The end has come!! As promised today I'm going to be showing you the difference between using a nail strengthener and simply not polishing your nails. Above you see my final results of four weeks of butter LONDON Horse Power. As I mentioned in my last post I had a bit of peeling but nothing really major and most of it on a previously injured nail. You can see that there's some significant growth and no breaks so that's definitely a plus! On this hand I went polish free with just strengthener for the first week and then after used the strengthener as a base coat under polishes. On my other hand I used NO products. Here are the results of that...

Look at the height of my C curve on the right vs the left. It's nearly double. This is caused by the polish. It creates dryness which causes the nail to curve under more. THAT in turn makes it easier to break the nails. Over dryness can make them more brittle which increases this risk. But in general this is simply changing the shape of my nail. It can be more slight on some people than others but I think that most of us are simply too used to the polished shape to realize that it's not the one we were born with!  Is it serious? No. Will it hurt you? No. But is it better for your nails to grow out polish free? Well...let's just say, it will give you a much stronger base to start polishing!! :)  (as a side note: you can also see in this picture that the Horse Power did not add any thickness to my nail!)

Have you ever tried this experiment? What were your results?

I have something REALLY exciting to share with you guys today! As you know if you follow me on Instagram (@bee_polished), September is the month of giveaway's for Bee Polished! You'll definitely want to be following along this month because you'll have a few chances to win some super awesome stuff.  This is the first of the giveaways this month and ladies and gents, it's a doozy. :) 

I'm sure you've all been following along with my Digital Dozen monthly challenges.  Myself and 21 other gorgeous ladies, bring you one week of art based on a different theme every month.  It's our one year anniversary and to celebrate, we're bringing you a CRAZY amazing giveaway AND twelve days of art based on all the themes we've done over the past year.  This giveaway is open internationally and will end on the 15th of September. The winner will recieve a $200 gift certificate to their choice of nail polish stores!! Just think of all the nail polish that will buy you! You can enter the giveaway below, and don't forget to stay tuned over the next two weeks to see us do all the themes again!! :)

Also be sure to stick around for Octobers upcoming series on small nails BIG art.  I'm trying out a new nail growth product and want to use my nubbin time to celebrate shorter nails!

So you've seen all the OPI Liquid Sand polishes now and you all know that my favorite is the purple one! Well if you loved Can't Let Go too, then today could be your lucky day.  I'm going to give you all a chance to win a bottle for yourself!  I'd love to have given away the set but rising shipping costs have limited me and I want to keep this available for my international followers too!  Find details about entering below! This is a BRAND NEW full size bottle.  The winner we be drawn on the 24th of February and I will contact them via email.  You will have 48 hours to claim the prize or I will draw again. International entries are welcome. Thanks for following and good luck!!

Today I have something SUPER exciting to share with you all!! Lime Crime's new polish collection, Les Desserts d'Antoinette. There are a few reasons I'm excited to share these with you, and only one of them is that I'm totally obsessed with Marie Antoinette!  If you're not familiar with Lime Crime, they are a cruelty free, vegan (they do have one product which contains beeswax) company which was born in 2008.  Until recently, the majority of their product line was eye shadows and lipsticks but they recently added nail polish and are currently adding a line of face products.  I do have a few Lime Crime eye shadows and they're lovely so I was interested to see how the polishes would be. So how were they?  Well here we go....

I'm starting with the brushes on these because I was surprised at the brush in the bottle!  Here I'm comparing Lime Crime's brush with a China Glaze and an OPI brush.  Since it comes in a shorter bottle I expected a thinner brush a la China Glaze but if you look at the picture you'll see that it's much closer to the wide brushes of OPI.  It's not quite as wide as the OPI but it's wide enough to cover the nail easily yet not so wide that it's not feasible for use on toes!  The cap and brush are shorter than a lot of commercial brushes; I'd liken them more to a butterLONDON brush where length is concerned.  There are seven polishes in the Lime Crime line, and here they are...

This is Milky Ways.  It's an off white polish intended for use with French manicures, but I'm in love with it on my nails.  It's almost got a hint of peach to it and it's a perfect soft white polish.  I could see myself wearing it just as is rather than as a French manicure.  The formula on this one was amazing.  With whites and cremes I usually find streakiness, unevenness, and thin formula.  This was none of the above.  This is two coats and there isn't a streak in sight!  It also dried to a shiny finish (there is no topcoat on these!) which is another big bonus for me!  I think this turned out to be my favorite of the bunch!

Next up we have Crema de Limon.  This is described as a pastel yellow but I think it leans a little more on the bright side than pastel.  I have a few pastel yellows and this is much more pigmented than any of those but it's not bright enough to be neon or unflattering. Like with Milky Ways there were no streaks, no unevenness and it dried to a shiny, glassy finish.  I don't know that I would have chosen this color for myself if I were buying these but it was actually very flattering on me which is surprising since yellows normally hate my skin tone! 

Then we have Peaches ♥ Cream.  This was my least favorite of the bunch.  It again is not really pastel but also not neon.  It's like pastel on a night out! Very pigmented and very vivid.  I didn't love it on my skin tone but even though it has peach in the name, they do describe it as an orange on the website which is much more color accurate.  I had some issues with formula on this one.  Even though all the polishes have the same viscosity, this one seemed to want to drag and streak a bit.  This is three coats and it evened out nicely but it was the only one of the bunch I needed three for.  It did dry shiny and glassy like the others, but it wasn't my favorite to work with. 

Here we have Parfait Day.  I'm just going to throw it out there...for a pastel collection, these are very intensely colored.  This one was no different than the others.  It's not as soft as you'd expect a pastel to be but I really loved this one.  I'm not a pink person by any means but this has the right amount of softness and femininity and just a punch of fierce.  No complaints on the formula on this one either.  Two coats, no streaks, shiny finish. 

This is Lavendairy.  This one surprised me a bit.  It really reminds me of Barry M Berry Ice Cream.  It's purple...but wait...it's also pink?  It's a very warm, pink toned purple and again it was very intensely colored.  These are not your grandmothers pastels.  The formula on this one was great but it didn't dry as shiny as the others.  I'm not sure if that's something to do with the pigments but it had a more semi-matte, neon type of finish.  Nothing a bit of top coat wouldn't take care of though.  This is another favorite for me.  It was super flattering and I like that it's not a straight up purple. 

Here's Once in A Blue Mousse.  This was another pleasant surprise for me.  It's blue and it's sort of pastel, but it has just a hint of soft green in it.  It really gives the color dimension and it was SUCH a pretty color.  Other than Milky Ways this is a favorite for me.  It was so gorgeous I hesitated to remove it to finish my swatching!!  I had a hard time capturing the color on this so it's more intense than what you see in the picture but the basic color is accurate.  It's not pastel but it's soft and rich.  No formula issues on this one.  This is two coats and it dried to a shiny finish.

Finally we have Pastelchio.  This one is a stunner.  It's literally almost a neon but it just hinges on that line of crossing over!  It's bright, intense and in your face.  I was surprised at how intense it really was when it was on my nails!  It did dry to a semi-matte type finish same as Lavendairy but again a little top coat solves the problem nicely.  The formula was lovely on this one, two coats no streaks, but beware of using a base coat on this one!! I didn't and I should have (duh) so I did get a bit of staining from it but nothing serious.  Actually I'm surprised it didn't stain worse with no base coat but I also didn't wear it for an extended period of time!

Overall, I'm really impressed with these.  I think the formula is on par with high end brands and the retail on these is $5.99 each which puts them at practically a drug store price point.  They're not thin but they're not super thick either and for the most part they only need two coats. The wear time on them is good, although I've only had them a day so I can't speak too much on how they wear.  So far so good and I have no chips or issues yet.  I love that they're unique colors, I haven't seen anything like them before and with over 900 polishes in my arsenal that's really saying something! I also love that they're vegan and three free! I'd love to get more of these in the future! Thanks for following along with me! I hope you enjoyed this collection!

Do you have any Lime Crime polishes? How do you like them?

Well...I finally made it out to Sephora to see what's left of my favorite make-up line, Tokidoki. Remarkably, a lot of what I wanted was still there so I pretty much cleaned up at 40% off!! I also managed to snag four of their polishes, which I'm going to be swatching for you today! The polishes I'm showing you today are: SANDy, Latte, and Donutella.  I also purchased Savana but it's very similar to SANDy though it doesn't have the multi-bar glitter.  So here we go...

SANDy is a clear base with gold micro glitter and gold and holo bar glitter.  This is three coats. The coverage is nice but still a bit sparse as you can tell from the second photo which was taken in the sun.  The formula is thin on these and the brush is on the thin side as well. I'd liken it to an Essie or China Glaze brush.  Even though it's a thin formula it's pretty easy to work with and it wasn't difficult to build an even coverage.

Latte is a clear base with blue micro glitter and purple and holo bar glitter.  I think this was my favorite of the three color wise.  It also required three coats for full coverage but you can see that it's more compact than SANDy and it really covered well with three coats.  I like that these glitter polishes are buildable so that they can be used over things or on their own.  The formula was the same as the SANDy; a bit thin but very easy to work with.

Finally, we have Donutella.  I have no idea how they decided on the character names for these because to me, there is nothing Donutella about this shade (nor was there anything Latte about the previous!!) but it's a gorgeous color none the less.  Same as the preceeding two Donutella is a clear base with a deep magenta micro glitter and holo bar glitter.  It had the most vibrant color of the three and was mostly opaque in three coats.  Formula was the same as the previous two.  I really love the way these all shimmered in the sun. They're just insanely sparkly and reminded me a lot of the China Glaze Prismatics.  

Overall I'm happy with these polishes.  They cost me $6 each which I felt like was a fair price for them.  The coverage is thin but easily builds to opaque in just a few coats which is a plus to me because sometimes I like a full coverage glitter and other times I like a more sparse look over another color.  The bar glitter can sometimes make polishes a nightmare to work with but these went on very easily without any maneuvering required to get the bars on the nail properly.  If they weren't discontinued, I'd definitely buy more!  Plus the bottles are VERY thick and super cute.  They're not cheaply packaged at all.  I did also purchase Savana and it's a clear base with gold and pink micro glitter.  It reminded me a lot of SANDy without the holo bars, but SANDy does not have the pink micro glitter either.  Thanks for looking!! Do you have any Tokidoki polishes?