Some More Swatches, Part 2

Hello.  I'm back.  I said I'd keep posting, and I still have more backlogged NsOTD to show you, so here's the rest of the more recent ones.

These don't really have a theme...

First, this is GOSH Gasoline....

It took a few coats to be opaque - it was quite sheer.  The finish kind of reminds me of a purple version of the new SH HD polishes... very sparkly and with a strong blue flash.

It was pretty on it's own, but I wanted to try out my new Chanel Illusion D'Or:

I thought this combo wasn't bad.  I wanted the blue glitter flakes in the ID'O to pick up more in the polish, and I thought the blue flash would help, but the Chanel glitter is so dense it kind of blocked out the effect.

I should have used Purple Heart under it, in retrospect.... I will try that soon.  And I need to try it over black!

Next, this is some konadery:

This is Fingerpaints Easel Come, Easel Go stamped with SH Insta-Dri Blazing Blue and a BundleMonster plate ( I can't recall which ATM... the one with the diagonal stripes).  ECEG is probably my favorite silver that I own - so shiny and foil-like. 

I quite liked the way this looked.  The BM plates are so narrow, though - I don't even have very wide nails, and I found it quite difficult to get the pattern evenly covering the nail.  Which is why I attempted to freehand some of the edges with the SH polish.  I apologize - I knew it'd probably look horrible in pics, but no one would notice in IRL...

See?  You can't really tell.  I got tons of compliments on this.

Yeah, I liked it.

Anyway, here's a crappy indoor pic of Del Sol Ruby Slippers:

I know, I suck so bad for not getting a pic of it in the sunlight.  This was the day my camera died.  It was so bright and sunny and hot that day, I decided to try this and WOW! These are so awesome! It turned to a deep, glittery fuschia pink in direct sunlight,  in the shade it was a lighter sparkly pink, and indoors here, it was a silvery white glitter.  It was gorgeous!  And I loved watching it change colour if I held my hand out.  I wish I had more of these polishes, but my drugstore has such a limited range of colours (only five!) and they're $11 each!  They have a blue and a deep pink one that sort of catch my eye, but I dunno... I can actually see why these are worth the price, though (unlike, say, $OPI) - they're so so so cool!  Once again, I know I sound like a moron because I didn't get a pic of the coolness... sigh...

These were taken with my BF's camera:

ILLAMASQUA RAMPAGE!!! glaaaaaaaahrrrrrrrr........ (<----- that's the sound of drooling).

Dark forest green jelly.  An opaque jelly, if that's possible.  It goes without saying this is bloody effing spectacular.  I'm so impressed by it.  If all Illamasquas apply like this, I want all Illamasquas.  So perfect, smooth and glossy and easy to build.

This is two coats without topcoat, because I was planning....

... to top it with Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure!!!  :D :D (*even more drool*).

God I love HT!  I plan to use it over every polish I wear until I absolutely can't stand looking at it anymore! :D  Which will be a while.  I'll only post it if it looks cool/unique.

I don't think I've ever seen this particular combo before, and it was suggested to me when I was on the Nail Board bragging about my new pretties, so I took their sage advice :)

Alright, that's it for now :)  I'll be back soon with my haul post.

Summery NsOTD That I Took Before My Camera Died - Because I Need To Post Something :S Part One: Pinks, Corals and Konad

I feel bad about not putting anything up for the past little while, although I know no one's exactly all broken up about it but me.... but what the hell - this is supposed to be at least an excuse for a blog, so I'll act like a blogger and post already.

Hmmm.... more like act like a Blogger and STOP WORKING already..... why can't I upload some of my pics?!?!  Okay, it seems to only want to let me upload a certain amount right now and the rest are all just little annoying red x's, so looks like this post is going to be broken up into bits again.  I'm destructive like that.  Also, I have nothing to do today  :p  Literally. 

So I shall start off with something simple...

This is Maybelline Coral Cabana, from the Salsa Sun collection.  Pretty standard coral creme.  I was looking for a dupe to MAC Scorcher, since I don't wanna pay so much for a colour that doesn't seem all that unique... 

Needless to say, this was not it.  Not even remotely close.  I don't think I left this on for very long...

This is a Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Mango Motion.  It's a salmon pink creme.  I like these Insta-Dris a lot more than most people, I think - I LOVE the opaqueness of the cremes, and the formula does dry super-quick on most of them.  It's the wide, flat brush that people hate the most (along with the flat, rectangular brush handle that's hard to wipe off and always seems to have globs of polish dripping down it - yeah, it's kind of annoying...), but I can deal with it.  That said, I didn't really care for this particular colour on me at all.  I'll probably reserve it for konading.  It's from what I believe is the newest collection of Insta-Dris - all pastel cremes.  I'll take a pic of the ones I have from it - I say I believe it's the newest collection because, well, I'm in Canada, and our new is everyone else's six months ago  :p

Next, this is CM Hot Spring:

I looooved this one, about a thousand times more than I thought I would.  It was only about a dollar, too :)  Yay frugality!  Indoor pic:

It's a bright pink shimmer with a gold flash.  I HATE pink shimmers, unless it's something pretty like CC Electro Candy.  This definitely qualifies as pretty.  It comes out looking much more peachy on the nails than in the bottle...

Here's the bottle:

Sid, admiring it through the window:

Oh, the poor, opressed life of a spoiled indoor kitteh...  :p

But yes - I really like CM Hot Spring.  I thought it looked pretty good on me :)  And you can't beat that price.

Last (for right now) I have some nail art fun!  I was bored one afternoon, and decided to play around with striping different colours on as a base and then stamping overtop...  You might have seen this type of look lately on sayanythingbr00ke's channel on Youtube, xsparkage's website, and about a billion other places, cuz, well, it looks so freakin cool and is relatively easy to do.  That said, I didn't copy the design exactly, more like did my own, not-as-cool interpretation of it, and my skills are nowhere near as good as either of theirs... that's why they are Youtube nail queens and I sit here blogging away in obscurity, lol.  I also saw a look like this on the nail board done with holos and the BM leaf pattern in black... the possibilities are endless.

Anyway, I got lots of compliments on this look :)  One girl at the checkout at Superstore was like, "Whoa! Your nails!"  I had already complimented her on the shiny blurple polish she was wearing (Joe Grape, she informed me, pointing to the cosmetics section :)

Left hand:

Right hand:

I used konad plate m64, and Color Club Where's The Soiree? to stamp.  For the base I used a whole whack of Color Club neons (and one Misa).

Here's the base, left hand:

Let's see if I can remember what colours I used here: Color Club Lazer Pink, Chelsea Girl, Misa A Sunny Smile Makes Me Go Wild, CC Warhol, Blue Light, Limelight, Rebel Debutante, Wham! Pow! and Puccilicious

Right hand:

I think I used all the same colours on both hands.  And as you can see, I wasn't going for a solid stripe pattern... more like random swipes of colour wherever I felt like it or could fit it.  More so on my left hand, though... with the right I was just trying to get each nail colorful without screwing it up, although the base doesn't have to be perfect at all...  This took forever, btw, and a lot more patience than I knew I had...  but the end result definitely got noticed!  I will probably be playing around with this look a lot more this summer, and I'll probably end up copying the actual "Lisa Frank" look that the Youtubers came up with above.... it's like an easy way to almost get that colourful, rainbowy marbled look without having to actually do a water marble.  Which I'm still gonna try one of these days soon... 

Okay, that's all blogger will let me do for now  :p  I'll be back later with more, though, including my haul from last week :)

UPDATE: Why I haven't been posting...

Hi everyone.  I'm still alive.  I just wanted to let everyone know that I haven't been posting due to the fact I've been pretty consistently sick over the past two weeks, as I mentioned in my last couple of posts, and my camera finally died altogether :( 

However, I'm feeling sort of better, I have soooo much awesome haul that I'm SO EXCITED about, and it's my birthday on Thursday!  Traditionally, I hate my birthday, and I like to sleep through it if I can, but this year I'm sort of excited for one, shallow reason - my BF is getting me a new camera :)  At least I hope he is, since I asked him for one...  YAY!  So maybe my pics will not suck so much anymore! :)

Yeah, this past week or two I have acquired two Illamasquas, two Chanel polishes, Sally Hansen HT, and a whole buncha other good stuff too! :D :D :D  This has helped my healing process considerably  :)  J/k.  Kind of.

So, hopefully I will be back next Thursday!  I wish I could take a pic of my new camera, but that's going to be just a tad impossible  :P

Quick HAUL from today!!

Just wanted to put this up there so I don't create a huge backlog of haul posts again.  Which, don't get me wrong, is fun and does give me a little jolt of glee to go through, but isn't really the best format as far as clarity and organization goes.  Ha! *snort*  If you've read more than one post of this blog, I'm sure you're surprised to find that both those words are even in my vocabulary :p  

I'm still really sick by the way, but I had to go to the mall today to go see a doctor, and I felt well enough for about an hour to comb through the mall a bit.  This is a really really crappy pic, since I'm in bed and can't move about to get proper pics (not to mention it's like 4 am :s) but here's what I got at the mall today.  I know you can't see anything, and I'll post proper pics later, but I'll describe it all to you.

A whole whack of stuff.  :) 

Top row:

•  Revlon Cotton Candy and Bubble Gum (for a swap)
• Some new kind of Voluminous mascara that I convinced myself to try (all I ever use is regular waterproof Voluminous, ever since I was 13 - it's my HG)
• Sally Hansen Instant Cuticle Remover, since Sally's is so far away and I can't get out there to get some Blue Cross.  I know you're all sick of seeing my disgusting ragged cuticles.  I plan on really trying to improve my pics.

Middle row:

• Cover Girl City Lights (for frankening, I think - this is so similar to Fairy Dust.  People say they're different enough to own both, but I don't know if i agree...)
• Sephora by OPI Sparkle Me Silver glitter topcoat.  I went into Sephora on a whim, and saw a whole "Nails" setup and display, where they were obviously doing a promo for their polishes earlier (which I missed - boo!  I have no idea what it actually was...), and what immediately caught my eye was an empty display stand labeled "Glitter topcoats".  there were five or so empty slots.  I got excited and went to the $OPI display stand, and saw they had the Sparkle Me Silver and Gold For Me topcoats!  Well, they didn't have any more Gold For Me left, but the tester looked strange - just like ChG Treasure Chest, except with Solar Flare-size hex glitter, and the gold is more beigey than TC.  It didn't immediately call to me, but if I see it next time I'm there I'm grabbing it.  Anyway, Sparkle Me Silver is medium-sized bar glitter in a clear base.  The bar glitter is larger than the AliSha one I got from the Dollar Giant, which is the closest polish I have to this... I know not everyone loves bar glitter, but I do. 
• The L'Oreal "North Fork" collection dupes!!  YAAAAAY!  I have been looking for these for a while!  I can't find the Essie North Fork collection anywhere, and these three are supposed exact dupes.  Which makes sense since Essie IS L'Oreal now.  This is Water's Edge, Ocean Breeze and High Tide, aka Greenport, Shelter Island, and Sag Harbour.  I'm wearing High Tide right now (and got Blondie stuck in my head, inevitably), and it's so gorgeous... if I owned the Essie it would instantly be one of my favorite Essies.  I'll still proabably pick up the Essies if I ever see them.  Yes, I'm stupid  :p  I hope these wear as well as Essies do... we shall see.
• Two from the Maybelline Salsa Sun collection - which we just got in now.  Pathetic, no?  The only two I picked up were Coral Cabana and Summer Splash.  I'm really drawn to bright corals lately (even though I haven't worn my RBL Coral yet *hides*), and Summer Splash was a no-brainer... although it is reminding me of both OPI Ogre-The-Top Blue and ChG Shower Together/Aqua Baby.  Must go check bottles....

And the bottom row:

• I went crazy with the Wet N Wild Craze polishes!  These are from the new summer collection - the one with the picture of the brightly coloured Skittle-looking candy on it :)  I was so excited to find these - I got every one in the display.  The two at the far left are two Nocturnals I plan to use for frankening (copying someone's Chanel Ciel De Nuit recipe - hells yes! wish me luck!  I still need to find a couple more of the polishes she used...) but then after that are the new ones.  L-R: Bora Bora (pink flakey shimmer), Cabana (orange shimmer w/ red and gold microglitter), Cozumel (sunny yellow flakey shimmer), Kauai (sky blue flakey shimmer - almost foil-looking...), Maui (bright blue creme), Aruba (medium pinky-purple creme - like $OPI Domestic Goddess?) and Barbados (purple flakey shimmer, with the same almost-foil finish as Kauai).  These are minis, too - the Nocturnals and the regular Craze line are all 10 mL, while these are 6.5 mL.  I know they're cheap, but that's pretty small...  I really don't care though.  I love these fun summer polishes.  I can't wait to swatch and review them all, since the best kind of lemmings are easily fulfilled, 99-cent lemmings  :)

I'll post later with pics of L'Oreal High Tide, and about my previous haul :)

American Apparel Maibu Green and L'Esprit

Hello.  Yeah, I'm still sick.  I was really sick this morning, but now I'm at least sitting up in bed instead of writhing in pain  :(  Once again, though, groggy from medication, so I'll make this as brief as I can.

Right, so last week I went downtown (had an interview with a new agency), and I took the oppurtunity to stop by a couple places I had scouted out for nps.  I'll go into more detail later when I finally post that haul post, but long story short - not only did I find the Del Sol polishes I almost ordered online for a ridiculous shipping price, but I finally picked up my first American Apparel polishes!

Aren't they prettttty?  Look how nicely they line up!  I'm going to talk about these again later, but two of the ones I wanted were sold out (Office and some coral one the salesgirl was describing... yes, Office. Yes, I know I need another mint green like Heidi Montag needs more surgery - get off my case :p) so these are what I picked up.  L-R: Summer Peach, Butter, Malibu Green, Hunter, Mount Royal, and L'Esprit.  I was gonna get Peacock too, but passed for now... and can I just say how nice it is to get 3/$18 and not have to pay the stupid shipping fee?!?  Sooo glad I was able to buy these at the B&M store!

So the first one I wore was L'Esprit, because I had heard that it was different from all the other bazillion light lavender cremes out there.  And it really is - it pulls WAY more blue than any other lavender creme I own (including Essie Lilacism, which is very blue), so much so that this is almost periwinkle.  It's not, it is lavender, but leaning towards periwinkle.  I love it.  It's so pretty.  I think this may surpass OPI Rumple's Wiggin for my favorite light lavender creme.  Of which I own many.  I just might have as many pale lavender cremes as I do mint greens.  I'll have to do a post soon comparing them all....

This is after I got bored and started playing around with some of the Claire's glitters I bought.  This was two days of wear (unusual for me, but I was sick) so please excuse the chips.  For the ring finger, I did one stripe each of Claire's Twinkle Twinkle, Diva and Glam, and then stamped a BM plate over it.  I don't remember which plate... I know there are two vine designs on the BM plates, and they're almost identical... yeah, I suck.  Sorry.

I thought it came out okay, but I didn't want to ruin the loveliness of L'Esprit by stamping over all my nails.  But for those of you who haven't tried it - try splotching on or striping different colours as a base, then stamping over it with a full-nail design in black.  It looks so cool....  a couple of the ladies on the NB did it with the BM leaves pattern, and it inspired me...

The only other one I've worn so far is Malibu Green.  This is gorgeous, and I was actually able to get the colour to show up somewhat accurately...  This is a rich, medium blue-based green creme.  Almost like a turquoise, but not quite blue enough.  Actually, you know what I think is a perfect description for this colour?

It's totally Gumby green  :)

I love this one as well.  So bright, it just pops on your nails.  Bet it would look awesome on toes.  And it didn't stain my hands or nails at all  :)

Outdoor pic.  Luuuuurve.  Looks a teeny bit more blue here than IRL.  And I actually managed to not fug it up with a konad!  Yay, I can wear a shiny creme and not konad over it!  I've progressed! :D

I'm really impressed with AA polishes so far.  Opaque, smooth... and possibly my favorite bottle of all time.  I can't wait to try my other ones!  I'm gonna have to file my nails off first though, cuz I really don't like the look of dark colours like Hunter or Mount Royal on my long nails.  They'd look so much better on my usual shawties.  But I'm kind of liking having nails for once.  I'm trying to see how long I can grow them before they start ripping off... so I'm unwilling to sacrifice them on new polishes at the moment.  Plus I want to try some pretty konad patterned french tips...

Okay, cutting myself off again.  Be back later with more random manis and that haul post I keep mentioning.

Spam. Because I'm Sick and Can't Be Bothered.

Ugh.  Hi everyone.  I'm very sick, and I've been sick for the past few days.  It sucks.  I feel very out-of-it and like I have no energy.  Which sucks cuz I've agreed to do a bunch of CPs for people and I haven't been feeling well enough to get out to the beauty supply place to do so.  :(  Boo.

So since I have no energy or imagination right now, I'm just going to show you some random NsOTD from the past week or two.  I know, I said I wasn't going to do this anymore, but I really don't care right now.  Deal with it  :p  Okay, sorry, that was bitchy.... did I mention I've barely been able to eat?  :(

Alright, forward ho! (heh)

First off, this was my "dare" mani from the MUA nail board.  My dare was "heavy metal".  Yes, I know this isn't the most imaginative interpretation, but I thought it looked "heavy metal".  Kind of.  This was OPI Suzi Skis In The Pyranees Suede, with China Glaze Millenium and 2030 for the chains.  I didn't use a topcoat.  Which is why this was starting to chip already by the time I took this pic  :p

Next, this is the beautiful, wonderful, gorgeous OPI Catch Me In Your Net (cough *Zoya Charla* cough).  I have the Zoya coming to me from the polish exchange, but I'm impatient, so when I saw the OPI Summer Flutter polishes at my beauty supply place I got all four, even though I knew this was a Charla dupe.  This polish is freakin' gorgeous.  Shimmery teal with blue and gold and green reflects.  So sparkly.  So mermaid-y.  Begs to be on your toes.  AAahhh!  But of course I'm never satifsied...

So an FKA it is!  I actually don't think this is that bad of a fail.  I actually kind of liked it.  Even though I smudged it a bit, cuz I suck.

This is OPI Fireflies.  Sorry for these pics - this polish bubbled on me and took a billion coats to show up as much as I'd like, so of course I smudged it.  I really wanted to show you a pic of it though, even though I probably shouldn't even be posting these cuz they're so horrible.  I apologize.  I fail at life.  I'm sorry.  This polish really is pretty, though - a pearly white-gold that flashes a very noticeable green.  The first pic is indoor, the second outdoor.  I found this at a dusty - a rare score for me :)  I never have any luck with dusties, until last week it seems...

This is the gorgeous OPI You Don't Know Jacques.  I think this is my favorite work-appropriate polish ever.  So chic and shiny.  But, you know me...

Yup, more konad.  I don't mind the way this one turned out, either - other than the fact that it's not straight and some parts of the pattern didn't transfer properly...  For me though, it's pretty good!  I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Blue Blast - I think this is a newer Insta-Dri.  It was in a display with a bunch of newer-looking ones that I'll show you in that haul post I've been meaning to put up...  Anyway, these Insta-Dris work AWESOME for konad - that's pretty much why I picked them up, cuz I can always use some pastels that'll work for konad :)

Next, this is Rescue Beauty Lounge Starfish Patrick - I lucked out and received my first three RBLs in a swap!  :)  I got this, Om and Coral.  Everyone always raves about RBL polishes and how well they apply, but to be honest, after I applied this I didn't see what all the fuss was about.  This was three coats.  Sure, it's nice and all, and I know it's a jelly, but even still, it was a bit too sheer. I dunno.  I thought I was in the mood for a nice shiny squishy peach jelly, but I grew bored with it really quickly.

I tried to jazz it up with two coats of China Glaze Golden Enchantment, and then thought I'd try out my China Glaze Solar Flare.  Well, as you can see, I painted one finger and then almost hurled.  Doesn't it look gross?!  ChG Solar Flare is a tricky polish - I think over the right polish it could be really cool, but wtf was I thinking layering it over this....  Golden Enchantment, on the other hand, was quite pretty - a gold holo glitter.  Fairy Dust's gold, less-dense sister.

And last, but not least, this is my first-ever attempt at a gradient mani.  I used NYX Voodoo as the base colour, then two of the Color Club Japanese glitters as the progressive colours - Sakura Glow in the middle and Firelight on the tips.  I didn't sponge or anything fancy like that (mainly because I have no idea how to do a sponge gradient - I've never looked up how :p), just applied the NYX and then brushed the other two on from the tips down, trying to thin out the colour as I got closer to the cuticle. 

Outdoor shot.  Try to ignore my blurry thumb.  I don't think it turned out that bad at all.  But then once again, of course, my eyes turned to my konad plates...

And this is what I ended up with.  Cute?  Ugly?  I'm undecided.  My boyfriend thought it looked stupid, but we all know how much his opinion counts when it comes to polish :p  I didn't end up wearing this for very long, though, so maybe his opinion affected me more than I thought...

I think it would've looked cuter with smaller flowers, but I couldn't find a plate that had them...  This is very girly, very feminine, and I usually don't do girly, feminine looks.  Maybe that's why my bf thought it looked stupid.  I'd like to do girly nails like this more often, though - it's super-cute and pretty.  It would probably look better if I'd done a sheer gradient using jellies or cremes rather than glitter polishes, but whatever, it was my first attempt.

And that's all I'm going to post for now.  I feel like I sound weird cuz I'm so groggy from meds still, and I don't want to read this later and think what a crackhead I sound like, so I'm gonna cut myself off right now  :p  I do have more to post, though - some swap haul (including the RBLs), a small haul I made downtown last week (including my first Del Sol and American Apparel polishes! yay!) and more swatches.  See you soon!