Olive & June Summer 2021: Swatch & Review

Well guys, summer has officially started. Mentally, I am not having a party but that doesn’t mean that my nails can’t! I totally fell for the marketing of Olive & June’s summer collection this year. The Lisa Frank color palette, the box you get to decorate with stickers… oh yeah, I am having as much fun as I did in the good ol’ days of being a kid. Olive & June has only featured once on the blog before because honestly, I mostly use them to paint my toes. Their polishes are designed to work without base coat and the paddle brush makes painting your tootsies super easy. But, we have seven new polishes and I cannot wait to wear several of them as manis so why not start playing with them now? I did recently become an Olive & June ambassador, but these polishes were purchases. Buckle up, you know there’s going to be a lot of pictures. I tried to keep blabbing to the minimum, but, you know, it’s me.

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Kelli Marissa X Orly: Swatch & Review

Summer is about to start and I am NOT excited. Last week Southern Oregon decided to sneak in a few early 100 degree days, very thoughtful of it to remind me how much I don’t want this season to start. There have also already been some small wildfires in the area, yay. Luckily I have awesome nail polish to distract me from all of this. No matter how hot it is outside, my nails are always going to be cool 😎 I have barely talked about Orly on the blog, which is weird because they are probably one of my favorite brands. A shining example of how quality does not automatically mean expensive, I think they are very reasonably priced compared to some of the other mainstream brands. They recently collaborated with NailTuber (nail YouTuber… not sure if this is a term I’ve heard other people use or if I just made it up) Kelli Marissa. She does swatch videos for a variety of mainstream and indie brands, her channel is such a great resource! Her collaboration with Orly features some galaxy inspired shades that will work for a variety of seasons. These are so up my alley, it was a no-brainer to purchase them even though I’ve been trying not to buy so much nail polish. Truly, I think about it all the time. I may not act upon it, but I’m thinking about it. If you don’t want to buy more nail polish yourself, maybe stop reading about now because these are SO GOOD.

{PR} Butter London Jelly Preserves: New Shades for 2021

Happy Wednesday! I can’t pour you a nice, relaxing cup of tea through the internet sadly, but I can share some nail polish. Or at least some pictures of nail polish. Butter London sent me their new Jelly Preserve shades and I thought I would share them here. These are super sheer jelly polishes and this time around Butter London is adding a shade with an orange tint and one with a green tint. If you want to see the first two shades, yep, I have a blog post for that! As a bonus, this time around I even wore one of them for ten days. You guys know I NEVER do wear tests because I’m a crazy nail person, but I managed to pull it off on my right hand. These polishes are meant to be treatments to help nourish and strengthen your natural nails. The index nail on my right hand is a particular problem for me (or, more likely, I’m just a problem for it) and I thought I would see what these could do for me.

Holo Taco Unicorn Dream Unicorn Skins Swatch & Review

Since Holo Taco has just dropped their second release this spring, it’s about time that I talk about the first spring collection! I thought I was doing well to have this post scheduled for this week, but I planned that waaaaay before knowing there were going to be two new full collections added to their permanent lineup. The first drop this year was a follow-up to last year’s spring collection: more unicorn skins! There is now a full rainbow of unicorn skin toppers available; this year they have added toppers with a mostly blue, green, and yellow hue. But, because they are unicorn skins, they are much more colorful than that! Over the past year or so I have been having a moment with toppers, so these are a very welcome addition. The collection also included two new creme polishes, but I’m just going to be reviewing the unicorn skins themselves today because that’s what I care most about.

Butter London Spring 2021 {PR}

This week is a very wonderful week. I’m getting my first vaccine dose ON THURSDAY!!! I seriously have never been this excited to get a vaccine in my life; I truly hate needles and usually dread these occasions, but I am willing to do whatever I can to help. The second wonderful thing is that we are talking about Butter London’s new spring collection, which they very kindly sent me. I almost did a happy dance when I opened the package, good stuff people, good stuff! The four new polishes are all part of their patent shine line and excitingly, there is a lighter green, which I don’t think they had anything like in the patent shine collection until now, and a new topper. I’m way too happy about this, let’s just get into the swatches because you know there’s going to be some blabbing.

Duri Below Zero Collection: Part II Swatch & Review {PR}

*Just a heads up, the polishes featured in today’s post and last week’s post were sent to me as PR.* Winter is wrapping up and so is my review of Duri’s newest collection. No offense to the polishes last week, but this week’s are all my favorites! They are all cool tones: we have a grey, blue-green, and blue. Perfection. Although it sounds like a wintery line up of colors, I think most of us would be reaching for these colors in a variety of seasons. All are perfect two coat cremes; I’ve come to expect this from Duri at this point but I’m still really impressed!

Duri Below Zero Collection: Part I Swatch & Review {PR}

*Just a heads up, the polishes featured in today’s post and next week’s post were sent to me as PR.* It feels like we’re farther into the year than we actually are. I think after Valentine’s Day, my brain thinks it must be spring now. It doesn’t help that yesterday was pretty much sunny all day. Of course, actually stepping outside and feeling how cold it is brings me back to reality, but for some reason I am struggling with the fact that it is still indeed winter and will be for a little less than a month. On the blog front, that’s good news for me because I have a winter collection to share! Duri sent me their newest Below Zero collection, which features a fun mix of polishes that I think I could wear across multiple seasons. Today we are going to look at the warmer shades in the collection and next week we’ll take a look at the cooler shades. I’m either an old lady now or a little kid, because sitting and swatching more than three polishes at a time makes me stir-crazy. Dividing up collections like this helps me keep my mental sanity.

Holo Taco Frosted Metals Collection: Swatch & Review

Merry Christmas everybody!!! This is the last full review of the year and I am finally getting back to doing Holo Taco reviews. The Rainbow Collection and Multichrome Collection have not made their way to the blog yet despite being swatched, but I’m certain they will make an appearance at some point! The Frosted Metals collection is another untraditional holiday collection from Holo Taco (see previous year) and it features a finish I have not seen a ton of in the nail polish world. All of the polishes are packed with a super reflective metallic foil silver flake. I find this to be a much more enjoyable way to wear metallic polishes because you get a lot more dimension and none of those annoying visible brushstrokes! As of writing this post, I think there are even still some of the beautiful box sets available for purchase, so if you want to get yourself/your nails a great gift, you still can!

Duri Cosmetics Primal Instincts Fall 2020: Swatch & Review

*The polishes featured in this post were gifted to me by Duri Cosmetics. I am under no obligation to review them or write this post. All opinions are my own.*

Duri kindly sent me their fall collection a couple months ago (sorry guys). It took me a while to get this post together, but I think I owed it to this collection to take my time and do it justice, you know? It’s called Primal Instincts; I think they were on the same wavelength as some other brands with the nature inspired theme! This is a super fun fall line up of polishes, they went full jewel-toned as opposed to dusty and muted. It’s composed of all the primary and secondary colors with a fall twist. All the polishes in this collections were cremes, totally fine with me, and I found the formulas superb. The last Duri collection I swatched had amazing cremes too, they have clearly mastered the formula. None of them took more than two coats (yes, even the yellow!) to reach full opacity and some of them only needed one. You really cannot ask for more.

Butter London Jelly Preserves

*The polishes featured in this post were gifted to me by Butter London. I am under no obligation to review them. All opinions are my own.*

I got a mystery package in the mail and was seriously wondering whether I should open it or not… USPS had lost a previous package of mine and I thought there was a longshot chance that was it. Upon finally opening it… goodies from Butter London! I was, of course, sad that it was not my long lost package but that sadness was quickly dashed by the appearance of the cheerful packaging. I have seen the new Jelly Preserve polishes/treatments on Instagram and hadn’t purchased them yet because I don’t think I am the target audience for them. But, put the bottles in my hands and you know that I’m going to give them a go! I actually don’t own any true jelly polishes that never get opaque on their own nor do I own any treatment type polishes that aren’t for hardening, so these are truly unique in my collection. Other brands have done these tinted treatments before, OPI and Essie come to mind. Butter London is cruelty-free, so perhaps there is a niche for these that needs to be filled in the cruelty-free market! I both polishes on their own for you today and then got creative with a good ol’ jelly sandwich. Remember when those were super popular? Always love rediscovering old nail polish community crazes!