Red French Tips (Using a French Brush)

Hello again!  I am excited because a couple weeks ago I went with a few friends to go polish shopping at beauty supply shops and I found the perfect cleanup brush.  I saw a french brush in a bin at one of the stores and thought that it might make a good cleanup brush.  It seems that all polish girls are forever in search for the best cleanup brush and best top coat and I seem to collect both.  This brush was only $3, so I figured what is the harm?  Well, I loooooove it!  It is the best cleanup brush I have ever used.  My elf concealor brush melts in the acetone after only a couple weeks of use.  I have used this brush for several weeks and while bristles have gone astray on the whole it is still very well intact.  The edge of the brush is so thin that you can cleanup in the tightest of areas around your nails.  One of my friends Jess, Lost in Polish, pointed out that this is what the manicurists probably use for french manicures.  I didn't even think about that even though the brush has the words, "french brush" etched on the side.  So guess what I decided to try?  Well, I hope you can guess from the title of this post.

I took some pictures of the brush to show you what a perfect cleanup brush looks like.  The other end of the brush has a small dotting too.  I actually use this as part of clean up also.  Since the brush isn't very stiff, I push back my cuticles with the small dotting tool that way I can clean up the excess polish that gathered near my cuticle with ease.

The shape of the brush ends up being perfect for making that smile line for a french mani.

Look at my french tips!  It isn't perfect I know.  But these are the best french tips I have ever created (even my right had looked decent!).  Lol!  And in keeping with the holiday colors.  I thought I would do shimmery red tips! 

In order to create the french tips, I polished the tips with red polish pretty sloppily and then I dipped my french brush in acetone.  I tried to keep a good amount of acetone on the brush, not dripping wet but pretty soaked, then I placed the whole brush where I wanted my smile line and gently pressed down flat against my nail and swiped from side to side brushing away the excess polish to make the french lines.

Wow that was a wordy post!  Ironic since I do not like to read wordy blog posts.  What do you think of my french tips?  I would tell you the name of the red polish, but I got this in a Color Club pack from Ross and threw out the box.  I'm so sorry, if anyone can name it please let me know!  It seems like a metallic Santa red polish.

*Update*  Look at how I updated my mani!!  I love this so much.  I'm not very good at nail art, but I'm proud of myself for this.  Hahaha!  I used my Winstonia Plates for the snowflakes.

Color Club: The Uptown

So lately I have not been keeping up with the blog world.  My Feedly app (my blog reader of choice!) had like a 1000 blog posts I didn't read.  So I decided to go through some of them.  There was one polish that I had noticed that seemed to be popping up here and there on my favorite blogs:  Color Club The Uptown.  This totally caught my eye because it is a duochrome flakie!!   I love flakies!  Maybe it's a multichrome, I'm not sure because the Color Club website called it a purple flakie.  It is no purple flakie.  It is a purple jelly based polish with an orangey bronze flakie that shifts to gold and green!  Let me tell you this is packed chock full of flakies and you need to be careful to make even coats.  I put too much of a blob of polish on my pointer and it is really dense with flakies.

Here is The Uptown from Color Club's newest Girls About Town Collection.

Bottle shot!  Can you see why I had to get this??

The Uptown layer over Revlon Royal and topped with HK Girl Top Coat

Macro shot!   Eeek!

The Uptown over Revlon Royal mattified!

Macro of the mattified version!

I'm so in love with flakies!!  And this is no exception.  It is like the Fantasy Fire of Flakies!!  What do you think??  Which did you like better glossy or matte?  I think all flakies have a different dimension when matted.

I actually purchased my bottle at Enospring.com because they sell it a little cheaper than the Color Club website.

Ross Haul

I love me some Ross!  So many of my friends say that it is so hard to shop there.  They are nutz!  It is just as hard to shop at the department stores or other clothes shops.  Sure you can see the clothes on display, but you get disappointed when your size isn't there.  At Ross you go straight to your size.  You don't have time to get disappointed!  I can't shop anywhere else besides Ross, Marshalls and TJ Maxx.

Anyways, who knew this was a great place to get nail polish?  I certainly didn't until I started reading all these blogs.  I would hardly ever go to the cosmetics section of the Ross.  Now I hound that place every time I go in!

This is what I got a couple nights ago.  So excited!

Color Club 7pc set  $7.99.

JLB 7pc set $5.99

One thing to be careful of is check to make sure your set has not been tampered with.  Essentially just make sure you don't see the same colors in the packs.  I've seen that happen.  :(  People are so mean sometimes.

I'm excited about my Color Club set.  I've heard of people getting really cool sets, and every time I go I'm disappointed with the Color Club sets that they have, but this time it was pretty cool.  The set says Take a Walk on the Wild Side, but I think I've heard that the name of the sets in Ross are different than the actual sets that were released.  And the names on the packaging is wrong too.   Oh well, these polishes are usually $8 a pop on the Color Club website.  

The JLB nail polish appears to be a cheapie polish, but they looked so beautiful and the bottles were cute too.  I was pretty impressed.  I used one as a manicure the other day and it was so pretty!  The formula was really weird though.  It didn't spread on the nail at all almost like it dried instantly on the nail as you put it on.  But it wasn't dry.  However, the pigmentation was so awesome that it was a one coater!  I did a couple coats on some nails, only because I was thrown by how weird the formula was.  This might be a really good stamping polish.  Will try that out next!

Have you found any treasures at Ross?