June Julep box

So remember when I said that you could get a Julep box for a penny? Well I got my box! In it was two nail polishes and a foot creme.  Here's my review/swatches!  I got the box when it was late and I couldn't wait to open it, so the first pictures are all from around 2 in the morning, so I apologize for the lighting.  Warning: this post is quite picture heavy.

My box came a little bit battered, but from what we know about the postal service, this is to be expected.  It was just a plain black cardboard box with the Julep logo on the side.

When I opened the box, this is what I found, there were two slips of paper inside.  One was the information about being a Julep Maven (the monthly box subscription) and the other was about what I was receiving this month (two polishes and one foot creme).  I chose the American Beauty set for this month.

The packaging was actually quite cute. There was a pink paper bag with two toe separators on top, wrapped with a black ribbon and the box was filled in with all the little black paper worms.

Here is the pink paper bag that I pulled out of the package

The Pedi Creme and the wrapped Julep polishes (sorry about the bluriness, my camera was just not wanting to work with me)

The unwrapped polishes.  On the left we have Eva and on the right we have Renee.

I also did the swatches/review for the two colors after the break!

China Glaze splatter

So I had the China Glaze Dress Me Up on as a full manicure, then after a day or so I started to get bored of the one solid color.  So I decided to take a page our of polishaholic's book (her blog is at thepolishaholic.com) and do a splatter mani!  For this, I used China Glaze Foie Gras (also from the Hunger Games collection) and a Color Craze white that I had stashed away.  I used the tip of a ballpoint pen, painted polish over the small end, and blew through the other end. This created that nice splattering of color.  Of course, I taped my fingers before I started, so that clean-up wasn't completely brutal.  I sometimes don't like how splatter turns out, but I think this one wasn't so bad!  I still have it on right now and I did it a couple of days ago!

More color accurate

Song of the day:  Superwoman by Alicia Keys

China Glaze Dress Me Up

I haven't done a swatch in a while, so here is one of the China Glaze polishes from the Hunger Games collection.  Now I was addicted to the books and I absolutely loved the movie, so it's only reasonable that I have the whole nail polish collection! This color is a lot more.....soft than almost every color I own, I think it's the closest that I have to nude, which is pretty sad.

China Glaze Dress Me Up was originally named Primrose (inspired by Katniss's younger sister).  It is a mauve creme with a faint blue undertone. I did two coats for the pictures below, and had slight bubbling on my third finger (you can see it in all the shots), but when I did another mani over this one, you couldn't see the bubbling at all.  The formula was like a dream and went on like butter, so I have no complaints there.

In 100 degree Colorado sunlight

Sunlight

Outdoor shade

See? Closest I have to nude in my collection.

Song of the Day: Misery by Maroon 5 (Their new CD comes out today, and Adam Levine is hot hot HOT)

Claire's Neon Orange

I was staring at my collection the other day and I could not decide what to do for the life of me, so I decided to just go neon to go with the rest of the latest summer trends.  I already did the neon yellow this year, so I decided to go with orange!

This is the most color-accurate photo

Neither of these pictures do the polish justice, but they are decently color-accurate.  In the sunlight though, there was no way I could get a decent picture, because my camera kept freaking out and wouldn't let me.


Song of the day: California King Bed by Rihanna (good lord I have such a girl crush on her)

NYC With Nail Tattoos

I did these nails a few days ago, and I really love them.  I'm usually not a fan of yellow (my skin has a yellow undertone to it, so that's definitely an issue), but with the flowers, the yellow is toned down a whole lot. I got the nail tattoos off of amazon.com and I haven't regretted it AT ALL.  They are super easy to use, you just cut out the one(s) that you want, then soak them in water, then stick on your nail over the dry base color and seal with a topcoat! They are really simple and give a great finish, so I'm extremely glad I bought them.  They were also pretty cheap if I recall correctly. The base color I used was NYC Taxi Yellow Creme.  I ended up using about 4 coats, and you can still see the slightest visible nail line, but I think it works perfectly with the flowers I chose.

The second picture is the most color accurate, but in reality, they are much less orangey.

Ignore the hangnail I got on my middle finger.  It really hurt :(

Also ignore the fact that my middle fingernail is much shorter than the others.  Halfway through painting them, I broke it, and decided to just chop it down and leave the other ones.  Forgive me.

Song of the day:

ONE CENT NAIL POLISH!

My crazy-couponing step-mom showed me this link, and it takes you to the Julep website, where you can get a box for $.01! It was so crazy, I had to look at it, I mean Julep is expensive! But it's very true, I just placed my order for a Julep box, which should arrive in about a week or so.  I'm very excited, I just hope that I remember to cancel the subscription later! However, if you don't want to cancel, it's still a really good deal.  More details when I get the box!

Here is the link:

http://centslessdeals.com/2012/06/40-worth-of-manipedi-items-for-one-penny-shipped.html/




And.....song of the day:

Happy Father's Day!