Miss Ashleigh: Berry Delicious

Press Sample

I love a good purple polish and Berry Delicious from Miss Ashleigh does not disappoint! In this review, I share my first impressions of the polish by Miss Ashleigh, sent to me from Ella Ann Cosmetics.

The polish comes packaged in a white designer box, with the super cute heart logo in a bold modern style. The box also has a window cut out so the polish color is visible before it's removed from the box.
The brush is a round classic style brush and the formula is fantastic. It is very fluid, easy to control, no clumps or dragging and almost opaque in one coat. I used two coats and topcoat to make sure I had good even coverage for the photos. I've worn the polish for two days now and plan to wear it for a few more and so far, I've not had any chips or cracks. The mani still looks freshly applied.




Last night I decided to try out a new Infinity stamping plate that has some of my favorite Sanrio characters on it. I stamped with MDU 25 and a candy head stamper.





I hope you'll give the Miss Ashleigh line a try. I think you'll be glad you did! Berry Delicious and many other shades are available at Ella Ann Cosmetics. In fact, many of them are on sale and she's offering a shipping special. Please visit her webpage for more information about those!

I've had a good experience working with Ella Ann Cosmetics and she sent me quite a few (17) polishes to review, so you'll be seeing more of those here at xoxojen.com

Thank you for stopping by today!

One Cotton Ball to Remove Them All!

Yes, you read that right! I'm going to share my secret with you of how I remove a full manicure with only one jumbo cotton ball.

The trick is to create more surface area. We're going to do that by unrolling the cottonball so that its a strip and no longer a ball.

You'll notice the rolled up ball looks like a hay bale or roll of toilet paper. So, I kind of pick and pull around the rolled edge (like I would a roll of toilet paper!) until the end starts coming loose. Then gently unroll it the rest of the way.



Next, cut small strips/squares from it to match the size of your nails. We're going to cover each nail with these pieces. If you have small nails and make careful cuts, there may even be a tiny cottonball leftover!

Once the pieces are cut, soak them with 100% acetone one by one and apply on top of the nail.
There are a few ways to soak them with acetone:
1. Put a small amount of acetone in a glass dish and toss the pieces in to soak it up. (watch for drips)
2. Hold five pieces together at the bottle opening and tip it, then separate them to apply to the nail. (spill risk)
3. Using a pump bottle, which is the way I prefer most. It's less risky of spills/drips and can be done with one hand.

Apply the soaked cotton pad to the nail and let sit for a bit. About a minute is a fair time frame for a couple of layers of cream polish. Let it sit longer (and reapply acetone if it dries out) for more layers or polishes with shimmer.



Remove each piece by pressing down near the cuticle and sliding the cotton to the free edge of the nail. This will remove most if not all of the polish. Avoid scrubbing back and forth, as this will just smear the color from the cotton onto the skin. If there's a litlte polish left on the nail grab a clean square and remove it in the same manner, dragging from cuticle to free edge until it's gone.



Above is my result! I had about three layers from my previous mani.
Afterward, I used the tiny cotton ball remnant and removed the little spots of leftover polish.

This method is very similar to the foil method, but without the foil. I've come to love the unrolling technique that I have used since 2008, it is key to making a bag of cotton balls last much longer.

I hope you find this useful and try it out some time!
What are some of your your tips and tricks to remove polish?

Stamped Stars mani

I hope everyone who celebrates it, had a wonderful holiday this July 4th!
Jas and I went to the city's fireworks display, which was excellent, on the night of the 3rd. But even more magical than that was the view from the place Jason goes to run. We had a nearly unobstructed 360 degree view of all the fireworks in the area, and we were the only ones there. We stood outside the car for nearly an hour and it was absolutely breathtaking.

Anywho - below is what I wore for the holiday. Albeit a little late, I thought I would share anyways. I used plate JQ4, MdU 1, and a GPS stamper to stamp the stars. The gradient was made with a base of Polish My Life Stripped and Essie Style Cartel. Which matched the gradient of my shirt perfectly! (linked shirt image is from cj banks catalog, not taken by me)




If you don't celebrate, I still hope your day was fantastic! Thanks for stopping by!