Sally Hansen - Rockstar Candy (11/30/2010)

I'm not quite sure what kind of candy Rockstar's eat, but Sally Hansen's Complete Salon Manicure's rendition, Rockstar Candy (RC), is gorgeous and is definitely eye candy for us nail polish fanatics!

Color Description:  As you can see in the pics, RC looks totally different in varying lights.  It can look like a soft shimmering mauve with purplish pink hues or it can look like a flat out raspberry frost in all of its glory.  IRL, however, it looks more like the first picture than the second.

Price Point:  This nail lacquer goes for about $8.00 in drugstores but if you wait for a deal and double up on your coupons you can get them for a steal.

Similar To:  I honestly can't tell you what this looks like to me because I don't have anything else like it.  I don't usually buy these types of pinks.  This is definitely a more mature and sophisticated pink, IMO.

The Brand:  Sally Hansen's Complete Salon Manicure lacquers boast of being the "salon manicure made simple" with an all inclusive, Base Coat, Strengthener, Growth Treatment, Color, Top Coat in one polish.  As well as a patented Vita-Care Technology for advanced wear, more shine, and nourishing care.

This Look:  I don't know about all of that so to keep my precious nails looking there best this week, I used (from bottom to top): one coat of Starting over After Artificials, one coat of Sally Hansen Hard As Wraps Acrylic Gel, 3 coats of Rockstar Candy, and one coat of Sally Hansen's Mega Shine.  

Thanks so much for stopping by today!  Do you own this color?  Are you having second thoughts of passing it up?  I'm glad I gave it try and maybe you will be too.  Stay well-polished and warm, and see you soon!

CQ - Shimmering Bark (11/23/2010)

Color Description:  What's the 411? CQ's Shimmering Bark (SB) #411 is, to be exact! A beautiful mauve with a delicate dusty rose shimmer, SB is a very subdued and classic nail lacquer.  This color has been compared to Chanel's Paradoxal, and although they are in the same family (in the bottle), they are not even close when it comes to depth or color or application. Chanel is one coat to CQ's 3 or 4, with the Chanel being much, much darker on the nail.

Price Point:  This is a drugstore brand readily found at Rite Aid and can be purchased for a whopping $2.99.  Well worth the price!

Similar To:  As mentioned earlier, you could say this is Paradoxal's fairer, more delicate, distant relative.  Believe it or not, it also puts me in the mind of Essie's Demure Vixen with it's gorgeous "secret" shimmer, making it ever so shiny.  There are many others that Shimmering Bark could be compared to but it's definitely in a class of it's own.  Can't wait to get my hands on Revlon's Perplex to see how it stacks up.

This Look:  One coat of Starting over After Artificials (base coat), 3 coats of CQ Shimmering Bark (very, very sheer), topped off with one coat of Sherani's Tufcoat.  So far, I've been liking this base and topcoat combination.  Wears very well and haven't had a broken nail in weeks!

Do you own any CQ's?  What's your favorite?  This is the first time I've ever worn this brand and though it's only been hours, so far so good!  Take care my well-polished peeps...

Savina - Purple Confetti (11/18/2010)

Can you say, "party over here, party over there!"?  Savina's Purple Confetti is literally a PARTY IN A BOTTLE!!!  Pictures don't really show the depth of this color but here goes it...

Color Description:  Though this color has "purple" in its name, it's actually a magenta or raspberry and it's a JELLY!  A raspberry jelly with holographic glitter reflecting, gold, blue, red - every glitter color in the rainbow.

Price Point:  This nail lacquer can be found at Nordstrom Rack and only costs $3.97 before tax.  For this price you get so much bang for your buck.  I mean, bang, like firecracker bang!  Absolutely beautiful...

Similar to:  Even though I haven't seen a magenta/raspberry jelly with holo glitter on the market, Purple Confetti, is very similar to it's red counterparts Ulta's Bombshell and Massini's Slammin' Red.  Also, it's blue equal was a Finger Paints sold at Sally's called Sapphire Shimmer (another delicious jelly with holo glitter).

This Look:  1 coat of Starting Over After Artificials, 2 Coats of Purple Confetti, and 1 coat of Sherani Tufcoat.

Thanks for stopping by and if you live near a Nordstrom Rack, this color is still readily available.  Hope this post was helpful and found you well-polished!

Nubar - Jewel (11/10/2010)

Outdoor lighting.

Nubar Jewel is very pretty but I will say that I think you would be able to get the same effect by using a medium brown frost and layer China Glaze Fairy dust over it.  

Nubar's holographic offerings are not my favorite but they do look like jewelry for the nails.   

(I really ♥ the China Glaze OMG Collection) 

Indoor lighting.

This Look: one coat of Starting Over After Artificials (as a base coat), three coats of Jewel, and one coat of Sherani's Tufcoat (as a topcoat).

This polish dried fairly bumpy but the topcoat helped some. Well, that's it for now.  I will talk to you well-polished darlings later :).

Nail Expo in Review...

Hello All -  Jackie S. of CANDY COATED TIPS and I had a nice time perusing the aisles of the Nail Expo.  This Expo boasted over 30 exhibitors, including Nubar, OPI, Seche, CND, and many others.  However, it was geared toward nail art and not nail polish.

There were in-booth demonstrations, class room education, and competitions, but what we really wanted to see were the new collections (i.e. OPI Texas for Spring/Summer 2011, etc.) and that wasn't happening.  If you wanted to learn more about gel nails, this was your place.  Almost, every booth had some form of colored gel as an offering.

Nail art and crackle-effect nail polish in every color you could imagine, were all the rage.  I picked up a white and a silver - because crackle is really not my thing.  Boring, colors but I thought this would be a good place to start.

OPI, had older colors and it was interesting that the girls in the booth didn't know the collections or if they were discontinued colors, and I had a feeling they knew nothing of the Texas Collection.  The polish offerings that they had were 6/$24 or $4 ea.  What can I say, the price was right - I purchased Comet Loves Cupid from the 2009 holiday collection (can you believe  this is on  sale at Amazon, right now, for $25.99 - that's just ridiculous).

We had the most fun with the China Glaze girls!  They had the latest collections out but it was nothing we hadn't already seen. 

One of the girls was wearing Four Leaf Clover (she's holding a similar color but FLC was not available at the Expo - it's in the core line at Sally's, however).  Again, the price was right, though @ 6/$12.  So, I picked up six: Frostbite, Up All Night, Sexy Silhouette, Make An Entrance, Oxygen, and Fifth Avenue (pictured above).
  

We also found a booth that had their polishes (Daisy) on sale for $1 each (great quality for the price) and if you buy 5 they would throw a sixth one in for free.  This was refreshing since Nubar had only the Finest Silk Collection available to purchase, everything else was nail arts driven.  

So, to sum it all up, acrylics, gel, and nail art were really the theme of the day.  And though, very few booths had nail polish, they brought their files, and foot baths and every thing in between.   

Though, the nail polish selection wasn't "all that", we had a nice time and as a nail blogger, I think it was something that I just had to experience - if only once!  Have a well-polished day. :)

NAIL EXPO - Long Beach, CA (November 8, 2010)

UPDATE (11/9/2010): The Nail Expo was yesterday and I can now that I have a new nail buddy, Jackie S. of CANDY COATED TIPS! We had a great time and found some nice deals and ideas.  New pics and post to come soon...

The Plan: We'll meet up at the OPI booth, of course (lol).  If you're planning on going, please feel free to contact me for more details.  Now, the question is, what color nail polish should I wear for the occasion?

ORIGINAL POST (10/4/2010): 
To my California Girls!  Who's going to the the Nail Expo at the Long Beach Convention Center on Monday, November 8, 2010?  Here's a list of exhibitors, including, Seche and OPI... 

I've never been to one of these but wouldn't it be nice to have a Los Angeles Area round-up of all nail fanatics?

Let me know your thoughts...  I just might rearrange my schedule to attend this event.  Sounds like fun!

One more step on the road to being well-polished!  Have a great Monday :)

Finger Paints - Autumn Blaze (11/3/2010)

In this lighting a blue/magenta flash
is very visible :)

I'm a sucker for colors like this.  Finger Paints Autumn Blaze is special for its beautiful shimmer and blue/magenta flash.  These pics show the subtle differences. 

It looks different in many lights.  This Look: 1 coat each of base and topcoats and 2 coats of Autumn Blaze.  

Here's the magenta flash w/ burgundy hue

This color was one of the Limited Edition shades from Sally's Beauty Supply.  Funny thing is I purchased this one twice!  Once at full price and the other once it went on clearance.  I was almost certain that I didn't have this one in my collection and then when I got it home, I was a bit bummed.  

Shows a darker hue, here
(looks like this most of the time).

Off to the swap-box it goes...  Speaking of swaps, within the next few weeks ago, I plan to set-up swap tab on my page for all of my unintentional dupes and unloveds to find a good home.

Take care now, my well-polished lovelies and see you around the web!