Today in the Alphabet Challenge I got to the letter I and I have an Orly polish to show you. This is Ingenue and it is from the 2011 Holiday Soiree collection. This collection was released just before the holiday season of 2011 and the entire collection is very icy and shimmery. Ingenue is no exception.

Orly Ingenue - indoor light and flash

Ingenue is very metallic shimmery, almost foil-y. Its a pink-purple base filled with tons of gold shimmer. I have something in my heart for all polishes shimmer and so I am enjoying Ingenue very much. It may not be unique, especially not when 2012 was so filled with foil-chrome-glitter polishes, but I think this look is so beautiful and festive.

Orly Ingenue - Natural light, direct sun

Application was pretty easy for this one. It's a little bit on the thin side so it needed 3 coats to get full opacity, but each coat drys pretty quick. For my wide nails, the Orly brush is too thin to my liking and I hate it when I have to go with more then 3 strokes over nail. But the tons of shimmer in this polish make it very forgiving to any issues with the strokes.

Orly Ingenue - natural light, direct sun

Orly Ingenue - Close up

Orly Ingenue - Artificial light, indoors

I was wondering if such shimmery polish would like to have some stamping on it so I grabbed my Zoya Jem (which you will see a little more of in my next Alphabet Challenge entry for the letter J) and I must say I like it pretty much! What do you think?

Orly Ingenue stamped with Zoya Jem

Orly Ingenue stamped with Zoya Jem

Would you stamp on such a shimmery polish? Do you think it adds or subtracts from this polish's look?

You might remember my previous entry for the Christmas in July nail art contest at Jen's Nail Files. But today I have another entry for a different contest by the same name! This time the contest is by the wonderful Andrea at Finger Painting Fingers, and you might want to check it out RIGHT NOW as the deadline to enter is July 31st!!!

 So this is my entry to Andrea's contest. I am still having issues with the brush and I get some of the lines crooked, but I hope I am still improving.
Here are some close-ups of my nails:

Thumb - Christmas decorations

Index - A christmas tree under a hot July sun

Middle finger - Santa is having a drink while sitting on the float

Ring finger - Melting snowman

Pinky - a sock. To collect my winning in the contest ;-)

In the make of this nail art I used this brush and I used so many polishes! I mixed them together to help with the shades I wanted. These are the polishes I used, from left to right: Zoya - America, Zoya - Holly, Chic - Black Fog, Illamasqua - Caress, Illamasqua - Strike, Milani - White on the Spot, China Glaze - Bond Tastic (Magnetic), Julep - Pippa, Zoya - Helen, China Glaze - Sunshine Pop, Chic - Crazy In Love and L'Oreal - Magic Croisette.

So did you send your entry already?

I promised you another special polish today for the letter H in the Alphabet Challenge,  and this is yet another very special polish for me. Again from the one and only Amy of Nail Venturous Lacquer this is the Hidden Potential!

Hidden Potential by nail Venturous Lacquers

This is such a delicate polish! Micro glitter in blue and magenta with white medium hexs packed all in a white base and create a super special white polish. The colors combo makes this polish so perfect for any outfit. Sport or elegant at the same time. If I ever thought of getting married, this is how I would like the fabric of my dress to look like.

Hidden Potential by nail Venturous Lacquers

The Hidden Potential has a base that is more jelly then creme and is a little less easy to apply then it's brother  Granite, but it is still so packed with glitter that application is not an issue. All the sorts of glitter come out with every brush stroke and in two medium-thick coats this polish is completely opaque. This time I only used one coat of Gelous, and I am sure it would have looked better with two coats, but unfortunately,  time was not following my feelings.

Hidden Potential by nail Venturous Lacquers

Hidden Potential by nail Venturous Lacquers

Hidden Potential by nail Venturous Lacquers  - Close Up

Hidden Potential by nail Venturous Lacquers, a bottle Close up

I am loving these two polishes - The Hidden Potential and Granite so much! I truly hope that Amy of the Nail Venturous will return to create and sell such works of art like these! And until this happens, make sure you are following her blog and facebook page!

Today (and in fact tomorrow also) for the Alphabet Challenge I have a special treat for you. This polish was one of my biggest lemmings for so long! I could not believe it when it actually got to my hands and I owe it all to it's amazing creator!
So before anything else - THANK YOU AMY SO SO SO MUCH! YOU'RE AWESOME!!!

Nail Venturous Lacquers - Granite

So this is Granite by Nail Venturous Lacquers. A true class and elegance packed in a bottle. Micro black and copper glitter along with medium copper/gold and white hex's all mixed in a white-grey base to create real high quality granite stone look. It is so special and so so beautiful.

Nail Venturous Lacquers - Granite, artificial light indoors

This polish is so packed with the glitter that it was no problem at all to apply. You get all it's goods out with every brush stroke. Unlike most glitter-packed polishes, Granite has the perfect consistency and is so easy to apply. All pictures show 2 medium-thick coats of Granite topped with two coats of Gelous.

Nail Venturous Lacquers - Granite

As far as I see it, this polish has only one down side: Amy of the Nail-Venturous Lacquers announced that she will not be selling her polish. This is very sad news because her polishes are too good to just be gone. I hope so much that Amy will decide at some point to get back to creating and selling her amazing creations. In the meantime, you can follow Amy through her blog and her facebook page, and make sure you get all her most recent updates!

Nail Venturous Lacquers - Granite, Close Up

Nail Venturous Lacquers - Granite, A bottle close up

Nail Venturous Lacquers - Granite, Natural light and direct sun

I hope you like this perfection as much as I do! And do stay tuned for yet another specialty for my H entry later this week.

As you may remember, I joined Gosia from Life In Color! and we're doing an Alphabet Challenge. You can see the official rules here, and all the previous entries here. I really enjoy this challenge because it's making me look in my stash and check polishes that i wouldn't look at otherwise. Today we begin the second week of the challenge, for the letters E to G. And today the polish I would like to show you is a great example for those polishes I wouldn't otherwise check.

Nails Inc. Eagle Street

This is Eagle Street by Nails Inc. I got it as part of The Fabulous Trio, a 3 polish set of colors not available otherwise, and for a price lower then one polish alone. I got this set only for a light blurple polish called Chalk Farm. But today I needed a polish in E, so I decided to check Eagle Street. And I am so glad I did! I got so many compliments on this color...  I am not used to such "quiet" shade but I must say I like it a lot!
Nails Inc. formula is perfect. I really like how buttery their cremes are. They are very well pigmented and very quick to dry and Eagle Street has a very nice glossy finish. What you see in the pictures are two coats with no top.

Nails Inc. Eagle Street

After a while of wearing it as it is, I got a little bored so I decided to add my F polish in and I layered Fairy Dust by China Glaze over Eagle Street. 

China Glaze Fairy Dust layered over Nails Inc. Eagle Street  

Fairy Dust is an amazing micro holographic glitter top. It is made for layering. I don't think its interesting by itself. But layer it over any other color and step into the light and WHAM!! A whole party coming to life!

China Glaze Fairy Dust layered over Nails Inc. Eagle Street 

Application of Fairy Dust is a bit tricky. If you use too much, you get to see all the brush strokes and it becomes gloopy. If you use not enough, it pulls the polish under it and spreads unevenly on the nail. My trick for that - before every use I thin Fairy Dust a little with a polish thinner and I use large coats.

China Glaze Fairy Dust layered over Nails Inc. Eagle Street 

China Glaze Fairy Dust layered over Nails Inc. Eagle Street 

China Glaze Fairy Dust layered over Nails Inc. Eagle Street  

So what do you think about this almost nude color? And about the glittery addition? Would you wear those together?

One of my favorite bloggers, favorite polish makers and good friend - Aleta of The Nail Junkie - is having an awesome giveaway! She is giving away Butter London Slapper and Sally Hansen Graphite Gravity magnetic! 
Actually, Slapper is in my wishlist for sooooooo long... Maybe i will finally get some luck with this one?
Anyway, you can enter this great giveaway HERE, until the end of july!

Good luck!

This weekend is yet another collaboration mani. But this time we have a special reason to party: my friend Jacki from Adventures In Acetone gave birth to the amazing Owen James!
CONGRATULATIONS Jacki! May Owen become an amazing kid and will make your entire family so proud and happy!
And in honor of precious Owen, my blogger friends and I have decided to do a Baby Blue theme mani.

So my mani started with Illamasqua Caress, a soft and light baby blue creme. I really love illamasqua. Their formula is (in most cases anyway) flawless. The polish is smooth and very easy to apply. Drying time is normal and they are well pigmented. Caress is no exception. It was completely opaque in two easy coats and has a beautiful light blue payoff.

Then I decided to try some more freehand painting. I am truly hoping that practice will make it better! I knew that I want only blue and white shades in my mani, and I basically only used those and made my pinky, ring and middle fingers. But then I was kind of stuck. I had no idea what to do next. After several trial and error, I decided to go with a cute little baby face. For that, I had to add a light brown/nude color so something in the colors looked very flat to me. I needed something else, so I just added the yellow dots around and now I pretty much like the result. I really hope you do to!

And of course, the picture of all the polishes used, from Left to Right: Aqua Daisy - Fuel Spil, Nails Inc. - Bluebell, Sinful Colors - Zeus, Illamasqua - Caress, Milani - White on the Spot, Nails Inc. - Sumner Place and Julep - Pippa.

I really enjoyed this mani, and I wish Jacki and her entire family the bestest of wishes!

Almost a whole week has passed and i am still playing the Alphabet Challenge. This is the last letter for this week: D
For D I have an indie polish. Not completely drama free i'm afraid, but I am not going into drama-land. I just want to show you a beautiful polish. So please meet Dreamsicle by Lush Lacquer.

Dreamsicle is a baby blue polish with a lot of glitter in it. Blue, silver and holographic hex's, bars and micro glitter. It is so full of glitter that it makes application a little bit tricky but it ends up so pretty after just two coats. it is also very top coat hungry. I don't have Gelous top coat yet so I couldn't try that heavy top coat but I used 2 coats of my top coat (a local brand called Chic) which is relatively heavy, and I still didn't get the glass-like look I was hoping to get. But other then that, it is really a pretty pretty polish and I think it's name is very appropriate. This polish really makes me feel dreamy...

I added a couple of close-up shots so you can see all the different glitter types. This polish really is stuffed with glitter!

You can get Lush Lacquer polishes in their Etsy shop for $8.75 for the full size bottle. They are three-free and are available internationally!

Today in the Alphabet Challenge I will have to break my polish-company with the same letter habit. So I will stay with the polish and show you another not-too-summer-y color. This one is actually very Fall-perfect. But I love it and its name starts with a C. This is Model's Own - Cherry Pie.

Cherry Pie is very rich and pigmented, opaque in two easy coats and has a sweet chromatic change under different lights. In its qualities it is very similar to Avalon that I showed you a couple of days ago. The difference (aside from the color of course!) is the fact that model's Own formula is a bit more runny which means you should be careful not to flood your cuticles. But other then that, it is real lovely. The picture above is in direct sun light. the pictures below are both indoors with artificial light. First one is flash and second is no flash.

As you can see, the flash brings out the deep cherry color of this polish, while warm lighting and sunlight shows a lot more of the bronze shades. Either way this is a real pretty color and I think it blends nicely with my skin tones. I hope so anyway... LOL

I had to add some bottle picture of Cherry Pie, just so you can see how the cherry and the bronze colors are showing in it.

Isn't this color making you crave for some pie and a hot drink and cuddle with some warm blanket before the TV?