Wet n Wild 1 Step Wonder Gel swatch and review

(L-R Left Marooned, Condensed Milk, Stay Classy, Pretty Peas, Lavender out Loud)

Hello everyone, hope you are having a wonderful day. Two weeks ago, I wandered to my local Loblaws Superstore and found that they had the new Wet n Wild 1 Step Wonder Gel for $6 CDN and of course, I grabbed as much as I could.These polishes are supposed to mimic a true UV cured gel polish without the use of a UV light. So if you are interested in seeing my swatches, pros and cons, as well as the results of my 2 week wear test, just keep reading!

So lets start with some swatches, the range of this product consists of 18 different shades however, I only picked up 5.

Starting with the lightest shade I picked up, this is condensed milk. I did use three coats for this swatch and if you look carefully, you will see that there are still some spots where the polish is not completely opaque. Furthermore, the color that you see on my nails is lighter than the color you see on the bottle.

Next we have pretty peas, which is a beautiful seafoam green. I did use three coats for my swatch and I was able to get it fully opaque but I tried not to overwork the polish. On the first and second coat, I found that the more I brushed the polish, the streakier it got. Therefore I would recommend using the three strokes method with this particular color.

Stay classy is a wonderful mauve shade, and had the best formula of the bunch. It was almost opaque in one coat, however I did use two. This is the shade I chose for my wear test so you will be seeing it again soon.

Lavender out loud is probably the second best of the bunch but did need two coats to be fully opaque. It is a light and sightly dusty purple.

Last we have the worst of the bunch, left marooned. This was opaque in two coats but the formula was really tricky to work with so you might need three. This was incredibly hard to photograph using my regular lights, so I also took a picture in the sun.

 Nope, I did not change my polish. Left marooned is a cherry red. This color did not deepen on a third coat, and as you can see the color is nowhere near the same as the label. Also as I mentioned, the formula was tricky; it was goopy and hard to work with.

Next, lets talk about the wear test I did; I wore stay classy for 2 whole weeks with no base or top coat.

Say hello to my Cinderella hand, this picture was taken 9 days later. I do have a disclaimer, I hit my hand while closing a cabinet and I bent the nail on my middle finger which resulted in the chips you can see on the side. So please keep in mind that those chips have nothing to do with the formulation of the polish itself. Overall, I have to say I was definitely impressed by this polish. I do have a good amount of tip-wear, but this my dominant hand  and for nine days, it really held up well. As for the shine, I felt like I had the same amount of shine as the day I applied it.

Day 14, as you can see the chips on the side of my middle finger have gotten worse. I have more tip-wear and some chips on the sides of my other nails. However, the shine is still pretty prevalent and after fourteen days, I'm still impressed.

Overall, this polish by Wet n Wild has three main claims; color and shine for up to 2 weeks, no base or top coat needed, and easy removal. It has been my experience that all of those claims were true. After two weeks, it's still on your nails and it was a easy one step process. A lot of the time, if you don't use a base or top coat to extend the life of your manicure, your polish won't last for even a week. Also it did remove as easily as regular nail polish.

To wrap up, lets talk about some pros and cons, starting with the cons. $6 is expensive for Wet n Wild, their regular megalast polishes retail for about $3 CDN. This polish is really prone to bubbling, you really have to let it sit before you go in to paint your nails. The bubbles show up easy and since there is no top coat, you can't smooth out the polish is you do get the bubbles. No top coat also means that the shineyness of the polish itself is all you have, so if it's too dull for you, this line doesn't have a top coat for you to add on top. My major con with this line, is that since the bottles are opaque (the lacquer is light sensitive) you really depend on the sticker to depict the color. And while I can overlook the variation on condensed milk; it was a little lighter than the label, left marooned was really off. The label showed a classic maroon shade and the polish itself turned out to be a cherry red. So, what you see on the sticker, is not necessarily what you get.

To end on a positive note, I have a lot of pros for you. As you could see from my wear test, the polish did last a really long time. I got tired of the color long before I thought the manicure looked bad. For four out the five polishes I used, they applied really smoothly, self leveled nicely, no issues. The brush is the same as their megalast brushes so you can cover your nail easily. The polish also dries really fast! It is supposed to cure from regular ambient light or sunlight and I found that I only had to wait a handful of minutes in between coats and in the end.

While $6 is expensive for Wet n Wild , if you consider the other brands in the drug store, none of them have this kind of gel formula. To name a few, Sally Hansen Miracle Gel is a two step process; the polish and the top coat. Loreal Gel-Extraordinaire is a three step process;  base coat, polish, and top coat. Even Essence, gel nail polish has a base coat and top coat in addition to the colors. Therefore, since you only have to purchase the color you like, it is still an affordable polish.

Overall, I think this product is a 4/5 and my favorite color is pretty peas. Thank you so much for reading my review, if you've tried any of these comment below and let me know your thoughts!

Olivia Palermo x Ciate London Nail Polish

Hello all, today I will be reviewing a Ciate polish which is from their Olivia Palermo collection. I received my polish from my February Ipsy bag but the polish is also sold at Sephora and directly from Ciate London.

This is two coats of "Hutch- my go to red" and I have to say, this polish is beautiful. First, even though this is a mini bottle, the brush is large and perfectly rounded at the tip. Application was amazing, there were no streaks, no patches, it applied evenly. It was almost opaque on one coat, but I did have to do two. The polish also dries down darker than when you apply it.

I did a wear test to test out the quality of the polish and so I wore it without a base or top coat. I kept this on for 6 days with regular tip wear and the only reason I took it off was because I had to clean up a nail polish spill. The quality of this polish really impressed me and the only downside is that I found it took longer than normal for the polish to dry down. This can be easily solved with a fast drying top coat or some dry drops. Overall, I would definitely recommend this shade and hope to try out more Ciate nail polish.

Leave me a comment down below about what your favorite Ciate nail polish is, or which one you really want to try! If you are interested in signing up for your own Ipsy bag, feel free to use my referral link:  https://www.ipsy.com/new?refer=vfxwa 

OPI Suede

Hello everyone, today I am going to be reviewing three OPI suede polishes that I bought on sparklecanada.com. I purchased Ink, Russian Navy, and Lincoln Park after Dark and conducted a wear test along with swatching them. Now when you buy an OPI suede, there is a tag on it telling you it is a suede finish and some general "rules" about the polish. First, it says that the suede polishes will not last as long as their original nail lacquer. Second, it advises you not to use a top coat or any drying products which I can understand. However, the information tag tells you not to use hand lotion while wearing suede, which I think is pretty unreasonable.

So while I was conducting my wear test, I applied the suede polish on five of my nails without any base coat and I added top coat to three nails. While wearing suede, I did keep two nails devoid of top coat as well as drying products but I did still use hand lotion. At the end of day one, both of the fingers that only had suede showed significant tip wear. However, the fingers that had top coat did not show tip wear until day three. Day two was not any better for the suede polish as it had serious wear and was very faded.

Overall, I feel like while the suede finish looks beautiful, it is not meant to be a long wearing polish. A base coat might help prolong the wear of the polish but on it's own, it feels like more of a one night polish. Top coat will definitely extend the life of your manicure but take away from the suede finish so you could use a matte top coat after. Again keep in mind that a matte top coat will not mimic the suede finish. In the end, I do like these polishes and think they are worth the buy, so without any further ado, here are the swatches.

Shown above is one coat of Russian Navy suede. The application for these polishes are beautiful, opaque in one coat and really fast dry time!

Russian Navy suede with a glossy top coat.

One coat of OPI Ink suede.

OPI Ink suede with a glossy top coat.

One coat of Lincoln Park after Dark suede.

Lincoln Park after Dark suede with a glossy top coat.

I hope you enjoyed the swatches and my review on these polishes. Also don't forget that my 5% coupon code (Anusha) for sparklecanada.com expires on March 3rd. This is not an affiliate code and Sparkle Canada does ship worldwide. Please leave me a comment letting me know which is your favorite and if you prefer the suede finish or glossy.

Buying nail polish online, Sparkle Canada

Hello everyone, I just wanted to take this time to tell you about one of my new favorite websites to buy nail polish. So if you are a Canadian nail polish lover like myself, then chances are you typically used nailpolishcanada.com for all of your online nail polish purchases. They are a great site and offer free shipping at $25 and have a nice reward system and selection. However, just recently they did increase their prices, which I was not a fan of. And as you would expect, they did not carry many older collections.

I was on the hunt for OPI goldeneye, I heard so many great things about the polish so I decided to buy it. It was not available on nailpolishcanada as it came out in 2012 and I started looking for it in the end of 2015. After that I resorted to amazon.ca where I found it for $35, and $10 on amazon.com but they didn't ship to Canada.  Then I decided I wasn't going to buy it because it was too expensive for just one bottle of polish.

Fast forward to January 2016, where I found an advertisement for Sparkle Canada, claiming that they had stock of collections from 2002. Obviously I was very excited to look through their catalog where I found OPI goldeneye and tons of other amazing polishes that were on my wishlist and I had pretty much given up on finding them for a good price. Now I did buy a few polishes at different prices but OPI goldeneye only cost me $8.57. The other polishes from OPI did range in price from a dollar less or a dollar more depending on the specific color.

So lets talk shipping, Sparkle Canada does offer free shipping in Canada for orders over $75. So you do have to place a rather large order if you want free shipping. Or you can decide to pick it up from their store at 848 Eglinton Avenue East, Toronto, ON. My order did qualify for free shipping and it was really fast. I had placed my order on the weekend, it was shipped on Monday and reached me by Wednesday.  Also, they did provide tracking for my order.

Now at the time of placing my order, I was simply another customer to Sparkle Canada, and without any request or direction from me, they added a mini OPI nail envy to my order. I did contact Sparkle Canada after receiving my order and requested a coupon code for my Instagram followers, and they were kind enough to provide it. The code is "Anusha" for 5% off their website, code expires March 3rd, 2016. If you do make a purchase, I encourage you to leave Sparkle Canada a review on their Facebook page as well as tag me (@anushas_nails) on Instagram so I can see what you got!

(Top: L-R, OPI Push and Shove, OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls, OPI Goldeneye,, OPI Rising Star,OPI mini nail envy, Bottom :OPI Ink Suede, OPI Lincon Park after Dark Suede, OPI Russian Navy Suede, OPI Extra-va-vaganza, China Glaze Zombie Zest, China Glaze Bizzare Blurple)

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OPI Push and Shove

Today I am going to be reviewing OPI Push and Shove from the Holiday 2014 Gwen Stefani collection. This polish is marketed as a one night wear polish and comes in a duo set with a mini of lay down that base, base coat. The method behind this polish is that it will only work with lay down that base and it is supposed to be worn without a top coat. However, I have found that if you apply this polish on your bare nail, it will apply perfectly and you will be able to achieve the metallic foiled effect in just one coat. Furthermore, adding a top coat does dull the polish.

I did a wear test and I started noticing the polish disappearing around the 16 hour mark. It doesn't chip off, it just wears away like you've been wearing it for weeks. After 24 hours, the wear was definitely visible in the sense that I had lost half of the polish I was wearing. Overall, I highly recommend Push and Shove because I think it's very unique and since it is marketed as a one night polish, the wear time is pretty decent. Also, since it is opaque in one coat and the formula is wonderful, I think the polish is quite enjoyable.

I purchased my bottle of Push and Shove from sparklecanada.com. They do ship worldwide they have provided me with a 5% discount code "Anusha". This is not an affiliate code.