Another Spam Post

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

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 :)

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

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!

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

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.