Nail Polish I Wore In Real Life Vol. 3

Hi everyone! Thanks for joining me today for another installment of my series on nail polishes I wore in real life, meaning ones I wore as a full manicure but haven't otherwise shown in posts like collection reviews recently. You can see the other posts in this series here.

Received As Gift | Purchased by Me

I first purchased Zoya Adina way back when it came out in the Spring 2010 Reverie collection. I don't know what possessed me to do so, but I had ended up destashing it at one point. I recently picked it back up during one of the Zoya flash sales, they do different promotions often so check their Facebook & Instagram to get in the know. This has a cool lavender base with a strong green flash. This was huge when it first came out. I'm glad I have it back now, it's pretty fabulous and looks so cool in real life. This is three thin coats. It has a tendency to pool if you load up your brush too much so be careful.

Next is a pinky brown nude crème, OPI Krème de la Kremlin from the Russian collection which came out in Fall 2007. I was feeling super professional wearing this color, it is very buttoned up and ladylike. I feel like this color could work on anyone. Two perfect easy coats. I can't remember where or when I got this but I've had it for a long time!

And last is Essence Colour & Go Grey-t To Be Here, which was a lovely gift from one of my friends that lives up north in Canada, Dani. She is such a sweetheart, thanks again girl! I've had this polish on my wishlist for a looong time and I'm so glad I have it now. It's a cloudy day grey with a ton of soft pink and orange flake shimmer bits in it. This needed three coats to be opaque.

What have you been wearing on your nails lately? Have a great week everyone!

❤ Kellie

One of the products mentioned was received as a gift; other items were purchased by me.

Guest Post by The Swatchaholic: 209 over Out Of My Mind Medallion

Please enjoy this guest post by my nail crush Jeanette from The Swatchaholic!

Hi everyone! :)

OMG I am excited to write a guest post for one of my biggest nail crushes Kellie. ♥ I am so honored to be here on Also Known As...!
This is my first ever guest post and I wanted to show you guys something special, something very dear to my nail polish heart so I picked a layering which I tried the other day.

Layerings are so much fun because you have the possibility to create a manicure with many textures combined to create a sparkly and glittery depth you probably can't with one nail polish.

Another huge benefit for me - when I am stressed and don't have much time - is that with adding a layer of another nail polish over a current manicure I can spice it up and create a new look without having to remove a manicure first.
Of course it doesn't hurt that with using more than one nail polish for a manicure you can reduce your pile of untrieds faster too! :D

For this layering I used two just recently purchased nail polishes and a nail polish which was already an untried for a few months.

The base nail polish for this layering was the soon to be discontinued Essence 52 Out Of My Mind, a gorgeous light-medium blue/teal duochrome with a slight pink shimmer. Because the base color gets covered up a lot any light to medium blue would do, though. :)

The untried I finally wanted to wear and the nail polish which I layered on top of Out Of My Mind was one coat of China Glaze Medallion, a fun gold and holo glitter in a clear base.

The star of this layering is a nail polish which I wish would be available everywhere: BeYu 209. BeYu is a German brand which exclusively is sold at Douglas perfumeries in a few selected countries in Europe. What makes 209 so special is that it is unicorn pee! Not THE famous unicorn pee Clarins 230 but very alike.
The base of 209 is much more opaque than the base of 230 so whichever base you are using won't really be visible once you put 209 on top. Because I only used one coat of BeYu 209 it's unicorn pee qualities didn't show up a lot. With two coats you can see more of the green multichrome sparkles but in general the multichrome shimmer of 209 is not as strong as in Clarins 230.
Shimmery nail polishes with a not too opaque jelly base are great nail polishes to use on top of layerings!

I really hope you enjoyed this layering and maybe I could inspire you to spice up old manicures with a coat of another nail polish. Layering is so much fun! :)

Thanks for looking and have a great week! ♥ :)

ZOMG I am dizzy from the magic of this mani! I love love love this layering combo and I love Jeanette! Thanks so much for sharing this with my readers! Now send me a bottle of 209 stat!

Guest Post by Nails and Noms: Essence - I Like

Please enjoy this guest post by my girl Rie from Nails and Noms!

Hello Everyone!

I was quite surprised and flattered when Kellie contacted me asking if I could do a guest post for her blog this week! Kellie's site was one of the reasons my polish obsession exploded, which eventually led to me creating my very own blog. :-D I racked my brain (and my polish collection) trying to figure out what I could share with you all and quickly decided on this lovely polish by Essence (a German cosmetic brand) that my friend Dana from Ohio sent me. All swatches for this one are with Seche Vite top coat and Sally Hansen Nail Quencher base coat.  

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I Like

 

I Like is a beautiful seafoam green polish that's filled with subtle ice blue and light green shimmer. The brush on this one is quite wide with fat bristles that hold a lot of polish, so I had to be a little more careful with application to avoid overloading the brush. That being said, the formula was very smooth, self leveling, and highly pigmented. I only needed two coats. :-)  

Here's a macro shot so you can see the delicate shimmer on this one, it's so pretty! :-D  

And here's two shots of I Like with my camera flash, doing its best impersonation of the sun. I work midnights so this is the closest to the real thing as we're gonna get. ;-)

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Final Thoughts:

Pardon my redundancy here, but I really like I Like... A lot. :-D With the wide brush I was able to cover my entire nail in one stroke, and pale greens like this make me weak in the knees. :-) I Like is part of the Blossoms Etc... Collection released by Essence this past April. They are perfect colors for the spring, but I'll probably wear this one year round because I love it so much. My friend Dana found them at her local Ulta store, but I hear they are selling out quickly so if you want I Like or any of the other colors I suggest you act fast!

Purchase Info:

I believe the only place to find the Blossom Etc... Collection in the US is at your local Ulta store, they retail at $1.99 per bottle of polish. I hope you all enjoyed this post! ^_^ - Rie

Oh wow, how gorgeous is that polish? Thanks so much for sharing friend! ♥ This girl has a really awesomely fab blog and deserves more followers :) Go check her out mmkay?

Guest Post by Glitta Gloves: Royal Jelly Glitter Sandwich

Please enjoy this guest post from my amazing friend Kirsten from Glitta Gloves!

Hi lovelies! This is an exciting and kind of nerve-wracking post for me! I was so excited and flattered when Kellie asked me to do a guest post for her. Her blog was one of the very first nail blogs I started reading and I have had a very long-standing love affair with her nails. Creepy? Maybe!

So I started thinking really hard about something special I could share on her blog and I decided to do a jelly sandwich. If you read my blog, you know that I'm kind of obsessed with these haha. I was looking at pictures of Lippmann Across the Universe and being depressed about not owning it, so I decided to try and layer something somewhat similar. I used two coats of Revlon Royal, then two thin coats of Essence Edward, then a thin coat of Royal again on top. It's definitely not an ATU dupe by any stretch of the imagination but I think it's still pretty! I wish all polishes had square glitter.

Really fun and simple to do, I think! I hope you guys like it! And to my Kellie love, thank you so much for letting me do this! It was so fun!

Have a lovely day, pretties!

I love my girl :D Thanks so much for writing for me K-dawg *smooches*

random notds

hiiiii :D

this is the only essence polish i have. i got it at ulta for 99 cents yay! the bottles are teeny tho, 5 ml. it's really the only one that appealed to me. all the good ones are only sold over seas still. this color is called what do u think and it is a dupe for chanel's orange fizz. that is most likely the reason it appealed to me. this is three coats of creamy orange dreaminess.

this polish is called lazy daisy pink. it's an opi i found at ross for like $2 or something one day when i was digging around. i don't love it and in fact, since it was old non-big3-free formula, i traded it in during the zoya swap. it is streaky pearl frosty pink. kinda nice if you like that sort of thing, but the formula was like death. bubbles and streaks oh my!

this is dazzled by gold by opi. oooh i LOVE this one. i wore this one back around christmas time i think? or thanksgiving. sometime around then because i took the picture when i was visiting home in nevada. anyhoo, this gold is mostly glitter but it's the really dense kind that coat opaque after maybe three swipes. i love how the different shades of gold glitz out at you. you can almost pick out a silver glitter here and there!

monkey business by essie is a polish i got in a discount bin at tj maxx. they had a huge ace bin there around christmas time filled to the brim with essies i've never heard of and this is one of the little puppies i fished outta there. i thought i would cherish this guy more, but when i had it on, it matched my skin tone so much that i felt like i had on self tanner and it got all over my nails or something. really weird feeling. it's description on the web is "tawny as a lioness". which is also weird...considering it's named after another animal.

mac neon 8 was a lucky find for about $5 in a discount outlet up in park city. it's a metallic orange with a pinky duochrome shimmer in the sunlight. i didn't love this once i had it on. but meh, i really like mac polishes so whatevs. plus neo sci-fi, from which this polish came, is one of my favorite mac collections ever.

i think blue nail polish looks pretty stunning on me. not to brag or anything, just sayin! haha but really, china glaze's sexy in the city is not my favorite blue polish but it is pretty. a frosty/metallic shimmery blue with a teal flash. this was prone to brush strokes but you can't really tell once you get through, with is cool.

this mac is another one i scored from the outlet in park city. mercenary is a gorgeous bronze from the style warrior collection, which is absolutely my favorite collection ever from them. the gold foil/grain in it completely blows it out of the water and makes this polish a total winner. too bad i didn't get a great picture of it huh. can we say...do over?? i think there are fine bits of pink and green glitter in there too. this polish is just amazing. if you can track it down, get it!

have you entered my giveaway yet?? no? why the heck not?? here is the link. love ya!