Revlon Selects - Polish Box

Alright, so I shared with you last week that I received a surprise box of nail goodies from Revlon as part of the Revlon Selects program. I'm going to be featuring the two polishes I received in today's post.

If you would like the opportunity to take part in the Revlon Selects program, they offer opportunities on their Revlon Canada Facebook page every once in a while, so check it out!
If you're not in Canada, take a look at your local Revlon page on Facebook - they may have similar product sample offers.

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First up, Revlon Colorstay in Nude Beige.
Sheer coverage with one coat, and opaque coverage in two. Easy to apply, smooth and super shiny (photo has no topcoat).
The colour? Definitely nude! I've seen other nail bloggers refer to this look as 'mannequin hands'. It's kinda neat! I think I will have to try this shade again with some black or white stamping over top.
Nude polishes seem to be in for spring, so this is perfect timing for Revlon to release this new shade.

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Next up is from the new limited Chroma Chameleon line. This is a line of duochrome or colour shifting polishes. I couldn't find anything official from Revlon (they aren't on their site yet), so here is a link to Nouveau Cheap's post with some photos of the collection.
I ended up with "Gold" which has a gold-green colour shift. I don't own Chanel's Peridot, but from what I've seen, this will be another dupe.

I was a little afraid when I started applying this one because of just how sheer it was on the first coat, however it built up pretty quickly and I only needed three coats in the end. You will end up with some brushstrokes, but they don't stand out too much.

It was a little difficult to photograph this one in my dark house in cloudy Vancouver (I really need a light box), so I took one photo with the flash and another photo in the dull afternoon sun.
The duochrome is pretty strong on this one in real life. I would recommend it if you missed out on any of the other versions of this shade. It looks like they have some other really nice duochromes in the line as well.

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And finally, (mostly) naked nails!
This one was NOT provided to me by Revlon, but it is their product ...
I quickly swatched the polishes above with no basecoat or topcoat  on Wednesday and then decided to hold off doing a full manicure for a couple of days, because I wanted to do something for a comic convention I was going to over the weekend. The first day, I had nothing on my nails at all and it actually felt weird, so when I got home, I applied my Revlon Calcium Gel Nail Hardener.
I use this once in a while, because it doesn't really work as a basecoat (I always end up with lots of bubbles), but if ever I want bare nails, it is my go-to clear coat.
I figured since my nails were in decent condition, I would share!

I get a tiny amount of discolouration toward the tips of my nails, but using a basecoat every time really helps to prevent staining or yellowing.

In a couple more days, I will share the manicure I wore to Fan Expo Vancouver, and I am going to test out the nail strips that came in my Revlon Selects package in the next few weeks.

**disclamer**

The first two products featured in this post were provided to me free of charge to test and review based on a contest I entered last year. I do not receive any additional compensation for reviewing the products, nor do I allow free product samples to influence my opinions of the product itself.

Reddit Challenge - Animal Print

I grabbed another clearance polish a while back, this time from a salon. China Glaze Desert Sun. It's a lovely light orange-brown shade.

When I saw an Animal Print challenge was coming up, I knew I wanted to do freehand leopard print, because I had never done it before.

I also didn't just want to do plain leopard print.
I liked this tutorial, but didn't want to recreate it exactly, so I improvised and modified.

First, I started with two coats of Desert Sun near my cuticles. I didn't do my whole nail with it, because I didn't want to wait for too many layers to dry.

Then, I went over it with two coats of Essence Nude It!, leaving the Desert Sun visible to create a ruffian.

Once that was dry, I used Desert Sun to create little blobby dots all over the Nude It!.

Finally, I used  It's So Easy Stripe Rite Black to finish off the leopard print.

Normally, I'm not a big fan of animal prints, but I really like how this one came out!

Revlon Selects News and Wild Child

First up -
As you may know, I was selected as one of 500 people to receive a box of goodies for review under the Revlon Selects program.
Now, when I entered the contest on facebook, figured it was a one time thing and thought, it would be cool if they sent more stuff later, but never really expected anything else.
Well, yesterday I got a lovely surprise in my mailbox - a square box with a Revlon Selects sticker pasted on the side. I opened it up and much to my delight were two full size bottles of nail polish and a box of nail strips. Apparently they selected a group of people at random from the first batch of 500 and sent out another box.

I got a bottle of Revlon Colorstay polish in "Nude Beige", new Revlon Chroma Chameleon polish in "Gold" (a very popular green-gold duochrome shade) and a box of Revlon 3D Jewel Appliques in "Floral Fatale" (hot pink, white and black floral design with a silver geometric pattern. - they're a bit textured, hence the "3D")

Stay tuned for some photos of the products in action!

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In other news ... A manicure!

I found this one on clearance at my local Shopper's Drug Mart and decided I wanted to get it.

It was really hard to get a photo of this one that shows all of it's elements.

The base is a black jelly polish filled with gold micro glitter.
Then, it has tiny silver holo hex glitter. In the bottle I have, this was all settled at the bottom and I had to turn the bottle upside-down and shake like mad to get it blended in at all.
Finally, it has a light scattering of small hex glitter in orange, teal, lime green, gold, purple, blue ... there might be other colours, but I'm not sure.

Since it's a jelly and I didn't want to use too many coats and muddy up the glitter, I did a base coat of Avon Licorice - a black creme - to provide a base, before adding a couple of coats of Wild Child.

The coloured glitter was a bit difficult to get out of the bottle, you'll see I only have one on my pinky and two -3 pieces on my other fingers. My thumb got 5 total. But it's enough as long as you shake the bottle before each coat. I checked out google images to see if I could find any other pictures of it, and you couldn't really see the coloured glitter in any of them.
Too bad, because this is a gorgeous polish, but since it was on clearance, I assume it has been discontinued.

Two Weeks of Reddit Challenges

I'm on a deadline for a couple of craft projects so it's difficult to fit fancy nail art in as well.

Sorry I've been a bit behind!

Also, I wanted to share that my favourite nail blogger (and fellow Canadian) Kayla Shevonne is doing a nail polish giveaway sponsored by Butter London Canada. Today is the last day - go enter!

**** Giveaway ****

This post has two weeks worth of challenges in it, just so I can focus on getting my other projects done.

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First up, this last week's challenge was "Inspired by a Flag"

I chose the Union Flag (or Union Jack), but I also wanted to show what flags were used to create the Union Flag ...

It's a little wobbly because it was all done freehand with normal sized nail polish brushes. I really need to get a striper brush.

Thumb: Union Flag

Index: Flag of England - St. George's Cross

Middle: Flag of Scotland - St. Andrew's Cross (sorry, I didn't have an appropriate blue, it's supposed to be an azure blue background)

Ring: St. Patrick's Cross. From what I understand, this one is frequently used by the government to represent Northern Ireland. Check out Wikipedia for some information on Flag disputes in Northern Ireland.

I just used the blue on my pinky to tie everything together.

Colours Used:

Blue - Ardene Elektronika

White - Zoya (colour unknown)

Red - Essence Flame Fatal

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This coming week's manicure is "Flowers"

I settled on daisies.

Two coats of Essence Wake Up!
Then I used my Claire's white detail polish to create the daisy and added a dot of  Essence Wanna Be Your Sunshine for the centres.

Reddit Challenge - Grey

This weeks's challenge was pretty open: Grey

I decided to keep it simple and subtle.

2 coats of Avon Concrete (matte polish)
French tips done in Color Club Wild Orchid
I used a top coat to make it shiny, because I didn't like the matte for this manicure.

I love how well the colours matched. Wild Orchid does have a slight purple shine to it in some light, but for the most part, this was a very, very subtle french tip.

Next week's challenge is Inspired by a Flag. I had such a hard time with this one last time I did it, but I think I have something in mind this time.

Easter Nails

Inspired by my jelly sandwich from a few weeks ago, I did some Easter themed nails.
I decided to make it a ruffian manicure to incorporate some chocolate brown into it as well.

I used 2 coats of Revlon Chocolate Truffle to create the base for the ruffian. I only painted it near the cuticles, because I didn't want to create too many layers.
I went over that with a thin coat of Zoya White to create a base for the lighter colours.
From pinky to thumb, I used Zoya White, Fascino Blue, Sally Hansen Mellow Yellow, Sally Hansen Pink Blink and Ardene's Stereo Love. Two coats of each.
Once those were mostly dry, I added Ardene's Paris Nights multicoloured glitter. It's in a slightly green tinted base so it did alter the pastels a little bit, but it's super pale and sheer, so you don't notice it once the manicure is done.
Once the glitter coat was mostly dry, I went over it with Sally Hansen Polar Bare to mute down the colours and matte the glitter.
Topcoat to even everything out and protect it and voila! speckled Easter eggs!

The Ardene's polish and the Sally Hansen Polar Bare both take ages to dry, but it's a super cute effect.

I wore this over to a friend's house and once they saw it they said "you have Easter eggs on your nails! Chocolate ones!"
I think the concept was a success.

Reddit Challenge - Stripes

This week is stripes - they are probably some of the easiest nail art you can do!

I wasn't really sure what to do, so I just grabbed some colours, tried a couple of things and finally settled on this:

Two coats of Color Club Wild Orchid - a medium grey with a pink-ish shimmer. In sunlight this polish looks purple. It's really pretty! The first coat was a little patchy, but the second coat fixed it right up.

Off to one side, I did a single thick stripe of Essence Fortune Cookie from their Cherry Blossom line. It's kind of a mustard yellow with a very slight simmer to it. I had to do two coats to get good coverage over the grey.

Then I outlined the yellow stripe using my Stripe Rite black polish. I didn't think it was quite done, so I added a stripe down the middle of the yellow as well.

I keep thinking it looks like a street.

Reddit Challenge - Inspired by a Tutorial

It took me a while to find one, but I finally settled on this Hello Kitty tutorial by Kayla Shevonne

I used Wet n Wild Lavender as my base
Dots were added using Sinful Colors Fusion Neon

Hello Kitty's shape was painted on using Claire's white detail polish
The nose was Essence Wanna Be Your Sunshine, and the eyes and whiskers were It's So Easy black Stripe Rite polish.
The bow is from the Claire's Girly Fimo Wheel.

Reddit Challenge - Violet

This week's challenge is Violet. I wasn't sure if I wanted to just do purple or actually violet flowers on my nails.
I seem to be coming down with something, so I'm tired and I decided on purple nails with some floral stamping ...

I used two coats of Ardene's Stereo Love - a lilac not-quite-jelly not-quite-creme. It's thick but sheer on the first coat, and the second coat makes it opaque, but it has an odd ... depth (?) to it. I like it.

After that was thoroughly dry (and Ardene's polish takes ages to dry), I used my Claire's white detail polish and Bundle Monster plate BM10 to stamp on some little white flowers.

Since the polish is lilac and not violet, I'll use the excuse that the flowers are supposed to be Canadian white violets ... haha

I'm going to try and do a second manicure this week, but we'll see how I'm feeling.
Next week's challenge is "Inspired by a tutorial"
I've posted every tutorial I wanted to try so far ... so I'm going to have to go in search of a new one!

Reddit Challenge - Spring

I've been MIA this last week, because my work schedule has been so weird that I haven't had much time to do anything, let alone my nails.

I managed to squeeze out some time to do the challenge this week. The theme is Spring, and as soon as I saw that, I knew which manicure I wanted to do.

Cherry Blossoms!

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I used this tutorial from Nails by Kayla Shevone, and it was really easy!

I started with a base coat of Fascino Blue and then went over it with two coats of Sinful Colors Mint Apple.

Once that was dry, I used my Quo by ORLY striper polish in Black to draw the branches. I didn't do anything specific, I just kind of placed them wherever looked good.

After that, I used my Claire's detail polish in white to create the flowers. This polish has both a striper brush and a 'pen' tip, so I could do the dots. I did the dots one by one, because when I tried to do groups of three, the polish flowed into itself and created a blob - so, I did single dots where I wanted to place the flowers on each finger, then went back and did the second dot for each flower on each finger, then the third..

Finally, I dripped a bit of Sally Hansen Pink Blink and Avon Mocha (which is pink ... ??) onto a bit of plastic and used a bent bobby pin to dot those colours over top of the white.

Everyone keeps asking me if they are nail stickers.
The next question is "how much time do you spend doing that!?"
Usually about an hour from removal to final topcoat.

Oh, and bonus kitty legs in the background of the photo - she was sleeping there, but as soon as I brought out the camera, she got up. She does it every time.