter polish.  This is no exception!  It applied really well, so no problems there.

Julep Maven: July 2012

Hello there!  It's been a while hasn't it?  I got caught up in school and my internship and just let this little ol' blog go.  Basically, I got lazy.  All I pretty much wanted to do was bum, when I wasn't at school or my internship, lol.  But I'm back!!  Summer is here, and I've got quite a bit of time to swatch and take pictures.  Yayy!

To start off, here's my Julep Maven box for July!

I usually get Boho Glam, but this time I decided to go for It Girl.  I didn't want the lip gloss the other boxes came with, but I wanted the America polish, so it kinda seemed like my only option, haha.  I wasn't thrilled with the polish colors, since I'm not a big fan of white polish (usually streaky) and I already have several colors like the dusty teal that Daphne is, but I could live with them.

l-r: Daphne, Kate, Mila, America

If you notice, America looks like it's not filled to the top.  It seems like the polish settled, but I think it's like that because it's a very thick polish.  It doesn't move at all when I shake the bottle!  And when I opened the bottle, it was goopy and you can hardly tell there are any stars in it.  I was quite disappointed by this, since this was the polish I was most looking forward to.  Also, I was hoping to wear it for 4th of July, but it arrived this past Friday, the 6th of July.  Bummer.  I've contacted Julep about it, to see if it's truly supposed to be like this.  We'll see what they say!  Maybe when I swatch it I'll like it better.  But for now, I'm sure there are better star glitter polishes out there...

add ons: O Canada! and Chelsea

I decided to add on O Canada! and Chelsea because I really liked the look of them.  I liked all the glitters this month, so it was tough to choose which ones to add on.  This was my best solution. xD  I'll just have to get Yumi some other time, I guess!

Swatches coming soon.  And lots of other things I want to post about, like my IMATS haul!  I'm going to try posting at least twice a week, starting now!  Stay tuned~! :]

Wet N Wild Ice Baby Skittles

Ugh, just had midterms last week.  I'm not sure how I did, but I didn't feel too good about it.  For one of them, I studied more extensively on a part that I didn't really need to know and not enough on the part that ended up as a majority of the test. -sigh-

Anyway, today I took a trip to Walgreens, as I was on the lookout for the Wet N Wild limited edition holiday collections.  Nouveau Cheap has been reporting more and more sightings, so I thought I'd go look.  Good thing I did!  The Beauty Bar, with the limited edition palettes, wasn't out yet, but I was so excited to spot the display for the Ice Baby collection.  And it was completely full!

I picked up 5 of them:

I don't have time to swatch them individually yet, but soon!  I was just so excited that I wanted to share it right away.  Here are some skittle swatches though, so you can get a look at them:

From thumb to pinky: 1 coat each of It's All in the Cut, Back Alley Deals, Cost is No Issue, Believe Me It's Real, and Rockin' Rubies

From thumb to pinky: 2 coats each of It's All in the Cut, Back Alley Deals, Cost is No Issue, Believe Me It's Real, and Rockin' Rubies

More bottle and skittle pics after the cut...