Hard Candy Pop-Arazzi

Hard Candy Pop-Arazzi is one of the new matte glitters from Hard Candy’s spring polish release line. This glitter is packed full of light blue, dark blue, black, green, red, and cream glitter. I thought the color selection was unique and I’ve never seen anything like it before.

This glitter applied nicely and has decent coverage; I didn’t need to work with it too much to get it to lay flat or provide strong distribution. I can’t stand it when I get a beautiful bottle of glitter only for it to not distribute fully on the nail. You know what I mean- when you dip the brush in, and there’s four glitters on the nail and a big blob of clear polish- This isn’t like that!

Hard Candy polish is cruelty-free and only $4! The only downside: the only place to get it is Wal-Mart!

Hard Candy Sweet Tart

Hello! Long time no see! I know it drives my mom crazy when blogs don’t update, so I figured I better get a post up before I get scolded. 😉 Anyway, I was actually out of town for nearly two weeks, and since I’ve been back I have been really busy.

I have a really pretty Hard Candy topper today, and it is a new polish in the line: Sweet Tart. This is a flurry of pink-tinged white hex glitter, white bar glitter, and black bar glitter. I usually hate bar glitter, but when it’s small I don’t mind. I guess “confetti” would be a better term since these aren’t really glittery.

I layered it over Essie Mint Candy Apple and loved the result. I am just a sucker for white glitter type polishes and knew I would love Sweet Tart!

Dupe Alert: Deborah Lippmann Shake Your Money Maker

Hello! I am really excited about this post! I was looking at Hard Candy’s polish selection again, and they have some new shades! One shade seems to be a dupe for a new Deborah Lippmann polish, Shake Your Money Maker. It is called Emerald’s Eve and it is $4 compared to the pricey Deborah Lippmann polish at $19. I wish I would have seen the Hard Candy one first!

I didn’t buy Emerald’s Eve, but I did snap these photos to compare at least a couple bottle shots.

I don’t know if they are *exactly* the same, but they look fairly similar to me. If you like Shake Your Money Maker but can’t (or won’t) pay for the high end price tag, this is worth considering for sure!

Hard Candy Peach Pop

This spring, speckled polish was all the rage! I love this trend and picked up several from the Hard Candy line, including this one called Peach Pop.

Hard Candy has several polishes that are great alternatives to the more expensive speckled lines, like Illamasqua and Deborah Lippmann. It should be noted though that these will not last nearly as long on the nail, at least they did not for me. Unlike Illamasqua and DL, when the Hard Candy speckle polish chips, it comes off in one large chunk instead of just a small chip here or there. For $4 though, this isn’t a complaint.

Peach Pop is a great orange shade packed full of pink, orange, and silver glitter. I used two coats here, though it would probably look even better with three! The glitter does not interfere with application either.

For the price, I think these are great polishes to have fun with, especially if you change up your polish frequently.

Hard Candy Black Tie Optional

When Hard Candy released their new polish line this spring, there was definitely a frenzy for these budget-friendly shades. At $4, they aren’t a huge investment, but still have some really unique colors. My favorite of the bunch is definitely this awesome glitter polish, Black Tie Optional. This is packed full of black and white bar and hex matte glitter, making it wearable over practically any shade!

Black Tie Optional has a great formula. It doesn’t catch despite there being a lot of glitter.

These aren’t the greatest photos, but I layered it here over Wet ‘n’ Wild Tropicalia. The manicure totally reminded me of the bike I got for my birthday in third grade. The bike was white with multi-colored splatters all over it, and I thought I was way cool! 😉

 

More Manicure Spam!

Hey Everyone! I just realized that this blog is now a year old as of March 21st. As the cliche saying goes, time flies! 🙂 Anyway, I have some manicure spam of the polish I wore last week, starting with Illamasqua Scorch. Wow, this is an amazing, vivid WHITE! If you love white nails consider this a must have. It is totally opaque in two easy coats.

I ended up layering Scorch with Hard Candy’s Black Tie Optional. This was a good pairing, but it would look better with a colored polish since there are opaque white glitters in this polish.

OPI Give Me the Moon. OH. MY. GOSH. I wore this for four days and the photo does not do it justice AT ALL. This polish is like Cinderella’s gown wrapped up in a cloud with unicorn dust and fairy sparkles. It has that “lit from within” glow in person and is a shape shifter between blue, gray, and lilac. WHY does nobody talk about it???

And OF COURSE a pink shade, right?! Oh boy did I debate this nail polish, Comic Cute from MAC. As you can see, it’s from the Archie’s Girls collection. I placed an order for everything I wanted makeup wise, but not this. It kept nagging at me so over a month later I decided to just get it and I’m really happy with it. The formula is fine and it is such a gorgeous pink. Believe it or not, I don’t even have a dupe for it. 😉 If you like pink, this is a good one!

Thanks for reading!

Hard Candy Beetle

While growing up in the 90s, the only way I had a clue as to what was going on regarding trends was by pouring over Sassy, Seventeen, and YM magazines, and watching MTV. Growing up in the middle of nowhere had major perks, but it was practically impossible to keep up with anything going on due to the very limited shopping and the fact that anything popular got to our neck of the woods about five years too late. That means I never got to experience the wonderful world of Hard Candy nail polish that I drooled over in my glossies.

In the summer, I cleaned the cabins owned by a family friend, and I was good friends with their daughters. After cleaning, we used to paint our nails outside on the porch. I was always jealous that she had better nails, but of course that didn’t make me stop biting. We mostly painted our nails blue, always Wet ‘n’ Wild. Then I would go home and wish I could find Hard Candy. It wasn’t like it is now where anything can be purchased online!

Now that my teen years are long gone (which is FINE BY ME), I am out of the nest and Hard Candy has been resurrected by Walmart of all places, where I absolutely despise going. Still, going there for Hard Candy is worth it, as evidenced by how gorgeous Beetle is! This is supposedly a dupe of Orly Space Cadet, with Beetle being the more affordable one at $4, while Space Cadet is $10.

I love the way the light hits Beetle and BAM! It’s a different color. So pretty! And in my head I am totally thinking, “OMG I am finally wearing Hard Candy! Where are my magazines? I am so cool!”

Now all I need is to stay up late watching 120 Minutes and waiting for my favorite music videos to come on so I can record them on a VHS tape. Ah, the good old days!