Quo for Orly~ Christmas Red NOTD

Full Sunlight

For my birthday this year (December 10th, so not too long ago) my sister gave me this little Quo by Orly polish along with a lovely shirt. This polish is a true red that doesn't lean blue, pink or orange. It didn't come with a name as it's a mini bottle but I believe in full size it is Red Hot. It's a perfect festive shade for the holidays, exactly the colour of Rudolph's nose or Santa's suit. All my photos are coming up a little orange but it doesn't have that cast in real life- it's a bright cherry red. 

(Truest to colour)

 I was actually really impressed by the formula of this little polish. It was almost completely opaque in one coat and it glided on really nicely. The brush though small was very good too, firm but flexible. 

In the photos I'm not wearing any base or top coat so as you can see it's quite shiny. It also seems to be wearing well so that's a bonus.

Beware those that have big fingers though! This bottle is tiny! I have small hands to begin with so you can sort of get an idea from the photo above. The little bottle stands about 2 1/2 inches high. But such a cute way to try a shade don't you think?

Quo by Orly polishes are available in Canada at Shopper's Drug Marts.

Overall, I like the colour, the packaging and the formula. Plus it's tiny so it doesn't take up a lot of room. Heck I may actually be able to finish a polish this size! Classic.

Sprite Rating: 9.5/10 Not sure why I took off a 1/2 point but I guess I just don't feel it deserves a perfect score. Maybe for the super small handle of the brush.

Would I buy this again? Yes, the formula was great and the mini is adorable, especially for colours you aren't planning on wearing too often.

Cult Nails Get It On Base Coat and Wicked Fast Top Coat~ Review

Cult Nails was offering a deal with the release of their Base and Top Coats Get It On, and Wicked Fast a little while ago and I've been putting both of them through the wringer testing them out! I've now used them for four separate manicures with differing types of polishes and formulas.

First off, like the other Cult Nail polishes, these are well priced ($8 USD each or $15 USD for the two of them together) and have a easy to hold sleek cylinder bottle with excellent brush. Both have excellent consistency- a ever so slightly thin formula that applies easily to the nail. Wicked Fast is especially surprising in this aspect because all previous quick dry top coats I've tried are gloopy.

Wicked Fast is clear whereas Get It On is tinted pink. At first I was a little skeptical about the pink tint with the Get It On but now I'm so glad! It does somehow seem to brighten the nail just by itself, it doesn't affect the polish colour layered over it at all, and it makes it easy to spot out of all my other polishes. I almost wish the Wicked Fast was tinted blue so I could spot it easily too!

Get It On has a slightly rubberized texture to it to help with adhesion as well as ingredients to help with peeling, spliting, strengthening, and thinning nails. That's a whole bunch of stuff in one! It doesn't help with my splitting nails that I sometimes get as much as the Nail Tek II does, but my splitting is quite hard core at times so I wasn't expecting it to fix it. It doesn't seem to aggravate the issue though which is nice. On top of all that Wicked Fast is supposed to keep the same consistency throughout the bottle (unlike China Glaze's Fast Forward coat which becomes a sludgy mess half way through) and of course like all of Cult Nails polishes is Big Three Free.

Wicked Fast dries quicker than any other quick dry top coat I've tried, including my well loved China Glaze Fast Forward Top Coat. In addition to this you only need a thin layer of this stuff, which is the complete opposite of the China Glaze one which you have to almost flood the nail when applying. It also dries quite shiny too. Get It On has a very small drying time too.

Now onto what I'm sure most of you are waiting for, does it help my manicure last? GOSH YES! Plus, it dries so quick that I don't have to be careful with my fingers in worry that I'll ruin my manicure, and I never get the nicks or ripples that I sometimes used to get when the top layer of polish had dried my the layers beneath didn't and moved.

With the Cult Nails polishes I got an amazing SIX DAYS of wear out of the polishes before I noticed tip wear and chipping. That is literally unheard of for me! I am really tough on my nails, I'm forever typing, reading, writing, cleaning (I work in a lab as a lab assistant cleaning a bunch), washing, putting on moisturizer, etc. I'm usually lucky to get my nails to last three days, so as you can imagine six days is a miracle. Even my crappy polishes that only last one day on my nails with other base and top coats I get a minimum of three days wear with the Get It On and Wicked Fast combo.

Left Hand Day 7

Right Hand Day 7 (Dominant Hand so more wear)
Major chip on ring finger happened that day

The only thing I can say about these that is even slightly negative is that you need to remember not to blob on the Wicked Fast top coat because it can bubble if you do that, but since you only need a small amount it's more of a getting used to the better formula than anything else!

Overall, these were the best impulse purchase I've ever made. I seriously can't believe how awesome they are every time I do a new manicure. They work well with a variety of polish types, and are a cinch to use. If one of my friends decides to get into polish I'll be buying them a set of these because I'm in love.

Sprite Rating: 10/10 Holy Grail!

Will I purchase again? Yes. I most certainly will. I've already been eyeing my bottles trying to estimate how long they'll last before I need to make another purchase of them. I feel like I need to hoard them even though they aren't limited edition or going away! Go get yourself a bottle now!

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 Living Water~ Review and Swatches

L-R: Living Water, Iconic

Living Water has been a polish I've been eyeing since it's release so when I placed my order for Cult Nails not that long ago I knew I needed to include it! Living Water is a dark blue-teal jelly with bright aqua shimmers in it, and to me looks exactly like the name in the sun! It's very unique and is the perfect dark shade as it's distinctly blue-teal even in low light. A pet peeve of mine is shades so dark they look black except when in full sun, so this made me really happy!

Living Water applied well (just as Iconic did- you can see my review here: Iconic Cult Nails Review). I had a little bit of patchiness on some nails but that was solved with a third coat. It lasted well like Iconic did too. One thing I'd definitely like mention though is that this polish dries a weird sort of matte texture, so it really really needs/benefits from a top coat in my opinion.

Same great brush and bottle as Iconic had. I really wish my photos showed just how lovely this polish is but they really just don't capture it. I tried though!

Cult Nail's polishes cost $10 USD and are shipped really quickly and securely! I love how they're packaged in little wraps of paper-towel/cloth-like material.

Overall, I think this polish is a good pigmented and unique shade. Perfect for fall in it's richness. Though again, I think it needs to have a top coat (which for me isn't a problem as I use a top coat always anyways). I do love the Cult Nails formula though, I get the best wear and application with these!

Sprite Rating: 8.5/10- lost points for slight patchiness (i.e. three coats and some spot touch-ups) and weird matte dry-down but other than that an awesome polish.

Would I Buy It Again? Yes, I totally would. Great shade, easy application, great wear.

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!

Spa Ritual Howl~ Review

SpaRitual's Howl polish from the fall Wilde collection was the only shade I felt I needed in my life. All the blogger photos were gorgeous, it looks stunning in the bottle. A dark brown with copper shimmer throughout. However, on the nail is just seems to fall flat. Even in bright sunshine you can barely see the shimmer at times, and the dark brown base looks black in most lighting. Plus, if you want any hope of seeing the shimmer you need a super shiny top coat. I tried it first with an older topcoat I had hanging around and it pretty much killed the uniqueness of the polish. 

I tried very hard to show the shimmer in these pics, they were all in direct sunlight but as you can see there isn't very much. This makes me sad because the polish in the bottle looks so gorgeous! Or when I'm in the process of removing it and the base removes a little before the shimmer so you can see it more.
The formula itself was pretty good. It went on easily in two coats and wear was about average for me (which is 2-3 days before major tip wear and chips).

Overall, I'm kind of disappointed. I was really hoping for a more unique and glowy sort of polish but mostly it just looks black or black-brown. Sparitual is vegan though so that's a plus, and I love the bottle, not only is it shaped nicely the rubber cap rocks.

Sprite Rating: 5/10, lost points for the potential it had but didn't live up to and the need for a super shiny top coat.

Would I Buy it Again? No, I wouldn't. I liked the idea of it and other bloggers seem to be able to coax out it's hidden wonders but on me it just looks black most of the time. *sigh* And I had such high hopes.

Sephora OPI Winter~ 2011

Sephora has recently released their OPI nail polish collection for winter. Personally, I don't want to think about the winter months yet, but these polishes are quite lovely! Take a look at the variety of shades and finishes of the single polish bottles below :D

Be-Clause I Said So- Clear base with medium and chunky red glitter

Chest-Nuts About You- Opaque pink champagne with shimmer

Countdown To The Kiss- Opaque royal blue with medium glitter

Don't Be Eggnogious- Clear base with medium and chunky copper glitter

Keep Me On My Mistletoe- Opaque champagne gold with shimmer

New Years Red-Solution- Opaque metallic golden red shimmer

Naughty Is The New Nice- Opaque ice blue with silver shimmer

Stop Stocking Me- Opaque metallic golden plum shimmer

Sugar Plum Fairies- Clear base with medium and chunky purple glitter

Good Tidings We Bling- Clear base with fine and chunky red and green glitter

Also released are the mini sets! The beginning picture of the post is the 18 piece mini set called Glimmer Wonderland and retails for $48 USD. It has colours from the core line but also includes some shades from this year's seasonal releases too.

Glimmer Wonderland 4 Piece Mini Set- $18 USD

Glimmer Wonderland 6 piece mini set- $22 USD

So that's it. Any colours really calling out to you? 

Note: OPI is owned by Coty, a company which does test on animals. However, OPI a smaller company under Coty does not test on animals. I just want to make this clear.