Revlon Runway Collection 'Stella' Artificial Nails

Not to beat a dead horse or anything, but I'm sure you're all aware that french manicures and I do not mix. I feel very... strongly about french manicures. Indeed.

However, there are some exceptions. I have seen or worn french manicures that I actually liked. For example, french manicures with glitter for tips instead of chalky white.

So, when I received these artificial nails from Revlon, I was quite pleased. Finally, a french manicure I actually like!

Sorry, guys!  These are actually Stella nails.  Mine were mislabeled- sorry if I have confused anyone!  :)

These are the Starlet nails from Revlon's Runway Collection series of artificial nails. There are two styles of nails named Starlet- this is the first version. I'll post the second version soon- I just wanted to clear up any confusion caused by having two different styles with the same name.

Anyway, this is a set of false nails, also known as press-on nails. It comes with 24 nails that come in 12 different sizes, a bottle of nail glue and an orange stick.

The interesting thing about this set of fakes is that it has half sizes. Woohoo!! I am often complaining about sets of press-on nails that I would like to wear but can't because all the sizes are too large for my nails. These ones fit much better than any nails I've tried so far. I do have one complaint though- there aren't enough of the small sizes! I only do one hand for my pictures, but I used all but one of the smaller sized nails. I wouldn't be able to do both hands. They need to include more of the smaller sizes and less of the huge toenail sized ones.

But then again, maybe my nails are just freakishly petite and regular people have nails the size of the ones in the kit.

To apply them, you simply drip some glue onto your natural nail and press the artificial nail onto it. The glue bonds instantly. The application process is very fast and straightforward.

I do have a few tips on applying them, though- it can be very messy if you haven't done it before. The directions say to put glue on the fake nail and on you natural nail- DON'T!! You will have glue everywhere if you do this.

What I recommend is to put a very modest amount of glue onto your natural nail- don't cover your entire nail. The glue spreads out when you press the fake nail onto your natural nail, and even with a tiny amount of glue on your natural nail it can make a bit of a mess. The glue is a very thin texture and it oozes out from under the nail onto your cuticles. So, go easy on the glue.

Since these are a transparent french-style nail, you need to be careful of air bubbles under the nail because they will be very obvious. To prevent air bubbles, press the nail down firmly, making sure to provide firm, even pressure across the entire nail. Do not release the nail until the glue is completely dry- it should only take about 20 seconds. If you don't apply pressure until the glue is dry, the nail will lift from the natural nail and cause an air pocket.


Now that that's out of the way, here's what they look like on me!

Pretend that you can't see my pinkie nail sticking up over the top of the fake nail. I filed my nails down as short as they will go without bleeding and they're still a little too long to be covered completely by these nails.

Here's what I like about this particular french manicure design.

As you can see, instead of a thick bright white tip, these have a subtle semi-sheer natural looking tip with a fishnet/lattice design. I love the design on the tip- it has personality!

The shape of the tip has a subtle and natural smile line that perfectly mimics the line of my naked nails. The shape of the nails themselves is also very flattering- soft square. This shape looks good on everyone and it gives the nails a very groomed and professional look.

The colors of the nail are completely natural and clean looking. The base matches the color of my natural nail but provides just a hint of sheer milkiness. The tip is also very natural and has just a hint of pink to it. If you can see from the pictures, it's not a solid color. It's made of teeny-tiny dots of sheer color!

The best part about this nail for me is that from a distance these don't look french. They look like clean, shiny natural nails. Only when you look at the nails up close can you see that there's a french manicure with a fishnet design on the tips.

One more thing I love about these particular nails is the thickness of them. They aren't thick at all- they are perfectly thin and not obviously fake looking. I know I've used the word 'natural' about a million times already, but these are so natural looking, no one would be able to tell the difference!

There are a couple things I don't like about the nails. For one, they're very short. Like I mentioned above, my nails are filed down as short as they can go, yet my natural nail is still longer than the artificial nail. I have long nail beds, so my nails are long even when they're short. A slightly longer length would be perfect.

The other thing I don't like about the nails is the size. Again, like I mentioned above, there aren't enough of the small sized nails in the kit to do both hands. I think I used the same size nails on all but my pinkie- 7 or 6.5 and then an 8 for my pinkie. I think there was one leftover 7 in the box when I was done.

So, overall, this is a really great nail. It's not something I would normally wear, but the fun design and the natural, non-tacky look of this french manicure are really appealing to me.

They're fast and easy to apply, and they're inexpensive to purchase and maintain. Think about it this way- a fill on a set of enhancements will set you back around $50-$70 a month (not including tip!) depending on where you go... Four boxes of these press on nails will cost you around $20 tops per month, and you can do them yourself. You might be able to get two full manicures per box if you have larger nails than I do. No damage, no unhygienic conditions, no appointment, no tip!

These can be purchased at any drugstore (though they're with the nail art section and not the regular Revlon section) and they're around $4.50 a box.

Nailene French Manicure Kit

I'm sure you all know by now how I feel a bout french manicures, so I won't get into that in this post. :)


Despite my feelings about french manicures, I get a surprising amount of emails and requests for them! So, when I received the opportunity to try out some french manicure kits from Nailene, I thought it would be the perfect chance to address all of those requests.

This is the first kit I tried. It includes a clear topcoat, an opaque white creme, a sheer pinky beige and a sheer warm pink with blue duochrome plus 42 tip guides.

Since guides were included in the kit, I used them for these french manicures.

Please excuse the 'bruises' on my nails. French manicures aren't ideal for hiding them!





For this manicure, I placed the tip guides on my nail after my base coat was completely dry. I painted one coat of the opaque white over my tips, waited for it to dry and then removed the tip guides. I used two coats of the sheer pink beige on top and I sealed it with the included topcoat.



Here's the same manicure with a few decals from the Nailene Bedazzle line.

For this look, I started with white tips and then applied two coats of the sheer pink with blue duochrome and sealed it with the included topcoat. Since this polish has a little more color than the other one, it caused the white tips to appear yellow. Normally, I would start by painting tips first, but for this shade I would recommend doing the tips last.

Here's what it looks like with the white on top instead:



I should point out the difficult part of doing the white tips second while trying to use the guides. I'm sure you've all experienced it before. If you try to place the guides on top of an already polished nail, they will often peel off the polish when you remove them. You can remedy this a little bit by removing some of the stickiness from the guides. Put them on the back of your hand once or twice- it causes them to become less strong and sticky and reduces the chances that it will peel off the polish on your nails. You also should wait until the base polish is 100% dry before attempting to use guides on top.

And here it is with a Bedazzle decal:



This decal was a little too stiff and wouldn't lie flat on my nail. You can see in the photo that the edges of the decal are sticking up and visible. It may have been too cold out when I tried to apply the decal- it might become more flexible if you warmed the sheet between your hands or near something warm first.


This kit was extremely straight forward and easy to use. It would be perfect for beginners and people experimenting with the french manicure look. People looking for a more natural looking french may not be satisfied with the white tip polish included in this kit because it is very bright and stark.

If you're looking for a more natural french manicure look, try using two coats of the sheer pink beige color as your tip color and then one coat of it as your base color. Alternately, you could add some white and sheer pink into the clear topcoat to create a custom tip color.

Nailene French Manicure Kits can be purchased at any drugstore.

More drugstore awesomeness: Sally Hansen Insta-Dri

This time I have something from the drugstore that isn't discontinued or limited edition or hard to find... In fact, it's brand new and I've seen it at every store I've been to in the last month.

Sally Hansen has a new line of "Insta-Dri" (why did they spell it like that? Weird.) shades that come in ugly bottles and are supposed to be super-quick-dry. There are a bunch of shades- a blue or two, a red/orange, a plum - but only two of them really caught my eye.




Lightening. Their spelling, not mine! This is a creamy yellow. Not neon and not too muted. Not as bright as a lot of other yellows. It's streaky like all yellow polishes are, but doing three coats eliminates the streaks and unevenness.




Jumpin' Jade. A shimmery blue-tinged green. Really pretty! It's not as green as I would like it to be, but it's still beautiful.

The colors are great. There are, however, a couple of weird things about these polishes!

For one, the bottles are a really weird shape. They're long and almost triangular, and I think they're pretty ugly.

What's weirder than the shape of the bottle is the shape of the brush. It's a huge, wide, flat and slightly curved monster of a brush. It's really... unique? It's gigantic! One of the strangest looking brushes I've seen. I have heard a lot of complaints about the brush in these, but I actually like it. The size and shape of the brush is intended to give you one-stroke coverage on all of your nails, resulting in a very fast manicure. This is the case for me- while the brush is a little too wide for a couple of my nails, it gives me perfect coverage with one brushstroke. Similar to OPI's Pro-Wide brush, but, uh, wider. And flatter.

The formula is a little three-freeish for me. It's thick but runny. The polish really does dry super fast, so that's a bonus. I did three coats of the yellow, no topcoat and it was dry in ten minutes. Two coats of Jumpin' Jade was dry in around five. That's without my usual coat of Seche Vite! Pretty cool.

I think these are on the pricier end of drugstore polishes. These are around $5, though they seem to go on sale often. Usually when I buy drugstore polishes, I expect them to be under $3, so sometimes it's a shock to see them cost upwards of $5 each. To put it in perspective, you can get OPIs, Essies, China Glaze, Orly, et cetera online for $2.60-$4.75 each. It also seems that the prices on drugstore polishes are steadily rising.

Overall, I love the gigantic brush and the quick-dry nature of these polishes. I like that I was able to go to a grocery store and get green and yellow polishes. I don't like the bottle shape, but that hardly matters...

Sinful Colors

Another drugstore brand that I really like is Sinful Colors. I used to have a lot of Sinful polishes in the 90's, so I have a soft spot for Sinful. Especially Sinful in the old bottle.

I haven't been able to swatch much of my Sinful collection yet, but I did take some bottle pictures which show the colors very accurately.

Before I post the pictures, I'd like to say one thing about Sinful...

The formula is TERRIBLE. It's not just that they're either too thick and globby or too thin and runny, they're all very sheer. It's very hard to apply these polishes. Sheer polishes with bad formula are especially difficult because you have to figure out a way to do enough coats to build opacity without making a gigantic clumpy streaky mess.

There are a few of them that don't give me any trouble- Dream On, Tucson, San Francisco. The rest are a pain in the rear.

However, the colors are so lovely and unique, the trouble is usually worth it.

I am missing a few bottles... They are in my house somewhere, but hell if I know where they are...

Please click the images to enlarge. These are much better in full size.




Sparkle, Heartache, Broadway Star, Treasure Island, Pearl Harbor, Kansas



Hottie, UFO, Pinky Glitter, Pink 4 Ever, Pink 4 Ever (version 2), Green Ocean




Pacific Ocean, Poison Ivy, Guam, Green Bean, San Francisco, Show Me The Way, Irish Green



Toxic Shine, Shausha, Dream On, Daddy's Girl, What's Your Name?, Pink Diamond, Tucson


Lagoon, Euro Trash, Old Gold, Morph Marie, China Gold, Canary Yellow, Serena & Chloe

And a couple that I swatched but can't find the bottles:



Swedish Blue



Greenland (five coats!)

Red Glitter

I hope everyone had a lovely Valentine's Day! I did. I ended up keeping my Nicole I've Got The Power topped with Love Your Life mani from my previous post. I love it so much, I'm still wearing it. This polish wears like iron- I did my mani with no basecoat or topcoat and three days later it barely has visible tipwear and is still smooth and shiny. I'm impressed!

I was thinking about doing a red glitter manicure for Valentine's Day. I am not really a red person, but I love red glitter. There's something about it that's just so pretty and interesting.

One of my favorites is actually a Maybelline polish: Red Comet.




Isn't it pretty? You might need to view it in full size to see the glitter.


Another favorite of mine is Color Club Ruby Slippers:



Not to be confused with another lovely red glitter, Essie Ruby Slipper:




Most red glitter polishes seem to come out around Christmas time, but this one was made for Halloween:



Fright Night Claw Polish Spellbinding Top Coat in Voodoo.

Some of my most favorite red glitter polishes take it to the next level with holographic glitter instead of red glitter in a red base.


Ulta Jingle Bell Rock.



L'Oreal Bijou Crystals B. Daring.


Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Golden Tourmaline. Technically it's a straight holo and has no glitter, but it's sparkly so it counts, right?


These are just a few of the red glitter polishes in my collection. They're just so beautiful, I can't resist them! They look like fire on your nails, or glimmering rubies. They're fascinating. If you're like me and not really into plain red, you might feel differently about red glitter.

Rimmel Part 1

I thought now would be a great time to post about my love of Rimmel polish. The other day I was out shopping, and noticed that the Rimmel Underground Play Fast polish displays at every store were completely empty! This can only mean one horrible, horrible thing: They're being discontinued.

On the bright side, a few of the colors (Camouflage, Hard Edged are two that I saw) seem to have been repackaged in the 'regular' 60 Second bottles, and they have a new display.

A few of the stores I went to still had a couple lonely Play Fasts on their displays, so if you've been thinking about buying a particular Rimmel color but haven't yet, now would be the time to do so. I've had my eye on a few shades but haven't bought them because I assumed that they were permanent and were never going to be discontinued. Now I might be too late!

Anyway, the intention of this post is not to make you go out and buy Rimmels, but to share may love of this particular polish line. I just thought it would be worth mentioning that these will soon disappear.

I will do another two or three parts to this post when I'm done photographing my Rimmel collection. So, you may consider this part one :)


Rimmel Underground Play Fasts:


Hard Edged. One of the most beautiful polishes ever to see a drugstore shelf. It's a vampy brown shimmer with pretty strong duochrome. As you can see in the left hand side of the photo, there's some green/gold iridescence visible in the bottle. This is visible on the nail, but it's very subtle. Hard Edged seems to change from brown to purple in some lights. This picture doesn't capture the true beauty of this polish at all. It has a lot of tonal similarities to OPI Black Tie Optional.


Camouflage. A gorgeous, gorgeous quick-drying golden green shimmer. What I like the most about this shade is that it's more green than gold. A lot of drugstore greens in the past have been too light, too gold, and not green enough for my liking (Maybelline Go Go Green, L'Oreal Bijou Gems B. Strong.) but Rimmel Camouflage is nice and rich. It's a St. Patrick's Day green.
Perfect in every way.


Night Life. An edgy mushroomy taupe-brown with golden bordering on copper shimmer. Rimmel may have been ahead of its time with this color! This was released years ago, and just this past year mousy taupe-browns and purples started to become extremely popular. This is a very unique shade, I can think of only one similar shade- CND Family Secret. While they're not exact matches, the taupe/brown/grey with reddish shimmer makes them cousins.



Street Wear. Another edgy, sexy muted shade. This time it's a grey putty with subtle gold shimmer. Extremely hot. It reminds me of mushrooms. I think this picture makes it appear a little more warm-toned than it actually is, but it shows the shimmer well.

About half of the shades in the Rimmel Underground Play Fast line are these fabulous sheer, flaky shimmer colors that are really amazing.


Out Of Control. This is a really old picture! I haven't taken a new picture because this one is just about perfect. Out of Control is a pinkish-red color, more of a coral really, that has outrageous gold shimmer. It truly is out of control! The polish is made of little flakes, so it takes three coats to reach bottle color.


Pop Quiz. Light, peachy orange flakes mixed in with silvery white flakes. Another very unique shade from Rimmel. I'd be hard pressed to find a match for this polish. The different colored pearly flakes all combine to make this pretty light orange color. It's very sparkly, and I have a feeling that it would be great layered on top of one of the other more opaque Play Fast shades like Mouthy.



Scene Stealer. Mesmerizing gold/taupe/bronze/grey shimmer flakes with a slight duochrome effect. This is a very beautiful polish, I've never seen anything like it. It is very sheer but still packs a punch! This picture is three coats and you can still see through it a bit, I'm sure four coats would make it 100% opaque, but I like the sheer look of this. It sparkles and changes in the sun, and even looks good in dark indoor lighting. Another polish with layering potential, would probably go well with Night Life.


And a couple "regular" Rimmels...


Green With Envy. Not exactly what I would ever consider green, but pretty anyway. A bright metallic blue/aqua type of color. You may notice that the bottle is absent from this picture. That it because somehow I accidentally threw it across my kitchen and it shattered all over my ceramic tile floor. Swatching is dangerous... >.<
Torrid. This color has been repackaged, so this is the 'old' version. The new version appears to be exactly the same, but I won't know until I apply them both. Sometimes companies do that. No idea why. Anyway, Torrid is a rich plum-brown shimmer. I can't decide if it's more reddish or brownish. I guess it doesn't matter if it's as beautiful as this!



Dazzle. A very unusual drugstore find! A festive light gold metallic packed with fine medium-gold glitter! As much as I adore this color, this one is a victim of "good idea, bad execution". When you mix light-colored and light-textured metallics with glitter, instead of looking like a nail covered in delicate, sparkling glitter, you get a nail with weird speckles and lumps. Glitter and thin-formula metallics rarely work. Another example of a metallic with glitter that doesn't work: L'Oreal Bijou Crystals B. Shocking. Instead of a nice glitter look, you get chunks. But, for every few failures, there is one success... One of the best light metallics with glitter is the ancient OPI Mystic Moonshine. So, it can work, but it rarely does.


I really love Rimmel polishes. The formula on them is always perfect, they dry quicker than any non-holographic or neon polish I can think of, and they have a variety of incredible unique shades. I have seen UK-only shaded that are even more spectacular than the ones they sell here!

I wish people would start to love drugstore polishes instead of shunning them because they're 'low-end.' You all know I love my OPI, my Rescue Beauty Lounge, Dior, Lippmann Collection, Essie, all of the more expensive and popular brands. Drugstore polishes can be just as good! If I put a Rimmel in a Chanel bottle and told you to use it, you'd probably think that Chanel had improved their formula. I encourage you to look past the name and packaging and love the polish inside.

The odd thing about drugstore polishes is that they're not always inexpensive. I almost bought a Revlon the other day that would have cost me $7.50! I'll talk more about this in another post, but the idea that drugstore polish is cheaper is quickly becoming inaccurate.

A true drugstore gem: Tropez Aqua Pearl.

This polish took me by complete surprise. I wasn't looking for it at all- it sort of jumped out and grabbed me! And I wasn't even completely impressed with it at first- sure, it's nice in the bottle, worth buying on color alone, but the magic happens when you apply it.


Tropez Super Pearl Aqua Pearl.

You may not be able to tell from this angle, but it's a pretty strong blue/turquoise/greenish duochrome type color. It changes depending on the light, but it's not as dramatic as your standard duochrome (Nubar Peacock Feathers, for example).

So, the color alone is fantastic, but the formula.... Oh, the formula. It is the most perfect, smooth, pigmented, flawless formula I have ever used in my entire life.

Tropez is manufactured by Markwins, who also makes a lot of other drugstore type products including Wet N Wild and Black Radiance. I guess I wasn't really expecting much from the company who makes that The Color Workshop garbage, and Wet N Wild wasn't always known for its quality, either (though that has definitely changed in recent years!).

The quality of this polish is out of this world. On the very first brushstroke you can see the difference. The polish doesn't go anywhere you don't want it to go. It doesn't run and it doesn't drip despite the very thin texture. It is so amazingly smooth, it practically applies itself. The brush is perfect, and the polish only goes where you put it. The texture of the polish is very thin, but it's also ridiculously pigmented. It's opaque in one coat! A thin drugstore polish that's perfect in one coat. Am I dreaming? Is this real? This picture is two coats, but I could have gotten away with one. It was dry, shiny and bubble free in under 5 minutes.

I am used to using polishes that are more expensive, your standard OPI, Essie, Orly, stuff like that. To have a $2 drugstore nail polish totally annihilate them in the formula department is truly shocking and wonderful. It just goes to show you that price doesn't always indicate quality.

I haven't tried any of the other polishes from this brand, this is the only color that really got my attention, but I'm definitely going to pick up a couple more now to find out if this is just a fluke. I mean, I am seriously impressed by this little hidden gem of a polish.


And, on a totally unrelated note, I am slowly working through my emails and comments. I really appreciate your emails, and I hope no one thinks I am ignoring them! I am normally glued to my laptop for most of the day, and that hasn't been the case for the last month or so, but I will get back to you as soon as I possibly can :)

Checking in and thoughts on drugstore polishes.

Hey guys! I just wanted to let you know that I have been pretty busy lately and haven't been near my computer as much.... So, if you've sent me an email or left a comment here, I'm not ignoring you! I'll respond as soon as I am able to.

While I'm working on a big batch of requests, I thought I'd leave you with one of my favorite drugstore polishes.

I know, I don't usually have very much drugstore stuff on here, but that's not because I don't love it! The truth is, I love my drugstore stuff almost more than I love the higher-end stuff. I don't usually post about it, though, because I know that the brands are not available everywhere and I never know how to answer the inevitable "where can I get this if I live in _________" question.

But, weirdly enough, I love old discontinued drugstore stuff infinitely more than anything that's been released recently. It's nostalgic for me, and I am always hunting for the polishes that I used to have but gave away / lost / threw away many years ago.


Wet N Wild Speed. This one's a fairly new release, I picked it up at a CVS last fall. A spectacularly gorgeous iridescent purple with a subtle golden glow. This is similar to both OPI Ink and Hot Topic Iridescent Purple. This is truly purple as well, not blue in some lights like some purples. Just pure purple sparkly iridescent goodness.

I'm thinking about doing a lot more posts on drugstore brands and nostalgic polishes. I'm getting quite bored of focusing mainly on new collection after new collection- though I do love new polish (a lot!!), old polish needs some love too!

Swatches: Barielle Shades

When I first saw these in the September issue of Nails Magazine, my heart skipped a beat. Green and purple!!!!!!!

I looked all over for these polishes and finally gave up- I was never going to find them. It was all a cruel joke. I put them out of my mind...

...Until people started talking about them again! It was so mean, waving those lovely green and purple polishes in my face, knowing that I can't get them.... BUT! Some kind soul emailed me to say that they're available at CVS of all places! I know! CVS, can you believe it?!

They're also available on Barielle.com, but they cost $8 there and $6 at CVS.

I didn't get the whole collection because I'm on a polish budget right now, but the other two didn't really excite me that much. One was a pearly white, and one was a slivered brown that reminded me of Misa Earthward. Very pretty but possibly easily duplicated.

Enough babble, on to the swatches!!


Date Night. The undisputed star of the show and quite possibly one of the most perfect greens in existence. Please excuse the tipwear, I was wearing this for three days before I took the picture. This is a rich, deep, true green. No blue hints. It's lush and extravagant. I haven't wanted to wear anything but this color since I got it. If you like greens, you NEED this.


Hidden Hideway. Another unbelievably spectacular color from Barielle. A vibrant purple that's just a bit blackened. It's one of those lit-from-within colors that I love so much. The best thing about this is that it always looks purple in the middle, but blackish around the edges. I hate purples that look black, and this is not one of those! It's like Zoya Yasmeen's older, naughtier sister.


Secret Encounter. I keep wanting to call this one Random Encounter, heh. Another perfect purple shade. This one is much brighter and more on the red side. The color is made more beautiful by the incredible smooth shimmer this polish has. It sparkles with microscopic multicolored particles in full sunlight. So beautiful.


Two Timing. A beautiful shimmering coppery fall leaves type color. It reminds me a little bit of OPI Music Hall Curtain Call. It's not as red as Music Hall Curtain Call, more ambery copper, but the gold shimmer really brightens it and makes it flashy. This just screams FALL to me. Love.

I can't tell you how impressed I am with this collection. All of the colors are amazingly perfect, not a single dud in the whole collection; even the ones I didn't get were beautiful. It was like they hacked into my brain and created a collection they knew would make me freak out. And I gotta tell you, I freaked out over these!

Formula wise, I have mixed feelings. They are very thick but not difficult to apply. The thickness causes them to be mostly opaque in one coat, but a second coat is still necessary. The formula is smooth and not runny, and I like that, but they also take quite a while to dry. I always use Seche Vite on my polishes, and usually use Qtica Half Time drops on top of that, so manicures do dry quickly for me, but each polish tends to dry at their own speed.

CND, for example, takes the longest to dry because it doesn't ever actually dry. China Glaze takes the second longest, remaining dentable for a day or more. OPI is usually the fastest, mostly dry in 10 minutes and totally dentproof within a half hour... And so on and so forth. These polishes dry slower than OPI but not as slow as China Glaze. I was able to dent this polish after two hours, but by the end of the night it was completely dry. For the record, it was one coat of basecoat, two coats of polish and one coat of topcoat.


That being said, I'm still completely in love with this collection. I might even have to go get the other two polishes. I haven't been this excited about a collection in quite some time. It's perfect. Perfect! Bravo, Barielle! Great job! I didn't even know Barielle made polish, so seeing these shocked the hell out of me and made me giddy with polish-joy at the same time.

Rock on, Barielle.

Awesome color change polish!

I was at Big Lots the other day, hoping to find some old Sally Hansen or Maybelline polishes (no luck! Just some old Revlons) when I came across these awesome solar polishes!

They didn't really interest me until I noticed that the package said "color changing". Color changing?! Hell yes! Gimme!

These are like the Del Sol color change polishes which I've been meaning to post for months....

There's Christmas Cookie...


Christmas Cookie, before, indoors.


Take it outside and it immediately becomes this!! How awesome!!


Holiday Mint before...



Holiday Mint after!




Sugared Pear before.


Sugared Pear after.

I'm not sure if these are scented or not. The names lead me to believe that they are, but the ingredients don't list fragrance as a component, so I'm thinking they don't. I would love it if they were!

These change colors super fast. As soon as I stepped outside with these, BAM! Presto change-o. Awesome.

And the best thing? Each two-pack cost me $1.50. The label said the price was $1.87, but they each rang up $1.50 instead. Score!

So cool! I'd love to see a major polish company do a color change polish. Can you imagine all the color combinations that could exist? I even heard of a group of girls in England (I think) who came up with a polish that was clear indoors and colored when exposed to sunlight.

This is a really cool concept. Mood polishes, solar color change polishes, those old mood lipsticks that turned hot pink no matter what your mood was, that crappy Smashbox blush that also turns hot pink no matter what.... When I was a little kid, I used to have these gloves that would change color and show extra pictures when you played in the snow with them. I've been obsessed with things that changed color ever since. My husband and I even exchanged mood rings when we first met.

I wonder what other cool color change cosmetics are out there waiting for me to find them...

Blue Cross Holiday Polishes - Snowmen and Ornaments

I'm a huge fan of anything seasonal and festive- I wear jack-o-lantern perfume in October and I'm not at all opposed to wearing a kooky Christmas sweater in December, so , naturally, when I saw these little cuties sitting on a grocery store cosmetics shelf it was love at first sight. (Wow, that was one terrible sentence. Yikes.)

The first thing that caught my eye was a set of mini glitter polishes. None of them have names, but the set is labelled "Ornaments." My favorite of the bunch (and the only one I've photographed so far) is this purple jelly glitter. At first it seemed like a purple version of China Glaze Emerald Sparkle, but it reminds me more of Zoya Roxy on the nail. I wish this came in a full size.



(That looks like a cat hair on my index finger... I have no idea where that came from. )


Slightly different lighting.

The other colors in the set are all jelly glitters- green, pale blue, red, and clear-ish with pastel glitter. I have heard rumors that there are sets with different colors, but my store only had one set.

Next to the Ornaments set was a display full of the cutest little polishes ever- Snowman head-shaped bottles with super awesome glitter polishes inside!

My favorite is this red and green glitter:


This lighting shows the red more...


But this lighting shows the green a little better.

I just loooooove this polish! I've worn it three times since I bought it. It looks great on its own- these pictures are three coats- but it looks way more cool over black. One coat over black is super sparkly and festive, but since you're only doing one coat the red and green don't blend to make a brown look. Love it love it love it! I haven't tried this over white or other colors, but I'm sure it would look awesome. Maybe over gold too! The glitter in the red and green snowman is very fine, almost microglitter. It's nice and smooth and not difficult to remove.

The other colors I picked up were a hot pink shimmer and a red and silver glitter.


This is the hot pink...


... Which seems totally out of place among the wintery, Christmassy holiday colors.




This is the red and silver glitter....


... A medium sized red and silver glitter in a red jelly base.


These are only a few of the colors I saw on the display. I believe there was a black, a shimmery white, maybe a few others- but these were the sparkliest ones, so these were the ones that caught my eye and came home with me.

If you can tell from my pictures, they snowmen have little hats! How cute is that?