Review: ILNP Sweet Pea Nail Polish

As much as I love vampy shades in the winter, I’ve been getting tired of wearing dark nail colours and have been trying to incorporate pinks and neutrals into my nail routine. Today I wanted to share with you a recent favourite lately – ILNP’s Sweet Pea.

To give you some background on the company first, ILNP (I Love Nail Polish) is an indie polish brand from the US, and their nail polishes mainly consist of less common finishes such as holographic, chrome, and ultra metallic – I actually don’t think they have released any crème polishes! There are numerous ways for Canadians to get their hands on ILNP, but the most affordable places I know of are Nail Polish Canada and Harlow & Co. I purchased mine from Harlow & Co. for $14.99 each at 12mL a bottle, and shipping was free because my order was over $25. The ILNP official website is also an option, although the prices are shown in USD, standard shipping is $10.50 and is only free for Canadians if you spend over $100 ($50 for USA and $200 for international); most ILNP polishes are $10 USD on the official website, which means you would have to buy 10 polishes to receive free shipping.

The ILNP headquarters are located in Las Vegas, and the polishes themselves are made in the USA. All ILNP polishes are 3 Free, which means they don’t contain formaldehyde, toluene, or dibutyl phthalate, chemicals that are said to be harmful to the body. ILNP is also a cruelty-free company, which means they don’t test on animals or get their materials from suppliers who test on animals.

I’ve wanted to try this brand for a really long time ever since I saw it on Instagram. Holographic polishes are not impossible to find, but they’re rare amongst brands that can be readily found in stores, so I wasn’t opposed to turning to online shopping.

Review – Anastasia Liquid Lipsticks

Last month, the Anastasia Beverly Hills Liquid Lipsticks were part of Sephora’s Week of Wow sales, and I took the opportunity to try two shades in this formula. There are a million reviews of this liquid lipstick line, but I wanted to share my thoughts as a dry skin, dry-lipped gal who has always steered clear away from liquid lipsticks. However, at $16 each, it was hard to pass up trying the formula to see if it would work well on me. I wanted to try one brighter shade and a more neutral shade, so I settled on a magenta called Sugar Plum (I called this Dusty Rose in the haul post) and a brownish shade called Kathryn. Read on to see how I got along with these!

Wedding DIY: Watercolour Place Cards

Although my wedding has long come and gone, there are still a handful of DIY projects I wanted to share but never got around to – nothing wrong with sharing them after the wedding, right? Today I wanted to talk about how I made my place cards. I loved how they turned out, and they surprisingly seemed to be quite popular at our wedding. A few of our guests even told me they took theirs home, which is hilarious because I’m not sure what you would do with a place card after the wedding 😝 This was quite a tedious process that took me months to finish bit by bit, but I enjoyed the process. I also went through several shows on Netflix while working on it, so it was a win-win. If you have any bridesmaids that are willing to give a hand (or be voluntold by the bride), that would probably be a great help!

Since my general wedding design was watercolour, the place cards featured a watercolour background with champagne-gold splatters and hand-lettering that I did myself. The gold splatters are optional – our wedding colours were blush and dusty blue, but we ended up with a lot of gold accents in our décor, so I thought the gold splatters would be a nice tie-in with the rest of the room.

Sephora VIB Sale Wish List

It’s the time of the year we’ve been all waiting for! No, not Christmas – the Sephora VIB Sale! This year, the 20% off sale for VIB Rouge members starts on November 3-6, then again on November 10-15 – that’s two weekends of shopping! For VIBs and BIs, the sale is on November 10-15; VIBs receive 20% off, and BIs receive 15% off.

I’m not a Rouge member so I’m not doing my shopping this weekend, but I still thought I would share my wish list for those who DO get to partake in the sale this weekend – maybe we can get ideas off of each other’s lists! I will definitely not be buying everything on the list – it goes from most likely to purchase to least likely to purchase.