I'm Swatchin' You - Spoiled Shrimp on the Barbie

Yup, I got another Spoiled.  Luckily, the color is amazing, because the brush certainly isn't.  This is called Shrimp on the Barbie, a pink jelly with gold micro glitter.

This took just two coats to look incredible.  While my brush was the worst I've seen from Spoiled, it certainly still qualified as craptastic.  As I said, the color is gorgeous, so I'm still glad I braved another Spoiled.  I'll be decanting sometime in the future.  The only other downside is that I hate cleaning up micro glitter!

SH Double Duty and SV as base and top.

I'm Swatchin' You - Spoiled Cougar Attack

Hello everyone!  Today's color is from Spoiled.  If you are at all familiar with Spoiled, you know they have horrendous brushes.  That is my only complaint about this color, Cougar Attack.

To be honest, I didn't think I was going to love this color.  But everyone was raving about it when it came out, so I grabbed it to give it a shot.  OMG, what a gorgeous polish!  It's a copper glitter in a copper jelly base.  The base color builds quite nicely.  You are looking at two coats.  It would just get more incredible with more coats.  The result is a beautiful coppery color with a strong copper shimmer from the glitter.  It looks great and my pics just don't do it justice.  You. Must. Buy!

SH Double Duty and Insta-Dri for base and top.

I'm Swatchin' You - Spoiled Shaken Snow Globe

Rise and shine!  Be sure to enter the giveaway...it ends Thursday!  And I'm already shining and sparkly thanks to today's color.  This is Spoiled's Shaken Snow Globe.  You know the deal on the brush...ewww.  C'est la vie.

This is, of course, meant to be layered.  Here it is in the natural state, and it's full of oh-so-glittery sparkle in a clear base.  You get lots of colored sparkle in a great formula that goes on wonderfully.  Now if only you could apply it would a quality brush, right?  Well, if you can deal with the brush, it's a fantastic color to add to your stash!  My camera just doesn't capture the colorful goodness of this one.  Sorry for that!

SH Double Duty as base.  No top coat.

I'm Swatchin' You - Spoiled I Don't Drink Cheap Wine

Good morning all!  Less than a week to enter my giveaway!  And please vote for my entry in the Bundle Monster contest here.  And on to today's color!

If you've noticed from a lot of my swatches so far, I do love some dark, vampy colors and this one fits the bill!  It's from Spoiled and it's called I Don't Drink Cheap Wine.  Since it is a Spoiled polly (and if you've read yesterday's post), you know I despise their brushes and this one was no different - oar-like.  But once again, I LOVE the color!  It's a deep, dark maroon with a subtle shimmer and it's beautiful!  The formula was pretty good.  I got full coverage in two coats.  If you can deal with the sloppy brush, it's a must have IMO.

 SH Double Duty and SH Insta-Dri for base and top.

I'm Swatchin' You - Spoiled Good Karma

Oh, my.  This day is already off to a bad start.  Today's color is my first from Spoiled.  I cannot express how excited I was for this one!  It's called Good Karma and it's a gorgeous, pearly, shimmery, dark teal.  I don't really know how to classify it for you.  Nail polish finishes (technically speaking) confuse the hibbity doo out of me and my tired eyes.  But can we talk brushes for a sec?  I know, me and my brush rants.

This one was positively horrible!  By far the worst brush I have come across!  Take the SH Complete Salon Manicure line's flat brush, widen it, and add more brush hairs.  Oh, and then bring in a rodent to gnaw on them for awhile.  If the SH brushes are like painting your nails with coffee stirrers, this was like painting them with a virtual OAR.  There was no way this was going to be a "neat" mani, and it wasn't.  I'm really quite sad about this.  I adore some of Spoiled's colors and do have a couple more to swatch for you.  But the brush is probably bad enough to keep me from buying any more unless they make a change.

Anyway, sorry for the rant.  The formula was actually okay.  It was a little streaky on the first coat (plus I was trying to control the brush with little success), but it evened out nicely with a second coat.  The color is still beautiful.  It just may be a bit difficult to get it on without a battle royale.  I guess you have to decide if the color is worth the hassle.  This one, for me, just might be.  I see some decanting in my future.

SH Double Duty and SH Insta-Dri as base and top.

Feature Friday - Peep Show!

It's Friday! First, welcome new readers!  Only 10 away from an amazing giveaway!  I've been gathering goodies for you...OPI, Orly, Sinful.  Bouncing off the walls excited!  PLEASE help me get there!!!  Oh, and if you didn't notice, I've added a page where I will post other blogger's giveaways as I come across them.  Go check them out!

So, here I have my Easter mani.  You may have come across this before because it was featured on Nouveau Cheap's Easter round-up, which can be found here.  From one G to another G - thank you!!!  Sorry I didn't get "in-progress" pics on this mani.  I was a little pressed for time (what else is new?).

I started with my base of SH Double Duty.  Then I did two coats of OPI's Alpine Snow (despite the fact that she's such a bish to me - we have a very unhealthy love/hate relationship).  I free-handed the peeps using ChG Sweet Hook and Sinful's Unicorn.  I used a dotting tool to add the eyes using Orchid's Truffle Maker.  I topped them all off with Spoiled's Shaken Snow Globe (darn those craptastic brushes!).

After submitting this to Nouveau Cheap, I decided I needed something different on my thumb.  So I attempted an Easter basket.  It didn't come out as I'd hoped, but then, these things rarely do.  Oh, well.  I started with ChG Cha Cha Cha for the grass.  Then I added Orchid Truffle Maker for the basket.  Using my beloved tape, I added CC Antiquated to attempt a woven look (fail!).  Everything was topped with SV.  In the end, I thought it was cute and enjoyed doing it.  I am actually planning a different, more "classical" mani for Easter day.  I'll post that on Monday.

Enjoy your weekend, everyone!  And if you celebrate Easter...Happy Easter!

Feature Friday: A Mermaid's Tale

Hello again!  I was wanting to have my Friday Feature done last night so you would get the pics sooner, but that just did not happen.  Hubberoo has been sick, child's been stubborn, and it's been a long, crazy week full of meetings and homework.  Oh, well.

I don't know why, but I had visions of mermaids and Erika over at Chloe's Nails inspired me to break into my new Big Ruby nail tats!  I got these on sale and you can find them here.

I started with SH Double Duty as a base, two coats of 10's Pinky Promise, and one coat of SV.

Then I taped off my tips (except for my accent nail) and used Spoiled's Good Karma.  Finished them with a coat of SV.

Next, I used my Big Ruby nail tat from their Sea collection.  I wanted this to look like a mermaid diving into the mist, so I took the larger shark tat and cut it in half.  Now I need to think of a mani to use the shark's head...thoughts?  After I applied the tat, I used Spoiled's Shaken Snow Globe on the bottom half of my nail.

Then I layered Sinful's Call You Later on the bottom third of the accent nail.

Followed this with a layer of Sinful's Nail Junkie on just the tip of the accent nail.

To finish up, I used Shaken Snow Globe to kind of blend it all together and topped with SV.  Hope you like it!

May the Best Brush Win!

As promised, it's the Battle of the Brushes!  Since I have done a decent amount of complaining about different brush sizes, I thought I would upload pics of some of the brushes I have mentioned so you have a better idea of what I'm talking about as well as one I have not complained about yet.  :o)  I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions about what your prefer and what you have encountered.

First, I mentioned the flat, thick brush from SH's Complete Salon Manicure line (color shown is Green Tea).  It is also a little rounded at the end.  I think the rounded edge was a good idea and it is smoothly rounded.  But the flatness and thickness were a bit much for me.

SH CSM Side view

SH CSM Front view, same brush

The next brush was from Icing (the color was Butta).  This one was incredibly thick and I had a really hard time with it.  It was like trying to paint my nails with a mop.  However, it may have been a fluke that I got such a thick brush, as you will read about below.  For comparison, the first picture is Icing's Butta, with the bad brush.  The next picture is Icing's Hazelnut.  The brush on the Hazelnut was better, but still very thick.  I think the frayed and flared brush on Butta was just a case of the occasional bad brush, which Icing pollies seem to have a problem with.

Icing Butta: VERY thick brush

Icing Hazelnut: Better, but still thick

Unfortunately for Icing, their bad brush flukes seem to permeate all of their pollies.  I recently bought a bunch of their Magnetix pollies - both for me and for a swap.  While none of these brushes were flared like my Butta was (that just doesn't sound quite right, does it?), I did come across a couple with warped brushes.  I don't know how else to explain it.  They are bent.  This one shown is their gold Magnetix color (no name).  Sadly, both of the golds I bought were like this.  :o(

Icing Mag: Front view

Icing Mag: Side view, same brush

My best advice (which I will be following from now on) is to check the brushes in store anytime you purchase an Icing polish.

The next brush is from SH's Hard as Nails line.  The color shown is Hypnotic Pink.  This time, I thought the brush was much too thin.  It took several strokes to cover my nail.

SH HaN

This next brush shown is one that I felt was "just right."  It is from Piggy Polish.  This color is called Blue-mmm.

PP

Finally, the last brush I will show you for now is from Spoiled.  I haven't swatched these yet for you, but these brushes are, by far, the worst I've come across (with the exception of the occasional funky Icing brush).  They are similar to the SH Complete Salon Manicure brushes, but thicker and jagged.  I tried to get some good closeups of the brush tip for you so you can see how jagged it is compared to the SH's smooth and rounded brush, but you know my camera.  Very poor quality (both my camera and the Spoiled brush).  It was like trying to paint your nails with a oar.

Here is Spoiled's brush.  The color shown is called Good Karma.

Spoiled

Next is Spoiled's brush (left) and SH's Complete Salon Manicure (right).  My camera just couldn't handle focusing on both, so the SH brush is a little soft.  Sorry about that.  But the main goal was so you could get an idea of the thickness of the brushes side by side.

Left: Spoiled. Right: SH CSM

Last but not least, a closeup of the Spoiled's brush bristles...just terrible!

Spoiled

It dawned on me after I took all of these pictures that I should have slated all of the brushes next to a ruler.  That darned hindsight is always showing me up!  Hopefully, this was helpful to some of you!  And again, I'd love to hear about your opinions and experiences, too!