Nails of the Day

Since the sky is so cloudy and gross today, there's really no point in swatching a whole bunch of stuff. Although I've done indoor swatching, I'm learning that it's really best to have a sunny day to take pictures.

So, I used a simple red polish for today, to be removed tomorrow when it's supposed to be sunny. This is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Cherry Red. This is a really nice red for my pale and pink skin tone. It looks like a classic red to me. It isn't an orangey, tomatoey red (those usually look like shit on me), but a classic cherry red. The formula on this is nice and was opaque in one coat, but I used two anyway.

I also bought some Sally Hansen Insta Dri topcoat, which is what I'm wearing in these pictures. Eh. It's no Seche Vite, and I can actually get Seche Vite cheaper than this topcoat. The Sally Hansen topcoat DOES dry quickly itself, but it does NOT dry the layers of polish underneath -- I have a dent on my right thumbnail to prove it. Alas!

Indoors:


Outdoors:

Nfu-Oh...My

Well, I'd hoped for better weather when I swatched this, but today in North Georgia, it is cold and raining and cloudy. So my indoor pics actually turned out better than my outdoor pics.

So, I think I need a couple of these polishes. I don't want to shell out $25 right this minute, but in a couple of weeks, I believe I will. :)

This doesn't compare to OPI Merry Midnight. They are both purply jelly polishes and both have flakies, but the Nfu-Oh is much cooler-looking and more interesting.

Merry Midnight is more of a plum color, with micro glitter and a few flakies. 51 is more of an inky blurple with a whole crap-ton of flakies. 51 looks pretty on its own, but it really, really shines over black.

And now I'll quit running my mouth and post some pictures!

Here are the two polishes on their own. I used three coats of each. 51 is on my index and ring finger. Merry Midnight is on my middle and pinky. This is taken indoors:


And this is taken outdoors:



So then, I put on one coat of Wet N Wild Black Creme, let that dry, and topped it with two coats of 51 and Merry Midnight. Again, 51 is on my index and ring fingers, and Merry Midnight is on my middle and pinky. THIS is where you can really see how much cooler 51 is than Merry Midnight. This shot was taken outdoors. Look at all that duochromatic flaky goodness!


And this is outdoors:



Tomorrow I am going to do a full mani of 51 over black. It's supposed to be sunny, and I think I'll try to get better outdoor pics. I have some other stuff I want to swatch tomorrow, so I'll do that, then give myself a full mani. Then I will have to return 51 to her rightful owner.

Thanks a lot, Teresa, for letting me borrow this polish!

Things to come

So last night, a friend let me borrow her Nfu Oh so I can try it out. It is Nfu Oh 51. These polishes can be purchased here. I am hesitant to pay that much money for nail polish, but if I like it, umm... I have a tax refund coming. :D

We're also interested to see how this particular Nfu compares to OPI's Merry Midnight. There are some similarities just looking at these in the bottle, but judging by swatches I've seen online of Nfu Oh 51, I don't think they're going to be all that similar.



Anyway, I'm super tired and did nothing interesting to my nails today, so I think I'll leave it at this for the day and try to get some swatchin' done this weekend. :) G'night, folks!


p.s. I am really loving the Nfu Oh bottle design. It's too cute!

Nails of the Now

I finally busted out with the houndstooth. :)

This is Konad special polish in black over China Glaze DV8. I love it! I hate that cleanup is so brutal, though, when you use the black special polish on a full-nail design. Imma be cleaning black off my cuticles for DAYS.

Four Pinks

I usually think of pink as being boring, so I don't buy a whole lot of it. Lately, I have been on the lookout for interesting pinks. I grabbed one on clearance at CVS, two on clearance at Sally and one regular price at Rite Aid.

So, here's the pinksplosion:

This is Sally Girl "It's So U." I freaking hate text speak. I felt like a moron typing out that polish name. This is too sheer (I used three coats in the photo), but it's a pretty color. It's a super sheer purply-pink with a blue flash of iridescence in it.


This is Sally Girl "Get Out!" I love this color! It's a nearly salmon pink with that "glass fleck" finish to it. It's sparkly without being glittery. This is a pink I would wear. Also three coats and there's still visible nail line. These Sally Girl polishes are very sheer, but I only paid .79 for them, so there you go.


This is the one I picked up on clearance at CVS. Man, CVS had some really awesome makeup clearance sales going on last week. This is Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine in Gleaming. It's a bright magenta-red with some shimmer in it. I would also wear this pink. :) Two coats!


THIS... is a Jesse's Girl polish I picked up at Rite Aid. I've never bought that brand before (I've also never seen it except for at the Rite Aid by my house). I've ALSO never worn neons before. This was a bright ass neon pink. It dried fairly matte and was sort of gloppy after it dried. It wasn't anything a good topcoat couldn't fix, but be forewarned. This also went sort of orangey on my nail, despite being bright ass neon pink in the bottle.
This is outside:


And this is inside:



I also did a konadicure over the bright ass pink, but ended up removing it because it didn't come out as I expected. I used the Konad special polishes in black, silver, and violet pearl.
This is inside:


And this is outside:

China Glaze Fortune Teller

So I really wanted this color, but I figured since it was released for Halloween 09, that ship had sailed. So while I was scavenging the clearance table at the local Sally, I saw this and grabbed it!

This color is the hotness. :) It SUCKS to remove though. Like, even more than most glitter polishes.

It's so Halloweeny, but I may wear this one even when it's not Halloween. I love it!

Nails of the Now

So last night, the glitter was chipping away at my creation from yesterday, so I decided to remove it and just paint my nails with OPI DS Reserve, which is what I wore to work today.

Friday I got paid, so I splurged a little on two new Konad plates and special polish in Violet Pearl. :) I got the package today! Woot!

So I came home and did this to my nails, using plate M63. I actually wanted the houndstooth, but thought this design would be prettier over pink. Also, the boyfriend voted for this design over houndstooth.



Wednesday I'm off work again, and I have an interesting idea for a design. I've had a lot going on lately, but will try to catch up on some frivolity (Read: nail polish) on Wednesday. :)

It needed something more...

So I kept looking at my nails and thinking they needed something else. So, I took my silver glitter Art Deco nail art polish and put some silver glitter on the tips. I like it. :)

A couple of recent polish jobs

I went to Sally the other day and was checking out the clearance rack. I found a 2-pack of Orly Enchanted Forest and Prisma Gloss Gold. It was marked $3.99, but it rang up at $1.99! Score! So then I had to try them both out, of course. I really like Enchanted Forest. I don't own any green cremes, I don't believe, and I only own one other dark green polish. The prisma gloss was pretty, too, and it dried super fast. I just don't like having to shake it up to get the glitter particles to disperse. And the glitter could be more dense. Just sayin. :)
Here's what I did. This is two coats of Enchanted Forest with two coats of Prisma Gloss:


Another cool thing I recently got was a set of Fauxnad plates. They are much cheaper than Konad, but I don't like the designs as much. The Konad designs seem sharper, somehow. BUT, there are a lot of pretty little floral designs on these, and for the price, they're just fine. :) So this morning I woke up, painted my nails with Orly Goth, and then used one of the Sally Hansen Chrome nail polish pens to Konad. Those Sally Hansen pens SUCK. Man, I wanted the Sally Hansen Chromes back, but not like this! I cannot even get my nails painted at all with the brush on that pen. I can, however, polish a nail stamping plate! I put roses on my thumbs and little heart... things... on the rest of my fingers.

China Glaze Lubu Heels

I filed my nails down today! I was sort of sad to file them down, but I do a lot with my hands, and I type all day at work, so I cannot deal with super long nails.

This is another color I picked up with my Amazon gift card. I'd been drooling over Rescue Beauty Lounge's Black Russian, but cannot force myself to pay $18 for it! So I got a similar "black with red glitter" shade for much cheaper.

I really like this! The black is sheer enough that you can actually see the red glitter. On the other hand, the black is so sheer that it requires three coats. To quote me, earlier tonight, "3 coats turned this from 'oh, this is pretty' to 'hot shit.'" I keep checking the sparklies in different types of lighting. :)

This'll be my color for work tomorrow.

OMG!

Have y'all seen this?
I'm sorry, but that picture makes MY nails hurt in sympathy! Is it even possible for your nails to hurt? Maybe I'm just having sympathy pains in my nail beds. EGAD. Although I do like the suggestion in the comments to paint the nails like the ghosts in Pac-Man.

Completely off-topic, but this is our brain-damaged, blind kitty named Shoes. He curls up under my chair when I paint my nails. He's the one who's been giving us fits lately, but he really is the sweetest thing ever! I just love the expression on his face in this picture and wanted to share.

OPI Merry Midnight

I have no idea why this polish didn't catch my eye when the holiday collection came out, but it didn't. Not until I saw a couple of other people blogging about it did I realize, "OMG, I have to have this!" It has flakes and glitter in it!

I really want to try the Nfu Oh flakies, but right now I'm freaking out about how much getting married costs, so $12 nail polish really isn't on my agenda right now. I'll try it eventually, like after the whole wedding thing is over, done, and paid for. :)

This is actually my manicure for the day. I finally removed the crazy pink and blue leopard print.

This has blue glitter and... pink? purple? opalescent flakies in a dark purple jelly base. I really want to try this over a base of black polish to see how it looks.

Dark and vampy OPIs

Also in Jill's package last week were three dark/vampy OPI polishes. Yay vampy!

Here are my swatches of each:



This looks very brown/brick red in indirect light or in low light.


In direct sunlight, it is considerably brighter.



I really loved this color! Really! One of my favorite types of nail polish is that super dark "blackened" polish that isn't really black with a little hidden shimmer in it.
This is Midnight in Moscow outdoors (you may need to click on this one to enlarge it in order to see the shimmer).


And this is Midnight in Moscow indoors.


The last of the dark OPIs is Lincoln Park After Dark which, for some reason, I neglected to photograph the bottom of the bottle like I did with the other two.
She sent this to me because I didn't have it and because I do have the Suede version of it. I knew the Suede was nothing like the original polish -- the original is much darker. This is a dark, dark eggplanty purple. I like it a lot. :)
Here it is indoors:


And outdoors:


And just for comparison, here's the suede version of it. The suede is a million times lighter, but I like it too.

Maybelline Go Go Green vs. Bijou Gems in B.Strong

Good morning!
One of the polishes Jill sent me last week was L'Oreal Bijou Gems in B.Strong. When I put it on, I thought, "This looks JUST LIKE Maybelline Go Go Green!" So I decided to do a comparison.



I don't have hundreds of bottles of nail polish, so I don't think I have many dupes, but these are almost exact dupes of each other. Go Go Green may have just a LITTLE more yellowy shimmer in it, but not much.

Here is my original photo of Go Go Green:


And here is my photo of B.Strong:


So, to compare, I put Go Go Green on my middle finger and pinky. B.Strong is on my index finger and ring finger.





Can YOU tell a difference?

Good Morning!

It's Monday, and while all y'all government employees have the day off (jerks!), I am sitting at work, playing on my little netbook, waiting for stuff to break since that is the nature of my job.

I added more blogs to my bloglist. I want to add every nail polish blog there is. I appreciate the followers I've amassed in the last week or so, and I want to try to help other people out. :)

Anyway, today I'm going to post some colors I swatched over the weekend. Some of them are the ones Jill sent me. I think I may hold off on posting the pictures I took of the dark OPIs she sent because I couldn't get decent sunlight at all on Saturday or Sunday because it was raining all weekend. The colors really just look black unless they are under direct sunlight, and none of them are actually black. I'm off work Wednesday, but guess what?? It's supposed to rain! So we'll see. There's always next weekend.

I also have some packages coming in the mail. They were in Atlanta yesterday, but since today's a postal holiday, I suppose they'll be here tomorrow. Hooray! (And HOORAY for Amazon gift certificates!)

So, one of the polishes Jill sent was Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Diamond. I love this! It's a lovely holographic silver. I really want to try layering some sheer colors over this to see if I can get different-colored holos out of this. The application was easier than the one China Glaze OMG I own. This formula was pretty thin and a little sheer -- I used three coats.


This was the Maybelline Express Finish in Bolt of Blue. It was a sheer sky blue with silver glitter in it. This was either three or four coats, and I managed to smudge my pinky.


This color drove my CRAZY trying to photograph it. I was inside at night (there's error number one -- although I usually get decent lighting and accurate colors in my kitchen because it's bright in there). I was using my little Nikon and decided to switch to my Canon and STILL could not get this color to photograph accurately. So I left it alone. I may reswatch it if it's ever sunny on one of my off days. This is Petites in Dare. This is a really interesting color. It was a dusty royal blue, if that makes sense. It also had some small silver glitter and some silver flakes in it. It's a really pretty color that my camera HATES!
The color is NOT as bright as this picture would have you believe, but you can see the flakes in it pretty well. :)


This is slightly more color-accurate.


This is actually a color I picked up at Dollar Tree. You would be surprised at what old-ass discontinued nail polish you can find at Dollar Tree. And now that I know that polish revivers exist, I don't worry about them being thick or goopy or dried up because I can totally fix that. :)
This is a Sally Hansen shade called Trendy Creme. Sidenote -- I am actually on a sort of hunt for a nice olive green. I don't own a good olive green. I thought this might be it, but this is too light. I'd call it "avocado." I used to live in this ratty old studio apartment, and all the appliances in it were this color.


And this is one of the new Sally Hansen Xtreme Wears in Wet Cement. I have no idea why this color appeals to me. It's a straight light grey. You know, like wet cement. :)

Mannequin Hands, attempt 2

I think I actually found my mannequin hands shade. I found this Rimmel "Milk Chocolate" on clearance for 1.09 and figured, "Why the hell not?"

Oddly enough, I think I like this, even though I am more apt to choose a glittery or vampy color (I have to feed the inner goth girl, I tell you!). I might just wear it once I get rid of my crazy leopard print.

Glossy... Almost mannequin hands.


Full hand shot. Look at my pudgy lil hands. :)


And with Matte Magic topcoat... I think I have the right shade now.


Not-quite-full hand shot.