Rescue Beauty Lounge: Naked Without Polish

I bought Rescue Beauty Lounge's Naked Without Polish when the Fan Collection 2.0 was available for pre-order.  I finally got a chance to wear Naked Without Polish.

Thoughts

I will be completely honest.  At first when I saw the inspiration pictures put together, I had a different idea of how the final colour would turn out.  Then I saw the swatch release before the pre-sale and I wasn't sure if I wanted this since it was different than I imagined.  It is a pink and pinks are usually pretty safe, so I decided to buy it to try it out (RBL is U$20, so it was an expensive thing for me to say, "oh let's give it a try".)

After I wore it, I do really like it.  The gold flakes add a special look to it that is different.  It looks very refined and not like the usual shimmer.  For some reason, it reminds me of the Cadbury Milk egg look.  The blue shimmer flash isn't as apparent on the nail but it adds to the overall finished look.

What I really like RBL polishes is that it applies pretty easily.  I have issues of going onto my skin for my other polishes but usually for RBL, this isn't this case.

Breakdown
Basecoat: Seche Base
Colour layer: Rescue Beauty Lounge Naked Without Polish (2 coats)
Topcoat: Seche Vite

When I wear RBL, it just seems to make my nails look so pretty!

I bought Naked Without Polish on the RBL website for U$20.00.  Depending on where you live, there is shipping charges.

Urban Decay: Naked 3!

We had freezing rain over the weekend in Toronto.  This is a picture I took of my neighbour's tree.  There are still berries on this tree, which are now frozen.

I have something else to share with you today.  I bought Urban Decay's Naked 3 palette when it was available on Sephora.  Since I'm a rouge member, and I had a C$20 gift card from Sephora, I decided to use it to buy the Naked 3 palette.  I wanted it anyway, and was going to buy it in the New Year to start building my status but $20 off can't go wrong.  

I received this last Tuesday, and I wore it on Thursday - Saturday.  I am falling in love with this palette.  I mean, I was worried at first because when I try to wear rosy/pink eyeshadows, I look like I was punched.  I bought the Urban Decay Vice 2 palette but I didn't like that. Sure, there were beautiful colours but one of the colours really made it look like my eye was bruised.  So I returned it.  

The Naked 3 palette gives my eyes a really nice look and it's not too much.  I don't have a picture of my look since I just wanted to talk about the palette and not really my technique or anything like that.  

A picture of my palette.  I have swatched all the colours on my arm but I haven't used all the colours on my eyes.  

The swatches on my arm.

Close up shot.  

Before my palette arrived, a lot of reviews said that Dust has a lot of fall out.  It's very true to it's name that it is dusty and my picture of my palette might look a little powdery because of Dust.  I must say, I love Dust!  It's so beautiful.  It has this really pretty light pink shimmer to it.  I used Dust for the three days I have used this palette.  I use a base colour and a pat the shadow on instead of using a swiping motion. It seems to help.  I didn't come up this myself, I totally saw a YouTube Beauty Guru suggest this and it worked!

I have also used Burnout, and Limit from this section.

The rest of the close up of the shadows.

Another colour I was worried about was Blackheart.  It's a black base with red shimmer.  I have used this colour to line my eyes or use it at the edges of my eyes.  I think it's really pretty too.  Though the red shimmer is pretty subtle or it's the way I'm applying this shade.

I also really like Factory and Darkside. 

Overall, I really like this palette but out of the few days I have owned it, I haven't used all the colours yet.

A closer look at bases and Dust:

My bases: NYX Milk, NYX Cottage Cheese, Maybelline Barely Beige and Maybelline Barely Branded.  

One of the Maybelline colours was a limited edition shade but I forgot which, so I just threw both in as an example.  They are both very similar.  I think Barely Branded is the one that is in the permanent collection.

Bases applied in this order: NYX Milk, NYX Cottage Cheese, Maybelline Barely Beige and Maybelline Barely Branded. 

Blended in NYX colours

Far left is Dust on it's own without a base, then over Milk, Cottage Cheese, Barely Beige, and Barely Branded

Closer look at Dust with base colours only

After looking at all of these, I think it goes with Milk the best, for me personally.  I don't use a lot of Milk, just a little so that Dust can stick onto it better.  

Thanks for reading my post.  I wouldn't really call it a review of any sort since I'm just explaining what I like about this palette.  I'm not an expert or anything, but I really like this palette and since I have a blog I just thought I'd share my feelings.

I hope everyone has a wonderful holiday.  Merry Christmas!

Essie Parka Perfect and OPI Pirouette My Whistle

I'm totally cheating today because the photos aren't my nails, but the plastic wheel.  I wore this manicure last week, but I didn't have a chance to photograph my nails afterwards.  It's been a very busy week!  I still wanted to share since it's very festive and a lot of people around me liked this look.  I was asked if this was a gel manicure but it's not.   

I painted my nails Sunday night and wore it until Friday.  There was minimal chipping.  I haven't had a manicure that lasted this long for a while.  The only reason I'm not repainting for this post is because it was really hard to take off the glitter.  That's the only draw back.  I soaked my nails in one of those sponge filled with nail polish remover, but it wasn't that easy to remove.  So I don't want to go through that again for photos.  If I was going to wear it, then it'd be worth it.

Side story: I watched Frozen on Wednesday with my friends.  This manicure really reminded me of snow, snowflakes and winter.  It was a coincidence that I put these together before watching the movie but it fit.

Essie's Parka Perfect

OPI Pirouette My Whistle

Thoughts

Essie's Parka Perfect:  This polish is pretty thick.  I would say that I haven't encountered such a thick Essie polish in a while or not to my recent memory.  It was just an interesting formula because when I was painting my nails, it felt thick, but it was also running a little that I was afraid that there'll be a pooling effect near the grooves of my nails.  It is thick enough to have just one coat of polish but I painted two coats.  There's a slight shimmer effect on the bottle but that doesn't translate onto your nails.  It's not really noticeable.  Overall, I like the colour.  I think it's great for this time of the year.

Essie's Parka Perfect with one layer of OPI's Pirouette My Whistle (PMW) is very pretty.  I love this combination together.  The small silver glitter in PMW captures the light beautifully and the bigger silver glitter chunks looks like snowflakes.  PMW was part of the OPI Spring 2012 collection for sheer polishes, so this wasn't really out for the holidays but I think it goes so well with Parka Perfect.  Another thing I love about PMW is that the glitter is subtle.  The small silver glitter is shiny and bring but the bigger silver glitter hexagon shapes aren't as bright and in your face.  

Essie's Parka Perfect

OPI Pirouette My Whistle

Two coats of Essie's Parka Perfect

Two coats of Essie's Parka Perfect with a layer of OPI Pirouette My Whistle

Two coats of Essie's Parka Perfect with a layer of OPI Pirouette My Whistle

Even though I cheated, I just wanted to say how much I love this look.  Even though glitter is known to be not subtle for some reason I feel like this has a really pretty look to it.  I think because the glitter isn't so sharp.  When I added my top coat of Seche Vite, that's when people thought this was a gel manicure.  Lasted pretty long too.  I only had a chip on my pointer finger (but it was big enough for me not to take photos of my nails).

I bought OPI Pirouette My Whistle (15mL or 0.5 Fl. Oz) in 2012.  It is still available.  Essie's Parka Perfect (13.5 mL or 0.46 Fl. Oz), I bought on nailpolishcanada.com. 

Nail Art: Rose Gold Bows

I have another quick post about nail stamping.  I wanted to show a friend of mine how a stamped manicure looked, so I decided to do this.  I think bows are a pretty nice touch, I decided to use the same image plate as my last nail art.  

I'm still not that used to stamping, so my left pointer finger is kind of off.  Other than that, I'm pretty happy with the outcome.  I would have redid it but I decided to show people who nail art stamping takes patience and accuracy, which isn't something I have.  So it's a true representation of what could happen with stamping.

I also think this really confirms, for me, that Essie polishes are pretty good for stamping.  I used Penny Talk from the Mirror Metallics since I've done stamping with this polish before and I knew it would work really nicely with Carry On.  

Items Used

Essie Carry On

Essie Penny Talk

Essie A Cut Above

Seche Base

Seche Vite

Image Plate: Pueen Plate #29

The Image Plate

My left hand: Pointer finger is a little off.

My right hand, which is a lot better.

Thanks for reading my post!

Illamasqua: Facet

I was trying to avoid buying this colour since I have so many similar.  As seen on this post, which I was trying to convince myself that I don't need it.  

Side story

I walked to Eaton Centre after work one day and noticed that they renovated.  It looks more like a high end department store.  It was always a higher end department store compared to K-Mart, Zellars, Wal-Mart, etc, but The Bay really rebranded their stores to look more like American Department stores, like Lord & Taylor.  Specially since The Bay carries L&T, so I'm not sure if there's a reason behind it.  I don't know if The Bay was bought out but, that's another type of post that I'm not going to get into.

Anyway, The Bay in downtown Toronto (Queen and Yonge) carries Illamasqua now!  This might be old news since I bought this out in September.  Anyway, I was looking around the counter for Facet and I thought I found it and was confirmed after I looked at the bottom of the bottle.  I had to buy it!  It was C$17.00!  Which is cheaper than Sephora's C$22.00.  The thing is, Sephora did not carry Facet.  I was pretty happy but I didn't wear this until now.  

Thoughts

Facet is a chocolate colour with golden flakes.  The golden flakes are really pretty and I'm so happy with the colour.  The polish applied very easily.  The chocolate base is like a chocolate milk colour.  Compared to the polishes that I did my brown with gold shimmer post, Facet's gold shimmer/flakes are more apparent than those polishes in that post.  

Breakdown
Basecoat: Seche Base
Colour layer: Illamasqua Facet (2 coats)
Topcoat: Seche Vite

Facet is still available online on The Bay for C$17.00.

Rescue Beauty Lounge - 50% off weekend Haul

On November 17, Rescue Beauty Lounge had a 50% off on their polishes except for the newer collections.  I was trying to resist but then I thought, that since I normally pay full price, why not look at it during this 50% off.  I might end up buying the same colours anyways.  So I bought four polishes in total.

Bella (gomm collection): I've been wanting Bella for a while but I never bought it because I'm not sure how white would look on me.  The way Bella is described is it's supposed to have this bleached bone look.  I already own a few from the gomm collection, so I decided that this was a good opportunity to buy this.  Also the gomm collection colours are limited edition, and will never be brought back on a bring it back collection.  So it's really now or never.  I feel like it's this feeling for a lot of RBL colours, but especially this collection.

Fire Queen (Fan Collection 2.0): This was not part of the 50% off because it's part of the new collection.  I bought it anyway since I didn't order it during my Fan Collection haul, so I should take advantage of paying shipping once here and not later.

Abi (gomm collection): This was another colour I really wanted.  Just because it's an interesting green.  So I'm happy to have bought Bella and Abi 50% off

Plie: I bought this since it's a nice neutral colour.  I already own a lot of pinks but this is just nice to throw in since it's normally $18 and now it's $9.

I can't wait to try these colours!

Estee Lauder/MAC/Clinique Warehouse Sale Haul

My friend gave me a pair of tickets to the Estee Lauder/MAC warehouse sale.  This warehouse sale is by invite only.  It took place Friday, December 6 to Sunday, December 8.  I wasn't able to go on Saturday, so I went on Sunday instead.  I don't use MAC that much, but I'm still very lucky to be able to receive one of these coveted tickets to enter the sale.  I arrived at 8:35am and the doors opened at 9:00am.  We were able to lineup inside, and we went in at a good time.  There was also Orgins, Ojon, Bumble and Bumble, Coach, DKNY parfumes, Smashbox, some Bobbi Brown, etc.

I'm really happy to have found Clinique's Happy set and the MAC brush.  The free gift was a surprise and it's a very neutral colour that I can use.

What I got:
Clinique Happy Set: $40
Clinique High Impact Favorites: $15
249 Large Shader Brush: $15
Clinique take the day off make up remover travel size: $4
Clinique repairwear laser focus $4
Bloom On eye shadow (bottom picture left) - free
Charity Bag $5: 2 Mauveless eye shadow (bottom picture right), 1 small Clinique Happy bottle .14 Fl Oz, Origins Drink Up Hydrating lip balm 01 Nude

There are other sales around Toronto/Markham area.  I'm not sure if I'll ever receive a ticket to this again but I'm glad to have experienced this.

Nail Art: Purple Bows

The holiday season is among us!  Today I have some nail art to share.  I would have done a post for my base colour but I painted my nails at night so the lighting would have been off. 

My base colour was Essie's Bangle Jangle.  This was part of the 2011 Cocktail Bling Collection.  I always thought of this colour as my winter version of Nice is Nice.  I want to mention that application was pretty easy and it's similar to other Essie polishes.  This one isn't very streaky on the first coat, but I used two coats to even out the colour.  

I felt that stamping was pretty hard.  I am pretty good at stamping with my left hand, so my right ring finger turned out nice but when I applied top coat, the colour bleeded a little.  My left hand was hard to stamp.  My right hand isn't so good at stamping.  So I had to redo my ring finger a few times because I wanted the bows to be at a slant.  Note: I know I could have used a Konad polish to stamp the image, but I found that a lot of my Essie polishes do the trick for stamping.  I haven't had much success with stamping with my OPI polishes.  It depends how well the stamper picks up the polish from the plate.

The final touch was adding glittler to the middle of the bows.  I only dotted the middle bows because I wanted those ones to stand out.  If I had more bows on my fingers, I might have alternated it just to give some bows more accent.  Then I added a top coat.  I think the top coat really makes a difference since it seals everything together and makes the image really go with the base colour.  Next time, I just have to be careful of the possible bleeding.  I find Seche Vite is still better than other top coast I have used for stamping.  Minimal bleeding.

Items Used

Essie Bangle Jangle

Essie Carry On

Essie A Cut Above

Seche Base

Seche Vite

Image Plate: Pueen Plate #29

I bought everything myself.  I order the image plate from nailpolishcanada.com for C$4.00.