Lately I'm Obsessed With...

Ozotic 507 - The Closest To Peridot We'll Probably Ever Come...

2012-02-07T12:56:00.001-08:00

I apologize for the severely declined quality in both my posts and photos... I'm just kind of chucking whatever up here just to have some content. And all on my phone. Yeah. I know... Who blogs from their phone right??? Do they have a Shittiest Nail Blogs On The Web award? Someone send me the button o__O

Anyway, I hauled a small haul from Harlow & Co. recently (if you wanna see it, lemme know...), and it included three Ozotics, one of which was this. And while this is beautiful and gorgeous and stunning and all that... It just looks so damn similar to Chanel Peridot. With a less-strong duo chrome effect (which I mean, who wants that?? More, MOAR duochrome! Never less!!). And since I not only own Peridot but had to jump through hoops to get it, I don't want to wear anything that's like a watered-down version of it...

I'm making this polish out to sound not-that-great. Don't get me wrong. It's definitely great, especially if you don't own Chanel Peridot. If you missed Peridot, like the title says, this is The Closest You Will Ever Come. It's a gorgeous green-gold shimmer that flashes teal at angles, and it looks unbelievable in the bottle. I'm just kind of upset that i paid almost $20 (yeah, these Ozotics aren't cheap. It's the crushed fairies and unicorn DNA in the ingredients... jacks the price up, dontcha know...) for something I have a dupe of >___<. And what's worse, I have yet ANOTHER polish that looks similar to these two that I got from Harlow & Co as well (Model's Own Golden Green). I'll have to try that as well. I actually have the whole Beetle Juice collection to go through, so expect to see some of those, as well as my other goodies from H&C.

Alright, that's it for now. The other really annoying thing about these Ozotics is: although 3 different websites sell them now, their shipping is GAH! and none of the sites ever have all the polishes you want in stock at the same time xp

My Superbowl-Themed Nails

2012-02-06T17:00:00.001-08:00

I don't like the Giants and I don't like the Patriots. But both teams have the same colours - red, blue and white - so I couldn't miss either way :). I don't even really like football, tbh - I like it more than baseball, which isn't saying much - but the game turned out to be way more exciting than I anticipated. I actually watched it. Now that's saying something :p

Sorry I haven't posted in forever. I'm aware of how lame this is. My computer still is having problems though and, well, YOU try blogging from your phone. It doesn't work very well. I'm using the Blogger app right now, because the BlogPress app - that I paid for :( - isn't letting me publish anything. It says "it seems like your network is not ready for posting.". Wtf. Why the hell not?

I hate this Blogger app. It sucks. I can't even post a picture in the middle of my post - it appears at the end. How shite is that?!? Truthfully I don't even know if this will publish. But you c here for nails, not bitching and moaning, so here it is.

The red nail is Zoya Sooki topped with OPI Crown Me Already. The blue is Essie Mesmerize topped with the same OPI, and the white nails are Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Whirlwind White topped with LA Girls Glitter Addict Animate and Jostle.

Hope you had a happy Superbowl weekend!

Kleancolor City Never Sleeps... And A Small Haul

2011-11-20T13:08:00.001-08:00

Okay, real quick, because I'm in the middle of playing Final Fantasy VIII and I have a town to explore (go ahead, judge...) - this is Kleancolor City Never Sleeps, one of the Kleancolors I bought the other day...

Ain't she purty?

I like. I knew I would when I bought it. I've always loved multicolored glitters. You guys know that. I admit I was too scared to wear it on its own, though, so I snuck two coats of LA Colors Morning Glory underneath, which is a deep purple jelly with blue shimmer.

City Never Sleeps is small blue and medium sized copper, gold and fuschia hex glitter in a sheer purple jelly base. I only did two coats of it overtop of Morning Glory, and while I'm pretty confident you could get away with layering this to density, I was afraid to :p having never used it before...

My sister was next to me as I was applying it, and she said, quote:"what smells like burning plastic??" Yay, Kleancolor. But i so don't care. This one is gorgeous and I love it, the last one I wore I loved, and I can't wait to wear the rest of them. And they were so inexpensive!

This has already taken a lot longer than I intended. I mean like, a lot. I was literally just going to put the name of the polish and one photo, and that was it :p. (Yeah right...). But I really want show you some stuff I got the other day... These are gonna be the worst, most horrible crappy photos in the world, you guys...

Color Club Beyond The Mistletoe set! I got these at Winners, not the beauty supply, so they have the cheap caps and no labels. I can't even begin to tell you how much that bugs me... According to the box, this is (l-r): Beyond The Mistletoe, Holiday Splendor, Sugarplum Fairy, Gingerbread, Candy Cane, Jingle Jangle.. and a boring clear topcoat that I left out of the photo.

Color Club Backstage Pass set. L-R: Take The Stage (not to be confused with the more orangey-gold OPI Take The Stage), Wish Upon A Rock Star, Backstage Pass, Platinum Record, It's A Hit!, and Fame And Fortune. This was in a clearance section and two of them are normal and have labels, but I still don't really know why I bought this. Look how much bigger the normal lids look - can you tell which two have labels? I will probably never wear any of them except for Wish Upon A Rock Star..

China Glaze Lorelei's Tiara, Some Like It Haute, and Marry A Millionaire, from the Marilyn Monroe-inspired Eye Candy collection. Love these. Want the red one.

Orly Androgynie and Fowl Play. Although I already own two Merry Midnights, I currently cannot find either of them :(. Again, found these at Winner's for the inflated price of 7 bucks each :-/

Essie Absolutely Shore and Butter ~~Seattle~~London No More Waity, Katie. I feel the same way about NMWK as I do about Kate Middleton - I like it, but I feel I haven't really given it much of a chance yet. And AS I've just wanted and never been able to find elsewhere. I also put in an order for BL Wallis and Black Knight while I was there - "there" being Shifeon, in case anyone cares. If you live in Vancouver and you're a Robson St. regular, you've been here, and, well, you know how convincing their staff can be :p

Okay, that's it. Monsters and junction abilities are calling me. Again, make that face at me all you want, I don't care - I love Final Fantasy :p. I'd be all over a themed polish collection o' THAT :D

Location:A City That Does Sleep

Kleancolor Metallic Fuschia

2011-11-17T01:02:00.001-08:00

So, I know that last post is an eyesore. There really ain't much I can do about it until I get my laptop fixed. Which I can't do until I get money, which means dragging my miserable arse downtown to my agency and collecting my cheques. (No, I don't mean welfare... cheeky... :p). Which I can't do until Friday. So we're just gonna have to live with these grating, posting-from-my-iPhone spewings until then, okay? Fml.

Anyway, I wore one of the badly-photographed Kleancolors from the previous post today, Metallic Fuschia. Fuchsia. Fucshia. What-freakin-ever. Not even one of the more exciting ones, but I ended up quite pleasantly surprised!

And it looks nothing even remotely like fuschia here. It's very pretty and glowy and a lot more red-toned than it looks here. Very metallic-looking. It looks like purple cellophane Christmas wrapping. It's freakin gorgeous and I absolutely love it.

Also, Seche Vite completely changed the look of this polish, and for the better.

Before Seche Vite.

After Seche Vite. See how much more liquid and glowy it looks? I dunno why this stupid BlogPress app is turning my pic sideways, but I can't figure out how to correct it :(. Again, picture it much pinker and less blue than it is here. I know that's not helpful. But just trust me, this polish is gorgeous. It's another "purple-version-of-Frostbite" title contender, although TBH I think I even like it better than China Glaze Coconut Kiss, and maybe even Sinful Let's Talk, although this is a lot pinker. I still think it's too purple to be called fuschia though. But you need it. Get it. Especially if you're in the U.S, where Kleancolors can be had for around a dollar in many states. Even if you're in Canada, pretend I didn't just tell you that and shell out the four(!) dollars they're gouging us for these at Urban Planet and Stitches stores (and I think maybe some Garage stores as well...?). At least get this one. I can't wait to try Metallic Mango now. Did KC have a whole collection of these "metallic" ones like the Chunky Holos and the Neons? *off to google

P.S Where do I insert tags on this stupid app...? Anyone else use the BlogPress app?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Kleancolors

2011-11-15T14:07:00.001-08:00

I bought some polishes yesterday, for the first time in ages...

P.S - I'm trying out Blogger for iPhone. So far I think it SUCKS - can't post photos in between paragraphs!! So I guess the pics of my Kleancolors are all gonna be at the bottom of this post. Do not want. Don't download the free Blogger app, kids - I'm gonna see if I can avoid paying the three bucks for BlogPress and try to find a free alternative. Because while I will pay fifteen dollars for the right bottle of nail polish, I am exceedingly cheap in many other aspects of my life. Except for food and clothes :p. I invest in those.

Anyway, I got an assortment of them, as they were five for $10, and I don't have too many other than the Chubky Holos and a couple random neons...

Okay, yeah. This app sucks. I'll be back with a better one. Since I can't put this below the photo, the polishes are (L-R): Shooting Star, City Never Sleeps, My Valentine, Afternoon Picnic, Salsa Much, Metallic Mango, Metallic Fuchsia (how IS it that you spell fuchsia? I thought it was -cshia, but my iPhone insists its -chsia... Maybe it's. -schia? This is bothering me...), Military Green and Neon Fuschia. Spelled that way :p

I'll be back once I've downloaded a better blogging app :p

Oh and PS...

2011-11-14T14:32:00.001-08:00

Two things.

One, OMG I AM SO EXCITED FOR A FREAKING CHINA GLAZE HUNGER GAMES COLLECTION I COULD SH*T!!!!!! Yes I meant to yell that :p My favorite brand doing a collection based on a book I thoroughly enjoyed! Does it get any better?

All Laquered Up has a great preview post on it. I'd link to it but I don't think I can on this Blogger IPhone app thingy. What app do you all use to blog on your phone? What's the best free one? But yeah, I want every single one. The one that's inspired by her dress (sorry, forgot the name... Flaming Gems or something like that?) looks like its gonna be a CC Covered In Diamonds-like flaky!! :D. I love flakies.

And the second thing, which has nothing to do with anything, but if you feel like laughing at someone:

You can't really see my makeup too well here, but I thought I made a kickass Black Swan :) Whatever. Yes, this is amateur hour - I am not, not do I claim to be proficient at applying eye makeup. But it was still fun to do :). However, I am now stuck with five different brands and formulas of silver eyeliner, shadow, and pigment that I'm pretty sure I'll never use :p. Anyone want a HC Eye Def glitter shadow in Robot? :p

Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

This Blog Is Not Dead

2011-11-14T14:17:00.001-08:00

I just wanted to say really quickly - I know everyone must think I've died or lost my love for and interest in nail polish...

THAT IS SO NOT SO.

Honestly, you know what my problem has been? It's really pathetic - Picasa died on my PC. It just straight up will not work anymore. I can't open it, period. I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling - nothing. The program just WILL NOT run on my computer anymore :(. Which has entirely screwed my clueless noob ass, as it's the only free photo-editing software I'm aware of :(

So of anyone can recommend a free program that's easy to use and lets me edit photos, I might be able to start my blog up again...

But I don't want to - CAN'T - let it just die, so for anyone who's still around to read this - you're going to be subjected to iPhone NOTD's. Until I can think of something better. I have a HUGE backlog of photos, but they look like shit and I can't edit them :( So I'm just going to give a giant middle finger to quality photos and content, and just vomit up whatever polish pics I can. And I thoroughly apologize for it :(

OPI Rainbow Connection, overtop of Essie Power Clutch. I highly recommend RC over any dark grey - it allows all the different-coloured glitters to show up and really shine :)

OPI Excuse Moi! I was gonna pass on this one, until Scrangie said it was her favorite :p. far be it for me to ignore the wisdom of Scrange The Wise.

I have more. Wanna see moar? .........really?

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Late For Theme Week Part Two: My Misa Stash

2011-05-19T11:44:00.000-07:00

This is the last obnoxiously late Theme Week post I'm doing, I promise! The lameness will subside. Also I have to make this quick.... was up all night and now I'm falling asleep :S It's really not that long, though.... cuz my Misa stash isn't all that big :| But it's still really nice! (TWSS?)

I will say this about Misa - they are awesome and I love them and there's about a billion more I want, but they have some of the longest, most annoying-to-type-out names out there :p

I love Misa's bottles. They're so square and... sturdy-looking?

Here's a closer, more personal look at my fledgling collection:

Bikini With A Martini, Cherry Topping, Love Bite, Lather Rinse Repeat.

A Sunny Smile Makes Me Go Wild, Let's Go Green, The Grass Is Greener On My Side, Blue Over A Boy, Pour Me Something Tall and Strong.

Throw Me Something Purple Please, Decadent Drifter, Fountain Of Youth, Whimsical Wish.

Dance Fever, Confection Section, Ghetto Fabulous, Toxic Seduction.

Aaaaaand that's pretty much it.

And how about some of the only Misa swatches I have? Yes, my Misa stash is largely untried *hangs head in shame*. I've never even tried Decadent Drifter - can you believe that?? I want to try that, TMSPP and perhaps BWaM on my toes...

Here were my two picks from the Spring 2011 Wishes collection. First up, Whimsical Wish:

...which I love. I screwed up the middle finger, sorry - pls to ignore. I thought these were going to be frosty and sheer, but they're acutally very opaque with a pretty, glowy shimmer to them!

Usually pale colours like this on me give me corpse hands, but I like this one! It's a pale cream colour with peach and gold shimmer - it winds up looking like a very very pale, creamy peach. This is a great Boring Office Neutral for me - just enough shimmer to make it really interesting and pretty :)

And here's my other pick, Fountain Of Youth:

Again, I really, really liked this so much more than I thought I was going to.

Again it's a very pale, shimmery mint green with a blue/green iridescent flash. Again, opaque in 2 coats :) I think I might do a full mani of this - I like it so much better than I thought I would! The shimmer is very fine, but there's enough interesting stuff going on that it doesn't look frosty and horrible. I love the slight teal iridescence - these seem to me like a modern update on the classic pale shimmer. A way to wear light, airy colours with a shimmery finish without lookin like your Grandma! Sure!

And finally, we have Pour Me Something Tall And Strong:

This came out a couple summers back - Summer 2009, I believe... and it's a meduim squishy blue jelly.

BLUE JELLY, people! I think from those two words alone you can surmise how I feel about it :p But it also applied really nicely - this is 3 coats - and it's one of the best blue jellies out there. If you like jellies, you absolutely 100% need this! It's darker and more unique than most blue tones out there, but it's still so bright and vibrant! I ended up topping it with two different coloured flakies, and... wow... I might show you one day... if I ever get my act together :-/

So before I dismiss you for the May Long Weekend (in Canada) (for some people... I know others just have Monday off), I have two questions for you (yes, again):

1. Am I missing any must-haves Misas?? I've been hesitant to purchase the much-revered Dirty Sexy Money, cuz I own $OPI Ocean Love Potion and it's a dead-on dupe.... but any others? (I already want a bunch of the d/c'ed duochrome ones - Decadent Drifter is the only one I have, but I will get more, muahaha...)

and 2.) Any of these you'd like to see pics of? It's embarrassing that I have so many untrieds from such a great brand. I need to work my way through my Misas. Anyone?

Okay, this post took a lot longer than I thought it would. I'll be back with some OPI stuff for OPI week, though, I promise!

Oh, yeah, one last little thing....

GO CANUCKS GO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Late for Theme Week: My Nicole Stash!

2011-05-17T12:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, so you all know the Nail Board is doing theme weeks now, yes? Well, they are. And yes, yes, as most of you know, last week was Nicole by OPI's week... but I had stuff to do, and I got sick :( As I really don't want to have taken all these pics for nothing, and I'm the boss of me, I'm posting it late. Sorry for being so lame.

Here's a breakdown of the Theme Weeks from nbthemeweek's notepad:
A NEW THEME STARTS EACH MONDAY!
WEEK 1 (OVER): Sally Hansen
WEEK 2 (OVER): Nars, Zoya, Revlon, Etude, Model's Own, Ulta3, New York Summer
WEEK 3 (OVER): Dupe Week!
WEEK 4 (OVER): Dior, Misa, L'oreal, Face Shop, Barry M, BYS, Wet N Wild, Milani, Nicole By OPI
WEEK 5 (May 16) : OPI
WEEK 6 (May 23) : Frankens, Finger Paints, American Apparel, Sephora By OPI, Accessorize, TINS, Joe Fresh, Chi Chi, Mavala, Lancome
WEEK 7 (May 30) : Urban Decay, Island Girl, Confetti, Ulta, Toma, Essence, Diamond Cosmetics, Glitter Gal, Canmake
WEEK 8 (June 6) : China Glaze
WEEK 9 (June 13) : Lippmann, Color Club, BBC, Nails Inc, Chelsea, Pa, Australis, Golden Rose, Anna Sui
WEEK 10: Spa Ritual, Rimmel, IsaDora, Goldies, H&M's, MAC, Boot's No. 7, NYC, LA Colors, LA Girls
WEEK 11 (June 27): Illamasqua, Collistar, Nfu Oh, Borghese, Maybelline, Ozotic
WEEK 12 (July 4) : Chanel, Rescue Beauty Lounge, Nubar, Cover Girl, Gosh, Elantro, Koh, Icing, Claires, Hot Topic, Bloom
WEEK 13 (July 11) : Random Week- Any brands you have not included in the other weeks!
WEEK 14 (July 18) : Essie
WEEK 15 (July 25) : Orly
WEEK 16 (August 1) : Creative Nail Design (CND), Pro10, Hard Candy, Pure Ice, MNY, P2, Catrice, Skin Food

So as you can see, I missed out on Sally Ho and Zoya already :( Which, boo. But I also have a large collection of Nicoles, so I have to post this late! And I like my Misas, too, so I'm gonna do a seperate post about them. It'll be much smaller - I have way more Nicoles than Misas, unfortunately.

So enough ado... Oh, and some of these photos are watermarked wrong. They're my photos, I assure you (like I'd steal such crappy photos XD), so just ignore that, mmm'kay?

As I said before, I have an embarrassing amount of Nicoles. Way too many. I don't know how I ended up with so many. Well, okay, I do, but it's like I blinked and they bred and multiplied on their stand or something...

See? This is just some of them o___O I have to keep them in a stand because it p!sses me off to no end trying to stuff them in a drawer. They take up so much space and don't fit nicely into anything - aargh! Has there ever been as colossal a FAIL as the NOPI bottle? If only they had designed a decent bottle! Imagine how differently we'd look at the line!
I don't want to own so many - I hate that fugly effin bottle as much as any of you - but they've just put so many awesome colours out in the past year or two and I am WEAK when it comes to awesome colours :p Honestly though, out of the bajillion Nicoles I own, I don't think there's a single one I would get rid of... at least I think there isn't :S What do you guys think - could I stand to lose any of these here? Any of them have lots of dupes, or anyone just not like one for any particular reason? If anyone has any suggestions for purging, I'm more than open to them! :)
Here's they all are - I'mma do my best to name them all for you:

Nail Ya Azalea, Mango Maven, Traffic Cone, You're An Angel, Yellow It's Me, Lemon-Lime Twist.

Hint Of Mint, Make Mine Lime, Diva Into The Pool, Iceburg Lotus, Fell From The Tree.

A New Kind Of Blue, Sky's The Limit, Virtuous Violet, Di-Vine Is Divine, Black Cat-Cha Later, I'm A Pool For Love (which probably belongs with the blackened glitters below, but you'll ignore that, won't you?)

Razzle Dazzler Matte (the only matte one I own - I didn't like the rest of them), Wink Of Twink, Imagine If... (okay, these two look like dupes to me - I could probably get rid of one of them, no?), Glitz and Glisten, Gone Wishin' (is this a dupe for Sinful Frenzy or $OPI Too Good For Him? anyone know?), You're A Star.

The four Gossip Girl polishes: Party In The Penthouse, Scandal Secrets & Sparkle, Too Rich For You, Nicole...Spotted!, and a random Oy Oy Oyster.

It's kind of hard to tell these apart here - sorry for the crappy pic. Blues In The Night, Party At 3am!, Midnight Madness, Drama In The Dark, Turn Out The Lights. I love Nicole's blackened glitters :)

Let's Get Star-ted, Honey-Dew You Love Me, Have A Heart, Spring Romance, Step 2 The Beat of My ?. I love shaped glitter too :)

Some Biebers (I think they're Biebers..) Count On Me (this is so pretty for layering), Brilliant Idea, Nicole's Nickel, Me + Blue. I had a purple glitter one but I swapped it away... and I think I want it back :S

And these are my favorites:

Season's Gray-tings (my favorite Nicole!), Sensational Scarlet, Such A Go-Glitter (my second-favorite Nicole!), Spark My Mistletoe, Bring On The Tinsel, Pitch-Black Glimmer. The last holiday collection was awesome... I was told they were LE Target exclusives, so I went crazy trying to aquire them before they went OOS... only to have them show up in Shopper's Drug Mart four months later >__< They still have them, too.

Let's just look at Season's Gray-tings one last time....

Gorgeous. Look at that holo. Would you believe this is untried? Yes, my favorite Nicole is untried *ducks to avoid flying garbage*.

But before I end this late, mostly pointless post, I do have some pics of Nicoles I have actually worn...

Yellow It's Me. A yellow with noticeable pink shimmer - now how many of those can you say you own?

Bring On The Tinsel (over Orly Wandering Vine), from last Christmas. Red, yellow, blue, green and silver glitter.

Really crappy swatch of Glitz and Glisten. This was only available in Canada in a 2-pack with some eggplant creme colour... I was not amused. You're probably not amused by this pic. or else you are. Either way, I'm sorry :(

Too Rich For You. Blackened blue shimmer. I love blackened blues.

You're An Angel. Pink with rosy gold (glass fleck?)shimmer.

Such A Go-Glitter. Deep blue, full-coverage glitter, with the occasional fleck of gold. Okay, this is a really blurry, horrible pic, but OMG LOVE! Reminds me a bit of Nubar Night Sparkle.

Lemon-Lime Twist. Kind of a chartreuse shimmer.

Iceburg Lotus. Stupid name, but I'll forgive it because it's a teal with pink and purple shimmer! How awesome is that?! Nicole is really on to something here with the contrasting shimmers :)

I'm a Pool For Love. Again, the name is beyond idiotic (pool?...uh... it's a blackened glitter...) but this has duochromatic glitter in a black base, so again, I don't care. The glitter shifts from blue to purple depending on the light. Not the best pic, as usual, but trust me when I say if you like blackened glitters like I do, it'll be worth it to pick this one up.

Okay, that's it for my Nicole post! Like I said before, waaaaaaaayyyyy too many of the little saggy bewb bottles. But Nicole has been killing it lately in my opinion - every collection they've put out since last summer (the collection with Traffic Cone, Nail Ya Azalea and A New Kind Of Blue - yeah, that collection and every one since) has been absolute love. Which kind of sucks, because up here in Canada Nicoles are expensive - $11 regular price, and I'm not really wanting to acquire any more of them! But if they keep putting out collections as spectacular as these, I might have to >___<

Okay, as promised, I'll be back later with my Late Misa Post! Oh yeah, and being as this week is OPI week, and even though I've already done a post with my OPI collection, I guess I'll do something to do with that too :p 'Till later!

OWWWP: Color Club Ultra-Astral

2011-04-28T04:31:00.000-07:00

(Why is Lacey Chabert so orange in this pic, anyway?)

Super-quick Pink Wednesday post. Two posts in one day, after disappearing for a week or two. Yep, that's how I roll.

I present to you Color Club Ultra-Astral, from the Starry Temptress collection.

This is part of a collection of neons with glitter in them, which as you might guess is right up my alley. This dries fairly matte as with all neons, but applied pretty well. Somewhat sheer - you do need three coats to avoid VNL. The glitter effect overall is nice, although somewhat muted. But have no fear - Color Club thoughtfully provides you with a glitter topcoat in this set that you can slap on top of these if the glitter payoff from the polish alone isn't enough for you, like it wasn't for me:

Oh baby. That's what I'm talkin about :) This is after applying the Starry Temptress Topcoat that's included in the set. It eliminates the yucky matte effect, and adds even more sparkle to the somewhat dull glitter. You still need topcoat to get the maximum effect out of these, but I do think they look better with the topcoat than without.

Overall, I love this polish, I love hot pink, and I love how Color Club always finds a way to make their neon collections a little different :)

Til later :)

*EDIT: I just noticed this - two pinks with glitter in a row. Yeesh. I'll try to switch it up a bit next week :S

*EDIT#2: Go Canucks Go :) Nashville, you goin down.

OPI Pirates Of The Carribbean Collection - Well, The Ones I Picked Out, Anyway

2011-04-28T04:01:00.000-07:00

Hello! So my Pink Wednesday post will just have to wait, because I happened to find these today:

Yup, that's right - I happened across a new, full, unmolested OPI Pirates Of the Carribbean display today at the mall. After stalking this collection for the last week or so to no avail, I remembered the frenzy surrounding the last OPI Shatter colour and quickly grabbed two of the suckers. Happy dances were performed on the spot.

I looked over the other colours for quite awhile and was largely unimpressed by the swatches, just as I was online. I ended up getting three of the colours - the only three that really interested me - and leaving the two pinks (because yawn) and the aqua Mermaid's Tears (because I'm convinced there's a dupe that I most likely already own). However, after coming home and swatching the ones I did buy, I'm almost wanting to go back and snag the other three. Although the application wasn't the best I've ever experienced, I love these on me a lot more than I thought I would :) No outdoor pics 'cuz it's kind of nighttime, sorry. All of these are without topcoat too, except for the Shatter.

Stranger Tides. Probably the most unique one out of the collection. Reminds me of Sew Psyched and Color Club Sheer Disguise, although neither are dupes. I think this kind of almost "dirty" mint green works on me a lot better than a lot of blue-based mints. Even mint greens that have a lot of yellow, such as Claire's Dreamcatcher, still make my hands reddish, but this one doesn't seem to :) If it kind of looks like it in this pic, it lies. Application was a bit annoying - streaky and left bald spots on the first two coats. This is three. It dried pretty fast though, which probably accounted for the streakiness. (Sorry for the crap picture - photographing my right hand is flippin' impossible sometimes -___- #n00b)

Skull & Glossbones. I loved this one too. Some pale greys make me just look yellowed and gross, but I like this one on me. Quite a lot, actually. It almost looks a little blueish here (or maybe that's just my monitor) but I assure you it's not. It's a very yellow-toned dove grey - more yellow than Zoya Dove. Again, application on this one was pretty much the same as Stranger Tides - streaky, bald spots, and cuticle drag if I wasn't careful. Something told me I wanted this when I first looked at swatches online, and now that I see it on me I'm so glad I decided to just shut up and buy it after standing there with it in my hand in the middle of the store for about an eternity.

Planks A Lot, with Parlez-Vous OPI? on my pinky for comparison. Slightly greyed-out purple, so of course I had a #$!*% of a time photographing it, trying to get it to not look blue. As you can see, I failed. It's a lot more red-toned than it looks here, and with a heather grey cast to it. This one gets a thumbs-up too, although maybe not as enthusiastically as the first two. Application was nowhere near as bad as the first two, though - I was able to get it looking decent in two coats. This drew comparisons to the now-discontinued PVO? when promo pictures were first released, but I don't really think they look alike at all:

Left, Planks A Lot. Right, Parlez-Vous OPI? PVO? is much more brown-based. PAL is like the love child of PVO? and Do You Lilac It? Which I should've included in the picture, but I fail :s

And I saved the best for last:

This is Silver Shatter overtop of China Glaze Calypso Blue. I tried to find an OPI to layer it over, but believe it or not, out of my vast OPI collection I couldn't find a suitable dark blue creme. So I cheated with China Glaze, who's my true love anyway :) It cracked nicely, although you do have to take care to apply a thick enough coat. And no, I didn't layer it over the polishes from the collection. I know I'm a'sposed to, and while I think it looks okay over them and all, I think it's most striking over darker colours :) Although I'm dying to try it over a white. And maybe do some striped skittles with it? Oooh, I can't wait to play around with this. I have a feeling it'll be on my toes, eventually, too :)

So those are the ones I picked up. I'm in love with the Silver Shatter, and the other three are definitely each getting worn soon as well. I think the entire collection goes perfectly with the soft florals and woven fabrics we're seeing everyhere for spring and summer, and the polishes have a pretty, romantic feel to them in my opinion, despite the theme. Like I said, the desire to go back and get at least the light pink is growing strong in me.... The Silver Shatter is clearly the star here, though (the salon I went to had three left, of which I bought two, and as I was paying the other one was put aside for someone on the phone. By the time I left the mall an hour or two later, every display that I had passed by had been stripped of the Shatters!) I would love to see an entire collection of metallic shatters (what's that, you say? China Glaze has already announced an upcoming collection of these? well naturally! I'll get back to this later when I find out more...)

Now I just need that collection of OPI Shatters to be released, along with the Serena sets, and my OPI lemmings will be fed for awhile :)

Happy Belated Easter! :o)

2011-04-25T22:44:00.000-07:00

It's Easter Monday, so it still counts, right?

Hello all. No, I have not disappeared off the face of the earth. Yes, as usual I'm behind on posting stuff and have a whole backload of NOTDs to show you, plus my TD haul. I promise I'll try and get it out there, in the interest of Not Sucking.

But for now, wanna see my cutesy-poo Easter mani? Suuuure you do :)
Left hand:

Right hand:

Yes, the pictures are watermarked wrong. It's my MUA label, but you can ignore that, right? I actually kind of like my right hand better than my left - the chickie looks better, and the bunny came out cuter (I swear his teeth don't look that smudgy in real life...). Except for the dots. Those just look stupid.

Polishes I used: Sparitual Reveal Yourself, Joe Fresh Coral, China Glaze Peachy Keen, Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Expres-so Yellow, OPI Gargantuan Green Grape, China Glaze For Audrey, Color Club Blue Light, China Glaze Secret Peri-Wink-Le, and Crush Hustle. I think that's it. Oh, and Art Club nail art pens in Satin White and Black. And a dotting tool.

And just for S&Gs, here's a random tape mani I did:

I used OPI DS Magic and Glow. I love both of these polishes. Ah, foils :) Glow looks pretty good on me, for a bronzy gold. Bronzy golds tend to look much better on me than champagne-y golds. I have such a weird skin tone :s I'm pale, yet all the colours that are supposed to look good on pale skin make me look washed out. Bah.

Anyway, enough grumbling. I'm gonna go work on the seemingly daunting task of posting the giant backlog of crap I have to show you :)

Oh yeah, I started a spreadsheet. Or rather, I started working on the spreadsheet I started over a year ago again :s It's not even close to finished. Not even remotely. What's on there is a small smidgen of what I own (except for Color Club and Sinfuls! Those are up to date - yay me! :p) but in case anyone cares here it is :)

'Til later.

On Wednesdays We Wear Pink: OPI Pink Me I'm Good

2011-04-13T23:14:00.000-07:00

I'm sure most of you have heard of Pink Wednesdays by now... if not, and you've never seen the movie Mean Girls and you can't figure it out for yourself, go here for an explanation. I, personally, love pink, so of course I'm gonna go along with it ^_^ And everyone knows Mean Girls rules.

So my Pink Wednesdays mani for this week was OPI Pink Me I'm Good.

These aren't the best pics, but it was rainy outside. I'm so glad I was able to get my hands on it - it was an Ulta exclusive, and we no haz Ulta in Canada. Yay for swaps! :)

It's a gorgeous pink jelly with chunky gold glitter. The finish is smooth, though - not gritty like you might think. And the gold glitter really shows through, even in dim light.

I love it. It's gorgeous.

That's all I have for right now. I'm too excited over the hockey game I just watched - yay, Canucks got their first win!! This is our year, people - that cup is ours!!

Till later :)

Spams, Spams, Everywhere the Spams

2011-04-12T00:49:00.000-07:00

This isn't really a full-on spam, just a little bitsy mini spam. I just wanted to prove to you that even though I've been working a ton and not really allowed to wear anything interesting on my nails (and when I am, I'm not allowed to change it), I am still diligently photographing what I do have on, and obsessively changing it in my spare time every chance I get :p Yup. This is me.

I'll start with what I have on tonight - my Freehanded Cloud Mani That Didn't Turn Out As Nearly As Cute As I Pictured It In My Head:

It looks a lot less messy IRL :-/ I swear it acutally looks half-decent - here in macro it just looks smudgy and sloppy. I wanted to do a cloud design but my cloud Konad plate walked away on me :( So I freehanded them by just doing a bunch of dots close together, but I didn't think they looked like clouds (my bf said they just looked like smudgy white blobs) so I outlined them in WnW Black Creme using a toothpick. Like I said, it looks better IRL. The base is SpaRitual Sky's The Limit.

This is the Lippmann Ruby Red Slippers mani I had on for three days straight due to work. I used two coats of China Glaze Lubu Heels as a base, then followed it with three coats of RRS. One coat of Gelous, one thick coat of SV, and a coat of Barielle Mani Extender applied 24 hours later, and there you have it - it stayed on for three days on set :) There was some tipwear, as you can see, but no chips whatsoever! I couldn't capture on camera how sparkly this was. I know I've worn and reviewed this before, but I just want to say again how pretty this looked under the bright studio lights... The glittery red was was very noticeable and just popped against the black. I got compliments on it from girls and guys alike! .

China Glaze Ahoy! I had this on for exactly 20 minutes before I got bored of it and had to change :S It's pretty - like Strawberry Field's darker cousin - but I just wasn't feeling it today for some reason. Which I don't know why, because as I said, pretty.

My attempt to dupe SH Frock Star. You know those nail stickers that they charge $9 a box for? Yes, well, I refuse to pay that for something that similar-looking to polishes I already own. And yes, I know, this isn't really a dupe, but it was close enough for me. Glittery and loud. I used CC Magic Attraction, Milani Gems and Wet N Wild Party Of Five Glitters. There may also be some Zoya Gaia underneath all that as a base - I really don't remember after all that glitter :p And yes, I do own the SH Girl Flower nail stickers, but those are a different story - you try duping those.

This is a new Revlon, called Blue Lagoon - a delicate baby blue creme with really noticeable glass-fleck shimmer. It's part of their Summer collection, which also includes a peach and a yellow with the same glass-fleck shimmer. I really liked this polish, for a Revlon - application was great, smooth and even in two coats, and the pretty glass-fleck shimmer is just as noticeable on the nail as it is in the bottle. Very ethereal and icy-looking.

China Glaze Electric Pineapple. Neither pineapple-coloured, nor electric-looking. Maybe like a greenish, chartreuse pineapple? Yeah, sure. I swatched this on one finger when I reviewed the Island Escape collection, and I said it looked odd - as you can see, I was correct. It changes from greenish to yellowish depending on whether I'm indoors or out, too.

Another glitterbomb mani. Sometimes I'm just in the mood for glittah. And I know I'm not alone *looks around at all of you* This was H&M Lavender Sky, topped with one coat each of Paris Couture iridescent blue-green glitter (a dollar store glitter, similar to Inglot XL4), Fasino purple hex glitter (another dollar store polish that smells like absolute death) and WnW Party Of Five Glitters.

And this was the mani I did to match my blue-grey dress they put me in at work. This was Orly Pixie Dust, OPI DS Sapphire, some no-name Goldie holo and ChG Fairy Dust. It was a gorgeous match for the dress... and then they ended up putting long white opera gloves on me :p Go figure. I did take my gloves off quite often, though (as would anyone - gloves are a pain), and every time I did I was like, "Oooh!" :) Polishes always look so good under the bright, hot studio lights - especially glitters and holos! :)

Alright, that's all for right now! :) Will be back later!

Oh, and PS: Would you guys be interested in seeing more stash pics? Maybe my China Glaze drawer, or my HE drawer? LMK!

Icing Mood Swing Mood Polishes

2011-04-10T23:16:00.000-07:00

Hello lovelies. It's been a super-busy week for me - I haven't had a whole lot of time for swatching or posting, or even doing my nails at all. I wore a mani of Lippmann Ruby Red Slippers over China Glaze Lubu Heels for three days straight (well, it was for work, but still)!

I have two polishes for you that I recently discovered - Icing has mood polishes now!

I showed you these in a recent haul post, and finally got the chance to try them out recently. I'll start with the pink one, Romantic/Relaxed.

This is how it looks warm:

It's kind of a weird sandy-gold colour. Not really the most flattering on me, but the contrast between it and the cool pink shade is striking.

And then it eventually turns pink as it cools:

And eventually it ends up as this:

Kind of cool, right? Again, I'm not a huge fan of the colours themselves... The pink shade is pretty, with a noticeable gold shimmer from the warm shade. It looks pretty cool as it changes....

The other polish, however, Happy/Hopeful, was far and above my favorite:

This is the only picture I got of it, sorry :( And the bottle walked away on me when I went to take this pic. The base is a creamy bubblegum pink colour, and it changes to a deep royal purple colour, similar to China Glaze Grape Pop/OPI Funkey Dunkey, etc. The contrast is even more striking than the pink and yellow one. This is by far my new favorite mood polish - I like it even better than Claire's Happy/Earthy (my second favorite mood polish now). I need backups.
*EDIT- Okay, I lied - I found a couple more pics of Happy/Hopeful:

This is what it looks like completely cool - note the Grape Pop/Funkey Dunkey similarity.

This is what you get when it's in that in-between, transitioning from cool to warm stage- a berry-ish purple. Like Essie Splash Of Grenadine, or OPI Dim Sum Plum, but more purple.

And this is as it's changing - you can see the thumb starting to go pink. Yes, definitely my new favorite mood polish :)

Alright, that's all for now. I might make a point of going to Icing soon and seeing if they have any other ones, because I'm really impressed by these!

Till later!

My Essie and Orly Collection

2011-04-02T21:25:00.000-07:00

Hello all and happy weekend! As usual I have a whole backlog of stuff that I need to show you, but I'm way behind, so I'm just gonna start with this :p

I was organizing my polishes into my new Melmer (yay for 50% off Michael's sales!) and I was deciding which three brands were going to get a drawer dedicated to them (My Helmers and Melmers are organized by brand, and most of my brands - except for OPI, China Glaze and Color Club - share drawers). I decided that Orly, Essie and Zoya - three more of my favorite brands - were the lucky winners of a drawer of their own :)

So I decided that I'd show you my collections of two of these brands, Essie and Orly - I haven't got around to Zoyas yet.

Here's my Essie drawer:

Okay, I'm going to list them all - you ready?
Back row, L-R: Blanc, Naughty or Nice, Jackie Oh My!, Ballet Slippers, Mademoiselle, Fiji, Cool-lots, the mini is Pop Art Pink.
Row 2: Knockout Pout, Pink Parka, Watermelon, Jag-U-Are, Really Red, After Sex (heh..), mini is Red Nouveau.
Row 3: Van D'Go, Haute As Hello, Tart Deco, The Cove Copper.
Row 4: Funky Limelight (my favorite neon polish of all time), Pretty Edgy, Sew Psyched, Turquoise and Caicos, Mint Candy Apple.
Row 5: Borrowed and Blue, Lapis of Luxury, Mesmerize, Aruba Blue, Midnight Cami.
Row 6: Nice Is Nice, Lilacism, Demure Vixen, Splash Of Grenadine.
Row 7: Wicked, Decadent Diva, Sole Mate, Sexy Divide, It's Genius!
Row 8: Playa Del Platinum, Main Squeeze, Steel-ing The Scene.

I just kind of took a pic of the whole drawer. You might want to click on it to see better. This was before I figured out that you probably can't see it too well in a photo like this :-/ Fail.

Untrieds:

L-R: Limited Addiction, French Affair, Beach Bum Blu (why did I get this just cuz it was on sale? It looks frosty and horrible), Coat Azure, Dive Bar, Going Incognito, Merino Cool and Smokin Hot. I know, I know, supposedly my untrieds are some of the best ones :-/

I love Essies. For a fairly pricey mid-range polish, I do have a lot of them, and this is mainly for one reason: wear. I've said this before and I'll say it again: Essies wear like iron on me (and a lot of other people). The formula is usually pretty good, if inconsistant - it can be thin or thick or streaky at times, but no matter what the formula and application is like, an Essie polish can always be trusted to last the longest on my nails without chips out of all my brands of polish. And I probably have about 50 brands in total :O On average, an Essie will last for three days with no chips and the smallest amount of tipwear of any brand. They can be trusted to look great no matter what I'm doing with my hands, and hence, they are one of my favorite brands :) I just wish they'd continue to make awesome colours like Funky Limelight (they have a lot of awesome neons, actually) and Turquoise and Caicos - most of Essie's collections consist of neutral pinks and sheers >:p

Okay, and now my new Orly Drawer-ly:

L-R: Red Carpet, Ruby Passion, Orange Punch, Crush On You, Secret Admirer, Opal Hope, Passion Fruit, Swizzle Stick.

I suck so bad, I cut off Green With Envy :( I don't have another photo, sorry. Trust me, it's there on the left. L-R: sliver of Green With Envy, Bailamos, Wandering Vine, Enchanted Forest, Royal Navy, La Playa, Star Of Bombay.

L-R: Charged Up, Fantasea, Happily Ever After, Glam.

L-R: Pixie Dust, Mirror Mirror, Love Each Other, Fifty-Four, Goth.

L-R: Rage, Luxe, Glitz, Flagstone Rush.

I loved the Sweet collection. L-R: Pixy Stix, Cotton Candy, Lemonade, Gumdrop, Snowcone, Lollipop.

L-R: Glitz & Glisten, Naughty Or Nice, Meet Me Under The Mistletoe, Winter Wonderland.

My favorite collection of last year :) L-R: Space Cadet, Lunar Eclipse, Hailey's Comet, Out Of This World, It's Not Rocket Science, Galaxy Girl.

And minis, L-R: Ruby, Last Dance, On The List, Limelite, Starry-Eyed, Sheer Nude, Velvet Rope.

And that's my Orly collection :) Orlys are another favorite brand of mine, mainly due to the great collections they release. Sometimes they're not too unique, but I thought they really outdid themselves last year - the Cosmix FX collection was unbelievably awesome, jacked-up price and all. Rage and Luxe are two of the best metallic foils I own, and the Sweet collection was so much fun to wear - I loved every shade. Also, I really like Orly's bottle, for a round bottle. It feels heavy and sturdy, and I looove the rubber grip bottle top :)

Most of the time I organize by colour within brand, but sometimes I just can't bear to split collections up - hence the random organization. I just think sometimes collections look nicer all together, and some polishes I remember primarily by what collection they were part of. And the ones I don't, I organize by colour :) Get it? No?

Sid, as always, decided to interfere.

Okay, that's it - I have to go watch our President's Trophy-winning hockey team now :D Be back later!

NOTD: Color Club Electro Candy collection with OPI Black Shatter

2011-03-31T03:50:00.000-07:00

Just throwing this up here real quick before I go to bed, cuz it's super-late and I should be in bed. Hehe. Throwing this up. Ew. Anyway, I just wanted to show you all my NOTD that I'm going to have to take off in a second, since I'm working on set tomorrow, and I'm sad because I love it:

I striped three colours from the Color Club Electro Candy collection - Electro Candy (the pink), Volt Of Light (the yellow) and Pure Energy (the blue- which happens to be one of my very favorite blues!), and then put OPI Black Shatter over the whole deal.

I quite like how it turned out, and of course, things like this just wow the muggles - tons of people (three to be precise, which obv. = tons!) complimented me on this, and one person claimed they didn't want the OPI Black Shatter till then :) Ah, the power of polish influence! This wasn't actually my idea originally, though - I'm pretty sure I saw this posted on the nail board a while back, although I don't remember whose it was... so credit the nail board in general :)

Okay, I have to get to bed. Working on a movie tomorrow that's a retelling of a fairy tale, and they have me in a blue-ish grey gown. I won't get into the hat they put me in, but let's just say it's hilarious :-/ Anyway, I settled on Orly Pixie Dust topped with OPI DS Sapphire and ChG Fairy Dust as a mani. It's quite pretty. I'll try to get pictures of that up when I get home tomorrow - gonna be a long day, though. I'm told I'm going to be there for about 15 hours o___O Oh well - more money for haulin'! Speaking of which, I took the plunge with those Catherine Arley holos today, for those of you who know what those are. We shall see how that goes :S

Thank you and goodnight! be back later...

China Glaze Island Escape Skittle Swatches

2011-03-29T03:31:00.000-07:00

Hello and good evening. Hoping Blogger is going to be nicer to me this time >:(

Anyway, I have some quick skittle swatches of one of my newest aquisitions from my favorite and most-owned brand - China Glaze's Island Escape collection. This is China Glaze's collection for Summer 2011, but it's out already. I initially was only interested in three or four of these shades, but in then end it was cheaper for me to buy the boxed set than the polishes I wanted seperately. So I ended up with all of them :s

This collection consists of a rainbow of summery shades - four shimmers and two cremes. Left to right: 108 Degrees, Papaya Punch, Electric Pineapple, Cha Cha Cha, Blue Iguana and Senorita Bonita. The shimmers are, for the most part, that same glass fleck-type that the China Glaze Summer Days collection from a few years back consisted of - y'know, Strawberry Fields, Grape Crush, Watermelon Rind, etc.? Yeah, that one.

Thumb to pinky: Electric Pineapple, 108 Degrees, Cha Cha Cha, Blue Iguana, Senorita Bonita. I chose to leave out Papaya Punch because it's my least favorite. I initially wanted the four glass-fleck shimmers from this collection. China Glaze does this finish well - also see the Martini Pedicure collection and the Tequila Toes collection, which is one of my favorite collections and I would kill for... Actually a couple of the polishes in this collection kind of reminded me of a couple of those, which is what made me finally decide to buy them. I wasn't at all wowed by swatches, but the polishes totally won me over once I saw them in person.

108 Degrees. This is a bright glass-fleck fuschia pink shade. Extremely pretty and reminded me of the old China Glaze It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere, but more pigmented. Application was pretty good on this one, as with all the shimmers.

Cha Cha Cha. This is rumoured to be a dupe to the infamous Moonpool, and I wish I had it to compare to tell you for sure :p But in the meantime, this is good enough for me. It's pretty, but I need to compare it to Icing Sour Apple, Sally Hansen Spark (I think that's the one) and a couple other supposed Moonpool dupes I own. Also, I don't really know if it's all that unique - seems there's a billion light greens with gold shimmer out there (Zoya Midori comes to mind).

Blue Iguana. This was my favorite out of the bunch, and not just because I'm a sucker for blue. It was just so glowy - the glass-fleck finish really sparkles on this one. Also, it kind of reminds me of a brighter Drinking My Blues Away :)

Senorita Bonita. My least favorite of the shimmers. It was much more sheer than the others- this is three coats, and could've used a fourth, whereas the others are all two. It's okay - as well as the glass fleck, there's some interesting blue and red sparkle going on in there as well, but the sheerness turned me off :-/

Electric Pineapple. I liked this a lot more than I thought I would. The formula was not as horrible as I anticipated a yellow creme would be - a tad steaky, but nice and pigmented and not too thick. As far as the colour goes, it's a bit of an odd duck...

It's kind of a cross between OPI Who The Shrek Are You? and Fiercely Fiona, leaning much more toward FF but with a touch more Shrek green in it. It's like they had a baby. A little greenish, jaundiced alien baby.

Aaaanyway.... last one.

This is Papaya Punch. I'm guessing that you can tell by now that I wasn't horribly enamoured by it. I dunno, it's a nice tangerine creme, but I just don't really think it's horribly unique. Also, I like orange polish most of the time, but I've always hated the colour orange. I have this unfair prejudice towards orange - I don't like things that are orange (except kitties!), and orange-flavoured. Oranges, as in the actual fruit, are good and well, as well as OJ - just not orange skittles, orange candies, orange froot loops, orange popsicles, etc... And no orange clothes, either. I know, I'm the weirdest freak in the world and you probably feel sorry for my parents :p But yeah, I've tried to keep this prejudice from extending to my polish tastes, and I've succeeded I think (I can name at least ten orange polishes that I love), but for me to love it an orange polish has to be more than just... an orange polish :p And this is just an orange creme. I could take it or leave it.

Overall, this collection was a lot nicer than I thought it would be, but it wasn't the most awesome or unique thing I've ever seen. I'm glad I picked it up though - it's worth it for the glass-fleck finish of the shimmers and the Moonpool-similarity-factor of Cha Cha Cha alone, and I do think Electric Pineapple will look great on my toes come sandal season :)

Alright, that's all for today. Thanks for looking, and I'll be back in the next day or two with more swatches!

Some China Glazes, Essies, Nicoles and More ~or~ Ten Posts Crammed Into One Because I Don't Post Frequently Enough

2011-03-27T03:44:00.000-07:00

*EDIT*: WHYYY the EFF is Blogger not posting my photos?!??? I just uploaded the photos three times - I promise they're there, if you click on them it will take you to the pic, but blogger is not showing them in the post for some reason. It's making me want to pull my hair out,. I've just spent fifteen minutes trying to fix this, but blogger just won't show them, and I have to go to bed now, so I'm hoping this will just fix itself :( :( stuff like this makes me want to quit blogging :(

*EDIT #2*: Okay, I think I got it to work.... I just have to paste the photos in HTML form... which I don't know crap about, so if it's all wonky, blame blogger :p

*EDIT #3*: Okay, that didn't work AT ALL. I so fail at HTML.

*EDIT #4*: Now blogger is going to delete this post altogether?? I had it published, now it's back in my drafts? WTH?

*EDIT #5*: Yeah.... it is now Sunday evening. Blogger seems to mysteriously be working again, although it decided to take random photos I was trying to publish earlier and make them tiny little pixels that you can click on to go to a full-size pic. Which is what it was doing before with all my pics. Sigh. I could delete all these edits, but they're entertaining. At least they will be for me to read later :p

Good Saturday Evening, all!

Yes, I know this should really be broken up into seperate posts about each colour to maintain everyone's constantly waning interest, but I would actually have to post on a semi-regular basis to do that :p Alright, no excuses today - let's just delve right into it, shall we? Let's!

Forgive my brutal cuticles in all of these, please, by the way. Winter no likey me hands :(

First off, some crack - China Glaze Medallion topped with Lightning Bolt and Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure. Not too sure about how this came out...

China Glaze Kaleidoscope Him Out. Okay, "love" is not a strong enough word for how I feel about this polish. It's my second favorite blue holo behind DS Glamour. I lemmed this for soooo long, and finally caved and bought it on ebay - remember I told you I got a good deal on it because no one bid on it due to the fact the seller couldn't spell "kaleidoscope"? It was listed as "China Glaze hom Out" XD

Boring old Essie Ballet Slippers. This is my go to Boring Office-Appropriate Neutral, and has been for some years now. I can't stand wearing it sheer, though - this is four coats here.

SpaRitual Face Of Destiny. From the Truth collection. I don't like this on me at all. Ugly gramma-ish apricot barf. Making matters worse: ew, oily skin! Sorry. Darn that China Glaze Peppermint cuticle oil!

SpaRitual Eye Of The Beholder. Again, pardon shiny cutes. I only have one of the SR Truth collection left to swatch - when I finally get around to it, I'll post them all together. This colour is okay, a chartreuse-y lime creme, but it doesn't seem horribly unique or exciting to me, although I can't think of a dupe I own...

China Glaze First Mate. Another one I loved. Applied great, I loved the shade on me, again I don't know about the uniqeness, but it's a blue so I don't care :) I'll happily own every blue out there regardless of similarity :) Okay, that's an exaggeration. Either way, I loved this on me....

So whyyy did I have to ruin it with this childlike attempt at a gradient? Seriously. I love White Cap and everything, it's very gorgeous, but this looks like a smudgy mess. Like a four-year-old did it. I should have just left it alone or did a full top coat of White Cap. I love WC, by the way, and plan on trying it over a lot more things.

My St. Patty's Day mani! This was China Glaze Emerald Sparkle topped with one coat each of China Glaze Sour Apple and Sinful Green Ocean. It's a hot green mess, but all I was going for was sparkly and green, so it sufficed :) God was it horrible to get off, though. I don't know what it is about the foil method and green polishes, but it all just goes directly underneath my nails when I try to remove it and makes me look like I have dirty green gunk under my nails for days. Hawt.

Essie Borrowed and Blue, from their Spring 2011 Wedding collection. Forgive the chips. Very, very pale blue, paler than CC Take Me To Your Chateau, maybe a touch less pale than Hard Candy Sky? I'll have to compare. Application was a tad more annoying than usual, as it the norm with these super-pale cremes - a bit streaky.

Nicole Iceburg Lotus. Very pretty foil-y teal shimmer with very noticeable pink flash that I could not capture no matter what I did! :( Trust me when I say it's there, though! It's totally visible on the nail. Scrangie was right, though - this is everything I wanted OPI Austin-tacious Turquoise to be :) Too bad it's in that... bottle...

Aaargh - Nicole, why do you have to be so frigging awesome lately?! I can't take another one of your horrible, storage-disrupting, Helmer-drawer-fuglifying bottles! But look what they're packing inside these horrible hideous bottles! This is I'm A Pool For Love. I don't get the name (pool? It's a blackened glitter :p) but yes, it's gorgeous. A blackened duochrome glitter that's deep blue and purple most of the time, but goes from purple to gold at extreme angles. Nicole rocks blackened glitters. Actually Nicole's been rocking everything lately. I got a couple more the other day besides these two - Nicole's Nickel (another black glitter! Not blackened, but acutally black, like the one they had at Christmas! Squee!) and Brilliant Idea (a lime green glitter), and there was a holo glitter and a blue with pink flash I was eyeballing as well... but I'll have to wait until Nicoles go on sale for $6 again at Shopper's Drug Mart, which is when I got these - $11 is just waaaay to much for me to justify spending on such an ugly bottle.

I just decided to go count my Nicoles, on a whim....I own FOURTY-SEVEN freakin Nicoles, people. 47!!! 47 of those heinous freaking things, in my house, in my possession...*shudder*... Yeah... Maybe I won't go buy those other ones when they go on sale :p ("But," the voice in my head protests, "you love every single one of those Nicole colours...")

Blah. I'm still not even remotely caught up on posting pics. Also, I just got the China Glaze Island Escape collection the other day - swatches of those coming up soon! Plus, ten more random spam posts like this, probably :p

See you soon! I should probably go to bed :p For some reason I am really craving a pepperoni stick. Wish I had some of those.

Oh, oh, PS: I gave my niece (the BF's best friend's daughter - got that? so not really my niece but you get it)a bottle of ChG Black Mesh, and she posted a pic of her crack mani on Facebook saying how much she loves it :D And all her friends posted comments saying, "Omg, I love it, where did you find it, I can't find it anywhere" etc. etc., since Black Shatter's been sold out around here since the day it came out. And my niece is all, "Oh, my aunt got it for me, I'll have to ask her.." HAHA! :D Who's the best aunt in the world?!?? :D I love being the nail polish fairy to a fourteen-year old! :D

Massively Hugely Enormously Massive Haul Post

2011-03-21T19:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, so this started out as just a post of what I've hauled this past week, but then I thought, what the hell - I'm going to do a post of every single thing I've bought this year so far. Wanna stop reading? I don't blame you :p

I don't know if I should do most recent to oldest, or....? I guess I'll do it from oldest to most recent. Keep in mind, those of you thinking I'm some spendaholic freak, that this is for this entire year so far. Some of these are swaps, as well. Oh, I'm just going to stop making excuses for myself - you know you're all just as bad as I am ;p

Ready? Grab some chips and turn the TV to something boring :)

Sephora by OPI Read My Palm and Just A Little Dangerous. Two I'd been lemming for a while - I only had a mini of RMP.

From Forever 21, Love & Beauty scented polishes in Peppermint and Kiwi, and a regular polish in Lime. These do smell, although not very good - the scent reminds me of those scented fat felt pens we had when we were kids.

Boring stuff - Barielle Camo and Mani Extender, found at Winner's for $5 each. After I bought these, I walked into Eterna Skin Care on Robson and saw Camo for $18! D:

But oooh, this is exciting - the Dare To Wear Disco Tech collection! Hee. I like glitter. I just noticed that my older polishes from this brand are spelled "Dare 2 Wear". Huh.

See? See? I told you! This is Hunter Green x2, Billie Purple Haze (awesome neon purple with subtle shimmer, and only a buck!) and some little butterfly decals I found - which are sitting on top of a Hello Kitty fauxnad plate :)

Aren't these adorable? I got these so I could copy this mani that I saw on Chloe's Nails. It's so simple, but so adorable - one of my favorite manis of all time :)

Anna Sui 101, 103 and 011. 011 has flakies!

Some old discontinued China Glazes. L-R: Stone Age, Sunset Glow, Channelesque, FYI and Drama Queen.

More old discontinued China Glazes. L-R: Subtle, Beatnik, another Channelesque ;p

Now, we move on to our OPI part of the presentation:

OPI Texas collection. L-R: Y'all Come Back Now Ya Hear?, Big Hair..Big Nails, Guy Meets Gal-veston, That's Hot! Pink, Do You Think I'm Tex-y?, Houston We Have A Purple, Austin-tacious Turquoise and You Don't Mess With OPI! These names get worse with every collection :p

More (yes, more) random OPIs - Skinny Dip'N In Lake Michg'n, Tickle My France-y, Barefoot In Barcelona, Over the Taupe (I needed neutrals, lol), Just Groovy and Simply Smashing.

And dusty finds! Awesome dusty finds! L-R: Mad As A Hatter, Sapphire In The Snow, Smitten With Mittens, Merry Midnight. I already own all these, but backups, swaps, you know how it goes... :)

And that concludes our OPI portion of the evening, now how about some Daiso finds?

OMGHOLOsqueeeeeeeee! <--- iz what I did when I found these in the store. These are the "Rainbow" line of polishes, they are pretty holo, and they are fantastic! The three in the middle look like they're the same, but they're actually three seperate colours. But aren't these just the FUGliest bottles you've ever seen? Daiso has some seriously ugly bottles, man.

Like check THIS out. These are all very pretty - a chunky silver and holo hex glitter, iridescent hex glitter, a blue that looks really frosty and horrible here but it's actually very silvery and pretty, and the one on the end is called Aurora Lights and it's basically an exact dupe of CND Crimson Sparkle. But those first two bottles are seriously some of the most ridiculous-looking things I've ever seen in my life...

SEE?!? Like, seriously? What the hell is that thing? A nail polish bottle or the frickin Empire State Building? I think the folks at the Winmax must've just done this for a laugh :p

And look at this!

Aren't these cool? Anyone know how to read Japanese? :D The pictures are SO awesome though. I'm going to pick a couple of pages and try to scan them like Wan does with Nail Up! magazine over at I Love Nail Polish - a fellow Vancouver blogger, btw :) And that concludes my Daiso finds! Back to our regularly scheduled programming.

American Apparel polishes in (L-R): African Violet, Cameo Blue, Army Jacket and MacArthur Park. Now I just need Passport Blue, Dynasty, Echo and a couple more :p

Some randoms. L-R: Nox Twilight Disco Darling and Citrus, unnamed LA Colors yellow gold, Claire's Poison Apple and Zoya Jade.

Wet N Wild Teal Of Fortune and Blue Wants To Be A Millionaire? TOF looks like another Charla dupe, and BWTBAM looks similar to the Justin Beiber Nicole polish Me + Blue, although they're not dupes.

China Glaze mood polishes that - blast it all - have no labels!! :( Anyone have any idea what these might be? The one on the left is baby blue with a pinky-gold flash, and the one on the right is slightly darker with blue glitter.

CND Effects - all for a swap :) Aren't they pretty? I love these, they're so fun to play with.

And some Essies - Coat Azure, Beach Bum Blu (frosty and horrible - I dunno why I bought it :-/) and French Affair.

And last, I know no one cares, but some non-nail-polish stuff that I got for cheap:

I got my makeup done by a Smashbox artist at SDM, and since I had a gift card I bought two products - the Halo powder and Peony cream cheek colour duo, and the MU artist ended up throwing in all this stuff for free! She threw in a full-size lipgloss, lip pencil and concealer for free, as well as a travel-size mascara and a billion other little samples. I was blown away! Usually they're just trying to get you to spend money and even when you do, make you feel like you're not spending enough, but she was extremely generous! Thanks Smashbox! Oh, and the In Bloom eyeshadow palette I bought at Sephora a few weeks back - happened to grab the last one :)

I started composing this post about a week and a half ago, so I've bought a couple of things since then. I'll take some photos and get an updated haul post up as soon as I can :) I've been working lots lately, which I really need.

Crappy Monday :)

Some Random Swatches

2011-03-07T19:12:00.000-08:00

Hello all. This time, I didn't post much because I was having troubles with my camera - I oculdn't upload pics onto my computer for the longest time :( Now that I can, I'm all backlogged again. Boo. I'll probably end up doing two or even three posts. Then again, I probably shouldn't get ahead of myself :p

Anyway, here's some recent NsOTD from the past week or so....

OPI Tickle My France-y. I was working on a certain show about the adolescence of a certain superhero who wears a cape and flies, and needed a very neutral, office-appropriate polish. This was recommended to me on the Nail Board. Forgive the chips - it was a long day :p I'm not sure how this looks on my skintone, either... it is a pretty, soft-looking neutral, but I'm just not drawn to "blah" shades like this.... I kept wanting to jazz it up with a black konad pattern of some sort.

Zoya Pinta. One of the Zoyas I ordered recently. This is a gorgeous and very pigmented (two coats here) dark blue-ish eggplant creme. Yes, it is similar to OPI Sapphire In The Snow, but this one is much easier to find, and I honestly like the application way better.

This is Winmax Diamond Nail Enamel in Black. Another one of the polishes I got at Daiso. This one has a TON of silver, pink and blue shimmer. It's a black polish where the shimmer is actually very. very visible - it almost gives it a metallic sheen. Like hematite, but with tiny blue and pink flecks. I don't have another black like this - it's absolutely gorgeous.

Wet N Wild Grey's Anatomy over black. Gorgeous, gorgeous silver-purple-green duochrome. I couldn't get the best pics of this - oh well. I heard this is a dupe to Lippmann Wicked Game, which I'd been lemming for a while. I think it's hilarious that the only dupe that exists to this $18 polish costs $1.79 :D Anyway, we just started seeing this collection in Canada, but I'm glad I swapped for this one and Party Of Five Glitter - every display I've seen has been stripped clean of all the ones I wanted already :( I'll show you the ones I did get in the haul post I'm gonna do next.

SpaRitual Enlightened Soul. From the SpaRitual Truth collection (remember that mini 4pack and the two others I got back in January? or February? Or two posts ago? Three out of six of them are now tried :-/ ). Anyway, this is a standard taxicab yellow creme. I was hoping for spectacular application, as it's what I usually get and have come to expect from SR, but no. As you can see from the second, outdoor pic (which is the more colour-accurate pic, btw), it's streaky as fuh :( But that didn't really matter because...

I was planning on putting China Glaze Crushed Candy overtop of it anyway :D

Did I mention I got the Crackle Glazes? CUZ I DID :D :D It took a bit of scouting, an inside tip and my BF almost killing me as I dragged him around looking for this tiny nail supply store, but I FOUNDZ DEM! Sorry for the caps, but I LOVE crack polish and these are so freaking awesome!

More coming up about the new stuff I've gotten in my next post! :)

Some Valentine's Day Manis

2011-02-15T18:40:00.000-08:00

Hey all.

So how's your day? I'm mad because I've been waiting on a couple packages in the mail and they STILL aren't here yet, and I'm a tad worried because I know for a fact our new mail carrier doesn't like us for no reason at all :( It's a long story, but basically I'm worried he's going to "lose" my package just to spite me. Sigh. I could totally see him doing that. Like I said, long story. Bottom line - you better not mess with my effin Zoyas, bro, or we'll have a problem....

Ahem.... Anyway, I have some V-Day manis for you. Just a couple. I don't really celebrate Valentine's Day - the whole concept of the day just makes me feel bitter and irritated and I just choose to try not to acknowledge its existence - but I do like pink. And hearts. So whatever, Valentine's Day manis, yaaaay :) In the past I've had some really awful, depressing V-days, but this year me and my BF did nothing all day except hang out together, and it was nice. Everything I could ask for :) So I don't really have a reason to sound bitter towards V-day this year, at all.

Anyway, it's an excuse to wear my heart glitter polishes and not look tacky.

First, pink sparkly Barbie monstrosity:

This was 2 coats of SpaRitual Knowledge Is Power, 1 coat each Misa Confection Section and HT, and 1 very annoying, thick, goopy coat of the Fasino glitter heart polish I'm holding. Did I mention it was goopy? Like trying to paint Vaseline on your nails. Chipped already on my middle, prolly due to the billion coats - I know the SpaRitual would never do that on it's own. I don't know what I was thinking. I wanted something pink and girly and disgustingly Valentine's-y after I wore RBL Concrete Jungle, but this was just OTT - it looks like what you'd get if you ate a billion pink Peeps coated in crystallized sugar and then vomited. At least I got the disgusting part right :p I should have gotten pics of Knowledge Is Power by itself, because I really like the colour, but I suck.

Next, this is Orly Cotton Candy, from last year's Sweet collection (all of which I love). It's a peachy-pink creme - like the colour of a piglet :) I think it's much more flattering on me than light, blue-based pinks. Application was great with this, very smooth.

Aaaaaand Valentines-ified. I used Claire's Love Struck and Nicole Have A Heart. I like these heart polishes - they're really cute, and even cuter if you do different-coloured hearts on each nail - but they don't lie completely flat against the nail, and to be honest it drives me crazy. I'm constantly sitting there trying to smooth the edges down :( Maybe I need to use a thicker coat of Seche.

And last but not least, yesterday's mani:

Kissy lips! :D This is cute too, but I didn't end up loving it as much as I thought I would. In my head it seemed like it'd be so adorable, but IRL you can't really tell what's on my nails unless I put my hand right in front of your eyeball. DBF said from far away my nails just look like I'd been digging through corpses or something. Ew. The polishes I used were Saly Hansen Insta-Dri Whirlwind White for the base (dries fast, yes, but sooo streaky), and the for the lips I used SH Insta-Dri Pronto Petal and Speedy Sunburst, China Glaze Phat Santa, Essie Red Nouveau, and CND Dark Ruby. All of which work great for konading, btw :)

Alright, that's it for today. Happy belated V-day, and all that. :)
Oh and here's hoping I get my packages soon despite my mailman having an irrational psychotic hate for me :p

New SpaRituals! Truth Collection: Reveal Yourself Swatches & Comps

2011-02-02T18:04:00.000-08:00

Happy Groundhog Day! Has that movie been on TV nonstop for the past three days in your area as well?

I'm a little down today, so I'm gonna keep the incessant chatter to a minimum. I went out and hauled a bit the other day, and got some new pretties... even though there's still all that stuff I'm waiting on in the mail - urrgh. Today's mail brought me Maybelline Blazes Of Blue though - yay! Although is this a flaky? It looks like a plain ol' glitter to me, but I've been told it's a flaky....

So anyway, part of my haul yesterday was a new SpaRitual collection, called simply "Truth" (not to be confused with the Zoya collection of the same name.) I love SpaRitual polishes (made by the same company as Orly) - the formula is great and the wear is amazing, almost as good as Essie. Their cremes are amazing and this collection is all cremes :)

L-R: Circle of Life (oooh! pretty!), Face Of Destiny, Enlightened Soul, Eye Of the Beholder, Knowledge Is Power, and Reveal Yourself. The minis are pretty good - 5 mL isn't a bad size, and for some reason my beauty supply stocks more mini SRs than it does full-size :-/ so I make do with them.

This is an incomplete post for two reasons: one, I do not have pics of the rest of my haul, and two, I did not manage to swatch all of these SpaRituals :-/ I did get pics of Reveal Yourself; however, when I put it on I thought it looked so similar to a bunch of light pinks I already own that I had to do a comparison. And then the sun went down :( So this is all I have.

SpaRitual Reveal Yourself (indoors). A light baby pink creme, cool-toned and leaning blue.

Outdoors. It's pretty and I like it, but other than neons, opaque baby pinks like this are my favorite kind of pinks :) Application was awesome - SpaRituals apply really well, and this was very opaque. This is two coats here - one was a tad streaky, and two smoothed everything out. It may look a bit brushstrokey, but the marks disappear once dry. Drying time is better than average, I'd say - my SR hand was dry a few minutes before my comp hand.

It looks soooo similar to others I own (or so I thought). The first one that came to mind was OPI's Mod About You, but I think I gave this away to my sister (what is wrong with me...?) so I didn't have that one on hand to swatch (I always end up giving away polishes that I can easily obtain... I'll have to swap for this one or pick it up next time I'm at the beauty supply... I actually meant to pick it up when I hauled yesterday, but forgot..)

So these are the ones I used for the comparison:

L-R: Maybelline Bubble Pink, Color Club Vintage Couture, China Glaze Something Sweet, SR Reveal Yourself and NYC 108A (I got this in the US a looooong time ago - I dunno if it's even still available. I know that's lame. Sorry.)

Pinky to thumb: (I know they're reversed in order from the pic above but just ignore that - I wasn't gonna retake the pic :p) NYC 108A, SR Reveal Yourself, ChG Something Sweet, CC Vintage Couture and Maybelline Bubble Pink. The NYC isn't even close - too dark. Something Sweet is paler and more muted, and Bubble Pink is more yellow-toned, and both these two and Vintage Couture are all warmer in tone than RY - RY is the coolest out of the lot. Overall I'd have to say Vintage Couture is pretty close, although they're not exact dupes. And the SpaRitual had the best application and wear out of all of them :) I've had it on for more than 24 hours and there's no chips or visible tipwear at all.

Sorry I don't have Mod About You to compare... I promise I will do swatches of the rest of these, though. I really want to. Even if you just get crappy-lit, not-the-most-accurate indoor photos (I need an Ott light... soon... badly). I took nail wheel swatches. Wanna see my nail wheel swatches? Yeah, I thought not :p

So I'll be back later with more of these. Promise.

NOTD: Nubar Night Sparkle and A Rambling Lament

2011-01-31T05:23:00.000-08:00

So one of my ebay Nubar orders came in :) Yay!

L-R: Indigo Illusion, Love Rainbow (not nearly as holo as I thought), Wildlife, Moon Shadow, Night Sparkle, Reclaim.
I've been ordering stuff like a mad woman lately. I guess that's what happens when you haven't bought anything for yourself since November and you make a crapload more money than you usually make all in one go... I think I'm done for now, though. Seriously, this is what I've got lately: I made a TD order with a fellow Vancouver pal from the nailboard, I finalized a swap for some lemmings I can't get in Canada (WnW Party Of Five Glitter, Essie Dive Bar and Jesse's Girl Confetti), and I grabbed the Zoya Intimate set tonight from evilbay for $38 inlcuding shipping (I know right? Good job me! :D) - and that was just tonight! :O I've also nabbed China Glaze Kaleidoscope Him Out off the bay of evil for a half decent price too ($9 - the cheapest I've seen it on ebay for over a year.. and I think it only fetched such a low price cuz the seller couldn't spell "kaleidoscope" and couldn't take a non-blurry pic :p) I'm rather happy about that one though - this was one of my first and biggest China Glaze lemmings when I started to get back into np again, around December of 2009... man, I should have just ordered both Kaleidoscope sets (both warm and cool!) off Ebay then - I remember they were going for around $37-$38 each at that time... I mainly just wanted KHO at the time too, and was just going to get the others as an afterthought :) Man, I can't wait to finally get KHO now :) Also, I've been eyeing Clairins 230... I haven't bid yet, but I'm thinking about caving and getting Teh Unicorn Pee if I can gets it for under $75 or so... I'm still undecided though - that is an awful lot for one polish, even if it is like getting five polishes in one... I've wanted it for so long, but I think I'd feel foolish. But who cares, I want it! Gaaaah - yeah, undecided.

Holy crap, ramble on forever, lady! What am I, my boyfriend's mother?

Nubar Night Sparkle:

I don't know why I chose to wear this out of all the new Nubars I got. It called to me. Night sky polishes- what can I say? Easily my favorite one out of this Nubars Sparkles collection - I have a bit of an obsession with night sky polishes.

Did I mention to you guys there's a Chanel Ciel De Nuit on Ebay right now for $129? Buy It Now :)

Why am I bringing this up now, you ask? It's simple. Nubar Night Sparkle makes me drool - this is obvious, but I thought it important for you to know why it makes me drool.

Now, you guys know Ciel De Nuit is my biggest, hugest, Forever Number One Lemming.

It's the Polish that started my Entire Love Of Polishes... back in 1995 (or was it '96?) It was the winner of a contest put on by Chanel and Seventeen magazine, a reader-designed polish... I fell in love, and bought Maybelline Twinkle Twinkle because of it (which I still own), and then some Wet N Wild black, purple and green... and then some Claire's and Afterthoughts polishes... and then Street Wears.... fifteen years later, here I am....

To this day, despite all the dupes and look-alikes and Essie Starry Starry Nights in the world, this polish still makes me glowy-eyed like no other. I still want it exactly just as much as I did the day I saw it in the pages of Seventeen magazine. And that's why, to this day, I've bought every single polish that looks even remotely like it or even vaguely resembles any aspect of it ever since :p

Should I buy the polish on ebay, you guys? :p :p Anyone wanna buy it for me?

Okay, I know this post is stupid and whiny, since I'm heartbroken over the price of the Ciel De Nuit on Ebay that I'll never own, but can I talk serious for one second here? I really love Nubar Night Sparkle. It is the prettiest one I own out of the Nubar Sparkles so far - the other two being Meadow Sparkle and Sky Sparkle, and much less impressive. The purple ones look okay, but I love blues and they can't be anything compared to this. This kind of reminds me of Finger Paints Easel-y Entertained, but less purple, and Nicole Such A Go-Glitter... but I don't have that on hand to compare. Either way, none of these were easy for me to get, but they were all worth it - dark blue glitter in a black base is one of my favorite polish colours ever :)

PS: I realize how obnoxious this post is for how bad these pics are. And I apologize. Better ones to come :S

NOTD: Revlon Perplex

2011-01-26T16:06:00.000-08:00

Hello and good afternoon :) This is my NOTD, Revlon Perplex. I would trumpet my wearing of this awesome and coveted polish more, but I don't want to hurt or offend my fellow Canadians who are unable to purchase this. This is the celebrated dupe of Chanel's Paradoxal. Obviously, I was forced to swap for this, as - did I mention this? - this is NOT available in Canada, for some unfathomable reason. Do I sound bitter? Hmm, why would that be? Seriously, though, I just don't see why they couldn't sell this in Canada. I mean, how to they decide these things?

Anyway, please excuse the laughable mile of gap I left between the polish and my cuticle :S I've been making a pathetic attempt to shape my nails square (which for some reason, my nails just do not want to do - they refuse to deviate from their natural oval shape even just a bit), and in an even more pathetic attempt to highlight that, I tried to square out the cuticle line... yeah, I went a bit overboard. It looks silly, I know. Just ignore it :p

So here's Revlon Perplex:

My previous favorite dark mushroomy colour like this was OPI's You Don't Know Jacques, and this would completely replace it as my favorite mushroomy of all time, were it not for one thing:

Check out my middle finger! It goes through an entire day of wear just fine, then I go to sleep and wake up and I have these stupid creasey thingies on my nails :( GRRRRevlon! Revlon is always, always, ALWAYS such a fail on me! Remember this post I wrote back in the dark days of my blog, when my photos were beyond crappy (even more so than now, if you can imagine that) and no one read it? (Of course you don't, cuz... no one read it. Derr.) I said I was never buying Revlon again. The Top Speeds are okay, I think, although I've never really worn any of those beyond swatching them on one nail (hmm... maybe my next project? swatching all the Top Speeds?), but this is just a normal Revlon, thus the suckage. The colour really is fabulous though.

It's the purple shimmer. I'm in love with the purple shimmer. It's just so visible! It's like YDKJ with an extra layer of gorgeousness added! I definitely will wear this again, when I want a nice neutral with a bit of added dimension (like an Essie Demure Vixen). I'll have to try it with a coat of Gelous under my Seche Vite, instead of with SV alone. The creases aren't visible IRL, but it's enough to bother me.

Anyway, that's all for now. If TD will ever put up those darn China Glaze Crackle Glaze polishes, I'll have another haul to post about :p Also, waiting on my FB Zoyas still and Ebay Nubars. Anyone else still waiting on their Zoyas?

Another Spam Post

2011-01-25T22:03:00.000-08:00

I told you I had a ton of backed-up NOTDs to post, so I'm getting it over with. I hope you don't mind. I'd just really like to get caught up to date with these so I can start just posting my NOTD almost every day... yeah, good luck with that, Lex...

Anywho, these are sort of in order from oldest to most recent...

This is Hard Candy Frigid. Droool, old Hard Candy.... please excuse the hideous tipwear. This polish was pretty sheer, but buildable... I think I used four coats here though.

A konad I did with plate m57, Color Club Warhol and L'Oreal French Tip White. Tacky, but I kind of loved it...

Barielle Elle's Spell over Essie Limited Addiciton.

Indoor shot. Look at those flakies!

The gold flakies in this flash to green at certain angles. I loved this. It's absolutely gorgeous. Wish Barielle was more widely available here :(

Another konad - fauxnad actually - using the L'Oreal French Tip White and Illamasqua Jo'mina. Jo'mina isn't as blue-toned as it looks here - it's acutally much warmer.

Claire's Venomous. I couldn't really get a decent picture of it, but this one shows most of its tones. I didn't really find it to be as close of a dupe for Orly Space Cadet as I'd read.... the base in this is much more green.

This was something I'd lemmed for a long time, but I was kind of disappointed in when I finally tried it on: OPI Sand-erella. This is sort of HTF, so I feel bad saying it disappointed me... but I dunno, it just looked frosty under most lights. I didn't really get too much of the holo sparkle you see in the bottle in the 2nd pic.

This is Zoya Erika. This polish is really pretty, but I don't know how crazy I am about this colour on me - what do you think?

Milani Hi-Def. This is really pretty, and my favorite of this line after Cyberspace (the blue one) - it's sort of a pea green colour, and very holo. I didn't use a topcoat here, as not to diminish the holo. Sorry about the blurry 2nd pic, btw, but the way my thumb looks in the first pic is how this polish looks 99% of the time :)

Last, we have Claire's Bright Skies.

Blue. Jelly. Holo glitter.

Do I really have to tell you what I think of this polish? I think you can figure it out :)

Blurry to show the glittah!

Alright, that's all for now, I guess... I had another picture of Bright Skies, but Blogger isn't letting me upload it, and I just sat here for 10 minutes trying... so now I'm all bad-tempered. Also, I've been sick for the past two days and haven't eaten ANYTHING - literally, nothing. And I like food. A lot :( So I'm going to go try and eat a meal. Wish me luck! If Blogger stops being poopy I'll edit that pic in later.

Oh yes, my NOTD is Revlon Perplex, and I am in LURVE. Whyyyyyy can't we get this in Canada?? Pics of this to come :)

CRACK

2011-01-23T13:28:00.000-08:00

Hello. I know, one post every two weeks is ballz. I fail for life :(

Also, do you guys think I should change my blog design? I just kind of went with the default back when I set this thing up, aside from my banner, and never really gave it another thought... I'm so challenged when it comes to this stuff though, sadly. Like, I would love to put a picture of my own up as my banner, but I have no idea how... maybe Blogger makes it easy for you? I haven't actually checked :p Wow, I sound like a complete idiot... why am I writing this here anyway....?

Oh, oh, oh - guess what I got???

Yay! The OPI Katy Perry collection! L-R: Black Shatter, Teenage Dream, Last Friday Night, Not Like the Movies, and The One That Got Away. I was despairing at first, cuz these were all sold out on Transdesign, but then I found them at a local salon! The first salon I went to had a full display, so I bought two Black Shatters, but then as I was shopping throughout the day I noticed more and more displays with empty slots. By the end of the day, every KP display I passed had empty BS slots, and I noticed Teenage Dream was disappearing fast, too. So I had a minor freak-out and then proceeded to motor my way around the huge mall I was in looking for TD, Not Like the Movies and Last Friday Night. Not only did I find one, I found a salon that had a Buy 3 Get 1 Free deal - and they let me use it on the KPs! :) So I got The One That Got Away as well - wasn't really lemming it, but I figured why not. I don't want the name to become annoyingly ironic.

Anyway, as you can guess, I'm obsessed with Black Shatter and have been putting it overtop of everything lately. Here's a couple of my BS manis (heh) - I haven't photographed them all because we just plain haz no sun right now, not to mention it's freakin cold outside, but I did get pics of a few:

This is the first mani I did with BS - I wanted maximum impact, so I skittled neons. Base, thumb to pinky: Color Club Psychedelic Scene, Misa A Sunny Smile Makes Me Go Wild, Color Club Limelight, Misa Lather Rinse Repeat, Color Club Bizerk Turq.

I actually like how my right hand turned out a lot better, for once. The base polishes are all the same as above, except I swapped out Psychedelic Scene for Illamasqua Jo'mina on my index finger. People were pretty amazed by this - I got lots of compliments from random people :)

The trick to Black Shatter is to apply one coat, as thickly and in as few strokes as you can. The thinner you apply it, the smaller the cracks will be - I like the wider cracks that one thick coat gives you. Try not to overlap your brushstrokes. I don't think I quite have the hang of it yet...

Here it is overtop of Hard Candy Lava, with some SH Hidden Treasure added for extra lava-y-ness (yes, I really just said that). I didn't really like the way this came out, though - it looks pretty here, but the HT tinted the base and make it look orange, and under the black it just looked Halloweeny to me in most lights.

And finally, what I have on today: Black Crack (I mean Shatter, whatever) overtop of Anna Sui 080.

Let me just talk for a second about Anna Sui 080:

She is absolutely gorgeous. These are sad, crappy, really horrible indoor photos taken at night inside my house with dim energy-saving light bulbs, so they don't even begin to show how pretty this is. It's larger holo and iridescent hex glitter with tiny pink glitter sprinkled throughout. It's fantastic. It's probably my favorite AS polish that I own. It's one of my favorite glitter polishes, period (and we know what a glitter hoor I am!) As soon as I put this on, I decided I needed a backup. Pretty, pretty things like this always get discontinued :(

Anyway, I almost didn't want to ruin it with Black Shatter (no one wants to be BS'd over, heh...heh... 'kay, I'll stop), but I did anyway and I like the way it came out:

It still sparkles beneath the cracks, and I really like the way my thumb turned out.

Did manage to get one, sort-of-lit picture. But yeah, I like it. I think I'm going to try it over either Color Club Magic Attraction or Blue Light next :)

I have a metric crapload of NOTDs to post, so I'll be doing that next. I'm waiting on my Zoyas in the mail still (the Order Status still says Shipping, and there's no tracking number yet), and I ordered a bunch of Nubars from evilbay (most of which are duochromes! Squees!) - I can't wait for those! :D I'm waiting to make a TD order until the China Glaze Crackle Glaze collection comes out (yes, more crack in multiple colours. You can surmise what I think of those :p), which is making me extremely nervous - they better still have Anchors Away fully stocked by the time that happens!

Anyway, 'tsall for now! Bye :)

NOTD: GOSH Holographic

2011-01-06T23:13:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all... no, this isn't the New Year Start-Off Post I promised, but it'll have to do... I've been doing so much crap and running around lately :( Blah. Plus I'm working the weirdo freaky on-set hours next week (Hellcats this time) so you probably won't hear from me for a few days then... not that that's unusual....

Anywho, who watched Jersey Shore tonight? /guiltily raises hand. I hate myself for being so addicted to this show :p

Okay, enough, Here's a couple of the worst pics in the world of GOSH Holographic:

Ain't she purdy? It was kind of a streaky PItA to apply, but all was smooth after four(!) coats. I used so much of the bottle though :( Also, this is with no topcoat. Topcoat diminishes the holo. Hence the chip on my index finger :( Please to ignore.

Now, as far as your silver holos go, this is very holo. Very very holo. Holo-er than ChG OMG, I'd say, although I can't find my pic of that at the mo... I don't own Nfu-Oh 61 (yet) but I hear this is very similar to this. What I DO have to compare it to is (equally crappy pics of) OPI SRO (Standing Room Only) Silver:

As you can see, I'd say SRO is a tiny bit more scattered - less linear and smooth than Holographic. I honestly don't know which one I like better... They are both gorgeous, though. And obnoxiously hard to find :( I brought in my bottle of Holographic to Shopper's Drug Mart, where they sell the rest of GOSH's line (everything except Holographic and Rainbow. the two coolest ones. The eff?) and asked the SA if she knew the deal with the availability, and apparently we might start seeing Holographic in Canada? Don't quote me on that, though - some SA's have no idea what they're talking about... I had a lady at a salon downtown tell me that Zoya folded as a company and doesn't make polishes anymore XD I just bit my tongue.

Oh, what the hale - here's a bonus polish that I love, but hate on me:

Essie Mint Candy Apple. So pretty, but:

Do. Not. Want. Clearly not the best with my skintone :( Which is sad, because I love mint green, I love blue-tinged cool colours, and Essie's formula wears like no other on me. But this polish and me were clearly not meant to be... *wipes tear. And yet, I can't bear to swap it away. Le sigh.

That's all for now, guise. Back later with more.

PS: We're filming a wedding scene over the three days next week on Hellcats, I think. Wonder what np I should wear? :p

Happy New Year, Everyone! Some Pretty Polishes I've Acquired Recently

2011-01-03T14:49:00.000-08:00

Hey y'all! Alright, I know I never did a post with all my Christmas manis, but no one wants to see that by now anyway.... I'm gonna do a New Year Start Off post with some stuff like that in it. I promise. I really will :p

But yeah, lately almost everything I've been wearing is untried and newly acquired, so I'll just show you some of those for right now. I know I didn't do haul posts when I got some of this stuff, because, well.... I dunno... I've been feeling lately like haul posts are sort of obnoxious. Well, coming from me they seem that way, anyway.... Since it seems like that's all I do is haul polish sometimes... I dunno. I get really excited when I have a new collection, or a new couple of polishes that I've been really lemming, or an unexpected treasure that I've found without even looking for it... but does anyone else? Yeah. More on this later.

Speaking of hauling, also, there's about a BILLION collections coming out very soon that I think I'm gonna need. First and foremost, there's everything crackle. Katy Perry, Serena Williams, and the China Glaze crackle collections - I'm gonna need ALL of those. Seriously. I need me some crack. I am so excited to wear these that I can't even describe it :D Then there's the Tronica collection (which I'm kind of on the fence about, since I own all the OMGs except BFF, but I know me and I know I'll end up caving :S), the couple of polishes I want from the Anchors Away collection, and then there's the new Zoya Intimate collection that Scrangie posted - um, drool! Not to mention I'm sure Orly and Color Club will be putting out spring collections soon, although we haven't heard anything official yet. So, my wallet is going to be absolutely wailing in agony and I'm gonna have a lot of stuff to post :p

So yeah, here's some stuff I've been wearing lately!

This is Joe Fresh Coral. I tried putting some CND Gold Sparkle Effect overtop of the ring and pinky, but then decided against it as I could barely see it :( You know me. Always gotta be OTT. Can't just leave a perfectly pretty polish alone and appreciate it by itself....

So since my first attempt was a fail, I was even more determined to make it more flashy and glittery (and tacky :p). The result was this :p

It is actually kind of pretty. It reminds me of a goldfish.... I used Inglot 203, one of their blue-green flaky polishes (Inglot flakies are awesome), and then topped that with a coat of Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure, just to see what it would look like.

And now for something completely different....

This is Ardene Grape Times. This was my post-NYE mani (I'll show you my NYE mani in my New Year's Start Off post. It's pretty much what you'd expect :p) THIS, however, is absolutely gorgeous for a tween-store polish...

It's a deep, dark, delicious grape jelly.... mmmm, grape jelly.... But seriously, that's what it is.

It reminds me of watercolour. Too many coats and it looks blackish indoors, so I just did one coat here.

But apparently, I've really been into layering lately, so...

I did this. I added one coat of Sinful Let Me Go, which is a beautiful sheer purple blue-green duochrome. It looks light purple in the bottle with a strong blue flash, but on the nail it's very blue-green. I received it as a swap extra - I didn't even know it existed- but as soon as I saw it I knew it would look gorgeous over black or darker colours.

Of course, since it's a duochrome I had to take a million pictures of it...

See the greenish-blue hue to it?

Picture with flash. I don't use flash very often...

And last and most definitely not least.... lookie what THIS Canadian got her grubby mitts on!

This is the Ulta-exclusive OPI Gift Of Gold :D The ONLY reason I own this little beauty is because I whined and pleaded with my aunt (who lives in GA) to please please please CP me this for Christmas! And she did! Not only did she get me this, but she also got me Elle's Spell! And some LA Splash glitters! :D (Both of which I can't get in Canada), so if by any chance you actually clicked on the link to my blog I gave you, and on the even more remote chance you've actually read this far, Hi Aunt Bonnie! Thank you for the gorgeous polishes! :D

I wasn't a Nail Boarder when OPI's last Ulta-exlusives came out, Dazzled By Gold and Pink Me I'm Good, so I had no idea those even existed until they were lone gone and super hard-to-find. So I will make do with this :)

Super close-up so you can see the tiny red microglitter sprinkled in there with all that gold. Please excuse my horrible, horrible dry cuticles - they are really bad :( This is super-shiny and blingy. It actually is a really great Christmas polish, but I would totally wear this year-round. I want this on my toes next, I think (currently China Glaze Cheers To You is still on them).

See how pretty? Please forgive the chips as well. This is two days of wear.

Okay, that's all for now. I'll be back later with my promised posts!

Some More Recent Wearings (Wearings?)

2010-12-02T00:40:00.000-08:00

Okay, worst title ever, but I have to fire this off pretty quick...

I've been away lately because I've been super-busy, not because I've been sick this time. Yay! So that's good, right?

Okay, yeah, quickly. Quickly. I can do things quick. I think.

Oh yeah, warning in advance: THIS POST CONTAINS FEET!!!! Just don't bother reading this if a picture of toes is going to make you toss yer cookies or something. You've been warned.

I'll start off with a mani I can't believe I didn't include before.... my First Snow Of the Year mani:

This is an attempted glitter gradient using Revlon Powder Puff topped with Icing Glamorous, which is a medium-sized holo glitter. I wanted to do something wintery-looking, because my yard at the time looked like this:

Yes. Oh yes. It sucked. I hate freaking snow. But I loved the mani :)

Next is a fail:

I don't even know why I'm including this, since it's a horrible picture, but it was a horrible mani, so... This is LA Girls Rock Star Crowd Surfing. Crowd Surfing is pretty, a light green with gold and orange flakies, but it's super, super sheer, and I have no idea why I thought it'd be a good idea to try it over white... Try this over a darker colour, if you have it. Which you probably already know, if you have it. I have no business giving people advice with this once, because, as you see, I thought THIS ^^ was a good idea. Um, yeah, no!

Next, I was gettin experimental:

Do you like this polish? Do you honestly?

It kind of ate topcoat.... I put on two coats, I swear. It's like, where did they go...?

The colour is most true-to-life here. This is actually a nail art pen that I dumped into a regular polish bottle! It's Jordana Artsy Purple. It is very pretty, a purple with strong red shimmer, but I have no idea how it manages to make two thick coats of Seche Vite completely disappear.... hmmph....

Next, a crowd favorite:

OPI The Show Must Go On. This was the last of the Burlesques I acquired. I freehanded two tips with OPI Man Of La Mancha on the ring and middle finger, just to see what it looked like - ignore them please :) This has been shown a million times, so I'm just going to shut up and show the pretty:

In case you didn't know (but you probably do), TSMGO is a really pretty reddish-pink-gold duochrome. It's similar to MAC Bad Fairy, but a touch lighter pink.

Okay, foot warning. FOOT WARNING!! Didn't you hear me??!? FOOT WARNINGGGGG!!!!

I hate posting pictures of my feet, and I really, REALLY hate to say this, but you should probably click on the picture to blow it up so you can see the AWESOMENESS that is Inglot 207!! Seriously. Just ignore my toes. This is a medium-sized gold holo glitter, and I have two coats of it on here over Orly Luxe. It. Is. Gorgeous!!! I wore this for days, around lots of people, and I got tons of compliments :)

Next, this is an unnamed Love & Beauty polish from Forever 21. It's a medium forest green shimmer with fine gold foil-y glitter. It's pretty. Application was kind of annoying, though. Very thick.

And last, the first in a series of Christmas manis!!! Yaaaaaaaaaeeeeeey! (Oh come on, they're fun!)

You like? Ees preety? I think so :)

This is another Love & Beauty polish, a dark jelly green, topped with Wet N Wild Prancer. I kinda stole this idea off a Nail Boarder named beclee :) Prancer is a clear with small and larger hexagonal red glitter. It's awesome for layering to create a Christmas mani :) I wish it came in every colour! As far as the Love & Beauty polish goes, it's application was a lot better than the other one - I had no real problems, aside from a lot of buildup (like, a lot more than the usual amount) on the lip of the bottle from me wiping the excess off the brush.

Okay, that's all. Expect a lot more Christmas manis coming up soon. Plus I got a bunch of new RBLs, some Inglots (inlcuding the above 207) and Illamasqua Jo'mina, and a huge Cherryculture order that I haven't even dug into yet! So many untrieds! Talk to you all later :)

Random Spamdom: Orly, OPI Burlesque Glitters, Bourjois and RBL

2010-11-20T00:58:00.000-08:00

I might already have a post with that title. Oh well.

Hello everyone :) It's the weekend! How are you all? As for me, I got sick last night - again. Not three hours after I wrote that post :( Man, it sucked, but now I'm feeling better, albeit once again heavily medicated. So don't mind me sounding like an idiot again. I appreciate you guys claiming you're not judging me, btw :) It makes me feel slightly better about these idiot posts... or at least like I still have any business posting at all anymore, lol.

Anyway, I need to catch up on all these NOTD pics I have floating around.... Cuz , see, even though I seem like I'm not posting, I'm still planning on posting.... which involves taking pics usually every day. I really am. I swear. Okay, sometimes I forget. Most days I don't have time when it's light out, so they're crappy indoor pics... How do you guys take your NOTD pics indoor? Do you have an Ott light or any sort of super-bright light that you use? I can always use photography tips, as you can see :s

So here we go...

First off, we have RBL Under The Stars. I got this in a swap during the summer, and while I do like it and think it's pretty, I couldn't help but be a little disappointed by it. I wish the subtle blue glitter showed up better against the base. Or I expected it to have more of a shimmer as well, or.... agh, I don't know. I'm hard to please. RBLs apply beautifully, and for that reason I liked wearing it, but it's not my favorite night sky polish...

This is Bourjois So Laque! in Bleu Violet. Okay, I LOVED this - I had heard bad things about these polishes, that they were streaky and thick, yet runny, and a pain in the ass to apply. So I was kind of peeved that I'd spent $10 on it... but WOW! SO shiny, so smooth, such a pretty cobalt blue colour.... I was thinking the "Violet" part would show up under different light but it stayed cobalt blue under all lights. And it wasn't hard to apply at all. I don't really care for the stubby, rounded little brush though. And this was really the only colour that stood out to me - the rest were all pinks, reds, nude or black :p Boo! Oh yeah, and the art on my ring finger was for the Cauncks vs. Leafs game I was watching :) The green is CND Green Scene, I believe, which is a gorgeous, opaque green similar to Essie Pretty Edgy.

Now, a couple more Burlesque glitters for you:

This is OPI Simmer & Shimmer. Sorry about the chips - I used the aforementioned Guaranteed Flake-Off Combo with this mani - partially on purpose so I wouldn't have to go through any sort of removal process :) I love this one too. Not that there's a single Burlesque glitter that I didn't love... but this one's blue. Blue is mah favorite :) I got lots of compliments on this polish. Everyone seemed to love it....

Everyone bows to its beauty :)

And this one is Sparkle-icious, my fave of the glitters, and maybe of the whole collection. I'm such a sucker for interesting, multi-coloured glitters. I felt like AA and MAAH and Lippmann's new glitters were made just for me. And this one is by far the most interesting of the six OPI Burlesque glitters - it's the only one that has a pretty even mix of all three colours, rather than one dominant colour with other accents. You can see a pretty even mix of fuschia, gold and blue in there. A lot of people wonder what would be a good base colour for this polish. Personally, I like it on its own - I used three coats here, and it was more than enough to be opaque. I suppose you could layer it over a burgundy, a dark fuschia, a blue, a gold, a black, a white... But I like it on its own :)

This is a gorgeous no-name polish I got at an asian dollar store :) The band is Winmax New York - anyone ever heard of them? Didn't think so. Anway, it's a gorgeous shimmery blurple, or rather its a dark purple base with lots of blue and a tad bit of red microglitter. Very complex and very pretty. In the bottle it looked like a dark shimmery purple, but on the nail it turned into a lapiz-lazuli coloured blue shimmer. Which was fine by me - I prefer blues to purples :)

Side indoor shot.

Outdoor shot. Ignore the hideous tips I tried to sponge on with Hard Candy Frigid (and my poor pinkie cuticle) - my sponging technique obviously needs some vast improvement. You can see the true colour here.

And this is the much-more-gorgeous-than-I-expected Orly Glitz & Glamour, from the holiday collection. This lonely little gold wasn't getting any attention, but I've always had a soft spot for gold polishes, so I thought I'd try it out and see if it deserved any. A warrm, buttery, caramel-gold foil - I thinks it's so glowy and pretty. I have no idea how it compares to some other warmer golds that I own - that Milani one, Zoya Goldie, the OPI Burlesque one, Misa Ghetto Fabulous.... and a couple of others. It looks most similar to the Milani and the OPI, in my opinion, rather than some of the smoother golds because of the tiny glitter flake particles that make up the foil finish... but I'll have to do a nail wheel comparison soon to prove it to myself.

Alright, that's it for now. My Cherry Culture order came in today :D so expect a post about that soon!

P.S: I'm having a reeeeeally hard time deciding what to wear on my nails lately :p

SickPost: I'm Sorry, I've Been Very Ill For A Long Time... But Here's Some Glitter! :D

2010-11-19T00:29:00.000-08:00

Yeah, so, I've been very sick Again. I've mentioned getting sick before, and it happens to me on a regular basis, and it has for a very long time, and I'm not going to bore you with details... But this is why this post is going to suck. It's going to suck a lot. I'm just warning you in advance....

Okay, fine, I'm gonna bore you with a teeny bit of detail. Without giving you more information than you want to know, what happens when I get sick is I'm basically in a lot of pain and I need to be administered medicines. Various amounts of various medicines. Sometimes repeatedly, until I can sleep. And sometimes the effects of these medicines last WAY beyond the amount of time I want them to. I go to sleep and wake up and still feel loopy as hell. Which is what's happening here.

So, I think to myself, what better time than NOW to do a blog post?! xp

I'm aware you're probably judging me right now. That's okay. I accept your disapproving grimaces of pity. It's just, for some reason, even when I'm sick or careening around the room on medication or half-awake and barely able to creak open an eyelid, I always want to take out my pretties and look at them, play with them, swatch them... It's a strange complusion, I know, but it gives me peace of mind, and cheers me up after two long days of being sick and in pain.

So, I took some photos, and.....

Oh balls. I just realized there's frigging snow on the ground outside my house. Like, enough that it's actually stuck to the streets a bit. When the eff did it snow?!? Buggerbuggerbugger.....

Anyway, I took some photos a few minutes ago. I'm not well enough to actually get out of bed, and it's dark out anyway, so these photos are Lextard-style today! Well, sort of. Like, her style except for I'm only using one finger, because - hey, guess what- I discovered the magical formula for making any nail polish - and I mean any - peel or pop off one one solid sheet! Yay! So half my glitter skittles popped off, and I was just glad I had one left of each colour to take a pic of. These were going to be some glorious, sparkly glitter skittles pics, but in the end I was grateful for one-nail pics :p

In case anyone wants to know - to make your polish pop off in one big sheet, use one coat Witchcraft Protein Nail Hardener, one coat American Classics Yellow Stopper (sold at Sally's, by the same people who make Gelous), however many coats of polish (multiple thick coats of glitters recommended), and one thick coat of Seche Vite. Wait to dry. Wash your hands with warm water. Voila :( I don't know if its any one of these products, but the combination of them all together never fails :(

Anyway...

This is Sid, keeping me company and being nosy.... and the ice-pak that was also keeping me company :( As you can see, he's going "What happened to your pinky and middle fingers...?" "Oh, you used that combo again? What are you, a noob?"

So here they are. These swatches really suck, and I'm sorry for subjecting you to this, but I really want to post something and I don't feel like editing any of my other photsos right now:

This is Nicole by OPI Glitz And Glisten. It's a medium purple-based pink dense microglitter. From what I've seen online of this shade, it was apparently released as part of the Nicole Target holiday exclusives? Then why was I able to buy it in a 2-pack at Shopper's Drug Mart with some other purple shade (whose name I forgot already... but I think was also part of the Target LE's)? And why did they only give Canada these two colours, and not Pitch-Black Glimmer, or Fell From The Tree, or that blue glitter.... bitchbitchbitch. Anyway, I did like this one. Kind of like a microglitter version of Zoya Nova.

This is one of my recent Asian dollar store finds! Sorry about the chips. It's an aqua jelly base with silver, aqua and holo microglitter. This was actually a striping polish that I decanted into a plain bottle - I need to go back and get another one, because the stiper polish only half-filled the empty bottle, and it's a pain to get the polish out....plus, it was only $2 :) And it's pretty. Reminds me a little bit of Atlantis, although they are not the same at all.

This is Icing Party Hardy... not to be confused with the kickass China Glaze of the same name. God, this pic sucks. I'm sorry. This is a dense raspberry microglitter, the micro-equivalent of Zoya Astra. Very shiny and sparkly. I actually liked the colour of this one better than Nicole Glitz and Glisten - it's less purple, redder, more vibrant. And it seemed to dry shinier after applying topcoat than the Nicole. Icing has some great polishes, and this is one of three I've picked up lately - the other two being a holo glitter and a blue/purple glitter, which I'll show you in a second...

This is the worst picture in the entire world of Finger Paints Easel-y Entertained.... which is a beautiful blurple/cobalt microglitter that I'm defacing with this horrible pic.... I'm not sure why I put it up, and I'm not going to go into any more detail, other than you should get this if you don't own it already. Wow, how much of a fail is this post....? Anyway, almost done...

And this is Icing Bedazzled, the other new Icing I've gotten lately. Really pretty, dense blue and purple microglitter. Dense enough to be worn alone. I'd been itching to wear it over black, but I tried it over a dark blurple and it kind of completely covered up the base. I know you probably think you've seen a billion blue & purple glitter polishes by now, but this one is so much finer and denser than any other that I've seen. Check it out, next time you're near an Icing. This place consistantly churns out great polishes.

And I consistantly churn out awkward, stumbly, subpar, thrown-together blog entries :S I promise I have more for you guys. I have a Cherry Culture order waiting for me at the PO tomorrow! :D :D :D and I am expecting a SWEET package with my RBL sale orders and some other goodies in it!! :D :D :D So I'm super-excited for that! Plus I have a billion NOTDs, some of which I really like, and my post about dollar store finds.... I'mma post it all soon. Seriously. Thanks for reading my over-medicated ramblings :p

I Can't Sleep.... Let's Look At Some Recent NOTD Pics!

2010-11-07T06:18:00.000-08:00

So I really suck at keeping promises.... yeah.... you're probably so sick of hearing me apologize too. Whatever. On with the blog.

First of all, let me tell you a story.... Lex isn't very good at staying awake lately. Which is weird - I have had chronic insomnia since I was a little kid. I'm used to staying awake whether I want to or not - usually way past the point that I want to. But these days, I come home, blather on to my bf and dork about on the computer for awhile, make dinner, and then I can barely make it through a DVD episode of Lost before my eyes are starting to close on me.... It's really frustrating. So tonight, Saturday night, I decided to chug a can of Red Bull in order to not fall asleep in front of my friends during the hockey game. Hence, this post at 5 in the morning. And this is after Falling Behind. It's actually 6 in the morning :( I love my Red Bull, and it's helped me through some tough times, but lately the stuff has such an adverse, hateful effect on me... Anyway, the end.... Because of this, I can't sleep and you get this cracked-out-sounding post! High fives!

In other news, I bought another Helmer, and am in the midst of reorganizing my stash.... trying to figure out what goes in what drawer and what deserves its own drawer and all that.... I thought it'd be more fun, and, I mean, it is kinda fun, but it is kinda just like cleaning.... I need to massively de-dupe, I'm realizing as well :-/

In other other news, I found all the holiday China Glazes except for... well, like half of them. My Sally's is ballz. I still need Peace On Earth, Little Drummer Boy, Frosty, Mommy Kissing Santa and those two golds... Problem is, no one place has all of them in stock :( At least I got my greedy mitts on Party Hearty. We all know that's the important one :)

So anyway... who wants to look through some old NOTD pics? yaaay! Well, they're actually pretty recent...

My sloppy execution of the candy corn mani. Did this sometime during the week of Halloween.... I used....

An old Sally Hansen Halloween exclusive from a few years back, Orange Pumpkin. Yes, the point of me taking the pic like that was so I didn't have to type that, but let's move on.... Maybe it was just last year's release, I'm not really sure. Anyway, I used the yellow and white SH Insta-Dris for the rest (Lightning, and... I don't remember...) Also, I freehanded the lines, because I couldn't find any tip guides. Or tape. Don't hate.

Another Halloween mani. This is Sephora By OPI If You've Got It, Haunt It, with Color Club Tangerine Scream on the ring finger. IYGIHI was one of the Halloween-exclusive $OPIs, along with Kitty Loves Black and that glow-in-the-dark white, and my fave of the three by far. It's a black glitter in a base of grey microglitter, and there's some blue and pink in there too. Gorgeous and unique in my stash. I can't find Nicole Pitch-Black Glimmer anywhere, and this fulfilled that lemming nicely.

This is a Kiko Cosmetics #270 overtop of $OPI Kitty Loves Black, which was a black with pearly blue microshimmer. Kiko 270 I've shown on top of $OPI Read My Palm before, but it shows up much better on top of a darker colour like this. The paillette glitter reflects different colours at different angles - purple, blue, teal and green. These photos are blurred but you can see some of the colours of the glitter...

It is really quite stunning IRL... very Across The Universe-ish. I love this polish. I got it in a swap from Italy - I wonder if there's anything similar on this side of the pond...

This was my anniversary mani, for my 3-year with the BF...

Cheesy, yes, but that's what I was going for :)

I used (what else) OPI Happy Anniversary! and layered various heart polishes overtop. I actually kind of went crazy with the heart polishes. I pulled out every one I own and started slopping them on, flinging hearts this way and that.... There's a couple of Nicole ones (Love Your Life, Have A Heart, Honey-dew You Love Me, Spring Romance) a Claire's one (Love Struck), some random no-name dollar store ones... Yeah. It doesn't look the greatest, I'm aware - the repeated application of the thick heart polishes turned the finish of Happy Anniversary all gungey and gross-looking.... but it served its purpose. Boyfriend liked it :)

And last, but not least.... I have a random no-name dollar store polish for you!! (don't you hate those? :p) I've been combing Asian dollar stores recently. Being in Vancouver, I walk past a ton of them all the time, and decided to start exploring some. Well, look how glad I am that I did!

I found this gorgeous grey holo polish in one such store. It was $2, has no name and comes in a fugly-ass twisty bottle. But look how prettyyyyyy! *_*

I love me some holo. And this has got good holo :) I also picked up kind of a rusty-reddish looking one that also looks kind of holo, so hopefully that one'll turn out to be as nice as this one! I scored a bunch of stuff at that store and stores like this recently, and I'm going to have an upcoming post dedicated to my dollar store finds. Most of them are random Hong Kong and Korean brand polishes, they're cheap, and they're all kinds of awesome :) I'll also include where I found them all, in case anyone's in Vancouver. (And in case you're interested, I found this particular one at that Daiso-type dollar store in Tinseltown by Stadium Station :) Or what used to be Tinseltown. I don't know if it's still called Tinseltown. But you guys know where I mean, right? I'm sure it'd probably be at Daiso, too, since this place seemed to have pretty much the same stock as them...)

Well, I have run out of pics for you right now. But do not fret - I shall return with more stuff I promised I'd do. Seriously. I will.

(No, I'm still not tired yet. FML :p)

Some Burlesque Swatches: Let Me Entertain You and Extra-Va-Vaganza, Plus A Whole Buncha Bonus Swatches

2010-10-26T01:18:00.000-07:00

Alright. I'm doing it again. It's been awhile, so I'm throwing up a whole bunch of swatches at once. Because really, I've been hauling so much lately that i have absolutely no excuse for not posting something every single day, even if it's just stash photos or haul photos or just my NOTD :p So here you go - here's what's been on my nails the past week or two.

Sorry about the watermark - I already posted this on MUA, so if you already saw these phots there, sorry :p And I didn't have time to go back and change the watermark on all of them, so just try to ignore it :s Also, sorry about my dry-azz cuticles :(

Okay, I'll start with some of the other stuff. Why? Just cuz I want to :p

Sparitual Chill. OMG, what a gorgeous creamy bluey-purpley! Do these Sparituals wear like iron on anyone else, or is it just me? Cuz if they all wear this well, I think I love...

Claire's Mood Polish in Mellow/Crazy. This is it cold...

...and this is warm. I may have jazzed it up with some random glitter topcoat, by the looks of it here, but I honestly don't remember... I thought this was new, but its really just a lighter, more boring version of Calm/Wild...

See how similar? Does anyone else have Mellow/Crazy?

Alright, here's those Burlesque polishes I promised you:

OPI Let Me Entertain You. Ooh, blue shimmer! I loved this one a lot more than I thought I would.

OPI Extra-Va-Vaganza. yeah, I loved this one exactly as much as I thought I would :) I mean, how can you not?

I will swatch the rest of these Burlesques as I wear them - I promise! I have all of them now :S :S I'm saving my favorite, Sparkle-icious, for last....

Milani Just Browsing. Your standard silvery, shimmery white. Kind of like OPI Kyoto Pearl.

China Glaze Stroll. <33333333333

Okay, and I really loved this one too:

Color Club Untamed Luxury topped with HT. UL is such a gorgeous polish - turquoise blue jelly base packed with aqua glitter...

...and topped with HT, it just looks so... mermaid-y....

Remember that 5-pack of blackened glitters Icing had a while back? This was my favorite one from that pack. The gold glitter stands out really, really well against the black base. Love :)

Massini Purple Medallion.... or, I mean Studio M, whatever.

And saved for last, my recent favorite:

This is Color Club Wild And Willing. I think I put it over With Abandon, which is a black with very subtle gold shimmer/microglitter, but it doesn't matter - you'll get the same basic effect over any black...

Red...

Gold...

...and green :) Lovin would be easy if your colours were like my dreeeeeams.... yeah, never mind. It's kind of like a more intense Space Cadet, in my opinion.... if you can picture such a thing :)

Alright, that's all for now. I have soooo much haulage to show you guys... Japanese dollar store polishes, MAC Jade Dragon, new Anna Sui and Bourjois, new WnW blackened glitters, and some really sweet frankens I made! Yes, I, Lex, The Queen of FrankenSuckFail, made not one successful franken - but three! :D And one's that SSN franken I've been meaning to make forever - turned out great! :D Oooh, I can't wait to show you!

I'm tired now, though, and off to bed - I'll post my NOTD tomorrow too, I promise.

Huge Swap Haul! Things I Couldn't Get In Canada

2010-10-13T16:53:00.000-07:00

Okay, I told you about that EPIC swap I did awhile back... I don't want to bore you to tears, but I did want to show you what I got in the swap really quickly.

One of these days I'd like to start doing Youtube videos about stuff like this. And then I could just link to the video. I'm probably completely kidding myself thinking anyone would be even remotely interested in watching anything like that, but really, I think I would have so much fun doing it that I wouldn't really care :p But then I get to thinking about why I'd have so much fun doing something like that, and I start to feel kind of narcissistic and insipid and decide against it again. But then I watch videos like this and this and especially this and want to do it again..... ugh. Anyway, I'll try not to drag this on....

Okay, so this swap was courtesy of the awesome jn_woods. I don't know if you're a follower, Jen, but if anyone is on MUA and thinking of swapping with her, I highly recommend it - the woman is a CP wizard, people! :)

Okay, so these are in no particular order, since Blogger is not letting me rearrange my photos right now:

This is Love My Nails Glory, Essie Pink Parka and Sinful Innocent, which I think is a dupe for OPI Who The Shrek Are You? Oops.

Pure Ices in Beware and Strapless. Both intended for frankening. I think this is like my fifth bottle of Strapless :p

This is Zoya Luna, Nova and Collette - obtained for me during Zoya's "LIPPY" sale earlier this year, which of course wasn't available to Canadians >:p

Hard Candy Mr. Wrong and Lava. My sister stole the ring from Mr. Wrong. We have Hard Candy at Walmart here now, but of course, NO NAIL POLISH! AWESOME! THANKS WALMART CANADA! >:p >:p

New York Summer Amaranth and Hot Baby Blue, and Sally Hansen HD Byte and Wavelength. We eventually got these HDs in Canada, but not at the time I requested them. I didn't want to wait 2 months till we got them here :p

This is the Milani.... Hot Metal collection? Liquid Metal? Arrrgh. I fail. I know Milani had two collections of chromes (and then put out another with metallic reds and oranges....it's like, oooookay), and I got both of them, but I don't recall which was which.... to be fair, I never actually saw the display myself in person :p Anyway, I think this one is the Hot Metal collection. I think. These all have names with "melt" in them.... and they have been reviewed to death so I'mma move on...

And here's the other collection. These have computer-y names... and they look more like Liquid Metal, so I'm gonna guess these are those. I don't remember all the names of them right now, and I don't want to go look, so.... oh man, this post sucks soooo bad, doesn't it? :( Sorry.

These are Massinis, as you can see :) They are super-pretty and blingy. I'm so happy I finally got these, but ........ whyyyyy don't they sell these in Canada?!? Sad face.

*EDIT - As I was reading this, when I read "as you can see", I looked up at the picture and saw.... that the bottles say "Studio M" on them now. I IZ SMRT..... Yeah. Massini renamed itself Studio M a long time ago... and come to think of it, I may have seen the makeup in a store around here... so maybe we'll see Studio M polishes soon?

These are Essence Color & Go's. Once again, not in Canada :( I already had two of these from swaps - Pool Party and Underwater, and now I am the proud owner of Check Me Out, No More Drama, What Do U Think and VIP Appeal. Stupid names, but whatever. I read on the board that What Do U Think is a dupe for Chanel Orange Fizz.... really? I dunno about that, but it's a cute colour.

LA Splash polishes! The coveted Golden Seahorse, Sparkling Oceanspray and Sparkling Stratosphere. Once again, never seen in Canada. I feel like if I search dollar stores hard enough I'd find these one day, but I know it's a lie....

The entire collection of the summer LE Wet N Wilds! Now, we have WnW in Canada, but we'd never, ever see new collections like this, let alone LE ones. And I never thought I'd be able to obtain all of them, but I did! :D

Okay, I had a couple of more things to show you, like the names of the WnW polishes, not to mention the crown jewels of my swap! :( But blogger is NOT letting me upload photos right now. At all. I click on them to upload them, and nothing happens. I realize this post really, really sucks, and I apologize. Hopefully blogger will stop effing with me soon and I can go back and edit this. If you're reading this before I have a chance, once again I'm sorry :( My next post will be better, i promise!

My OPI Collection, In It's Entirety

2010-10-02T01:36:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I randomly decided on a whim to count all my OPIs. I attempted to photograph the entire thing, then I set about identifying each polish. I'm just going to post the pics, and then all the labels below it. It's a lot to sort through, but at least if you see a polish and wonder what it is you'll be able to find out. Or you could just compare it to your own OPI collection. Or... whatever, fine, you know what?! I really don't know what the point of me doing this was. But the point is, I did it, and now I'm going to post it just so I feel like I didn't waste two hours of my life :p
OPIs are not my favorite brand of nail polish - probably my second or third or fourth, realistically - but I do own a lot of them because they are so easy to find, and for a while there I really had a hook-up and I was able to buy a lot of the core colours for a dollar or two each :) So my collection kind of grew. And I mean, I do love my OPI. They are good polishes, for the most part. Certain ones definitely inspire a special kind of lust in me that few other brands can. And they have created some of the coolest colours of all time. So even though the company itself is ridiculous and stupid and can go pee up a rope, I do love their polish. As you will be able to see.

So... are you ready for this?

Okay.... I'm warning you. This is ridiculous. Downright laughable. I own 181 OPIs! including minis. So....you wanna see? You really wanna see my ENTIRE OPI collection? Well.... okay.... you asked! :p

This is the main OPI drawer of my Melmer... so far I have one drawer dedicated to OPIs, and the rest just on random stands around my room. I'm going to have to dedicate another drawer to them soon - in the new Melmer I plan to buy soon, most likely. You're probably gonna have to click on the picture to see all the numbers, but maybe not.

Also, please excuse the mess that is my room. I'm reorganizing my closet - it doesn't always look like this, I swear! :p

1. How To Jamaica Million 2. You Don't Know Jacques - Suede 3. Pearl Of Wisdom 4. Alpine Snow 5. Bubble Bath 6. We'll Always Have Paris - Suede 7. Skinny Dip'n In Lake Michg'n 8. Happy Anniversary 9. Elephantastic Pink 10. Kyoto Pearl 11. Princesses Rule! 12. Meet Me On The Star Ferry 13. Suzi And The Lifeguard 14. Lincoln Park At Midnight 15. Flower-To-Flower 16. Bling Dynasty 17. And This Little Piggy 18. Russian Navy - Suede 19. Wing It! 20. Lincoln Park After Dark 21. Mod About You 22. Black Cherry Chutney 23. OPI Ink 24. OPI Ink - Suede 25. (unknown unlabelled pinkish nude) 26. 18K Ginza Gold 27. Moon Over Mumbai 28. Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow 29. Sweet Heart 30. Don't Know... Beets Me! 31. Purple With A Purpose 32. Jewel Of India 33. Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ 34. You Don't Know Jacques! 35. Light My Sapphire 36. Give Me The Moon 37. Louvre Me Louvre Me Not 38. Russian Navy 39. La Paz-itively Hot - Matte 40. Cozu-melted In The Sun 41. Shim-Merry Chic 42. Manicurist Of Seville 43. Lemonade Stand By Your Man 44. Need Sunglasses? 45. Russian Navy - Matte 46. Yoga-Ta Get This Blue! 47. Can't-a-Berry Have Some Fun? 48. It's All Greek To Me 49. Brisbane Bronze 50. Dress To Empress 51. Bright Lights - Big Color 52. The "It" Color 53. Dating A Royal 54. Jade Is The New Black 55. Dutch Tulips 56. Royal Flush Blush 57. Suzi Skis In The Pyranees Suede 58. Miami Beet 59. I'm Not Really A Waitress 60. Hot & Spicy 61. Banana Bandanna 62. Green-wich Village 63. Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow - Suede 64. Amazing Lazing Lilac 65. Nomad's Dream 66. Holiday Glow 67. Malaga Wine 68. My Chihuahua Bites! 69. In My Back Pocket 70.Suzi Says Feng Shui 71. Gargantuan Green Grape 72. Do You Lilac It? 73. Tickle My France-y 74. Sand In My Suit 75. Royal Rajah Ruby 76. Bogota Blackberry 77. Flit A Bit 78. Midnight In Moscow 79. All-A-Bordeaux The Sled 80. A Oui Bit Of Red 81. No Room For The Blues 82. Sea? I Told You! 83. My Big Break84. I'd LikeTo Thank 85. Hollywood Blonde 86. Have You Seen My Limo? 87. Dim Sum Plum 88. Red My Fourtune Cookie 89. Thanks So Muchness! 90. St. Petersburgundy 91. Witch Arm? 92. Off With Her Red! 93. Glow-Ink In The Dark 94. Tattoo You Want Candy? 95. I Love Mummy 96. (unknown blueish silver) 181. Suzi Says Feng Shui. Wow, that was ridiculous. And the last one is 181 because I missed it at first :p

This is random stand #1, where they're playing nicely with Zoyas, Lippmans, Illas and Chanels:

97. Merryberry Mauve Glitter TC 98. Paris Couture For Sure TC 99. Thrills In Beverly Hills TC 100. Glitter Bit Of Music TC 101. Goldilocks Rocks! 102. Merryberry Mauve 103. Vodka & Caviar 104. Got The Blues For Red 105. Maliblue 106. My Fave Wave.

A stand hanging on the wall by my bed:

107. Who The Shrek Are You? 108. Fiercely Fiona 109. Ogre-The-Top Blue 110. What's With The Cattitude? 111. Can You Dig It? 112. Rumple's Wiggin' 113. Funkey Dunkey 114. SRO (Standing Room Only) Silver 115. Damone Roberts 1968 116. She's Golden 117. Fireflies 118. Blonde Date 119. Brand New Skates 120. Baby It's Coal Outside 121. Breathe Life 122. Maine-iac Mauve 123. Ate Berries In The Canaries 124. Sahara Sapphire 125. MPJ (teal flash) 126. MPJ (brown poo) 127. MPJ (holo) 128. (is actually China Glaze Strawberry Fields, not an OPI - oops)

The second stand, on my dresser, completely full:

129. Man Of La Mancha 130. Movin' Out 131. Rent 132. Thoroghly Modern Millie 133. Mamma Mia! 134. That's All Bright With Me! 135. Dress To Empress 136. Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous 137. Ski Teal We Drop 138. Color So Hot It Berns 139. Glitzerland 140. Cuckoo For This Color 141. Yodel Me On My Cell 142. The Color To Watch 143. Lincoln Park After Dark 144. Black Tie Optional 145. Have You Seen My Limo? 146. Sonic Bloom 147. Who Are You Wearing? 148. Ocean Love Potion 149. Peel Me A Gobi Grape 150. Merry Midnight 151. Smitten With Mittens 152. Call My Cell-ery 153. Sit Under The Apple Tree 154. Hey! Get In Lime! 155. Parlez-Vous OPI 156. Done Out In Deco 157. Sand-erella 158. Blue Moon Lagoon 159. Coral Reef 160. You Ottaware Purple 161. At Your Quebec And Call 162. Glacier Bay Blues 163. Rainforest

And the third stand, with my DS and Alice polishes, playing with Anna Sui and miscellaneous others:

164. DS Chiffon 165. DS Reflection 166. DS Reserve 167. DS Tapestry 168. DS Extravagence 169. DS Treasure 170. Mad As A Hatter 171. Absolutely Alice 172. DS Sapphire 173. DS Jewel 174. DS Glow 175. DS Glamour 176. DS Mystery 177. DS Illuminate 178. DS Elegence 179. DS Coronation 180. Ghostess With The Mostess.

Okay, this post was ridiculous. I don't even really know why I just put it up. Guilt, likely.

*EDIT - I just realized two things. 1.) Even though I said #128 was a China Glaze, not an OPI, I still included it in the count. Derpderp. And 2.) I missed an OPI, cuz it was hiding in one of my other purses. And it's one of my favorite colours - Significant Other Color! So, minus the ChG and including that, the final number is still the same... wow, that was entirely pointless, wasn't it....

So I got my giant swap in, and my TD order, and I haven't really gotten much else that's major in the past little while... I got Essie Sew Psyched and MAC Bad Fairy today - yay! :) And I plan on getting each and every one of those damn Burlesques when they come out.... which should be any day now. I have them all on hold at my local salon - they're getting them in any day now and they're calling me when they do :) And now there's all this NARS madness going on.... gah! I think I'll hate myself if I have the opportunity to get Zulu and Mash and don't.... oh, my poor poor wallet :p

Anyway, some day soon I'll post photos of the giant epic swap haul.... plus I have all the Orly Cosmix swatched, which I might as well post. And all my NOTDs that I've been backlogging, as usual :-/ Oh well. And coming up real soon will be the Burlesques :) I'm sure I'll do a trumpeting post on them full of squees the day I get them :)

Okay, it's kind of late, and my friends are all sitting around me talking, and it's kind of distracting, so... good night!

Oh yeah, one last thing - RIP Greg Giraldo. You guys ever seen the Comedy Central roasts? That guy was one funny mofo. I can't believe he's gone. The roasts are all going to suck now :(

Some Spam While I Wait For The Evil, Sadistic UPS Truck.....

2010-09-03T13:57:00.000-07:00

Okay, I have to put this up quickly because my TD order should be here any minute.... The UPS page says "Out For Delivery" and I'm sitting here waiting and watching for the truck.... I know, I need a life. Whatevs. Come on, truck..... I'm going insane. They're doing this to me on purpose, I swear....

Anywho, here's some more spam while we're waiting.... yes, I said we... You're waiting with me :p

Lippmann Razzle Dazzle. Really quite pretty. From the Lippmann All That Jazz set, came with Some Enchanted Evening and Lady Sings The Blues.

Obligatory Blogger-flipped photo :(

I liked this a lot more than I expected to. It was kind of what I wanted WnW Night Prowl to be....

This is Kiko Cosmetics 270 over Sephora by OPI Read My Palm. I know it looks like crap here - I couldn't photograph it properly for the life of me. But trust me when I say it's an awesome glitter topcoat - it's comprised of tons of multicoloured pailettes that shimmer and reflect tons of different colours depending on the light and base colour.... I know they look yellow here, but overtop of this colour they mainly reflected blue and green... It looked very mermaid-like...

Aaargh. This photo is blurry and bad, but your can sort of see the blue it reflects IRL... It looked gorgeous, anyway. I received this in a swap, but you can order Kiko Cosmetics through their website, I believe. It frustrates me that I can't show you this topcoat properly though, so.... moving on.....

This was a recent KOTD. It's the Barielle Blackened Bleu from the other day stamped with China Glaze Sci-Fi, and a konad plate..... I can never remember the names of the plates. I fail at life. Sorry. But I did like the way this looked.

And this is my current KOTD.... current up until about ten minutes ago, that is, when I took it off in anticipation of my TD order arriving.... which still hasn't shown up, btw..... I'm seriously starting to get cold sweats....

It's like a "Still-Trying-To-Squeeze-Some-Use-Out-Of-My-Summer-Polishes" mani. I'm kind of in love with it. The base is an awesome polish from Claire's....

And yeah, its definitely hot :) It's like a neon orangey-pinkish red.... ish. It shifts between these three colours, depending on the light. But it's definitely neon. So bright and unique. I don't own another neon like it, and I own a lot of neons. This is probably the closest thing to a neon red that I have.... much closer than, say, China Glaze Rose Among Thorns, or something. But it's beautiful. And the application was seriously awesome - pigmented and not thick or gooey at all. I did three coats but two would have been fine. Three was easy to apply though - this polish is pretty thin.

Oh yeah, and I stamped overtop with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Expres-so Yellow... my favorite polishes for konad :) Other than the Chromes and Romatiques of course. Seriously, though, I've picked up so many of these just for konading - I find they work better than the actual Konad polishes! I tried doing this mani with the yellow Konad polish, but it just would NOT transfer to the nail at all, and the bit that did transfer barely showed up. So I tried again with this and got much better results :) If you're looking for some good colours to konad with, I highly recommend picking up a couple of these - especially the primary colours and the pastels.

Okay, the UPS guy still hasn't come by.... If he doesn't come today, I'll have to wait until Monday to get my order! The page still says "In transit" though..... I'm going to quietly have a meltdown in the corner. Hopefully I'll be back later.

NOTD: Barielle Blackened Bleu

2010-09-01T14:55:00.000-07:00

Okay, just needed to post something. My NOTD is Barielle Blackened Bleu.

I really don't know much about this shade as far as when it came out or what collection it was part of.... all I know is this is one of my very favorite polish colours ever. This type of colour, that is - blackened glittery blues. There are a ton of these out there - pretty much every company has a polish that fits this description. And I own most of 'em, hehe.

This one is very very nice - indoors under low lights, it just looks black, but outside or under lights, it's got tons of blue microglitter, which is very visible on the nail. So pretty. I loves it.

This is it in direct sunlight.

Pretty.... I have a couple of other Barielle polishes - Berry Blue, Glammed Out Garnet, one or two others - that I need to try. And I neeeeeed to find Falling Star! I was so very excited to get this one, though. I think you can order Barielle polishes through their website, which I think I just need to do - I got these through swaps...

Alright, I know I still have tons of stuff to post. I'll get on it, I promise!

Haul From August, Long Overdue

2010-08-27T12:30:00.000-07:00

Morning. Afternoon. Whatever.

So all I have to show you today is a bunch of stuff I've gotten in August. I got this stuff over the course of this month from TD, swaps or stores. And I'm just gonna jump right into it this time :p

Most of this stuff you will have already seen before and will be totally boring. Sorry :(

First of all, my China Glaze Vintage Vixen set. I got Goin' My Way, Riveter Rouge, Classic Camel, Emerald Fitzgerald, Midnight Mission and First-Class Ticket, and then I also ordered Ingrid. I'm liking most of them, but to tell the truth I wasn't horribly impressed with this collection. The colours just don't seem that unique. I don't really like Goin' My Way (brown is probably the one polish colour I'm really not a fan of - I probably only have like three "actual" browns :p), and Classic Camel is guaranteed to look like puke on me. And I'm kind of blah about First-Class Ticket as well. Another blue-purple shimmer? :-/ The rest look good, though.

Next, OPI's fall Swiss collection. My selection from the collection, anyway. I got Glitzerland, Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous, The Color To Watch, Yodel Me On My Cell, Ski Teal We Drop, Cuckoo For This Color and Color So Hot It Berns. CSHIB was a last minute addition. I found these all at the same B&M salon I got the Shreks at a few months ago - they seem to get OPI collections faster than anyone else, and it's awesome.

May as well continue on the OPI tangent... This is what I've amassed so far of the Holiday On Broadway collection. L-R: Movin' Out, Rent, Mamma Mia, Man Of La Mancha and Thoroughly Modern Millie. I got some of these from swapping, and some from TD (they're out of MOLM, though). Notice anyone missing, anyone very important? Yeah. But I'm not paying $40 for it on ebay. I really can't justify that :( Maybe for Christmas.

More OPIs :) L-R: Call My Cell-ery, Sit Under The Apple Tree, Rainforest (!), Glacier Bay Blues (!) and Sand-erella (!!) The first two came from TD, the rest are all from awesome swappers :) Soaper1 gave me Rainforest, and yelly21 is beyond awesome - I swapped with her for Sand-erella, which I'd been lemming forever, and she inlcuded another one of my all-time biggest lemmings - Glacier Bay Blues!! :D I've never received something that's on my top ten biggest lemming list as an extra! I was touched. The NB is so awesome :) I can't wait to wear GBB and Rainforest, but I'm trying to save them for fall...

Some Orlys. L-R: Bailamos, Mirror Mirror, Royal Navy and La Playa. I found Bailamos and La Playa at Shopper's Drug Mart, of all places! I guess some SDM's have Orlys. now? And free top/base coats! Royal Navy was on my want list for a long time now - finally caved :)

Behold this beautiful sight...

Ahhh, my eyes! OPI Need Sunglasses!! Haaaaaaa......... I'm not funny.
Srsly though, these are the coveted Lippmann Nordstrom exclusives. L-R: Razzle Dazzle, Lady Sings The Blues, Some Enchanted Evening, Bad Romance and Across the Universe. I love AtU, and I'm wearing Razzle Dazzle right now and I really really like it too. I'll probably post a NOTD pic later on, so I won't go into too much detail now... I've heard that LStB and SEE are both kind of disappointing... SEE kind of looks like a 99 cent Sally Girl polish.... but I'll try them anyway. Since I can't return them :( Hey, could Some Enchanted Evening be called Salmon-Chanted Evening? Cuz...y'know.... it's pink? OMG why am I actually making an attempt at jokes. I should just hang myself for that one. Or go work for OPI :p

Wanna see another beautiful sight?

Okay, so these are not new, really, but I just noticed the other day that I've collected quite a few RBLs just from swapping. Which is awesome. Cuz these are spendy. These are the RBLs I own: L-R: Lulu, Om, Starfish Patrick, Coral, Frugalista, Look Rich Be Cheap, Concrete Jungle, Dead Calm and Under The Stars. I've only worn Starfish Patrick and LRBC. I can't wait to try these others though. UTS is one of those "night sky" polishes that I love so much - black with very fine blue and teal glitter. Love. Also, why are my bottles different heights? :-/

Some Billies I got from Dollar Giant. I like Billie polishes - pretty decent quality for a dollar each :) They remind me of old WnWs. The one in the middle is called Purple Haze. The old man at the checkout at DG that rang them up for me said, "Aren't these three purple ones the same?" "No.... they're.... actually slightly different...." I said, feeling like a certified lunatic. That's pretty much the look he gave me, too. Like, you have problems, lady :p

And last but not least, I found the new fall Sally Hansen Xtreme Wears :) In case you can't read the bottles, I picked up Purple Gala, Fireberry Red, Cosmic Blue, Concrete and Mystic Lilac. These were the ones that appealed to me most. I will admit, though, that after I bought them, I sat outside the store with my iphone searching the NB for any mention of these, just to see if there were any good ones that I should go back and get - hahaaaaa <----------- iz dork. I think my instincts are pretty spot-on, though :) I haven't seen any mention of Cosmic Blue, but it's the kind of polish that would probably appeal to me more that it would most people. It's got bar glitter in it, ppl! :D

Alriight, I will be back with a quick NOTD, and I know I promised you those stash pics, as well. Also, expect another GIANT haul post in the next week or two :) I have a huge, huge swap (huge. like 100+ polishes huge :O) coming in the next few weeks here with all sorts of awesomeness in it that I can't get in Canada (she should get her end any day now, and should be mailing mine right after :)... and then there's the TD order I pulled the trigger on the other day with all the Halloween and Winter collection goodies coming in it! :D :D Good stuff like China Glaze Awakening, Orly Tis The Season, Color Club Untamed Luxury and (oh man) Orly Cosmic FX! *squeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!! So yeah. Lots of stuff in the next few weeks. I iz excited :) And I plan on picking up Jade Dragon and Bad Fairy from MAC, but other than that, it's a no-buy until those OPI Burlesque glitters come out!

Till later.....

Five Billion Swatches of What I've Been Wearing All Month

2010-08-26T12:07:00.000-07:00

Hello all! Wow, I haven't posted in a month! I'm so so sorry... this obviously has been a really busy and hectic month. I know no one wants to hear my lame excuses or stories about what's actually happening in my real life. We just come here because of our mutual love/admiration/constant cravings for the polish, amirite? :D And for some reason, you look at my writing on my silly little blog here, and maybe identify with me? Or just feel superior. Either way, I hope you want to see five billion swatches of what I've worn this whole month - cuz that's what I'm putting up :p Or most of it anyway. There were a couple of days I didn't take NOTD pics.

Also, really quickly - I've gotten two requests to see some stash/collection pics, because y'all are thinking "my stash must be huge" and you "wanna see it!" I've taken a couple of photos, which I'll put up later, but here's what I'm thinking... yes. You're right. I have a giant np collection. Like, ridiculously huge. I usually stay away from those "How many are you at??" poll posts on MUA, because I see the numbers people post and I'm like, "wow.... maybe times that by five" :s and I don't want to seem like I'm some spoiled brat/hoarder. Or rich. I've been collecting NP since I was in 7th grade, but over the past two years my obsession really came about full-circle. And I have... quite a lot now :p That's why I haven't posted collection or stash or storage pics before. But if I'm getting requests to do so, I was thinking.... would you watch a video of my stash and storage? It would be so much easier to follow. And I'll stay out of sight - you'll be forced to listen to my stupid voice, but that's all! Whaddya think?

I'll still post the collection pics I already took later.... wait, I already said that, didn't I...

Okay, enough talk. Here we go - NOTDs from August:

This is Sally Hansen Spectrum, overtop of China Glaze Grape Juice. GJ was untried and Spectrum was new at the time, so I thought them a natural combination. I wish I'd tried GJ by itself, though, and I wish those SH's were opaque enough on their own.

Icing Chartreusely Yours. This is the only true chartreuse I own, I think! :) It's a bright yellow-green creme. I fauxnaded overtop. You probably saw that for yourself :p

Zoya Gwin....

OKay, blogger just decided to prematurely publish my post before I was done, so I lost all the pics I uploaded! I'm having to upload them all over again :(((( I seriously feel like throwing my laptop at the wall. Does Blogger ever do this to anyone else?? Lose their photos, randomly flip them weird ways, screw up your alignment...? It does this to me almost every time I post! Is it IE? It makes me not even want to bother writing >:(

Anyway... I think I can move on...

This is Zoya Gwin after I coated it with OPI Significant Other Color.

The subtle gold/green flash in Gwin just wasn't doing it for me - I needed moar!

SIC is really one of my favorite layering polishes... it gives such a strong green/gold flash. I was tempted to try Sonic Bloom over it as well, but I thought the blue tint would make it too murky.

This is Sephora By OPI Midnight Mambo. This was an online exclusive - not sold in stores. Which I think is stupid, because what if you don't have a credit card? This is such a gorgeous polish, everyone should have access to it! I got this and 212 at the same time, and while I haven't tried 212 yet, I'm pretty sure that MM is my new all-time fave $OPI polish! So pretty... a bright jelly blue base with very dense mulitsize and hex holo glitter. What could be more perfect? Well, one thing, but I'll show you that in a sec....

This is Toma Island Girl. I got this in a swap, and it's an iridescent pearl colour with very strong blue and green flashes.

Inside, it just looks like this most of the time:

But at certain angles, and in the sun, it's very opalescent and pretty.

I couldn't really get all the colours to show up on camera :( of course, but I could see blue, green, purple, pink.... this is very very pretty. It did take four or five coats to be opaque, though. This would be nice on tanned toes, with a white underneath to help the sheerness. Hmm... maybe I should try....

This is OPI Color So Hot It Berns, from fall's Swiss collection. Sorry 'bout the chips. I thought this would be a hot red, so I grabbed it at the last second when I first found the collection. It's okay, a standard cherry-red creme. I'm so bad at telling if a red is right for my skintone or not though. I think they all kinda look the same *hides*

This is Color Club Puccilicious. Ignore the yellowness in this pic - the polish colour is the closest to real life in this pic. This is a very blue-based purple. It's not a blurple, it's definitely still purple, but with a very, very blueish tone. Which = impossible to photograph. Here were my attempts:

See? Here in the sun, it appears very very blue.

As well as here, in the shade. Oh well. It looks IRL most like the first pic, and it's a gorgeous creme. If you like purples, I'd highly, highly reccommend this one. This is one of my very fave purple cremes. I even like it better than China Glaze Grape Pop/OPI Funky Dunkey/RBL Mismas! I just love the blue tone.

Okay, remember how I just said it doesn't get any better for me than $OPI Midnight Mambo? Ahem. BEHOLD!!!!

Yeah, I know everyone's seen it by now, but I can't help it. I. ABSOLUTELY. LOVE!!!!!!!!!!

It was like Deborah made this polish just for me. Blue. Glitter. Green tinges. Gaaaahhhhhhh...... Yes, the hex glitter (or "sequins", as DL calls them) are big and chunky like in Ruby Red Slippers, but this combined with the jellyness of the dark blue and the glitter give it a gorgeous depth that really does make me think of space and night skies. Awesome. Automatically in my top 20 of all time. Probably even top ten. Oh yes, in case you don't recognize this, this is Deborah Lippmann Across The Universe. Came in a set with Bad Romance, which I haven't tried yet. I also got the All That Jazz trio with Lady Sings The Blues, Razzle Dazzle and Some Enchanted Evening. I might post all that later as well, along with my stash pics. Anyway, this was sold exclusively at Nordstrom's stores, I think... or so I was informed. Now, we don't have Nordie's in Canada of course, so I believe you could also order them online through the store's site, but if you want this polish, I suggest you hurry up and pony up the twenty-something bucks (yes, I know) and grab it, because I'm not sure how long these will last... I'm loving these high-end glitters, though. So fun! Owning them, that is. Not the paying for them part :(

Sorry for my dry cuticles here. This is a polish from Ardene's, called Royal Blue. I topped it with Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure here. It's basically a dupe for SH Pacific Blue... which is, for some reason, kind of htf where I live. I did have it already when I bought this... but I wanted it for comp purposes. Besides, they often have 10 for $10 cosmetics sales at Ardene's. So Canadian gals, if you can stomach the obnoxious 12-yr-olds the store is usually filled with, it might be worth ducking into Ardene's to check out their polish, especially if you can't find SH PB. Other than this and a bright orange, though, a lot of their colours looked like dupes.

This is LA Girls Disco Brites Hustle. Sorry for the crappy pic, but it was the only pic I could get the colour to show up purple, not blue! This is another blue-based purple, but this one's a jelly. So pretty. Competing with Dance Studio to be my favorite from the Disco Brites line :)

See how outside here it looks way more blue? It's not this blue. It's a dark purple jelly. Yeah, that was not very helpful, was it :p

Here's one of my FAIL-of-the-days! ChG Blue Fox topped with Revlon Galaxy. I should have put Galaxy over something else - I thought this just kinda looked like dirt on my nails. Blue Fox was brushstroke-y as fack, too :/ It's a very old, non-B3F polish though - the writing's all rubbed off the bottle completely - so I'll forgive it. It's like seeing your Grandma with her lipstick applied outside her lip lines, or something. You love her, and her little faux pas somehow make her more endearing :) I'll give Blue Fox another chance, and try Galaxy over something else - something darker.

This is a Jolly Ranchers polish, from a set I got a Claire's. This is the Watermelon one. Ugh - my cuticles are really really bad here. Sorry. I had to wash my car and dog, and although I used Cuticle Eraser and Lemony Flutter, they're back to looking like this within a few hours. Bah.

Yay! It woudn't be Blogger without a flipped photo! (goddamned son of a... #$%^&!) Anyway, this is a warm pinkish-red with very fine pink shimmer. Is it unique? No. Does it smell? Not really... it kinda does at first, but it doesn't really smell like Watermelon Jolly Ranchers. Which sucks, cuz that's one of my favorite scents in the whole world, and basically why I bought the set. Maybe the Blueberry or Sour Apple polishes will be better?

So since it didn't smell, I decided to layer over it!

I layered it with HT, which looked ok and I should have left it, but then, since we all know I never know when to stop, I decided to put a coat of Sinful Green Ocean (because I've wanted it forever and recently RIS as an extra from an awesome, awesome lady) overtop... which did not look ok. The polish looked orange after I topped it with HT, and green and orange? Ew. It looks better in this pic than it does on my nails.... but now it's 10000 layers thick and it's gonna take me forever to remove it :p I have a day off today - maybe I'll just not leave my house instead :p

So that's it for right now.... back later with a small haul post, and later than that with some collection pics! And let me know what you think of me making a stash/collection video!

Sid and his thumbs bid you adieu.

The Drugstore That Time Forgot.... Plus A Couple Swatches

2010-07-27T11:21:00.000-07:00

Sorry, I'm not having a lot of time to post lately - my bf's cousin is in town and staying with us for a week. She expects to be entertained. So I'm having to go out and actually do stuff instead of hauling and blogging and sitting on my ass inhaling polish fumes. Tough life.

So this morning I was killing time waiting for my boyfriend to come out of the Medi-Clinic (he hurt his knee while we were on this BRUTAL hike yesterday.... yes, I actually exercised :p I know, I know - pics or it didn't happen. See the end of this post :) Oh, oh, wait, before I say anything else, I want to mention that I wore Del Sol Rock Star on this hike, and had the direct, scorching hot sun on the damn stuff all freaking day and - nothing. It didn't change colour. I was so disappointed, since Ruby Slippers had worked so awesomely :( I SO wanted it to turn that gorgeous aqua green colour that I've seen in pics, but nope - nothing! And then it chipped badly while I was hiking :( So I just got pissed off and took it all off without taking a pic. Which I really should have done to prove that it didn't change at all :p Oh well - I'll probably give it another chance, and I'll show you then. But I mean, I'm not really surprised - Scrangie took down her reviews of Del Sol because a lot of people got "defective" bottles that don't change colour, but the company was hard to deal with when these people wanted refunds or replacements. Oh well. Lesson learned - not all Del Sol polishes are made equal. Buyer beware.

Anyway, where was I... oh yes, I was waiting for the boyfriend to get his knee looked at when I suddenly noticed/remembered that the Dr.'s Office that I have been going to since I was an infant has a drugstore just a few doors down from it. An ancient, ancient drugstore that had been there since before I was born and I haven't been in since I was about five, when my mom would occasionally bring me in for a fifty-cent can of Coke after my Dr.'s appointments. It's like, how can I not have gone in here by now? Especially with the frequency of my doctor's visits =/

Anyway, I'm building up to nothing here. I went in, looked around - they didn't have much. I did manage to find a couple of things, though...

L-R: Old SH Xtreme Wears in Midnight Navy and Down Pour Blue, Old SH Hard As Nails in Radish and Beet Red, and Wet N Wild Shameless and Wild Orchid. The good part was everything was either a dollar or a dollar-fifty. They had all been marked down multiple times. But still, for how old and decrepit this place was, I was kind of expecting their entire store inventory from 1995 or something.

Close up of Xtreme Wears. They look identical but are slightly different. Down Pour Blue, on the right, is slightly darker than Midnight Navy, as you can see. I have a couple of older Xtreme Wears with the white cap like this (Lemonhead, Marine Scene and one other one...) Why'd they change the colour of the cap three times? First they were white like this, then silver, now they're black...? Anyway, they'll both likely end up as frankens :) I'm thinking I'll add some clear to thin them into jellies, and add silver and dark blue glitter.... yes, I'm always searching for that perfect SSN/CDN franken, lol. If anyone has a really good recipe, please share it with me. Please?

Close up of Radish and Beet Red. Now that I know these old Hard As Nails polishes are being discontinued (as are all SHs except the current Xtreme Wears, CSMs and Insta-Dris, so I'm told) I have a soft spot for them. I kind of like vintage polishes in general, and vintage SHs are some of the best. Some of these old bottles don't fit in my Helmer drawers though - they're too tall. So they spend their whole lives lying on their backs. Whores.

Close up of Wet N Wilds. I've wanted Wild Orchid for a while now, but could never find it - weird that I found it in this ancient drugstore. And Shameless looked interesting - pale blue with a purple flash. It's not really showing up here, but it has a purple shimmer. And it had a "New" sticker on the cap. I've never seen this shade in any stores around here either (I thought it was Rain Check at first), but I'm guessing it's probably not "new" :p

Anyway, moving right along, I have some random polishes from the past couple of days to show you as well.

First, I'd like to introduce you to a dear, dear old friend of mine - Hard Candy Sky :)

Isn't she gorgeous? She has a secret shimmer, but it doesn't really show up on the nail....

Please ignore the stupid effing flipped picture >:( Application was pretty awesome - thin yet opaque formula, nice-sized brush for a mini polish, dried pretty fast.... This was the first one in my Hard Candy set I reached for. I wanted to save it for a post about the set, but I just had to wear it. I love this polish. It has such a soft spot in my heart. I owned a bottle in 1996, and almost went through the entire thing. I loved Hard Candy back in the day. What I would do to get my hands on another full-size bottle of this... I stalk ebay, but never see it...

Ah yes, I wanted to mention this, as well - whenever I'm outside taking NOTD pics, my jealous, mouthy and possibly mentally disturbed cat is doing THIS on my window screen:

"MWOOOOW! MOWOOOOOOOOW!! MROOOOOOOOOOOORRRW! MWOWWWW!!" Scratch, scrape, claw.

My poor screens :( But really, he's an indoor cat - it's not like I can keep him off the windowsills. I just don't want him to claw giant holes in my screen so that bugs fly in and I have to buy new ones :p So, I appease him by showing him what I'm doing, like this:

Sid loves nail polish, as we all know. The sight of the bottle calms him :) Yes, that's what I'm telling myself. So don't be surprised if you see pics like this every now and then.

Next, this is Lippmann Ruby Red Slippers. It's pretty, but I didn't love it as much as I thought I would.

I don't know why. Maybe I'm just not into the whole Lippmann "deconstructed" look or whatever the hell.... Maybe I don't like the "sequins" she's so fond of. Maybe I just prefer my China Glaze Ruby Pumps. I don't know.

I mean, I still like it. It still is pretty. I bet it would look good on my toes. I wonder what it would look like either underneath or overtop of Ruby Pumps.... hmmm....

STOP CLIMBING UP MY SCREEN YOU FREAKING PSYCHOPATH CAT!!!!

And last, my current NOTD: Nox Twilight Poseidon.

This is a very, very pretty blue - along the same lines as SH Xtreme Wear Blue Me Away! but lighter. It's greener than OPI No Room For The Blues, and slightly lighter than LA Girls Disco Brites Funkadelic. The closest polish I have to it is H&M U Must Have This, which is maybe a teeny tiny tinge greener... barely, though. I really should have done a comp pic - sorry. My stash is organized by brand, though, not colour, so I didn't really go through it all - just pulled out the ones I thought were closest off the top of my head. I suspect I probably have a couple of other dupes as well, though - this seems highly dupe-able....

Sadly, for such an expensive, dupeable polish, the application was crap. Thick, draggy, streaky, bubbly.... ugh. It's a fairly opaque polish, but's it's so thick. Needs thinner. Badly. And I hate polishes that need to be thinned on the first use :( And did I mention these were expensive? London Drugs' regular price for these is $9.99 >:( The couple of shimmer Nox Twilight polishes I have (the navy blue, the reddish purple and the rose-gold metallic - I don't remember the names. they all have stupid, generic names) all apply quite nicely, but I'm wary of the couple of cremes I have now (this, the bright neon pink and the pale ballet pink). I might see if I can return them. I can't believe I spent so much money on this stupid collection. I bought most of them on sale for three to five dollars each, but still - I've never even seen the movie :p But yeah, if you like this polish, I'd say try to get your hands on H&M U Must Have This instead - the application is much better.

And I'll leave you with a picture of what I was rewarded with at the end of our long, brutal hike yesterday:

Pwetty :) Go to Vancouver, drive up the Sea-To-Sky highway and hike up the Stawamus Chief to the third peak. Great assessment of your own fortitude :)

Wanna quickly hear what my week's like? Today we're going to the beach. Tomorrow I'm taking the bf's cousin shopping (ugh, but whatever - she'll have to put up with my polish stops, hehe), and tomorrow night we have to go to see the fireworks again ( doesn't sound like a big deal, but literally about half a million people show up to watch these things :p). Thursday we're packing and leaving for my friend's cabin four hours away, and then I'm gone till Monday. I'm so taking polish. I just haven't decided which ones yet :D But yeah, busy week. I'm going to want to shoot myself by the time I'm packing for the cabin.

I'll try to post, I really really promise I will. Try, that is.

NOTD: China Glaze Orange-Pacific

2010-07-20T13:28:00.000-07:00

Good morning. Well, it's morning to me....

Today, I have China Glaze Orange-Pacific to show you, from the Surf 2007 collection. First of all, I'd just like to say the name kind of bothers me. Orange Pacific? How does the Pacific Ocean in any way evoke thoughts of orange? And what's with the hyphenation? I know it's probably just to go along with the rest of their collection's names (Blk-Bila-Bong, White-Kwik-Silvr, etc.... which are dumb names as well. The spelling? I know, I judge the names so harshly, don't I? Makeup in general - but especially polish - always has the most ridiculous names. If you want more proof, read this blog :) but I still think it kind of makes most people go, "Huh?" Then again, most people don't even read the names. You ask an average person what the name of the polish they're wearing is, or even the brand, nine times outta ten they have no clue... okay, I'm starting to rant again.

Anywho, I'll forgive China Glaze for the name, because this is bright shimmery juicy orange goodness!

Orange-Pacific is a very bright orange packed full of smooth gold, red and orange microglitter, giving it that shiny foil-like glass-fleck finish that the rest of the collection has. It's so very bright and shimmery - it has that "glowy" quality to it.

I love it. Orange Marmalade from the Summer Days collection is similar, but much lighter and the microglitter/ glass-fleck doesn't have the same density. This one has a lot more gold in it, from what I can see. The finish is pretty much the same, though, so if you can't find Orange-Pacific anymore (this collection is older - all of mine have older labels on the bottom) you might try Orange Marmalade for a lighter version.

Perhaps because of the old, toxic formula, the application on this was a dream - thin, yet extremely pigmented. Two coats would have been all I needed, but I'm a habitual three-coater. And the wear has been pretty good, although I've only had it on 24 hours - I dented my thumb a tiny bit when it was drying, and there's some very minor tipwear, but all in all, no complaints here :)

Okay, that's all for right now. I realize I still have all that stuff to show you, but I have yet to take pics of it, so..... I suck :p And I've been going out and doing summer stuff as much as I possibly can, so it's eating even more into my blogging time. I'm trying not to be a frail, pallid nerd sitting in front of my computer all summer :p I'm probably not fooling anyone, though. Did I mention how much I suck at frisbee golf? :p

Hope you guys are enjoying the summer too! When you're out doing stuff, having a bright, happy, summery colour on your nails just makes it all the more fun, now don't it? :)

EDIT THREE DAYS LATER: Someone on the NB much smarter than I informed me that Orange-Pacific is supposed to be a play on Ocean Pacific. You know, OP, the surf brand? Like all the other names? Duh. And it dawned on me soon afterwards that maybe the misspelling is to avoid legal action from the actual surf companies since they obviously didn't have a deal directly with them while making this collection. I still don't get the hyphenation, though :p

NOTD: Nubar Gem

2010-07-19T12:22:00.000-07:00

Hi all! Did you have a good weekend? Mine was.... okay. My no-buy is going rather well so far - :D yay me! :D - but I'm getting paid on Wednesday, which means I'm going to have to pick up the Vintage Vixen colours I want (the entire second set, plus Ingrid). I'm really chomping at the bit for the Orly Cosmix collection as well as the ChG Awakening one for Halloween. I need all of those Orlys :p Oh, and that MAC Venomous Villains collection, as well! Not only am I a sucker for Disney-themed nail polishes (yes, I know, Disney is evil, but dammit I love those movies :p), but they sound so, so awesome from the promo descriptions....

Anyway, this is what I had on my nails all weekend - Nubar Gem. I just recently acquired some Nubars in a swap :) so this brand is fairly new to me. I had it on aaaaallllll weeekend, so please excuse the chips. The wear was actually pretty good considering I was doing stuff with my hands - cooking, digging through things, ripping things open, splashing around in water... major tipwear, but that's because my nails are so short that I have a really hard time wrapping my tips, so I just skip it... This pictures really are quite hideous, but I wanted to tell you about this polish, cuz it really is so pretty...

The base for this holo glitter is sort of a beige-pink duochrome. The glitter is very dense and has a very pronounced prismatic effect. Making this polish a holo. I luuuuuuurve me some holo.

Yeah, I love this polish. It's definitely a winner. Usually I'm not the hugest fan of neutral coloured polishes, and at first I thought this would just be another beige holo like ChG FYI, but the duochrome base and the density of the holo glitter make it very unique. I also received Spark in the swap, and that's more like FYI - the glitter is not the same. They got the glitter just perfect in these Prism polishes -had they decided to put this glitter in a charcoal-coloured base, we would have easily had an original MPJ dupe. I want the rest of these Nubar Prisms - I have only Gem and Jewel. And I need the Sparkle collection. And the duochromes. Man, how did I not own any Nubars before?!

I'll be back later with my "My New Favorite Things" post. Things of course all being polishes :p

Some More Spam

2010-07-16T23:05:00.000-07:00

Hiya. No, I'm not dead. I know I've not been posting much, and I'm sorry. Does anyone really mind though? Probably just me. I like writing these posts more than you all like reading them :p

I posted this earlier on the NB (well, I cut out a lot of it), so if you frequent it, you might have seen most of this already. Also, I have to warn you - this post contains feet. You all know how I feel about feet, but I really like this pedi and I've gotten tons of compliments on it, so I feel I have to show you. If that's something that's going to really bother you and give you nightmares, look away now! :p

So here's some of my most recent manis. Sorry for the general lack of quality, ragged cutes, etc.

Essie Pretty Edgy. I had to nubbinize my tips for work (wasn't happy about it at first, but I kind of like they way they look now...) Sorry about the dry cuticles. Also, this pic isn't very colour-accurate. It looks dusty here, like OPI Jade Is The New Black, but it's actually much lighter and brighter.

Sorry for the HORRIBLE pic. This is Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure overtop of NYC Little Italy, which is a nice, opaque, non-streaky white. And cheap :) HT looks great over white - just like an opal. I was straining and contorting at all different angles to try and capture the different colours reflecting off of it - it would only really show up on camera in low light...

Ulta For Bitten, from the Glam Goth collection. Sorry for the chips - this is how well it held up through a punk/metal concert. Not too bad :) I love this whole entire collection, but this one is my fave, I think. I'd say Tainted Love was, but I have Project Runway already so it wasn't anything too special to me.... but I'm so glad they made a dupe that isn't super-exclusive and htf :p

For Bitten topped with Chanel Illusion D'Or. Was trying to disguise the chips. Didn't work. Blogger is flipping my photos, and I don't know why, and I can't do anything about it =/ I just spent five minutes trying to fix it, and I can't. grrr. You have no idea how much it's bothering me.

Okay, it's time.....

Foot warning! Foot warning! Foot warning!

My current pedi. Basically I just went nuts with some nail art pens. And apparently no one actually paints their own toes 'round here. Everyone asks me where I got it done, and when I say I did it myself, I hear "Oh, it must be nice to have so much time on your hands!" xp Or, "I wish I was talented enough to do that!" It's like, well, can you draw the letter "I"? :p Anyway, I used ChG FFF, an Art Club pen in Orange, SH Insta-Dri Expres-so Yellow (whatta stupid name...), an Art Club pen in Mint, SH Insta-Dri Brisk Blue, and a tiny thin stripe of CC Puccilicious. It draws a lot of stares :)

A kind of crappy pic of SH Silver Lining. This is soooo pretty, and unique among my silvers - it has tiny blue, pink and purple microglitter in it. Which you can't really see here. But trust me, it's there.

Del Sol Electrick! stamped with CC Wild At Heart and konad plate m57. This changed to seafoam green in the sun, although the change wasn't as dramatic as I would have liked:

See? You can hardly even tell it changed. The bottle changed more than my nails =/

And my current NOTD:

China Glaze Custom Kicks. Which my camera also couldn't capture. Which also looks better IRL. It's a lot more green than here - it's like a brighter Flyin' High with secret gold shimmer. Or a less-bright TuT. Or a more muted, less-frosty Passion In The Pacific. You get the idea. You can kind of see the secret shimmer in the bottle in the first pic, below the "g"....

Bonus Sid pic:

Anyone want a slightly oversized swap extra? lolz

Okay, that's all I have for now. I need to show you a few of my favorite things that I've gotten lately - inlcuding Kiko Cosmetics polishes, Ozotic Pro polishes, LA Colours Intense sets, a couple of older China Glaze collections, some really old China Glazes, some htf OPIs, new-to-Canada Sally Hansens, new-to-everyone Revlons, and some old Hard Candys! Including SKY! Yes, I now own Hard Candy's old Sky! :D Yes it's a mini, but who the eff cares?!? It's only, like, my favorite polish that I owned as a teenager! :D I was a rabid Hard Candy fan back in the day, and recently I was lucky enough to find someone nice enough to swap me an old mini set from the early 2000's! I can't express in type here how excited I am about this - I just tried three times - so I'll save it for the actual post :p

Real Quick....

2010-07-08T08:08:00.000-07:00

Yes, I'm still alive. Barely. Having the same usual problems with my health. But no one wants to hear about that, cuz that's lame.... However I do apologize for not posting :( Do know that I would if I could. If anyone really wants to know the gory details, you can always email me and I'd be glad to bore you to death with the details.... but I'm only saying this because I know no one's gonna :)

I have sooooo much stuff to show you guys. I can't do it all right now, but here's a little something to make me feel better about this blog. Some stuff I've been wearing lately:

Anna Sui 203. Reddish-purple grapey jelly base with pink and gold microglitter and holo hex glitter. And it has that damn rose smell that you either love or hate. I hate. It smells like my Nana's bathroom, as I said on the nail board :p But I love the colour. So unique. I know of nothing else like this! I can't wait to try my other Anna Sui jelly glitters :)

This is Zoya Tallulah. Received in the Zoya exchange, thanks to Karen D. :) Medium sky-blue with a slight pinkish-purple shimmer. Sort of like Color Club Electro Candy, which is one of my all-time favorite blues. This is very pretty, if not all that unique....

And this is Tallulah konaded :) Of course. I used plate m57 and China Glaze Millenium. Not terribly original, but I had just watched Avatar, and that's what this kind of reminded me of... I ended up wearing this tacky mani for waaaaay too long, though :p

And last but not least, here's my busted-ass Canada Day mani :p I used China Glaze Ruby Pumps, and OPI Ghostess With The Mostess (WOW does that polish ever glow in the dark!) with SH Hidden Treasure on top. I then stamped with a maple leaf design from one of the BundleMonster plates (don't recall the number) using L'Oreal French Tip White and Essie Red Nouveau (which works great for konading if you need a red, fyi). There was a lot going on here, for such a boring mani. I'm sure everyone else's Canada Day manis probably blew mine out of the water :p I almost didn't even do one. I haven't really done much celebrating of anything, as of late. I know, I know, I sound like such a downer :p Blaaaaaaah - that's what being sick does to me.

Anyway, that's all I can do right now. I promise I'll post more. I have lots of stuff to show you - lots and lots and lotsa stuff! So much stuff. Neverending stuff. Must stay well so I can post!

Sigh.... I'm trying to pack up about 50 or so polishes for this EPIC swap I'm doing, and Sid just decided to adopt my mailing box as a bed for himself. Do you ever get really annoyed at your cats because they are seriously in your way and holding up your progress, yet at the same time are too cute to move or disturb? Isn't that part of what makes cats extra annoying? :p Anyway, if you're reading this Jen, please excuse the white cat hair that will probably be stuck all over the inside of your package.

Till later.

Some More Swatches, Part 2

2010-06-15T03:51:00.000-07:00

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

2010-06-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-06-13T20:25:00.000-07:00

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