Awesome Sauce Box: Cake

Press Sample

Happy Birthday Awesome Sauce Box!! The box celebrates it's one year anniversary this month with a cake themed box that is packed with extra polishes and goodies! I received the full sized box to review, but it also comes in mini.



Pictured are:
The Holo Pineapple's hand painted keychain is so sparkly and cute!
The Caked Up wax tart from Lou It Yoursef is scented with cookies, cake and fresh baked pie crust. It's a deliciously sweet buttery scent.
Ever After's Lemon Pound Cake Soap is a lightly scented soap with hints of lemon raspberry and vanilla. Smells good enough to eat and it's super cute to boot!
Anonymous Lacquer's Cutie balm is lavender/vanilla scented and contains mango butter, coconut oil, bees wax, Cocoa butted, jojoba oil, grape seed oil, apricot kern oil, and fragrance. I really enjoyed using her cuticle balm, it works really well!

Plus SIX polishes!

Anonymous Lacquer Got Cake! - Lavender linear holo with all kinda sparkly flaky goodness. I wore two easy coats with topcoat and man is this sparkly! It has a mirrored finish!




Ever After Polish Frost Yourself - Creamy nude scattered holo with pink, blue and purple micro flakes. I wore three thin coats and am absolutely in love with this polish! Formula is great, as I've come to expect from EA.




Lavish Polish Cake in Your Face - magenta to light pink thermal polish packed with shimmer and tiny glitters. I had so much fun with this polish that I included an extra photo of it. I kept checking my nails at work to see how it had changed and my coworkers got a kick out of it too! I wore three coats and topcoat, formula was smooth and easy to apply.





Dollish Polish I Never Mint To Eat The Whole Cake - A super fun mint green crelly with green shimmer, black micro flakes & glitters. I love this polish with a passion, it reminds me a little of Dollish's Zombie Flesh, but in a minty version. I wore three thin coats with topcoat.




Lou It Yourself Like a Fat Kid - is a funfetti inspired powdery blue crelly with subtle gold shimmer and pink micro flakies. The formula on this is spectacular for a light blue crelly style polish. So smooth and quite opaque, no streaks, dragging or stickiness, pure perfection! I wore two coats, but may have been able to get away with one if I took extra care to paint more evenly.




NVR Enuff Raspberry Dreams - a bright raspberry pink jelly filled with silver and cherry Galaxy holo hex, rose flakes and linear holo. I wore two super sparkly coats of this polish. For those of you that enjoy an extra wide brush, you'll love this one!




The box is available right now through June 3 over at http://awesomesauceindies.bigcartel.com/. Be sure to check out their facebook group too!

LevelUp Lacquer: Eclectic Combo

Press Sample

Ash from the newly relaunched polish LevelUP Lacquer asked if I'd like to review some polishes. I jumped at the chance and she chose four to send to me. She is inspired by everything nerdy or geeky and loves to create. You can find her shop stocked to the brim with beautiful polishes, including the four I'm reviewing!



Inspired by everyone's favorite game- The Game of Thrones
Narrow Sea- This polish is a solid blue glitter cream. I wore two thickish coats for opacity and topcoat for a glossy shine.




Song of Fire- This topper has gold and red micro glitters and rainbow flakies. I wore this over LC Milky Ways, an offwhite cream polish. I think it would be awesome over blue for a patina effect.




T-1000, a metallic mirror finish with a slightly taupe base is solid in just 2 coats. It shines heavily in all light because of it's reflective pigment. Must be seen to be believed! This polish was inspired by Terminator 2- Judgement Day.




Unicorn Poo is a fun iridescent glitter topper with tons of sparkle and sass! This is just one coat over PDP's atrament and whitewater.





The formulas on all of these polishes was fluid and easy to control and apply. No stickiness or clumping. I enjoyed trying these out and I definitely like what LevelUP has to offer from packaging to formula. Which polishes do you want to try first?

Literary Lacquers: Tonight's Adventures and Makuahine

Press Sample

Amy of Literary Lacquers enjoys helping others and it shows, as she is offering another charity polish. This time she has collaborated with Debbie Wolf DeMars of Running With Lacquer. The polish is inspired by a young friend of Debbie's and is available now through the end of May. For each bottle purchased, LitLaq will donate $5 to the International OCD Foundation.

The limited edition shade, Tonight's Adventures, is a vivid pink-orange holographic polish with orange and copper shimmer. I wore two easy coats, and added topcoat for shine and seal. I also want to say thank you to Amy and to Debbie for including others and touching their lives to help them have better days. My uncle suffers from anxiety, ocd, and depression, so this means a lot to me!

Debbie's Story:
Imagine you have this amazing friend. She’s super smart, the kind of smart that would be intimidating if she weren’t so down to earth and nice. So instead of feeling inferior you learn from her. The kind of friend who pushes you to be a better person, and pushes you to question what you know and what you stand for. Imagine she has a wicked sense of humor. When you are together you laugh deep in your belly and your eyes tear. She’s caring and genuine and you know if you needed anything she would be there for you. Now imagine she has a teenage daughter and that daughter has all the amazing qualities of her mother. She’s spunky, smart and incredibly sweet. Sounds awesome, doesn’t it? And it is! Except that this amazing young woman, in addition to being brilliantly gifted and wickedly funny, also lives with mental illness. Her name is Sage. She is strong and brave but the road is hard and there are many bumps (hospitalizations) along the way. It is a constant fight. As their friend you feel helpless. You feel their pain so deeply it hurts but you are at a loss as to how to help. This is me and these are my friends. During one such hospital stay, amidst my feelings of helplessness, I had the idea of doing a charity polish in Sage’s honor, to raise money for OCD, one of the mental illnesses from which she suffers. I reached out to Amy with the idea and she was immediately 100% on board. Not only was she on board, she offered to donate a generous $5 per bottle sold to the IOCDF (International OCD Foundation)! Thank you, Amy, for your thoughtfulness and generosity! Being able to do something like this makes me feel like we are helping not only my friends but the countless others out there who are battling OCD. Please consider purchasing a bottle of this special polish in honor of my courageous young friend, Sage.

The Hawaiian name, Makuahine (Ma-koo-ah-hee-nay) means mother or any female relative of the parents' generation. The name was chosen to honor mothers everywhere, but Amy created the polish for HHC admin Aubrey who lost her mother. The metallic finish represents the strength that our mother figures have in all that they do for those they hold dear. The warm earthy color represents the love and care they bring forth to us. This polish is no longer available, but was an HHC exclusive, so you may be able to find it in the HHC chat group in a destash. I wore two coats with topcoat.




I hope you've enjoyed this review and will stick around for more - albeit a slow trickle until my work hours normalize.

Candy Lacquer: Springtime!

Press Sample

Candy Lacquer launched their springtime collection back in early April, but asked if I'd like to review some so I jumped at the chance! She sent three of the six and I liked them all, of course. These are available right now at Candy Lacquer's shop.

In Bloom is a lavender holographic polish with iridescent shimmer.




Spring Forward is a mint green holographic polish with iridescent shimmer and a few gold microflakies.




Deep End is a denim blue holographic polish with iridescent shimmer.




I wore two coats of each of these with topcoat. These are smooth to the touch and dry to a semi-gloss or satin finish on their own. The formula is consistently good and easy to work with based on the (now) five CL polishes I've tried so far. I hope you have enjoyed the review!

A personal note from me: I have been working extended hours in my career for a month now, which has caused me to have very little free time. My situation may change back to normal as soon as July or as late as September, so entries here will be slower/fewer until then. I appreciate your understanding and patience during this time. :)