Swatches: China Glaze - Spring Fling

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Hey everyone! I've got swatches of the new China Glaze Spring Fling collection to share today! I am seriously loving these colors together, and while some of the individual shades aren't necessarily my style, I think all of these work great for a springtime adventure.

China Glaze - Rebel: Swatches & Review

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Hello, all! I have a great set of polishes to share with you today from China Glaze! Fall collections are by far my favorite - partly because I love the fall season so much, but also because it's an opportunity for brands to create vampy, moody, edgy, beautiful shades.

Cue the China Glaze Rebel collection. *insert heart eyes* :D as one of the first fall collections I saw this year, I was immediately drawn to the colors but was then even more excited for the inspiration. I was born in 1990 so I wasn't quite old enough to appreciate a lot of the good (and bad!) things about the 90s. But even still, I know almost many of the references made in this collection which made the Rebel collection all the more fun. As always, there are 12 shades in various finishes in this collection so let's take a look!

China Glaze Lite Brites - Summer 2016 Collection: Swatches & Review

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Hiya, everyone!

Hope your week is going well :) I can't believe it's already Wedneday and that it's already almost MAY!? Where is the time running away to!? I'm getting married in almost 6 months and that is just INSANE to me. Someone come help me plan the rest of it?? :D

Today I've got swatches of the super fun China Glaze Summer 2016 Collection, Lite Brites! I honestly love swatching China Glaze's collections because they're always so beautiful together and create a cohesive and inspiring set of shades. This one absolutely has me excited for summer!

As always, I try to keep my swatches as true to color as possible, but keep in mind that some of these are bright neons and don't always translate well to photos. For reference, I shoot all my swatch photos under two 5500 K ottlight blubs directly onto my nail so different lighting will also affect the look of the photos.

Let's take a look and you'll have to tell me your favorite! :D

China Glaze - Cheers Holiday Collection: Swatches & Review

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Hello, hello! It's Tuesday which is usually my least favorite day of the week...however, when Tuesday's mean new China Glaze swatches to look at, I think it makes the day a whole lot better! The new Cheers Holiday collection is out now and I have swatches of the entire set of polishes for you all to take a look at!

China Glaze is without a doubt one of my favorite brands and I'm always so impressed by how they manage to come up with so many cohesive and fun collections each season. I'm really enjoying this holiday collection as there seems to be a little bit of everything - shimmers, cremes, micro-glitters, crellies, glitter toppers...lots of pretty things to swoon over. Let's take a look!

Don't you just love how the whole collection looks together!? I can't get enough of it!

40 Great Nail Art Ideas - Orange, Purple & Green

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Hello, hello! Time for another round with the ladies who contribute to the 40 Great Nail Art Ideas posts! This week we're doing another color + pattern challenge and it was a bit tricky for me to come up with an idea for it. It's pretty cool though because everyone is creating manis with Orange, Purple, & Green and then the pattern is different for almost everyone.

So today, I bring you Orange, Purple & Green decals!...and I've never done decals before. As you probably know by now, I am not a stamper. I tried it a couple times (literally) when I first got into nail art, but I was never good at it and my true love lies with freehand nail art anyway so I never tried to get better at stamping.

China Glaze - The Great Outdoors: Swatches, Review, & Nail Art

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Hello, all! There are so many great polish brands out there but without a doubt, China Glaze is one of my favorites. Seeing their new collections each season make me giddy and this Fall's The Great Outdoors had me weak in the knees immediately. I love the color palette and the mix of finishes and the theme itself is a favorite of mine (I love the great outdoors!).

There are 12 polishes in this collection, 6 creme/jellies, 5 metallics, and a glitter topper...and they all of course have seriously clever and cute names. Let's take a look!

China Glaze - Electric Nights Collection: Swatches & Review

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Hello, hello!! I have an epicly wonderful post to share with you all today! I have the China Glaze Summer collection, Electric Nights to share with you and oh man, such a great set of neon bright shades! I've really been enjoying the CG collections lately and I'm especially fond of the fun glitter toppers of this set. Let's take a look! 

Note - all the below swatches are as is, no white base coat. I wanted to show the polishes as they really are, so keep in mind, if you use a white base, these will be even more vibrant and you can use less coats than I mention. 

China Glaze - Road Trip Collection, Spring 2015: Swatches & Review

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Hello, all! I have a very exciting (and very large) post to share with you today! I've swatched the entire China Glaze Road Trip collection and I must say, I'm in full 'swoon' mode over how these all look together! This is CG's new Spring 2015 collection and whether it's time of year, or the colors, I'm loving this collection. It consists of 12 shades, 6 cremes and 6 cremes with shimmer added in. While some of these shades might be similar or might have dupes somewhere in the polish world, I think this is a really strong collection and I'm a fan.

China Glaze - The Road Trip Collection: Press Release

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Hello, all! I've been so excited about China Glaze collection as of late and their latest spring collection is seriously awesome! Take a look at the Road Trip Collection! 

China Glaze - Holiday 2014, Twinkle Collection: Swatches & Review

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Hello, all! Today I've got a big post to share! I have swatches of China Glaze's Twinkle collection to share with you! I'm absolutely in love with this set of polishes. I think they all work really well individually, as well as grouped together as a holiday collection. While the creme lover in me wishes there were more than two of that finish, the rest of these polishes are stunning in their own right and I think this might be one of my favorite holiday collections to date. Let's take a look!

China Glaze Autumn Nights Fall 2013 Swatches - Part 2: Gossip Over Gimlets

As promised, here is the second half of the China Glaze Autumn Nights Collection! This is definitely my favorite of the two halves - it has the only 2 cremes of the entire collection so I really can't say no to those ;) Let's dig in!

Gossip Over Gimlets

The name sake for this side of the collection, Gossip Over Gimlets is a platinum foil with bits of tiny gold flecks. The gold is very subtle but once you notice it, you'll love this polish even more. The formula is a bit on the watery side, but it's still opaque in 2 coats. 

China Glaze Autumn Nights Fall 2013 Swatches - Part 1: Strike Up A Cosmo

Hello, All! Today I've got the first part of the China Glaze Fall Autumn Nights Collection to share with you all. I hadn't seen much on this collection prior to purchasing this, so I figured I'd splurge on it and share them all with you! Here is the first side of the collection - Strike Up A Cosmo

Strike Up A Cosmo

Strike Up A Cosmo is my definite favorite from this side. It is a pink foil loaded with gold flecks. It's really quite stunning. The formula is great and shown is 2 coats. 

Candy on my fingers!

I'm super excited for how tonight's look turned out! About a month ago I bought Gloss n' Sparkle's Unicorn Spawn from the amazing people over at Llarowe and never got the chance to use it. Well, I'm kicking myself now for waiting so long! I LOVE this polish. It's so fabulous and such a fun color for spring...or any time! 

GLITTER Stripes

Part of my Valentine's Day Haul from the Boyfriend included the China Glaze Cirque du Soleil collection (I also got a BUNCH of nail art pens that I am so excited to get to using!) and I decided to use two of the polishes from that, as well as one of my recent acquisitions from my trip to Sally's Beauty. This by far one of the sparkliest manis to day but I like it so much more than I was expecting to! I used China Glaze's Water You Waiting For and Running in Circles and Orly's Bubbly Bombshell and made super simple stripes. Easy peezy, lemon squeezy!

China Glaze Creative Fantasy Swatches

After I finished my smooch mani tonight, the boyfriend disappeared again into the depths of the garage, only to reappear holding what is apparently another part of my Valentine's gift. Can it be the 14th yet so I can see whatever else he has hiding back there!?! He was pretty excited to give me China Glaze's Creative Fantasy and I was even more excited to receive it! It is such an incredible royal purple that has a very unique formula. I was going to try and hold off on swatching this since I JUST did my previous mani, but I honestly couldn't wait to try this out. It took me 3-ish coats to get to this opacity, and though in the pictures it still looks a bit sheer, in person it's hard to tell. This is definitely more jelly than opaque. I added a top coat to this because I'm impatient, but it has a really neat rubbery finish that is very unique. I'm just incredibly excited about this purple!! :D

My camera charger is MIA...

Do you know what my cell phone camera and a potato have in common? They both same the same quality photos!...and I'm only slightly exaggerating!

With my move a few months ago I somehow managed to misplace the battery charger for my Canon and I am so sad! I suppose I should be thankful that the two fully charged batteries that I did have lasted as long as they did, but I'm really not looking forward to buying a new charger (especially since the old one will turn up soon after). In the meantime, I'm going to search for a new camera app that will hopefully make better use of the alleged 8 megapixel camera that my phone has. The past few manis I did I've only taken photos with my phone, so bear with me on the quality and lack of pictures. I'm going to throw them all into this post and hopefully I'll have my camera up and running again soon! 

For this first mani, I was lacking a bit of inspiration and ended up making my boyfriend sift through my polishes and find some colors he wanted me to use. After much deliberation, he ended up choosing Butter London's Disco Biscuit and OPI's Gold Shatter. I've used Disco Biscuit before but the Gold Shatter was new to me. My mom actually surprised me with it when I was visiting home over the holidays when she found out that in all my collection, I did not have one shatter polish! She's kind of great :) 

Sparkle Gradient with BL, CG and SOPI

Today's nail art challenge is Sparkles! I'm really loving this look and it's super simple to create. The base color is Butter LONDON's Royal Navy and the gradient is made with China Glaze's I Herd that and the chunky glitter is Sephora by OPI's Only Gold for Me top coat.

China Glaze's I Herd That Chevrons with Purr-fect Plum

Happy New Year's Eve!! Well, it's still the 31st here in California so Happy New Year to anyone 9 hours ahead of me! ;) 

To celebrate, I put together this sparkly fun mani to ring in the new year :) I busted out the striping tape and got started. 

 

I used China Glaze's Purr-fect Plum (left) and I Herd That (right) for this mani and I really like how it turned out. I tried to make it look like the Chevron on my middle finger extends along the rest of the fingers. 

Deborah Lippmann - Across the Universe

I was so spoiled this Christmas. Not only did I get to spend 10 days in Costa Rica, my boyfriend bought me enough polishes to keep me busy for a LONG time! Yay! He ended up getting me the entire On Safari collection from China Glaze which I fell in love with from the first moment I saw it. It's a Trap-eze! from their Cirque du Soleil collection was also included. If that wasn't enough, I got 3 new ButterLONDON's AND my very first Deborah Lippmann!!! To top it all off, I got a new Shany image stamping plate that I absolutely love. I can see myself using every single one of these stamps. I am so excited about all of them and feeling so fortunate for everything I have right now :)

I fell so hard for the Deborah Lippmann that I had to put in on immediately. I went with something simple and ended up using two of my new China Glaze's as well, Man Hunt (blue) and Exotic Encounters (green). And of course, I couldn't leave well enough alone so I added a stamp using my new plates! I really love this look...possibly because I am back to my favorite colors ;)

China Glaze and Butter London Loveliness.

I've mentioned my newfound love affair with nail stamps before, but I'm seriously in love with them.  I'm going to ask them if they want to go steady later tonight, so wish me luck they say yes! The application process and the versatility of stamping in general is just so cool! This is actually the second time I've used this stamp (as shown in my previous stamping post) but I just think it is so darn cute and to be honest, I wasn't feeling some of the other stamps on the image plates I have. I guess that just means I need MORE :D That's not to say I don't love a majority of the stamps in my current set, I just wasn't feeling them for tonight's mani. Since it's almost Monday and I'm really not excited about it (though I only have a two day week! I'm going to Costa Rica on Thursday!! YEEE!) I wanted something fun but simple.