Peachy Polish Dupes

I went into Target the other day and as usual found myself in the beauty isle looking for Essie in Tart Deco (after seeing how pretty it looked online). Then I thought to myself "how unique is this color.. I mean really?" and "jeez, this is $8.59 a bottle.. I wonder if there's a cheaper dupe around here?". In no time at all I came across 3 possible dupe contenders which all cost less than the Essie polish.

From left to right: NYC in Hampton Peach, Sinful Colors in Hazard, Sally Hansen in Peach of Cake, and Essie in Tart Deco.

NYC and Essie were the most similar polish shades to one another except NYC's was a smidge brighter. Sinful's was the darkest of the lot and was more of a pumpkin peach shade in comparison. Sally's was the lightest and more of a pale peach orange shade. I ended up getting NYC as it was such a similar shade of polish to Essie's and it was also the cheapest polish of the lot at $1.72 (that's practically 5 bottles of NYC polish for the cost of 1 bottle of Essie polish). Honestly the NYC polish applied very similar to Essie's, and my nails were fully painted in 2-3 coats. For the low NYC price I ended up buying some more polish and got NYC's matte topcoat.

From left to right: NYC in Hampton Peach, and NYX in Matte Me Crazy.

As a side note... these peach shades don't photograph well on the iPhone5 as this polish has a bit more pink to it than the above photo shows (it's much prettier in person).

Dupe it Out

Click to Enlarge

Do you find it odd that paint colors of mint aren't actually the true colors of mint? Paint color mint is generally more of an aqua shade (light blue-green), while actual mint plants are more of an olive shade (green-yellow). That aside I ended up finding I had 2 polish colors I felt were polish dupes in terms of color. Essie in "Mint Candy Apple" applies much thicker than Wet n Wild in "Hush Hush/Ultra-Secret" although it's cheaper in price.

Minus Green Plus Purple

Today I decided to remove the green color from my St.Patricks Day nails leaving my leopard print nail as-is but adding a stick-on diamond decal (not sure you can see it well in this photo) to the center of the nail and fnished with a clear topcoat of Seche Vite to keep it in place. The light lilac colored polish (which may look gray from my B-Berry photo) is Essie in "Looking for Love" which took several coats of paint (I lost count of how many coats I did but it took A LOT). BTW my ring is from Etsy in case you were wondering ;D

I also got to try out Onyx Professionals (the purple colored formula) nail polish remover today which I purchased recently at Wal-Mart, it seems to work better then the Equate brand (which would take me forever to get all my polish off).

Dot or Not

I've seen this necklace at Forever21 but I noticed a lot of people actually have this one and I managed to save a $1.77 by finding a slightly different one on EBay. WOOT for being different for less, ahah...cheap is the new chic ya know XD *~*~*~Nail Time~*~*~*

I recently saw Juns mani/pedi (above) and tried my "hand" in replicating it (below) using polish I already owned ^.^ (with dots)
(without dots)

The pink color is Sally Hansen in "Pardon My French", the gold glitter is CoverGirl in "Gold Rush" and I used a base color before adding the CG color which was Milani in "Good Morning Sunshine" which was also used to create the dot work which I did using a toothpick. I ended up happy with my final results except I should've just bought the Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen in Gold cuz my dots look bleh to me.

I'm not sure if its noticeable to most but the pink on the toes appears slightly darker to me then her mani (maybe its the flash, IDK). To me it makes sense to use a darker shade on the toes because the color looks less fleshy from afar since you don't have the dots on 'em. So for the pink on her pedi I opted for my Essie in "Guchi Muchi Puchi" (I totally love saying that name, ahaha).

Mani How-To
Step1: Apply your Clear BaseCoat and let dry.
Step2: You'll need to apply a total of 3 coats of "Pardon My French" (the pink on the 2 fingers) and 2 coats of "Good Morning Sunshine" (the gold on the 3 fingers) and let dry between coats.
Step 3: Apply 5 coats of "Gold Rush" on top of your "Good Morning Sunshine" (let dry between coats) and apply your dots of "Good Morning Sunshine" on top of your "Pardon My French" using a toothpick and let dry.
Step 4: Apply a Clear TopCoat and let dry completely.

Pedi How-To
Step1: Apply your Clear BaseCoat and let dry.
Step2: You'll need to apply a total of 3 coats of "Guchi Muchi Puchi" (the pink on the 2 toes) and 2 coats of "Good Morning Sunshine" (the gold on the 3 toes) and let dry between coats.
Step 3: Apply 5 coats of "Gold Rush" on top of your "Good Morning Sunshine" (let dry between coats) and let dry.
Step 4: Apply a Clear TopCoat and let dry completely.

Well my B-Day is coming up before ya know it, hollaaa...ok please don't. My B-Day always tends to be the worst day of the year for me...I have no clue why its just generally a total cr*p day aside from getting older, I have no expectations at all but I may be celebrating during the weekend...maybe a double B-Day with Mr. Sweety?? IDK.

On a final note I'm leaving ya with this tune, chao fa nao soul sista's and mista's!

Nail Trending

I picked up "For Audrey" by China Glaze recently, got compliments on the color in fact! The pink color is "Basket Case" by Orly which is one of my favvv pinks that also gets compliments as well and I totally dig the name, haha. The gold glitter on top is "Gold Rush" by CoverGirl which looks kinda cool with a matte topcoat if you don't wanna sport the normal shiny look as pictured above.

This is a marble water technique I found when surfin' YouTube. I put these two colors on top of Milani "Colorful in Coral" which is a reddish pink color. The yellow color is Sally Hansen "Lightening" and the orange color is Essie "Bright Tights" which is a bright orange that I've been searching everywhere for. This is a messy technique to be honest and I can't say I was THAT crazy with the results but it was my first attempt at this, so be easy.

This is Milani in "Timeless" which I came across last month I believe and it was the last one left at the store apparently and I haven't seen it on the web. The top photo has a matte top coat in Essie "Matte About You" which is suppose to be all the rage this fall...my mom hates it and for my personal review its kinda cool but the matte finish starts to rub off and my nails seem to chip more. Mr. Sweety complimented me on the shiny version of this ;PI've been upping my polish game to make more unique looks so I took the matte version of Milani "Timeless" and turned it into a french manicure style using NYC "119A" and leavin' it in a shiny finish. Tip for a cheap/easy french manicure: Place a piece of scotch tape over completely dry nails to get straight lines, peel off the tape as soon as your wet nail polish has been applied ;D