Olympic Fever!

I don't know about you guys, but I have been totally obsessed with the Summer Olympics the past few days.  I love watching swimming and  gymnastics and I have been so happy to see so many talented American athletes take home metals.  It is so excited to watch someones dreams come true right before your eyes! Seeing the America girls gymnastics team take home gold the other night inspired my manicure today.

For this manicure I decided to focus on themes of the Olympics not just the USA.  I painted my pointer, middle and ring finger on each hand with gold, silver and bronze to represent the Olympic metals and on my thumb and pinky I painted the 5 Olympic rings using large and small dotting tools on a white base.

For the gold, silver and bronze fingers I used Julep Oscar, Zoya Trixie, and OPI Take The Stage; and for the rings I used Wet n' Wild French White Creme, Essence Walking on Air, Wet n' Wild Black Creme, China Glaze Poinsettia, China Glaze Solar Power, China Glaze Holly-Day.

To create the ring design I used the large side of a dotting tool to make 5 dots, one of each color featured in the ring design then I used the smallest size dotting tool that I had to add white dots inside the color dots to create the illusion that they are rings.

I am really excited with how this design came out and I have been getting complements on it all week! I also love how simple it was to get the olympic ring look.  Also on a side note this is probably the most bottles of nail polish I have used in one manicure!

What are you wearing for your Olympic mani?  Leave a comment here, on Facebook, or tweet me @Polish_Paradise!

Review: Essence Cosmetics Fall 2012 Polishes

Today I am very excited to be reviewing some of the new Essence Cosmetics Fall nail polish, and also their new polish bottles!  I am a huge fan of the Essence Cosmetic brand and all of their polishes and the newly designed bottle definitely do not disappoint.

I was sent an old bottle of Ultimate Pink to compare with the new bottle of Ultimate Pink, Modern Romance, and Stuck on You.

First I will start off with the bottle comparisons of Ultimate Pink.

The new bottle is on the left side of  each of the pictures.  It has a different shape and holds more polish. The old bottles held 0.16 fl.oz / 5ml, and the new bottles hold 0.27 fl.oz / 8ml, which means that the new bottles hold 0.11 fl.oz more.  The new bottles all still have the great color coded caps and they also have a new and improved brush.  The brush its curved at the top and it is wider, which helps with even color distribution on the nail.

Now for  a comparison of the polish in the old and be new bottles.

One Coat:

I painted every other finger with the old and new polish bottles and the formulas are very similar and coloring is exactly the same.

Two Coats:

Ultimate Pink is a beautiful bright pink color and after two coats it is completely opaque.  It is also beautiful and shiny without a top coat.

Next polish up is Modern Romance, which is light peachy pink  with a slight pink-purple shimmer in it.

One Coat:

Two Coats:

Three Coats:

I really love this color.  It is very soft and pretty.  It looked pretty good after two coats but I used 3 to fill in a few thin spots I had, and it looked great.  The shimmer in the polish was very hard to photograph because it is very subtle, but when it catches the light it looks very nice too.

And last but not least is Stuck on You, which is a slate gray-blue color with silver shimmer. Also it is a one coater!

One Coat:

After one coat this polish is completely opaque with a beautiful color.  It went on evenly and smoothly. Also the fact that it goes on in one coat and dries quickly is really nice too!  Perfect for a manicure on the go!

As always I am very impressed with Essence Cosmetics.  The new bottle and updated formula are great and they have 18 new trendy colors in their collection.  Their polishes are also free of harmful ingredients like formaldehyde, toluene, and emollient phthalate.  Their polishes retail for the very affordable price of $1.99 a bottle and can be purchased at ULTA, Ulta.com, HEB, and Fred Meyer.

What do you think of the new Essence polish bottles?  Leave a comment here, on Facebook, or tweet me @Polish_Paradise!

*Products in this post were provided for review.  All views expressed are my own. See my Disclosure Tab for more info.*

Try it on Tuesday! Nails Inc. Electric Lane

For today's "Try it on Tuesday" I decided to try out Nails Inc. Electric Lane Special Effects Holographic Glitter Top Coat that I bought a couple of weeks ago but never tried out.  I put it on over China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy creating a scotch tape manicure.

To create this look I took a square piece of scotch tape and made a triangle at the bottom of then nail, similar to a half moon design but with a point at the top.  Make sure to stick the tape to the back of your nails a couple of times and also make sure that your base color is completely dry before you put the tape down so that it doesn't smudge your polish.

I really like the Nails Inc. polish! It has a great formula and a lot of glitter in it and it looks so great over the neon pink!  It is so bright and sparkly I cannot stop looking at it while I am typing this post up right now!  For me this is an awesome bright summer nail design!

Do you own any Nails Inc. polishes?  What do you think of them?  Leave a comment here, on Facebook, or tweet me @Polish_Paradise!

Rainbow Jelly Sammich!

After I did my first jelly sandwich a few weeks ago I kind of became addicted to them.  They are a really cool way to use jelly polishes and a simple way to spice up a manicure!  Today I have on a Jelly Sandwich with Zoya Coraline and OPI Rainbow Connection.  This sandwich is much brighter and festive than the last one that I did.  They really look like nails that would be perfect for a party!

Recreating this look is very simple.  I started by painting one coat of Coraline on all of my nails.  Next I painted one coat of Rainbow Connection over  that.  After that was dry I painted two coats of Coraline on top of it and then topped it off with a coat of top coat.

What do you think of Jelly Sandwiches?  Leave a comment here, on Facebook, or tweet me @Polish_Paradise!

Deborah Lippmann Meets a Holo Top Coat

Today I have a very interesting combo for you all; a couple of weeks ago I managed to score a Deborah Lippmann duo from a HSN clearance sale one of the polished that came in that duo was Don't Tell Mama, and the other day I had some credit from Copious.com and a bought a Spectraflair Holographic pigment top coat.  I thought it might be fun to layer these two polishes for a darker holographic look.

But first I have some pictures of Don't Tell Mama on its own.

Above is two coats of Don't Tell Mama.  I have to say I was not as impressed with this color on my nails as I was with it in the bottle.  In the bottle it looks like a dark iridescent teal color, but on my nails it looked like a very dark grayish green with minimal amounts of shimmer.  I thought the color looked very flat and in most light looked like it was just black polish.

Next I decided to jazz it up with two coats of the Holographic top coat.  The top coat is made from a suspension base with 35 coarse grade Spectraflair holographic pigment.  From what I have learned about Spectraflair a 35 coarse grade pigment means that the pigment is very holographic even indoors, and it truly lives up to that description!  It is so holographic and I am in love with it.  I will let the pictures show you the rest.

I used two coats of the holo top coat, but one would definitely show a lot of the amazing holographics too!  You can see all the colors of the rainbow and it is so beautiful!  I cannot stop staring at my nails!

What is you favorite holographic top coat or polish? Leave a comment here, on Facebook, or tweet me @Polish_Paradise!

Don't forget to enter my 500 Fan Giveaway!

500 Fan Giveaway!

I am so excited to present to you the Polished Paradise 500 fan giveaway!  If it was not for all of my amazing fans who follow this blog, Facebook page, Twitter, and Pinterest, I would never have come this far with this blog.  All of the people who read this blog inspire me to keep going with new material and also to find ways to get everyone involved!  For all of that I  thank you all with this giveaway!

Now for the exciting stuff! The giveaway details!

This giveaway consist of 3 great prizes.  There will be 3 winners and each winner will win one of the prizes.

The first prize is two bottles of China Glaze polish from the Prismatics collection.  The colors are Liquid Crystal and Full Spectrum!

Prize number 2 is a Zoya mini trio with mini bottles of Zuza, Kimber, and Myrta.

Prize number 3 is a mini set of Sally Hansen Xtreme wear polishes. There are 4 in the set, and they would be great for skittle nails!

- Must be 18 years old to enter.
- It is open to people living in the US and Canada (sorry to my international fans! The rules for mailing polish out of the country and overseas are crazy. But still enter if you have a US address you can have it sent to!)
- Please be honest with the things you enter below.  I will be verifying the winners entry and people who make up fake entries will not win.  Honesty is the best policy!
- The winner of the giveaway will be contacted by email and must reply within 48 hours from the time the email was sent or a new winner will be drawn.
- The Giveaway will end at 12:01a.m. on August 1st. a Rafflecopter giveaway

Fan Chosen Tutorial: Sponge Gradient!

Hello everyone! I know it has been a little while since my last post, things have been really crazy with work and life, and it has been really hot here in New York which makes me feel too hot and lethargic to polish my nails.  But that is all about to change, I have some really cool post coming up for you guys and one of the new series I am going to be doing is a Fan Chosen Tutorial Series.  Every week I will post a survey question on the Polished Paradise Facebook Page and the fans on my page will vote to choose what tutorial they would like to see this week.  This weeks tutorial is a sponge gradient that won with 14 votes!

For this tutorial I decided to use polishes in the blue family; China Glaze For Audrey, Zoya Charla, and China Glaze Blue Year's Eve.  It is such a simple nail art design that is sure to jazz up your manicure for the summer!

Step One:
I like to start out with a base coat of the lightest color polish that I am using. In this case I put down two coats of For Audrey.

Step Two:
I use a cosmetic sponge and paint three lines of the colors that I am using for the gradient.  I prefer this methods to others because I find it to be the easiest, and also it wastes less polish and cosmetic sponges than the other methods.

Step Three:
Then I press the sponge over the nail making sure to get good coverage of polish.  I also tend to dab the sponge a little more at the top of the nail to make sure that the darkest top color gets dark enough coverage.

Step Four:
Repeat steps one through three on all of your nails and then cover them with a top coat.  The top coat smooths out the polish and helps the colors all blend together.  Then enjoy your nails!

Gradients happen to be one of my favorite designs.  I think that they are so versatile and you can do so many things with them.  If you want to add more to the look you can add stamping or dots to it which can give another cool spin on this look.

Have you ever done a gradient on your nails?  Do you have any good tips?  Leave a comment here, on Facebook, or tweet me @Polish_Paradise!