more naughty and nice swatches

hey guys! i hope everyone had a great halloween :) and for those who don't celebrate, i hope your weekend was pretty great also.

naughty and nice, the namesake of this collection, is a vampy deep dark jelly that looks pretty black but is actually a plummy purple. this is three coats.

midnight kiss is the gold version of cheers to you, soft yellow gold foil. this two coats. very pretty and as always i. love. gooooooold.

ruby deer is a gorgeous bright red creme that really brings Christmas to mind. and i love the name! three coats.

jingle bells is a champagne gold metallic polish, not as foily as midnight kiss. this is two coats. not my favorite on me but still lovely and it's nice to have two golds to choose from in a collection, that way if one doesn't suit you chances are that the other will.

the last round of these is coming up so keep your eyes peeled folks =)

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

these products were sent to me for an honest review. please see disclosure statement for more information.

milani bare it all

the milani bare it all collection is full of naked people! not really, but if you address your polishes like real live entities, as i do haha, then it kind of does! these colors are all nudes, neutrals, and soft pinks, lovely and minimalist.  their slogan for this set is "less is more" and ya know what?  sometimes i have to agree :)

truth or bare is a creamy peach that doesn't give me mannequin hands, but warms them up just a smidge.  two coats on a nude?? unheard of!

bare with me is a pale pink shade that we've all see a billion times, but that's alright.  she's right at home in this collection.  three coats on this milky creme.

bare necessity (did anyone else just start singing the song from The Jungle Book just now?) is a pinky taupe creme.  this is the only one that i didn't terribly love, though the formula was top notch.  i messed up one nail which is why you only see three...sorry.  two coats.

there is also teddy bare (a particulière dupe), bare to wear (a grey taupe), and bare in mind (an iridescent pink) in this collection.  have any of you tried these yet?  how do you like these neutral collections that are showing up?  i rather like them though i usually only find about one or two "must-have" colors in the bunch.

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

these products were sent to me for an honest review. please see disclosure statement for more information.

nubar holiday jewel basket

Give the gift of beautiful nails! Nubar’s Holiday Jewel Basket is filled with nine Nubar classics for a perfect holiday manicure. With a range from glitters to classic red crème, the Holiday Jewel Basket has something for every woman.

Always free of formaldehyde, phthalate and toluene, the nail lacquers in Holiday Jewel Basket offer four fine glitters, two glitter top coats, a classic red crème, Foundation Base Coat, and Diamont Top Coat.

Grass Green Glitter (G103) Fine green glitter
Silver Glitter (G108) Fine silver glitter
Gold Glitter (G113) Fine gold glitter
Pixie Dust (G125) Delicate dusting of shimmer
Ruby Red Glitz (G157) Fine red glitter
Nubar 2010 (G188) Flaky glitter in a color changing base
Competition Red (N219) Classic red creme
Foundation Base Coat (T304)
Diamont Top Coat (T309)

This collection comes out November 15 for $49.95, which is their most deeply discounted price for a collection.  I really love Nubar polishes, the bottle and brush work so well for me!  I'm excited for the flakey polish and the gold glitter.  Anything look especially good to you?

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

you need kelly

image via zoya.com

even though my name is spelled differently, i still have love for everything and anything named the same! and this is my legit favorite Zoya color ever. so, uh, you pretty much need it now :D

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

soapbox

please read this: I've Got Your Counterpoint Right Here, Maire Claire

i don't want to link to the original article/site, but that link explains the issue and gives a brilliant response to it.

i want to shout and stamp my foot about this. ignorance is ugly. it hurts my head and my heart. blog responsibly kids, that's all i'm going to say.

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

china glaze mrs. claus

from the second i saw the bottle shots of China Glaze's holiday collection, Tis the Season to be Naughty and Nice, my heart has been set on acquiring this baby. mrs.claus is a pinky red glitter polish with a candy red base.  the glitter has kind of a silver sheen to it, like frosted glass almost! it's pretty sweet.  and the name is just too cute huh :)  this is two coats.

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

this was sent to me for an honest review. please see disclosure statement for more information.

giveaway winners!

i have some winners to announce from my recent giveaways, so let's give them all a round of applause shall we :)

the winner of Lippmann Waking Up in Vegas is Jana from Jeweled Tips

the winner of the Apothica $25 gift card is Justine W. (had it wrong earlier, sorry girl!)


and the 7 winners of the Halloween Kiss Nails giveaway are:

Twister

Samantha Wells

Kelle T.

Elize

BeautybyBrittany

Carolina

Donna aka CheapThrills

more contests coming up soon :) thanks to everyone who entered!!

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

milani neons

i have an TON of milani nail polishes that i have yet to show you, shame on me! but as my friend Nihrida said in a post this week, it's overwhelming sometimes when i think about all the unworn and unpublished polishes that i have.  that may sound ridiculous to you but it's true. i seriously need to have 50 hands or to wear skittles every day to be able to get through all the polish that i have :D

totally 80's looks like it might be wasabi colored, i.e. greenish yellow, according to the opaque bottle shade, but turns out it's simply a neon yellow jelly. not the brightest yellow i've ever seen, the hot topic one i have probably takes the cake on that. this one was still streaky after four thick coats, but dried well and without bubbles which was nice.

dude blue applied like a friggen DREAM! almost a creme, but a bit watery and it is neon but not BLAM in your face neon. i almost got away with one coat on this guy! but did two to cover the tiniest hint of vnl. love it.  these neons dry with the satin finish, but this was probably the least "satiny" of them.

 

awesome orange was probably my favorite out of these guys.  i really enjoy oranges, more than the average polish consumer i think :)  this jelly neon just really hit the mark for me, amazing opaque coverage, no vnl after two coats, and great intensity.  the milani brush gives me trouble sometimes but on this entire collection it covered pretty nicely.

pink rocks! is a shocking pink neon.  nothing really new here, but i actually really enjoyed this pink :)  i bought a second one for a giveaway i sent to a lucky girl.  two coats and still a bit streaky but that's cool.  sometimes neon doesn't need to be perfect because the resulting color "burst" blurs out any imperfections anyway!

fresh teal is the polish i thought was going to be my favorite but ended up falling a tad flat, although i still think it's a lovely color.  it's another kinda neon, kinda creme color.  this is two coats.  brighter and more turquoise than the opaque bottle color suggests.

and last is rad purple, another one that's inside color is vastly different from the bottle wrapper color.  weird and kind of annoying, but whatev.  i like the actual color better than the bottle color anyways.  i've heard folks compare this to deborah lippmann's call me irresponsible. ( i might do a comparison soon.)  i found this hard to get even looking unfortunately, though and my swatch is streaky :(   three coats.

*whew* more milanis to come folks :)  and giveaway winners to be announced SOON!!!

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

these products were sent to me for an honest review. please see disclosure statement for more information.

wicked fairytale

i think i need to stop doubting things. everytime i think i won't particularly love something, then i wear it, i totally turn 180 degrees and fall head over heels for it. take these two nail polishes from deborah lippmann, wicked game and today was a fairytale. i thought they both were alright, but wasn't sure if they were really "me". well that went out the window as soon as i had them on my fingernails. they are SOOOOO me!

wicked game is a total bombshell, a "multi-chrome" polish that flashes silver, purple, green, and even blue. this is three coats. i also wasn't sure if this would work for me because metallic colors tend to have mega brush strokes. not this guy! every which way i moved my hands, my tips would change colors and reflect differently with the light. tres bien! me likey :)

today was a fairytale is one of the lippmann holiday colors for 2010. it's got a gold label (woot!) and is infused with "virgin diamond powder". it is a few dollars higher than a regular lippmann polish at $20, but you gals who dig the bling might just need to deal and snatch this baby up anyway! i was skeptical, not gonna lie, it looked kind of just like a silver glitter with a tinge of blue in the promo images i had seen, but then i kept hearing so much buzz about it that i decided that it was worth a try.

it has tons of silver glitter, large sequins and smaller dots, that is pretty densely packed, much more so than it's cousin some enchanted evening. the base is slightly cornflower blue colored, and it can be built up to almost opacity which is a HUGE plus for me. the day i got it, i was wearing wicked game, but could not wait to wear it, so i decided to layer this baby on top. HOLY BLING! seriously, these pictures do not do the look justice, all you could see was silvery blue bling with hints of that purple silver peeking out. my mani was blinding! this is two coats of TWAF over wicked game.

proof that you can't judge a polish til you've got it on your fingers :)

xoxo,
kelliegonzo

these products were sent to me for an honest review. please see disclosure statement for more information.