Mail Time: April Julep Maven Box

This month's theme is "Turn on the Brights" which is ironic because it's been raining and dreary here in Northeast Florida for two days. I usually love this kind of weather, but lately it's just bleh to me. I'm really feeling Spring colors this season and the gray skies are a bummer! But at least I get to break out my zebra-striped umbrella, so it's not a complete hardship. Accessories make all the difference, right?

My style profile is Classic with a Twist, and I ended up sticking to it this time. I love the colors, but I'm most excited about the Mighty Nail & Cuticle Serum! I'll have more information about the serum after we take a quick look at the box...

How gorgeous and fun are these colors?

The goodies inside

Information about Mighty Nail & Cuticle Serum from the Julep site:

"Kapow! Peptides – super-charged amino acids that build keratin (for your nails) and collagen (for your cuticles) – are our Mighty Nail & Cuticle Serum's secret weapon to transform dry and damaged cuticles almost overnight. Plus, get visibly stronger, smoother nails with fewer ridges and less splitting and brittleness in only 2-3 weeks.

To use: Apply to cuticle area twice daily for two weeks, then once a week for maintenance. This serum is so powerful, you only need one half-turn per hand. Can be used on bare or polished nails. Allow serum to dry completely before applying polish."

It sounds like just the thing I need for my sad cuticles! I'll test this bad boy out for a couple weeks and let you all know what I think. Until then, bright sunshine-y days to all of you out there! 

PS: Can someone pass me a towel? 

Polka-Dot Mani and Seche Vite First Impressions

Let me officially go on the record here by saying I am most definitely NOT a nail guru and I'll never claim to know much about that end of beauty. But I do love color very much and I have fun trying simple nail art. Plus I have an obsession with polka dots.

With all of this in mind, this is my Hello Spring! manicure. Pay no attention to my horrible cuticles. I know they need some TLC.

Base color: Sally Hanson Insta-Dri in Fast Fuchsia

Dots: Nicole by OPI Selena Gomez Collection in Hit the Lights

Psst, deal alert! I got both of these polishes this week for $1 each! The Insta-Dri was at The Dollar Tree and the Nicole was on clearance at Walmart with the rest of the Selena Gomez line and lots of other polishes for a buck. Some of the other polishes were 50 and 75 cents! All together I spent $4 on polishes, base, and top coat. More on the base and topcoat later.

Some "creative" shots. Blurry buggers though they are...

These are all on day 2 of the manicure. Man, look at those cuticles! Anyway, moving on. I used Seche Vite top coat and base coat for the first time here and as you can see, there's already tip wear. I was really surprised since it seems most bloggers prefer Seche Vite. In fact, blogger opinion was why I decided to try the brand. I had a $5 off coupon to Sally Beauty Supply and it just so happened they were running a special -- buy the base coat, get the top coat free. So for $2 I got to try both. Score! I was so excited to test them out. Both base coat and top coat applied as usual, with great drying time. 

I don't have a full review for you all just yet, but I can tell you that five hours after I did my nails I had considerable chipping on my dominant hand and tip wear on the other. This was after 1 coat of base, 2 coats of the main color, dotting, and one coat of top coat, which I wrapped. I did one load of pre-washed dishes with a dish wand, so my hands weren't fully submerged. Nothing else was out of the ordinary. I do my nails the same all the time, lately with the Colorstay Gel-Smooth base coat, 2 coats of polish, and either Sally Hanson Insta-Dri top coat or Orly Glosser top coat. I use the same wrapping method with those top coats as I did with the Seche Vite and it usually lasts about three days before I start to see wear at all, and a few more days before I have to remove everything. But with Seche Vite I get less than 5 hours? 

Anyone have any thoughts on this? If I'd done anything different besides changing brands, I'd say I've done something wrong. I'll give the brand another test run and update when I have more thorough results.

Miscellaneous Nail Storage

Just a quickie here. I've been on a major reorganizing and decluttering kick lately and I've been thinking about how to reorganize every aspect of my life. I thought I had a passable solution for all my nail stuff in this Steralite tote...

I had sort of an organized chaos thing going on. I had thinner, removers, cuticle oils, various nail art tools, buffers, nail files, manicure bowls, and even a few stripers. Lotsa stuff happening in that little tote, but I had it separated with smaller containers and it was working okay.

Yep, all of this.

But then today I was at Hobby Lobby, checking out their storage bins (why do those things have to cost a small fortune? Why???) when I came across a three-level container. I spazzed and forgot to photograph the container by itself, but here is how I divided  the three levels:

Left: nail art supplies; Middle: Tools; Right: Polish removers, cotton rounds, cuticle removers, and cuticle oils. 

Ta-Daaa!!!

The final result! I put the nail dryer and stripers in with my polishes and the manicure bowls didn't fit, which is a bummer. But overall, I'm pretty happy with the separation of my stuff. And best of all, it takes up less space than the Steralite container -- saving any amount of space a major plus when you live in a tiny house. I'm not stressing the bowls too much anyway, since I only break them out when I want to do some major pampering. With this new container I have everything I use on a regular basis and it's super portable. 

Oh, I almost forgot! This was also 40% off of $7.99 today, so I only paid $4.79. Don't you love a good deal? I found it around all the Spring-themed plastic items. All of their Spring Shop collection is 40% off.

Do you have any great storage solutions? I'm especially curious about how people organize their makeup and polish. Can't get enough of those types of YouTube videos!

Emerald City Nails!

Not only is it the Pantone color of the year, but it's also the color of the most fantastical city in all of Oz. I'm talking about emerald, of course!

In a couple hours I'm going with some friends to see Oz the Great and Powerful and I thought I'd do something fun with my nails.

Please excuse the bad glitter clean-up. That stuff is stubborn! 

I started with my Colorstay Gel-Smooth Base Coat, then applied one coat of Wild Cactus by Color Club. After that dried I used Sinful Colors Call You Later from the Almost Famous collection all over and let that mostly dry. I then dabbed Milani One Coat Glitter in Gold Glitz onto the tips and faded it down toward the middle, applied top coat, and voila! Emerald City nails!

This would also be appropriate for St. Paddy's Day. Now I have to go finish getting ready. Talk to you soon!

Swatches: Sinful Colors Go Green Collection (Shamrock Repromote)

It's that time again! Ah, St. Patty's day. A day for guzzling booze with no shame, covering yourself in green for fear of being pinched a million times (usually by people drunker than you), and of course the return of the Sinful Colors Shamrock (this year called Go Green) collection. Especially anticipated is the return of Green Ocean, in all its flaky goodness.

From my local Walgreens. 

The collection consists of three shades: Irish Green, Green Ocean, and Exotic Green.

As always, click on the pictures to enlarge! 

In sunlight:

In the shade:

Irish Green: 
This shade wants to be a neon, but comes off more like a bright kelly green. It has a semi-matte finish. This color is often repromoted in SC neon collections.

Green Ocean:
Oh, how I struggled to capture the nuances of this polish! It has green and blue flakes suspended in a very sheer, pale green base. I've seen it best layered over black on other blogs, but I've layered over Exotic Green here. I recommend using a top coat since the flakes make for a bit of a bumpy surface otherwise. Nothing major, but it might irritate some.

Exotic Green:
This is a core collection shade. It shows up more like a true green here, but it's actually a bit mossier than that. I think of it as kind of a slightly grayed-out forest green. The first swatch in the shade is much more color-accurate.

Overall I really like these colors. I can honestly say that in my 200+ colllection of polishes I have nothing like any of them.

Happy Hunting! These should be pretty easy to find.

Review: Revlon Colorstay Gel-Smooth Base Coat

I'm not great at nails. I mean, I try, but it gets frustrating when my polish chips off or peels off in sheets after a grand total of 2 days wear -- if I'm lucky! For a long time I didn't bother doing my nails at all because the wear time on me is ridiculous. I've pretty much always worked jobs that are hard on my hands, like serving, bartending, and for the past three years I've been co-owner of a very small house cleaning company. My poor hands take abuse at work, then I come home and do everything a mother of two needs to do to keep the home running. So as a result I haven't done much with my nails except curse them for sucking so much (thin, peeling PITAs that break easily) and curse myself for having craptastic manicure skills (filing sets my teeth on edge so I'm lazy about it and my cuticles are a hot mess). But the past 8 months or so I've really been trying. The first time I got 4 days wear out of a polish I almost threw a parade.

Oh little did I know! 

I read about this Colorstay Gel-Smooth Base Coat Longwear Nail Enamel being great, but I was skeptical. I mean, obviously these people don't know my nails or my life. I bought it anyway -- what can I say? Hope springs eternal and all that. They were right; this stuff is AWESOME.

It smooths ridges, protects nails from staining, and just look at this picture! This manicure is 8 days old! Whaaaaaat!?!?!?

Not too shabby for 8 days, right? There's some unavoidable tip wear, but it isn't too awful. The new growth and ugly broken nail (ouch, BTW) on my pointer finger are the worst of it, but I'm still really impressed.

Unrelated to the base coat, I wanted to mention that this is the first time I've ever had so many compliments on my polish, which was pretty cool! I used the Colorstay base coat, Julep Nail Color in Meryl, Color Club Professional Nail Lacquer in Snow-Flakes, and Orly Glosser (on clearance at Marshall's for $4.99) as a top coat. I wish the holo flaky showed up better here, but you get the idea from the bottle. I'm absolutely loving this Color Club polish -- and it was on clearance with a red polish for $3.99 at Sally's. Score!

I love this color combination, but I'm definitely ready to change it up now that I've done my due diligence with the base coat. If it wasn't for the growth and my boredom with wearing the same color too long, I could even stretch this manicure a couple more days.

Price: $4.99 at Walmart and Target, and around $7.99 at drugstores

Mail Time: February 2013 Beauty Boxes

Is there anything better than finding your mailbox stuffed full of  goodies? No, I think not. Today I received two subscription boxes and a Hautelook order. All fun stuff and not a bill or junk mail in sight? It must be my lucky day!

I'll have a review on the Hautelook order later, but for now I wanted to focus on the three beauty boxes I subscribe to and received this month: Ipsy (formerly MyGlam), Birchbox, and my very first Julep Maven box. I'm sure most of you know what these services are all about, but if not be sure to click on the links and check them out for detailed explanations and ordering info.

On to the boxes!

First up, Ipsy. And can I just add that I absolutely love the metallic hot pink mailer these come in? They instantly brighten up my day when I see them gleaming in my mailbox.

From left to right:

MICA Beauty Cosmetics gel liner 

Lash Card -- 4 individually wrapped mascara guards

Pixi Flawless and Poreless primer

pop beauty mascara in Smoky Black

Coastal Scents eyeshadow in Glitz &Glamour (Candlelight, Gunmetal, Incognito, and Ashen)

I haven't tested everything out, but the eyeshadows are pretty pigmented. They're the same quality as you would get with the 88 Palettes (and the like). I've used the Pixi primer once. I'll have a more thorough review on it later, once I've had a chance to really give it a spin.

I'm generally pretty satisfied with all of the Glam Bags I get from Ipsy. They've been pretty good about sending deluxe sized samples with products I actually get use out of, from brands I wouldn't normally try. In my opinion this service is worth the $10 per month. 

Birchbox:

Left to right:

SKIN & Co Roma Cleansing Body Gel with Olive and Sicilian Orange Extracts

Dr. Lipp Original Nipple Balm for Lips (Yep, really!)

Color Club mini in Wild Cactus

Ghirardelli Milk and Caramel Square

twistband hairband

First, I think it's interesting that both Ipsy and Birchbox went with the "Red Carpet Ready" theme, but considering all the award shows this month it's really not that hard to understand the reasoning.

So. The products themselves. I haven't had a chance to review the products thoroughly (except the chocolate, which was yummy, of course!), but my initial impressions is that this box is kind of underwhelming. I guess this month just felt kind of chintzy compared to past months; there are no "wow" products included and I'm not impressed with the tiny sample of lip balm. The Dr. Lipp's looks like an okay size for a balm sample, but tube is only filled from the bottom pink line down. I will say that I have it on my lips right now and it is very soothing to my dry lips. If you've ever breastfed before then you know the texture and scent breast balms have. This one is no different. Who'da thought about putting that on your lips? It makes a lot of sense. 

The shower gel has a very unisex scent and contains about two to three shower's worth of gel. You're mileage may vary, of course. The twistband headband works better for me and my super thick hair than the twistband ties. I think the item I'm most excited about is the Color Club polish. It's a color I somehow don't already own! As a bonus, the Pantone color of the 2013 is emerald green, so I suspect we'll be seeing as much of that color as we did tangerine last year. 

Okay, onto the the newbie of the bunch!

My very first Julep Maven box (Classic with a Twist):

Left to right:

Julep Nail Color in Meryl

Julep Nail Color in Barbara

Julep Facial for Hands Glycolic Hand Scrub

Julep Essential Cuticle Oil

Can't wait to give these a whirl!