Diamond Cosmetics Winter Collection, Part One

Hello lovelies! I've been buried in a pile of papers, articles to edit, and school work for the last week and a half, but I think I've finally conquered it haha. I did get a bunch of swatching done in the meantime, including the beautiful Winter Collection from Diamond Cosmetics. I'm breaking it up into two parts, today and tomorrow, so it won't be too picture heavy for you. So today I'm going to be showing you Moonsand and It's Electrifying, check out the pictures below!

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more sun

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I love Moonsand! Everything from the name to the color to the application I like. I've been jonesin' for a charcoal-y silver polish for the last few weeks and I think this fits the bill! It only took two coats to get full coverage and wasn't bad to remove either. Diamond Cosmetics describes it as, "This charcoal foil shines like the full moon; eye catching and magnificent." I think this is going to be the base for my New Year's Eve mani, maybe with some glitter on top.

sun (the color made me camera a little crazy, so my skintone looks...off)

shade (yay for normal looking skin!)

inside (and my skin's back to looking strange..)

"It's Electrifying... do do doo, better shape up dun dun dun cause I need a man, do do do, and my heart is set on youuuu" hahah, doesn't this name make you immediately think of Grease? Maybe it's just how my brain works. This color is fantastic. The formula gave me fits a little bit though, this picture is four coats. The VNL (visible nail line) is a little visible in pictures, but not in real life. This was a little bit patchy when I was applying it, but I was rushing a little bit so that could be partially my fault. It's Electrifying is a squishy color for sure, I know a lot of people will love it even with less coats, but I'm not into VNL so four was what I needed. Diamond Cosmetics describes it, "Give him chills with this powerful and sassy blue." Perfect description right?

What do you think of the first two colors from the Winter Collection? I hope your holiday shopping is almost finished! :)

(these were provided to me for an honest review)

First Ever Franken! - Stormy Waters

If you follow me on twitter, you probably saw that yesterday I finally got my courage up and made my very first franken! I'm really excited about what I ended up making and can't wait to share it with you. I also took some pictures of the supplies I used to put it together so hopefully I can help inspire some of you to get your franken on :) This post is picture heavy, just giving you fair warning!

Okay first some pictures of the franken, which I've lovingly named "Stormy Waters" and then I'll tell you how to make it!

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bottle picture

The bottle shot is color accurate for the base color, it's a teal with scattered holo. I like scattered holo better than linear holo, so I like using the Milani holographic polishes for frankening purposes. I'm going to make a second bottle of this I love it so much. Stormy Waters is a sibling to China Glaze - DV8 and China Glaze - Atlantis (only holo instead of glitter, obviously) So it's similar to other polishes out there but still fairly unique. Remember the franken I showed you a few weeks ago that Alexandra made for me? This is basically a teal version of that!

Now for how I made it... It's about half a bottle of Milani - HD (silver holo), maybe a fifth of a bottle of OPI- Ski Teal We Drop (pigmented dark teal), and 5 drops of Milani - Hi-Res (purple holo). You don't really need to use Hi-Res, I just thought it gave it a bit more depth. Very easy and inexpensive to make haha, just how I like my polish. It's totally opaque in two coats and was very easy to apply!

you can see in the picture exactly how much of HD and Ski Teal We Drop I used, they were both brand new and never used bottles, I bought them just to make this franken with. Ski Teal We Drop is super pigmented so you don't need much of it.

If you want to take the foray into making your own franken, I suggest you pick up some ball bearings for mixing. I'd recommend stainless steel, anything else is going to oxidize in your franken and ruin it! Here's what I use:

And I hit up my local Dollar Tree (a dollar store) and got a few 2-packs of old style NYC bottles, because I like the shape of them and the labels peel off easily. But you can buy empty bottles online - places like ebay or polish e-tailers as well. Also you can clean out old base coat/topcoat bottles or polishes that are old and you won't use again. Here's a picture of my NYC bottles before I cleaned them out:

I like the shape of these a lot

I also used a small glass bowl and orange stick to mix to figure out an idea of the ratio before I make a whole bottle. All very easy to find things! I couldn't be happier with how Stormy Waters turned out, I'm wearing it right now and honestly can't take my eyes off my nails :) Do any of you franken or are you planning to in the future?

Rodeooooo Fanatic!

Left Hand Alert! My left hand is making a rare appearance in today's post. Why? Well mainly because when I wore this, the sun didn't come out for like four days. And I was playing around with different layering combinations on my right hand and the sun came out for a few minutes so I decided to take pictures. So I apologize for two things, number one- that my hand positions are a little screwy, I need to practice with my left hand haha; and two - that the mani looks a little raggedy around the edges, this was the fourth or fifth day of wearing it. (Yes, I generally wear manis for 4-5 days - I very rarely get chips, just growth)

On to the color... This is China Glaze - Rodeo Fanatic; it's from the ah-mazing Rodeo Diva collection. I got this in my first ever e-tailer order when my nail polish addiction first took off.

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This is a color I wear frequently, I loooove it for pedis and rock it on my tips in the fall/winter. It's a dark blue-green (more so blue, but there is some green in the mix for sure), but it never ever looks black, you can always tell what color it is. Nothing makes me crazier than a color that looks black, I don't wear black polish and don't like my colors to look black inside, just my preference. I have a few colors that are siblings or cousins of Rodeo Fanatic, but no dupes. I definitely would recommend picking this beauty up it's soooo worth it!

I hope everyone's Sunday is going well :) Go Cowboys!

Layering with... Wild Orchid

The other day I showed you Color Club- Wild Orchid. Since it was such a dream to apply I wanted to see how some other polishes I have would look layered over it. Wild Orchid has silver shimmer in it which I thought would bring an added dimension to any layering combination! So I tried out four different sheer polishes over it; all from Savvy Femme Couture.

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So I have a different color on each finger. From index to pink they are...

Index: Prince Ala Charm

Middle: Fairy Twinkle

Ring: Glass Slipper

Pinky: Knightly Armour

I think the ring finger with Glass Slipper on is my favorite combo, I think you could get a similar effect with Pure Ice- Heartbreaker (which I can swatch if someone wants to see as well). I also really like Knightly Armour, which is kind of like a ramped up version of Wild Orchid.

I picked all four of these up on clearance from Sallys (yay clearance!) Do you have any? Which of the four pictured are your favorite? I can't wait to try them over some other colors!