Polish Addict Nail Color - Swatches & Review

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I hope everyone has survived the Black Friday, Small Business Saturday sales and is getting some rest for Cyber Monday ;) I know I had to use tremendous restraint to not buy every single nail polish I saw. 

My final set of swatches for the weekend madness is from Polish Addict Nail Color! These 4 polishes are all from the latest Winter/Christmas themed collection and are available now for $9/bottle :)

Toyland:

Toyland is a white crelly with TONS of different glitters in all shapes, sizes and colors and at first glance in the bottle I almost didn't see "Christmas/Winter" in this polish. But, after putting it on and seeing the wide range of glitter, it really does seem like a toyland. I really like creme colored base crellys and this is definitely a fun take on a winter themed polish. I used 3 thin coats to avoid my tips showing through. 

Laquerlicious - Swatches & Review

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Next up in our Black Friday Swatch-a-thon is Laquerlicious! If you've never heard of Laqerlicious and you're a glitter bomb lover, you're missing out. What's more, Michelle of Laquerlicious donates part of her earning to her local Pit Bull rescue. It's really a win-win for us - we get beautiful polishes, and some doggies help find homes. 

I've got the Winter 2013 collection to share, as well as 2 polishes from the New Year's Eve collection. We'll start with the Winter collection.

Winter 2013

All Bundled Up:

This is a deep royal purple packed full of silver and purple micro glitter. There is also a silvery shimmer undertone to this one. I really loved this polish. The glitter was subtle but gorgeous and good for someone who loves dark polishes and is looking for a bit more pizzazz. Shown is 2 coats (though it could have probably been 1!). 

Polishaus - Swatches & Review

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Hello, all! I'm sorry I've been a bit MIA the past few days. I've been busy with family activities, driving, and eating too much. I'm going to have a few major swatch posts to share with you all today since all of these lovely indie makers are having black friday sales and I figure it'll be nice to see some of their product. 

I'm starting off with some FABULOUS polishes from PolisHaus Lacquer. I was so pleasantly surprised by these polishes. I had heard of PolisHaus and had been following her on Instagram for awhile but had yet to try these so I was so excited to get to review them. 3 of these are glow in the dark as well :)

Renaissance Custom Lacquer - Swatches & Review

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Happy Saturday! Today I'm very excited to share with you all the very first set of polishes to come out of the newly founded indie polish line, Renaissance Custom Lacquer. Meghan of Will Paint Nails for Food and her sister Laura are the brains behind this company and I think they have done a fabulous job with their first endeavor into this area of the polish world. They've drawn inspiration from art, design, fashion and nature to create these polishes and I think it truly shows. This is a picture heavy post but I think it's worth it! ;)

I have 6 polishes to share - 4 are part of the first full collection, The Seasons, and the last 2 are stand alone colors.

The Hunt: The Cure For Outfit Envy...and now nail envy! ;)

Hello, all! Today I have a fun and simple tribal print tutorial to share with you all! I'm sure other nail artists out there can appreciate feeling stumped on what to create sometimes and we all have our ways to be inspired. I think I've mentioned it before, but I really enjoy using the website called The Hunt to help spark my inspiration and I tend to have 15+ tabs open whenever I browse the site. It's a bit addicting and I almost always find something I like or want to recreate. 

Today marks the official relaunch of their iPhone app and it has an entirely new look and feel that just makes me so happy. It is very sophisticated and intuitive and needless to say I've been perusing the app a lot lately. I mean, look how pretty it is! 

I've been noticing a lot of the "hunts" are looking for nail art tutorials and more often than not these hunt's are lacking any "finds" for the tutorials. SO! I decided to take on a hunt myself! There was one in particular that really caught my attention and I knew I wanted to attempt solving the hunt with a tutorial I put together myself. The hunter asked for an "easy-ish way" to do a tribal like shown so I did my own take on it. It also gave me an opportunity to do a design I might not have done on my own. 

So here it is, my how-to for colorful tribal nails :) 

31 Day Nail Art Challenge - Day 31: Recreate your Favorite Challenge

Well, after more than a 2 week hiatus, I'm back to finish up the 31 Day Challenge! I am so proud of Meghan and I for completing this and I feel like we've both seen ourselves improve throughout this challenge. I can't believe we started it back in July! Time flies - all too soon we'll be doing this all over again! 

While I considered other options, I don't think there was ever a doubt in my mind that I would be recreating my Inspired by a Song look for this theme. I loved everything about this look. The song I chose was the Florence and the Machine song, Shake it Out, and the chorus "It's always darkest before the dawn" was my major source of inspiration. However, this time around I decided to glom onto the "dawn" portion. My reasoning was that it was paying homage to the new dawn that this challenge has brought for our nail art! Yeah, I went there. Welcome to chees

e-ball city, I'll be your guide.

The Digital Dozen does Black & White - Day 5: Birds on a Wire

I want to begin tonight's post with a thank you to all the ladies of the Digital Dozen! Thank you so very much for allowing Meghan and I to join you for this wonderful experience! While I struggled some nights with the theme (apparently you're not supposed to procrastinate on these!?) I completely enjoyed this challenge! I've loved getting to know you all over the past month and I can't wait for all the future endeavors to come :) Thank you for bringing me into the fold and for being so kind and supportive - it means the world to me <3

So, you'd think that on the final challenge of the black and white week I would definitely stick with black and white, right? Well I'm not really sure what happened, but my simple birds on a wire concept turned into a slightly more colorful version than I was expecting. Also, I think some of my birds are a bit...dog like? Haha!

The Digital Dozen does Black & White - Day 4: Middle Eastern Themed

So I will preface this post with an apology! I am the tiniest bit in love with this manicure and I couldn't narrow down my photos to just a few...so this is a picture heavy post! ;) 

This is my 4th mani for the black and white theme and I was feeling really uninspired and a bit discouraged when I sat down to do something. I did 2 looks before this and was about to call it quits but knew I'd be hurting the rest of the week if I didn't get it done tonight. I received a random catalogue in the mail and saw this wonderful rug and decided to be inspired by it! I'm really glad I went for it though because I'm really proud that they came out as clean as they did and I may force random strangers to look at them throughout the day tomorrow. Sometimes I have a heavy hand when it comes to free handing things like this and my lines get too thick way too quickly, but I think I managed to maintain some line weight consistency throughout each nail.

The Digital Dozen does Black & White - Day 3: Taped Reciprocal Gradient

Ah yes! Today's mani marks the halfway point of this week's challenge. I never realized how difficult it would be to come up with 5 different looks all around the same basic theme. I feel like there is SO much you can do with black and white, yet my brain struggles to realize them. 

The Digital Dozen does Black & White - Day 2: Floral

It's day 2 of the Digital Dozen Black & White challenge and I've got simple floral look to share with you all. 

I kind of struggled with today's design. I had a bunch of thoughts and unevolved concepts of floral looks that I couldn't quite grasp enough to put onto nail. I ended up doing a pretty simple carnation look similar to some that I've done before but I really like the subtlety of this look. 

The Digital Dozen does Black & White - Day 1: Southwest Tribal Skittle

Squee!! This marks my very first manicure as a member of the Digital Dozen and I am so excited for this challenge week and to be creating art with these amazing women! This month's theme is Black & White and I knew immediately that I wanted to do a tribal print of some sort for at least one of the days. Yes, I am still utterly obsessed with tribal print. I can't help it. I love the artwork of the Native American tribes of the Southwest of the US - it is just so inspiring to me! 

31 Day Nail Art Challenge - Day 30: Inspired by a Tutorial

Tonight I've got my second to last theme of the 31 Day Nail Art Challenge to share with you all. Today was "Inspired by a Tutorial" and I knew immediately which tutorial I wanted to do. My partner in crime through this whole challenge, Meghan over at Will Paint Nails For Food, recently did an AMAZING dreamcatcher tutorial that had a filtered look to it and was grungy and edgy and just fabulous. I knew I could never create anything as stunning as what she managed, but I thought I'd try my hand at it anyway!

Wondrously Polished is One!

Happy Saturday, all! So I let yesterday come and go and didn't even realize that it was the one year anniversary of the day I started my blog! How cow, I can not believe it's been a year already. Time sure does fly when you have an addiction/obsession/passion. In honor of this milestone, I decided to recreate a few of the first manicures I felt were worthy of being posted on the internet. 

Sigh. Looking through these past posts, I was cringing a bit. I'm not sure why I thought some of these looked remotely good! I used terrible lighting, had poor nail care, and cleanup was optional. So, with that, lets take a walk down memory lane and see how much I've improved over a year...though I really had no where but up from my original looks ;) I'll share my original try first, then the recreated mani one year later after.