Mascara: Search for the Best Ever

Maybelline The Colossal Volum' Express. The best I've found yet.
Pardon my wrinkles. Tanning is bad.

Butter London Lovely Jubbly v. Wet n Wild Fergie XoXo

After I bought the Butter London Lovely Jubbly polish one of my friends decided she had to have it. Unfortunately, the nearest Ulta is 45 minutes away and she didn't want to make the drive or spend the money. On one of my random Walgreens trips I noticed this Wet n Wild Fergie collection polish that looked just like Lovely Jubbly to me. When I told her about it she wanted it. I ended up picking it up for her since the Walgreens near her house didn't have it. Decided to do a little comparison before handing it over to her.



In person, I swear the color looks almost identical in the bottles. I couldn't seem to capture that with the camera though.

I alternated nails with it and really couldn't tell a difference at a glance. XoXo has a lot more clear polish and the glitter is slightly larger. It took a few more coats of it than it did Lovely Jubbly to achieve the coverage as pictured. Lovely Jubbly also has gold glitter, XoXo does not. For a fraction of the price, this is a pretty good dupe. (Lovely Jubbly is on the middle finger, btw.)

Recent NOTDs

Essie "Turquoise and Caicos" & Butter London "Henley Regatta". My most favorite combination ever!


OPI "If You Moust You Moust" & "Nothin' Mousie 'Bout It". Not a huge OPI fan but I couldn't resist the Minnie Mouse collection. The heart glitter was a huge pain.


Spoiled by Wet n Wild in "Shrimp on the Barbie". A beautiful color and new favorite!


Essie "Penny Talk" & Sephora by OPI "Traffic Stopper Copper". Probably my most favorite combination I have done recently. Too bad the Essie metallics chip insanely fast.


Essie "Boxer Shorts" & "Stroke of Brilliance". Picked these up at Walgreens on my lunch break one day. My friends saw them and picked them up after work. We both wore them the next day. And she showed me how to get the glitter off with no hassle!


Julie G polishes. I had to go to another state to get these. Not sure if it was worth it.


Julie G "Bikini" & "Pink Tiara". Beautiful colors. Painted my nails at night. They were chipped by the time I got to work the next morning.


Julie G 9 to 5. Another beautiful color. A huge pain to use. Super thick and streaky. I wore it for one day. It didn't chip but it still looked bad.


Sinful by Wet n Wild in Cougar Attack. This is a pretty brown jelly with TONS of glitter. Easily a favorite. It chipped quickly but I was extra rough on my hands the days I wore it. IDK why my fingers look so chubby on this day. :/

Orly Preamp and Butter London Lovely Jubbly. My only purchases on a recent Ulta trip. Was actually looking for a different Orly color but they didn't have it.

Essie Poppy Razzi

Camera, Lights, Bazooka, Action.

Was so excited for this "neon" collection. Definitely not my idea of "neon" though. Bright, yes. Neon, nope.

Julep Maven: May Box

The Julep Maven subscription service is not something that interested me much. I'm pretty picky about nailpolish. I almost exclusively use Essie these day. However, I ran across a promo where I could get the intro Julep box for only $0.01. The two polishes that came with it seemed decent, though a bit boring. I didn't really plan to continue with the program. But then I got the email about my May box and the colors looked so tempting. I ended up ordering my box along with two add-on polishes.


Fina, Sarah, Ashley, & Nessa. Two coats each & Seche Vite topcoat.

My box is the Bombshell box, which just happened to be my favorite of all the boxes. My box came with the colors Fina and Sarah. For my add-ons I chose Ashley and Nessa.

♥Fina. "Sky blue metallic with a mod chrome finish." Metallic, yes. Chrome finish, yes. Sky blue, not so much. I see it as more of a grayish blue. It reminds me of the "Cadet Blue" crayon, which happens to be one of my favorites. I like this color. A lot. But it is definitely a color I would lean more towards using during the cooler months of the year.

♥Sarah. "Sheer, pink coral with iridescent and glitter." This color is very sheer. Almost a jelly formula. It is a pretty, summery shade of pink. I'm not really seeing the coral in it though. It has somewhat chunky iridescent glitter. While this is pretty, it is a fairly ordinary color. And I'm not a huge fan of sheer polishes.

♥Ashley. "Sunset orange with a metallic micro-shimmer." This is also metallic and, in my opinion, has a chrome finish. The micro-shimmer is indeed micro. I honestly didn't even realize it was there until I got on Julep to get the descriptions for this blog entry. Orange is my least favorite color but this is nice. You don't see metallic, chrome orange polishes often. Since it's not a bright, neon orange I can see it being a nice polish for fall as well as summer. It actually kind of reminds me of fall leaves.

♥Nessa. "Bright lemon sorbet shimmer." Another metallic, chrome. Again, the shimmer is pretty much invisible. This was the one color that I HAD to have and I'm pretty happy with it. Unlike a lot of yellows, it goes on smooth with perfect coverage. Like with Ashley, this is what I see as a fall leaves kind of color. Definitely my favorite of the bunch.

Now for the negative. While the formula of these polishes seemed really nice, it was hard to work with because the brushes were complete crap. The brush on Sarah was actually fine, but the others were all flared out like they had been shoved into the bottles improperly or something. This made it very difficult to not pick up too much polish and to keep the polish off my cuticles while painting.

Overall, I'm not completely decided on Julep at this point. Like with my May email, the June email was so tempting. I ordered my box and two add-ons again. I'm hoping the brush issue was just a fluke and that my next set will be fine.



Descriptions from julep.com.

Essie Neons: Summer 2009

Perky Purple, Flirty Fuchsia, Punchy Pink, Funky Limelight. Two coats each with Seche Vite topcoat for shine.

My most coveted Essie polishes. Finally snatched up a set of the minis on eBay recently. Love them!

NOTD

Sally Hansen - Pacific Blue

I didn't really get the obsession with this color until I used it. It almost has a neon quality about it! ((Yes, my cuticles are a big mess.))