Hello again!

Another swatch post coming up! I’ve got a couple of glittering beauties to show you today. These are from the CND Vinylux Starstruck Collection. The full Shellac Starstruck Collection has several other stunning glitter bombs but, from what I can find out online, the Vinylux line is only composed of these two I’m swatching today. I’ve done two coats for each of these and topped them with the Vinylux Weekly Top Coat.

Emerald Lights – This emerald green jelly is gorgeous. It is loaded with green glitter and it is so sparkly.  I don’t have a lot of green polishes and I’m so happy to have this one in my collection now.

Dark Diamonds – I would describe this one as a black crelly loaded with lots of silver glitter. Very sparkly and fun to wear.

As you can expect with any glitter polish, these take a bit of extra effort to remove. Also, I did not experience any staining, even with the green, which made me very happy.

CND Vinylux Weekly Polishes feature  CND’s “ProLight technology” which is designed to increase the durability of the top coat with exposure to natural light. These polishes are awesome. If you haven’t already seen it, I hope you will check out my thorough review and wear-test of the Vinylux line. You can also check out my nebula nails using Midnight Swim. You will find that these polishes have great wear-time and they dry quickly too!

If you are interested in investing in your own CND Vinylux Weekly Polish or trying them out on your next mani/pedi  spa 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.

Which is your favorite of the two? I love them both!

Have a great week and don’t forget to keep on smiling!

Hugs,
Rach

The post CND Vinylux Starstruck Collection Swatches (Emerald Lights and Dark Diamonds) appeared first on The Nailinator.

Hello lovely ladies!

I’ve got a couple of swatches to show you today from the CND Summer Brights Collection. Even though these are part of a summer collection, Rouge Red would totally work for the Christmas season and Rock Royalty would be a bit hit in the fall. Here we go!

Rouge Red

Let’s start with my favorite of the two. Rouge Red is a crelly and, in my opinion, is The. Perfect. Vintage. Red! When I put it on my nails I thought the color looked like something straight out of a vintage nail polish ad. Do you agree? I used two coats. In the image above you can see a little VNL (visible nail line), but I didn’t notice it at all in real life.

 Rock Royalty

Next up is Rock Royalty which is a gorgeous dark purple creme that has teeny tiny blue and pink flecks mixed in so it has a lovely glow to it. I LOVE wearing purple on my nails. Rock Royalty made me very, very happy. This is another two-coater.

CND Vinylux Weekly Polishes feature  CND’s “ProLight technology” which is designed to increase the durability of the top coat with exposure to natural light. These polishes are awesome. They are very durable and dry quickly. Read my original review and check out my 7-day wear photos to learn more.

If you are interested in investing in your own CND Vinylux Weekly Polish or trying them out on your next mani/pedi  spa 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.

Which is your favorite of the two? Purple and red are my two favorite shades to wear on my nails so both of these are winners to me.

Thanks for reading and for sticking around even though my posts have been kinda sporadic the past few months. I have still been doing my nails but blogging is on the back burner most days as I have my hands quite full with my precocious  6-year-old and my imaginative 4-year-old that I home-school. Family first! But I thank you for your patience.

I hope you are having a fabulous week and that you get to make someone smile today.

Hugs,
Rach

The post Swatches of CND Vinylux Rouge Red and Rock Royalty  appeared first on The Nailinator.

Hello ladies!

I’m sorry that it’s been so quiet around here this past month. Between being out of town for a while, finishing up the school year with the kids, needing a break afterwards, taking care of other responsibilities, and enjoying motherhood and life in general, it’s been hard to find the motivation to sit and blog. I have been doing my nails, though, so I have some things to share with you soon.

I’ve got a short and sweet post for you tonight. I started with CND Pink Bikini. I’ve told you before how I love the formula of the Vinylux polishes. This one gave me some issues at first. I think it was because there was some dried polish at the neck of the bottle. I cleaned up the neck and then it worked out well enough. So pretty and fun to wear! The weather has been so gloomy and rainy here in Cebu and a pop of color is just what I needed!

I sponged some Ocean Green (Sinful Colors) on the tips of my nails. I grabbed Ocean Green while I was in Texas last year and I really love it paired with this pink. It is iridescent and so pretty.

I’ve always loved glittery tips and it really is one of the easiest ways to spice up a mani. All you need is a makeup sponge and some glittery polish. Just put some glitter on a bit of the makeup sponge and start dabbing. You can’t really go wrong.

These sparkly nails are my entry for Day 7 – Glittery! of the OMD3 Challenge hosted  by Brijit from Brijits Digits, Jacqui from Craftynail, Jemma from Eeeek! Nail Polish!, and Lindsay from Nail That Accent!. Check out the other pretty glittery nail art below

I hope you are having a great week and that you make someone smile today!

Hugs,
Rach

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Hi Dolls!

Today I’m sharing my latest Nebula (or Galaxy) art. This is one of my favorite looks to sport on my nails. Aren’t they pretty? Sometimes I think I’ll try something fancy with crazy colors and mix it up, but I always end up just liking it like this with pretty purple nebulae.

Back in November when I swatched CND Midnight Swim, I knew I wanted use it as the base for my next Nebula nail art look. It’s such a pretty deep blue, and I was excited to test its durability with nail art over it! While the base color is CND Midnight Swim, all the purples, blues and glitter were done using  several Girlstuff polishes and a makeup sponge torn into small pieces. Check out my tutorial for nebula nails here. It takes a lot of sponging, but it is really easy to do. I added some stars using white polish and a small dotting tool. The criss-crossed stars were done using a teensy tiny brush that I cut into just a few strands.

I’ve been wearing this for 8 full days now, and I’ve got to say, I am SO impressed! Just look at this side by side of Day 1 and Day 8!

Can you believe it? I like this brand even more the second time around! This polish is out of this world! I would definitely recommend these CND Vinylux Weekly polishes for their long wear time. Check out my full review here.

You can get your own CND products by contacting CND Philippines on Facebook, Instagram  or Twitter.

Have a stellar day!
Hugs,
Rach

The post CND Vinylux Midnight Swim Nebula Nail Art appeared first on The Nailinator.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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!

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:

• My Pretty Nails
• Emphasis Salon
• Extraordinail

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

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