300 Follower GIVEAWAY!!!!!

It's time for my 300 Follower Giveaway!!!!! And I'm giving away one of my personal favorites of this fall!

One lucky winner will take home the China Glaze Awakening Halloween set! This set includes one bottle each of Zombie Zest, Mummy May I, Ick-A-Bod-Y!, and Fast Forward Top Coat. For swatches of these polishes, see my review of this collection.

To enter this contest, you must be a follower via Google Friend Connect OR a follower on Twitter. If you are a follower both on Twitter and Google Friend Connect, you are entered twice! Additional entries will be given for:
1. A comment on this post telling me which fall polish you are loving
2. Adding Never Enough Nails to your blog roll
3. Posting about this contest on your blog
(for numbers 2 and 3, please leave a comment on this post with a link to your blog, so I can verify)

The contest will end on Sunday, September 19, at midnight EST.



The amazing pictures in this post were taken by my photographer boyfriend. He wanted to do one picture with the red lighting to go with the whole vampire/zombie theme. Cool, huh? If you're into photography, go check out Behind the Lens, his brand new photography blog.

Good luck and thanks so much for reading Never Enough Nails!!!!

200 Follower Giveaway!!!!!!

OK so I know we're a few over 200 followers, but to thank you all for following, I'm having a giveaway in honor of you, Never Enough Nails' 212 (currently) followers!!

To enter, you must be either a follower of Never Enough Nails through Google Friend Connect/Google Reader (remember to "follow publicly") OR be a follower on Twitter. If you are both a Twitter follower and a Google Follower, you get two entries! The contest is open to both US and international readers. The contest will end Sunday, August 22nd at midnight EST, so get following!

Enough boring details- onto the prize!! One lucky winner will win a total of 5 polishes:



China Glaze Midnight Mission (see review)
China Glaze First Class Ticket (see review)
OPI Yodel Me on my Cell
OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous
China Glaze Ingrid (see review)

Good Luck!!!

Reader Request: China Glaze Grape Pop with Wet and Wild Glitz

China Glaze Grape Pop with Wet and Wild Glitz, no flash

I have to thank reader Aurora's Nails for this gorgeous combo. She wanted to see Wet and Wild Glitz over purple or black. Since I'm still in a summery polish mood, I decided to put it over China Glaze Grape Pop from the Up and Away Spring Collection. I did two coats of Grape Pop, a medium purple creme (see it alone here), and one coat of Wet and Wild Glitz.

China Glaze Grape Pop with Wet and Wild Glitz, sunlight

I seriously can't stop staring at my nails right now. These pictures don't even capture how good the pink, blue and silver glitter looks with the purple base. I put a shiny top coat on for these pictures, but I bet in a day or so I'll be putting on a coat of China Glaze Matte Magic. I think this would look amazing matte! I liked Glitz on it's own a lot, but over a purple creme, it is outstanding! For $1.39 it can't be beat!

China Glaze Grape Pop with Wet and Wild Glitz, no flash

Reader Question: Does a Matte Top Coat Help Prevent Chips with Matte Shimmers?

After seeing my post about MAC Studded, a gray/silver matte shimmer polish, reader Skulda wanted to know if a good quality matte top coat would help prevent a matte shimmer polish from chipping. So I did a quick test to find out the answer to her question!

I used KnockOut Cosmetics Flatte Top for my matte top coat. I have found this to be an excellent matte top coat. When applied over non-matte and glitter polish, this top coat is chip-free for days!

left to right: 3 coats Studded plus 1 coat Flatte Top; 3 coats Studded; 3 coast Studded plus 1 coat Flatte Top; 3 thick coats Studded

As we know, the polish companies do not recommend using a top or base coat with any of the matte or matte shimmer polishes. In my wear test of MAC Studded, the nails with the KnockOut Flatte Top top coat actually chipped worse than the nails without. As you can see, my middle nail (Studded alone) only has tip wear, no chips. My pinkie (Studded alone) has a chip, but I accidentally applied the polish very thickly on that nail, so I would say that caused the chip more than anything else. I also had Studded alone, with no top coat, on my right hand and the nails only had tip wear. The only nails that chipped were the ones with top coat (and the aforementioned pinkie nail). The pictures are both with flash, as the weather here in CT is charming yet again.

left to right: 3 coats Studded plus 1 coat Flatte Top; 3 coats Studded; 3 coast Studded plus 1 coat Flatte Top; 3 thick coats Studded

In the pictures, I had been wearing MAC Studded for two days. In my experience of mattes and shimmer mattes, this is pretty standard wear for that amount of time. I do have very oily nails though, if you do not have oily nails, mattes might last longer on you. The polish was absolutely perfect for the whole first day and a half. It started to look like this after I took my second shower while wearing it. I think showers really wreck matte and matte shimmer polishes. Maybe it's just because I take really long showers LOL.

So, to sum up my test, sorry Skulda! I don't think a good quality matte top coat will help prevent chips while wearing a matte shimmer polish! On the bright side, chips are very quick to fix with this polish, and you can't see the seams like you can with non-matte polishes.

MAC Studded is available online at MAC. KnockOut Cosmetics Flatte Top is available online at KnockOut Cosmetics.

OMG, while we're on the subject of KO Cosmetics, check out their new polish "Match" a matte hot pink! I want it sooooooo much!!!!!

Your Opinion!!!

So readers.... EK and I supply all of the material seen on this blog with our own hard-earned money at the moment. We'd love to show you every collection ever, but sadly, we can't afford that. So we want to know:

What spring collections are you most interested in? (China Glaze Up and Away?, Zoya Reverie?, Barielle Wildflowers?, OPI Alice in Wonderland?)

What do you want to see on this blog?

Since we are not currently being sent products by any companies, this is one blog that you can pick what is reviewed! Let us know in the comments or shoot us an email at neverenoughnails@gmail.com

(p.s. If you are a company looking to find willing and honest testers for your products, we are more than willing to accept products for consideration. Just send us an email!)

Reader Request!

We had a reader request for a dupe of OPI Vampire State Building. Vampire State Building is a very rare, discontinued polish that came out with OPI's New York collection. It is a lovely dark red creme. I do not own Vampire State Building, but I have seen it before. The consensus among polish addicts on the web is that the best dupe of Vampire State Building is.......

Revlon Vixen, three coats, no flash

Revlon Vixen is a cheap, highly available substitute for the rare Vampire State Building. I am lovin' this one, and I bet it would look great on toes as well. Revlon polishes are nice and thin and normally last quite a long time. Some of my favorite polishes in the past have been Revlon.

Revlon Vixen, no flash

I hope this helps anyone who has been searching for Vampire State Building. If I ever get my hands on it, I'll make sure to do a proper comparison between that and Revlon Vixen.

Revlon polishes are available at your local drugstore or Stop and Shop!