Icing By Claire's Deliciously Scrumptious Swatch and Review

Hello everyone and welcome to Cheap Polish Tuesday where we explore and discover polishes found on regular price or on sale for $5 or less! Today's I've got yet another from Icing by Claire's! I said I'd spread these out but honestly, I am having so much fun with these speckled-inspired polishes that I couldn't resist. This is the last of the 3 known available speckled shades! Again, at Icing by Claire's, my fellow Canadians can buy these polishes for $5 each and my American neighbours can get this for $4.50. They have a regular promotion of Buy One, Get One Half Off!

So here's Icing by Claire's Deliciously Scrumptious - C-C-C-C-C-OMBO BREAKER! Not too sure why it doesn't follow in the same suit of "Mint Choco Chip", "Choco Chip" - but instead it gets its own unique name! This polish is a slightly deeper cotton candy pink with solid black micro and hex glitter. Did Deliciously Scrumptious make the speckled polishes three for three? Well, heck yeah it does - another two coater. Here's my swatch with a Seche Vite top coat:







To my knowledge, there isn't a pink shade quite like this in the original Illamasqua speckled shades so this one would be unique! I actually quite like it and for the price, I definitely recommend picking up Mint Choco Chip and this one. Choco Chip is a little bland for most folks but I like it. Great set for less than $15!

I also placed an order for not-so-cheap nail polish on Nail Polish Canada - they had an Enchanted Polish restock - I couldn't resist. Here's one coat of Enchanted Polish Djinn in a Bottle over top of Icing by Claire's Deliciously Scrumptious:



Subtle but I'll find more ways to wear Djinn in a Bottle another time.

Which of these speckled polishes are you favourites? Will you be picking up any of these shades?

Icing by Claire's Mint Choco Chip Swatch and Review

So I thought this was going to be a normal week of polishes from my stash and I was going to continue with that but then I got my samples from Rainbow Honey's latest and greatest "Summer of 199X" collection and I'll be featuring that starting tomorrow! But onwards with today and today is Cheap Polish Tuesday where we explore and discover polishes that are found on sale or regular price for a price of $5 or less! I've got another one from Icing by Claire's much in the same tune as last week's. Again, the price of these guys are $4.50 for my southern US neighbours and $5 on the Cheap Polish Tuesday mark for my fellow Canadian homies. They also sport a regular promotion where if you buy one, you get another for 50% off.

So today I've got Icing By Claire's Mint Choco Chip which might LOOK FAMILIAR? Illamasqua Mottle, sort of right? I'll post the photos after the Mint Choco Chip jump but asides that, it is a mint green creme jelly that has solid black micro glitter and sparse hex glitters. Formula wise, it's awesome! Full coverage in two coats, and a no mess application. Here's my swatch:





I love it. Especially for the price, it was so worth it. Now while I don't own the Illamasqua Mottle to do a direct comparison, I think Mottle maintains a mint tone, but is slightly warmer and yellow tone leaning than Icing by Claire's Mint Choco Chip. So as it turns out - the two aren't dupes! (Just recalling from memory here.) Here's Illamasqua Mottle in case you've forgotten (you can read the full review here):





(Waaah, I miss my long nails, haha!)

And another thing...

I talked about photos in my post yesterday about revealing how the polish compares to my Asian skin tone. (Read more details here.) I am actually going to continue with this for the next little while until I either get sick of it or once I gain a decent consensus on what my readers (if any, har har) think. So again, here's how Mint Choco Chip compares to my Asian skin tone:





And as a bonus, here's Icing by Claire's Matte Top Coat. I think it's not that good:



So far, I am gathering that most people are favouring seeing my skin tone with the polish. I dubbed my regular photos the "dead hand photos" because the skin tone is fairly lifeless and desaturated with my natural yellow skin tones bleached out by a colder biased white balance. Again, please let me know your thoughts of whether or not I should keep the regular first set, the "skin tone" set (wish I had a better name for them), or if I should just go crazy and do both.

Just to clarify - I am not skewing the colours at all, and both sets are actually "colour accurate". The first set is what everything looks like under the purest white light. The second set is what it would look like in more "natural" light conditions. What do you prefer?

What do you think of Icing by Claire's Mint Choco Chip? Now that you've seen both polishes, would you splurge for the Illamasqua? Or will the Icing by Claire's suffice for your ice cream polish cravings? We'll meet again tomorrow with some swatches from Rainbow Honey!

Icing by Claire's Choco Chip Swatch and Review

It's Cheap Polish Tuesday where we discover and explore nail polishes found on sale or regular price for $5 or less! Today I've got a polish from Icing by Claire's, which I believe is available in both Canada and America. I assume this because of the price tag, and as usual the American pricing is lower than the Canadian pricing. Regularly priced at $4.50 for US folks, and right on the Cheap Polish Tuesday mark at $5 for me and my fellow Canadians - and further to that, they have a regular promotion where you can buy one polish, and get the other for 50% off. (I don't know about you but I always get suckered.) Alas, I picked up two of these and spoiler alert - I want another.

So here's Icing by Claire's Choco Chip, which... Reminds you of something, doesn't it? Definitely a polish created in efforts to mimic the Illamasqua speckled polish collection from the I’mperfection spring season line. Choco Chip in particular doesn't resemble any of the Illamasqua line so it's unique in itself - it sports micro and sparse solid black hex glitters in a pale grey crelly. Formula wise, it was pretty cooperative! No streaks, no pulling - two easy coats. I found the larger hex glitter a little more sparse than the Illamasqua but I did get a few on some winning strokes. The only issue I had was that I had a brush hair fall out and apply on my index. Agh. Didn't have any problems asides that, though. Here's my swatch - it's two coats, with no top coat:







A top coat would have given this a more even look but I suppose I was feeling disgruntled due to my broken nail. I had broken my middle finger nail when I was doing some shooting on Friday so I cut them all off. Agh, hate it when that happens.

Here's how Icing by Claire's Choco Chip looks with a matte top coat. I'm using Revlon's Matte Top Coat, to stick to the theme of Cheap Polish Tuesday:







I actually really love the formula (and the price!) of this one. I hope that Mint Choco Chip (the other Icing by Claire's polish that I picked up) follows the same suit, and I'll be on the look out for the third one which is a pastel pink. Icing by Claire's Choco Chip is a little dull, but for some reason I like the subtlety of it. Definitely awesome for a low key look, or some fun when you are sporting shorties like how I am now.

What do you think of Icing by Claire's speckled polishes? Would you rather splurge for the Illamasqua? (Also what the heck is the difference between Claire's and Icing by Claire's? Seems like they have the same inventory!)

Claire's Candy Shop Swatch

In spirit of cheap movie Tuesdays, Taco Tuesday, Toonie Tuesday, I'm bringing Cheap Polish Tuesday to this blog. I think I am anyway.

Anyway, I remember picking up Claire's Candy Shop last year when all the girls on Reddit were raving on about a Deborah Lippman dupe for... Candy Shop. What a minute, Candy Shop? Claire's didn't even beat around the bush on this one, they just went ahead and did it. To be perfectly honest, the rainbow glitter trend last year didn't really take hold of me. I was far more concerned with flakies, but I couldn't pass up a $4 polish that was a dupe of a $25 polish.

So here we go... Here's three coats of Claire's Candy Shop, topped with some aged goopy Seche Vite I had sitting around. (I really need some thinner.) The pink jelly was not my favourite shade of pink. It seemed a bit "dirty", whereas I remember Lippmann's being a little more milky in tone. (Note that I don't own Lippmann's Candy Shop; this is just based on the swatches I've seen on the Internet.) The dirtiness might have cheered up a bit if I used a white base coat. Despite the tone of pink, the application was no fuss. I had no issues with any of the glitter being biased, or pushed around.



I think it was definitely worth the cheap price tag. If I was really into a pink jelly and rainbow glitter trend, I might invest in the Deborah Lippmann original, but it's not my thing so I'll stick with this one for a blue moon wear.