Happy Holidays and a Merry Christmas Manicure: Dior Apparat

Merry Christmas everybody! Did you all wake up early to open your presents?  My Christmas has been filled with cookie baking, decorating, and lots of  present wrapping. I love the holidays, getting together with family, making tons of fabulous food, and seeing friends. There's just something so heartwarming about being with the people who love you most.

Here's my Christmas mani, I've picked Dior Apparat this year to dress up my tips. Apparat was a holiday color from last year, and it's a beautiful, opulent red base with fine red and gold glitter.

I am in love with this color, it's perfect for the holidays, rich and luxurious. Fantastic for a Christmas party with friends or family.

This is two coats to make opaque coverage. I found this polish difficult to work with, as it was quite thick and became even more so as I continued painting my nails. I had a hard time keeing the manicure clean, and it definitely didn't apply evenly, but that was nothing a good coat of Seche Vite couldn't fix. 

 Overall, I'm happy with the result of the manicure, but the process could have been easier with a smoother formula. What have all of you been sporting on your nails this holiday season?

An Early Christmas Present & Ciaté: Cupcake Queen Review

Good evening everyone! For all of you college students, let's celebrate the end of a fantastic semester! If you've been following my site for a while, you know that I've been a little MIA lately, business school will do that to you! Now I'm back home with my family for the next couple of weeks to relax and prepare for another intense few months of school. I'm hoping to switch up some of the upcoming posts, I hope you guys will like them!

Yesterday I was surprised with an amazing early Christmas present from my boyfriend, who I won't be able to see until New Years Eve. We both exchanged gifts early so that we could celebrate some holiday cheer together. I was so excited to see something that I was sad I had missed out on as I unwrapped his present... the Ciaté Mini Mani Month Advent Calendar.

The advent calendar features 21 mini Ciaté nail colors as well as three bottles of micro beads for a total of 24 days of polish. I opened up all but the 24th color, and there's an impressive variety of colors and types. I just think this is such a cool idea, seriously, one nail polish a day? You can sign me up for that anytime. I'm a big sucker for packaging, and Ciaté has excelled in this department with a beautiful box and adorable bows on each bottle. I decided to wear the first nail polish Cupcake Queen, a hot pink with subtle blue shimmer, on my nails today. It looks like I have candy on my nails! 

Consistency was great, I was able to get full opacity with two thin coats. Very even and easy to work with. One thing I do think could be improved is the shape of these tiny bottles. They're quite skinny and easily knocked over. I'm not familiar with the full sized bottle, so this may just be a problem for these minis.

two coats accompanied by Seche Vite top coat

Overall, I think a nail polish advent calendar is a fantastic idea and a wonderful gift. This is my first experience with any of Ciaté's products and I'm impressed so far! I hope more of these show up next holiday season. I hope every one's holiday is going splendidly!