NCC Flowers #1

It's time for July's theme which was voted to be FLOWERS. I have a couple flower designs I've wanted to try and haven't gotten the chance yet so this is hopefully going to be a successful month for me. Anyway, this is the warm up round and I started with Orly Velvet Rope and Sinful Colors Green Ocean and added a little daisy using Gosh Holographic Hero and Essence Wanna Be Your Sunshine.

It was vair shiny =3

Swatch: Sinful Colors Green Ocean

So, starting with Orly Velvet Rope, I thought this would be the perfect base for Sinful Colors Green Ocean, which was sent to me by Alyssa from Frugal Polish <333 I did two coats and some of the picture are blurry because SHINY.

I'm going to have to try this matted and over straight black. It is gorgeous <3 Thank you Alyssa!

What's your favourite flakie?

Swatch: Orly Velvet Rope

Orly Velvet Rope, a shimmery grape purple with silver microglitter scattered throughout. First pic is two coats but it had bald spots so I did three!

Very purty =3 It's a luxurious colour and I like it. I have been neglecting my purples. What's your go-to?

Swatch: Born Pretty Store Blue Holo 8

Aaahhh! Recently the bornprettystore.com holo polishes have been half price ($6) and I'm a sucker so I bought the blue! It was a little darker than I expected in the bottle but the holo was strong enough that I could see it under indoor lights.

It's a little sheer so I think I used 2 - 3 coats to make sure I was covered.

So it's much lighter on the nails than it appeared in the bottle which is perfect <3 Now I wanted to compare this to my other holo in some creative way. My other holo is Gosh Holographic Hero and I decided to try framing.

 They turned out... okay. So I think HH takes a bit more work to get the holo out. BPS did really well by itself, no work, no base coat etc whereas if you look at my post for HH you can see that I did several layers blah blah blah. It's not as glossy. It was nice and blingy for the day though =3

What do you think are frame nails? I like them when others do them but not really when I do...

Review: ShoeDazzle.com

Brace yourself, it's story hour. I don't even know what possessed me to join this site in the first place. It was probably some ad on Facebook. Also they advertise "free shipping" and what they mean is "free shipping for Americans." Anyway, I joined and I found a couple things I really liked so I went to order them. I paid $20 for shipping but for two pairs of shoes $60 isn't bad at all.

I ordered a flat grey knee-high boot called LINA and some really cute sandals called DIVYA. Sorry, I couldn't pull photos off the site...

A few days later I got an e-mail saying part of my order had been cancelled. They had taken Divya off and continued with the rest of it. Instead of refunding the money back to my credit card, they'd kept it in "store credits" which had an expiry date set for 5 years. So I paid shipping on one pair of shoes rather than two, and that's not worth it in the least.

I called to find out what to do about this fiasco and waited on hold for upwards of 45 minutes. I honestly believe that if I hadn't started pestering them on social media, I would have been sitting another hour. By the time he had called my cell phone somebody else had started talking to me. The story they gave me was that those sandals had all been recalled because the quality wasn't up to standard so instead of just telling me this and shipping me the shoes that would be up to standard when they were available they had given me store credit for the sale price of the shoes, which were no longer on sale and there was a glitch between the warehouse and the retail site so that if I tried to order them again I would have to go through all this garbage again. The "Stylist" gave me a credit towards shipping which is something, but still a total piss-off, especially since if I wanted THOSE SHOES that I had painstakingly picked out and hemmed and hawed over I would have to pay en extra $10 now. Nope.

Anyway the boots came. They are actually pretty fab and I'm going to get a lot of use out of them (even though it's summer, because it just keeps bloody raining).

They totally just survived my 45 minute hike to city center and didn't chafe or anything. Surprisingly good buy =3

Anyway, that's enough of that.

I was going to wait until July 1st and see what the whole "showroom" garbage was but I'm impatient and I am kind of fed up with this company and their shitty operations so I just trawled the clearance section until I came across DIONE and NOBOKU. I like the shape of Dione and I'm sure I can find ways to wear it. As for Noboku, I can't walk in shit like that but I need a pair of pirate boots so we might work out as a couple.

I'll let you know what happens as soon as they get here.

So this site is one that operates on referrals and I'll get points if you use my link. It's not worth it if you're Canadian BUT for the free shipping and returns/whatever in the States, you'll probably have an excellent time of it... as long as you don't have to call them. Alternatively, you can do as I do and rove over the clearance section once in a while. All sales final, free shipping in the states? Not a bad deal, honestly. If you're in the states.

Also, here's my link. I won't cancel my account until the order comes through but if I can milk this and make up for my inconveniences that'd be pretty alright. Every 5 friends you get to sign up is a free pair of shoes (plus you get points on purchases you make). Of course for me, I'll have to pay $20 shipping but we'll fight that battle when we get to it.
.

... In conclusion, I'll wear closed flats this summer, and fuck you ShoeDazzle.

Swatch: Rainbow Honey Tiny Ruby

I know y'all were getting all excited for some Canada Day nail art but the maple leaf has gotten old for me for some reason, even though it's not like I do it every year. If  you're really craving some country birthday art, check out last year's nails k. I went with glitter this time. Free glitter. Glitter provided for my honest review.

I put it over Orly Razzmatazz. Two coats.

This is actually one that looks much better in person. You can see it in some of the photos, how you get twinkly little red bits and those just don't quit.

Linking to last year's nail art got me feeling a bit nostalgic though so I added some festivity over top of this in the form of Julep O Canada, a stroke of genius from last year and a dupe of a Pure Ice that my friend here has swatched so don't go running out and spending $14 on this when you can go to Walmart for $2.

None of them will watermark apparently, so have some pics.

It's actually more twinkly than before now and I feel sufficiently festive. How did you or are you going to pay homage to your country's day of reckoning? Less lazily than me I hope. Feel free to link me =3

Swatch: Orly Razzmatazz

Hi! Today I have another of those 50c minis I found in the corner of a Pharmasave. Razzmatazz is what I would describe as a Cerise colour. It's also a jelly and coverage and formula was AMAZING. If you wanted a red wash over your nails you could do a single coat (shown below).

 

And then a second coat. Didn't change the colour really, just added some opacity.

Razzmatazz is the kind of colour that makes me think of Taylor Swift and Instagram and overexposed photos from dark indie concerts (like those Virgin mobile commercials?). It's kind of vintage/classic which unfortunately reminds me of wanna be's and hipsters. It's still a cool colour though. It's not its fault that hipsters are lame.

It's pretty perf. I think I like this red. I'm glad I have one for one Julep January finally fails me.

Do you have any weirdly specific impressions of nail polish colours?

And it's totally Canada Day! Happy Canada Day! Maybe I'll do nail art on this and show you tomorrow =3 See you then <3