Tag Archives: China Glaze

Haul of Shame: Nail Polishes from Sally Beauty Supply

Sally Beauty Supply Haul & Pictures Yesterday, I took my membership card and hit up Sally Beauty Supply because I was running low on my favourite nail-polish remover.

Since I have to make a trek to get to a Sally Beauty Supply store, the occasional time when I go, I make sure to look at everything in all the aisles.

As usual, I walked out not only with what I had original made the special trip for, but also with a handful of other goodies!

Normally I don’t have much luck in finding gems on the nail-polish clearance rack, but this time, I feel like I struck gold unexpectedly!

Come check out my amazing finds in this Sally Beauty Supply Haul!

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China Glaze Calypso Blue Swatches & Review

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China Glaze Calypso Blue Swatches & Review China Glaze Calypso Blue from the Bahama Blues Collection has been in my stash since it was released in 2008.

The odd thing? This is the very first time I wore it!

Yes, I hoped that Calypso Blue would forgive me for overlooking it just because a lot of flashy pretty things sauntered by and distracted me.

I took it out for a spin, and we fell in love. We went to dinner, saw a movie, and stared at each other by candlelight while sipping on some wine and having a heart-to-heart conversation. 😉

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The Best of 2012

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The Best of 2012 Another year is coming to a close! Are you ready to see what 2013 brings?

What you probably didn’t know is that in 2012, I faced a lot of stressful issues in my personal life that caused me great emotional pain.

Blogging and interacting with you helped me push through it instead of giving up.

If you’ve been following Swatch And Learn for even a little while, I hope it’s evident that blogging and interacting with readers bring me a lot of happiness. Yes, it is hard work and very challenging to keep up, but I’m not the type of person who’s afraid of pulling up my sleeves to get things done.

Thank you for listening to what I think and for valuing my opinion, post after post and tweet after tweet. That is a big compliment!

Most of all, thank you, dear readers, for being encouraging and kind as well as for cracking the much-needed joke.

You remind me that genuinely good people are still out there. I needed that reminder, and you gave it to me in spades!

So, while in this post I list the best of 2012 in terms of nail polish, nail art, etc., I want you to know that Swatch And Learn readers are really the best of 2012!

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What I Wore on My Nails for Christmas

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Christmas Manicure Swatch Now, I told you (and showed you) in yesterday’s post that I overcompensated this year by wearing China Glaze Party Hearty a lot to make up for not sporting it last year.

The one Instagram photo I snapped with my iPhone was insufficient. When you go overboard, you have to really go overboard, take the plunge, and throw all the sailors off the boat with you! (Just make sure they can swim first!) 😉

So, here are lots of photos of my Christmas Manicure that I’ve been wearing since December 25th all the way up to today. (Plus I only took the photos for this post with my proper camera yesterday evening. While it’s no longer a fresh manicure, I still loved it so much and wanted to share some holiday spirit.)

Some of you may know that I spent the holidays at my mom’s place. We were pretty busy, and I literally painted this 30 minutes before guests arrived because I didn’t want my nails to be naked for a special occasion. (Thank goodness for the miraculous Seche Vite Fast Drying Top Coat…hehe!)

Layering Party Hearty over dark green is my favourite so far. What other colours have you used under it? I’d love to see it over a purple.

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China Glaze Party Hearty Swatches & Review (Revisited – Layered Over OPI Oy-Another Polish Joke!)

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China Glaze Party Hearty Swatches & Review Last Christmas, I didn’t get a chance to wear China Glaze Party Hearty, so what did I do this holiday season? I overcompensated like a good nailphile, of course!

If you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw the festive manicure I did with Party Hearty on top of red and green. But, days before that, I was wearing Party Hearty over OPI Oy-Another Polish Joke! from the Euro Centrale Collection due out in stores February 6, 2013.

This glitterbomb is back-up worthy! There are at least 2 extra bottles in my Helmer.

I’ve worn it tons of times, but oddly this is the first time I tried it over a gold. I quite like the look. It reminds me almost of a Christmasy dinosaur egg!

P.S. I reviewed this polish on here a long time ago. Felt that it was time to revisit it. 🙂 It’s one of those polishes I could never get sick of. It’s essentially Christmas in the form of nail polish!

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China Glaze Split Perso-Nail-ity Swatches & Review

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After wearing China Glaze Modify Me, the next Tranzitions polish I wore as a manicure was China Glaze Split Perso-Nail-ity.

I was hasty with my application and didn’t fully wait for the polish to dry. Yup, I was too excited to transform the colour with my clear top coat.

Patience is a virtue.

In this post, you’ll see what can happen if you don’t wait for the polish to fully dry before adding your top coat like China Glaze recommends.

Yeah, I’m such a badass. I don’t always floss my teeth, I stay up late, and now I add top coat too early. Bad. To. The. Bone. Oh yeah. 😉

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Holiday & Winter Nail Art Ideas

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Winter & Holiday Nail Art Ideas & Tutorials This year I haven’t had time to do Christmas nail-art tutorials prior to the big day.

But, since I know that a lot of nailphiles will be busting out the lacquer, I’ve put together this post on Holiday & Winter Nail Art Ideas featuring some looks I’ve done in the past.

In this post, I’ve also linked each manicure to its corresponding nail-art tutorial, which features step-by-step written instructions and photos. All, except for one, have tutorials. Plus within some of the posts are links to reviews of the individual nail polishes.

Hope that you’ll come up with something great for your holiday manicure! (I actually have been juggling a few designs in my head, but I still haven’t decided which to paint. I’ll be sure to share my Christmas manicure sometime after December 25th.)

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