Eat Sleep Polish The Sisterhood of the Travelling Polish

Well hello there everyone! It's been a while. You might not remember me anymore. That's okay!

I have through hell and high water finally managed to put this polish on my paw. Yes, paw. Only one. How silly I felt wandering around the grocery store after swatching with only four nails painted. ;) I know we've all been there a few times. 

Anyway, it seems I am back. Whether for a while or just a brief pop back to say hello, I do still love polish! And now that I have access to my camera more easily, I do plan to at least get back to polish swatches on instagram regularly @sheloveslacquer - follow me there!

The Sisterhood of the travelling polish is a gorgeous purple holo with a pink shimmer and a bit of a blue flash in certain lights. I found it difficult to capture the natural state of this polish, but I've done what I can with it. It was fun to wear, if brief. The formula just didn't stick to my nails well but I have this problem a lot, randomly. Gorgeous while it lasted, I look forward to my own bottle one day! :)

Please forgive the sad state of my poor hands from being washed and banged up at work.

Visit those involved with the Travelling Polish

Eat Sleep Polish Facebook | Instagram | Shop

BlackLace Reviews: Blog | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter 

Darling Magpie: Blog | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Twitter 2 

Gaby The Girl Next Door: Blog | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter 

Kitties and Polish Forever: Blog | Instagram | Twitter 

Love This Lacquer: Blog | Instagram | Twitter 

Mini Neko: Blog | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Pinterest 

Ms Becky Bean: Instagram | Twitter 

Oh My Swatch: Blog | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Pinterest 

Sandie's Cupcakes: Blog | Twitter 

Swatcher, Polish Ranger: Blog | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter | Pinterest 

We Didn't Miss It: Blog | Instagram | Twitter 

Writing Whimsy: Blog | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Just Because Nails - Picture Polish Aurora

This has to be one of my favorite polishes, despite being nearly impossible to capture all of it's faces. I pulled out the big camera recently and tried to catch this beauty on my nails.

Isn't it just gorgeous?!

Battle of the Topcoats - Part 1!! HK Girl Vs Seche Vite

Immediately after finishing the mani.

Shortly after finishing the mani - you can see some shrinkage already occuring on the index finger.

Shortly after finishing the mani - all good!

Both my HK Girl and my Seche Vite are quite low, as you can tell. They've both been thinned to be workable and both apply similarly to the nail. Each one had a tiny bit of smudging on the stamping if I wiped the brush over it too many times, so in that regard the performance was the same.

However within hours of finishing, a clear winner began to emerge. The nails with Seche Vite were already showing some serious tip wear/shrinkage.

Shrinkage/tip wear on the SV nail.

Within about 48 hours, I had some chipping on the SV nails. You may notice that I had to file my nails a bit before this photo was taken - some rough edges were catching and I didn't want any breaks, so the index finger looks less severe than reality. As you can see, the HK Girl nails are still looking quite good!

Winner: HK Girl!!

Bin Chic's Boutique - St Val's Heart, St Paddy's Shillelagh and The Trickster

I wanted to pop one more quick post of the remaining swatches from the BinChic Jan-April polishes before I get into some fun stuff coming up. I loved all of these polishes and can't wait to show more designs including them. The thermal is extremely reactive and the formulas are buttery if a tiny bit streaky on the more metallic finishes (to be expected). Enjoy these! I sure am!

February - St Val's Heart

Super pretty cherry red with a pop of pink shimmer, what's not to love?

2 coats.

Sunlight Macro

Sunlight

Flash (look at that shimma!!)

St Paddy's Shillelagh

This green is so gorgeous! I wore it in my pre-St Paddy's Day green madness as well. Love the shimmer!

2 coats.

Sunlight Macro

Sunlight

Flash (to show the shimmer!)

Flash - another face of the color

The Trickster

 Love how thermally reactive this was, it was really difficult to capture a fully warm picture because it changes so fast!

3 coats.

Cold, Flash - shows the shimmer.

Cold, Natural Lighting.

Cold, sunlight.

Natural temperature, Natural Lighting.

Natural temperature, sunlight. (Shimmmaaaa!!!)

Warm, flash.

Warm (quickly changing), sunlight.

*Press Sample*

BinChic's Boutique - WTF (Wine Time Finally) - Swatches & Review

Two coats, flash.

Today I have for you a polish from BinChic's Boutique called WTF (Wine Time Finally) inspired by the pantone color of the year, Marsala. This is a gorgeous burgundy-wine holo that I'm really enjoying!

I've shown one coat here because this polish could have easily been a one coater if I knew what I was working with before applying it. 

It's self-leveling in the same was as A Englands, where you need to work quickly and in a thicker coat to avoid the polish drying too fast and making lumps where you drag your brush. You can get full coverage in one shot if you work fast. These are a bit streaky/patchy because I wasn't yet aware of the type of polish, but still totally wearable!

I really enjoyed the forumla, though there was a little bit of streaking that can happen sometimes with more metallic type finishes like this. It went on smooth and could have been a one coater with proper application. I plan on trying some stamping with this polish eventually.

I wore it for about 48 hours - went swimming, did dishes, showers, etc. and had only a little bit of shrinkage on two fingers from my top coat, not from the polish. I would say it wears quite well! Check it out over at BinChic's Boutique on Etsy!!

One coat, natural light.

One coat, natural light.

After a second coat the streakiness was much less apparent and the finish was quite glossy, but these shots are taken with top coat. (Seche Vite)

Unfortunately the sun was not shining today but I took photos with the natural light from outside and with flash to show the holographic finish.

Two Coats, natural light.

Two coats, flash.

*Press Sample*

Blog Issue :(

It's come to my attention that many of my prior post images are missing from their source folders and have disappeared from the blog. I guess that's a good reason for a new challenge in January. I'm so sorry about this error and very sad that so many of my images are missing. I hope to recover what I can, but new posts to come will make up for the loss.

WillowStore Product Review

A few weeks ago I recieved a few sampler products from www.willowstore.ca for review. They included a handful of sample packets each of their Donkey Milk Body Lotion and Face Cream, a Donkey Milk & Olive Oil soap and an olive oil lip balm. The shop itself is based in Toronto, Ontario and is a newly budding Canadian business that I was very excited to hear about and was so happy to get to try out these products! They carry both the Donkey Milk and Olive Oil products online in their shop.

*I apologize in advance for the photos this time around, I didn't think to take them right away and it was late night when I finally did. Poor planning on my part. :( *

The Donkey Milk is provided by a traditional family farm in Belgium where the donkeys are hand milked three times per day! The products themselves are made up of 95% or higher organic ingredients and have some amazing qualities. The Donkey Milk provides several benefits to your skin including the potential to reduce sun damage and wrinkles (thanks to antioxidants, vitamins and minerals), as well as offering amazing moisture and continuing protection from dry skin. Donkey Milk is superior in nutrients for our skin to cows milk, but because the process is very labor intensive and the donkeys can only produce a fraction of what a cow can, it's very difficult to get our hands on these products.

The first product I tested out was the Handmade Olive Oil soap in which I chose the Donkey Milk & Silk variety. I found it was what I would consider to be unscented. It lathered well and left me feeling clean, however I found it left my skin feeling a bit tight in the body. I have this issue commonly with soaps, however, so please don't let this discourage you from trying it. Even extremely moisturizing soap varieties often leave my skin feeling tight. I did however find that for my combination skin on my face, this was a perfect choice and I have been using it to wash my face since then.

The bars retail on the website starting at $3 and vary by size.

The Donkey Milk Body Lotion was quite possibly my favorite product of the bunch. I used one packet after a shower for several days on my legs, arms, and some of my body and found it left my skin feeling soft and silky and relieved some of the dry itchiness of winter. It's definitely a scented product, it has a clean soapy perfumey sort of smell that I associate with higher end facial and body creams.

A 400ml bottle of Body Lotion retails for $34 on the website.

The Donkey Milk Care Cream (face cream) was a close second favorite for me. I used it as a night cream after reading some of my friends thoughts on the product as I expected it might be greasy and need some time to sink in. I put about half of a packet on before brushing my teeth and by the time my teeth were brushed, all of the cream had absorbed into my skin. I put on another layer on for good measure but it wasn't necessary as I learned through the next few days using it just once. My skin was super soft and my dry spots seriously reduced for the days that I've been using this cream. As soon as it's in my budget, I'll be buying this in a second. A jar will last a long time. I got 2-3 uses out of each of my 3ml sample packets, so I expect one jar would last 35-50 applications depending on how you use it.

A 50ml jar of Care Cream retails for $36.

And finally I recieved the Vanilla Olive Oil Lip Balm which was a soft scent of vanilla and had no real flavor. It was moisturizing and melted nicely in a similar fashion to the handmade lipbalms I usually use. It is not waxy like a traditional lipbalm and can take some getting used to, but I love them.

It retails for $4.75 on the website in Vanilla, Natural and Rose.

Willow is the only store in Ontario at the moment carrying these products and they are amazing! Some of the gift sets available on the website right now are amazing deals, if you're interested, I would run over and check it out! What better time than the holidays to treat yourself or a friend to some great gifts to de-stress and remember to love ourselves with!

I hope you enjoyed my review! Let me know if you plan on trying out these products!

A Busy Few Days of Swatching!

While writing out full length posts for my blog has been a bit difficult for me lately, I have been keeping up with my nails. The last couple of days I've started working on swatching my polishes for my pinterest collection. I thought I would share them with you all here and remind you that if you like my swatches, you can find them regularly on my Instagram. Once I've completed the projects I owe for Christmas (crochet requests from my Etsy shop - details in the future) I will get back into my normal programming for blogging.

So without further adieu, some of my swatches this week.

Eat Sleep Polish - You Can't Sit With Us

Eat Sleep Polish - Great Sexpectations

Eat Sleep Polish - The Turtle and the Hare

Aly's Dream Polish - Hottest Pink

It has been a month.

You know one of those ones where life intervenes and everything you want to do is sidelined for the important and super un-fun stuff? Yeah, one of those.

I miss blogging. I miss writing. I miss having time to do my nails every day. But I have been working on some fun stuff.

A scarf for a friend, nicely tied in a bow here:

A few pairs of slippers, some fingerless gloves and several bathroom oragnizers have also been keeping me quite busy.

I know this isn't my usual nail related post, but here are a couple of mani's I have done recently to tide you over:

Carpe Noctem Cosmetics - South Haven Sunset

I know I've shown this one before but it's just so gorgeous! I needed to wear it again. Look at that gold shimmer come through, it really does look like a sunset doesn't it?

I have high hopes that in the coming week I will be finishing up many of my near-complete projects which should open up some free time to get back to my nails and my blog. I hope you're all doing well, tell me in the comments how has the past month been going for you?

What? October is almost over?

What a terrible host I've been for the October mani challenge. I'm -still- sick! I can't believe this nonsense, but regardless, sick or not, I'm going to upload all of my photos so far tonight and update by week. Back to regular programming after that, I'm done letting this cold win!

Benefit 2014 Advent Calendar "Candy Coated Countdown"

Quick post, not back from my little break, but this one was an easy one.

I've noticed a lot of people talking about the Benefit 2014 Advent Calendar already. Last year's calendar was great and came with a price tag of $79. This year's advent calendar has a whopping $40 markup coming in at a massive $119. What's with the markup? Is it really worth it?

So here's what it looks like in the package, quite pretty, as usual for Benefit.

Now for the good stuff. The contents. Spoilers, my dears, if you don't want to know what's in there, don't read any further.

All of the products are sample sizes.

Day 1: Heart Paper Clips

Day 2: Ultra Plush Lipgloss "A-Lister"

Day 3: They're Real Mascara

Day 4: Stay Don't Stray (lt/med)

Day 5: It's Potent

Day 6: Porefessional

Day 7: Silver Hair Tie

Day 8: Holiday Post It Notes

Day 9: Ultra Plush Lipgloss "Dandelion"

Day 10: Stay Flawless

Day 11: Benetint

Day 12: Total Moisture

Day 13: Posietint

Day 14: Hair Tie w/ bow

Day 15: Ooh La Lift

Day 16: High Beam

Day 17: Holiday Notepad

Day 18: That Gal

Day 19: Pink Polkadot Hair Tie

Day 20: Ultra Plush Lipgloss "Fauxmance"

Day 21: Watt's Up?

Day 22: Bad Gal lash

Day 23: ChaChaTint

Day 24: Fake Up Concealer in 02 Medium

So what's different from last year? Not much, honestly. Here are the differences:

2013 contained the following products that 2014 does not:

Girl Meets Pearl

Hoola

Dandelion

Coralista

BadGal Liner in Black

Ultra Plush Lipgloss in Coralista 

Ultraplush Lipgloss in Sugarbomb

2014 new products:

They're Real Mascara

Ultra Plush Lipgloss in Fauxmance

Stay Flawless

Watt's Up

Fake Up Concealer

You might notice that this advent calendar has actually lost products. In 2013's Advent Calender there were three days containing non Benefit products (a bracelet, a necklace and a barette). In the 2014 Advent Calendar we see six days without Benefit products (paperclips, post it notes, 3 hair ties, notepad).

Is it worth the price hike? Well, that's up to you, but I think I'll be investing in a David's Tea Advent Calender this year instead. Which holiday products are you excited for?

Quick Update

I'm so sorry I haven't been posting my daily swatches like I planned to, I have literally been sick since the first of October and still am not quite well. Hopefully I will be able to play catch up soon and get back to regular posting. In the meantime I have still be uploading daily mani's on my Instagram. I'll be back soon!

Amazing Autumn Mani Challenge Day 1 - Moss

Day 1 of the October Amazing Autumn Mani Challenge! Today's theme was "Moss" (green).

I've used two coats of Colors by Llarowe Army of One and a tiny bi of saran wrap stamping using A England Dragon.

I apologize for the lack of great quality content today, I have a really nasty cold and this was all I could muster. I promise more fun in future.

Amazing Autumn Mani Challenge! - Participants

As promised, before we begin our month of fun, I have a list of those participating and where you can find them.

Myself, here on the blog as well as on Instagram.

Tina with We Didn't Miss It, and Instagram.

Deb with The Bold and the Beauty Fool, and Instagram

goddessofblue

Natalie

Laura

I will edit this post if others decide to join in. 

I'm looking forward to getting started tomorrow!!

October's Mani Challenge - Amazing Autumn!

In continuation of the mani challenges that the wonderful Tina over at We Didn't Miss It has been coming up with, this month she asked me if I wanted to create the challenge 'chart' since October's idea of autumn colors was my suggestion. The ladies loved this idea and Tina and I have been chittering about our excitement to get started since then. So about a week ago I finally caved to the desire and wrote out the color chart. Who doesn't love Autumn colors?! I can't wait to get started!

Previous Monthly challenges I have participated in are August Is Indie Month and the first portion of September is Stamping Month. Unfortunately I've had some nail casualties and am working with shorties for the time being, so I've ducked out of stamping. Stamping is difficult enough working with nails the images actually fit on! Haha.

In the meantime if you'd like to see what I've been up to with my shorties, I'm still posting some of my manis on my Instagram, follow me there!

Now, for the good stuff.

This is October's suggested guide for the daily mani challenge. Participate on the days that you are able or want to, there's no requirement to do it daily, though I will be trying to. I will be following this guide the best I can (I'm still missing a few colors and they may not arrive in time!). The first 18 days are guided in color choice and the last 13 days are open to your interpretation for color or design, just follow the theme! Show us what color your favorite teacup and lap blanket are. ;)

Some guidelines I want to remember which you may choose to follow (or are welcome to ignore):

• Follow the color guidelines when you can and substitute something when you must
• Blog and/or post nails to instagram every day
• Try choosing an untried polish first or showing a favorite
• Write a quick (but honest) review of each polish that you choose to blog about
• Pick indies before big brands #supportindie !!
• Link back to the maker where possible on IG or FB
• HAVE FUN!*

If you want to participate, let me know! Drop me a message or leave me a note with links to where you'll be posting your Amazing Autumn manis. I'll be posting a Participant list soon. I will be sharing my manis here on the blog and daily on my Instagram (#amazingautumnmanis and  #octobermanichallenge). Let us know where you'll be posting yours so we can check it out!

I cannot wait to get started!

*You're not allowed to ignore this guideline. It's a must!

Final Stamping Month Update & Upcoming Blogs!

It pains me to inform you that I am out of the stamping challenge for this month as my nails started breaking at the quick and I was forced to file down to the nubbiest of nubbins. However I am planning a challenge for October and will participate in that one whether my nubs are nubby or not. Hopefully a couple of weeks will be enough time for them to grow out so I can make them look at least half decent. It happens to all of us. :(

So this means that instead of daily nails, I'll be working on some other reviews instead. 

Stay tuned! I have lots of exciting things in store even if it's not my nails.

And as a last update, this was Day 12 of Stamping Month - Bugs

Nails of the Week! Girly Bits #islandtime!

A brand I very recently discovered a love for but which has quickly found a place in my heart is Girly Bits. Today I've got #islandtime to show you which I fell in love with as soon as I saw the bottle. It looks even better on somehow, if that's even possible. It is a teal holographic with some hints of green and some hints of blue depending on the lighting. I think I've covered the faces pretty well.

I hope you enjoy! This polish is absolutely gorgeous! I couldn't bear to take it off for three whole days, almost unheard of for me!

This is three thin coats with HK Girl top coat. This polish dried lightning fast on my nails and application was amazingly smooth. Can't wait to try some more of my Girly Bits!

Indoors, bright sunlight.

Indoors with flash.

Setepmber is Stamping Month Update!

Stamping month update number two! This stamping guide has proven to be a little challenging. I only have two large plates and a handful of small circular ones so I have only a select number of images to work with. I've had to get creative and make up some of my own themes for a few of the days. Here's my update to today and for daily updates along with swatches and random mani attempts please follow me on Instagram here!

Day 7 - Hearts

KBShimmer A Touch of Glass stamped with A England's Dancing With Nureyev

Day 8 - Dragons

KBShimmer Plum Tuckered Out stamped with A England's Princess Tears

Day 9 - Fish.

I didn't like my first attempt at underwater creatures, so I went for a new theme. Travelling with a view.

Cadillacquer Crystal with Mundo De Unas #16 stamping.

Day 10 - Trees

I went with a beachy theme using Girly Bits #islandtime as a base with Mundo De Unas #6 stamping

Day 11 - Books

Today is supposed to be a book theme. I don't have any book stamps, so instead I decided to tell a story with my stamps.

A handsome Prince Charming, an adoring Princess, they fall in love, and live happily ever after in their castle. (So cheesy.)

This is Lilypad Lacquer Vixens Wear Violet with Mundo De Unas #1 stamping.