Trace Face Philes "Because I Can" Giveaway!

Hey everyone! I have some exciting news!! My friend Traci at The Trace Face Philes is having another giveaway!! Isn't she awesome!?! There are 8 different prizes to win!!! The giveaway ends on Friday, Sept 23rd, so go enter now!! 

Here is a picture of all of the prizes! Go look at her individual prize pictures to see what you can win!

Well, why are you still reading this?!! GO ENTER NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!

Alice is Absolutely Gorgeous!

Hey there readers! Happy Hump Day!! I have a few blog posts written up ahead of time, but after doing this mani last night, I knew I had to bump it up to this morning's post! I just love how it turned out!! :D

I saw this on Nailside a week and a half ago and knew I'd have to try it once my OPI Absolutely Alice came in. I changed the base color and didn't matte it, but it's the same idea. Of course, this was my first time trying her explosion tape design and mine didn't really look the right way, but I still like it for my first try.

 In the sun

 In the shade.

On the closeup of my thumb, you can see it's not perfect, but pretty good considering it was just glitter!

I used:
Base Coat: OPI Nail Envy
Base Color: China Glaze Flyin' High
Glitter: OPI Absolutely Alice
Top Coat: Poshe

I love how this turned out. Absolutely Alice is AMAZING! I am so happy I was able to buy it(since it's harder to find now without paying a ton of money). :) What do you think? Thanks for reading!

My First Julep Maven Box!

Hello there, lovely readers!! I have a very long and exciting post to share with you today!! If you read my other post on Julep Maven, this post is about what came in my first box. If you didn't read my other post, here are some things you should know about the Julep Maven Program.

This is a monthly subscription to receive nail polishes and products for cheaper than you would pay if you ordered them from the Julep website individually. $19.99 a month for over $40 worth of products each month! You will sometimes get never before released items to try before they are available to anyone else!

You take a quick quiz and they will determine your "personality" and base your colors around that. I was American Beauty. There is also: It Girl, Bombshell, Boho Glam, and Classic With a Twist.

You get to see what you are getting in a preview email before it is sent out, so if you don't like what colors they've chosen for you, you can request a "shelf pull" and they will pick alternate colors for your Sneak Peek Box that month.

You can pause your membership, send to a friend, or cancel at anytime! I love that, no real contract.

You are charged on the 26th of every month(the day your box ships out) so if you want to cancel, pause, or send to a friend, you MUST do it by the 25th.

It takes 7-10 days to get to you via USPS, and they will send you an email with tracking number once it has shipped.

As a Maven, you always get free shipping and 20% any Julep.com purchases.

You also can earn $15 for each referral to the Julep Maven Program. Here is my link if you'd like to sign up and give me credit for it. (If you do, please let me know in an email or the comments so I can keep track because they had some issues with the referrals).

Okay, that's basically the gist of it. Now, lets get to my first box!!

 All of this came in the box.
-Alfre nail color($14)--not yet released fall color!
-Cameron nail color($14)
-Julep Base Coat($14)
-Full sized Facial For Hands Glycolic Hand Scrub($32)
-sample of hand scrub and spf hand lotion
Total of $74 worth of product for $4.99(the intro code of smh9oxu took $15 off, now I'm not sure what it takes off, but try it!)

I have tried the hand scrub and really like it! I try to use it once a day and love how it makes my hands feel! Definitely happy they included it in this box! 

 I love the unique bottle shape. A lot of others have mentioned that they kept thinking they were going to tip the bottle over when they were painting, but it wasn't the case for me. I was surprised how heavy the were and seemed sturdy enough for me! I love that they are different!

 This is Cameron. Gorgeous color I wouldn't have ever picked for myself. A little thick, though, and that caused some trouble with application. This is 3 coats just to cover some problem spots. I plan to thin it a little and hope it helps.

 Unique side of the bottle.

 In the sun.

 

 In the shade.

 

This is Alfre. Not yet released for their fall collection. You can see the shimmer in the bottle in this top picture. I ended up loving this color, after expecting to not like it at all. A little frosty so you can see some brush strokes, but it was hard to see them in person compared to these pictures. It was much easier to apply than Cameron.

 

In the sun.

 In the shade.

After having Alfre on, I realized that it went really well with my new OPI Mad As A Hatter and decided to sponge it on the tips and paint it on my entire ring finger nail. Love them together!!

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with my first Maven box and look forward to getting my September box next week! Here is my sneak peek of next months box:

I'm a little dissapointed that there is only one nail color in this month's box, and hope there will be more next month or I'm not sure I want to keep getting these boxes. I'm in it for the polish mostly, but it will be nice to have hand cream and cuticle oil to go with my new hand scrub!

So what do you think? Will you be signing up? Thanks for reading!

Sparkle-thon Round Up and Comparisons

Alright folks, hope you enjoyed our 8 day Sparkle-thon. Today, I just want to do a quick recap and have all of the colors in one post for you if you weren't following all week. :) Nothing much else to say about them besides I LOVE THEM and I recommend them if you love glitter polishes! Mostly 2 coaters, you can't go wrong! I bought mine on ebay, but they are also available sometimes on Amazon, and of course on Nubar's website.

 Night Sparkle

 Petunia Sparkle

 Meadow Sparkle

 Violet Sparkle

 Fire Sparkle

 Star Sparkle

 Sky Sparkle

 Hyacinth Sparkle

Alright, now it's time for more pictures. I decided to do some comparisons with this Sparkles collection for you! I wish I had more to compare to, but I just used anything I thought was close from my stash and also my friend, Heidi's, stash for this post. I didn't want to go buy something that may be a dupe just to post about it. Anyway, here are the pictures! They are all labeled for you. And, there are 2 pictures of each comparison, one in the sun and the other more shaded, so they look different in both lights.

Nicole by OPI One Less Lonely Glitter was a close color dupe, but the particles are different sized compared to Nubars' uniform particles. On my nails, I was able to do less coats of Nubar than on these swatches, so for me, Nubar covered a lot better. Not to mention the awful NOPI brush that I hate hate hate!

 Orly Bubbly Bombshell was also a color dupe, but had different sized particles. However, the Nubar took half the amount of coats to cover!

I had nothing close enough in my collection to Violet Sparkle! This Finger Paints was the closest, and as you can see, doesn't even come close to the gorgeous brightness of the Violet. 

 Another non-dupe. Night Sparkle is gorgeous!

 We got VERY close to Sky Sparkle with Finger Paints Laugh My Art Off! And the FP needed much less coats(you read how I hated doing so many coats of Sky Sparkle). The blue particles in Absolutely Alice were very close, but the gold is in there so of course it's not a dupe. I just wanted to try it out since I haven't worn it yet. LOL

 Ahh, Meadow Sparkle is so unique. We had nothing, I just wanted to show it compared to this popular Sinful Colors green glitter.

 We had similar colors to Star Sparkle, but it was unique in it's particle size. I'm sure there may be another dupe out there, but neither of us had any.

And finally Fire Sparkle. I wish I had Milani Red One Coat Glitter for you guys to compare. I know some have the Sally Hansen and it was the only other red we could compare with, so I wanted to show. This is a really good representation of the amber-tone in Fire Sparkle.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading! Do you have a favorite one?

Day 8 of the Sparkle-thon! Nubar Hyacinth Sparkle

Wow, is it Sunday already? The weekends always seem to go by so quickly. Today marks 4 months since my dear husband left for Afghanistan. :( But, on a happier note, his deployment should be done next month!! :D This is much better than his last deployment that was for a year.

Today is our final day in the Nubar Sparkle-thon. Hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have!! I think I may do a post tomorrow with one picture of each color so you can see the entire collection on one post. Also, I plan to do a comparison post with the dupes for some of these colors.

Our last polish is Hyacinth Sparkle. I love this color. I love purple, so I was really glad to see 2 different ones in the same collection. This was only 2 coats and I was very happy about that after the nail fail with Sky Sparkle.

 These first two pictures were taken in filtered sunlight. The sun wouldn't come out from behind a cloud for the few minutes I was standing out there in the heat, so this was all I could do.

And a shade picture.

Well, that's it for the Sparkle Collection. What did you think of them? Did you enjoy having a theme for the 8 days? Thanks for reading

Day 7 of the Sparkle-thon! Nubar Sky Sparkle

Well, everyone, turns out that I've found the most annoying in the bunch. Today, we have Sky Sparkle. It's a gorgeous color, but was a pain to apply because it was so much less dense than the others. I had to do 4 coats and with all of that clear base mixed in, it made for very thick and uneven nails. I didn't even leave it on very long because it seemed like that many coats would never dry. Next time, I will be trying it over a matching base color instead of trying to build up the opacity in glitter alone.

 You can see the funky shape of my middle nail from too many coats of polish.

Do any of you have this color and have the same problem? Thanks for reading!