Le Métier de Beauté 'Rock 'n' Romance' Mini Lacquer Set Swatches and Review

Happy Friday my fellow lacquered lovers! I have a treat for you (and me) today! A brand I've never tried before! This is another set I got from the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale last week, Le Métier de Beauté 'Rock 'n' Romance' Mini Lacquer Set. I will be honest, I never heard of this brand before last week but now I am glad I did! This set is absolutely stunning!


From left to right: Midnight Rendevous, Heat of the Night, True Romance, Chrome Passion.

This collection consists for 4 mini polishes (and they are definitely small) but gorgeous shades that are perfect for fall. Each shade has some sort of shimmer to it and are rich, deeply pigmented shades.



Above: Midnight Rendezvous - 2 coats over one coat of Seche Vite Ridge Filler

Midnight Rendezvous is a beautiful midnight blue packed with silver shimmer. It's dramatic and intense and it was virtually opaque with one coat. I added a second coat just to smooth out any spots with cuticle drag. This is definitely a gorgeous blue and I don't have any other blues with this much silver in them that still look so dark!



Above: Heat of the Night - 2 coats over 1 coat Seche Vite Ridge Filler

Heat of the Night is a gorgeous blackened red filled with shimmer. This polish looks very multi dimensional because it almost looks black on the sides and like it's lit from within with red. I'd definitely call this a "black cherry" shade. It's absolutely stunning and definitely has more red to it than OPI Black Cherry Chutney which is one of my favorite blackened red shades.



Above: True Romance - 3 coats over 1 coat Seche Vite Ridge Filler

True Romance, while pretty, was definitely my least favorite of the bunch. This definitely didn't seem to go with the "Rock and Roll" theme of the rest of the collection nor is it a color I'd wear in the fall. True Romance is a metallic, almost pearl finished pale rose infused nude. I've definitely seen other shimmer nudes I prefer this year (the Zoya Touch collection for example) so True Romance fell a bit flat for me. It was also very streaky and took 3 coats for me to get an even look.



Above: Chrome Passion - 2 coats over 1 coat Seche Vite Ridge Filler

And now, the best for last! Chrome Passion is a stunning cross between gunmetal grey and chocolate that has holographic shimmer! So fun! I love holos, and I especially love an unexpected holo! I really want a full size bottle of this color, that's how much I love it. I love the grey/brown mix of this (could this be called mushroom or dark taupe?) and the holographic sparkle just really makes it pop!

This set is part of Nordstrom's Anniversary Sale and is $25.00. I honestly love 3 of the colors so much I'm thinking about getting a back up set or else I hope they release larger bottles so I can get Chrome Passion!

Has anyone tried Le Métier de Beauté before? What colors do you like? Are you a fan of this collection?

Butter London Wallis Swatch and Review

Hello fellow Lacquered Lovers! Just a quick post today to show you the newest release from Butter London. I got this polish when I went on my "high end polish buying spree" during Nordstrom's Anniversary Sale. This polish is named for Wallis Simpson, the American Divorcee that King Edwards VIII abdicated the throne for! Can you imagine someone giving up royalty for you? That's pretty intense! Now, on to the polish!


Above: Wallis - 2 coats over 1 coat of Seche Vite Ridge Filler

This color is amazing. There, I said it! It's a sparkly olive with hints of gold, black, yellow and green. Absolutely stunning! I love the complexity of it, how in different lights it changes completely, and the opacity in two coats!



I love the bronze look this polish takes on under a light. I was sure that this color would look awful on my skin because of the yellow undertones but I am in love with it! I can't wait until the fall so I can do a full manicure of it! This color is definitely unique and I do not have anything even close to a dupe of it! Butter London Wallis is available exclusively at Nordstrom for the time being and is $14.00 a bottle.

What do you think of Wallis? Do you know of any dupes?

Sephora by OPI The Garden Of Good and Evil Swatches and Review!

Hello fellow lacquered lovers! I have a treat for you today! A mini collection from Sephora by OPI that was just recently launched! Now I always love a good mini collection considering how much nail polish I have and I feel like the minis often give a good idea of the quality of a collection. None of this collection was jumping out at me (especially not for $9.50 a bottle) however the minis looked cute so I figured I'd try them!



I love the idea behind the theme of this collection, and unlike other fall collections that have been coming out, this one actually seems cohesive! It seems as if the first color in this collection, Completely Fern-ished, only comes in the mini collection, similar to the Glee collection from this past spring. Now, on to the polishes!



Above: Completely Fern-ished - 3 coats over one coat of Seche Vite Ridge Filler

First up is Completely Fern-ished, a deep green with a lot of yellow undertones. Now while in the bottle I really liked this color, it was too yellow-toned for my skin tone. There is a very slight shimmer to this color and I think it would look great on those with darker skin tones! I wish it erred more on the side of hunter green but can't win them all!



Above: Eve-y On the Eyes - 3 coats over 1 coat of Seche Vite Ridge Filler

Next up is Eve-y on the Eyes, a gorgeous grape shade with some shimmer to it. I love this color! Surprisingly with all the purples in my collection, I couldn't find a dupe for this! It's a very warm darker purple with flecks of silvery shimmer that is just gorgeous in the light! This is an intensely pigmented jewel color and I love it! I may need a full size bottle of this one!



Above: Tempted by Teal - 3 coats over 1 coat of Seche Vite Ridge Filler

I am in love with Tempted by Teal. I was a little afraid it'd be too frosty, but it's the perfect shimmer and metallic in a gorgeous, deep, jewel toned teal. It wasn't streaky at all when I was applying it and it's just absolutely stunning. I need to get a full bottle of this!



Above: Frankly I Don't Give A-Dam - 3 Coats over 1 coat of Seche Vite Ridge Filler

Frankly I Don't Give A-Dam was a little plain for me. It seems like every brand from OPI to Zoya to China Glaze to everyone else has been coming out with grey tones and this one is not unique. It's a pretty lighter grey but I definitely don't need a back up bottle due to many other grey's in my collection.

All in all, it's a decent collection. I'm glad I got to try the purple and the teal because they are gorgeous although I could live without the green and grey. I wish I could pull off the green because it's a pretty color but just did not work for my skin tone. I should note that all of these colors would probably be opaque in two coats but since they were mini brushes, they required three.

What do you think of the Garden of Good and Evil? Are there any colors from this collection that you love?

Color Club Trippie Hippie and China Glaze Platinum Pieces - A Post by my Boyfriend!

Get ready all my lacquered lovers, yet another installment that was written by my amazing pedicurist/boyfriend AJ! See the pic below of us at my brother's rehearsal dinner!


Isn't he so cute??? Anyway, read below for his post!

A stormy summer weekend in the New York 'burbs led the Lacquered Lover and her sidekick, Sparkle (she recommended 'the Holographic Hottie' for a sidekick name, but I'm sticking with Sparkle), to the beauty store and every cosmetics aisle in three different drug stores in search of a nail polish fix to beat the rainy-day blues. And did we ever! Color Club's Trippie Hippie is a deep, royal blue with a mesmerizing purplish shimmer that catches in most any kind of light.




We had the material, we had the canvas, and we had the time. After putting on a few coats of Trippie Hippie (yeah, it was a few coats, it's a little streaky on its first application or so) and admiring my work, I found myself wishing that the pedicure wasn't over. With the weather outside, who said it had to be? I started thinking over Carly's massive collection of nail effects, and playing with combinations in my head. A matte wouldn't do, since we didn't necessarily want to hide the shimmer. And a holographic, we all love to get "holo-ed at" every now and then, right?





I ended up landing on the China Glaze Platinum Pieces Crackle because I liked the silver as it complemented the deep blue, I figured the difference in the sparkle of the shatter and the shimmer in the nail polish would be fairly evident, and it gave me an excuse to put another layer of nail polish on Carly's tootsies.

What do you think about that? Do you ever mess around with nail effects on a pedicure? Who does your pedicures? Speak your piece below!

Deborah Lippmann Get This Party Started - Nordstrom Anniversary Collection (Pic Heavy!)

Ah my lovely lacquered lovers, this extremely hot weekend was spent in my nice, cool apartment (isn't air conditioning a great invention) swatching all my new nail polishes! Brace yourself for lots of picture heavy collections and new brands this week! I figured I'd start off with the newest Deborah Lippmann collection since I absolutely adore her glitters (plus I love that her polishes are named after songs) and was super excited to get this set!




The Get This Party Started set includes three polishes. The first is Happy Birthday which is an older Deborah Lippmann but one I don't own. My fabulous boyfriend tried to buy it for me for my birthday this year but it was sold out so he got me Milani Gems instead and it's practically a dupe! However since I wanted the other two polishes, I certainly wouldn't say no to Happy Birthday. It's also good to have for comparissons since both Forget You and Candy Shop from this collection are based on Happy Birthday with the same colors and shapes of glitters just in different bases.


Above: Happy Birthday - 1 Coat over Seche Vite Ridge Filler



Above: Happy Birthday - 2 Coasts over Seche Vite Ridge Filler

Happy Birthday is a clear base jam packed with multi-colored glitter in different sizes. Now there are definitely a lot of dupes out there like Milani Gems, however I think Happy Birthday has more glitter packed into it. I've worked with Deborah Lippmann glitters before so I definitely waited a few mintues between coats because if you don't, it just pushes the glitter around on the nail and makes it a mess, but if you wait for the first coat to dry a bit then the second coat will just glide over it. I love this polish and it would be great for layering over almost any color! I'd love to see it over a red or green during the winter holidays because it's just incredibly festive!



Above - Candy Shop - 1 Coat Over Seche Vite Ridge Filler



Above: Candy Shop - 2 Coats over Seche Vite Ridge Filler

Ah Candy Shop, you were my least favorite when I first saw the promos, but now, I love you. Anyone who follows this blog knows I am NOT a fan of pinks. However how can you hate on this adorable bubblegum pink that's littered with the same glitters as Happy Birthday? You can't look at this polish without grinning because it's just so cute! It's girly and bright and the glitter really makes it look multi-dimensional. Like Happy Birthday, this needed two coats and it really got very opaque at that point, no real visible nail line even though the pink is a bit jelly like and the glitter really shines through. This color would be perfect for spring or summer. Just be careful to let the first layer fully dry before doing a second coat, because I did not and had some drag on my nails.



Above: Forget You - One Coat over Seche Vite Ridge Filler



Above: Forget You - Two Coats over Seche Vite Ridge Filler

Forget You? Not a chance. This polish is divine and might have beaten out Bad Romance and Across the Universe as my favorite Deborah Lippmann polishes. Forget You takes the same glitters from Happy Birthday and puts it into a black jelly. It's just stunning. So festive, could absolutely be worn year round and very "blingy!" Looking at the pictures again now, I'm sad I didn't do a full manicure of it, that's how much I love it! Like the others in this collection, Forget You needed two coats to get rid of the visible nail line and you must let the first coat dry before starting the second coat to avoid drag.

Bottom line is that I'm in love with this collection! This collection can be bought at Nordstroms either in store or online for $40. Happy Birthday is the only one from this collection that is available on its own for now but the rest should be available by the holiday season.

What do you think of this collection? Any must haves for you? What are your favorite glitters?

Butter London Lady Muck and Nicole by OPI Make a Comet-Ment

First of all, let me say thanks to everyone who follows me! The blog is at over 300 followers and that's just so awesome! Now, on to the nail polish.

I was having NADD and couldn't decide what color to do so my fabulous boyfriend went into a huge pile of untrieds that I have and came back with two polishes, Butter London Lady Muck and Nicole by OPI Make a Comet-Ment. I wanted Lady Muck since it came out as part of the Spring/Summer 2011 collection and I saw it swatched because I love grey shades! I found it at Ricky's NYC last week and it's just so pretty!





Keep in mind that my camera is making the color slightly more grey than it is in real life, but this color is GORGEOUS! The application was great, went on opaque in two coats. It's a light dusty grey with a ton of shimmer in it and it leans towards cornflower blue a tiny bit. Now since I LOVE to do an accent, I did the ring finger in Nicole by OPI Make a Comet-Ment which is silver glitter in a clear base with a bit of holographic sparkle that shows up without the flash. The picture below is a bit blurry to show you how holographic it is.



I love both of these colors! They are both fairly unique in my collection, Lady Muck definitely has more blue and more shimmer than any other light grey I have and Make a Comet-Ment is not a linear holographic but more scattered and just adds a bit of bling! Now I'm excited to go home later because I have a ton of polishes coming in the mail including new Deborah Lippman Glitters and new Butter Londons as well as my first MAC, Dior, Nars and Illamasqua polishes so expect lots of swatches and pictures next week!

What do you all think of grey polishes? Do you have any Butter London or Nicole by OPI that are must haves? Do you love holographic accent nails as much as I do?

Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Misbehaved

This is actually my third review of Sally Hanson Salon Effects. You can read my reviews of Kitty Kitty here and my review of Girl Flower here. Todays post is about Misbehaved, which was actually the first Salon Effects pattern that caught my eye.



Misbehaved is a champagne/gold background with a black fishnet design over it. I was going to the beach last weekend when I tried this so I figured that it would match a lot of my outfits plus it would last longer than my normal manicures!



I wish I had taken pictures in the sun but I was in a rush to leave my apartment the morning after I put these nail polish strips on. The gold colors really shone through and gave my nails an amazing sheen. On the ferry to Fire Island I had three women ask me about my nails! They all loved it and wanted to know how I did it and were so excited when I told them that they could buy it in a drugstore!



The only issues I had with this application were that I had a slight fold/crease on two of my nails however part of that was my fault for not warming the strips up before applying them to make them more flexible. As much as I really wanted to do the 10 day challenge for you all, alas I wanted to swatch other polishes so I only made it 4 days. However in those four days my nails still looked perfect with just a tiny bit of tipwear that was easily fixed by filing my nails! Now, since I never really gave tips on how to do these properly, here are Carly's tips for putting on Sally Hansen Salon Effects:

* Make sure you read the directions that come in the box before you start.
* Use nail polish remover to clean off your nails, file your nails to your desired length and shape and wash your hands before you start so everything is ready to go.
* Only open one foil packet at a time (8 strips) because if you have smaller hands like me, you can get away with only using one packet and reusing the other strips another time!
* Warm the strip in your hand before you apply it, it will make it stick to your nails easier and be more flexible so you don't get bumps or folds.
* If you are choosing between two sizes, pick the larger and use the cuticle stick to get rid of the excess polish.
* Don't try to rip the excess polish off the top of your nail. Use a scissor and leave a bit to fold over the tip of your nail and then use the file to file it down. This reduced tip wear.

All in all, I love Sally Hansen Salon Effects. For someone like me who can't do nail art they are amazing! I have yet to try any of the neons or glitters (but I will soon) and I just love all the options. Plus they are amazing for when you go on vacation and can't do your nails for any length of time or if you're not afflicted with NADD (Nail Attention Deficit Disorder) like I am.

What do you all think of the Salon Effects? Have you tried any? Any prints in particular you'd like to try?


DISCLOSURE: this product was sent to me for review by Sally Hansen. For more information on my disclosure policy, please go here.

CND Effects featuring Wet and Wild Black Creme

At the end of 2010, I was a bit bored of my polish collection and wanted a way to dress up my polishes without adding glitter (I still didn't know about the tin foil method of removing glitters) so I decided to buy a bunch of CND Effects. These effects look fairly sheer in the bottle but they come in an array of colors and finishes from shimmer to sparkles and most colors you can imagine. I own 9 of them and I love them! I decided to swatch them over Wet and Wild Black Creme because I was in a bit of a rush (as you can see by the messy job I did) because it's the only one coat black polish I own. So here is Black Cream on its own:




Such a great black cream and I can't wait to try to Konad stamp with it! Now, on to the effects. First up I will show you the sparkle effects that I have:






From left to right (pointer to pinkie): Amythest Sparkle, Jade Sparkle, Crimson Sparkle, Raspberry Sparkle.

I love all of these! The Amythest Sparkle makes the black look like a blackened purple, the Jade Sparkle really shines and shimmers and almost comes out olive green, the Crimson makes the black almost a sparkly blood red and the Raspberry sparkle is a dark pink. They all look gorgeous over black.



This is Gold Sparkling and Silver Sparkling over the Black Creme. The pointer and ring fingers are Gold Sparkling and the middle and pinkie fingers are Silver Sparkling. Forgive the picture, I had trouble capturing this one. They are both suspended in a clear base and the Gold Sparkling is gold with bits of holographic glitter and the silver has more silver and less holographic glitter. Neither of these are as opaque in their coverage as the Sparkles above, but it adds a tiny bit of bling to any manicure. I'd say these are my two least favorite in the bunch but still very pretty if you want a subtle glitter.




Ring finger - Scarlet Shimmer. Middle Finger - Emerald Shimmer. Pointer finger - Ice Blue Shimmer. Wow, these effects changed the color so much! They actually look opaque! I think the Emerald Shimmer is my favorite because it's just so gorgeous but all three of these are amazing. I love how much they changed the black and really made a new nail polish! These are incredible and definitely the most full coverage of all the CND Effects.

Bottom line is that these are amazing! They really transform any color and make it something new and different and are always fun to play with over different colors to see what combinations you can come up with! I will say that darker colors work better since I tried to swatch them over white as well and they barely showed up.

What other colors besides black would you like to see the CND Effects swatched over? Which are your favorites?