Lacquered Lover Collaboration with Pretty and Polished: New York City Lights Swatches and Review!

Good morning my fellow lacquered lovers!  Happy Tuesday to you all!  I hope you are all doing well on this hot summer day!  Today, I have something really special to share with you all:

Above:  Picture by Pretty & Polished

I was given the amazing opportunity to work with the lovely Chelsea of the brand Pretty & Polished along with 4 other bloggers to help create a polish for the upcoming Blogger Collection!  Chelsea based my polish off of my love of purple and sparkles and blue and flakes!  Now, without further ado, on to the polish!

 Above:  2 coats of New York City Lights with no flash

Above:  2 coats of New York City Lights with Flash

New York City Lights (obviously named after my hometown of NYC) is a gorgeous semi sheer violet with blue iridescence.  This polish is sparkly, flaky and fairly duochrome all in one!  What I really love about it is that you can wear it on its own, OR you can layer it over a darker shade to get all sorts of fun colors!  And the best part is that even though it's a buildable shade, it's not thick and just 2 coats are needed for full opacity!

Above:  Macro shots of New York City Lights

I hope you all enjoy this polish because I had such a blast creating it with Pretty and Polished!  Be sure you are following the brand on Facebook and Twitter to find out when this and the rest of the Blogger Collection will be released and stay tuned for more swatches!

What did you think of this polish? Must have? Any dupes?

The products in this post were sent to me for my unbiased review. Please see my disclosure policy for more information.

OCC Lip Tar Stained Gloss Giveaway for Lacquered Lover's 2nd Birthday!

Good afternoon my fellow lacquered lovers!  Happy Friday!  I hope you're all having a wonderful week!  It came to my attention earlier this week that Lacquered Lover will turn 2 on May 20th!  How crazy is that?  I can't believe that it's been two years since I started this blog to share my love of nail polish and writing with the world.  I truly never thought anyone but my Mom and a few friends would read it and it humbles and amazes me all the time that you all have taken this incredible journey with me!

So, to celebrate, the incredible David from Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics has generously donated the entire new Lip Tar Stained Gloss line for me to give away!  I still remember the first time I posted about an OCC Lip Tar at Fashion Night Out last September and I fell in love with it and that's when I decided to start blogging about makeup!  David and the OCC team has always been amazing to me and I'm so glad to be able to work with brands like them that I truly believe it!

So please join in the celebration by entering this giveaway with me!  Just fill out the form below!  Thanks again for supporting Lacquered Lover and can't wait to see what the future holds!

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Lacquered Lover at Coachella 2013!

Good morning my fellow lacquered lovers!  Happy Friday to you all!  I hope you're all having a lovely week!  I know, I've been a terrible blogger lately but I hope you've been following my social media (@lacqueredlover on Twitter and Instagram and Lacquered Lover on Facebook) to keep up with me!  If you have, then you know that I got to go visit my awesome brother and sister in law 2 weeks ago to go to the amazing Coachella Music and Arts festival in California.  I wanted to share some of my pictures with you all, including some hair, makeup and nail looks!

Ok I forgot to take a "normal" picture of my nails but I used Illamasqua Lament and an accent of Jindie Nails Candy Land Remix!

My sister in law had OPI Cajun Shrimp on her nails!

A few of my different looks throughout Coachella.  As you can see, I was a big fan of the sunglasses, even rocked a straw fedora one day, always had on bright lipstick and used my Beachwaver, Wrap Up and a fishtail braid!

My sis in law and I both used the Beachwaver on our hair while our friend used a Wrap Up!

Our tickets arrived in style

My first view of the iconic ferris wheel and the palm springs style house!

Yes, there was a gigantic holographic snail that moved.  It was pretty glorious.

 The ferris wheel at different times

The VIP Rose Garden

A collage of the concerts

All in all, it was an incredible weekend!  I had a blast!  I will leave you with a couple videos of my favorite performances!

Lacquered Lover Goes to Work for Sarah Potempa!

Good afternoon my fellow lacquered lovers!  Happy Wednesday to you all!  Exciting stuff happening in my world these days!  I wanted to share with you all my amazing new job!  I am officially the Social Media Manager for Sarah Potempa Hairstyling Tools!  Now, some of you might know of my obsession with top knots and the first product I ever tried from Sarah Potempa's line was the Wrap Up during NYFW!

I was seriously obsessed with my Wrap Up on the runway!  Then  you may remember my Vine video about how to use the Wrap Up:

Finally I had the pleasure of meeting the Sarah Potempa team and once we decided it would be a good fit, I started yesterday!  So today, I got to try out the amazing Beachwaver curling iron!

LOVE the waves in my hair!  And how cute is the packaging?  The offices are also AMAZING!

Yep that's a beach scene!  All in all, I'm super excited for this wonderful opportunity with Sarah Potempa and be sure you check out her website, Facebook and Twitter/Instagram @sarahpotempa !

Lacquered Lover on Lifestyle Mirror Equality Now Red Beauty Post featuring Butter London Knees Up!

Good morning my fellow lacquered lovers!  Happy Wednesday to you all!  I hope you are having a lovely week so far!  I wanted to share with you all an article that I was lucky enough to be a part of yesterday!  As you might know, here in the US, the Supreme Court is currently hearing 2 cases about the right to gay marriage in this country.  To show support, many people have been wearing red yesterday and today (If you check out my instagram @lacqueredlover you can see what I'm wearing and a few of my favorite lipsticks!)  When the fabulous Philip Picardi from the website Lifestyle Mirror asked me for my favorite red nail polish to be included in an article about beauty bloggers, favorite reds, I had to be involved!

I was so excited to be among some of my favorite beauty bloggers!  Now what was my pick for my favorite red nail polish?

The fabulous Butter London Knees Up!  This bright, shimmery red is simply gorgeous and perfect for any occasion!  I adore red nails, for years it was one of the only colors I would wear and it still holds a place dear to my heart.  Whether for nail art or on its own, Knees Up is just a beautiful shade!  Plus it's one of the first Butter London nail polishes I ever bought!

Stay tuned later to see what some of my other favorite red nail polishes and lipsticks are!  If  you want to read the full Lifestyle Mirror article about beauty bloggers favorite red products, click HERE!

What do you think of this polish?  What's your favorite red?

Lacquered Lover featured on Intergloss!

Good afternoon my fellow lacquered lovers!  Happy Monday to you all!  My week is certainly starting off with a bang!  Today, I am super excited to show you guys that my blog was featured on the awesome website Intergloss!

Intergloss is a fabulous website where you can go and search for all your favorite and unknown beauty products!  Real people (like me!) go on and review products when they like them or search for new ones!  You can find your own new products and help others find them!  It's a great community for beauty lovers like all of us and I highly recommend you check it out HERE.  You can also read the full interview with me and learn a bit more about me, my blog and my life!  Hope to see you all on there soon!

Hurricane Sandy

Good evening my fellow Lacquered Lover! Happy Friday! Just a quick note of thanks tonight. Many of my amazing readers, knowing I live in New York City, have reached out to me in the last few days to see if I was ok in the aftermath of the storm. My apartment lost power Monday night as did much of Manhattan and by Wednesday we no longer had heat or water left. I'm very fortunate that I was able to leave the city by Thursday afternoon. So many people are in far worse situations and my hearts go out to them.

So, I just wanted to say thanks! The outpouring of love I received from you, the amazing readers on my blog really warmed my heart. Fellow New Yorkers have offered help, even ones I've never met, people I've never even interacted with emailed or contacted me through social media and it truly humbles and amazes me. You guys are truly incredible and its an honor to be able to share my love of nail polish with you all and the support you guys give me in return is something I never imagined but appreciate more than I can say. I hope you are all safe and I will be back to regular posting as soon as I can!

Lacquered Lover Gets Easihair Pro Hair Extensions for NYFW!

Good morning my fellow Lacquered Lovers!  Happy Saturday!  Today, I have a really special post for you!  As some of you might remember, about a year ago, I cut 14 inches off my hair to donate to the charity Locks of Love.  Fast forward to February NYFW and I met a fantastic stylist named Christopher Box who was there styling for the Parker Grey show!  I was a little lost as it was one of the first shows I ever attended so Chris and his awesome team were hanging out with me and we hit it off!  Fast forward to this week and in preparation for the NYFW shows this week, Chris very kindly offered to give me extensions so I would look fabulous!  Let's start with my before picture:

Don't judge my bad hair, it was a million degrees in NYC and SO humid that day!  :)

 Getting started!  Chris was fantastic!  The way these extensions work is that they take a very small section of your natural hair and sandwich it between two of the Easihair Pro extensions!  It's totally painless and the transformation is amazing!

 Here is one of the panels of extensions and the brochure for Easihair Pro!  Since my hair has an ombre thing going on now, he used a bunch of different colored extensions to make sure they blended!

Yep, they gave me wine, that always helps when doing a hair change!  I purposely was facing away from the mirror because I didn't want to see it until it was all done!

A close up shot of Chris sectioning off some hair to attach some of the extensions!  You can see some of the length there already!

And here is the final result!  I absolutely love it!  It's so full and voluminous and they feel like my real hair!  I love that you can't see the attachment at all and since it's human hair, I can style it as usual!  These were so painless and easy to have applied and the final result is amazing!  I've gotten so many compliments on these in the last few days and I can't wait to start showing it off at Fashion shows today!

My new favorite stylist Chris is based out of Dallas but luckily for all of us, he has all sorts of amazing websites and social media we can check out!  Easilengths Tape In Hair Extensions is the brand that makes these awesome tape in extensions that were used on me!  I was hesitant and didn't want to do anything like sew in ones and these are an amazing alternative!  If you want to find a salon near you to have them done, check out Hair Extension Geek!  And check out Chris's own blog at Christopher Box!   He has great posts all about Fashion Weeks he participates in and all sorts of fun stuff!  A HUGE thank you to Chris for giving me gorgeous locks to rock for NYFW!

What do you think of my new hair?  Have you ever done extensions?  Would you?

Lacquered Lover's Divine Caroline Butterly Wing Tutorial!

Good afternoon my fellow lacquered lovers!  Happy Monday!  I hope you all had a fabulous weekend!  Just a quick post today because I realized I'm behind on showing you guys the tutorials I've been doing for Divine Caroline!  The one I'm about to show you might be my favorite one yet!  Now, without further ado, on to the polish!



I love how this butterfly wing manicure came out!  (And yes, I love taking photos with my olloclip macro lens)  I was amazed how easy this was to do and really love the final product!  To learn more about this manicure and how to do it, just check out the tutorial HERE!

What did you think of this manicure?

Lacquered Lover 1 Year Blogging Anniversary Giveaway Part 1!

Good afternoon my fellow lacquered lovers!  Yesterday was a pretty momentous day in the world of Lacquered Lover.  On May 20th, 2011 I decided it was time for me to get back into the habit of writing regularly and what better way to do it than to share my collection and love of nail polish?  My first post was awful, I had no idea how to care for my nails, the pictures were from my blackberry and my first comments were from my boyfriend, my mom and a couple of good friends.  Now here we are, 1 year later, and I'm so incredibly thankful to still be blogging away!  I never thought that in 1 year this little corner of the Internet that I call mine would be home to almost 2,100 followers, 1,600 followers on Facebook, over 500 Instagram followers and all the amazing people who take the time to read and comment on this blog!

I truly love doing this.  I love writing, I love painting my nails, I love bringing you all collections, my attempts at nail art, and hopefully a smile when you interact with me on this blog or other social media.  So, to celebrate Lacquered Lover's first birthday, I thought I'd host a giveaway of Carly's Favorite Things!  Now this giveaway will be two fold.  Today I will share with you part 1 which is the main portion of the giveaway and starting tomorrow, I will post up the reader appreciation part which will just have 1 entry per person as a true thank you for being a part of the last year in my life!  Now, without further ado, on to the prizes!

This is what will be up for grabs!  I split them up into 4 prize packs so there will be 4 different winners!  Let's see what the prize packs are!

First up is a selection of some of my favorite Butter London polishes in Wallis, Snog and Trout Pout as well as a bottle of Zoya Carly!  I never would have known about Butter London if I wasn't a part of this awesome community so I figured it was a good choice!

Next up is the Glitter Prize Pack!  If you've been following my blog for awhile, you know of my love of glitter, particularly Deborah Lippmann!  So this pack includes a mini bottle of Dollish Polish Random Dancing, Deborah Lippmann Forget You, Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe (the polish that started my love affair with her) and OPI Excuse Moi!

Now we have the Blues Prize Pack!  Blue nail polish is my favorite color and these are a few of my favorite blue polishes!  This pack includes Layla Hologram Effect in Mermaid Spell, Dior St. Tropez and Mattese Elite Seduction!  Blue, holo, glitter, Dior, this pack has it all!

Last but certainly not least is the Purple/Grey Prize Pack!  After blue, Purples and Greys are my favorites and this pack has them both!  You can win Chanel Graphite (my first ever and most favorite Chanel!), Color Club Sugar Plum Fairy, Zoya Carly and Layla Hologram Effect in Ultra Violet!  Holo, Chanel, Glitter, what more could you ask for?

So there are your four prize packs you have a chance at winning!  This giveaway will be open internationally so feel free to enter regardless of where you live!  You MUST be a public GFC follower of Lacquered Lover to win and you MUST be over 18 years old.  Giveaway ends June 16th, 2012.  Fill out the form below for your chance to win!  Once again a HUGE thank you to all of you who follow and read this blog and I can't wait for another year!  And remember to check back for more giveaways later this week!  Feel free to leave any comments below, I love getting to interact with you all!

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Lacquered Lover featured on Stylehunter!

Good morning my fellow lacquered lovers!  Just a quick post this morning to share some exciting news!  Last week I was interviewed by the lovely Ghada Vanderpool for the website Style Hunter all about what the nail trends in NYC are this Spring!  The article went live last night and one of my favorite bloggers (and a total sweetheart that I had the pleasure of meeting at Blogger Night Out in February) Amy from Gotham Polish was interviewed as well!  Here is the picture I used for the article!

Above:  1 coat of Lynderella Connect The Dots over OPI Kiss Me On My Tulips

Check out the article HERE and let me know what you think!

New Look for Lacquered Lover and a Duochrome Flakie Matte Extravaganza!

Good afternoon my fellow Lacquered Lovers! Some exciting new stuff happening in Lacquered Lover world today! As I'm sure you've noticed if you are reading this blog post, Lacquered Lover got a polish change last night! The amazingly talented ladies from Mac & Mo redid the website for me and I love what they came up with! They are currently in the process of getting their own personal websites set up but if you'd like to contact them for any design or website inquiries (which you should because they are amazing to work with!) then shoot them an email at macandmo.design@gmail.com. Also if you'd like to see some of their other work, you can see Nicole's website HERE and Emily's website HERE!  Thanks again ladies, I think it looks amazing!

Along with the new layout/header/font, I see that I can now reply to comments directly!  So, if you are leaving comments, make sure you check back for a reply!  I'm also playing around with making the pictures larger!  Let me know what you think!

Now, to go along with my fabulous new website, I have a fabulous new manicure to show you!  Later this afternoon I'll show you all the pieces that went into it, but for now, I will show you a few pictures of the finished product!  Now, without further ado, on to the polish!

Yes lacquered lover, it's a duochrome flakie matted manicure.  I'm obsessed with it!  I started off with one coat of Finger Paints Black Expressionism, my new favorite one coat black polish!  Next came one coat of Ozotics 506 which I will give a more in depth post on later today.  506 is a gorgeous blue to purple duochrome!  Then I added a new flakie, Picture Polish Festival on top before making the entire manicure matte!  I love how matte flakies look and am so glad I discovered that if you matte a duochrome, it's still a duochrome!

So there you have it, an all new Lacquered Lover with a fun new manicure!  I'm so excited with how far my little blog has come since starting it last May and thanks to all of you for sticking around for the ride!  I'd love to hear your feedback on the new site so feel free to comment below!

What do you think of the new site?  Do you like the matted flakie duochrome manicure?

LACQUERED LOVER AND RICKY'S MATTESE ELITE GIVEAWAY WINNER!!!

Good morning my fellow lacquered lovers!  I hope you all had a wonderful winter weekend!  Today I finally have the winners of the amazing Mattese Elite Giveaway hosted by Ricky's!

Congrats Maria!  She has been notified via email and has 48 hours to respond!  Everyone else who has won a giveaway from me recently, be advised that your packages will be going out this week!  Stay tuned later today for more swatches and reviews!