Monday, January 18, 2016

Turtle Tootsie: Valentine's Collection


The Turtle Tootsie Valentine's Day collection launches Friday, January 22, at 7pm Central. If you order a full size set you will receive a FREE chocolate-scented top coat!
Isn't that the coolest?
You can also opt to add the top coat for a couple extra dollars if you purchase the mini set. I haven't tried the top coat myself, but it sounds yummy, doesn't it?

xoxoJen's swatches of Turtle Tootsie

Passionate Kisses - A deep red linear holo

xoxoJen's swatch of Turtle Tootsie Passionate Kisses
xoxoJen's swatch of Turtle Tootsie Passionate Kisses

Love Potion - A dark purple jelly polish with pink holographic microglitter

xoxoJen's swatch of Turtle Tootsie Love Potion
xoxoJen's swatch of Turtle Tootsie Love Potion

Cocoa Kisses - A brown copper linear holo

xoxoJen's swatch of Turtle Tootsie Cocoa Kisses
xoxoJen's swatch of Turtle Tootsie Cocoa Kisses

For each swatch I used two coats with topcoat and each polish has a smooth easy to apply formula.
I hope you've enjoyed my review and photos. Be sure to follow me on facebook to see what's next!

Thursday, January 14, 2016

Awesome Sauce Indie Box: Feat Literary Lacquers

The Awesome Sauce Indie box this month features guest Literary Lacquers. It contains a total of five polishes, nail vinyls from Lou It Yourself, cuticle Crelli sample from Ever After polish, cuticle oil and jelly stones from Anonymous Lacquer, and nail charms from Lavish Polish. The box is available with full sized or mini sized items!

What a box! Especially nice for team mermaid, eh?

Pre-order runs from Jan 29th 8pm Central - Feb 5th 10pm Central at the Awesome Sauce Shop.

xoxoJen's review of Awesome Sauce Mermaid box
xoxoJen's review of Awesome Sauce Mermaid box

Literary Lacquers Each to Each - Sparkling aqua linear holo with the slightest touch of murk from the unknown depths, inspired by The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.S. Eliot.

Two coats and topcoat. I created a gradient with Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster and Thermofish over the mermaid scales vinyls for the accent nail. Formula was perfect, as I have come to expect from LitLaq

xoxoJen's swatch of Literary Lacquers Each to Each
xoxoJen's swatch of Literary Lacquers Each to Each

Lavish Polish Golden Mermaid - A beautiful golden holo with a mix of different multichrome flakies and micro gold holo glitter.

Two coats of this sparkly polish applied itself, no clean up.

xoxoJen's swatch of Lavish Polish Golden Mermaid
xoxoJen's swatch of Lavish Polish Golden Mermaid

Ever After Scaling the Open Seas - Silver metallic shimner with green, purple and gold ultra chrome flakes with strong scattered holo.

Super reflective and shiny, I wore two coats and the formula was great!

xoxoJen's swatch of Ever After Scaling the Open Seas
xoxoJen's swatch of Ever After Scaling the Open Seas

Anonymous Lacquer Mermaid Magic - A majestic purple holo with micro flakes.

I wore two coats, although I think one may have been sufficient. The polish is quite opaque and has a creamy formula.

xoxoJen's swatch of Anonymous Lacquer Mermaid Magic
xoxoJen's swatch of Anonymous Lacquer Mermaid Magic

Vapid Lacquer No Clam Shell Needed - A green to blue oceanic thermal shimmering with iridescent rainbow flakies. Glitter in all the colors of a mermaids scales, blues and purples clear holographic and all glitters in mattes Mettalics and holos.

A cool thermal glitter that I think is on point for a mermaid style polish. I wore three coats with slight VNL, no top coat.

xoxoJen's swatch of Vapid Lacquer No Clam Shell Needed
xoxoJen's swatch of Vapid Lacquer No Clam Shell Needed

I enjoyed the polishes, all the fun nail art goodies as well as the moisturizing oil and cream - they saved my skin while swatching and both smell delicious!
Which polish is your favorite? What kind of nail art would you create with this?

I hope you've enjoyed my review, please remember follow me on facebook too!

Monday, January 11, 2016

Top Shelf Lacquer: Valentine’s Day Collection (part)

The Valentine's day collection is made up of beautiful Valentine-y shades! I've not tried Top Shelf Lacquers before, so I was happy for the opportunity to review these. The packaging is cute - little bottles all bundled up in a satin drawstring bag along with wine glass charms, a business card and handwritten holiday card. I was sent several of the shades, but not all of them so do look around other blogs or join the facebook fan group to see them all! These shades will be available only at The Top Shelf shop on January 15, at 7:00pm Central time.

xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf package

The French Kiss - An ivory white crème with a gold shift and gold micro flakes
I was pleasantly surprised at how well behaved this white polish was! Super creamy not streaky at all and quite opaque. I wore this for nearly a week with no chips or tipwear.

xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf The French Kiss
xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf The French Kiss

Cupid's Float - A cotton candy pink crème that dries to a glossy smooth finish
The thicker of this group, but not unmanageable. A coat of QDTC helped smooth it right up.

xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf Cupid's Float
xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf Cupid's Float

Love Potion Punch - A rose pink crème that dries to a glossy smooth finish
Heh, puch is a good name for it, so bright it packs a punch! A fun color and quite squishy almost a jelly but too opaque to be called one.

xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf Love Potion Punch
xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf Love Potion Punch

Red Hot Valentine - A candy apple red crème that dries to a glossy smooth finish
I couldn't decide if this was a warm or cool toned red it looked like both depending on lighting!

xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf Red Hot Valentine
xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf Red Hot Valentine

Lady In Red Cocktail - A port wine crème that dries to a glossy smooth finish
A nice purple-ish berry red. I love this type of shade when wearing red-ish. :)

xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf Lady In Red Cocktail
xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf Lady In Red Cocktail

Shrinking Violet Cocktail - A deep eggplant purple linear holo.
What a grape color and my fave of the bunch! (see what I did there?) Still wearing it today and planning to wear it for a few more!

xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf Shrinking Violet Cocktail
xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf Shrinking Violet Cocktail

I wore two coats of each polish and found the formulas on all of them were easy to apply and streak free - yes even the creamy white shade, The French Kiss! Cupid's Float (pale pink) was the thicker of the bunch but it wasn't unmanageable. The other pinks and reds are squishy and apply like a dream and that purple! But you guys know me, I always love the purple!


The creams stamp well, except for the Cupid's Float (pinky nail) which is very sheer when stamped and difficult to see over creamy white. (Plate is Born Pretty BPL-024)

xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf Valentine stamping

I also did some nail art over Cupid's Float! (polish is mdu 20 & 23, plate is Flowers-16)

xoxoJen's swatch of Top Shelf Flowers stamping

Thank you for visiting and reading, if you enjoyed my post please follow my facebook page to see what I post next!

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Grace-full: Wintertide Collection

The Wintertide Collection is a range of seven beautiful holographic shades, some with flakes and some with shimmer! I've used two coats in each photo, all their formulas were easy to apply and smooth except for the microglitter polish - it was a little bumpy as could be expected.

These polishes are available at the Grace-full online store and are currently on sale!

xoxoJen's swatch collage of Grace-full Wintertide Collection

Mulberry Velvet - Purple linear holo with brown undertones

xoxoJen's swatch of Grace-full Mulberry Velvet
xoxoJen's swatch of Grace-full Mulberry Velvet

Regal Boysenberry – a purple jelly with purple and gold super holographic glitter,

xoxoJen's swatch of Grace-full Regal Boysenberry
xoxoJen's swatch of Grace-full Regal Boysenberry

Olive Evergreen - Olive with gold shift linear holo

xoxoJen's swatch of Grace-full Olive Evergreen
xoxoJen's swatch of Grace-full Olive Evergreen

Marsala Leaves - Brown red linear holo with red metallic flakes.
This was my favorite of the collection - photos just don't capture it's beauty. It's definitely one of those 'sleeper' or 'hidden gem' type polishes. I didn't want to take this one off!

xoxoJen's swatch of Grace-full Marsala Leaves
xoxoJen's swatch of Grace-full Marsala Leaves

Taupe Fog - lilac taupe linear holo with teeny holographic glitter

xoxoJen's swatch of Grace-full Taupe Fog
xoxoJen's swatch of Grace-full Taupe Fog

Steel Blue Blizzard - A grey toned blue linear holo with teeny holographic glitter

xoxoJen's swatch of Grace-full Steel Blue Blizzard
xoxoJen's swatch of Grace-full Steel Blue Blizzard

Which ones are your favorite?
It was a really tough choice for me, as I really loved all of them. Especially since they're all part of my favorite color range. But I finally landed on Marsala Leaves, it has such beauty and depth!

If you've enjoyed my review please show me some love by following me on facebook.

Friday, January 1, 2016

Essie Starry Starry Night - Retro Revival

Essie Starry Starry Night has been a lemming of mine since I started blogging back in 2009. I'm super excited to finally have it in my hands! I am aware it's not exactly the same as the original, but this is good enough for me!
I got mine from a sweet gal on Facebook who found them in a local store back in December. She bought all they had and was kind enough to offer them to people in our group so I jumped at the chance!

I wore two coats with topcoat and UNF it's squishy and pretty and everything I hoped for! (The formula is the typical goopy Essie formula though)

xoxoJen's swatch of Essie Starry Starry Night

In checking just now, this polish is available at Beauty.com and sold out on Amazon, but there's an option for email notification there if you prefer Amazon.
Essie.com appears to be stocking it, but the cart is powered by Beauty.com and it looks like Ulta stocked the collection but SSN is currently sold out there. Don't fret though - it is said to hit stores soon!

xoxoJen's swatch of Essie Starry Starry Night

Are you excited about SSN? Have you ordered yet? Do you have the original? Let me know in the comments below!

UN-Valentine Collaboration Box

xoxoJen's swatch of Turtle Tootsie Un-Valentine collaboration box
The box contains five full size bottles of Indie brand polishes one each from Turtle Tootsie, 77 Nail Lacquer, Cupcake, Bear Pawlish and Glisten & Glow.
You'll notice the box is meant to be satirical, especially with the clever names they've come up with! There is a surprise in the box but I've been sworn to secrecy! Ok ok - it's a special chocolate but I can't say more than that!

The box will be available for pre-sale beginning at 9am Central on January 3rd and goes through the 17th at Turtle Tootsie Polishes.

It's Not Me, It's YOU! is a berry pink linear holo with teeeeeny iridescent flakes inside. It's quite unique in my collection and this is the first time I've tried Turtle Tootsie polishes. Color me impressed! I wore two coats and topcoat, formula was smooth and easy to control.

xoxoJen's swatch of Turtle Tootsie It's Not Me, It's YOU!
xoxoJen's swatch of Turtle Tootsie It's Not Me, It's YOU!
xoxoJen's swatch of Turtle Tootsie It's Not Me, It's YOU!

I Love You, Not! is a super squishy red jelly that deepens a bit with the second coat. It's packed full of iridescent and holographic microglitter. Red polishes typically freak my camera out and this is the case here - it needs to be seen in person to see its full beauty. I wore two coats, formula is thick but manageable if the first coat is allowed to dry before the second.

xoxoJen's swatch of 77 I Love You, Not!
xoxoJen's swatch of 77 I Love You, Not!
xoxoJen's swatch of 77 I Love You, Not!

I Bought It Myself is a coppery colored jelly packed full of golden holo microglitters. The end result is a coppery super sparkly nail polish!
I wore two coats and topcoat, formula was easy to apply and fairly smooth for a microglitter.

xoxoJen's swatch of Cupcake I Bought It Myself
xoxoJen's swatch of Cupcake I Bought It Myself
xoxoJen's swatch of Cupcake I Bought It Myself

Single and Ready to Mingle is a denim-like shade of blue with a vibrant linear holo rainbow. I found the formula to be great and wore 2 coats with topcoat.

xoxoJen's swatch of Glisten & Glow Single and Ready to Mingle
xoxoJen's swatch of Glisten & Glow Single and Ready to Mingle
xoxoJen's swatch of Glisten & Glow Single and Ready to Mingle

Table For One is a charcoal jelly filled with tiny holo glitters. The jelly darkens to black as it's layered in two coats. As with other Bears I've tried, the formula is smooth and easy to apply.

xoxoJen's swatch of Bear Pawlish Table For One
xoxoJen's swatch of Bear Pawlish Table For One
xoxoJen's swatch of Bear Pawlish Table For One

Do you have a favorite? Do you want #ALLTHEPOLISH ?

I hope you've enjoyed the review! If so, please hit my facebook page with a thumbs up and share your favorite shades below. ;)