Review: Trend Tips from Sephora by OPI

So I had a wedding to go to with my boyfriend this weekend. What girl is going to go without her nails done? So earlier this week I was in Sephora and because they are changing over their nail line and cutting ties with OPI all Sephora by OPI products were on sale. So these nail stickers retail for $12.99 were on sale for $6.99, loving the design I wanted to try them. In the past I never had much luck with nail stickers, but I still thought I would try them. 

I should have thought twice about it. It comes for 18 in a pack so you can pick the sticker that best fits your nail. Thing is once you open the package you have to use them right there and then and can not save extras for future use. 

After I applied them close to my cuticle and filed off the tips, the edges started peeling. You can see from the picture by the cuticles it had peeled. I put them on at 2:30 PM and they had peeled by that night after dinner. Don't waste your money on these. After looking on the Sephora website to see what other people said about the product, reviewers had the same feelings. Pretty design, but does not give you a neat manicure. 

Day of the wedding I got a quick manicure which I was better off with:

My Acrylic and Gel Adventure

So part of why I have not posted in a little while is because for the last month I took a risk and tried acrylic nails and gel nails. Never have in my life have I done anything realllly artificial to my nails other then polish. The reason I tried fake nails was to break a really bad habit which I don't want to disclose. 

This is what my acrylics looked like and 

My gel nails....

I have to say even through they looked good, they were a pain. I paid $30 for them and then fills were $20. The first 2 days I had acrylic I hated them. They were heavy and my fingers felt sore the next day. When I went to get a fill 2 weeks later it didn't feel as bad, but it was still time consuming to get done. By the end 4 weeks, I wanted to try gel. My acrylics came off easy at the salon, but my nails still felt like paper. The next day I went to get the gel. They called it 'liquid gel'. Liquid gel is about $50. This is when my real nightmare started. The salon I went to seemed to be like any other salon and seemed to be knowledgeable. Well only 1 women "knew" how to do liquid gel. Unfortunately to make a long story short she did not do it correctly, making an amateur mistake and so the nails did not fully cure and dry because she used regular polish still wet under a liquid gel topcoat. So by the end of the day, I was not near the salon and couldn't go back because of distance, they had to come off. After I was done being upset about my nails (my nails have always been my pride) I did some research and found a great nail strengthener and then had to repair my nails after all that damage. I'll post a review on my products for repairing nails in another post. So it's been 2 weeks since I've had my fake nails off and now my nails are almost back to normal. Moral of the story a)make sure the salon doing it has education on the product b)sometimes your risks don't always work out, but it's not the end of the world. 

Review: Maybelline Color Show Holographic

Yay so 2 posts in 1 week :)

R: Blue Blaze L: Mystic Green

So these are going back to the store. They do give off good pigment and become opaque after 1-2 coats. The lasting of it is not good. They only last about a day and then peel or come right off. To make matters worse...they don't live up to the claim that it's holographic. Invest your money elsewhere for polish. For $4.19 I've seen better in other brands such as Sally Hansen.

Had to show these!

Of you really want fun eye popping nails, these can be found at the drugstore. Already been lasting 4 days...aren't these fun??? :)

Thanks shana!

Review: Julie G nail color: Cabana Boy

So this is going to be quick. But I had to write a quick review. If anyone watches YouTube beauty guru, Julieg has her own nail polish line through Jessie's Girl cosmetics. All of her polishes are sold either online or at Rite Aid. At $3.99 they are priced well. For that price you get .35fl oz which is slightly less then Essie. So the polish itself has a good formula. It goes on opaque and dries quickly and goes on smoothly. It's a great color. Only con is the smell it has. This is the only polish that seems to have a disgusting, not normal polish smell. That is the only downfall. I'll still use it but I don't think I'll use it on every single nail. 

Maybelline Color Show Polka Dots - Drops of Jade

I'm back! My apologies I haven't updated this. Anyways guess what I got today....

This baby. I saw this in the back of a magazine the other night and thought I should keep my eye open. So today after school something told me to go to my local CVS and sure enough there it was. There are a few colors in the collection. All with black and white hexagon and tiny  circle glitters, just different bases. Today I only got one color to try it out. I am so glad that I did. 

Drops of Jade is a nice green teal color. I found it to have good pigment and I was not disappointed with the amount of glitter that came out. It wasn't difficult for the glitter to be spread out. I am really happy with it. The paint glided on easily and dried in a good amount of time. it dries with a semi gloss finish. I might even get the blue or black that is in the collection. I say go get it. If your not too big into textured polish like me, this is a good alternative for something different.

 Excuse the one finger. I was trying some other polishes to review. Btw, apparently this polish was a part of Fashion Week in NYC.

What posts will come in the future?

So I haven't posted much in a few weeks but don't fret, I have some tricks up my sleeve. I have some beautiful spring colors coming up, as well as testing whether if it really is worth it to buy high end nail polish such as Dior and Illamasque or stay with drugstore such as L'oreal or NYC cosmetic polish that retails for $.99. We shall see on that verdict. If whoever is reading this wants me to review a polish or do a test, just comment below.

Boston Strong

So this post is coming about 15 days late and is not related to nails, but something like this is way more important then painting nails. Monday 4/15/13 will be a day that no one will ever forget. The BAA 117th Boston Marathon occurred. Unlike in the past 116 times the Boston Marathon happened, the race was stopped due to 2 pressure cooker bombs went off by the finish line. I was just as in shock and worried as a lot of people. As a result, over 250 people were critically injured; losing limbs and having lives altered in a matter of seconds. As well 3 people lost their lives as a result. In the days since as people try to make sense at what happened, law enforcement find 2 suspects that they believe are responsible. After the 2 suspects were reviled in the evening of April 18,events were set off. The suspects, a 19 year old and 26 year old killed an MIT officer sitting in his car, injured another officer from the MBTA and hijacked another car. This all occurred less the a mile away from where I lived. After a lockdown was set in place for that Friday in all the surrounding towns and less the 24 hours later the 19 year old was found in serious condition in a boat in someone's yard. The 26 year old was killed in a shoot out early morning of Friday while apparently his younger brother drove over him while trying to flee. When the word captured came across the screen, I'm sure just like myself, everyone in the state felt relief amongst other feelings and emotions.

So why did I write a brief version of what happened? The one thing that occurred to me is why? Just like everyone else...why? And how could terrorism like this occur so close to us. I want to recognize that as sad and terrible this situation is, the one thing that everyone including myself was reminded of is how proud we are to come from and live in this city.

Boston Strong is perfect. We are the city that if you mess with us, we will shut down our day just to hunt for you and bring you to justice. There is no way for us to be broken. We can lose limbs and have to change out lives, but we will not stay down. We will rise above all odds and stand together taller, prouder, and stronger then before. We will come together and support one another even in the smallest way possible. It is amazing to know that people who ran 26.2 miles kept running just to go give blood to support those that needed it. Boston people will give anything to each other in time of need. Take note, anyone who wants to mess with us, don't waste your time because you won't ever get us!

Review: Essie Polish "In the Cab-ana"

So I'm still getting used to this blog thing. I'm not sure how many people have read it yet but, I still glad I decided to do it.

Today is Tuesday, April 9th and looking at my car dashboard it read 78 degrees and its beautiful and sunny! That means all the annoying snow is going to be gone and its time to put the dark colors away and time to take out the bright colors for spring and summer. So far color trends I'm noticing is a lot of mint greens, turquoise, corals, and some colors that are just bright and in your face.  I'm already building up my spring and summer collection. I know on youtube I've seen a bunch of people doing video's on their spring 2013 picks. Of course its all based on opinion and in my opinion, Essie "In the Cab-ana" if I had a spring pick list, that would top on the list.

"In the Cab-ana" comes from the Resorts Collection which includes 3 other colors so 4 colors in total for the collection.  This is the only blue and when you first see it, it jumps out. The only other color that sticks out to me is a neon coral color called "Come Here!" which I have not bought yet. The green in the collection seems to be ok, my next color to get would be the purply/pink color called "Under Where?". Back to this color... I'm not sure if the pictures do it justice. This is the first color I've heard my mom say "THAT is a great color!" That statement comes from a woman who does not understand my nail polish obsession and doesn't wear colored polish on her nails ever. "In the Cab-ana" is a very bright, light blue that reminds me of a sunny day in the tropics looking down at the clear water that you can see the fish right through. This color is absolutely beautiful and a great way to get yourself in the mood for sunny weather. If you do not typically wear bright or outrageous polish, but you would like to start, this would be a great color to start with.

It took between 1 and 2 coats to make it opaque which can be typical for polish. I always start with a base coat which protects my natural nail from being stained which some blues can do. Some of my nails after the first coat were a little streaky, but that was a quick fix with a second coat so no issues there. This polish was easy to apply and not fussy. I always end my polish with a quick dry top coat like Wet n' Wild's In a Minute Top Coat (which really does dry in about a minute) or Seche Vite quick dry Top Coat. After I finished painting, there was not much clean up for me. I picked this up at CVS and retails for $8.00. The money was worth it for this color!

A Great Discovery: The Nail Wheel

So this will kinda be my first real post. Im going to kind of learn as I go with this blog because I have never done this before but I'm amped up to show all my nail polish knowledge :)

So I have always had an issue picking nail polishes. Yes I can like the color but sometimes I can't decide which to pick so then I would have to take every single polish I was interested in and inspect each one, probably wasting nail polish remover in the process. One night my mom and I were in Sally's Beauty Supply and I found something that would change my polish experience forever.... The nail polish wheel.

This has been a big savior to me. No longer do I have to pull every nail polish and try to figure if that would be a good color for me to choose. Now every time I buy a new polish, out comes a clean wheel that I paint. When I want to paint my nails I pull out the wheel and try it on. I did take a sharpie and number some of them. But this has been a huge help. Like I said, the wheels I got were from Sally's Beauty Supply. They come in packs of about 13 for $5.99 and each wheel has 12 plastic nails to paint. My collection is about 80 polishes so I have about 4 wheels filled. I don't have an official count of how many polishes but that will come. There are a bunch of ways to organize this but this is a good one. I know some do the single sticks but this is much less bulky. A couple of my wheels are organized by color or collection. I would highly recommend someone that has a lot of nail polishes to keep track of get something like this. The experience you have choosing and painting your nails will never be the same.

Welcome to the Polished Tens!

Welcome to my blog. This is my first blog and I am super excited about it. After realizing my mom always knew where she could find me in Ulta, Sephora, or a drugstore (by the polish) and realizing how much I change my polish (every other day) I thought it was a good space to share my interest. I am a recent college graduate that does not have a fortune to spend on manicures and pedicures so I mainly do all my nail care at home. My nail polish collection ranges in brand from low end to higher end. I have found ways to organize, do nail art cost effective, and found some pretty good nail tricks that don't cost much because I am one that cannot sit around and wait for my nails to dry. On here I will post reviews, trends, tips, tricks, and everything in between. I will post as often as I can and I hope you enjoy it.