Matte-Suede Fest '11 - Day 3

Matte-Suede fest rolls on, day 3 brings us Revlon - Ruby Ribbon, no topcoat. This is my absolute favorite of the matte suede finish polishes. It's the perfect red with gorgeous shimmer....oh I could gush on about it for a while haha. This is a red I actually will wear on my fingers, normally I only rock red on my toes. In my book, Ruby Ribbon is perfect...see for yourself!

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and something fun I noticed while swatching, Ruby Ribbon matches the color of my front hall!

cool, right? :)

If you think Ruby Ribbon is pretty now, while it's matte suede (and of course, you do) just wait until I show it to you with a top coat. So pretty. I bought a back-up of Ruby Ribbon already... I did it just a few days after I tried it, same as with Perplex. Revlon, you have been bringin' it lately with the colors and quality! Ruby Ribbon was super easy to work with, I used two coats - but just like Emerald City, you can get away with one coat. Day 4 of Matte-Suede fest is going to be the first of the top coated versions of these polishes, so check back for that!

Do you have any polishes that match wall colors in your home? I plan to use some polishes as guides for choosing paint colors in the future though for sure!

Matte-Suede Fest '11 - Day 2

It's Day 2 of my Matte-Suede fest! I've got Revlon -Emerald City to show you today. And it's beautiful matte/suede or shiny Emerald City is more opaque and easier to work with than Powder Puff, which I showed you Day 1. I used two coats for this swatch, but you can probably get away with just one if you're careful. I also didn't have any issues with drying time, like a lot of people had with Powder Puff - so that's another bonus.

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This is one of my favorite greens, no doubt about it. I love how even without a topcoat, it's still very lit from within looking because of the shimmer it has. My favorite thing about these Matte-Suede polishes is that they aren't flat, like most mattes, there's still some shine and shimmer to them. I haven't decided what my St. Patrick's Day mani is going to be, but Emerald City is definitely in the running!

In my next post I'm going to show you my favorite of the three matte-suede polishes I have.

Matte Suede-fest '11: Day 1

Welcome to a little week I'm calling Matte Suede-fest 2011. I love most of the shades from Revlon's Matte-Suede line that came out a few months ago, a very serious love. So instead of sporadically posting them at random, I'm making it a Matte-Suede palooza! Woooo! I own 3 of the 4 shades (Fire Fox didn't appeal to me) so you'll be getting six days of fun. Let's get it on - Day 1 brings us Powder Puff, without topcoat


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This is without topcoat, which means it's Matte-Suede, so kind of flat. To me the whole Matte-Suede concept is really like a hybrid of the flat almost plastic looking matte finish, and the more suede like finishes (like Zoya Matte Velvets and OPI Suedes). So when these Revlons are topcoat-less, they are more interesting looking than a full on matte polish, in my opinion at least. I don't know if you know that I pretty much hate the look of matte polishes, so I always wear topcoats on these types of things, but the Revlons I like enough that I've contemplated leaving them Matte-Suede-y.

Powder Puff seemed to be the shade that got the most attention out of the four when these first came out, because it's one of the most interesting looking white polishes on the market. There's this really pretty blue flash to it. My pictures are three coats of polish, but I know a lot of people need four and Powder Puff is sloooow to dry. I'm pretty sure this can be solved by layering a coat or two of Powder Puff over a regular opaque white, but I haven't tried yet (I keep meaning too...) White it tricky for me to pull off because I'm ridiculously pale, but I like how Powder Puff looks on me. Tomorrow I'm going to show you the shiny topcoat-ed up version!

Fun WIth Layering Wednesday: Gray by Gray and Star

Happy Wednesday? I've got one more final left to take tomorrow and some end of semester work to finish this week and then I can breathe for like one minute haha. Next week I start more classes and the 2 baseball radio and webshows I co-host start up. Phew! But I do have a cool thing planned for this weekend - it looks like Mimi from Makeup Withdrawal and I may be meeting up for a nail polish playdate!


I've got another Fun With Layering Wednesday post for you today, using Sally Hansen - Gray by Gray from the Complete Salon Manicure line. In case you want to check it out on it's own and missed my post about it the other day, here is the link.



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I used two coats of Revlon - Star overtop of Gray by Gray. I think the glitter in Star really works well with Gray by Gray, the colors work really nicely together. I'm not super into the random hex glitter in the polish, I need to figure out a way to make it a little more symmetrical or something next time I use it. The polish Star has special meaning for me though, a few months ago when one of my cats Starlight passed away, a really really sweet MUA-er sent me this polish to cheer me up. She included a poem and a little note with it too which was so wonderful. Do you have any polishes with special meanings to you like I do with Revlon - Star?

A Little Crack(le) Giveaway!

Heyyyy! I should be studying for a final I have tomorrow afternoon (yes, final, my schedule is silly) but my back is being highly uncooperative. Shooting pain in my back and legs is preventing me from focusing - so my lack of productivity is your gain! Somebody should be getting something good out of this situation, don't you think? :)

So I came across some old Cover Girl Crackle Polishes recently and decided to give them away to one of my awesome readers!


the prize!

close-up of the bottles

One reader will win 1 bottle each of Cover Girl Crackle in Boo! and Ghost. Boo! is a black crackle polish and Ghost is a white crackle polish

This giveaway is open internationally! So as long as you have a mailing address, you can enter

Mandatory: You MUST be a follower! New or old, either works.

Tell me how you follow and what name you follow under. You also need to leave me your email address. (1 entry)

For additional entries:

1. Follow me on twitter (@JeweledTips) & tweet about the giveaway (must include a link to this post and @JeweledTips so I can see that you did!): (1 entry)

2. Blog about this giveaway! (putting it in your sidebar counts): (1 entry)

3. Add Jeweled Tips to your blog roll and leave me a link: (1 entry)

4. Tell me what your all time favorite nail polish is and why :) (1 entry)

So a possible 5 total entries! You will be disqualified if you do not at least leave the mandatory information. I had to disqualify some people in the last giveaway for this, so READ this whole entry please!

The giveaway will be open until midnight on March 17, 2011. As long as it's March 17th where you live, you can enter. Please leave you entries in ONE comment if possible (I know sometimes you may blog about it later or something so I understand that, but please do your best here). Also, once I contact you that you've won - you have 72 hours to respond or else I will have to pick a new winner.

Good luck everyone! I can't wait to see the answers to the favorite polish question :)

A belatedly Sinful Valentine's Day (pic heavy)

I hope you all had a fun Valentine's Day or Monday.. however you chose to think of the 14th :) Unfortunately, my laptop crashed so I couldn't post these on the 14th like I had planned too. My mom is great with computers, so she got it back up and running - yay! So I have three colors from the collection of six that Sinful has put out for Valentine's Day. All 6 appear to be repromoted shades, but they are very pretty and definitely worth checking out. This is picture heavy! Just fair warning

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Beautiful Girl: This is definitely less peach in real life than it's looking in pictures, it's a little brighter and a little more pink. This was three coats and a little thin, but I like it a lot. All three swatches are without topcoat, and you can see how shiny they are on their own, which I'm a big fan of. I was on the fence about this color in the bottle but it was really pretty once I had it on!


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Pink Forever: This is more vibrant in real life and a little brighter than the pictures wanted to show. I only needed two coats for Pink Forever, and it was definitely the easiest of these three to work with - so yay for that. It feels very spring-y to me, I want to konad some flowers on my ring fingers when I wear this :)

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Boom Boom: I found this to be the most difficult of the three to work with, it was streaky the first two coats. It did eventually even itself out and I ended up really liking it. Boom Boom is a color I'll be wearing a ton in the summer; doesn't it seem like a cute pedi color? It's very bright in real life, a little more vibrant and a little more blue than I could capture in pictures. I think using a white base or some other underwear color will help cut down on coats needed. It does have a jelly feel to it, which a lot of people will like (I'm not into VNL so I'll use underwear)

Overall I really like all three of these colors from the collection, I can see myself wearing all of them! Which of the three is your favorite? Will you be picking up any of the six pinks from the collection? At $1.99 a piece, there's no reason not to! :)

(these were provided to me for an honest review)

Gray by Gray

I'm so excited that we got sunshine here TWO days in a row! No, I don't live in Alaska haha, but the east coast has been rocked with gross overcast weather and a lot of snow and rain the last few weeks and there hasn't been sun for weeks. So I haven't been swatching in a few weeks and that made me sad. (Having no sun isn't an excuse for not posting much of late, I have plenty back-logged on my computer, it's just been hectic lately). But I've got a bunch of posts set up for the next few weeks so stick with me :)

Today I'll be showing you Sally Hansen - Gray by Gray, which is from the Complete Salon Manicure line. It drives me absolutely crazy that Sally Hansen has 8947493647 different "lines" of nail polish and that every bottle is a totally different shape. Add in the fact that their distribution plan seems ridiculously random... but I digress.

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Gray by Gray sat in my untrieds for a looong time. I picked it up when it first came out and then it just sat, never really calling my name. I'm glad I finally did try it though because it sure is pretty. A kind of dusty blue-gray slate color. I'd much rather see this color on my nails than in the the weather outside haha. Gray by Gray is so easy to work with too; 2 coats of creamy goodness. I hope it's sunnier where you live right now!

Also, just a heads up, under the About Me section on the right side of my blog, I've added some new pages. My Stash spreadsheet and Contact Info are both there now, as well as my Wishlist/Swapping Info. I also will have a new giveaway up soon, so keep an eye out for that!