Deborah Lippmann-Cleopatra In New York

Hi everyone! Happy Friday, I'm going bowling tonight to raise money for our marching band trip, can't wait! I'm probably the worst bowler you've ever seen but hey, it's worth it! Lol last time I went bowling I completely broke my thumb nail...hope that doesn't happen this time :-/
Today's polish is a great one, I picked it up around Christmas time, Deborah Lippmann-Cleopatra In New York. I absolutely love this polish! It is so pretty and unique(I don't have any like it in my collection) and I love the name of it too...God it's awesome!

Cleopatra In New York is an awesome black jelly/crelly base with small and medium sized gold glitter mixed in. The base isn't so thick that it covers the glitter in the previous layers, so this polish has really great depth to it.

The formula on it is all right, the black base is a little sheer, and I'm wearing 3 coats here for full opacity. The glitter is abundant and easy to get onto the brush/nail, but I would give the bottle a nice shake first. I also added a little polish thinner to it to ease the application. A little bit of dabbing is needed for the glitter, but it's really not too bad at all. Here's a closeup: can you see how the glitter from the previous layers shows through but it slightly covered, I love how much depth this gives the polish!

Anyway, this polish is kinda special to me because it's actually the most expensive bottle of polish in my collection, at $19. I have this thing where I refuse to spend more than $20 on a bottle of nail polish, because that's just obnoxious, but you know...how could I resist this 19 dollar nail polish?!

So yeah, that's all I've got for today. Thanks for reading everyone and I'll see you tomorrow! Byee

~Nova

Double Post With Rose Gold Glitter

Hi everyone! How's everyone's day been? We got rain over here and band practice was cancelled, so I did lot's of swatching yay me! So today's post is a super fun one. Several days ago my friend Carlee sent me some pictures of her nails and wrote up a little blog post/description for me and wondered if I would post it for her. Of course I said yes, so today I'm happy to present Nicole By OPI-Haley Good Lookin'. This is actually pretty cool because I myself don't own any Nicole By OPI polishes! So these are the pics she took:

So Haley Good Lookin' is from Nicole By OPI's modern family collection. I feel like I'm the only person on the planet who doesn't watch Modern Family. 

This polish is a mix of rose-y gold glitter with some larger pieces of pink and fuchsia glitter mixed in. It definitely leans to the "rose" part of rose gold. This is a full coverage glitter and is meant to be worn on its own, so I don't really think you'd be able to layer it over anything. 

Ok so according to Carlee "the formula's ok this is one coat and you have to dip the brush back in a lot and dab it on. The brush is a nice medium size and spreads out easily. These pictures do not have top coat." 

So yeah when she sent me these pics I thought it would be cool to do sort of a "double post", so I picked the polish in my collection that I thought best matched HGL and I have swatches for you guys!
This is a Love & Beauty polish by Forever 21, I picked it up like AGES ago and never really used it. Don't know why because it's so pretty!

So this is sort of rose gold polish but it definitely leans more gold, in the bottle it looks sort of pinker but on the nail it's a much more of a golden color. It's small gold, silver, and pinkish copper glitter in this coppery-pink base. You can't really see the base color that well in the pics.

So this polish was kinda sheer and is probably more appropriate for layering, but I felt like wearing it on it's own and think it looks really cool this way. I really love this glitter color, it's almost like a nude glitter! Does that make sense? Not really...

The formula was very nice, it was a little sticky but that didn't make application any harder. This is 4 coats I believe, and there's a teensy bit of nail line showing, but it doesn't really bother me. Here's a closeup so you see the little glitter particles:

 Overall I really like this glitter! It looks really great on my skintone and I love the color. It also only cost $4 so hooray for cheapness!

So that's it for today! And if anyone else wants to write a blog post and would like me to post it feel free to send me pics and a description anytime! Thanks for reading guys and I'll see you all next time!
~Nova 

What I've Been Wearing (On My Nails)

Hey friends readers and other people! I'm back! Yay. I know I've been like mia for weeeeeeks now...I have a good explanation. I promise. Soo if you didn't know I was in China for 2 weeks...so obviously there was no blogging to be done there. But I had a great time I was there with my mom visiting family, my grandparents, who by the way, live in THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, and eating Chinese food. Which in China, is nothing like the "chinese food" they have here. And dear God it was sooo hot! And I watched lot's of movies and TV and stuff. Cuz I was in the middle of nowhere and had nothing to do. But like, American TV stuff. I watched lot's of big band theory, and friends, and elementary, and FINALLY got a chance to watch Person of Interest! Yay me. And, of course, I bought more nail polish. The good thing about the middle of nowhere is that things are CHEAP! I got 5 bottles of polish for like 8 bucks. CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT!! Ok so then afterwards my mom and I stopped in Shanghai just for a couple days, and I bought more nail polish and visited some more family and stuff. And so I got back like 2 weeks ago i guess, on Friday night.   So yeah ALL of last week I was mostly free and probably should have updated this blog, except I was kinda busy yaknow...being the laziest ass in the world and watching friends all day and yeah...And then last thursday my family and I went to upstate New york to spend some time in a lake house with our neighboors, and we didn't get back till Sunday. And band precamp started on Monday and I'm away marching and playing in the hot hot sun from 9-2. So I guess this week I'll be able to get some blogging done, before leaving for band camp in Pennsylvania on Sunday, and will have no computer access/free time for all 5 days. So yeah August is like a super busy month for me. But I'll try and post some stuff for this week! I did do my nails after I got back from China and I have pics of those for you guys today!
So what I attempted here was a turquoise stone effect. Like this:

I'd seen lots of turquoise stone manicures so I thought I'd give it a try. So this is what I ended up with...

 So really not sure how I feel about these. I do think the effect is really cool...but I probably should have picked a more turquoise-y base color. What I'm wearing here is Urban Outfitters-Absinthe. It's a couple shades darker than what you see in the pictures. And that really isn't the color of absinthe. It annoys me when polish names are like that. If you're gonna name a polish absinthe you might as well make it the actual color of absinthe. But the dark teal color is still quite pretty! 

So after a couple coats of "Absinthe" I used plastic wrap to dab on white and grey polish. Then I used the water spotting method to get the black lines. It's basically where you put a few drops of black polish onto the surface of water, spray it with something like hairspray, which will create fine lines in the surface of the black polish, then dip your nail into a part you like to transfer the polish onto your nail. Much like water marbling. 

This was my first time ever using this sort of method, I don't even do water marbling that much because I find it sort of tedious. I think for a first try it came out pretty well though! I really like my pinky and index finger, I managed to get the finest lines on those. The other nails all seem to have larger chunks of black polish. 

Overall I think this is a manicure I'll be trying again sometime soon. Maybe with like other colors and stuff, it's a really cool effect and I got SO many people asking me how I did these! 
So that's all I've got you guys today! I'll be posting some more stuff this week (hopefully) before band camp so yay! Have a great rest of the day everybody!
Oh and fyi, THIS is absinthe

Please don't ask me how I knew all that.
~Nova