Review: Born Pretty Store Candy Color Metal Chain

I received this item in exchange for an honest review.

Sorry I've been so quite around here lately, I've been fighting off a nasty infection for the past week or so and anyway, just haven't felt like doing much. I have 3 Born Pretty Store reviews for you coming up over the next few days! :) If you're not familiar with Born Pretty Store, they sell a ton of nail art supplies and they ship for free worldwide!

So first up, today I will be reviewing something completely different from anything I've ever used before - a metal chain 3D nail art decoration. As you can see from the picture below, this chain is pretty small in comparison to a penny. These chains come in 7 different colors and I just happened to get the pink one. Its currently $.99 for 50 cm if anyone is interested.

Oh, I also forgot to mention, I'm also kicking off the start of a bunch of manicures inspired by my own books I'm writing :) So this is the first one.. hope you like it! Here's what I started with.

I used Julep Stevie for the base, with NOPI Luke of the Draw on my pinkie and thumb nails. Then I drew a heart on my middle nail using Kiss nail art polish in black, and a Shany nail art polish in red, I forget the exact number. Then I got started on applying the metal chains. These were pretty easy to cut using a pair of wire cutters.

I did find working with the chain itself was a bit tricky just because the pieces are so tiny, it was easy to drop them if I wasn't paying attention. I used Kiss Maximum Speed Nail Glue to hold these on, and they held just fine for the most part. I wore this manicure for about a week and I want to say maybe half of the chains had fallen off by that point. The one problem I had with the glue is if I wasn't careful, the glue would get on the chain, then the chain would stick to itself and stiffen up and make it more difficult to work with. Otherwise, it wasn't too terrible to work with.

The chain was tied in a knot in one spot when I got it, so I thought it would look neat to add the knot to my nail over the heart. This turned out not to be such a good idea because the knot came untied in my sleep so I had to fix it :P

In the picture below, you can see how the chain is literally hanging off the nail in some spots, which I think makes it look pretty interesting. It does snag on everything, but that's OK. As you can see from this close up, this particular chain does have some spots where the paint has worn off giving it a gold look which I really like. It makes it more interesting to look at than just a sold color, I think.

If you like 3D nail art, and like me, you enjoy something a little bit different from the standard looks, I think you might like this metal chain decoration. Its definitely a different look but I think you can probably do a lot of fun stuff with it.

I would say this is a winner, for certain :)

Don't forget, you can use my coupon code to get 10% off your orders at Born Pretty Store! Just use the coupon code QTX31 at checkout, and of course you'll also get free shipping worldwide! Be sure to check out their new arrivals as well, they have tons of great looking new products.

Thanks to Born Pretty Store for providing me with this sample.

Review: Cassani Fogless Shower Mirror

Disclosure: I got this product as part of an advertorial.

A shaving mirror is not something, as a female, I ever thought about until I moved in with my boyfriend and he swiped my makeup mirror to use in the shower.

The above picture is my old mirror, which I think you can see, being in the shower for many years has not been nice to it. It gets really nasty and I have to clean it frequently. The mirror part has long separated from the plastic portion so water gets inside of it and it just makes a huge mess and it's kind of a pain to clean. Don't do this at home! :D




That ugly nasty thing has now been replaced by the Cassani Fogless Shower Mirror. The design of the Cassani mirror is much more simple so obviously it will be much easier to clean. Installation only took a couple of minutes, spanned over a couple of hours (you have to install the wall mounts and wait a couple of hours before hanging the mirror itself.) I like how easy and simple this mirror is, and the simple design looks nice.

One of the nice things about this mirror is that it does come with a razor mount, which just seems like a nice added bonus. I hung Mike's razor on the mount knowing full well he wouldn't keep it there. So next day I replaced his razor with my own and bonus! The mount also makes a nice place to hang my loofah.

Mike's told me he has used the mirror, and I've been surprised to find myself using it as well. I almost always get soap in my eyes, so I can use it to check to make sure I don't have soap running down my face. Also, with my neck problems it hurts my neck to look at my armpit while shaving, so I can actually use the mirror to check to see if I've shaved my arm pits. I didn't expect to use it in that way, so that's pretty nice!

Also, this mirror does exactly as it says, I haven't had any problems with it fogging up at all.

You can purchase this mirror on Amazon.com for just $14.99 and it would make a great Father's Day present, don't forget that's coming up in a few weeks!

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

KKCenterHk Review: N.Nail Butterfly Dot Pattern Nail Foil Transfer [NNAIL-E31]

I received this item in exchange for an honest review.

I have one more nail foil to review today, and I'm happy to say this one worked so much better than the foil I reviewed yesterday.

This item is number N.Nail Butterfly Dot Pattern Nail Foil Transfer [NNAIL-E31]

This foil is clear, with pretty butterfly images surrounded by silver dots which actually have a little bit of a holo effect to them. I had absolutely no problems with this foil. It worked as expected and applied easily. I didn't use top coat over these since top coat can ruin foils sometimes, so the foil only lasted a few hours and by the next day I was scraping off the remaining foil. So that's something to keep in mind if you're looking for something permanent, but for something fun to last you just a few hours or a day, this works perfectly. I started out with 2 coats of Zoya Dream, then applied top coat before applying the foil so now I have a fresh manicure to do something else with. Seems like a winning situation to me :)

Originally I was going to do a green manicure with this foil, but my friend +Narmai Nan asked me to do a blue manicure for National Autism Awareness month, so I decided to use Zoya Dream instead. I thought the all blue butterflies would look nice for this, too :)  You'll see more of this polish again some other time, that's for certain!

Ok, so I think you can see from my pictures, this foil did wrinkle a tiny little bit but in comparison to the foil I used yesterday this wasn't so bad!

 I kind of like this look with the foil on all nails, because it looks kind of.. vintage, I guess? But I also like it as just an accent. That's one of the nice things about this foil, you can do a lot of different stuff with it!

This foil is $6.92 on KKCenterHk's Web site for the foil alone. You can also buy it and the glue for a couple more dollars.

 
Use code GETFANCY at checkout for a 10% discount.

website: http://www.kkcenterhk.com
Blog: http://kkcenterhk.blogspot.com/
Tumblr: http://kkcenterhk.tumblr.com/
Facebook: KKCenterHK
Google+: 108172894204617826877
Youtube: wwwkkcenterhkcom
Twitter: @kkcenterhkcom
Weibo: kkcenterhk
Instagram: @kkcenterhkcom

Review: KKCenterHK N.Nail Silver Heart Flower Laser Nail Foil Transfer [NNAIL-E45]

I received this item in exchange for an honest review.

Here it is... my first manicure post in almost exactly a month! Yikes! Yep, I went about 3 weeks without painting my nails even once. I believe before I've mentioned I get kind of weird around my birthday? Well, it's gone and passed so hopefully I'll get back to normal and post manicures more often again.. hope I get over this manicure funk soon.

Anyway, my last manicure post was a KKCenterHK water decal review and today I have another review for one of their products. This time I picked out 2 foils to review, because I love their foil so much. First up is product number N.Nail Silver Heart Flower Laser Nail Foil Transfer [NNAIL-E45].

Here's what the nail foil looks like. Pretty neat, right?

 For some reason, this foil made me think of Chibi Moon's Pink Sugar Heart Attack (Sailor Moon reference!) so I decided to start this manicure with 2 coats of Milani Digital, a really gorgeous pink holo. I had a really neat idea for this manicure, but it turned out not to go so well. Here's what I started with. Gorgeous, right?

I had this really neat idea of cutting out one of the hearts, then cutting it in half. I tried putting one half on one nail, the other on the other nail next to it. This didn't go so well because this foil is kind of awful to work with. It doesn't lay flat at all, so it tends to wrinkle which means when you lift it from your nail, there's still a lot of chunks of the foil missing so you can't really get a nice clean pattern with it like you can with some of their other foils. BIG TIME BUMMER!

So that definitely did not work out. I've had this experience in the past with one of their other foils and I know from experience this means a few problems: everywhere the foil doesn't stick you're left with a gluey residue which doesn't wash off well but everything sticks to it. So you can either use the glue and then apply top coat over the foil (which is what I did) or you can nix the glue and use top coat instead to stick the foil to the nails. The problem with applying the top coat over the foil is you lose a lot of the holo effect. This still turned out looking pretty neat (my boyfriend said it reminded him of the paint jobs on some of the old toy cars) but it definitely wasn't what I was hoping for. So this was very disappointing! Oh yeah.. also, the top coat did eat the foil a little bit, another boo hoo!

After I realized my original idea wasn't going to work, I kind of just applied this foil randomly on all of my nails :D 

So I still have one more foil to review for you guys this week. I haven't tested it out yet, so hopefully it works much better than this one!

 
Use code GETFANCY at checkout for a 10% discount.

website: http://www.kkcenterhk.com
Blog: http://kkcenterhk.blogspot.com/
Tumblr: http://kkcenterhk.tumblr.com/
Facebook: KKCenterHK
Google+: 108172894204617826877
Youtube: wwwkkcenterhkcom
Twitter: @kkcenterhkcom
Weibo: kkcenterhk
Instagram: @kkcenterhkcom

Pine Bros Softish Throat Drops Review

Disclosure: I got this product as part of an advertorial.

I pretty much always have a little bit of a sore throat due to chronic sinus problems and also my medicine, so when I heard Pine Brothers were looking for people to review for them, I jumped at the chance. Here is the background information about this company which I was provided with:

Ulysses S. Grant was President, the population of America hovered at 39 million, and the telephone was still a pipe dream, when in 1870 J. Herman Pine hung out a confectionery shingle on 8th Street above Walnut in Philadelphia and, along with his brother, sold their first batch of what they called 'Pine Brothers Glycerine Tablets.' In an attempt to relieve his own sore throat and those of his family members, Mr. Pine, a former German confectionery maker, determined that by combining the soothing natural qualities of glycerin with the healing properties of gum acacia, he could sooth and mitigate the mild discomfort of a sore throat. Add in some natural flavoring and a sweetener and voila, Pine Brothers Softish Throat Drops were born. "I have discovered something," Pine wrote, "which will give quick throat relief to thousands afflicted as I was." He added,"Perhaps I won't make much money out of this. But I can make people happy, and that's more important than money." Mr. Pine was being unduly modest, as his "discovery" would become one of the most successful, most delicious and most unique throat lozenges in the world. Nor has the recipe changed appreciably since it was first introduced to the public over 140 years ago.

In 1930 Pine Brothers was sold to the Life Savers Company and continued to flourish. Known for its 'soft drop consistency,' Pine Brothers lozenges became a favorite of adults and children alike. The product, which attracted healthiest sales in the eastern and northern states, due to its icy winters, reached its peak popularity in the 1970's. The company was sold by Life Savers, and then, having been re-sold and acquired a number of times, found itself essentially rudderless and under appreciated; this despite a legion of loyal consumers. Cost cutting changes were made to the original recipes, packaging became stale and marketing non-existent; Pine Brothers began to be made overseas. Sales declined.

Recently, Pine Brothers was acquired by the creator and former owner of Airborne, Victoria Knight-McDowell, for her new company 3 Sisters Home Products™. Much time and effort has been spent locating the original Pine Brothers recipes, redesigning the packaging, and creating an exciting yet classic new look. The natural product is once again being made in America, and is launching nationally in fall 2011. At which time old Mr. Pine, will succeed once again in "making people happy." God bless him!

Pine Brothers were very generous and provided me with 4 bags of their throat drops as well as 4 pucks. I shared the generosity by enlisting some friends to help try these out. Mike, Amanda and I all really liked these. Amanda particularly really enjoyed the Wild Cherry flavor drops. Josh was the only one who didn't care for these; he tried one of the Natural Honey flavored drops, didn't like it and I couldn't get him to try one of the Wild Cherry. So overall, these were a hit in my family.

 These drops are not at all like cough drops, they are, as the name implies, soft. They're glycerin based and so it kind of takes some getting used to if you're used to menthol products, because you won't find menthol in these. They do seem to help with my sore throat, so I've been using these a lot. I found the flavor to be pretty weak, so I use 2 at once to get a better flavor. Mike pointed out these are strange because they don't taste like candy, as other products do. The texture reminds me a bit of fruit rollups. I think they're quite good, and they do the job.

There's a few things I love about these:
They're made in America.
They're available online or in most drug stores (drugstore.com, CVS, Walgreens to name a few.)

Personally I prefer the puck container, just because it's more convenient and of course I can reuse it for something or other. The bags do contain more drops, however. I'll have to see how these hold up to my throat when I'm actually sick, but I would consider purchasing these in the future.

These drops just happen to be on sale at Drugstore.com right now. Both the bags and pucks are on sale for $2.99 but the pucks are BOGO! I just happened to see this today and thought I'd pass along the savings :)

You can find more information about Pine Brothers on their Web site, including additional flavors and where to buy them. You can also find them on their social media pages:
Facebook
Pinterest
Twitter

 I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers.

Born Pretty Store Giveaway!

Giveaway is sponsored by Born Pretty Store. I am not responsible for shipping of this prize. This post contains an affiliate link.

Born Pretty Store has kindly offered to host a giveaway for my readers!

I'm going to keep this pretty simple:
1. Open Internationally
2. The giveaway will start tomorrow April 2 and run until April 16.
3. One winner will receive one prize valued at $10. The prize will consist of some of their new arrivals and most popular items.
4. No cheating, of course. I will verify the winning entry.

Born Pretty Store just signed up for Tumblr, so please go check them out there!

In the meantime, I also have a coupon code you can use (affiliate link)

I think that's all the details, please let me know if you have any questions :)


a Rafflecopter giveaway