Cult Nails

This is an awesome brand!!  It's fairly new to the market and new to me completely, so I had to buy their entire stock of course!  Cult Nails is available online only.  It's made in the good 'ol USA by a wonderful woman named Maria who lives in FL.  She is a blogger just like me (and many of you)!  She's been very open and shares many of her thoughts about the brand and where it's going on her blog.

This is how the polish comes!  How cute is that?  A whole heap of cotton balls!!  Such a great idea!!

Each polish comes individually wrapped in paper.  So you know how much time she spends to package your polish and the care she's putting into it.

The Original Collection:

My Kind of Cool Aid, 2 coats.  This is a gorgeous greyed out pastel purple.  It has silver shimmer in it too!  It didn't show up all that well in this photo, but it's definitely there.  I love this color!

Living Water, 2 coats.  This is a dark teal-blue base with greenish silver small glitter.  You know what, the glitter might just be plain silver, but looks green because of the base, lol.  But still very lovely!

Iconic, 2 coats.  A warm reddish burgundy with gold shimmer and flakies!!  Gotta love the flakies.  They are soooooo pretty.  And with the combination of the warm darker color of the red, it's just a home run.

Quench, 2 coats.  A perfect red!  I suppose this would qualify as a jelly, but for me it's a little too opaque for that.  Maybe one coat would be more jelly like.

A Day at the Races Collection:

Let Me Fly, 2 coats.  A teal base with silver shimmer.  I LOVE teal, so this is right up my alley.  It's a darker teal, so it's not too bright and over the top.  It's just a perfect dustier teal, but without looking too muted.  Love it!

Devious Nature, 2 coats.  A great hot pink or fushia creme.  It's more pink than purple, but definitely has a hint of purple to it.  To me, it reminds me of OPI Dim Sum Plum.  I might have to swatch them together to see.

Cruisin' Nude, 2 coats.  The most perfect nude beige with a pink shimmer.  This is an amazing color.  I love it.  Words cannot express how much I love this color.  And it's nearly a mannequin hands for me!  I love it!  LOVE IT!

Captivated, 2 coats.  A coral jelly packed with gold glitter.  This one looks orange in the bottle because of the amount of glitter, but it's much pinker on the nail.  It's so amazingly beautiful!  I love it.

Always Winning, 2 coats.  A light green base with gold and holographic glitter.  Sorry about this lighting on this one, the sun took a break  :(  Figures it did that while I'm trying to show holo, right?  Ugh!  Maybe another sunny day I'll throw this one on again.  It really is much prettier when the holo is showing.

Application on all of these was amazing.  They go on nice and smooth and spread evenly without flooding.  They all have good opacity.  The brush is great and I love the bottles!  Overall I'm VERY pleased with this brand.  I would definitely buy from them again.  The service was great, the packaging was unexpectedly awesome and of course, the polish is superb!  I'm most likely going to order a backup of Cruisin' Nude.  I just LOVE that one!  What do you think?

[These polishes were all purchased by me!]

Broadway Nails Nail Dress

There is such a craze of having super detailed manis.  If you wanted to free hand something, it might take a good chunk of time and/or some practice!  But with the Broadway Nails Nail Dress, it's practically instant.  At the most, it would take as long as a regular mani to apply, but most likely even less time than that.  Let's take a look.

As far as I can tell, this design doesn't have a name.  We'll call it polka dots, shall we?  The yellow kind of freaked out the camera, so I apologize for the not-so-great pics.  These are "stick-on wraps" and to me, essentially stickers.  The Sally Hansen version is very thin, not sticky, more like nail polish.  This is thicker, like a sticker or decal, not very stretchy.  They come 14 on a sheet and each package has 2 sheets.  So essentially you get 14 sizes and 28 total wraps.  However, as with most of these products, you'll most likely only get one use out of the entire package unless you have in-between sized fingers that can fit in more than one size wrap.  Application SOUNDS really easy.  You pick a size, peel it off the sheet, apply with the round edge near the cuticle, smooth it on, file off the excess.  BUT and for me, this is a big but... (haha, butt... anyway) the sheet is opaque.  And not just like a little hard to see through, no, it's completely opaque.  So you can't put your finger under the sheet to gauge a good size to peel off.  When I am applying false nails or decals, etc, I like to size up all my fingers first and make sure I have a plan before I start.  With this, you just have to kind of wing it because you can't get a good fit by eye-balling the sticker and your finger.  Your nail is rounded and the sticker is flat, so it's just hard to match up!  That was the biggest downfall of this product.  But the rest of the application was very, very easy.  It goes on, well, like a sticker.  It comes with a 2 sided file and the one side buffs on the wrap, the other side files off the excess.  They recommend putting on a top coat for extended wear.

I put them on starting with the pinky, as they recommend.  I honestly don't see how it matters unless you are using your nails to peel off the stickers which would ruin the fingers already done I guess.  But you shouldn't be doing that because we all know we aren't supposed to use our nails as tools, right?  Right?  Stop it!  Haha.  But after I got them all on, I noticed the first few started lifting around the edges.  I had taken my prior mani off but did NOT buff my nails to take off the shine prior to application.  I think if I wore these again I would do that so they would stick a little better.  So after I got them all on and filed off the edges, I went back and made sure all the edges were good and stuck and slapped on a coat of ChG Fast Forward.  I made sure to wrap the tips since I just filed these things off on the blunt edge and wanted to keep them on.  I took these pictures the next day and you can see I already have some issues with this.  The pinky and thumb show some tip wear!

This isn't the greatest pic, a little blurry, I apologize.  I did like this mani, it's bright and fun and definitely easier to apply the sticker version than it would be to freehand.  Painting yellow dots on top of purple would be HELL.  You'd have to do white first to even get it to show up and then you'd need a nice opaque yellow of which we all know there are very few.  Not to mention how time consuming it would be if you are not very well practiced in nail art.  These are definitely much easier to apply and look "done" with very little know-how.  Apart from the issue with finding the correct size, application was very easy.  Keeping them on... not so much.  After 2 days, this index finger peeled off.  It started lifting at the tip and then caught on my hair in the shower and came right off.  I do type all day at work, so maybe that aggravated the tip wear resulting in that one coming off.  Who knows.

Basically, this is a decent product for what it is.  They come in a variety of designs and are fairly easy to apply.  It allows even the novice manicure maven to have a fun and/or sophisticated mani in little notice.  For a special occasion, these would be perfect.  However, if you're looking for long wear, I would not recommend these.  But they are very cute and look great while they last!

[This product was sent to me for review]