Essie - Smokin' Hot

Eep! Hello Everyone!

So, for me, Essie is like the brand of all nail polish brands. It exudes richness (For $8.00 a pop, of course it does!) and I've heard nothing but the best of Essie. Granted, I only have 2 bottles other than the one I'm about to review, but I think it's fair if I say Essie is one of the top brands!

So I went to target the other day and could not help but grab for a few bottles of nail polish, Essie - Smokin' Hot just so happened to be included in my mini haul!

On to the photo bomb!

As I looked at the bottle I thought to myself, Huh, what a wonderful purple-grey-dark-mysterious color, which is what drew me to it in the first place! Then with the first stroke I was stunned to see that it looked brown! How could such a deceivingly beautiful color in the bottle trick me like that, I thought.

Well, turns out it was only the first coat that was brown, 2 coats later and my beautiful purple-grey-dark-mysterious color appeared! Application was smooth as butter. Streakiness did occur with the first coat, but fixed in the second. These pictures are also with Top Coat (Seche Vite to be exact).

As you all know, I absolutely hate leaving you all with just a swatch so I did some Aztec Print nail art on top of Smokin Hot!

Have a lovely Monday, It's so sunny here today I think I'll go enjoy doing my nails outside!

Love from Leesha's Lacquer

P.S Also, I won First Place in a nail art competition hosted by Lynda from Lynda's Random Ramblings, the competition was here.
Thank you to all the judges :

The Nail Files By Lynda
Kat Stays Polished
Rambles Of A Polish Addict

Heather
Rhonda
and
Lauren

and thank you Lynda for hosting this nail art competition and supplying the prizes!

Sunday Bunday : Spring Edition

Why hello and Happy Spring (Finally!)

Today it was actually nice and sort of hot in fact. The high was 74 degrees! We've actually been in quite a cold slump lately and this weathers definitely making me feel springy!

And what, of course, is the typical sign of spring? Flowers!

Flowers,Flowers,Flowers!

Flowers, Flowers, Flowers! Inspired by This, this this skirt (okay, I'm overkill on the repetition, nixing it now!)

The colors I used for this were

Maybelline Color Show - Born With It  as the base

Wet n Wild - Ebony Hates Chris  as the black

and

Sinful Colors - Canary Yellow  as, obviously, the yellow

And as per usual, it IS Sunday Bunday : Harvey's Day!

Here is the lovely bunny of the day!

Have a happy sunday bunday!

Love from Leesha's Lacquer

Extra Relaxed 31 Day Challenge - Rainbow Nails

Hi all!

I'm a little (okey, really) late in posting today! I usually post really early in the mornings when I'm up because I'm a major night owl but for some reason it completely slipped my mind last night/this morning!

Anyway, for the ER31DC this week/day, is rainbow nails!

Warning : The design that follows may or may not include designs that occurred at random!

Once again I've used a plethora of colors!

I definitely enjoy this day of Rainbow nails! 

Be sure to check out the others rainbow nails below

Love from Leesha's Lacquer

Fishtail/Braided Tips

Hi there!

I've had this idea in my mind for quite sometime now. On top of that I've been wishing to do a fishtail/braided  mani for a long time! I noticed a lack of fishtail/braided nail art on tips, french-mani style, so here is my try at it!

Woohoo this was so exciting to do I love, love, loved it! Admittedly , the purple and blue turned out better than the orange and green imo, but you can't blame me for my first try!

There was a plethora of polishes used on these. Don't make me get up and dig them all out again, I beg you! 

I also adore how the nude works with the bam, bam brights! 

I'm excited, can you tell? Next week I'll have to try something fun like this again!

Love from Leesha's Lacquer

Spoiled - Distant Memory and Spoiled - Use Protection

Hello dearest readers!

No, my nail polish is NOT spoiled, that's very much the name brand of the nail polish for those of you who aren't familiar with it. I won a huge lot of about 30 spoiled nail polishes on eBay a few months ago and besides swatching them on my nail sticks, I haven't used a lot of them. I think I'll need to start using more because I really love them!

Woo! I loved the way these turned out! I also found the studs on eBay a while back. You can kind of see how they lifted a little on my pointer and pinky but that's because I didn't take as much time holding them down like I did with my middle finger. Also they're pretty big and nails are curved and all so I suppose it's a bit expected.

Use Protection is that pretty glitter gradient. It has a slightly blue base with various blue and silver particles that shimmer green and yellow in certain lights.

And here's a little swatch of Distant Memory.

I'm not sure if this is blue or green because in darker lights such as the swatch above it looks green but in brighter lights like in the picture with the studs and glitter gradient, it looks blue as well as looking Turquoise in the bottle. :/

The little shimmer particles are lovely but it does dry matte so I added a coat of Seche to bring out more of the depth that Distant Memory holds.

Spoiled is such a wonderful brand with funny names that depict, well, someone who is spoiled!

More swatches and nail art of spoiled is soon come!

Love from Leesha's Lacquer

Lazy Sunday Bunday

Happy Sunday Bunday, Lovelys!

Sunday, to me, means Lazy and Lazy means P.J's, so what more of a fitting theme to have on Sunday Bunday than a P.J inspired mani!

As a side note, I must note that dialect differs so I feel I should clarify what P.J's are. 

Once in school a while back we had a foreign exchange student who just so happened to arrive during our school spirit week. Each day was a different theme leading up to the homecoming football game and Monday's theme of that week was P.J Day. Well, not knowing what P.J's were and I'm sure she was to afraid to ask, she came to school in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich themed outfit. She looked like a walking sandwich I kid you not, from head to toe in beige with a purple shirt underneath. I question to this day why the student who hosted her let her walk out the door looking like a sandwich.

P.J's are not Peanut butter and Jellies. 

P.J's are Pajamas, Jammies, Nightwear, Sleep suits, whatever you want to call em' , they're the things you wear when you go to sleep!

Now on to more of the nail art, which is what you've come here for and NOT in fact a story of my high school years!

And here are the polishes I used not including the black.

Of course I can't jip you out of the whole point of Sunday Bunday so here is the one and only, Harvey!

He's just chillin' in his litter box NBD.

Happy Sunday Bunday once again!

Love from Leesha's Lacquer

Extra Relaxed 31 Day Challenge - Metallic Nails

Ohmygoodness I completely blanked Wednesday and forgot to make a post. Then on top of that I thought today was rainbow nails in the ER31DC! AND ON TOP OF THAT.. My Metallic nails flopped this week!

So without further ado, my sad, sad mani.

Sad little half formed flowers :(

Look at the sad little smudgin :(

The dark purple is CQ - Purple Quartz and the Pink is CQ - Berry Mocha

I learned 3 things in this nail fail

1) Metallic is the most DIFFICULT thing to capture! It's like am I gonna shimmer here? Am I gonna be all metallic over here? LOLNOPE you can't catch me!

2) (And as a side note this was my first ever stamping) Metallics aren't good at stamping..well at least this color wasn't. I'm sure there are plenty out there that stamp well.

3) Nail Fails are like the finger of the nail world. No matter how much you tried it's still a big $&^!  @!* to the face!

Let's hope the other ladies had better luck than I did. Check em out below as always!

Love from Leesha's Lacquer

Barielle - Orange Parfait

Hi all!

I have for you a swatch of Barielle - Orange Parfait that I got in my last nail haul from Holly over at Holly and Polish. 

This was my first Barielle polish and I have to say I really really liked it! 

Now on to the swatch!

*UPDATE: haha just kidding on to the swatch after this update! I just discovered its Animal Cruelty Prevention month and I love my fur baby Harvey who was rescued from a hoarders home. I adopted him from the humane society and he's adapted to living the good cage free life he lives today. The color for Animal Cruelty Prevention is orange so I dedicate this post to that. Carry on now!

This is a beautiful orange creme that reached full opacity in 3 coats, the 2nd looked fine but I have a habit of adding an extra coat with cremes. I added one coat of seche vite in the pictures above.

The formula was excellent, not to thick and not to runny.

I also must admit, I'm AWFUL when it comes to saying "This color is NOT for my skin tone" because in my opinion there's no polish that I find that I think looks bad on me!

I don't understand why some people say their skin tone doesn't match with a color! So you'll never hear me say that a colors not for me because I embrace all the colors!

Overall, I really loved this polish the formula was great, application was great and I'll definitely be getting more Barielle polishes in the future

Love from Leesha's Lacquer

Polka Spots and Harvey!

Happy Sunday Bunday everyone!

Poor little Harvey had his vet appointment this past Wednesday for a wellness exam and a nail trim and I'm happy to say all is well with the bun bun. He just HATED to be picked up, he was so scared!

Here's a picture of him at his vet being scared by some pamphlets. 

His little nails were trimmed in this pic! You can see how long they were before compared to this pic!

Now on to the nails!

I just got shipped a new ipad case and it was a pretty blue polka spot pattern so I decided to be inspired by that, seeing as I already had China Glaze - For Audrey on my nails, it matched perfectly!

I had a few bubbles that I just noticed now! I was so mad, I found my dotting tool a day after this! It was on the window sill. How it got there? Nobody knows.

I used the end of a paintbrush for these!

Have a Happy Sunday Bunday

and

Love from Leesha's Lacquer

Extra Relaxed 31 Day Challenge - Black and White

*Woohoo Happy Dance*  I'm super excited that we finally got out of the rainbow colors and it's finally time for fun things! Don't get me wrong, I liked doing the colors, but ohmygoodness I've been looking forward to this day!

And have I got some pretty, pretty black and white nails for you guys!

Tada!

I must warn you! This WILL BE picture heavy! Because I did two designs on each hand. 

I even planned this out on paper I was so excited!

For some reason I'm generally really good with doing designs on my right hand even though I write with it, so  designs on my right hand are no problem. In the above two pictures, the top hand is my right hand and the bottom is my left.

I used the same to black and white I usually use, and I'm sure the details will bore you so on to more pictures!

It's blurry, but I love this pose! 

My thumbs

These next pictures are with my tin that I keep my tea in. I LOVE TEA. A lot. I have a cup almost every night and I have my own tea maker and everything. Tea, tea, tea I love tea.

Wow, this was a long post! I hope you all enjoyed the pictures and the nails though!

Love from Leesha's Lacquer

Leesha's Lovely Lacquer

I must admit, I think I'm a tad bit addicted to making nail polish!

The Glitter! The Mica! The look of the bottle of polish after it's all shaken up!

*Swoon*

I think I may be suffering from something I've dubbed shakers elbow. It's when you shake up your nail polish to much and have a sore elbow the next day! Man, does it hurt, but it was SOOOO worth it!

Now here are my lovely children that are still, unfortunately, unnamed!

It's an atrocity! I don't even know what to refer my own creations too! Hopefully some bolt of amazing creativity hits me and I create the most awesome names you've ever heard of in your entire lives! I digress..now on to the swatches!

From left to right my cuticles go from icky to decent!

Anyways, the first polish (Starting with my pinky) is , of course, the one I first swatched so you've seen that before.

The second one, I'm not sure about, it's a blurple that shines at different angles with various white matte glitters. It's pretty and all but I still don't know how I feel about it..

The third one is blue squares with green, blue and pink micro glitters. It has a clear base and I quite like it, this was one-ish coat. I used the dab method for this so it's sort of difficult to say how many coats, but I'd guess it's about one-ish.

The last one I really like. It's green, blue and teal glitters suspended in a black tinted base. I reached full opacity in two coats and I'm quite sad that the pic above is so blurry! My camera just went crazy for it.

Each of these polishes were done over 2 coats of  Sinful Colors - Snow me White and topped with one coat of Seche Vite.

and here is each color individually!

Woohoo, you can CLEARLY see my canvas in all of these pics, SOOO not what I was going for but thats fine!

So whatcha guys think? Do you like my little creations?

Love from Leesha's Lacquer