Thursday, November 27, 2014

Spellbound Nails Christmas 2014 Collection

Hello lovelies!!! Happy Thanksgiving to those who celebrate. I don't know about you but I'm more than ready to eat my weight in turkey and stuffing and all the fixin's today!

I'm also really excited to announce that my Christmas Collection is finally being released. :) I'm going to attempt to keep this short and to the point as I know a lot of you will be spending the day with family, some of you resting up for late night or early morning Black Friday shopping. So onto the polishes!


I used a little of everything Christmas in this collection and then added a dash of carefully chosen scent for each polish - optional of course.


I've always admired theses kinds of bottle/brush close ups so I decided to try my own. They're not hard to do and they look amazing so you'll definitely be seeing more of them in the future. Now I just have to work on getting the angle of each picture the same. :)


Reindeer poo is a brown tinted jelly with gold and tangerine flakies. The optional scent for this polish is reindeer poo - a slightly fruity scent with hints of woods and vanilla.


Candy Cane Kisses is like crushed candy canes for your nails with rainbow shimmer, red micro-glitter, white hex glitter, and red and white bar glitter. This polish comes with optional candy cane scent.


Elf Sweat is like candy in a jar. It has a clear rainbow shimmered base with dots in a variety of sizes and colors. This polish comes with optional elf sweat scent - like candy, candy canes, candy corn, syrup, and soda. It's a very sweet scent.


What Happens Under the Mistletoe (shortened to Under the Mistletoe to fit on my labels) is a green tinted base packed full of micro-flakies. The gold-green and red-gold flakies create an amazing gold shimmer that has an almost rainbow effect in various lights. This polish comes with optional mistletoe scent.


And last but not least is Frosty's Melting. I created this polish to look like a melted snowman with orange triangles for the nose, large and small black dots for coal eyes, mouth, and the buttons down the front. All packed into a white crelly base with blue shimmer and blue micro-flakies. This polish comes with optional snow/snowman scent - a vanilla mint with a hint of woods.

Enjoy your Thanksgiving ya'all. Be safe, happy, and healthy. :)

Until next time,
Ashley

Saturday, November 15, 2014

Barielle Jetsetter Collection | ZigZag Gradient Nail Art

*Some products were sent to me for testing and review, completely complimentary, from Barielle. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Hello lovelies!! Some of you may have seen the black & white sneak peek of this mani on my Instagram account (@spellbound_nails) - now see it in full color! I was sent some really gorgeous fall colored polishes by Barielle from their fall/winter Jetsetter Collection. I'm not a great swatcher, but I pride myself on my nail art. With this in mind, I set myself the challenge of using them all in one mani. 6 polishes in one mani? It was a little challenging, but I love the final product!!


I started by painting my index and my pinky nails with my all time new favorite brown Autumn in Seoul. This is seriously the most gorgeous brown. It's a little bit red and a little bit gold with a light shimmer and a metallic-y finish that does streak a little but a good layer of top coat took care of that. This color leaves me wanting to paint my nails and just leave them that color all fall long so you know it's an amazing color!! While the brown was drying I took a sponge and created a gradient using (from cuticle down) Irish Eyes, Gondola Ride, Rain in Spain, and lastly Kiss Me Kate. There's not a huge difference between the green shades of Irish Eyes and Gondola Ride but the fade between greens is actually more visible in person than in pictures so I was pleased! I added some Born Pretty 2mm round gold studs to help it compete with the pattern I knew I was adding to the gradient. And lastly I did the pattern with Midnight in Paris.


I found this really awesome pattern while browsing for zigzag patterns to use. I was going to do a simple zigzag but then this one popped up in my search so I ran it through my Silhouette software and printed/cut it with my Silhouette vinyl cutter. It was tricky because the pattern was nowhere close to the simple peel and stick patterns I've been using but thankfully I had some vinyl transfer paper on hand and after 4 trials and errors before this I managed to get the pattern on my nails nearly perfectly. After that it was the simple paint over and peel off of regular vinyls. :)

L-R: Autumn in Seoul, Kiss Me Kate, Irish Eyes, Gondola Ride, Midnight in Paris, Rain in Spain

Here are the shades I used in case you were wondering. And I'm very sure I'll be finding all kinds of fun things to do with these all fall and winter long ... and probably longer because most of these are such great basic shades that can be used all year long and ones that everyone should have in their collection.


And I leave you with one last mani pic. ;)

What do you think? Do you have a favorite color from the Jetsetter Collection? As always, let me know in the comments.

Until next time,
Ashley

*Some products were sent to me for testing and review, completely complimentary, from Barielle. All thoughts and opinions are my own.