pretty: and we have a winner...

I don't know about you but I'm the type of person who enters select contests never thinking I'd win. I've never been lucky...or maybe not as lucky as some other people I know. When it comes to online contests, I enter and forget about them, figuring I'd receive an email if I won or some kind of social media alert. I entered an Instagram contest by Cult Nails (@cultnails) and guess what? I WON! All I had to do was repost their image, tagging them and entering their specific hashtag. I never thought I would win but I thought something was weird when I woke up one Saturday morning with all  kinds of Instagram notifications. Here's their winner announcement:

After some short communication with John (@jmorockstar), I received an email notification that my package was on its way--wahoo! Here's my winning box:

Hand hiding my address

And Mischief checking out the goodies inside:

Mischief decided that he liked the red tote the most. He used it to step on, stretch on and sit on before I could unwrap all the polishes and take a proper photo.

Here's everything unwrapped minus Mischief:

One half of the polishes and tote bag. The polishes are (left to right): Wicked Fast (speed dry top coat), Charlatan, Just Because, I Got Distracted, Masquerade, Ms. Conduct, Nevermore, Tempest (this one doesn't have a label on the bottom so I did a comparison on the Cult Nails website) and Doppelganger,

 

Second half of the polishes plus nail file and t-shirt. Polishes are: Feel Me Up, All Out, Be Loco, Captivated, Evil Queen (a gorgeous red I can't wait to try), Riot, Hypnotize Me, Party Time and Get It On (base coat).

 

I had a hard time deciding between which polish to use first...yellow or red for the end of summer or brown for the beginning of autumn? In the end I decided that I was done with summer and ready for autumn! I painted one coat of Ms. Conduct followed by one coat of Masquerade and top coat.

The Cult Nails polishes are free of DBP, formaldehyde, toluene and camphor. I found the two polishes I tried to be one coaters, though you could do two thin coats if you really want to. The polishes dried fast but not too fast that I didn't have time to smooth things out. One thing that I found truly remarkable is that I am SO used to the Pro Wide Brush with OPI polishes that I find myself having a hard time applying polish with other brand names (Essie, I'm looking at you). I'm happy to say that I didn't have the same problem with the Cult Nails polishes even though their brush isn't wide like OPI's. The bristles on the CN brush fan out rather nicely and considering I have wide nail plates, I found applying the polish a breeze. A non-wide brush is a huge pet peeve of mine since I can't seem to apply other polishes properly without one. Regular polish brushes never really even out on my nail plates and just leave my nails looking like a streaky mess. As you can see above (aside from some clean up that needs to be done but I was too excited to do it), applying the Cult Nails polish was rather easy.

I am so happy that I can now add these 18 polishes to my collection of Cult Nails polishes, which previously consisted of one, lonely polish, Feedback. Thank you so much Cult Nails for giving us the opportunity to win and fall in love with your products! I see a lot more manis with Cult Nails in my future :)