imPRESS by Broadway Nails in In The Spotlight

We are super excited to share with you some of the most wearable and on-trend press on nails we've ever seen. For those of you who are less art-savvy, or just want to get a great look in record time - these are for you!

These nails come in both short or a longer, medium-length. The medium length ones fit our longer nail beds perfectly (check out a picture of some neon splatter press-ons on our Instagram!), but the shorter ones are just a bit too short for us. We have also experimented with shaping these nails using a nail file, and it worked out pretty well! Wear time is supposed to be up to a week, but we wore these for a few days with no problem.

To show you some of the short-nail designs, we've borrowed some friends! For this post, Sophie is wearing the Impress Press-ons in In The Spotlight. This look is a orange to yellow gradient, with all over glitter.


Let us know what you think of this look, and whether you would wear these super-easy press-ons!

You may have seen our previous swatch of Ciaté's Love Letter - a gorgeous glittery pink - however, if you don't struggle with glitter polish removal - please let the rest of us in on your secret. I have heard of using glue base coat to peel off after, but after testing found that the glue was too thick to paint nicely on to my nails. This is where O.P.I. saves the day with their new Glitter Off! Base Coat.

O.P.I. Glitter Off! Base Coat

Nails post O.P.I. Glitter Off!

We used a thin coat on our nails prior to polishing and didn't even let it dry (which is probably part of the instructions if we bothered too look - but we were too excited. Fabulously, this totally worked! We scraped off our nails with an orange wood nail pusher which we had lying around, and it removed totally easy leaving us with a few remnants (pictured to the left, image left small to control the pain of unpolished nails) which came off in half a second with regular polish remover.

This product is totally worth it for us, as we constantly repaint our nails. We also found the wear time to be about 3 days chip free, however once this chips you are too tempted to peel off the whole nail. If you struggle with glitter removal, this could be a perfect holy grail base coat, and we definitely recommend it.

Let us know in the comments if you have tried this product and had a similar experience, or if you have another solution for easy glitter polish removal!

Disclaimer: Some or all of the products used in this post may have been provided by the company/PR in exchange for our honest review and consideration.

Butter London Patent-Gel Top and Tails Polish Set (retails for $40 at butterlondon.com)

We recently took a trip to London, and were super excited to try out two different no-cure gel base and top coat sets to see how they fared over 9 days of travel. Since a UV-cured gel manicure lasts around 14 days, we assumed that the no-cure alternative would make it around 9 with no major problems - We were wrong. While we did achieve a plush, gelly look for our mani, as perfectionists we were disappointed with the overall wear time.

Deborah Lippmann Gel Lab Base and Top Coat
48 hours

Butter London Patent-Gel Top and Tails
48 hours

We have used the Deborah Lippmann gel set before with 3-4 days of no-chip wear time, so we used that as a comparison on the left hand - see the picture to the left for this look after 48 hours compared to the butter London gel set after one day on the right. For colour, we used Misa Foggy Breath at 3AM. While the Deborah Lippmann set had more chips after 48 hours - you can still see a small chip on the pointer finger of the right hand.

After 4 days, both hands were too chipped to continuing wearing (especially if you hate chipped nails). Interestingly, the butter London top coat adds most of the thickness, while in the Deborah Lippman set it is the base coat which adds that thick gel look to your mani. Both polishes remained plush and gel like for the entire wear.

Overall, Butter London was the better set for resisting chips, however once it chipped the rest of the nail seemed to chip faster than with Deborah Lippmann. We recommend the Butter London set to anyone looking to perfect their nail look a day in advance of a major event without worry of chipping. It is also worth noting that we didn't avoid washing dishes or showering in the first day of wear, which can increase wear time!

Have you tried either of these sets in search of the gel look?


Dislcaimer: Some of these products may have been provided to us by the company/PR for our honest consideration and review.

We were so excited to review the Revlon by Marchesa 3D Jewel Appliqués, and we are happy to report that we love them! The full selection of designs in this limited edition release can be found on the Revlon website.

We tried out the Evening Garnet appliqués, and although we sometimes struggle with nail stickers, these are surprisingly easy to pull around your nail to ensure that there are no bubbles or folds (our biggest pet peeve!). The kits come with a small file and plastic pushing tool, as pictured below.

To place the stickers, just select the appropriate size, peel off and stick on your nail. While these are sticky, if you place them wrong, you can always reposition without ripping which is helpful if you have unsteady hands! We bent the edges over the tips and filed away excess sticker, before sealing with some top coat. We love the intricate designs (and the 3D gems don't hurt!) and overall we would totally recommend these if you can get your hands on them!

These wear for a few days at the minimum and have a great 3D jewelled effect! We totally recommend these for a night out or a special event!

Let us know what you think in the comments below!

Disclaimer: These products were provided to us by the company/PR for our honest consideration and review

Today we have something interesting on the blog - gel polish. As nail art lovers, we generally shy from anything that will stay on our nails longer than a few days. Who doesn't love to change it up? However, we have tried Shellac and Gelish systems for those times when you just need no-chip colour. We also use Shellac at home on our toes and it stays on for a few weeks problem-free. Gel polish can be a great base for nail art, since you can wipe off any mistakes with nail polish remover and maintain the perfect base!

We received two colours to review, Candy Apple and Raspberry Ice. Unfortunately, Raspberry Ice (which is a gorgeous sheer pink glitter) was a bit clumpy and wouldn't apply smoothly. It may have been exposed to light a bit or gotten a bit hard somehow… anyways we applied Candy Apple to test it out as a nail art base on our fingers.

The polish cures (like a regular gel polish), however you don't need any extra apparatus or items - all you need is the sun - which is free! The instructions say that it may take up to two minutes to cure - but we felt that ours cured in about a minute in high sunlight. The whole painting process took about fifteen minutes and it was totally dry at the end. We topped it off with a coat of the topcoat to ensure it stayed shiny. 

We tried a variety of looks on top of this red - and this is our favourite. We were a bit weary of removing it after but as long as you aren't using pure acetone (or a mostly acetone mix), you should be a-ok. We did feel like a bit of shine was lost when removing, but it still looks great. Overall - these polishes are a great base for nail art, however if you are obsessive about changing it up, these may not be for you. 

Since we do fall a bit on the obsessive polish-changer side, we opted to test the length of wear for these on our toes. Don't worry - there are no toe pictures coming, just some explaining! This polish wore perfectly for about a week and a half, and by two weeks there was definitely some tip wear and a few chips. By three weeks, almost every nail had visible chipping. That is pretty impressive wear for an at-home gel product. We are impressed! 

Let us know if you've tried Bio Seaweed Gel, or another gel product as a nail art base. If you're interested in Bio Seaweed Gel, you can use the code ILOVEBSG to get $10 off on their website http://bioseaweedgel.com. Happy polishing!

Simply put, we are addicted to this mani. The OCD in us loves the clean striping tape design, and our metallic love-fest continues in to Spring! While the grey colour almost appears brown in these photos, it was much darker off camera and true to the grey colour, even over the gold. If you don't have striping tape, you can try cutting painters tape or scotch tape (hey - we've done it!) in a pinch. The key is to leave the striping tape longer than the line you're painting, so that you can pull it off without having to dig in to your fresh polish.

We started this mani with two coats of Sonia Kashuk Golden Ticket, which we then allowed to dry fully. The swatch of this colour (our new favourite gold), to the left, is two coats with no topcoat. The shine this polish delivers without topcoat is incredible, however if you apply a second coat too quickly, some polish may drag creating a bumpy effect. Overall, we loved this colour simply for how opaque the coverage was, and that it was a true gold as opposed to the bronze "golds" we see everywhere.


We then used striping tape to make the pattern on our nails, laying tape wherever we wanted gold to remain. You can do this in 2 parts, either by going in one direction (and trying to stay in the lines) first, before laying the lines in the other direction, or you can line up the edges of your tape. The second way is more difficult and more time consuming - we recommend going one at a time. We used two coats of Sonia Kashuk Dime a Dozen which is a shimmery gunmetal (again, with great coverage!). After the two coats are dry - peel away! This part is definitely the most fun - and rewarding. If you peel back a piece of striping tape and it doesn't peel nicely, wait a few more minutes before trying the next piece!

Overall - the Sonia Kashuk polishes were smooth and had full coverage after only two coats. The real winner is Golden Ticket - which may be the best full coverage gold polish we've yet to get our hands on. Sonia Kashuk polishes are available at Target for $4.79 in the US - and hopefully will be available at any Target locations in Canada as they begin to open!

Disclaimer: These products were provided to us by the company/PR for our honest consideration and review.