Bellamama Style

If you're looking for retired Color Street nail strips, head over to my VIP Facebook group and check out my in stock/on hand album. I just updated the albums to include all the items I have on hand, and there are plenty of older designs that you may be looking for.

You will need a Facebook account and join the group to see the photos. If you don't have a Facebook account and would like to have access, please message me at [email protected], and I'll see if I can provide a different way for you to access them. Just an FYI, these are designs I have on hand to sell, and they will be shipped from me to you. I also honor the B3G1 designs and B1G1 french nail deals, and it's $3 for shipping unless you want to pay extra for express shipping.

Click here to go to the Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/bellamamanails

You can also purchase the current designs at www.bellamamanails.com, and they will ship directly from Color Street.

Welcome to Bellamama Style blog, home for Bellamama Beauty and Bellamama Nails!

I cannot believe that this year is already going by so quickly! It's only a few hours away from Valentine's Day 2018, and no matter if you have a significant other to celebrate with or not, I think it's a great to set aside a day to celebrate love. I've decided to giveaway two of my favorite things right now which are Rae Dunn mugs and Color Street nail strips! The giveaway goes until the end of V-Day PST, and two winners will be chosen on Thursday by Noon PST for a mug and either a Streets of Gold glitter nail set or El Dorado glitter nail set. 

You can enter here. GOOD LUCK!:

Valentine's BellamamaNails Giveaway

Comparison of Streets of Gold with El Dorado:

El Dorado (sheer gold with a bit of pink tone):

Streets of Gold (lighter more yellow gold but not as sheer as El Dorado):

***Please see disclaimer for the giveaway on the entry window. All the items being given away has been personally purchased by me and not sponsored by the brands. I am an independent stylist for Color Street but do not have any connection to Rae Dunn other than that I love to collect for fun.

I ended up moving a few months ago, and then I got behind posting photos of my manis. Here's my Christmas mani so far. I'll probably end up changing it next week since my nails are getting a bit too long. I find if it's too long, it gets in the way of taking care of my kids and typing. Since I'm on the computer almost all day, it gets annoying if it's too long.

I ended up putting this on in the semi-dark at 3am. I'm expecting baby #3 in May, and I was feeling horrible during the night so I was wide awake. I thought why not do my nails instead. :) Please excuse my dry and ugly cuticles. The nausea from this pregnancy isn't doing great things for my skin right now.

Color Club "Art of Seduction" on all my nails except for the ring fingers which are done with "Object of Envy" as accent nails. I love the thickness of the green glitter, but the red was pretty sparce. It wasn't as easy to work with, and I ended up having to do three layers. And even then it ended up with bald spots. I think I will use a base color first next time.

I'm in a Facebook group for Nail  Polish-aholics, and we just started a weekly challenge. First one was purple nail polish, and this is my version. My 7yo daughter got the Sally Hansen polish for me for my birthday, but I haven't had a chance to swatch it yet. I normally don't love duochrome polishes, but this is actually really pretty. It's purple and it flashes blue. I wanted to jazz it up a little for the challenge so I added Nicole by OPI's "Let's Get Star-ted" which has purple holo stars. They look purple but looks holo in sunlight. There's also holo microglitter in it too.

Initially out of the bottle, the stars are really tough to get out, so you have to either use an orange stick or take all the polish off the brush and try to fish them out. Getting them on your nail is also difficult too. Once they're on, if you have rounded nails the ends of the stars stick out. To minimize that, I push them into the polish once it's almost dry. Then I added Gelous Advanced Nail Gel Coat on top then topped it off with Poshe. Even then, you can feel the edges of the stars. If you like your nails smooth, I wouldn't recommend it.

I got the Zoya Pinterest mini trio that included Myrta (from the Zoya Surf collection) recently, and I really wanted to try it out. It's been really sunny this weekend so I was in an orange mood. When I put the polish on, I realized it reminded me of another color I had, so I took a look in my stash box. I have China Glaze Riveting from their Hunger Games collection that I absolutely LOVE, and so I decided to do a swatch comparison. It's not quite a dupe though very close.

Myrta is not as sparkly as Riveting, and it has more  of a tangelo look to it. It's definitely a foily shimmer polish vs. a glitter polish. Take a look and see if you can spot the difference. (By the way, sorry about the finger print smudge on my middle finger. I was in such a hurry, I ended up squishing it while taking photos.)

Zoya Myrta - 1 coat
Poshe top coat 

Riveting is on the thumb in the comparison photo. It has more of a jelly look to it with an inner sparkle. Both are very pretty, but I think I prefer Riveting more. It just has this intensity about it that I really love. Myrta is also pretty, but it has more of a foil look.

I really wanted a medium pink polish, and when a Zoya promo came up, I ended up ordering a few that I thought were dupes because I just couldn't make up my mind from the photos on their site. It's also hard to decide with other people's swatches since my Asian skin tone really makes polishes look different than the way it looks on others. Anyway, I already had Audrina, but I didn't LOVE it at first sight so I thought perhaps either Reagan or Areej might work.

Here's the comparison swatch I did with some of the ones I thought would be dupes.

As you can see, Areej and Reagan are near dupes. Areej is a bit dustier looking than Reagan, but if you have one then you probably wouldn't want the other. In the bottle, Audrina looks soooo much like the other two, but on the nail has more blue than the other two.

Audrina is on the left, and I can't even remember which two are on the right, but they look exactly the same to the naked eye. One's SLIGHTLY darker... MAYBE. :)

I added Rory and Lara since I got them for funsies. Rory has a lot of silver shimmer in it so although in the bottle it looks similar to Reagan and Lara, it shows up as very light on the nail. It's not as sparkly as Zoya's Sunshine collection. Lara has a bit of a softer neon quality about it. I just purchased a bunch of neon pinks, so I decided I don't want to keep Lara.

After the swatches, I decided that Reagan looks the best on my nails. It pops more than Areej which is what I really wanted. Audrina might be a keeper since I do like the bluer pinks, so it's going back in my nail polish box.

I finally picked up my Frontier order, and it was a pleasant surprise to find two of the new colors for Burt's Bees Lip Shimmers. They are one of my go-to lip products. They're kind of a cross between lip stick and gloss, and I use them when I want a bit more coverage than lip gloss. I have several, and maybe I'll do a comparison photo some time.

Anyway, here are the two new ones I got: Plum and Cherry. On my skin, plum looks very dark brown with a bit of purple tone but it's not very obvious. The cherry shows up kind of orange-ish red. You can see the swatches.

Butter London - "All Hail the Queen" or aka "All Hail McQueen" two layers
Essie base coat
Poshe top coat 

This polish has been around a while but since I always try to buy polish on sale, it's been sold out whenever Ulta or other stores have it on sale. I finally snagged one at the 2nd Street Beauty store on sale! Sorry my mani is a little old. I was out of town on a business trip and had done this while I was out in Florida last week. The photo shows 5 day wear. For a 5 day mani, the tip wear is pretty good!

By the way, I took Zoya Remove+ (my fave remover) in a smaller travel bottle I got at Target, and it totally melted it into a jelly-like thing. Plus it leaked on to my other polishes and melted some of the other plastics. Good thing I had it double zip lock bagged or my entire luggage would have been trashed. Lesson learned. Get the bottles appropriate for polish remover! Here is what it did to my polish cap:

I really love this polish! It is very work appropriate so I like that for important business meetings. It's very deceiving. It looks like a cream, but in certain lights or in the sun, you can see the tiny holographic microglitter. People who know me know I love glitter polish, so sometimes creams bore me. Now I know this has hidden sparkles, it makes me love it more. Here's a photo. I darkened the photo to show the hidden holo sparkles (click the photo to enlarge it):

Here's another side view where you can't see the holo. This shows the 5 day tip wear best:

Dior Bikini – 1 basecoat, 2 layers, 1 top coat

Comparison of Dior Bikini with Deborah Lippmann Daytripper

Thumb to pinky:
Dior - Waterlily
Deborah Lippmann - Mermaid's Dream
Wet n Wild - I Need a Refresh-Mint
China Glaze - Gaga for Green
Julep - Leah 

Top to bottom:
Sephora OPI - Bright as a Feather
Zoya - Wednesday
Wet n Wild - I Need a Refresh-Mint
Zoya - Tracie
Dior - Waterlily