Swatch and Review: Cult Nails Flushed

Happy Football Sunday, everyone! Or, if you're like me... Happy Start of Finals Hell Week! I'm right there with you guys, I promise.

Today, I'm going to show you the polish I rocked for my first final exam of law school: Cult Nails Flushed!

 Flushed is a true purple with fuchsia shimmer that appears to flow from within the base. Oh my God, I'm OBSESSED WITH THIS.

In this picture, you can see the glow of the shimmer even better! It looks amazing!

The polish applied fantastically, per usual, and was opaque in two coats. What else do you expect from Cult Nails at this point?

Flushed is available at the Cult Nails website for $10, along with the rest of the Behind Closed Doors Collection.

Are you as head over heels as I am for Flushed? Let me know!
Princess Polish

Swatch and Review: OPI ULTA Holiday 2012

Happy Saturday, everyone! I hope you are all enjoying your weekend so far!

Today, I'm bringing you this year's OPI holiday shades exclusively for ULTA Beauty. I stumbled upon them at my local ULTA in East Brunswick. If you purchase two OPI shades this weekend, you receive a special gift of your choice of the holiday shades for free.

 

Last Minute Shopper is a juicy strawberry red metallic polish. It applied evenly and was opaque in two coats. It's not the most unique shade out there, but it's a very pretty one. It has a very subtle glow about it. I like that has depth to the color without being a glass fleck. This reminds me of You Only Live Twice from the Bond Collection for Holiday 2012 without the aforementioned flecks.

For the record, this has already been stolen by the Queen Mum (aka: Nana) and I have not seen it since. I have a feeling it will make an appearance when she heads back to Florida and I find it on her dresser during winter break there.

Next up is Skip the Gift Wrap, a vibrant emerald metallic polish that slightly skews towards the frost spectrum. The application was fine and even. The brush strokes in this picture are virtually unnoticeable in real life. I think it's the macro that brings that out.

As Pantone has announced, emerald is SO in for 2013 and I think Skip the Gift Wrap is definitely a color to rock in the new year!

The last of the trio is Gift Cards for Everyone, a blurple shimmer with scattered specks of sapphire glitter. Forgive the lack of a bottle... it has gone missing somewhere within my bedroom.

The glitter is definitely apparent in sunlight, but not as much as in the bottle. It's a lot more scattered on the nail. Though, the effect is mostly there.

Overall, I liked this trio better than last year's two rough glitters and shimmery red. All three are very wearable for me and while they're not incredibly unique, I think they're very pretty shades that anyone would like to find in their Christmas stocking or for their last night of Chanukah.

As I mentioned before, you can currently receive one of these shades free with the purchase of two OPI polishes at ULTA. Because I only purchased these three, they were essentially B2G1 for me. They retail for $8.00 each and are available only at your local ULTA store! They also have a mini set called Stuff My Stocking that retails for $12.50 and includes the three minis

Three OPI's for $16? Not a bad deal, in my opinion. (And the 20% off my total purchase coupon didn't hurt... so they wound up being closer to $12!)

What's your verdict on this holiday collection?

Princess Polish

Swatch and Review: Rainbow Honey Mare of the Moon

Here comes the weekend! AND the 2012 Summer Olympics! I hope you're as excited as I am for all of the events. Gymnastics is my particular favorite!

Today, I'm rocking an indie polish I received in a secret swap I participated in. My awesome partner sent me this lemming of mine, made by Rainbow Honey. I LOVE the fact that Rainbow Honey is created in my home state of New Jersey.

Mare of the Moon comes from the Equestria Collection, the shades from which are all inspired by My Little Pony!

Mare of the Moon is a blue-purple duochrome polish with varying sizes of hexagonal glitter and silver moons. It has a beautiful sheen to it that always managed to catch the light.

Here, you can see the shift from the blue to purple a little bit better. It was a little difficult to capture on camera, but was a lot more prominent in person.

The only issue that I had with this polish is that it was super thick and gloppy in the bottle. I was afraid to add thinner because of how temperament some shapes can be. If I made those moons curl, I'd be pretty upset. It wasn't unworkable, it was just difficult.

Mare of the Moon, and the rest of the Equestria Collection, can be purchased at RainbowHoney.com. The 15ml bottles retail for $10 and the 7ml bottles retail for $5.

See you all in the AM! And stay tuned for an announcement about an awesome nail art contest coming up!

Princess Polish

Swatch and Review: Saint Germain - Part 2

Hello again! I hope you had a wonderful weekend!

You may remember Saint Germain from Part 1's swatches. Well, today, I have the second half of my Saint German polishes!

From left to right: Blue Moire, Purple Silver, and Purple Moire.

Swatch and Review: The New Black Week - Haze Collection

Hello again, everyone! Today's post is Day 2 of The New Black Week here at Princess Polish and I'm very excited to bring you this next set because it is my FAVORITE color on earth: purple!

It's one of the five piece sets from TNB and is an ombré collection called Haze. It makes me think of Jimi Hendrix, so that's another reason for me to love it already. The purples range from a jewel-toned blurple (!!!) to a dusty lilac. Unlike yesterday's Graffiti Set, there are no glitters in this collection and it's all cremes with a slight metallic in the blurple.

Oh man, do I love this set of nail polishes. I took this picture in the sun of my backyard and the plant you're seeing is of one of my blueberry bushes. I though that it was kind of appropriate for purple because when I think of blueberries, all I think of is "You're turning violet, Violet!" And there are definitely shades of violet in this set!

While I love the Graffiti set, I think Haze has officially overtaken it as a favorite!

All of The New Black sets are available at Sephora, Nordstrom, and Beauty.com. The ombré sets, like Haze, include five 0.125 fl oz. bottles of polish. All polishes by TNB are 3-free, cruelty-free, and vegan friendly! All sets range from $10 to $32.

One of the super smart things TNB is doing is that they offer polish duos for $10 called the Glimmer Twins, where they take the two darkest or two lightest shade from a set and offer those two together! FYI, The two blacks and two silvers from Graffiti are available in these sets!

So what do you think of the Haze set? Do you like it better than Graffiti?

Tomorrow... we go to the beach with The New Black!
Princess Polish

PS: Be on the lookout for more upcoming photos of my nails around my garden, as it's finally getting to be that time of year!

Disclaimer: The product(s) in this post were provided to me by the manufacturer or their PR company for consideration. For more information please visit my Disclaimer page. Product photos provided by The New Black.

Swatch and Review: OPI Grape Set Match and Serving Up Sparkle

Hi everyone! Sorry for the late post... it has been a stressful day at home!

Today I have a duo that I searched for, to no avail, last year, but managed to find at TJ Maxx on sale, along with another duo I swatched a nail polish from earlier in the week, OPI Love is a Racket. So here is the Serena Williams Glam Slam Duo: Grape Set... Match and Servin' Up Sparkle!

OPI Grape Set... Match is a gorgeous royal purple nail polish with blue shimmer that gives it the appearance of a blurple! When pictures of these duos were first released, I knew this was the one I wanted more than anything. And I'm SO happy I got it!

The application was a dream and with two coats, I could not have asked for better opacity.

 

OPI Servin' Up Sparkle is definitely a nail polish meant for layering. If you want to build it up to see if you can ever get it opaque, you are a far braver soul than I am. It was a little tough to take off, but was not the worst I've ever seen. (I'm looking at YOU, Nubar Night Sparkle). Zoya Remove + got the job done. That being said, I imagine it would be very difficult to take off after 8 coats for opacity's sake. *Shudder*

The glitter was a little too sparse for my personal taste (above was one coat), but I loved the inclusion of hexagonal glitter. Hex glitter seems to be very on-trend this year, so OPI was ahead of the curve in 2011.

Overall, I'm glad that I finally managed to get the duo and would definitely recommend Grape Set... Match.

Hump Day Holo: Color Club Wild at Heart

Hump Day Holo is back with my first Color Club swatch on the blog. It's a gorgeous purple holo called Wild at Heart.

This was borrowed from a friend of mine, so I do not have the bottle. But it looks much nicer on my nails than in the bottle!

Depending on how you look at your nails, the nail polish looks either like a super scattered holo or a linear holo. Sometimes, it even looks like both. But do I care which one?

Swatch and Review: Sally Hansen HD Byte

I had been reading that over at Rite Aid, a lot of polishes had been listed as 75% off. When I got to the one by school, I found a lot of them had been wiped from the shelves. BUT I managed to snag two Sally Hansen HD polishes for $1.55 each and I was very happy with that.

Originally, I noticed the polishes were wayyyyy too sheer to be on their own. But when I layered Byte, which looked like nothing more than a pretty pink polish, I was nearly knocked off my chair.

 

Holy guacamole, Byte is a duochrome! 

Upon closer examination of the bottle, I noticed some blue microshimmer hiding amongst all that glitter.

 

Look at that color shift! Ahh, I LOVED it. The only downside was the noticeable tip wear after a day, but for such a gorgeous duochrome effect, I'll repaint if I have to!

You can purchase any of these HD shades by Sally Hansen at your local drug store, such as CVS, Walgreens, or Rite Aid.

So what do you think, ladies? Worth the $1.55?

And stay tuned for the first post of March Madness!

Princess Polish

Layering OPI Designer Series

Thanks for sticking with me during my infrequent posts. Only one more week of LSATs and then I'll be all yours again!

Today's post features one of my favorite layering combinations EVER.

As you know, I love blurple. And with this blue glitter? Forget it.

This is OPI DS Fantasy, a deep blue glitter with multichrome glitter. And as you can see below (credit: lunatikitty.blogspot.com), it's a really pretty color. But it's missing a wow factor for me.



Same goes for OPI DS Royal (credit: all-you-desire.com), which takes numerous coats to build up and isn't a duochrome either.



But when I layered one coat of Royal over one coat of Fantasy...



Amazing. A beautiful grape color with vivid royal blue shimmer that blows most other purple glitters out of the water.

Now, it's still not a duochrome, but it has much more of a wow factor than Fantasy or Royal on their own.

If you've got both of these lovelies, then I say... what are you waiting for? Happy layering!