Valentine's Day Lip Color Swatches (pic heavy!)

Hello readers :) Valentine's Day is coming up and I thought it would be fun to show off some fun lip colors to wear! I especially love reds and pinks for Valentine's Day but lately I've going crazy for purple so I will be showing you some purple-based lipsticks as well!

My lips are incredibly swollen and sore after swatching and taking all of these photos back to back so I especially hope you enjoy this post and can appreciate the pain I went through for it =P

The colors I'm going to show you are:
-Elf Jumbo Gloss Stick in Flirty & Girly
-L'Oreal H.I.P Shine Struck Liquid Lip Color in Arresting
-L'Oreal Colour Riche Caresse Stick in Violet Chiffon
-L'Oreal Infallible Le Gloss 8 Hour Lipgloss in Pink Topaz
-Maybelline Color Sensational Lip Gloss in Plum Luster
-M.A.C in Sequin
-Milani Lip Flash in In A Flash
-Nyx Round Lipstick in Gardenia
-Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter in Red Velvet
-Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter in Lollipop
-Morgana Cryptoria in Fire Brick
-Morgana Cryptoria in Fire Brick with Victoria's Secret Dazzleshine Lip Gloss in Hot Pink

I'll post a photo of each and give a brief description about the color and application.

Elf Jumbo Gloss Stick in Flirty & Girly- I was surprised at how much I actually liked this product. It has a very glossy and creamy texture to it and is a nice light-frosty hot pinky salmony color to it. It's a really nice color that will work for most skin tones while not being crazy in your face.

L'Oreal H.I.P Shine Struck Liquid Lip Color in Arresting- I'm not quite sure what happened to this photo! There are some odd streaks in it so please disregard! I didn't notice it until later. I think this product is actually discontinued now that I think about it. The H.I.P line had these very vivid lip glosses at one point and I haven't seen them in a while. This is one of the more purply/magenta colors and has blue undertones to it! It's very pretty in person!

L'Oreal Colour Riche Caresse Stick in Violet Chiffon- This is one of my new favorite lipsticks! It's very creamy, rich, and moisturizing and doesn't dry out my lips at all. This color is really nice because it gives you a subtle pop of purple but it's not overwhelming where someone would be distracted in a negative way. I would best describe this as a gently muted down hot pink with a lavender punch to it.

L'Oreal Infallible Le Gloss 8 Hour Lipgloss in Pink Topaz- This is one of my favorite lipglosses I own. It's very longlasting and delivers a very rich color. I love that it's a bright pink with a subtle purple shimmer. It's lovely for daytime and night in my opinion!

Maybelline Color Sensational Lip Gloss in Plum Luster- I believe this is one of the newer lipglosses that Maybelline came out with. It delivers a really nice color and the gloss itself is smooth and creamy. It smells nice too! I love this color for daytime and nighttime. It's kinda like a salmony raspberry hot pink color (if that makes any sense) and has a nice shimmer to it.

M.A.C in Sequin-  I love this color soooo much! No, it's not your typical Valentine's Day color but this is one of those colors where you can where both day and night and do a more dramatic eye. This lipstick has enough pink in it that isn't too in your face and allows you to do a more funky Valentine's Day inspired eye with bright pinks and reds. I love it because it's more of a vampy frosted color and would flatter many complexions. I will probably do a full face Valentine's Day look with this color sometime this week and post it.

Milani Lip Flash in In A Flash- Love love love. All I have to say about this one. This is probably one of my favorite purply pink lipglosses. It's a gloss stick that has a really nice texture to it and has a really vivid color. It's a bright, borderline neon pink with this amazing blue/purple glitter. It's a very fun one to wear and would look nice with a simpler eye.

Nyx Round Lipstick in Gardenia- This is one of those lipstick that I actually forgot I had! I went through my stash when I was looking for colors and I came across this one! It's a very nice poppy red with a very subtle frosty sheen to it. This is another one that many people could pull off.

Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter in Red Velvet- The Revlon Lip Butter line is one of my favorites. The texture is so amazingly balmy and creamy and they have a nice range of colors to choose from. This is a more sheer red and would work best for those who don't prefer to wear a crazy bold red lip.

Revlon Colorburst Lip Butter in Lollipop- Ohhh yes please.... This is probably my go-to hot pink lipstick. I keep this one in my purse in case of emergencies =P Like I said about Red Velvet, it's very balmy and creamy. This one is definitely brighter and more opaque though. It's really nice hot pink with a subtle blue shimmer. So beautiful!

Morgana Cryptoria in Fire Brick- This is definitely my favorite red lipstick ever. This is the kind of red that makes me not want to buy another red lol. It had this thick, pigmented, almost matte, metallic finish to it and sticks to your lips like you wouldn't believe. I like more vampy red like this one so it works perfectly for me. I reviewed this in the past so you can check out my post by clicking here.

Fire Brick with Victoria's Secret Dazzleshine Lip Gloss in Hot Pink- I decided to get a little creative and top off Fire Brick with this amazing hot pink glittery gloss I got from Victoria's Secret. I unfortunately wasn't able to take a good photo of the gloss but I will link you over to Miss Natty's post where I found out about this gloss so you can take a better look at it. For me, I think this color combination takes the cake! I would only wear this for someone very special though =P

WHEW!! That was a crazy long post! I really hope you enjoyed it. This week, I plan on putting together at least a couple full face looks for Valentine's Day and I will use these lip colors as well. Did any of the colors catch your eye? Do you already own any of these and are there any you are drooling over by any chance? =P

I'd also love to hear if anyone has anything really fun planned for Valentine's Day. I unfortunately don't have "that special someone" to spend it with but I plan on doing something fun with my friends! Enjoy your week, and happy early Valentine's Day!

Morgana Cryptoria Fire Brick Swatch & Review! Best Metallic Red Lipstick!

Hello again. Today, I'm going to show you my new favorite red lipstick. It's called Fire Brick and it's by a brand called Morgana Cryptoria. I didn't hear of this brand until I browsed through Blix's blog and saw some posts showing off this amazing red lipstick. When I saw it, I fell in love!

Let me start off by saying that I am in love with this color. It's a very vampy deep red with a frosted metallic sheen to it. It is highly pigmented and rich in color. It is opaque and applies very nicely due to the shape of the lipstick, which I will show  towards the end of this post. I haven't had a chance to wear this out yet, but I suspect that it would last a long time. It was definitely more on the difficult side to remove but that is a quality I would need in a red lipstick.

In the photo below, I only have the lipstick applied with no lipliner underneath so I can show you how easy it was to control. It would probably look even better with a lipliner for maximum definition and wear-time.

Taken with flash

Photo of the product to show the shape of the tip

 Overall, I really love this lipstick and can't wait for the right night to wear it out. This is definitely a good quality lipstick and would purchase it again in the future. Have you tried this brand before? Are you brave enough to wear a red like this?

Bloody Halloween Nails

Hello readers. I have another Halloween themed post for you! I love doing my nails for Halloween and I decided to do one of my favorite scary manicures.

This is a repeat manicure of last years glow-in-the-dark blood spatter nails. I used a very messy and fun technique involving dipping one end of a straw into nail polish and blowing it onto my nails. Here is a link to the tutorial I go the idea from.

I used:
White- Alpine Snow by OPI
then two coats of Ghoulish Glow by China Glaze
Red- Drastic by China Glaze (near perfect jelly blood red)

One of my favorite parts of this manicure is that the white glows in the dark!

For now, I only have a pic prior to cleanup but I like it more that way =P

Happy 4th of July! Independence Day Manicure :)

Hello readers. Today I'm going to show you my nails for 4th of July and show you last year's 4th of July nails.

I used:

Blue = Eyes Like Sapphires by China Glaze
Red = Ruby Pumps by China Glaze
Silver = Kiss Nail Art striper
White = Kiss Nail Art striper
Glitter topcoat = Northern Lights
Seche Vite topcoat

Here's how I did it:

I started off with two coats of Ruby Pumps. Then I did the white stripes by laying the brush pretty flat against the nail and dragging it. I then carefully drawed on the silver stripes where I wanted the blue to start. Then I freehanded two coats of Eyes Like Sapphires to the edge of the silver. I touched up the silver once more to even out the lines and finished it all with Northern Lights and Seche Vite :)

Like it? Post the links to your July 4th nails as well! I would love to see them! Click here to see others' July 4th designs.

Louboutin-inspired halfmoon manicure :)

Hello readers! This manicure I am about to show you started off being a simple/classic idea and ended up being frustrating mess... but finally ended up looking awesome :)


At first, I just wanted to do a classic red polish so I puled out Isla by Zoya. I did three coats of that but I did it at the worst possible time... my friend invited me out for crawdads that evening and I didn't realize how messy it would be. When I was done with dinner, my thumb and pointer nails were completely ruined. It was late at night and I didn't want to re-do the whole thing so I put another coat of Isla on top.


The next day, I still hated my manicure. For some reason, it became all bubbly and the texture was bothering me. I then decided to put a coat of China Glaze Ruby Pumps (red glittery polish) on top to hide the texture, which helped a lot because of the glitter.


Then... it came to me. I thought about the "lubu manicure" and thought to myself... I've never done a halfmoon manicure... I'll try doing a lubu halfmoon manicure!


I used those hole punch protectors and shaped the halfmoon. I put one coat of China Glaze Lubu Heels which is a really nice black polish with red glitter. When I took off the hole punch protectors, some of the sticky residue was left behind so I had to touch it up with some more Ruby Pumps. I finished the look off with Seche Vite for a nice glossy finish and I love how it came out :)

It's soooo shiny :D

I love all the red glitter!

Here's how I did it :)

Here's my inspiration :)

Glow-in-the-dark Blood Spatter Nails for Halloween

Hello readers... long time no see! I finally have a chance to update this and just in time for Halloween this weekend! I went to a corn maze a couple of weeks ago and wanted to do some spooky nails so I did glow-in-the-dark bloodspatter :)

I used this tutorial to do the bloodspatter effect, which consisted of dipping a straw into a small puddle of nail polish and blowing directly onto my nails from the other end. It's probably a good idea to play around with the different angles and distances from where you blow the polish from so you get some interesting effects.This was soooo much fun to do! It was probably one of the messiest projects I've done but it was well worth it.

I used:
White- Alpine Snow by OPI
then two coats of Ghoulish Glow by China Glaze
Red- Drastic by China Glaze (near perfect jelly blood red)

And now for the nails... I still have this on almost 2 weeks later =P

And here's the glow effect! You have to "charge" it under the light for a bit but it looks amazing when it glows.

Happy Halloween :)

22nd Birthday :)

Hello everyone! Sorry again for another drought! The past couple of weeks have been very hectic and making a blog past has unfortunately been the last thing on my mind.

Last week was my 22nd birthday and it was seriously the best birthday I've ever had thanks to my amazing friends :) I'm going to start off by showing you my bday manicure and then I will show you the pics from my party and talk about that!

This is 2 coats of Midnight in NY by Sally Hansen with 1 coat of Dorothy by Nyx Girls

Anyways back to my party! My friends and I had dinner at a restaurant called Opa! in Los Gatos, CA, which is a Greek restaurant. I don't know how I lucked out so much but we ended up having our own private room, complete with our own TV and bathroom! Here's a pic of our group! I'm at the head of the table =P

And now for a pic of my outfit :-)

Then we met up at Mt Charley's down the street for dancing! This is the other group of people we met up with! The girl in the blue has the same birthday as me and we decided to celebrate together :)

Then we ended the night with some shots! Ignore my friend in the background.... he was 10 shots and 2 beers in when we took this pic haha!

Anyways.... best birthday ever!

OPI Red Shatter

Hey everyone :) I don't feel like writing too much on here tonight but I wanted to show you OPI's Red Shatter.

This is layered over 3 coats of Worth The Risque by Color Club, which is a holo silver, and one coat of Techno by China glaze, which is a chunky holo glitter.

I actually really like the Red Shatter, even more than the black. I love red nail polish on my fingers so it was interesting to have that with some silver peeking through. I totally recommend it-- you won't be disappointed!

30 Seconds to Mars Mani :D

Boy am I excited!!!! Tonight I'm going to see 30 Seconds to Mars live for the first time ever!! I decided to do a 30STM manicure based off of the tattoo that Shannon Leto has on his arm (pointer-pinky), as well as the logo on the Kings and Queens album (thumb). I am soooo in love this this manicure and I can't wait to rock it out tonight!

What I used:
Grey- Loredana by Zoya
Red- Ruby Pumps by China Glaze
White- Sally Hansen Nail Art Pen
Seche Vite topcoat

Shannon Leto's tattoo

Sister's Vday look

I wasn't the only one excited with Konad! My sister has always wanted leopard print nails so I gave her a nice look to match her outfit.

Red base- Chi- Its 5 O'Clock Somewhere

Gold spots- Chine Glaze- Midnight Kiss

Leopard print- Konad #M57

She wore a leopard print dress with red heels so this went perfectly :-)

OMG KONAD!!

So one of the best investments I have ever made was my Konad purchase!

If you don't know what Konad is, it's a nail polish stamping system! They have many designs to choose from and you can use any nail polish for your stamp design. They have special nail polish for stamping as well that gives nice, thick results.

Want to see how it works? Go to Wow Wow Nails' Post.

You can buy Konad at WowSoCool.com or any authorized retailer on Ebay.

Anyways, this look is the one I chose for Valentines Day! I didn't want to do anything to heartsy-fartsy so I chose zebra print!

Black with red glitter base coat- Lubu Heels- China Glaze

Red tips and zebra stripes- Chi- Its 5 O'Clock Somewhere

Zebra pattern- Konad #M57

I LOVE this look!!!!!