Contrary Polish's Candle Light

Surprisingly, this is my only black nail polish.  This is Contrary Polish's Candle Light and I love it!  The color is almost like a very dark green/gray/brown that blends together to make a soft black.  There's also some beautifully subtle gold shimmer.  I put on a base coat, two coats of polish, and a top coat.  Application was smooth and easy!

I tried to get Rosy to help me with modeling this polish but she was too tired to do any good posing.

I haven't come across a Contrary Polish that I don't like.  I've been trying to get the rest of the spring 2013 collection but man it sells out so fast!

Picture Polish's Electric Blue and Festival

I'm a sucker for a good blue nail polish and as we've already discussed, I'm obsessed with piCture pOlish's Festival flakies top coat.  Here's piCture pOlish's Electric Blue with a base coat, a fast-drying top coat, and one coat of Festival.  I seriously have an addiction with Festival, when not even a fun blue polish is enough for me and I need to add a coat of iridescent flakies!  I love Festival on top of a dark polish - the different colors of the flakies look amazing against this dark blue polish!  Sunny was gracious enough to help me model the polish.

The only downside to this polish is that it's kinda a pain to take off because the polish is super pigmented.  Definitely use a base coat to prevent possible staining (not sure if it would, but I would do it just to be safe).

I couldn't stop staring at my nails.  Such a fun weekend polish for me!

Butter London's Tea With The Queen and piCture pOlish's Festival

 
This is an old NOTD from a couple weeks ago when I was first testing out piCture pOlish's Festival.  This is on top of Butter London's Tea With The Queen, which is a pinkish tan neutral.  I liked this a lot for a neutral and is probably the best nude I have that doesn't give me mannequin hands or look like I have on Silly Putty fake fingernails.  I think the mixture of tan and pink is a good combination for my skin tone.  And I love how this looks with Festival on top!  I ended up keeping this on for only a day though because this is when I was still using Seche Vite as a top coat and the shrinkage was so bad that my tips were completely exposed.  Argh!

Anyways, Tea With The Queen is a great office appropriate polish and easy to apply.  This is with a base coat, two coats of polish, Festival, and a top coat.  I always apply a top coat over Festival, even though Festival is a top coat, because I like to use a fast drying top coat at the end to help speed along the drying.  Otherwise I will for sure dent or smudge my polish within a few minutes.

February 2013 BarkBox

Yay our February BarkBox finally arrived today!  I saw other blogs posting about it the past few days so I was eagerly awaiting it...I mean Sunny and Rosy were.  Is it strange that I cancelled all the monthly subscription boxes I got for myself and now this is the only one I still have and I love it?  I mean check out all the goodies in this box!

The girls were intrigued.

Very intrigued.

Especially Rosy.

So this box contained the following:

• N-Bone's Get Naked super antioxidant dental chew treats.  
• These are wheat free, corn free, soy free, and gluten free and are supposed to be low-fat and low-calorie treat that helps clean teeth and freshen breath.  They are made in the U.S.  It has a slight fruity scent. and they're a bit hard to break into smaller pieces.  The girls sniffed at it cautiously at first but happily chomped on them after they had a taste!

• Aussie Naturals toy
• This is supposed to be an eco-friendly dog toy with rope limbs.  There's no squeaker in the toy though.  The girls are never that impressed with the toys the first day because they're too excited about the treats, so we'll see if Rosy ends up liking this one (this is more Rosy's kind of toy than Sunny's).

• Wet Noses
• I love that this box had two kinds of Wet Noses treats!  We got the carob and mint, and dogranola.  I only opened up the dogranola to test it out and oh man the girls LOVED these cookies!  These treats are organic, made in the U.S., and are wheat free, corn free, and soy free.  The cookies are a bit big for the girls though so I break it into smaller pieces.  I generally try to feed the girls a grain-free diet, but I always test out the BarkBox treats.  I don't know if I'd repurchase these regularly on my own because of that, but definitely for special occasions or maybe I'd use them as an extra special treat for the girls! 
• Pet Qwerks newspaper toy 
• This is a really interesting toy because it's shaped like a rolled up newspaper, has at least two squeakers from what I could tell, and has some sort of wonderfully crinkly material inside.  The girls were intrigued by this but haven't played with it too much since they were too focused on the food.  But when I stepped away for a bit, I did hear some crinkling sounds so they are definitely interested in it.  I love how I can tell when they're playing with it even when I'm not in the same room!
• Wag.com $10 off coupon
• I really like Wag.com, which I only discovered through BarkBox as they sell the dog food I get the girls and for a reasonable price.  They have a ton of other stuff too so I'll definitely be putting this coupon to use!

From what I could tell on other blogs, the bigger dog boxes had slightly different contents and had a treat filling toy instead of the newspaper toy.  I know that some people find it weird to spend this amount on a surprise box of unknown goodies for a dog, but I really love it!  It's such a great way to try out different treats and toys!

Ok, if you just wanted to find out what was in the box and my thoughts on it then you can stop reading now.  The rest of this post is going to be picture heavy as I show you how much the girls enjoyed their BarkBox! 

The girls' favorite part of this box were the Wet Noses cookies for sure.  The cookie isn't that big, but to draw out the fun and to avoid feeding them too much, I break up the cookies into multiple smaller pieces. 

They really loved these treats!

As soon as I held out the treat, Sunny started standing up on her back legs, dancing and acting all cute to charm me into feeding her.

And it works.

Rosy's starting to pick up that habit too.

I was skeptical about the dental chews since anything meant to freshen dog's breath usually is unsuccessful with my stinky mouthed girls.  But these smelled more like real food and less like weird processed fake stuff. And it definitely got Sunny's attention!

I love how Sunny used the drawer handles to show off her cuteness and try to get closer to the treats!

Cuties!

Here, freshen your breath a bit Sunny - it really stinks after your dinner.

You too Rosy.

One nice thing about these dental chews is that they take a while to eat because they're so hard.  I really enjoyed watching the girls make funny faces as they gnawed away at these.  

And here's the Aussie Naturals toy.  Sunny jumped up to investigate on the chance there might be food in it.  Look at her lil floppy ears flying out as she hops up!

But she's no fool and she knew this wasn't the good stuff.  So of course I gave her a few more tasty bites of the Wet Noses treats!

 

Ok, on the count of three let's see who can get the treat first!  One...Two...Thr-!

Hey no cheating!

Ok, last bite!

No more treats tonight.  Here, play with the newspaper toy.  I know it doesn't taste as good but listen to it crinkle and squeak!

Essie's Miss Fancy Pants and piCture pOlish's Festival

I am obsessed with piCture pOlish's Festival top coat.  It's a top coat filled with iridescent flakes.  It's amazing!!  And if I apply it to the right polish, then it's low key enough that I can wear it to work without it being too flashy.  Here it is applied over Essie's Miss Fancy Pants.  

I bought this Essie polish when it first came out but then I went through a polish low where I just stopped painting my nails for no particular reason and didn't apply any for several months.  So I decided to give it a try even though the color didn't seem that exciting.  But I really love it.  It's a perfect greige for me.  It reminds me a lot of one of my favorite polishes, Essie's Chinchilly, but it's a warmer tone than Chinchilly.  So while it's not a flashy, new color, I think this will be one of my reliable standbys that I can wear during the work week.  And topped with Festival, I loved it so much I kept it on all week!

Here's a closer look at Festival's flakies. 

My cuticles are still a mess.  My hands took a brutal whipping from this past winter, and it's taking some time to get them back to normal.

And here's a shot with my pug model, Sunny.

Happy Valentine's Day

This Valentine's Day my niece and nephew gave me a musical pug valentine, some heart shaped York peppermint patties, and a kitten temporary tattoo that they demanded I put on my hand.  Loved it!

piCture pOlish's Pshiiit

I am in love with this piCture pOlish shade!  It's called pshiiit and is a collaboration polish with Pshiiit, a fantastic nail blog that I wish I could understand but unfortunately my high school French has completely left my brain.  Anyways, every time I looked down at my nails I always thought "mermaid."  This is a perfect almost metallic sea green with a green-blue shimmer and tiny flakies.

For some reason I had to reapply polish on several of my nails, which is unusual for me.  I don't know if I was having an off night or if this one just dries slower, or if it was the flakies throwing it off (getting stuck near the tip and sticking out).  This is a base coat, two coats of polish, and a top coat.

Sorry I didn't take more photos but my application wasn't so great and I ended up taking it off pretty soon because this is definitely only a weekend polish for me (so sad).

This is one of my favorite indie polishes so far because I feel like it's very unique and incredibly beautiful.  And I've never come across another polish that makes me think of mermaids as much as this one!

Contrary Polish's The Way I Am

I was able to nab one of Contrary Polish's Love Lyrics collection (argh, will have to try again for the others this week).  This is The Way I Am, which is very different in person than I thought it was going to be.  When I saw swatches online it looked and was described as a very pale avocado with fuchsia shimmer.  But in person this is much darker than I thought it was going to be.  I'm thinking those first swatches I saw were just one coat because this is more like a gray-green, or a camo green.  On me this pulls a bit more gray than I would've thought.

Either way this is a very pretty and unique color, with tiny fuchsia shimmer that is only noticeable upon looking closely.  I love that because I can wear this polish to work without it looking too crazy.  Application was great and this is a base coat, two coats of polish, and a top coat.  Sorry I don't have better photos in better lighting but I've been sick recently so most of my time has been spent on my couch, surrounded by pugs, as I flit in and out of consciousness.

You can see the fuchsia shimmer pretty well in this close up of the bottle.

I really want to try the other polishes in this collection as they're all beautiful shades with an interesting combination of shimmer.