CND Night Factory Duo Featuring Urban Oasis and Teal Sparkle Swatches and Review

Good afternoon my fellow lacquered lovers!  I hope you are all having a wonderful day.  It's rainy and dreary and gross in New York today, so to cheer up, I decided to post about some of my favorite new polishes!  I was lucky enough to receive the CND Night Factory Duo from my awesome friend Wendy.  The Teal Sparkle Effect was the last CND Effect that I was wanting but I figured I'd never own it since it was a limited edition!  Well thanks to Wendy and Ebay, it's mine!  So now, without further ado, on to the polish!

Above:  2 coats of Urban Oasis

First up is Urban Oasis on its own.  It's a gorgeous teal creme that's just perfect.  I find it to be a bit more blue than green leaning and it's just so beautiful!  It was almost a one coater but I put on a second coat for good measure.  If you're a teal girl like I am, try to find this polish!  It easily became my new favorite teal creme!

Above:  1 coat of Teal Sparkles over 2 coats of Urban Oasis

Oh man, why can't all the CND Sparkle Effects look like this?  I'm in love!  Teal Sparkles has tiny teal microglitter in a milky base that makes the glitter look like tiny little glass fleck flakes!  it's amazing!  Look at how three dimensional that looks!  I absolutely adore this CND effect and really hope that they will come out with more like it!  It's just so unlike any other specialty top coat that I own, I absolutely am obsessed with it!  I can't wait to try it over other colors!

All in all, I love this duo!  I'm so happy to be the proud owner of it!  Urban Oasis is just a stunning creme and Teal Sparkle is by far my favorite CND Effect to date.  More effects like these please!  They are fabulous!  If you happen to come upon this set or want to splurge a bit, definitely buy it because it's just so great!

What do you think of these polishes?  Do you have them?  What colors would you like to see teal sparkle layered over?

Layering Day 3 - CND Mood Ring Manicure

Good morning Lacquered Lovers!  In keeping with the theme of layering this week, I decided to try something out I saw a few months ago that looked amazing!  One of the bloggers who got me interested in starting my blog, All Lacquered Up, did this awesome Mood Ring manicure using all different CND Effects layered over black.  I decided to put my own spin on it by using a different base and different effects and I have to say, I love how it came out! 

Here is a quick sneak peek at the finished product!  I'm obsessed with it!  So now, without further ado, on to the polish!

I began the manicure with one coat of CND Asphalt.  I love that this polish is a one coater!  This is definitely one of my favorite grey polishes as it's super pigmented and opaque in 1 coat!  Now, on to the fun stuff.

So here is what you are looking at above.  There are 3 stripes of CND effects on each nail, Emerald Shimmer, Ice Blue Shimmer and Scarlet Shimmer.  I overlapped them slightly to blend the effect a bit better.  You can really see the different shades in the macro shot but depending on how I'm holding my hand, you either get more of a blue, green or red/purple effect.  I love it!  But of course, I couldn't leave it just at this!

So I decided to add Amethyst Sparkle on top!  I love the little purple glittery look this gives to the manicure and I think it helps blend in the stripes of shimmer effects as well!  But wait!  I still wasn't done with this layering adventure!

Last, I added my favorite of all the CND Colour Effects, Sapphire Sparkling!  Sapphire Sparkling is packed full of tiny little bright blue sparkles and I just love it!  This manicure is by far one of my favorites I've ever done!  I love how in every picture, it looks completely different!  It almost looks like a multichrome on the nail because depending how the light hits it, the dominant color changes!

What do you think of this layering effect?  Would you like to see a tutorial on it?  Have you tried this?

Day 6 Featuring CND Plum Truffle Duo

Good morning Lacquered Lovers! I'm sorry that this post is finding you a day late! I will have another post later today for Day 7, but I wanted to give you guys my review of a new set by one of my favorite brands! So now, without further ado, on to the polish!





CND released the Plum Truffle Duo as part of their holiday collection for 2011. Recently they have been releasing two colors at a time, a cream with a matching color effect. Now I LOVE the color effects. I own at least 10 of them and they are so awesome for adding a little extra something to a polish!




Above: 2 coats of Plum Truffle

CND Plum Truffle is the cream of this collection. Plum Truffle is a really pretty cool toned berry color. I love that this isn't too red and therefore turns into a "pink" but really stays in that berry and wine family. The formula was perfect, virtually opaque in one coat but I put on a second coat just to get full opacity and make sure there were no bald spots. I really love how pigmented this color is and how rich it looks on the nails!






So to top off the lovely Plum Truffle, I used one coat of CND Plum Truffle Sparkle. I actually really like that the sparkle color effect is much lighter than the cream it comes with! Plum Truffle Sparkles is a light pink, micro sparkle in a sheer pinkish base. I'll have to try to layer it over white to see how much of the sheer base comes through but as it stands, it's a perfect compliment to Plum Truffle. Maybe it's just me but this seems a bit more scattered of a sparkle than some of the other color effects, but this polish will be great for those who don't like reds during the holiday season.

All in all, CND never disappoints me with their formula. Their polishes are top quality and I love the idea of the color effects that help to enhance a cream color. I look forward to seeing more duos from them in the future!

What do you all think of this duo? Are you a fan of the colors and effects?


This product was sent to me for review. For more information, read my disclosure policy above.

Barielle Polished Princess and CND Jade Sparkling

Hello fellow lacquered lovers! It's finally Friday! Yay! I have some fun stuff in store for this lovely August weekend and I hope you do as well! Just a quick post right now because I have something REALLY fun in store for you later today! I just received my first Barielle polishes this week and was really eager to try, so I let the boyfriend go into the box of goodies and pick one out! So now, I give you Polished Princess!



Above: Polished Princess - 2 coats over 1 coat Seche Base and accent nail with CND Jade Sparkling

Polished Princess is a medium mossy green with a fine gold shimmer to it. I'm very on the fence about this color. In the sunshine, I absolutely ADORED it. In the shade, I kind of hated it! I think the reason for this is that it's a yellow based green which simply looks awful on my skin tone, but in the sun I really liked it! So frustrating when something like happens! The formula was nice although a bit sheer for my taste as you can see a bit of visible nail line and tip wear with 2 coats after only 24 hours. On my ring finger I added a coat of CND Jade Sparkling which I love hoping to spice it up a bit and in person, it added a nice sparkle but didn't really come through in the pictures.

For right now, my opinion is out on Barielle. I didn't love this polish, but I try not to judge a brand based on one polish so I will definitely be swatching the rest of my haul from them this weekend. It gets great reviews from a lot of bloggers so I'm hoping this was just a disappointing polish for me!

Do you have any Barielle polishes? What are your favorite colors of theirs?

CND Effects in Copper Pearl and Sapphire Sparkling

Good afternoon my fellow lacquered lovers! So this morning I showed you the first part of my CND post HERE and now I give you my new color effects! I did a post on the color effects I already have last week which you can see here however I have never tried their "pearl" effects and was missing Sapphire Sparkling! In order to show you how much the effects change the polishes they go over, I will be showing you them over the 4 neutral CND polishes I had bought a few months ago:


From left to right: Asphalt, Blackjack, Perfectly Bare, Raisin in the Sun



Top to bottom: Asphalt, Blackjack, Perfectly Bare, Raisin in the Sun (all 2 coats)

Ah such pretty neutral colors! I love all of these because they are almost opaque in one coat and all have a wonderful formula. Now, on to the effects!



Copper Pearl - 1 coat on top of 2 coats of cream polishes

I will be honest, I had low expectations for this color. I'm generally not a huge fan of a pearl finish and copper pearl sounded kind of weird to me. However I was extremely surprised at how much I loved this color! It almost gave the darker polishes a reddish/purplish tone and shimmer that was exquisite! I absolutely love the duochrome quality that came through after adding Copper Pearl to the colors, and really need to try it over a blue or purple to see if it will really make it pop!



Sapphire Sparkling - 1 coat over 2 coats of cream polish

Sapphire Sparkling was actually kind of a hard to find for me! I wanted it when I bought all my other effects but the company I bought from was out and I haven't been able to get it since! So I was so excited when this showed up in my package! It's exactly as gorgeous as I thought. Tiny blue sparkles that make any color just light up. I love the shade of blue when the light hits it, almost a perfect royal blue and it looks gorgeous layered over basically any color! This may be my favorite effect now!

All in all, I love both of these! There aren't any effects I don't like, but both of these were gorgeous! I am very happy to be surprised by the gorgeous Copper Pearl and am so happy to finally own Sapphire Sparkling to play with!

Which are your favorite CND effects?

DISCLOSURE: this product (just the color effects) was sent to me for review. 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?