Julep June 2015 Swatches, Comparisons, and Nail Art

Hi everyone! First up, I have an announcement: my giveaway to celebrate my one year blogiversary has ended and I have picked a winner! Congratulations, Cheri M!!! Thanks to everyone for reading my blog, and entering my giveaway – I really do appreciate all of you awesome readers ❤

Today I have my picks from the Julep Maven June 2015 Collection (The Deep End) to show off on the blog! This month’s collection, like the last two, was full of fun brights and mostly cremes, with a few other colors and finishes thrown in. While I loved the color palette and overall look of the collection, I limited myself to my three favorite polishes from the group, one of which has been my dream polish for a LOOONNNG time. As usual, I swatched the polishes, compared them, and did some fun summer nail art with all of them. Read on!

Julep April 2015 Swatches, Comparisons, and Nail Art

Hi everyone! Today I have my Julep April 2015 box (Paradise Collection) to show off on the blog (even though I missed the end of the month…again…)! This month’s box was full of brights, and, given how much I love bright colors, I had a lot of fun with this collection. I ended up picking four polishes and, as usual, I swatched them, did a few comparisons, and made some nail art. Since two of the polishes I chose were shimmery blues, I went aquatic with my nail art and did a little seascape with brightly colored fish.

Swatches – Different Dimension Tulips Are Better Than One and Julep Marla

Hi everyone! I sincerely apologize for the lack of blog posts recently. The truth is: I’ve been sick with a really bad cold since my last blog post over a week and a half ago. Between having a fever for a few days, frequent coughing fits, losing my voice for 5 days, and difficulty sleeping, my “energy” for painting my nails (much less nail art) was completely sapped. On the bright side, I’m FINALLY starting to get better after what feels like forever, and I’m back to posting! I know I missed at least one blog post that’s usually a monthly feature on my blog (you probably know what it is), but I hope to get back on track soon and finish up all the things I got behind on when I was sick. Anyways, to any of my readers who have stuck around, thank you so very much for continuing to read my blog ❤

Today I have two swatches of some random polishes I wore while I was sick. The first is Different Dimension Tulips Are Better Than One – a really fabulous bright “blurple” (blue-purple) duochrome shimmer – and the second is the polish I picked to wear on the first night of Passover: Julep Marla. Unlike the majority of the posts where I show swatches of polish, these two don’t really have any relationship to each other. But, still, I thought I’d combine them into one blog post since my swatch posts are pretty short.

Swatch – Glitter Gal Love Bite

Hi everyone! I have a quick swatch for you today of a GORGEOUS red holographic nail polish by Glitter Gal called Love Bite. I chose this polish to wear for a bit because I was feeling in the mood for red polish, and wanted something “special”; this one definitely fits the bill! The particular medium, warm red of this polish really suits my skintone and the strong holographic effect is just so mesmerizing – I love it!

Dark Red Reverse Gradient Hearts

Hi everyone! First, a reminder: please vote in my blog poll if you haven’t already! I’m halfway through cataloging my stash, and I already have an inkling about which color I have the most of, but I’d love to see which one you all think is the winner! Expect to see a blog post coming in a few weeks with the results!

Today I’ve got some simple gradient nail art that, as you can probably guess, I was originally planning for Valentine’s Day, but didn’t get around to until now. It kind of turned out to be a #nailfail because the topcoat bubbled like crazy around the hearts, but I suppose it looks tolerable. At least I got to use a bunch of my all-time favorite red polishes, and it wasn’t all that difficult!

Three OPI Swatches – Warm Me Up, Right Off the Bat, and First Date at the Golden Gate

Hi everyone! These past few weeks have been a little busy for me, so I haven’t had much time for nail art. Instead, I thought I’d show you all some swatches of the three random OPI polishes I wore!

Valentine’s Day Mani Swap with @fishnails on Instagram – My Recreation!

Hi everyone! I’ve got the second part of my Valentine’s Day mani swap with @fishnails on Instagram, and, this time, it’s me recreating her design! As I wrote in my previous post about my own design for the swap, a mani swap is a shared exchange of nail art designs between two people, after which each person recreates the other’s design. Her design for the swap was a kind of mix-and-match manicure inspired by those heart-shaped chocolate boxes you see around Valentine’s Day, and here I have my interpretation of it for you all to see! This is actually my first manicure that incorporates negative space elements – yay for new things!

SquareHue December 2014 Swatches, Comparisons, and Nail Art

Hi everyone! Today I have the SquareHue December 2014 collection to show off on the blog! This collection was inspired Rovaniemi – a town in Finland that is supposedly the home of Santa Claus. As someone who does not celebrate Christmas or care much for the holiday, this aspect of the collection was not a big selling point for me. All the same, I wanted to try SquareHue polishes again and so I ordered the box, partly to see just how Xmas-y things could get.

As it turns out, this collection is indeed very Xmas-y (surprise surprise), with the requisite red and green shades accompanied by a gold polish. Things get interesting, though, when you check out the finishes: out of the three polishes, two of them have unusual finishes (one textured, one matte). Not so conventional after all, I suppose! Like I usually do, I swatched all the polishes, did some comparisons, and then combined them all into nail art. Since the colors were so Xmas-inspired, I got seasonal with my nail art and made my nails look like presents. On with the swatches!

Swatch – OPI Under the Mistletoe

Hi everyone! Sorry about not posting for over a week – things have been rather stressful for me. I have a TON of stuff to do in the next two weeks! Well, even though it’s a week later, I hope all my U.S. readers had a wonderful Thanksgiving! I certainly did, excepting my major screw-up in which I accidentally left my laptop at the airport security scanner. YIKES! Since it’s my only computer, you can imagine how much my life, including this blog, would be set back if I had really lost it forever! When I realized it was gone, I felt like I’d lost a piece of my soul! You know, as if my laptop was a horcrux and someone had just destroyed it? Luckily, the TSA security line was probably the best place I could have lost my laptop because it was (obviously) found by security guards who cataloged and stored it until I was able to recover it. Crisis averted! While I did get my laptop (and sanity) back in the end, I highly encourage all my readers to BACK UP YOUR COMPUTERS!!! I kept putting it off, and therefore would have lost all my data if I couldn’t get my laptop/horcrux back. So don’t put it off until it’s too late!

Anyways, in other news, today I’ve got a swatch today of OPI Under the Mistletoe, which is the polish I wore for Thanksgiving. Because I spent the holiday with my boyfriend’s family, Thanksgiving-themed nail art didn’t happen. Things got busy right before I left and, besides, I wanted to be more conservative with my manicures while visiting them. So I chose this darling sparkly red! It’s a fairly traditional hue, but it’s got enough sparkle to make it interesting while not being overly showy. Overall, I think it worked well for the festivities. While the name of the polish implies a different occasion, red nail polish like this is always in style.

Swatch – Zoya Channing

Hi everyone! I have a quick swatch today of Zoya Channing, which is this astoundingly glowy red-orange shimmer polish. Let’s all admire it, shall we?