Cloudy With A Chance of Spam: Some (okay, a lot of) Recent NOTD's. Also, I'm Sorry I Suck So Much.

Hai!  Yeah, so I've been really really inexcusably horrible at posting lately.  I'm lucky any of you follow me at all :p  But I'm glad you do!  If not, I'd be all alone in cyberspace, talking about polish to no one  :p

Anyway...  what's new with you lately?  Any good new acquisitions?  I've been slowly growing my stash (not 'stache, stash.  heh.)  and swapping like mad.... none of which I have received my end of, yet  :(  Oh, wait, I did receive one... Milani Cyberspace!  Thanks akk23!  :)

Right.  So now I'm going to share with you now a whole shiz-ton of NOTD's that I've been building up.... I mean to post these every day, but I am too lazy.  Or stupid, maybe its stupid.  Yeah....

Here they are, in chronological order.  Are you ready?  Get comfortable - there's a lot!

Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau, from the Pardon My French collection.  Pardon the cut on my pinkie - paper cut  :(  This is a gorgeous powder-blue creme.  This is definitely the lightest blue creme I own.  It's lighter than CC Blue Light.  I love it.

And this is after I topped it with China Glaze Glacier.  Very wintery and crystal-ly-looking.  Maybe I shoulda done Snow Globe instead of Glacier....

....Okay, can I just say, WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL MY LIFE NFU-OH FLAKIES???  Oh mah GAWW!!!  I have never seen such fabulousness!  I know I'm really late to the party on these, and you're all like, Yeah?  And?  because these've been seen on every other blog already, but I can't get over 'em.  I almost never want to wear another polish again!  Just give me all flakies, all the time!  ....Okay, maybe not, but still, just look at it!  This is Nfu-Oh 44 overtop of... who cares  :p  I'm going to do a seperate post on my Nfu-Oh flakies.  I mean it this time! 
  (....okay fine, it's overtop of L'Oreal Resist & Shine 734, 735 and 736.  No, they have no names.  One's black with gold shimmer, one's black-blue and one's blackened red.  I was swatching them, and wanted to see how the flakies looked over all three.  There.  Happy?)

This is Essie Lilacism.  With some Konad experimentation on the ring finger.  I'm still getting the hang of Konad - I suck at the full-nail designs, but I like the way the small designs look as accents.  Lilacism is, duh, a light lavender creme.  I love Essie polishes - they wear and apply like a dream  :)  Now if they would just stop discontinuing all the good colours.  This was pretty, though - I got lots of compliments when I wore this.  Oh, blah, and for those who care, it was the flowers from plate m57 and I used Essie Watermelon, China Glaze DV8 and an old L'Oreal Steel Coloure in French Tip White for the flowers.  I knew no one cared. 

This is OPI Jade Is The New Black.  Medium dusty-looking green creme (by dusty I mean not really bright).  Yes, it took me this long to try it.  It just didn't really wow me in the bottle, and that's why I put it off so long, but once I got it on my nails I loved it, just like everyone else.  I think this was my St. Patty's day mani.

This is Claire's Mood Polish in Calm/Wild.  I know everyone's heard about these by now, and I was gonna do a seperate post on these as well, but here's one anyway.  This is a glass-flecked mauvey purple that changes to a light pink when your hands are warm.  It goes without saying that these polishes are TOTALLY EFFIN' AWESEOME and you should go get a couple as soon as you can!  You want a polish that's not boring?  How about looking down at your hands every few minutes and seeing a different polish?  Sometimes a two-toned effect?  SOOO cool!  :)

Next we have the aforementioned Milani Cyberspace, which is a light blue holo.  What can I say?  It's a holo  :)  Wearing this was enough to make me want all the rest of the Milani holos.  The glitter is larger in this than the China Glaze OMG holos - more along the lines of the Kaleidoscope collection.

Next up, Zoya Bijou.  A bright pink glass fleck jelly :)  I love jellies.  They remind me of candy and jelly sandals and stained glass and summertime.  Yes this one is a bit sheer, what with the VNL and all, but you'll forgive it - it's a jelly  :)

Hang on, I gotta stretch.  And maybe get myself a snack.  This is a long-azz post.

Okay.  Are we back?  Phew.  Moving on...

This is OPI Manicurist Of Seville.  Dark wine creme.  This looks very similar in the bottle to OPI Miami Beet - however, I don't know about how they look on the nail, cuz I haven't tried MB yet  :s  I was just craving a colour like this cuz I saw a girl at the salon wearing something similar.  The colour is truer in the first pic.

I loved this so much I left it on for a day and a half.  Then I wanted a change, but I didn't really have time to do a whole removal and new colour, so I looked for something to layer overtop.  I almost went with ChG Rainbow, but then at the last second I grabbed OPI Significant Other Color:

BAM!  Oh man, so, so cool.  The SA at Trade Secret gasped and asked what polish it was.  I told her the combo, and she was like, "I've never seen a polish like that before!"  Me neither.  It reminds me of a beetle wing.  It flashes green:

Pink:

And gold:

If you don't already own Significant Other Color, I suggest you go pick one up.  Like now.  I heard it also looks divine over ChG Re-Fresh Mint...

Ooooh, more flakies.... drooooool... I was going flakie-crazy this one evening, so I decided to see what flakies look like layered over each other.  This is Nfu-Oh's 51 and 52 over L'Oreal Resist & Shine 736.  I didn't really like the end result.  Sure, it looks all cool and everything in this pic, all well-lit and close-up, but on the nail, it just looked like a big ol' flakie mess:

See?  I was underwhelmed by it.  It just looked too.... I dunno.  Murked out.  I couldn't see the flakies enough for my preference.  Next time I wear 51 or 52 I'm going to wear them alone.

Oh, you want to see what L'Oreal 736 looks like on its own?

Looks nice here, but more than one coat and it just looks black in most lights.  Very opaque.  Which is actually kind of nice.

Please ignore the application on this one - this is after two (!) whole days of wear, and a lot of dish-washing  :p  Nicole by OPI Yellow It's Me, from the new spring Nicole line.  I've really been into yellows lately, although they probably look gross on me.  But I just try to look at the colour on my nail, and ignore the strange things happening to the colour of my hands all around it  :p  This is probably the most unique yellow I own.  It's got pink shimmer!  Look!

So pretty!  And unique!  You might have to click on the horrible pic to enlarge it to see all the awesome shimmer.  Nicole's have a nice formula.  This was only three coats, and the opacity wasn't too bad.  If someone tries this over a nude or white, I'd love to see a pic...

Almost last, we have China Glaze Peachy Keen.  With more amateur Konad.  Or, this is a Fauxnad plate, I think.  Anyway, I love this shade on me.  Essie Van D'Go is too pale, but this is nice and warm-toned.  Looked very spring-y.  I think peach polish can look old lady-ish if its not the right shade, but this was pretty.  I liked the way it looked with a grey shirt.

See?  Also note Sid sleeping in the bottom corner.  Picture jacker  :p

Okay, and last, finally, what I'm wearing right now:

OPI DS Mystery!  This is so gorg.  Sorry about the mess, too- this is pre-cleanup.  I love vampy polishes, but I can't stand the way they look if my nails are even slightly too long.  Hence, I had to file my nails down after I took off Peachy Keen before I could put on this, but man, it was worth it.  This is a deep deep sparkly purple with gold and purple glitter - it's like the way a night sky would look if it were purple.  It's very pretty.  I haven't met an OPI DS I didn't like, although some are way nicer than others.  This is one of the nicer ones.  I have so many I haven't tried - DS Glow, Illuminate, Extravagence, Reflection and Sapphire.  Which one should I try next?  I have Glamour on the way from a swap too - squee!

Okay, I gotta go now.  That was spam-tastic.  Even though my pictures suck.  Hope you enjoyed!  I'll post again soon this time, I promise.

A Giant Hot Mess Of A Post

Yeah, this is going to be a subpar post.  Why?  Cuz its late, and my brain no work.  Yes, its going to be sloppy.  Look away.  Now.

Or don't.  You might miss something cute.

So I've been busy lately and not posting as much as I wanna.  It kind of sucks, but let's not talk about that.  Let's talk about the good stuff.

I've been hauling lately, as usual.  I'm beginning to think its almost like I need a fix every once in a while.  And sometimes I just see things and they HAUNT my MIND till I go back and get them  :p  I'm acutally gonna do a whole separate post on Stuff I've Hauled Lately.  And I know I've said I'm going to do a post about a lot of things, but I mean this one.  Really, I do.

So, this is what I've been doing lately, nail-polish wise.  In no particular order:

GOSH polishes in Metallic Green and Golden Dragon.  I dunno about these GOSH polishes, if they're actually any good or what, but there's a bunch that I really like, and they seem ok so far.  These are two I like.  And they're green.  Cuz it's March.  Yeah.  You can pick these up at Shopper's Drug Mart if you're in Canada - they seem to be available exclusively there. 

This is GOSH Metallic Green.  I know, creative name huh?  This is a light, pretty, yellow-based metallic green that is nothing like China Glaze Cherish, like I thought maybe it was.  But what do I know?  It's a bit brushstroke-y, as is to be expected with metallics, and it seems highly konadable...

And this is Golden Dragon.  It's much deeper and more olive in real life, less blue-based, and the gold shimmer is much more obvious.  This is along the lines of Sally Hansen Project Runway but the shimmer is finer and seems to have glass flecks in it too, maybe?

What else do I have...  oh yes, how about my Fail Of The Day?

This is Sephora by OPI Fancy Schmancy.  Excuse the wear and peelage - I had just finished doing dishes and just wanted a quick pic before changing it...  Gotta say, I'm disappointed in this one.  It looked soooo much cooler in the bottle than on my nail.  In the bottle it was a nice, shimmery, glass-flecked silvery blue.  On my nail, it was just so blah.  I dunno, I guess I was hoping for more shimmer?  More silver?  More blue?  The colour didn't really come across on my nails.  I don't know, but I do know I often get this result with $OPI polishes... I like them, and I always feel compelled to buy them, but so, so often, once they're on my nails I'm just like, Meh... I feel like putting something else on.  Are they worth the $12? Well.....  There are a couple that are really nice, like I'm With Brad, but I haven't found one I'm absolutely in love with, yet....

Okay, what else...  okay, how about some brightness?

Color Club Psychedelic Scene.  aka Explosive.  Color Club likes to repackage and rename their polishes and pretend like they're new colours or something.  Which is lame, and kind of annoys me  :p  This colour reminds me of Cheetos.  Yes it does.

Um, what else....  OH!  OH!  OMG you guys!  Wanna see what I got today??  :)

LOOKIT!

My boyfriend got me this  :)  Ignore the mess that is my room.  It's one of those spinning displays for paperback novels.  It works awesome for nail polish!  :)  My bf knows how much I like having all my polishes out and on display  :)  So between this, my Helmer and Melmer, I think I'll have space for a while.  <---- she said naively.  Still, SO COOL!  :D

And finally, I bring to you another installment of Lex Doesn't Know When To Stop:

Oh GOD.  Your eyes!  Look away!

Meet my hideous mani of the moment.  I started with a base of Color Club Puccilicious, which by itself is a deliciously cool neon blueish purple creme.  I thought it looked so pretty, but then I had bottles of both Peppermint Twist (a very cool blue-pink neon creme, almost leaning towards lavender) and Jackie Oh! (a superbright neon fucshia that's wanting to appear reddish in this pic for some reason).  I was like, oh, I want to wear all three of these colours together, it would look so pretty... and what did I end up with?  Nails that scream Walmart Press-Ons.  That were painted by a blind five-year-old. Um yeah FAILURE.

Okay, well, I'm going to leave you for now with one last pic of my Colgate nails.  Just because I think this polish is just so darn pretty.

And I will be back later with a roundup of my latest hauls.  :)  I also still have a bunch of stuff coming in the mail, that I'm obsessing over every morning when I wake up.  :p  Konad and Nfu Oh's, Zoyas, a Milani holo, and more Zoyas  :)  I hate waiting.  :p  See you in a bit  :)

Quick NOTD: China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint

Sorry I haven't posted lately, again. I've been busy with boring, non-nail-polish-related things. I'm posting this from another computer, so I'm gonna be quick (also, I'm watching the hockey game right now... okay, mostly cuz I'm watching the hockey game right now :p), but I do have some things coming up I want to tell you about. I still have a bunch of Zoya polishes on the way :), so I'm looking forward to getting those any day now, plus I'm getting a konad (oh no! you're gonna be subjected to amateur konad experiments! aaah! I'll try to spare you... I think a lot of konad designs are kind of tacky... then again, sometimes my artistic side takes over and I lose concept of good taste - see this, this, and this :p) AND I got an Nfu Oh hookup! Plus a couple dollar store finds.  Oooh, so much to tell you, so much!.... :)

Anyway, here's my NOTD:

China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint. This is gorgeous, IMO. I loooove mint greens.  My boyfriend, however, said that I had "Colgate nails", but we don't care, do we? :p  Bah.  What do boys know about colour, anyway?  Loooove mint greens.  And I didn't really know of too many before last year.  Thank you, Chanel Jade - now there's only about a billion.  A lot of which I own.  I'm going to do a whole post on just the mint greens I own, I think... 'tis the month for green, after all  :)

Where was I...  Oh yes, Re-Fresh Mint.  From the Up & Away collection, which you probably already know.  This is nice and dense and opaque, too. If my application was better, this could have been a one-coater, almost. That said, as with all opaque pastels, I found it slightly tricky to apply, as it was a bit thick and had a tendency to streak.  A second coat took care of all my mistakes, and, really, it wasn't all that bad.  I'm probably making it sound worse than it was.  I was probably spoiled by NARS Purple Rain's application, which I'd been wearing for about three days before that cuz I just couldn't bear to take it off :p but I'll get to that later.

I'll post as soon as I get home ;o)