Review: Tan Towel for Face & Body

I first used a Tan Towel ages ago when they were first on the market and hard to find and thought it was a genius product, so I jumped at the chance to try them again when I received this as a sample in a Sephora order.

When you tear open the packet, it looks exactly like a moist towelette. There is no orange liquid or anything like that to deal with--the towel is white and the moisture on it is clear. You rub it on your body (including face) where you want to be tan. It takes about 5 minutes and is very simple and easy. In a few hours your skin starts to "tan" and you get that sun-kissed look. The only bad thing is that you can't see where you have applied the tan towel or how much is on your skin... which for me resulted in a ring around my lips and a very orange face. Less is definitely more when applying. I tried to cover my whole upper body and ended up tanning myself in unnatural places which made me look very Snooki-esque. It's also smart to apply this about 2 days before big events or outings so that the tan can fade off a bit and look more natural. It does have a smell, which is almost bitter, but it didn't bother me (I even kind of liked it) and faded significantly overnight. Tan Towel is a convenient alternative to tanning outdoors, tanning in a bed, or spray tans.

While the colors may not be accurate, note the difference in skin tone two hours after application. I'm pretty sure that I continued to get a bit darker after this:

New Sally Hansen Salon Effects & Gem Crush

Stopped in my local CVS today to discover them setting up a new display of Sally Hansen Salon Effects! Tattoo Much and Love Letter are my "Must Buys".

Here's a sneaky picture of the display (poor shots because it was crammed behind an Essie display):

Here's a brochure of the new collection:

Here's another brochure of their Gem Crush polish collection:

No polish pics of Gem Crush because they weren't placed out yet!

Thanks to all of you who have left nice comments lately! I appreciate the feedback!

Seeing Spots

Used the center of hole punch reinforcement stickers for these:

The polish is the purple Milani One-Coat Glitter

Nailene Butterfly Stickers

I decided to break out some Nailene nail stickers and give 'em a go:

Sweetheart

I first saw this style of nail on the Tumblr-verse and thought it was an interesting concept, so I tried it out... and fell in lust! It's a cute twist on the half-moon mani with a vintage feel.

Two key notes for a successful sweetheart mani:

1. Distance from the cuticle is key
2. Use a dark color if you have a nude base

The Death of a Bottle of Shatter

I've noticed that it was becoming more and more difficult to successfully screw on the top of my OPI Black Shatter because it dries so quickly around the mouth. It seems like the bottle won this battle because when I was poking around my nail polish collection I noticed this:

It's totally dried up and ruined, but it's kind of beautiful in a Dothraki-esque way, right?

Gold Leaf

The trick with gold leaf, well... if you're not going to cover the entire nail completely, is to find that balance between "strategically scattered" (left hand) and "actually, this looks chipped" (right).

Swatch: Nicole by OPI's Really Really Red

Really Really Red is a classic, classic red. Very retro, yet functional.

Sally Hansen Salon Effects: Holiday 2011

Sally Hansen's Salon Effects Holiday collection has arrived at my local Target for a cool $8.54!

Here they are in their display and packaging (in a rather large image--click):

"Plaid About You", "Peppermint Twist", "Snow Bunny", and "Prep's Cool" are my personal favorites. I definitely see myself buying one of these for Christmas day. I can't quite figure out why SH included the leopard print and zebra print in this collection as they're not very winter-festive... they're cute, but not for the holidays. For the price, I'd rather buy a bottle of glitter polish than buy one-time-use strips for the same price.

Pink Plaid

Feather Nails 2.0

Pheasant feathers from Hobby Lobby. The look you get from this is gorgeous, but it's a painstaking process. It's difficult to get the nail to stick and stay down in a natural way, and once you've managed to get that to work the edges are terribly rough.