It's St Patricks Day! I really LOVE green and I always get excited to do manicures for today BUT....I realized when going through my collection this year that I really don't have many green creme polishes. I have plenty of glitters, shimmers and other such goodies, but not anywhere near enough cremes.  In either event I threw a few China Glaze polishes together with one of my favorite glitters of all time, Dollish Polish The Hero of Time. I think it came out rather nice and subtle. One of those mani's I could carry over into tomorrow if I were feeling sort of lazy. ;) I hope everyone has a happy holiday and stays safe!

For today's ABC Challenge I have a gorgeous Essence polish to show you! It's called One Kiwi A Day and it's from the Fruity collection.  It's basically a shimmery pastel green polish with little greenish blue glitters in it.  I like that when it builds up the glitters get sort of muted and the shimmer starts to flash more.  This is three coats and it builds to a nice opacity even though it starts out pretty sheer. I used the Essence Fruity top coat over this cause it smells like fruit!! :)  It does dry pretty shiny though even without top coat!
Do you have this polish?

Don't forget to check out what Emma and Kerrie had for the letter "O"!!!

This is a mani I did awhile ago that I sort of forgot about!  I just found it in my cache the other day and thought it was a perfect time to show it off!  It features one of my favorite color combinations: green and gold!  It's a simple combination but I loved it anyway! The base on this is a Duri color and I have to say, I'm still really loving Duri.  Not only are they affordable but this is ONE coat of polish.  ONE. COAT. Plus they dry super shiny.  I can't wait to get some more of them!!

Colors used:

Duri: Summer In the City

Lynderella: Change

It's time for the letter "K"!  I'm really excited about this one because I haven't had a lot of excuses to wear this gem and I'm glad I finally got around to it!  This is Picture Polish Kryptonite.  This is the only Picture Polish I have and just based on this one, I need MORE!  The formula is fantastic; this is two coats of polish. It goes on smooth and the brush is mid-sized, not too fat or too skinny.  The only thing I don't love is the size of the bottle.  But it's worth it for this gorgeous color!  You can't see it very well in this picture but this has holographic flakes of glitter running through it as well. So pretty! :)

Don't forget to check out what Emma and Kerrie have for the letter "K".

I have another butter LONDON swatch for you today! This is also from their upcoming Spring line and it's called Fiver. Fiver is a mint green so you know I HAD to have it.  I have about twelve million mint greens and I can honestly say, this one is my favorite. It's not super green and not super blue.  It's also a nice light color but it's not pale or muted.  It reminds me of appliances from the 50's! I love that the colors in their new line have a sort of vintage appeal to them.  This one also looks great with Kerfuffle, the peach tone I swatched for you earlier.  It too was opaque in two coats and even though the formula is on the thin side these are really easy to work with. I had no streaking and no bald spots. It dried to a fabulously shiny finish as well. Perfection. :)  I love it when a color turns out to be exactly what you hoped it would!

Did you pick up any of the new butter LONDON's? Which is your favorite?

It's time for another BadAss polish!! I'm so excited about these.  The last one I did was so much fun with the stars and the silver glitter.  This one is also from the "Are You Ready For Some Football" collection and it's inspired by the Green Bay Packers.  It's called Go Pack Go.  It's a green glitter with larger goldish yellow hexes.  I'll be honest and say I didn't love this one but it's really just a color preference.  It applied easily and like the one before it I didn't have to do any fishing to get the hexes out.  I first swatched it over Duri One Summer Dream, a creamy yellow.  I love the way the green stands out on they yellow and it's definitely easy to see the inspiration on this one!  I like that the polish is saturated too because that means you can do one easy coat, as shown above, and not have to keep layering it up for effect.  After I had it over the yellow I decided to go for it over green as well...I mean...might as well!

Here it is over two coats of China Glaze Paper Chasing.  As you can see the effect completely changes which is something I love about multi glitters.   Now it's the gold that stands out and the green which provides a little extra sparkle.  Obviously you could wear this over any number of colors.  I think I really prefer the yellow to the green but it's nice either way.  Go Pack Go dried a little gritty as most glitter do, but again I used one coat of Seche Vite and it was shiny and smooth.  The hexes were easy to apply and they are not curled or raised at all.  I feel like you could almost wear this one on it's own if you wanted to layer it up a few times.  One coat is VERY glittery. I didn't try layering it on it's own but I feel like three coats would be sufficient.  

Which way do you prefer Go Pack Go?

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You can purchase BadAss Polish at their Etsy store.  



This polish was sent to me for my honest review. I have not been paid and all thoughts and opinions expressed are my own.

OK I'll admit that every time butterLONDON releases a new collection I get the feeling that I NEED them all.  This fall's collection is no exception.  Except that...well...it is.  I went to the store the other day with the full intention of purchasing several polishes from the new OPI Germany collection.  When I got there one of the sales girls was RAVING about the new colors.  I was unimpressed.   I twirled them about in my hands and shined my iPhone flashlight on them (yes I do that. You can never be too sure about polishes in the bottle!), shook them and held them at all angles.  Boring.  So I decided to pass on them, go home and play with the hoards of polish I already have.  Here comes my husband with several familiar little square bottles in his hand, "Have you seen THESE?!" he asks me.  Well, in a word, yes.  But I'm kind of past the point of being impressed by holographic finishes and sparkly glitters.  That said...the polishes he chose are gorgeous.  His picks?  Trustafarian, the stunning polish you see above.  It's a light, sage green laced with linear holographic shimmer.  What I love most about this one is that it doesn't dull in the shade or lose it's luster under topcoat.  Its fabulously stunning AT ALL TIMES. And flawless application which I already expect from butterLONDON.  Also in his hands were Lovely Jubbly, which is no surprise to me since he's a sucker for glitters.  I was stunned at the smoothness of Lovely Jubbly.  I found the color and coverage very similar to the OPI Burlesque polish, Simmer and Shimmer.  But while the OPI polishes are thick and goopy, this one is perfect and smooth.  One coat of Seche Vite took away all grittiness and left it glassy smooth and shiny.  His final choice was Gobsmacked.  While I DO love the color, I have several dupes for it so we swapped it out for Shag, a fabulously decadent copper.  I'll be swatching all of these for you in upcoming posts but for now let's focus on Trustafarian.  I wore it on it's own for two days before I decided to 'jazz it up' a bit with some Essence The Huntsman polish.  I'm SO incredibly in love with the combination.  In the shade the butterLONDON goes green and rainbowy and the Essence lights up with gold and green flakes and glitter.  In the sun Trustafarian lights up like a disco and The Huntsman glitters like a pot of gold. Perfection.  My favorite combo I've done so far!!  I'm including a close-up of the two below so you can see the goodness!!

Thanks for following!! Do you have any of the new butterLONDON's?

So I joined a new challenge group recently.  I know what you're thinking...you're already doing A LOT of challenges. And it's true, I am.  But I don't know how often I'll do these challenges it's just something I'm playing with right now.  I have a TON of stamps and yet I hardly use them.  When I first got started with nail art I got them because, when used properly, they create instant and stunning art.  But since I've gotten more into free handing, I almost feel lazy using them.  I want to find a way to, ultimately, combine both free handing and stamping to make crazy amazing mani's!  So the Adventures in Stamping group I hope will inspire me to use my stamps in new ways.  This week's stamping challenge was green.  Myself being the environmentalist I am, I immediately wanted to do something to do with recycling and 'green' living.  But...that idea was scrapped when I found that I have zero stamps with anything to do with anything 'green'.  So instead I used GREEN polish.  It's vegan, three free, and thanks to a special offer...actually was FREE for me.  I'm talking about Zoya of course.  I have a love/hate relationship with Zoya and you'll see why in my picture...

The base for this was Zoya Jewel and the stamp is BM-225 using Zoya Veruschka.  If you look at my ring finger, you'll notice why I hate Zoya polish.  This picture was taken about half an hour after I did this mani and along the top edge of that nail and also along the top side of the middle finger, you can see it cracking as it peels off my nail.  I don't have this problem with any other brand (so far) and before you ask, I've tried a ZILLION top/base coats and nothing seems to help the issue.  It doesn't ALWAYS happen.  But when it does, it sucks.  So as you can imagine these didn't last long.  Shame because I wanted to take a picture in the sun.  Zoya Jewel is SO sparkly! Anyway I hope you enjoy the nails and thanks so much for following!!

Day nine of the 31 Days of Christmas Challenge is here! This one was an easy one for me. Or relatively easy anyway! I have SO many greens. But most of them are too limey or too neon or too blue for this. I've already used many of my greens for this challenge so I decided to go with one I haven't used in awhile. It's Orly Meet Me Under the Mistletoe.  It's a gorgeous green flakie, glittery, jelly'y polish.  I only have a mini of it and I SO want a full size.  But I'll get around to it eventually!!

Here's a close up of the glitter in It's Alive.  Isn't it amazing?

Base: Zoya Dree

Glitter: China Glaze It's Alive

Tips: Zoya Veruschka

Top Coat: Seche Vite