KBShimmer Belle of the Mall

Happy Monday everyone! I think I can only say that because I am typing this up not on a Monday. What is with Mondays? They really can be the worst sometimes huh?

Anyway today I have a sparkle bomb of brightness to share with you. I first fell in love with KBShimmer after seeing their outrageous jelly sparkle polishes that truly pack a punch. Belle of the Mall is from KBshimmer's their Spring Collection and it's a beautiful pink leaning coral jelly glitter bomb!



Not only did this polish sparkle in the sun, it was almost neon in the shade! Such a beautiful bright pink color!



This polish consists of holo hex pieces of various shapes suspended in a pink leaning coral glitter that glows in and out of the sunlight!



Now, I seriously love glitters, but I seriously hate removing glitters. So I naturally I got a base coat that makes removal easier – here I used Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter A Peel. I have a love hate relationship with this base coat – I love how easy it makes my glitter to remove, but I hate that my manicure lasts less than 24 hours before it starts the easy removal process. I just want to wear a glitter for a longer amount of time (than 24 hours) and have an easy time removing it. But unfortunately that is just too much to ask.

And so I painted my nails the evening before and by 2 p.m. the next afternoon, this happened:



Application: KBShimmer makes THE best glitter bombs that require no fishing for the various sizes of glitter and went on easy in three coats!

Where to purchase: You can purchase Belle of the Mall from KBShimmer's website for $8.75. Seriously these are some of the most affordable and best quality indie polishes on the market, if you haven't already browse their site – they have something for everyone including cremes, holos, multichromes and yes glitter bombs!

P.S. My MoYou London Stamping Plate Giveaway is still going on, check out this post to enter the Rafflecopter and good luck! 

CrowsToes Vanaheim

Today's polish is a chameleon, a glitter multichrome with many different looks. This polish seems to shift based on the lighting it is in. It is not as strong as a multichrome as some other brands I own (Dance Legend, ILNP) but the polish is unique and stands on its own anyway!



CrowsToes Vanaheim is a gold to greenish blue color shifter with coordinating color shifting glitter.



Vanaheim is part of CrowToes 9 Realms collection. The theme is inspired by the 9 Realms in Norse Mythology. Vanaheim, located within Asgard, is the home of the fertility gods. 





Application: This is two coats of the polish, with no undercoat. The polish has its own unique shift, no black undercoat needed. The polish dries a little rough, like you would expect from a glitter, so an extra layer of top coat would probably be appropriate. I think I only used one coat and was ok, but next time I'd use two! This polish wore very well, I think I wore this for a few days without any chips at all!

Where to purchase: I purchased this polish from Llarowe for $13. In the U.S. both Llarowe and Overall Beauty stock CrowsToes polish.

Sweet Heart Polish Club 33

Checkout this awesome glitter topper featuring Mickey Mouse glitter! This is Sweet Heart Polish Club 33 from the Disneyland or Bust collection.



This polish is a mix of gold stars, green matte and holographic clovers and black Mickey Mouse heads with gold glitter and gold shimmer in a clear base. There is quite a lot going on with this topper, and because of that (and an application issue) I thought I would try it over two different base colors. Above, I painted two coats over Zoya Tracie and below I painted two coats over Essie The More the Merrier.



Application: This polish was on the thick side and you did have to fish for the bigger glitter pieces (the clovers and the Mickey pieces), but I think the unique glitter pieces make up for it. The final product looks great and heralding from Southern California, anything Disney and I'm a fan! I think I liked the topper slightly more over the light green Tracie polish than over the lime green The More the Merrier polish.

Where to purchase: Sweet Heart Polishes retail for $9-$10 and you can purchase them from her Etsy shop! The Disneyland or Bust collection features a number of glitter toppers featuring the Mickey glitter and some bow glitters as well!

This polish was provided to me for my honest review, and here you have it! 

Posted by Traci at 9:00 AM 4 Comments

Indigo Bananas 2% Butterscotch Ripple

Let me start off this post with an apology. My photos of this polish, do it very little justice. Indigo Bananas consists of multichrome glitter suspended in wine-colored jelly polish.

I layered this polish over a dark OPI (We'll Always Have Paris), which I thought might make it brighter, but only darkened it. For shots of this polish that really show its ultimate beauty, check out the Polish Hound's photos from this post. She really captures the gold to bluish shimmer the sparkles give off and puts all of my photos to shame.



The best shot I got of this polish is the one above, which shows just how raspberry/wine color the polish truly is.



The polish shot also shows it's blue leaning glitter. My horrible darker shots are below.





But if I share with you only my best, how would that be me being real. We all live and learn. I learned that in the future, I will not put this polish over a darker creme. It changes its beauty and I don't want that.

Application: I put one coat of 2% Butterscotch Ripple over two coats of OPI We'll Always Have Paris. Both wore well, but I would not combine the two in the future. Maybe if I were doing skittle nails, but not layered like this polish shows.

Where to Purchase: You can purchase Indigo Bananas polishes from their website, I bought this mini bottle (8ml) for $7.25. I really like their shop because you can purchase mini polishes or large polishes, which is a great way to sample a new-to-you indie polish maker. So far I have loved all of their polishes, especially Maui Wowee (in the bottle shot), but believe me that beauty is a post for another day!

So what do you think? Do you like it when I share nail blunders as well as nail beauties? I know nail blogs are supposed to be all professional, but every nail lady knows you can't hit it out of the park with every manicure. I just feel sad because I know I didn't do this polish justice – I'll make sure to publish a better post when I wear this polish again solo!!!

Painter's block and utilizing untried nail polishes

Today I'm sharing with you a manicure that I did when I felt like I had total painter's block. I had so many colors, I couldn't decide on what polish I wanted to use on my finger tips.

I couldn't decide, sparkles, cream, duochrome, skittles or nail art?

Eventually I just decided on working with some untrieds in my collection and trying a look I had not done before.



I decided to try on this beautiful purple polish from Essie's 2013 Wedding Collection. This Essie is called Using My Maiden Name, and I was lemming this polish for such a long time. Then I bought it and never used it! What is wrong with me. I think my main problem is I am never in the mood to wear purple for some reason. Which is crazy, look how beautiful this polish is!



Using My Maiden Name is a beautiful light lavender color with a pink shimmer under sunlight. Such a beautiful delicate number which screams spring to me! And since I can never just have a single color or finish on my nails, I added a glitter gradient of Butter London's Fairy Cake on my my tips!

It's still beautiful in indirect sunlight, below!



Glitter gradients can be tricky because some glitters are harder to build up on for the gradient looks. For this look, I did one coat that went halfway down my nail and then topped it up with another coat right at the tips. Sometimes the gradient isn't as obvious and gradual, but I thought this turned out well and this polish worked well for the build up!

Application: Essie's Using My Maiden Name was a little streaky, even after two coats, but I settled at that because I knew I was topping with sparkles. The trick is to use thin coats to get the best look out of this polish. Butter London Fairy Cake was a beautiful fine sparkles that build up well. This is about two coats on tips, one coat on the mid-nail. Also Fairy Cake did not dry too bumpy.

How often do you wear your untrieds? What is one polish you just HAD to have and then let sit on your wall collecting dust for a year before you tried it?

Review of KBShimmer Make My Gray

This is an old manicure that I found lost in my iPhone photos and I realized that I didn't review it! Whoops! Anyway, KBShimmer is one of my favorite indie brands and their price point is so affordable as well! If you haven't tried indie polishes, KBShimmer is a great one to start with!

Let's get started, they recently came out with their spring line, which has many beautiful colors and I picked up two! This is the first I've tried so far.



Make My Gray consists of coral and gray matte sparkles with aqua holo sparkle pieces suspended in a milky gray-blue base.

I loved the combination of aqua and coral pieces, really made this polish a unique mix!



In the sun the holo pieces sparkle, but indoors this polish is pretty as well!



This polish could make an excellent accent nail to a coral manicure or an aqua one! I tried a little nail art on it, using China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy, but I couldn't quite match the coral pink. Didn't really like the stamping job, it was just too busy, but I had to try something!



Application: This is a polish that is packed with sparkle pieces, you don't have to fish for any of the sparkle pieces, but you may have to do dab for application so you get the sparkles where you want it. These swatches are about three coats of dabbing, you could probably get away with two, but I require perfection.

Where to Purchase: You can purchase KBShimmer polishes from their website, their polishes range from $7.50-$8.75 per bottle. This polish retails for $8.75.

Good news: I won Chameleon Stampede's Second Blogaversay contest and I am getting a $25 gift certificate to Girly Bits! I am a Girly Bits virgin, but I've had my eye on A Stripper Has Been Sleeping in My Bed and Get Weaponized for some time now, so that will be great!

Recent purchases: I went on a spending spree this weekend, and man do I have so many pretties coming my way- new Dance Legend Spring Wow Prisms, another Color by Llarowe, more Indigo Bananas and my first Smitten Polishes are coming my way. I'll have lots of new pretties to show you coming up!

Indigo Bananas We Are The Music Makers

Today I have a review of Indigo Bananas We Are The Music Makers from their Willie Wonka collection. This is a gorgeous sparkle with a duochrome shift from teal to violet.



The shift is apparent indoors and outdoors, but harder to capture on camera than some color shifters I have been wearing lately.



Outside shots shown below.





This color is so beautiful and I originally saw used in an aquatic-themed nail art by The Mercurial Magpie. I plan to use it for the same purpose at some point.

Application: Some people wear this polish with a coat of a darker polish underneath, but I used three coats for opacity and accurate measure of color since this was my first time wearing it. It had a bumpier finish, as sparkle polishes do, but was easy to even out with top coat. Unfortunately this one chipped on me within a day of application, but I want to blame that more on the HK Girl Glisten and Glow top coat than the actual polish itself. HK Girl Glisten and Glow just does not want to work with me, I wonder why so many other people absolutely rave about it! But I get it, not every polish works with every person's body chemistry.

Where to Purchase: Indigo Bananas has their shop on Etsy and the great thing about this brand is you can get either the larger bottle or the mini if you are just testing it out. I purchased my mini bottle (8ml) for $7.25. I remember it taking a while to ship to me though, but that might have been a glitch in their system or something. Don't not check out their store on account of that, they have some amazing polishes in there!

What do you think? I know my photos weren't the greatest in this post, but I was always trying to capture that color shift which makes this polish so special! Enjoy!