Cult Nails Winter Pre-Sale- This Weekend Only!

THE SUPER POWERS COLLECTION Power Thief (right) is a milk chocolate brown with a spark of powerful shimmer Time Traveler (below left) is a royal navy blue jelly that dries to that perfect Cult Nails shine Mind Control is a slate gray polish with a perfectly complementary magenta fleck Clairvoyant (left) well... honestly... need we say more

Cult Nails http://shop.cultnails.com

Get all 4 colors for $30 plus shipping and handling  www.cultnails.com Twitter: @CultNails facebook.com/cultnailslacquer

The pre-sale event will start 11/4/2011 and go through 11/11/2011

The collection sells for $30 (USD) during the pre-sale event only.  That is 25% off the regular price!  The pre-sale event will only include the entire collection.  Individual colors from will collection will release after the pre-sale event.

Cult Nails Iconic~ Review and Swatches

L-R: Get it On Base Coat, Living Water, Iconic, Wicked Fast Top Coat

Not too long ago I made an order from Cult Nails during a sale that Maria had. I ordered two colours and her top/base coat combo. However, this review is only on Iconic, a beautiful deep berry/burgundy with gold shimmer and gold flakies. (The other polishes reviews are coming).

Cult Nails for any of you that don't know, is a polish brand that was started by a fellow blogger, Maria from her love of polish. On her blog R3Daily (which I follow and love) you can really see the passion, creativity, hard work and care that she puts into each and every one of her polish colours. All her polishes are cruelty-free and lack the big 3 and Camphor which is great! This also means they don't smell nearly as bad as normal polishes. 

Cooler light

Warmer light

This colour Iconic is part of her main line and as soon as I saw it I fell in love. Normally, I'm not too traditional in my nail colour choices- I tend to avoid pinks and reds, but this colour is anything but traditional! Depending on the lighting this colour is rich royal red, deep burgundy, or a unique pinked berry shade. Not to mention the amazing gold shimmer and gold flakies throughout. Most of you probably don't know this, but I adore flakies. I just love how each nail is a little different and the effect they give is just fantastic.

Warm, Sunlight

Daylight

You need to see this larger to appreciate the amazingness going on here

 See! Do you see the awesome?! I wore this for Thanksgiving this year (Canadian Thanksgiving is in early October), and my entire family loved it. And yes I did show it off and ask them all including my mother, grandparents and my great uncle. The poor souls have to put up with the cosmetic addiction.

The formula on this was fantastic too. I can't tell you exactly how long it wore for (because I'm testing the Cult Nails top/base coat at the moment and telling you would negate the results for that review, which I want to try some other polishes with the top/base combo first) HOWEVER, it applied like a dream, especially for a flakie polish. For any of you that have used polishes with flakies or large glitter pieces before, I'm sure you know what I mean when I say sometimes there is dragging issues or clumping, but I didn't experience any of that with this polish at all. I had a little difficulty at the tip of one nail but a quick sort of re-swipe over the area fixed it up no problem, so that is more of a flakie handling issue than a fault of the polish. All the photos above are with only two coats. At first I was worried as it looked magenta on the first coat but a second coat turned it into a beautiful rich berry.

Cult Nails polishes are $10 USD, which is fantastic because the quality (including the packaging which is easy to use, and has excellent brushes) is better than more expensive brands by far. Shipping isn't too bad either, especially because Maria often has sales and deals up. My polishes came to me individually wrapped in rough fabric-paper (which my gerbils adored being able to chew up into nesting material) and surrounded by cotton balls- which makes the polishes safe and provides you with nail polish removal. Not to mention eco-friendly!

Overall, I think this polish is fantastic. It's perfect for fall as it's a rich hue and it goes with just about anything. It makes me feel all sophisticated and chic when I wear it.

Sprite Rating: 10/10. This is going to be one of my staples I'm sure of it, especially for pedicures and in the fall. There is nothing bad about the polish, everything about it blew me away from formula to packaging to design. Maybe if they can get a consistent sticker on the bottom of the polishes (they have different fonts/layouts) but that's not an issue really as I rarely look at the bottom of my polish bottles anyways.

Would I buy it again? Yes. Absolutely 100%. Needless to say I'm excited to try my other colour Living Water and you all will be reading more Cult Nails on here in the future!

Joe Fresh Polish Haul & Twilight NOTD

Joe Fresh Nail Polishes- Butter, Twilight, Mallard, and Gunmetal

Hey all! I popped into my local Zehrs and they had released the new spring Joe Fresh polishes with the exciting flakie polish in Twilight. So, since they have the great 3 for $10 CND deal I bought all three of my store's Twilight bottles (one for me, one for my giveaway and one for a friend in the USA) and 3 other colours to try from the range. If you don't know Joe Fresh is a cruelty-free grocery store cosmetics line currently only available here in Canada. The bottles are the same size as the small Wet n' Wild Craze bottles are. 

Butter is a light pale yellow cream shade. I've been lemming American Apparel's Butter for awhile so I decided to take the plunge and get this one!

Mallard is also a cream, this is a blue-toned medium to dark green shade. (I'm such a sucker for greens)

Gunmetal is a metallic brown with plenty of silver shimmer in it. 

Twilight is a black jelly with green-gold flakies in it. 

Twilight needed three coats and as it is a jelly the black never does go to a true black. This could easily be solved with a black coat underneath. I also think it would look nice over other dark colours, very vampy with a twist. The flakies in this are gorgeous, mainly they reflect green and gold but sometimes you see a warm orange or even a spark of red. I really don't see it as a Spring shade at all, but it's definitely extremely different from anything else I have or have seen this season from other brands. Like another blogger said (and I can't remember who you are so I'm sorry!) I really see this as a fall shade, to me it's very reminiscent of halloween, october harvests and moons and dried leaves on the ground at night. Like the end of one of those really vibrant breathtaking sunsets in autumn, the second before it goes dark. Considering that Autumn is my favourite season, you can tell that this polish is going to be a favourite of mine :D.

I needed 3 coats and still have some spots that probably should have another coat but it applied well. The flakies were easier than I thought they were going to be to work with. With my normal one coat of China Glaze Fast Forward Top Coat it feels smooth to the touch, no bumps or edges from the flakies. The flakies were fairly thick in the bottle too so you get a good coverage of flakie per nail when applying.

If you look at the top two nails you can see the differences in flakie colour fairly well- Green and Golden-Orange

I had issues photographing this one but I hope you get the idea. I really like the polish and if you get the chance try to get a bottle if you're into vampy colours! Not sure on the wear yet, but we shall see.
:D Till next time!

The Giveaway Prizes! (with Pictures)

I noticed some of you had issues finding Hebridean Sprite Beauty on Facebook! So Sorry! It's through Networked Blogs, you can click here to find it on Facebook! If you want the entry but have already filled out the survey, leave me a comment on this post after you've liked it and I'll give you the entry!

Now onto the prizes!

One Wet n' Wild Color Icon Shadow Single in my favourite shade Brulee. My personal one has a huge dent in it, I use it all the time as it's the perfect highlight and the perfect shade to even out discolouration on my lids. I even use it as an undereye powder over my concealer sometimes. Even those with darker skintones can use this shade in my humble opinion as it would make a great intermediate blending colour between two darker shades and for brightening the inner eye. A wonderful matte creamy shade with great pigmentation, that doesn't break the bank either. This is from awhile ago, but you can see my first impression of this eyeshadow and swatches on this post here! I'll probably do a full review on this soon.

Joe Fresh is a Canadian Brand that can only be bought at certain drugstores here, and these mini bottles have grabbed the attention of many nail polish fiends in Canada and beyond. This is the newest sensation is this little beauty released for spring. My first flakie polish and named Twilight I love the contrast between the dark base and the gold-green flakes. This bottle is brand new (I bought more than one) so you can enjoy this Canadian exclusive too! My nail of the day and review of this polish is coming next week!

The next prize I haven't bought yet so I've had to use a stock photo. (For some reason I can't find my gloss either! Sheesh!) But if you haven't heard of this gloss yet, it's about you do! This is my favourite of the drugstore glosses I've tried, medium to full pigmentation, SPF 15, smells wonderful and non-sticky! Plus the packaging looks like something from one of the higher end brands such as Estee Lauder. The shade I'll be purchasing for the contest is Life's A Peach really lovely peachy-pink shade with a slight shimmer. In the tube it doesn't look that nice but on the lips it really shows it's potential! An excellent everyday coloured gloss I think would suit many people. A review will most likely pop up about this gloss sometime this month. I have to find my mysteriously missing glosses first lol.

Last but not least is a New York Color Blushable Creme Stick in Big Apple Blush. I adore this cream to powder formula and the pigmentation is fabulous! Pictured above is my blush stick, the winner will of course get a brand new one. You can check out my review of this blush here!