My first Zoyas

I'm going to make this post, but be aware that I seem to be under attack by pollen even though it's freezing outside and I'm all doped up on Benadryl at the moment. I feel alternately like my head is stuffed with cotton balls and like I'm stoned out of my gourd.

So one of the packages I got in the mail Monday were the Zoyas I ordered when they were running their special last week.

I love them! All of these were two coats. I did find the formula to be slightly gloopy on Blair, but I think I'll just add a couple drops of thinner to it and it should be fine.
Here's what I got. From left to right: Reece, Dea, Ibiza, and Blair.


The first one I tried was Reece. This is gorgeous! It's a nice bright magenta with gold flash/shimmer. I couldn't really decide if it was flash or if it was shimmer. I had a hard time capturing the gold-ness anyway.
This is indoors:


And this is outdoors:


This is Dea. It's a medium brown creme. I didn't have any brown cremes in my collection, and this one is nice. :)


This is Ibiza. A nice navy blue shimmer that I think I'll be putting on tonight when I get home.


And this is Blair. This color is sexy! I love it! It's actually on my fingers and my toes today. A nice sexy, metallic-y dark red with a nice shimmer to it. I had to take three pictures!







I still have a bunch of pictures I haven't posted, but I'll post them later when I feel less stoned!

holy moly

I got a buttload of nail polish in three separate packages today.

However... the boy and I were talking last night and he said, "Why don't you lay off the nail polish for awhile?" I said, "What, like a month?" He said, "How about two?"

WELL... we are getting married in just a hair over two months, so I'm going to do him a little better and hold off on buying any more nail polish til after the wedding. After that, GAME ON.

I have been going a bit overboard lately, to be sure. So I think what I'm going to do is wear a different color as a full mani (and not just a swatch) every day til the wedding. Well, maybe. I have a friend coming into town this weekend, and I doubt I take the time to paint my nails while she's here. So, as long as it's a normal day with no out of town guests, I'll use a different color. Maybe I'll do theme weeks, like green week or blue week. I could obviously do green week during the week of St. Patrick's Day. You get the idea. :)

I also need to konad some more.

But man, I'm happy with what I got today. I have pictures but no time to upload or post them right now. Probably tonight!

Boring Sunday at work

So, I probably shouldn't admit this, but I swatch nail polish for my blog during slow weekends at work.

Today has been EXCEEDINGLY slow. I think I've answered 5-6 calls in the last 9 hours (I still have three hours left in my day). I didn't get my first call til after 10am. I got here at 7.

So, as a result, I swatched all the stuff Jessica sent me! I'm going to post all of those and two randoms I'd already taken pictures of but failed to ever post.

This is my last weekend to work, ever. Well, maybe not EVER, but it's definitely the last weekend I'll be expected to work a 12-hour shift on both Saturday and Sunday. I should celebrate tonight.

So, here we go.

First up is Sinful Colors in Tokyo Pearl. It's a pearly white. Application was pretty good for a Sinful polish, especially in white -- they are usually so sheer, but this was good in 2 coats.
This is indoors.


And this is outdoors (well, not really outdoors, but by a window in natural light).


This is L'Oreal Wear Extraordinaire in Sheer Breathless. Okay, so when I saw this I thought, "Ehhhh... it's sheer. It's peachy-colored. Meh." But this is really pretty! And not too sheer! I had no visible nail line after three coats, and that's good enough for me. I really like the shimmer in this.


Jess also sent me this, which I didn't swatch because, well, it's a nail art brush. It will get used at some point... I thought the bottle was super cute. :)




This is Milani Garnet Gems, which I'd actually been wanting to buy! It's funny that Jess sent it to me, because I've never once mentioned to anyone that I was looking for this. The spot for it was always sold out in every store I went to, so I was pleasantly surprised to get it yesterday. I do wonder how close it is to China Glaze Lubu Heels, though. I was tempted to find my bottle of that this morning and do a comparison, but being up before dawn at ass o'clock in the morning didn't really make me feel too compelled to hunt for Lubu Heels. Maybe tomorrow. :)


THEN... she sent me four Goldie polishes. I kept seeing these Goldie trios at TJ Maxx last year but never did pick any of them up. I sort of wish I had now -- the formula was pretty good on all of these, and the glitter one looks like the lovechild of Dorothy Who? and Sinful's Nail Junkie. I wanted to try the glitter over the royal blue, but I was too lazy.. Maybe tomorrow. :)
Anyway, she sent me a nude color, a shimmery rose color, a royal blue with some shimmer, and a blue glitter. Man, I really need to do a blue glitter comparison, I seem to have a lot of those.
Nude shimmer:


Rose shimmer (this is really pretty):


Glittah! This is actually silver iridescent in a blue jelly base.


And this is the royal blue. I banged my middle finger into something when someone startled me so, well, there ya go. This is also pretty.


This!!! This is a polish Jess picked up in Taiwan. The brand is Kate and perfunctory googling turns up... absolutely nothing. But it's flakies! I layered it over black, and while it looks cool over black, I think it might look even better over a lighter color. Jess said that she thought it might be close to Nfu-Oh 40, and I think she might be right... not that I have Nfu-Oh 40 to compare it to. :) The Nfu-Oh may have more duochrome effect than this. I dunno. This is two coats of flaky goodness over Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine in Lustrous.




And that's it for the polishes from Jessica's box-o-stuff!

I also have two random polishes that I just never posted, so here you go:
This is Pure Ice in Rio. It's a purplish magenta with blue shimmer and it wasn't really opaque in three coats. Next time, I will use this tip for doing away with the dreaded visible nail line.


And this is OPI Shim-merry Chic. I picked this up impulsively at Kroger because it had flakies in it. Somehow that little fact escaped me when I'd seen swatches of this before. I was afraid it was going to be too bronze (not my color, not at all), but it was a really nice deep antique gold. Much like Merry Midnight, it coulda been flakier, but is still a nice polish. I took a few pics of this and still didn't feel like I adequately captured this color. It's a shimmery antique gold with glitter and flakies... there's a lot going on. :)

Surprise Haul!

Hehe. It's not a haul if you had no idea it was coming, right?

Anyway, a week or two ago I hooked my cousin in Houston up with Windows 7. As a thank you, she sent me this box of beauty stuff! It's awesome! She included 9 polishes, one of which is a Taiwanese polish with flakies.. woot! I'm going to do my best to swatch all of them in the next day or two. :)

This is what all she sent me:


And check out my sexy man lighter. His name is Tom Design. Why? Because that's what it says on the lighter! Tom Design! Clearly that is his name and not the name of the company that produced this, right??

Nails of the Now

I painted my nails with three coats of Essie Castaway and applied decals I ordered from this eBay store (cheap!!) and ended up with this.

It's so cute I could just puke!

Another enabling post

I've seen this posted on a bunch of nail blogs in the last couple of days, but you can get 2 free Zoya polishes (with purchase) through 5pm Friday.

I have personally never tried Zoya, but I just placed an order. What was that I said about hitting nail polish saturation? PSHAW.

Anyway, the deal is if you spend $10, you get 2 polishes free. So I ordered 4 polishes @ $7/ea and paid $14. Not too shabby. Shipping was $6.95.


Go to http://www.zoya.com/, http://www.qtica.com/ or http://www.artofbeauty.com/, add all the items that you want to purchase online to your shopping cart. Use the code "NYFW" for the discount.

Offer valid from Wednesday, 2/17/2010 - Friday, 2/19/2010, at 5PM ET.

E-tailers

Someone asked me earlier today where it was I'd bought nail polish online.
This will be old boring news to those of you reading this who already have nail blogs, but I have some readers who may not be aware of such places... so please, allow me to enable you. :)

First of all, most of these places have jacked up shipping. So while the nail polish itself is cheap, it's really not worth it unless you're going to buy several bottles.

Second of all, you'll start to find yourself reeeeeally thinking about whether you want to spend the $8 or $8.50 for an OPI or an Essie when you're in a brick and mortar establishment and you know you can get it for $4-$5 online. The problem with this thinking is that you will then order 6 bottles of nail polish from an e-tailer to justify the jacked up shipping charges and will have actually spent more money than you would've if you'd just paid the $8 in the brick & mortar store. I buy from both e-tailers and brick&mortars. It depends. Sometimes I need the instant gratification. Sometimes I have a few colors I want so I'll just order them online.

Anyway, we're all grown ups and can make our own decisions, right?!

I have personally ordered nail polish from:
http://www.transdesign.com
http://www.victoriasnaildesign.com (oddly, both of these places are located in Georgia, so I had to pay sales tax, but still came out cheaper than buying in a store)
I've ordered Konad stuff from:
http://www.wowsocool.com
http://www.ocnailart.com (do some perfunctory googling and you will find coupon codes for both these sites that offer 20-30% off -- AND neither of these sites have jacked up shipping charges)
If you want to get into the Konad thing, you really should order that stuff online. I discovered a Konad kiosk in the Mall of Georgia when I was there a week or two ago. I asked the lady running it how much their plates were and I must have made a face when she said, "Ten dollars," because she then gave me their web address and told me they were ony $6 or $7 online. Hehe. That's about how much I paid on each of the above sites, before discounts.

I've heard good things about, but have never ordered from:
http://www.8ty8beauty.com
http://www.head2toebeauty.com

So now... run free! Blow your paychecks on cheap nail polish you don't *really* need!

Holos Holos Holos!

Yay! I finally put on my last holographic polish this morning and snapped a pic, so I can make my holo post!

I have one more polish to swatch, but that may not happen til early next week because I need to clean my messy apartment ASAP. I have a friend coming in from out of town next weekend, but I have to work this weekend. Priorities, meh.

I swatched most of these on a rainy, gray day here last week (was it last week? it seems like ages ago), and should probably re-swatch them today, while it's sunny, but I simply do not have time.

So... here we go.

First up is China Glaze OMG. It's a lovely holographic silver. I'm still on the fence as to whether or not I should just pick up the rest of this collection (or as much of it as I can get -- it's a couple of years old). I have OMG and DV8.
This is OMG outdoors in crappy light.


This is in my kitchen -- you can actually see the holo-ness better here.


This is Color Club Wild at Heart. It's a very nice purple holo. Also in my kitchen. I really do need to re-do these. ONE DAY...


This is Color Club Revvvolution. It's a charcoal gray holo that didn't come out nearly as holo as I wanted it to on my nails. This is also indoors.


This is Icing Blackout. It's not really a holo, per se, but is a black polish with holographic glitter. I loved this in the bottle, and it was nice on my nails too, but holy crap that brush was bushy and hard to work with. It was like trying to paint my nails with a tiny mop.


This is the first Milani holo I tried -- Cyberspace. I snapped this early in the morning before leaving for work on Monday. I really liked this one! It looks most holographic under fluorescent light. I just took it off this morning, so I could put on my other Milani holo.


And this is what I am currently wearing. Milani in Hi-Tech. Also... see how short my nails are now?!? I need to get to crafting... house cleaning first. Yech. This one had a really strong holo effect in direct sunlight.


Til next time! Hopefully I won't dawdle on my house cleaning and will have more interesting nail stuff to show you soon. :) Also -- I think my craving for holos has been thoroughly sated now.

RIP long nails

I am currently filing my nails down, down, down shorter than they have been in a couple of months. I'm feeling the urge to do something crafty and creative with clay and I can't do it with long nails since the nails will gouge the clay.

It's WEIRD to have this much to file off, though!

In the past, I would have just chewed them off. So, you know, that's progress. :)

2 OPIs and a China Glaze

Man, I have a ton of pictures I haven't even posted yet, but I'm waiting til I have some off time later on this week because I have a massive holographics post to make once I swatch one more polish.

I love holos! And I have picked up a lot of them lately. Well, a lot for me. I think I am sort of reaching nail polish saturation for right now because nothing sounds too appealing. This too shall pass. :)

I DID recently pick up two of the new OPIs from the Hong Kong collection and a China Glaze I'd been lemming.

Man, that new OPI collection is full of orange-y shades. I hate oranges. They don't look good on me at all. The only ones that appealed to me are Jade is the New Black and Suzi Says Feng Shui. I know everyone's raving over Jade is the New Black, and it's nice -- a nice muted, dusty green -- but I love, love LOVE Suzi Says Feng Shui! It's dusty and muted like Jade, but it's blue and it's just lovely. :)

This is Jade is the New Black:


And this is Suzi Says Feng Shui (it's really not as bright as this photo would lead you to believe):


And this is China Glaze Wagon Trail... Olive Green is such an interesting color and this is a dark olive green with some shimmer. It looked pretty boring in my outdoor picture, but you can really see the shimmer indoors.
Here it is outdoors:


And indoors:



Til next time! :)

Valentine's Day Mani

So I decided to do a new V-Day Mani today.

By the way... it snowed yesterday! A lot! By our measurements, we got 4" here.

I know, you guys in the northeast who have recently gotten a foot plus of snow are probably scoffing at our 4", but it's a LOT for Georgia! Really! Everything shut down!

Anyway. On to my second V-Day mani. I used two coats of Icing's White Wedding and used Essie Ruby Slippers on the tips. And... see the SNOW in the background?!?!




Later on today (today as in Saturday, although it's after midnight as I'm posting this), my fiance bought me an engagement ring. Even though we've been engaged for several months, I haven't had a ring. He proposed to me over pizza with a ring out of a gumball machine. Laugh if you will, but it was sweet as hell! It's funny -- we sent out wedding invitations last week. And now I have an engagement ring. LOL. We're backwards! So I HAD to take pictures! I posted this on my Facebook and I think I got more comments on my nails than I did on the ring! Hee hee.

Score!

Sorry for the iPhone posting. I had to run into CVS this morning for some stuff, and look what I happened to find... :) I only picked up 2 of them, but I can't wait to try em out!





- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Nails of the Now

I was feeling inspired by the slew of Valentine's Day manis I've seen lately, so I decided to come home and do my own thing.

I used NYC Polyester Pink Creme as the base and used Konad special polish in black and Love My Nails in red for the stamping.

I used lace from plate M57 and hearts from plate M3.

I also added some white dots using my Art Deco nail art polish.

It's not perfect, but I like how it turned out. :)

Comparison

Wow. I was clicking through my "Nail Polish" set on Flickr and came across this picture from December 4, 2009.

I made a decision last November, after years of either chewing my nails or my cuticles, that I was going to put forth the effort to not screw up my hands anymore. Especially because I grow nice nails naturally (and I love alliteration!).

I think I've come a long way in the last two months!

December:


February:

Claire's Pastels

So, I finally got my pastels from Claire's swatched today, along with some other stuff.

To be honest, I was sort of disappointed with these pastels. The colors are pretty, but the formula seemed off on all but one. They were streaky, and all needed three coats. Also, they dried matte-ish, like pastel neons. In fact, the yellow and the green were more neon than pastel to me -- possibly the pink, too.

I loved the blue and the peach, though, bad formula and all. The purple was the one shimmer in the pack and it was nice, formula-wise, but the color is not for me.

Anyway, enough rambling. On to the swatches!

Pink:


Peach:


Yellow (see what I mean? NOT pastel):


Green:


Blue:


Purple: