Hard Candy Swatches - and a New Pet!

  First off, thank you so much to all of those who took the time to enter my giveaway - the comments one what you want to see from this blog have been extremely helpful!  I will be tallying up and checking the entries throughout the day and should have the winner for you tomorrow!  I may do a very small Christmas giveaway coming up sometime in the next few weeks; keep your eyes peeled for it.  I plan to do a larger giveaway when we hit 300 followers. :)

  Today I have for you some Hard Candy swatches, from the small stash that Becky picked up a few weeks ago.  I had never used (or even seen) this brand before, so it was a lot of fun to try out something new!  The swatches are a bit on the messy side, from a combo of factors including super fast swatching and I am even messier when painting others nails than I am my own... so please excuse the mess and take then as the (hopefully) helpful swatches that they are!

Hard Candy Sky

Outdoors, no flash

   Sky is a really gorgeous light blue creme.  Although in the bottle it seems to have some very minor shimmer to it, I can't see it on the nails no matter how hard I try!  Application was very nice, and this covered well with 3 coats.  This is probably my favorite of the bunch, I love the super light blue color!

Hard Candy Mushroom

Outdoors, no flash

   A really nice medium taupey-brown creme.  I am totally blanking on how many coats this was (I swear I wrote it down, I just don't know where!) but I am thinking three as well... again, very nice application, and a great neural color.

Hard Candy Envy

Outdoors, no flash

   This polish falls into that category of really pretty almost-blacks.  It is a very dark shimmery green polish.  This one is totally packed with gorgeous shimmer, and I really love it!  It also only takes two smooth coats, which I love.  This is definitely a close runner-up for favorite of these three.

Really pretty shimmer

  The final bottle Becky got was a really nice chunky glitter topcoat called Break Up that for some reason we didn't get a picture of.  Perhaps I will be able to get a good shot of that at some point in the future.  It was a very nice topcoat!

  In other news... you might recall me showing you that snake we found on our driveway a couple of weeks ago?  Well.. a couple of days after that, I found him again, in my garage (I was so close to running the little guy over).  I put him in the backyard this time, but I kept going out to check on him and he really didn't move much at all,  all night.  So... Dan and I decided he needed a bit of help and we took him in.  It turns out he had a head injury that has left him probably blind in one eye, and he was supposed to be hibernating, so he was very cold and very hungry.  He is doing really well now though!  The vet basically told us he would have died pretty quickly if we had not taken him in, so I am really glad we did.  He is actually really sweet.  :)

Silv's cage - he is exploring up at the very top

He loves cuddling in my hand, what a cutie!

  So now I have a snake, something I never thought I would be able to say, haha.  That brings the pet total up to five - two cats, two gerbils, and a snake!  We are starting to turn into a zoo. :)

Space Beetle? Orly Space Cadet vs Hard Candy Beetle

  A couple of weeks ago Becky got a bit of a Hard Candy haul.  One of these polishes was Beetle, which looked very, very familiar to me... we decided we had to do a comparison!

Orly Space Cadet and Hard Candy Beetle

  As I am sure most of you are aware, Orly Space Cadet was one of the most popular and unique polishes from the fall Cosmic FX line.  Now Hard Candy Beetle seems to be a dupe in the bottle - so we tested it out to see if it could hold up to Space Cadet's amazing duochrome shine on the nail!  These were done on Becky's nails.

One coat each

  Above, you can see one thin coat of each polish, showing that they share the same greenish base color and very similar looks glittery shine.  So far, these are looking pretty similar to me!  I continued to add thin coats, coming up with a grand total of four coats of each polish - opacity continued to be the same for the two brands.

Outdoors, shade

Indoors, artificial light, no flash

  As you can see, both polishes share the same amazing duochrome effect, looking pink at one angle and a greenish gold the next.  Application and finish were the same on each.  I feel safe in declaring these two polishes dupes!  I still absolutely love this color, it is a great one!  So, if you had a hard time getting your hands on Space Cadet, I suggest you go find yourself some Hard Candy Beetle!  That being said, if you do already own one, you definitely do not need the other.  This worked out well for Becky and I, because she has been wanting to borrow my Space Cadet for some time now.. :)  To check out my full review of Space Cadet, click HERE.  More Hard Candy polishes coming up soon...

  *Edit: Changed the name to Space Beetle, sorry Becky.  It is better anyway.  :)

  Also, there are only two days left to get your entries in for my second giveaway!  If you have not entered already, I suggest you do it fast! :)

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