Blue Midnight for World Diabetes Day

 A few days ago I saw a few posts on Facebook about bloggers doing blue manis for World Diabetes Day.  As a nurse, raising awareness for this disease is part of what I do so if I can do it in a way that fits into my "other life" as well that's just an added bonus!  I found this polish while I was on vacation and picked it up because I hadn't seen them locally and I am so glad I did!  I have quite a few Pure Ice polishes, for less than $2 they are a great deal and they really have some fun colors.  There is nothing on the bottle that hints that it is a matte/velvet polish but there was a huge display that indicated that part of them were.  I found this one to be very easy to work with which is especially great for a budget-friendly polish!

Pure Ice Blue Midnight

Check out the other bloggers participating in this cause by clicking on their links below!

Julep Nails

So a few days ago I posted about my Julep Maven box for this month and promised some swatches, today I have two for you. :) First up is Charlotte, a gorgeous dusky lavender cream. This one is amazingly smooth and easy to apply, one coat pictured here. That is one of the things I am loving about Julep's polishes is that they tend to be great with just one coat.

Next I layered Melissa over the top of it. Melissa is described by Juelp as "sheer opalescent shimmer adds a soft glow when used alone and a high-fashion holographic effect when used over another color." Intriguing to say the least. I was going to show it alone but couldn't get the pics to come out very well.

Notice anything about this pic? Well, there are two different colors shown here, can you tell the difference? On my index and ring finger is Julep's Melissa, like I mentioned above, one coat. On my middle and pinkie finger is two coats of Pure Ice Mint Dream. Now, I do love Julep polish but... I can barely (if at all) tell a difference here! But, where I can notice a difference is in my bank account. Julep retails for $14 for 8mL, Pure Ice can be found at Wal-Mart, Walgreen's and other drug stores and typically retails for under $2 for 15mL. A bit easier to swallow for me anyway. :)

What do you think?

Pure Ice All Nighter and Gradient Nails

So after a very long night at work tonight I wanted to do something sort of simple for today's post. I had an idea in my head for a killer color combo for a water marble, but alas, my colors didn't want to play together. I tweaked it some and still no luck so on to something else! I had an vision in my head of what this mani should look like and what I got isn't quite what I had pictured. I'm still not sure what I think of it so I will let you decide.

I started off with two coats of Pure Ice All Nighter. It is a beautiful red satin shade.

Then I sponged the tips with NYC Bowery Black and then topped that off with a black glitter polish from Hard Candy. The Bowery Black is a much more sheer shade than I had anticipated (it is in the bottle in this pic) but still very pretty. I topped the whole thing off with a top coat of Insta-Dri top coat from Sally Hansen.