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I bought my first Butter London polish a few months ago as a birthday present for myself. $14 is something I can only justify rarely right now. But it’s a BEAUTIFUL color and I love the formula, so it’s worth it.

First, the way Butter London describes this color: “A textured twinkling vintage blue pale and slightly smoky. Things reminiscent of the Victorian era, such as corsets, top hats and Syphilis.”

I laughed pretty hard at that last descriptor!

I’d describe it as a dusty teal base with very fine silver specks of glitter.

The formula was fantastically smooth. I only did 2 coats out of habit, but it was opaque in one. Really perfect application. The bottle is pretty too! If Butter London polishes weren’t so expensive, I’d have the ENTIRE collection by now.

Bought in-store at ULTA. $14 for 11ml/.4 fl oz. Big 3 Free.

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A super bright blue cream.. yum!! Spa Ritual is a vegan nail polish line sold in AVEDA salons and spas. I’ve become much more familiar with their line since I started my esthiology course at Aveda Institute Charlotte (which, by the way, I graduated from last Friday!!!). Enjoy this new Spa Ritual color from their Truth collection, and look forward to more from Truth soon!

Without flash you get a much more accurate idea of the color of this polish.

With flash, it appears much brighter and lighter, when in fact it is a bright royal blue.

This was photographed with a base coat and no top coat. What you see is two thick coats. The formula is okay, drying quicker than average, but there seems to be a settling problem with the Spa Rituals line (probably has something to do with the vegan ingredients)–basically, the settling is either very slow or simply doesn’t happen before drying. If you don’t know what I mean, it basically manifests in sloppy, uneven-looking applications of polish. In these pictures, a good example would be at the base of my ring finger, the little clump that is there. I went back in with the brush to fill in a very small unevenness in the line, and it never settled with the rest of the polish, basically clumped up and dried that way. Not cute, but probably also not impossible to fix with a nice self-settling top coat like Seche Vite (I’m out and need to restock, hence no top coat!).

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Sea Spray is my favorite color from China Glaze’s new nautical Anchor’s Away collection. I am such a sucker for everything nautical, especially because my bestest friend is in the Coast Guard. I have to go back for a few more colors, but I knew I had to have this gorgeous grey-blue-sky cream as soon as I saw it. It’s the color of a pretty cloudy sky, a greyer tone but with a lot of blue. I love looking at my nails with this on.

If I were to speculate, even though I don’t own any other polish like it, I would guess that Eyeko‘s Rain Polish is a great dupe for Sea Spray.

Application with this polish was really perfect, and drying time was QUICK! This is two coats.

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(Just wanted to remind you that my FLIRT! Giveaway is still open for entries until December 20!)

I love Forever21. It’s a cheap, trendy company that I’ve been familiar with for years, but for the first time in my life, I live near one! Actually, the new city I live in has several in and around it. AND THEY SELL NAIL POLISH! CHEAP NAIL POLISH! It seems that the only brand they carry is one I haven’t heard of before called Love & Beauty. I saw a huge bin of them on display in the store yesterday, so of course I had to check it out.

This is Indigo:

The name of this polish describes its color: it’s an opaque indigo jelly polish, could definitely be a one-coater if you’re careful. I don’t have any other polishes in my collection like this (MAC Blue India is much more dusty, and greener) so I was excited to get this–especially for $2.80!! It also applies as smooth as a dream, with a thin, long brush, and has good drying time. This is only two coats, too!

A few things about the polishes.. if you check out the Love & Beauty line in store or online, you may notice that there are several different polish bottle styles. I’m still not completely sure what that’s about. Though it appears that some of the styles are for unique finishes, it seems to be more of a novelty thing than a rule of thumb for identifying like polishes–does that make sense at all? I just mean that I thought that one bottle style was for all glitters, but then there are some in that bottle style that aren’t glitters, and some that are. So maybe they just like their items to not all look the same? Maybe they’ve transitioned a few times and can’t decide which one they like? Not sure.

The only unimpressive thing I’ve found about the polishes so far are that the names really suck, haha. I think their creative marketing team has only just been started up, with super unique and descriptive color names like “Blue,” “Gold,” and “Pink.” :P

One last note about the thumb decal I used, that is a purchase I made a few months ago, one that I’ve been meaning to use in manicures. They are the Ornament Nail Art Stickers by Essence, which I got at ULTA. I was super excited to use them, and I’ve found that they’ve been really easy to use! They last as long as my manicure, and are thin enough so they easily stay flat along the curvature of my nails. They’re cheap ($1.50) and come with 10 or 11 different designs. I was so happy I actually jumped back in shock when I saw the Essence end-cap at ULTA that day. I grabbed a couple of their Colour & Go nail polishes, too, so look for those coming up soon!

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This post is where you leave a comment to enter a chance to win the Flirt! eyeshadow palette!
Please don’t forget to leave your YouTube username, as you must be a subscriber! Also, please leave a reliable e-mail address.

Yay, I’m so excited for this, guys!! I am hosting a giveaway, provided by Flirt! Cosmetics, to win a 40 eyeshadow limited edition palette!! If you’ve never heard of Flirt!, they are sold exclusively at Kohl’s, and I am seriously impressed by the quality of the shadows.. especially for the price! See more of my review of this product and a look done using the shadows in the video below:

I am not being compensated in any way to host this giveaway by the company or their PR firm. I was provided the palette free of charge prior to the announcement so that I could test it for myself. All the opinions stated here are 100% true and only mine.

I will close comments on this post on December 21st at midnight, and announce the winner later that day!

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Just thought I’d mention that I tried water marbling for the first time today. It was sort of a failure :P, but I’ll post pictures soon!

Ever since product pictures were revealed for MAC’s Venomous Villians/Maleficent nail polishes, the beauty community has suspected that two of the polishes from Orly’s CosmicFX collection, Galaxy Girl and Space Cadet, were dupes for MAC’s Formidable! and Mean & Green. I wanted to post some comparison swatches of the four polishes along with my thoughts.

To get it out of the way, you definitely don’t need all 4 polishes. Space Cadet and Mean & Green, and Galaxy Girl and Formidable! are so similar to one another that unless you’re an avid collector of some sort, it’s be redundant to add them all to your collection.

Pictures are below. I’ve posted several because getting the same light on each finger while photographing proved to be impossible. Please forgive the messiness!

USED: (no base or top coat)
Orly Galaxy Girl (index finger): 2 coats
MAC Formidable! (middle finger): 3 coats
Orly Space Cadet (ring finger): 3 coats
MAC Mean & Green: 4 coats

Reviews

MAC Formidable! is beautiful, but is exactly the same as Orly Galaxy Girl. (Full review here.) I have seen people say that Formidable! has more of the blue sparkle than Galaxy Girl, but this was not my experience at all. Formidable! was perhaps slightly more sheer, but when coated to opacity (I used 2 coats Galaxy Girl and 3 coats Formidable!), they look exactly the same.

Mean & Green was EXTREMELY sheer in one coat. And although Mean & Green and Space Cadet contain the same colors and the same multichrome, Space Cadet appeared to be much more “sparkly” than Mean & Green. Space Cadet (full review here) is, for lack of a better description, all bling-bling all the time. Even in low light, the pink sparkle is beautiful and stands out against the olive/emerald green base. Mean & Green, disappointingly, did not exhibit as much of this pink sparkle as I would have liked. That being said, these are pretty much the same polishes. If you have one or the other, you shouldn’t be disappointed.

So what’s the bottom line? Here we go: Orly raised their prices with the CosmicFX collection for the first time, so Galaxy Girl and Space Cadet go for around $10 online. Formidable! and Mean & Green, on the other hand, cost $13 at MAC. What’s more, all of the MAC polishes are sold out online and likely at every counter and store you’ll find. Case in point, MAC is amazing at marketing limited edition collections. You may still have a chance to find the Orly polishes at Sally’s and on online retailers. In addition to being cheaper, the Orly polishes have a more consistent formula which means quick drying time, beautiful sparkle finish, and long-wearing quality polish. Also, I’ve seen at least a dozen complaints online about some of the MAC polish brushes being wonky. (If you received a polish with a wonky brush, you should be able to contact customer service to get a replacement cap.)