Born Pretty Store reached out to me to review some more products. While I was browsing what items that I wanted to review, I came across their blooming nail polish (Item ID# 44181). The concept of the polish is that you add the drops of colour over your base colour, and watch the drops spread and bloom. To make them bloom even more, you add drops of their clear blooming polish. Born Pretty even has a helpful tutorial on their YouTube channel if you can't understand their pictorial on their product page on their website.

Beauty Big Bang had recently sent me some products to review. One of them is a beautiful green chrome powder (Item ID#J6463TM-1C). Chrome powders can look gorgeous, but only if you apply them correctly!


One of the main things that you will require to use the chrome powders is a gel top coat. I tried using a regular topcoat at first but it dulled the metallic sheen and made the nails look less like chrome. If you don't use a gel base coat or base colour, you will need to make sure that you create a smooth base for the chrome to adhere to. To do this, using new polish, or an old polish thinned out with nail thinner tends to work best. If you create any bumps or dings in the nail, it will show through the chrome and get rid of the smooth mirror finish.

To start off, apply base coat, then a black polish. Next you can either use regular top coat or gel topcoat before the powder. If you use a regular top coat, you must wait for it to get almost dry, but not completely. If you use a gel top coat, simply cure it under a lamp . Then you need to use a burnishing technique to buff the powder in. Pick up some of the chrome powder with the application sponge provided and tap it onto the nail, then very lightly buff it in. I actually found that using my finger tips allowed me to lightly buff in the chrome powder much easier than by using the application sponge. Lastly, apply gel topcoat and cure the nails again.

I rushed through all these steps and it shows in my final look. You can see some of the bumps and dings under the chrome unfortunately. I also wish that my camera could see my nails how I see them, because they looked much more mirror-like and metallic in real life. They looked much more like the stock photo that I've provided below.

Beauty Big Bang offers a growing variety of nail polishes and nail art supplies, and also offers free worldwide shipping. IF you have't checked them out before, they're definitely worth a try!

Beauty Big Bang sent me some free stamping plates and a jelly stamper to review. Today I'll be reviewing 2 separate orders that happened to both arrive at the same time (yay Canada Post strike!). One of these is from an order back in August, and another is from October.

I've received more products from Born Pretty to test and review! I chose a Thanksgiving themed stamping plate as well as a stamping polish to test out and review for you guys. I received them a little too late to post on time for Canadian Thanksgiving, but I hope that my design can at least inspire some of you on time for American Thanksgiving!

I'll try and keep this review short and sweet. Born Pretty sent me some products to test and review, and one of the polishes that I picked was a Peacock Holo Polish in a beautiful purple shade called Rose of No Mans Land (item ID #43165). The polish is a gorgeous colour that looks amazing worn over a coat of black polish or sponged on.

Below I tried wearing the polish three different ways. The first and last nail are one coat of the holo polish over black, my index finger is a coat over white polish, and the ring finger is the holo sponged over black. The polish looks amazing no matter how you wear it!

If you haven't checked out Born Pretty before, they're worth your time to check them out. They offer a wide variety of inexpensive nail art products with free worldwide shipping. I've been using their products for years and I love trying out their new products!

A couple of weeks ago I received some NeosStrata products to test and review for free courtesy of Influenster. It's probably one of the most expensive items that I've ever received from Influenster (or any review program) to review. In the NeoStrata VoxBox, I received four items to review: a facial lotion, facial cream, facial cleanser, and a glycolic peel.

The products that I received are supposed to help enhance skin clarity by smoothing the texture and reducing wrinkles through exfoliation (which is weird, because they're all very smooth products that don't feel exfoliating at all). I'm only 25 and don't really think about using products to target signs of aging, but I do have some thin lines on my forehead that I'm concerned about so I figured that these products may do me some good.

NeoStrata Resurface Glycolic Smoothing Lotion - $45 CAD

The facial lotion that I received is supposed to improve the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles, enhance skin clarity, exfoliate with AHAs, and is ideal for people with normal and oily skin. I have oily skin so this product is suitable for my skin type. The lotion came in a 10ml bottle and was okay, but didn't feel like anything special for me. It wasn't the most moisturizing facial lotion I've used, and I couldn't tell at all that the lotion was exfoliating my skin. I do think that it has helped a little with the redness on my skin, but aside from that I wasn't wowed by it.

NeoStrata Restore Bionic Face Cream - $75 CAD

The Bionic Face Cream honestly didn't wow me (and holy hell, look at that price tag). The cream is ideal for dry and sensitive skin, and is extremely hydrating. I received a 10ml bottle and I find that the product goes on very thick, a little sticky, and doesn't fully get absorbed by the skin. I can put it on an hour before bed and still have my face sticking to my pillowcase. My face feels super greasy afterwords which isn't very impressive for a $75 face cream.

NeoStrata Restore PHA Facial Cleanser - $30 CAD

One of the most affordable products in this line, the facial cleanser was probably one of my favourite products that I received. I received a 10ml bottle to test out, which I feel isn't a whole lot of cleanser for this particular product. I feel this way because the product applies a with a jelly-like consistency, and doesn't have much spreadability when applying it to the face. However, it's a very gentle cleanser. It's soap-free and lightly exfoliates without drying out the skin. It's also ideal for dry and sensitive skin types.

NeoStrata Smooth Surface Glycolic Peel - $80 CAD

The glycolic peel started off by wowing me, but quickly turned into my least favourite product from the line. It's a high strength exfoliating treatment that is meant to reduce the appearance of fine lines, wrinkles, uneven pigmentation, roughness, and pore size when used as part of a NeoStrata regimen. It's most ideal for normal and oily skin types. For $80, I thought that this product was going to be amazing. Boy was I wrong. When I started using this product, it definitely reduced the redness of my face as well as diminish the size of some of my larger pores. It stung a little with the first use, and only for a few seconds, but I may have just had some open sores (i.e. I popped some black heads). The more I used the product though, the more white heads appeared on my face. At first I figured it was like the skin regimen that my doctor prescribed me when I was in high school; that my face would get worse before it would get better. But my face progressively got worse and worse. I hadn't had such a bad breakout for several years. So sadly, after two weeks of using the peel, I had to give up on it. It's been a few days since I stopped using the peel and my face has almost instantaneously recovered.

I wish that I could say that I loved these products, but I just can't. For a luxury skincare line, I wasn't wowed. I've tried drugstore brands of products that are more gentle on my skin and don't cause me to break out in horrible whiteheads across my face. I expected more from a brand that is so ridiculously expensive and meant to help my face recover. Instead, it made my face look reminiscent of my years in high school — of when I had horrible teenaged acne. A memory I'd strongly like to forget.

Hello everyone! Born Pretty sent me more items to review for you, and one of the items I chose to review was a stamping polish from their White Night collection (Item ID#42857). The White Night set of stamping polishes has a gold, silver, black, white and red polish. I ended up choosing the red polish called Dark Amor.

Now if you know me, I hate stamping. I also hate red nail polish because it always bleeds when you apply topcoat and doesn't remove easily from the skin with acetone. So what was I thinking, right?

A couple years ago, I created a Halloween design with blood dripping from the tops of the nails. I loved the design because it had Ghostface from the Scream movies, which is one of my favourite movie series. While the design still looked really cool, the red didn't show very well over black polish. I wanted to create a similar look for a Friday the 13th mani and I knew that I needed a red that would show over the black.

Ghostface/Scream nails from October 2016

Thankfully, I already had a stamping plate to create the blood drips. The plate doesn't actually have a blood drip design, as it was from the nail polish themed "Keep Calm and Polish On" plate. It's technically nail polish that's dripping, but I figured that the design could have multiple uses. I bought it from Born Pretty a couple years ago and never used it (because I hate stamping). Born Pretty doesn't seem to sell this particular plate anymore, so I'm unable to share the product link with you.