Category Archives: Review

30 Dec

Review: Girlstuff Forever Holiday Collection 2014 (Love, Hope, and Peace)

Howdy!

Any grand plans for the New Year? We were supposed to leave Cebu early yesterday morning to go out of town to be with some family on the next island over. But a tropical depression is passing through and has put a damper on our plans. The coast guard (wisely) has suspended ferries and boats between islands in the areas affected by the winds and rain. Perhaps we will be given the green light sometime today to go. Fingers crossed!

I’ve got a lovely collection to share with you today. Girlstuff Forever has released a glitter-packed, textured trio for the holidays, and I’ve got swatches right here! For each swatch, I applied a base-coat and two coats of polish. I didn’t apply topcoat since these polishes dry to a textured finish, but you could add topcoat for extra sparkle. I’ve included macro shots so you can see the glittery, textured goodness close up as well. Enjoy!

First up  in the Girlstuff Forever Holiday Collection is Love. Love is a pink jelly packed with tiny silver hex glitters and even smaller square glitters. This is the most girly shade of the collection, and I can see me rockin’ this on Valentine’s Day.

Swatch of Girlstuff Love Girlstuff Love macro shot

Hope is a very unique color. It is a greenish-yellow jelly base with the same tiny hex glitters and square glitters as Love. It is, sadly, not the most flattering color for my pinkish (cool) skin tone but I know that ladies with a warmer skin tone could really rock this. It is so pretty despite not being so flattering on me.

Swatch of Girlstuff Hope

Girlstuff Hope macro shot

Peace is my favorite of the trio. I guess I’m just a huge fan of blue polishes. Ha! Peace is a blue jelly base loaded with the same glitters as the other two, but it also includes a sprinkling of some bigger hex shaped glitters.

Swatch of Girlstuff Peace

Girlstuff Peace macro shot

As can be expected with glitter polishes, these take more work to remove than a crème polish would. Cleanup around the cuticle was very easy. Each of these polishes retails for Php 140.00. Girlstuff Forever is a cruelty-free brand which means they do not test on animals. The polishes are all quick-dry and are also 5-free which makes them perfect for our miniature fashionistas. Check out the Girlstuff Forever website to find a kiosk near you or to order directly online.

I hope your new year is filled with much love, hope, peace, laughter, and many smiles and fun manicures!

Hugs,
Rachael

22 Nov

Two-for-one Sparkly Accent Nail

Hi lovelies!

I’ve got  two-looks-in-one for you this evening. First up, I’ve paired this lovely hot pink with a gold glitter accent nail. I like to use glitter as an accent nail when I don’t have the time or inspiration for nail art but I still want something flashy and interesting. Do you do this too? This pink is Pretty In Pink by Girlstuff Forever. It is a two-coater creme polish that dries fast and is so bright and fun to wear. It cleans up easily too.

GirlStuff Pretty In Pink with 24K sponged accent nail

For my accent nail, I chose 24K which is also by Girlstuff. The bottle is packed with remarkably sparkly holographic gold glitter suspended in a clear base. You could paint it onto your nail for the typical coverage of any glitter top coat. But, if you want the coverage I have, you will need to grab a makeup sponge. I put tape around my cuticle (to minimize glitter sticking to my finger) and put a drop of 24K on the sponge. Then I sponged that directly onto my nail and repeated the process until I was happy with the coverage. The great thing about this method of application is that you can get all the glitter on the nail and most of the clear base will be left behind in the sponge. So you can have full coverage without having to use 14 coats of glitter. 😉 Make sense? Finish it off with topcoat to seal your glitter and enjoy the sparklies! The accent nail took a bit of elbow grease to clean up, but that’s typical for glitter.

Girlstuff Blues with 24K sponged accent nail

After wearing Pretty In Pink for a few days, I decided to try out Blues, another one of my new beauties from Girlstuff. This navy blue creme is another two-coater that dries quickly with a great shiny finish and also cleans up easily. ♥

The more Girlstuff polishes I try, the more I love them. I’ve heard they are good for stamping too, so that is on my “things to try” list. I’ll let you know.

I hope you are having a great weekend. Make someone smile today!
Hugs,
Rachael

10 Nov

Born Pretty Store Hexagonal Glitter Review

Hi there!

I’ve got another product review to share with you. When Born Pretty Store contacted me a while back asking me to review some of their products, I knew immediately that I wanted to get my hands on their 12-Color Hexagon Glitter Set I’ve heard so much about. When I received the package, I immediately set about putting tons of glitter all over my nails! I was thinking of doing something pumpkin related with these. But after I finished with the orange glitter, I realized that they looked more like koi fish scales. They were so fantastically glittery, I decided to leave them as is. Aren’t they pretty?

Orange Hexagonal Glitter Placement mani

To achieve this flashy look, I started with two thin coats of a similar base color (Caronia Bourrée in this case). After my base color was dry, I applied a bit of clear polish down the center of my nail and, using a damp orange wood stick to pick them up, carefully placed the glitter piece by piece in a straight line down the middle of my nail. Then I worked out towards the sides of the nail, applying clear coat column by column to get the glitter to stick. Using my cuticle nippers, I cut some glitter in half for the edges of my nails. After the nail was covered to my liking, I applied a generous layer of clear coat to seal it all in.

Orange Hexagonal Glitter Placement mani 2

I can’t believe that it has been a year since I did a full glitter placement mani! They are so pretty and fun to wear.

Hexagonal Glitter Review

Let me tell you more about the 12-Color Hexagonal Glitter Set from BPS.  The pack comes with 12 different colors each packed nicely in a clear pot with a screw top lid. There is a ton of glitter in each pot and the colors are very pretty.

Born Pretty Store 12 Color Hexagonal Glitter set

I have to say that some of the hexes are cut very well , like these orange ones for instance. There may have been one or two oddly cut pieces that I found while I was placing these bits, but most of them were just right. The silver ones that I used for another look, on the other hand, were not so perfect. I had wonky hexes, half hexes, and wonky half hexes (you get the picture). If you plan to use these on a matching base then the wonky shapes won’t be such a concern. But if you look closely at my other mani, you can tell clearly that they are shaped a bit off—a contrasting color makes it a little more obvious. In reality though, I wore that design for several days and had many compliments on it with no one noticing anything amiss. Maybe it’s just my OC self making note of the shape issue, but the silver hexes are the oddest of the bunch. The rest are significantly better.

I decided to include a little gallery with a sample from each pot of glitter so that you can see for yourself the general quality of the glitter. The color is hard to make out on some of these, but the silhouettes show just how well-cut (or not) each color is. Just click/tap an image to enlarge it and then flip through them one-by-one.

Overall, I think this is a great product. This 12-color hexagon glitter set usually goes for $6.85 on Born Pretty Store. They are having a sale at the moment, and you can get this set for $5.48, but the sale ends in just a few hours. If you live in the Philippines, I want to remind you again that, though there are no shipping costs from Born Pretty Store, you WILL have to pay customs fees (about 150 pesos) on any package coming from outside the Philippines. Delivery is also slow if you choose their free shipping option. So don’t expect your package soon. If you plan on ordering something from Born Pretty Store, you can use the coupon code below to get 10% off your entire order.

Coupon

Glitter placement manis are sooo eye-catching and versatile. I need to try a gradient type one soon or try different colors on each nail.

Orange Hexagonal Glitter over Caronia Bourrée

Have you done any glitter placement nail art? I would love to see! Please feel free to share a  link below in the comments if you feel like it. 🙂

I’m off to play some video games with my boy! Have a lovely day and keep smiling!

Hugs,

Rach

06 Nov

CND Vinylux Weekly Polish Review

Hi, Dolls!

Today I’m going to share some swatches of (and my two cents about my first experience with) a couple of CND Vinylux Weekly Polishes that were sent to me a few weeks ago. This is going to be a wordy post, so please bear with me.

The CND Vinylux Weekly Polish is designed to be used as a two-step system. (1) Starting with clean nails, apply two coats of the Vinylux color of your choice, and (2) finish with one thin coat of Vinylux Weekly Topcoat. The pamphlet says you should not use a base coat as the polish has “adhesion promoters” to help the polish adhere to the nail and to prevent the pigments from coming into direct contact with the natural nail. Can it be? No staining? RAFO people! As for the top coat, it features CND’s “ProLight technology” which is designed to increase the durability of the top coat with exposure to natural light. Pretty cool huh? This top coat is supposed to prevent chipping, denting, scratching and dulling for up to a week of wear. I gather that this is something in between regular polish and gel polish.

CND Vinylux Weekly Polish – Swatches

Which polishes did I get, and what did think of them? First up is Midnight Swim (#131). It’s an extremely dark blue filled with shimmery particles of magic fairy dust that look just gorgeous when the light hits them. I WILL be using this polish for Nebula Nail Art very soon!

CND Vinylux Weekly Polish Midnight Swim swatch

The picture above is from my lightbox. The one below is the same polish under direct light. You can see the subtle shift in color from the change of lighting.

CND Vinylux Weekly Polish Midnight Swim

Next we have Tinted Love (#153), which is a lovely deep berry shade. It’s reddish and purplish at the same time! I love it! Please pardon the bubbles on my index finger. Totally a user error. I’m a goof and caught the brush on the edge of the bottle and was too busy chatting with Mr. Nailinator to notice the bubbles.

CND Vinylux Weekly Polish Tinted Love swatch

The Review

The formula on these two are amazing! They were so easy to apply—quite possibly the easiest polish application ever. The brush is  wider than the standard polish brush. The bigger size might be a problem for some people, but I personally love the extra width. A wider brush means fewer strokes to apply polish evenly on my nails. As promised in the pamphlet, both polishes were opaque in two coats. They dried quickly as well. I noticed the top coat has a stronger smell than most polishes I have used, so be sure to work in a well-ventilated area.

So how did the polish hold up over the test of time? These polishes did not last the whole 7 days for me. I wore them for 7 days without chipping, but I did start to see tip wear after about 4 days. I didn’t really expect them to stay pristine with my oh-so-pointy nail tips (and the fact that I keep house and am pretty hard on my nails). To test them out on some shorter nails, I got a helping hand or two from my mother—henceforth to be known here as The Queen Mother . While it didn’t last a full 7 days for her either, she was really happy with the polish and was impressed with the wear time and how it held up under all the tasks she regularly does at work and at home. Here is how my nails looked on day 5.

CND Vinylux Weekly Polish Tinted Love after 5 days

Not too bad, eh? I think they look pretty good for 5 days wear and tear. I’m gonna be honest and say that I really don’t like having pictures of my nails looking like this on the interwebz. See how dedicated I am to a thorough review? Now lets see how Tinted Love fared after 7 days!

CND Vinylux Weekly Polish Tinted Love after 7 days

Please don’t share this picture! Haha! It’s a far cry from my usual well-manicured look. The scratches are not so visible in person, but as you can see, there is quite a bit of tip-wear and scuffing on the once-shiny surface. These CND polishes did hold up better than most of the dark colors I have used. I have to compare them to other dark colors because, as you probably know, dark colors tend to show tip wear earlier because of the contrast to the light-colored natural nail. Upon removal, I’m happy to report that neither polish left any staining on my nails. Again, dark polishes (especially blue ones) tend to stain but these did not. Win!

Final Thoughts

It’s possible that since I did both of my swatches at night and rainy weather kept me indoors most of the testing period that I didn’t get the full benefit of the ProLight technology. I am curious to see if my results would be different if I had a few sunny days or a UV light to help strengthen the polish. CND Philippines told me that using their Scrub Fresh preparation could also help as it is formulated to help the polish adhere to the nail better. I’ll be testing that out soon, hopefully, and will let you know.

At PHP499 ($11) per bottle,  the price is what I would expect with an imported brand like this which makes it a luxury item for most. But CND polishes aren’t your average polishes, and they are marketed primarily for salons and beauty professionals. If you are interested in investing in your own CND Vinylux Weekly Polish or trying them out on your next mani/pedi day, you can get in touch with CND Philippines @cnd_ph on Instagram and Twitter or at CDNPhilippines on Facebook to order or to find a salon near you. I did a little looking online and found the following salons that apparently have CND products available for their services:

I’ve been told CND Philippines is working on setting up a website so keep an eye out for that as well.

If you read this whole post, you get a virtual cookie! 🙂 Thanks for sticking with it. I hope this information was helpful. Have you ever tried CND Vinylux or Shellac polishes? I have never tried gel polish before, but I have heard such good things about their Shellac treatment and would be interested to try it.

I’m off to go play with my little ones. I hope you have a joyful day and that you make someone smile today!
Hugs
Rachael

31 Oct

Born Pretty Store Nail Art Brush Set Review

Today I’m reviewing a brush set from Born Pretty Store. They sell all sorts of nail art supplies and products (plus makeup, jewelry, etc.) and ship internationally for free, which is great! If you live in the Philippines, you will have to pay customs and a parcel fee on the package when it arrives. So keep that in mind. It cost me about 150 pesos to claim a package with 3 items in it. Just something to consider when ordering online.

The product I’m reviewing today is their 8 pc Nail Art Brush Set.

8 Pc. Nail Art Brush Set

I am rather pleased with this affordable brush set. They cost USD$4.32 right now, which is about PHP 190. The set includes seven different  brushes and one small dotting tool. The handles are pink, which I personally love.

Born Pretty Store Nail Art Brush Set

If you look at the close-ups of the brushes below, you will see two sizes of brushes that come to a point, one angled brush, one flat brush, and two sizes of flat brushes that are slightly rounded at the end. I love these flat brushes for cleanup around the cuticle or for making bigger shapes for nail designs. If I had any skills whatsoever with one-stroke flowers, I’m sure they would be perfect for that as well. The set also comes with a very small tip brush, which is great for detail work (like the leaves of my roses in the picture below). The dotting tool in this set is a very small one and it’s perfect for making tiny polka dots like you see below and for the swirly parts of these roses. I use this size of a dotting tool to do the markings of leopard print nail art.

Close up of Born Pretty Store Nail Art Brush Set

The set is shipped with these protective covers (pictured below) to help keep them from being bent. It is best to store them with the covers on, just to be safe.

Born Pretty Store Nail Art Brush Set with protective cases

Overall, this is definitely a good set of brushes. The price is right, it has a decent variety of tools and uses. If you purchased this set, you would be able to do a lot of different designs with them. You could even cut some of the bristles off  one of these brushes to make finer tip brushes if you want something smaller. I’ll be sharing some nail art I’ve done with these very soon.

Nail Art Brush Set in hand

Well, that’s my review of this 8 pc. Nail Art Brush Set. What do you think of this set? Do you want it? Already have it?

I’ve got a coupon code for you that will give you 10% off your entire order if you get the hankering to order this, or anything else, on BornPrettyStore.com.

Coupon

I hope you have a great day. I’m off to bed so I can get up in the morning and take my two little ones (Super Mario and Queen Elsa) trick-or-treating at the mall. Yeah, we do things a bit differently here in the Philippines.
Hugs,
Rachael

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