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.

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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.

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.

Fall Favorites: OPI My Italian is a Little Rusty

OPI My Italian is a Little Rusty, 2 coats plus top coat

It’s the most wonderful tiiiiiiiiiime of the year…. no, it’s not Christmas yet, but it is FALL!!!!! Although 2020 has been a steaming pile of poo, one of the bright spots has been all the incredible fall and Halloween polishes that have been released this year. Well, not from my wallet’s perspective. Money may not be able to buy happiness, but nail polish and happiness are pretty much the same thing, sooooooo… all the fall polishes, please! I’m hoping to share a few of my favorites with y’all before the other holiday season starts, but with my current schedule of posting every two weeks, we may not fit as many in as in the past. But I would rather go for quality and we are starting off Fall 2020 with a banger! It’s from OPI’s Milan collection, which was pretty much made for me: I ended up getting 11 of the 12 polishes (thank you polishpick.com, no way could I have done that paying full price). This beautiful burnt orange rusty dirt color, My Italian is a Little Rusty, is the first of those 11 polishes I have worn. You guys KNOW I go insane for oranges and while this is definitely brown and not orange, it’s the orangey-ist brown out there and I adore it. The name is definitely a 5/5 too, maybe not specific to Milan but perfect for the hue!

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!

Duri Cosmetics Retro Wave Spring 2020 Collection: Swatch & Review

{pr sample} Duri sent me the polishes in this post to swatch and review. All opinions are my own.

Duri reached out to me to swatch their spring collection and, not gonna lie, I saw a pretty green and that was all it took for me to say, yes please! Also, I have wanted to try the brand for a while and opportunities like this do not come knocking every day. I got my swatches up on Instagram pretty quickly, but fell into a bit of a blog slump. I guess I was feeling uninspired to actually write a post (I have been swatching consistently) but now I feel up to it again! I just love nail polish so much (wow, really Ashley, no one would have guessed) and I love the nail polish community. I think I needed a different form of escapism during this pandemic and since I have been working from home for about 4 weeks on and off, it feels like I’m just at home all day on a computer. I’ve gotten over that now and I am finally ready to give you guys an in depth look at the Duri Costmetics Retro Wave collection for spring 2020! I’m switching it up for the foreseeable future and my posts will be dropping on Wednesdays now. I would like to tell you that I used stats and blog analytics to decide this like a professional would, but actually I just realized that having a “deadline” on a weekend was not working out for me and mid-week posts seem more achievable. We’ll see. On to the swatches, there are six polishes in this collection and you know there’s going to be lots of photos.

OPI Mexico City VoxBox

*Influenster sent me all products pictured complimentary for review purposes. Writing a blog post was not a required part or any part of the campaign.*

Most people are putting out more content during these can’t leave your house times, but me? Nah bro, I ain’t about doing what everyone else is doing! Just kidding, the real reason I have not put up a blog post for weeks is that I had to rush to get the bare minimum stuff done for Influenster for this campaign because I got everything I needed only five days before it was all over, yikes. I also am still going to work and working full time (I work a local government job and we JUST got remote access on Thursday so we are still trying to figure out how that will work with us still having to serve the public) and when I get home in the evening after eating and doing whatever cleaning needs to be done, I spend way too much time watching commentary YouTube to distract myself (Kurtis Conner has been my main jam lately). Thankfully, I also have nail polish to distract me through all this craziness too. I do not have to do a blog post for the Influenster Mexico City box, but I thought I might as well because I tested everything they sent me. The box (actually it all came in two boxes) had pretty much everything I use for a full mani minus the cotton rounds and cuticle pusher! We will take a look at the two polishes first, Don’t Tell a Sol and Verde Nice to Meet You, then we’ll move on to the other goodness.

OPI Good Girls Gone Plaid: Blogstravaganza Fall 2019

OPI Good Girls Gone Plaid, 2 coats plus top coat

You guys… it’s the last post in my series on OPI’s Scotland collection! We have made it through the eleven polishes I purchased and I’m proud of any of you who have stuck with me through the series. Although let’s be real, when you’re looking at colors this gorgeous you cannot exactly call it a chore. We finish it all off with a final purple, a purple so dark that your non-nail polish friends will be skeptical when you tell them it’s purple. OPI calls Good Girls Gone Plaid an “alluring amethyst” which prompted me to google “amethyst” and I suppose it is an okay description. Some amethysts can be dark and it certainly looks darker when the crystals are all layered up. Fine OPI, I’ll accept it.

OPI Red Heads Ahead: Blogstravaganza Fall 2019

OPI Red Heads Ahead, 2 coats plus top coat

Happy Sunday, everyone! Have you been hitting those deals hard this weekend? I’ve picked up a few gifts, but the only nail/hand related sale I shopped for myself was at Unicorn Magic Skincare. I was planning on trying out their products in the spring, but decided to stock up during the sale. Why not? I really need to learn to restrain myself during the year with polish and candles until the Black Friday/Cyber Monday sales. Anyway, I’ve fallen behind on the  OPI Scotland collection, so today we are looking at Red Heads Ahead, which is probably the most vibrant polish in the collection. OPI says this color “shines like the auburn locks of a Scot.” Now, I will admit that I have not looked at every person in the world’s hair, but I have never seen a living human being with hair this naturally red. I would say this a classic, juicy red that leans on the darker side of medium-toned. I have some comparisons at the end that I think really show where this color falls in the red spectrum.