Beauty and make up in the past few years has completely ventured from just things you'd use like foundation, blush, eye shadow and lipstick to beauty tools, skin care and also nail polish. These things have also gotten more innovative and creative as the years have passed.
Now as a make up artist they have a magnetic bracelet that you can put your pallet on so your hands are free. For the make up enthusiast you have the brush tree, so that your brushes can dry upside down and the water won't ruin them. (let me know if you'd like to know more about how water can ruin your brushes) For the skin care fanatics there are BB and CC creams to help you cover up flaws but still treat your skin. And for the Nail Polish people you have so many nail art options.
There are matte polishes, sparkle polishes, gel polishes, textured polishes, and so much more. Hell, they even make nail polish brushes for nail art now.
I decided that since this is such a crazy that even my least girly friends are trying these things out that it would be good to review a few things and let you see what they look like for yourself.
The Nail Polish that I'd recommend to a beauty noob who wants to try nail art is something like the Maybelline Color Show Polka Dots.
#85 Pretty in Polka $3.99 (website price)
One coat of the pink color in my opinion looks kind of cute. It's a really sheer pink with matte chunks of black and white glitter. It becomes a bit more opaque (Still a bit see through if your nails are long) However, I wouldn't exactly recommend more than the two coats because by the third you end up with a really big layer of nail polish on, too much glitter and you're still a bit see through. On the brighter side the glitter in this polish is not hard to get at all. There are some polishes that make you fish around for the glitter, not these. I think these are kind of perfect, they come in a few fun colors, they make you look like you put more effort into it than you did, the dry time is awesome. Be very aware though that the chunks of glitter may break off randomly without a top coat.
The polish usually lasts about 4 days before it starts to chip.
There are also things like nail stickers.
(I should have totally taken a picture of this before I did my nails)
I bought this from the dollar store so it was only $0.99. It came with a nail file and looked easy enough to work with.
This is what they look like on. Now these are honestly easy to apply but if you look closely at the picture you can see that it lifts in certain places. The stickers feel less like stickers and more like really tug-able tape. They stayed on really well and looked nice from far away. It's just the close up that made it look awful. So I wondered if maybe on a flatter nail bed they would go on smoothly.
(luckily I have the best support system ever)
So I tried it out on a different persons hand and sure enough it worked. It went on easily, fit perfectly and didn't lift from anywhere. So these are totally worth a dollar if you have a flatter nail bed than I do.
Lastly, there are pretty awesome nail art kits that seem complete as they are. The Revlon double sided polishes seem like exactly that, a complete set. They have their Revlon Nail Art Moon Candy (which has one solid color on one side and a chunky glitter polish on the other side, or their Expressionist line which has two solid colors but one has a very fine tip brush, they have a Neon line which is one solid (white I think) and a highlighter color, and recently they released their Chalkboard line.
It is exactly what it sounds like. One side is a matte black color and the other is a very pastel color.
I found this at CVS and it was $9.18 but on drugstore.com it's $7.19.
Now as you can see the black nail polish is matte. However, if you have a matte top coat (it's clear and makes all of your polishes matte -sans shine) then you might want to add that on top of your black coat. The nail polish instructions say you can use one-two coats but I highly recommend two coats because the matte black goes on streaky with the first coat.
The white side has a nice texture to the polish, it isn't really glossy like normal polishes but it isn't matte either so it does give off a very chalk board feel to it. I do recommend using nail art brushes for this because the white brush may be thinner than the black but it's not thin enough to draw whatever you want nicely.
I bought these from Forever 21 for $3.80.
I used the dotting (brush?) to make all of the little hearts and they came out way better than they did when I first tried it with the brush. I used two coats of the white though because I wanted it to be really pronounced.
They awesomely didn't start chipping until day 3 without any form of a top coat.
Anyway, that's all for tonight. I'm thinking the next one I will try to mythbust on what actually helps your nail polish dry faster.
xoxo
