Chapstick Hydration Day and Night- Review

I know this is not a nail product, but I was given this product free for review on my blog by Smiley360, and since I have done a few lip product reviews in the past, I will go ahead and tell you about it here.

Let me first say that I was excited to find out the product has a matte/satin finish, which is perfect for prepping my lips for my current every day lip liner and lip color combo, which is very matte. The product keeps my lips from drying out underneath the color, and actually helps keep lip color from feathering out in addition to the lip liner.
Package quality is really meh. It's just a foil sticker with a logo wrapped around the tube and two cheap plastic caps covering the ends of the product. I am not excited about the design, and the cheapness of the packaging almost makes me want to depot the lip balm into something more durable.
I am, however, extremely impressed with the formula. My lips feel extremely soft and not at all dry during the day, and I wake up every morning having very healthy looking lips having incorporated the night time side of the product into my before-bed routine.
Overall, it's a nice new product, and I would like to see where the dual-ended concept goes from here.

To get $.50 off one of these, here is my link: http://h5.sml360.com/-/79rw

Scarab Beetle Nails

These nails were inspired by a nail art picture showing a similar simple design but more of a tulip shape. I though I would add a bright green metallic polish, outline the shapes in black and color in the negative space red to resemble the back of a scarab beetle carapace.
The base color I used was "Impanema Girl" by Layla, and the red is "Stiletto" from Claire's over a white base.
I have some step-by-step photos down at the bottom to show you what I did.

The only tools required are black and white striper brushes or nail art pens.

Rain Cloud Nails

This is a really simple, easy manicure that would be perfect for someone new to nail art or really bad at painting using their opposite hand. There are only 2 colors in the manicure, plus a glitter top coat. No brushes or dotting tools required!
The colors I used are Gumdrop by Orly, a pale teal color, Quinn by julep, a gray satin creme and Maybelline Color Show Street Art in "Blue Beats." It's just a variety of blue and black matte glitter pieces in a bunch of different shapes and sizes. For perhaps a gentler rainstorm, you could do a blue or silver chunky glitter.

I painted my nails with the teal color, and just painted a wavy line of gray near the tip of my nail and filled it in. When that was completely dry, I added my glitter and the new top coat I purchased, the Essence gel-look topcoat.

Overall, I am not impressed with the topcoat. it hasn't been 24 hours yet and I am getting some significant tip wear. I guess for only $1.99 USD I can't be too mad.

The Jelly Sandwich Manicure

This manicure has been circulating beauty blogs and nail art YouTube channels for some time now, so I thought I would show you the glittery blue version I did yesterday. The concept is simple: Layer a glitter polish between an opaque polish and a sheer, jelly finish type polish. What I like about the finished result is that chunky glitter seems less textured on the nail and in my case, the jelly polish I chose made my glitter seem even more vivid and intense.
For my opaque polish I chose Layla "Aqua Zen" which is a bluish creme polish that dries almost matte. I guess you could call it a "satin" finish. My glitter is Nicole by O.P.I. in "A Million Sparkles." To get the application I did, I completely wiped off all glitter from one side of the brush and used a dabbing motion to pack glitter on each nail. On top is "Isle See You Later" by China Glaze. It's really sheer and I'm not even sure the glitter has a bluish tint at all, but it did really intensify the look of the glitter.
I think this manicure could also be really cool just applied as a french tip if you don't want the solid color plus glitter look.

Rose Garden Nails

I've been wearing Essie's Naughty Nautical for a while, and thought I'd add some nail art to it. This green/red color combo is really cool, it it would be a really nice compliment to a Poison Ivy Halloween costume. To make this a little bit tougher and less girly, you could add thorns to the roses and use either an emerald green or forest green instead of the teal.

First, I applied Revlon Cherries in the Snow just with the brush in the bottle in large sort of circular shapes and allowed that to dry for about 20 minutes. After that, I added little black curved lines with my black nail art pen. As a final touch, I took a nail art brush and some white polish to add a few highlights. I actually think it looked better before the highlights, but what's done is done, I guess.

Constellation Nails

Here is an alternative space themed manicure for those of you who are bored of galaxy nails. This one just highlights a few of the most famous stars in the Milky Way. I was thinking about doing this in plain black- but I think this metallic duochrome makes it that much cooler. David Bowie would totally approve.
The base color here is "Space Cadet" by Orly. I just added stars in the shapes of some familiar constellations in white with a small and a medium sized dotting tool. On my Little Dipper and Orion nails, I connected the dots with a white striper, but the rest I just left as is. I think it looks best with a combination of some connected and some not, but you could of course change the style by leaving them all as dots, connecting them all, or doing all of them over a black background.

Lily Pad Nails

Here is a "Blobicure" style nail art design I did yesterday. I do not claim to have come up with the idea, this is just my own take on a design Colette from Mysimplelittlepleasures did recently on her YouTube channel.
The blue color I used was China Glaze Tranzitions in "Modify me." step one was to apply one coat of the polish to each nail after using a base coat. For the blob part, I painted each nail with a generous second coat of polish, and while that was drying, added blobs of Wet n' Wild "I Only Eat Salads." when the second coat and the green blobs had dried, I added some white lines to look a little bit like flowers on a few of the lily pads. The Tranzition colors change color once top coat is applied, so the blue became much darker and the green lily pads had more contrast than before. Overall, I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Dragonfruit Nails

This very cute and easy manicure was inspired by the cross section of a Dragon Fruit or Pitaya. They're delicious, smell great, and are gaining popularity in America mostly as a flavor in beverages and as fragrance.
The color I used for the outside of my dragon fruit is Essie's "Too Taboo." It's the right shade: kind of a bright pink with just a hint of purple. The formula was a little odd to work with: it went on a little streaky and weirdly matte, but after a nice layer of top coat, the texture and color saturation were just fine.

To get this look, I painted my nails white, then added two diagonal stripes of "Too Taboo." When the white was completely dry, I took a dotting tool dipped into black polish and added my seeds. Dragon fruits don't seem to have any specific arrangement to their seeds, so any way you would like to do your black dots is fine.