Lissa's Nails

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2011-05-16T21:36:00.001-04:00

Toenails... This is OPI La Boheme. I HAD to blog it!

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Hi folks

2011-02-19T11:55:00.001-05:00

I am SUPER BUSY right now. We're buying a house, my nails are peeling off (no seriously, and it sucks), and I am just sort of swamped.

Once we get all packed and moved, I'll start blogging again. And I'll put my blogsale back up. Right now it's just too much to worry about!

So I'm not quitting entirely... just on hiatus. :)

Baby's First Franken

2011-01-16T21:06:00.001-05:00

Tonight I dumped a bunch of L'Oreal HIP pigment in Intrepid into a bottle of clear polish, and this is what happened. I loooooove it! I bought a backup of this pigment for the express purpose of frankening with it, since it's currently 75% off at CVS.

What do you think?

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Mrs. Claus

2011-01-12T21:03:00.003-05:00

Ok... so after I removed this from my nails, I tried to think of a unique way to make this polish work for me.

It's still not working for me, but at least I have a photo.

I thought that using a blue as a base would be interesting under the sheer pinky-red base of Mrs. Claus. It sort of is, but I'm still not feeling it.

I used one coat of Orly Snowcone (best. medium blue. ever.) and two coats of Mrs. Claus on top of that, and got this:

Meh. And what's with the bald spots? Still classifying this as a nail polish fail.

worst. nail polish. ever.

2011-01-12T18:36:00.002-05:00

Ok, y'all, I just started to paint my nails with China Glaze Mrs. Claus... and I stopped in the middle and removed it all. What a horribly, horribly ugly nail polish. I like red. I like glitter. But that was an abomination. It looked super cheap. Not typical China Glaze quality, and I don't think any number of coats would've made THAT opaque.

I think I finally found something I will not ever be posting on my blog unless I get really, really bored!

In other news, the hubs and I ventured out into the snowy wilds yesterday to get some stuff (mostly beer) at Publix. I got into a conversation with the cashier about nail polish and pointed her to my blog. She was totally one of us. I love meeting people who are as nuts about nail polish as I am. I feel vindicated! So, if you're reading this (and I hope you are!), hi Jessica!

We have a winner!

2011-01-10T10:42:00.004-05:00

The winner of my blog birthday giveaway is MannaB!

We're having an icky snow/ice event here in Georgia right now, so it may be a few days before I can get to the post office to mail it!

This is the South... what is WITH all the snow lately?!

6" on the first landing of the stairs leading to our apartment:

Do your nails match your shoes?

2011-01-09T13:30:00.001-05:00

I got some more of the Sally Hansen salon effects... And some sparkly leopard print chuck taylors. So my nails match my shoes!

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Coupla things... blog birthday and a giveaway

2011-01-06T20:57:00.004-05:00

1) So, I stand corrected! Those Jesse's Girl nail polishes I mentioned in my last post DO have names. The Charla/Halley's Comet/Catch Me In Your Net dupe is called Glee, and the Scrangie-esque one is called Confetti.

2) That Scrangie-esque polish looks nothing like Scrangie on the nails. It's super sheer -- took four coats -- but flashes between blue, purple, and pink. It's really lovely! Most of the time it looks like a metallic purple with blue shimmer. I apologize for the slew of indoor shots lately, but light sucks when I wake up and sucks when I get home. Maybe I'll get some decent swatching done this weekend.

Anywho, here is Jesse's Girl in Confetti:

3) Friday, January 7, my blog will be one year old! I'm still recovering from my Christmas spendstravaganzzzzza, so I don't have much to offer... but anyone who comments on this post by Sunday, January 9 at 9pm can win a bottle of Milani Gems. Yes, I have a spare bottle. And I figured that since it's dupISH to Lippmann Happy Birthday (which I do not even have ONE bottle of), it'd be appropriate to give it away for my blog birthday weekend. :) I may or may not add more stuff to the package. My last giveaway, with the flakies, ended up being quite large... :)

So anyway... comment with your email addy starting NOW! HAPPY BLOG BIRTHDAY TO ME!

Jesse's Girl High Intensity Nail Color

2011-01-04T19:17:00.002-05:00

So, I saw these new Jesse's Girl polishes at Rite Aid, and they were BOGO 50%, so I grabbed two. These polishes don't have names!! DRIVES ME NUTS!

Anyway, I grabbed one that I suspected was yet another Zoya Charla dupe, and another that was Scrangie-esque.

What do you know... we have YET ANOTHER Charla dupe. Really? REALLY?! Isn't this like the fourth iteration of this color in the past year?

Observe.
Bottles:

On the nail.
2 coats of Zoya Charla on index and ring.
2 coats of Jesse's Girl on middle and pinky.
The application on both was exactly the same. They are indistinguishable on the nail.

So

2011-01-02T17:01:00.004-05:00

I woke up today and decided that I need to get rid of most of my nail polish collection. It is just taking up space, and the amount of space it takes up is starting to bother me.

I'm going to try to get down to just one drawer full of colors I love. I managed to pare it down to a drawer and a half. I'll keep working on it.

The rest I am blog sale-ing. So I updated my blog sale page. You can get to it here: http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/p/blog-sale.html

Please go buy my stuff. There's some good stuff on there now, and I just need to get rid of some of the clutter in my life. :)

Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Laced Up

2010-12-29T19:18:00.004-05:00

Okay, so I'm HOPING this will be my New Years Eve mani. It perfectly matches a shirt I plan to wear. I just hope this will hold up for four or five days.

I have friends coming in to town to party, starting tomorrow, and tonight was the last night I have to do my nails for New Years!

I'd been wanting to try these out. They are dry nail polish strips, like Incoco. CVS apparently has them BOGO 50% this week, but none of the CVS's in my town have them. I found them at Target, though, and bought the pack that most appealed to me. They retail for $8.99 per pack at Target, which is a little steep. I really wish I'd been able to find them at a CVS because I would have bought a few packs then. SOON. (I hope.)

These aren't quite as easy to use as the Incoco strips. I had a hard time removing the strips from the backing, and I had a hard time getting the excess filed off of the free edge of my nails.

HOWEVER, I recently cut my nails way, way down due to some nasty peeling I had going on at the tips, and if your nails are short like mine, you can get two nails out of each strip. Providing they fit the curve of your cuticles anyway. :) In the package, you get two sealed packages of 8 strips, and I only had to open one of the packages to do this mani. So, score, I may have enough to do another mani in the future, providing my nails aren't super long.

Another plus is that these come in all sorts of neat patterns and in GLITTER. I know Incoco does this too, but I haven't been able to find any Incoco other than boring reds and pinks in stores.

In the dry nail polish game, Incoco wins for ease of application, but Sally Hansen wins for availability and, uh, interesting-ness.

Anyway, I took this photo with my Droid since I have zero charged batteries for my camera and I just couldn't WAIT to show off. ;)

At KarenD's request

2010-12-27T21:45:00.003-05:00

Bottle pics of the retail Essie I picked up.

"Essie" is printed in white on one side of the bottle, with the opposite side being blank. The other two sides have the typical "Essie" embossed on them. There is also now a sticker on the cap with the polish name.

Observe:

Essie Dive Bar and some foreign polishes

2010-12-27T20:34:00.004-05:00

So when I was in Smalltown, GA with my husband to do Christmas with his family, we went to Smalltown's Walmart, where I saw the Essie retail display for the first time ever. Let me tell you, the Walmart and the CVS in Smalltown KICK ASS. My theory is that it's because there isn't anywhere else to shop there.

I picked up "Dive Bar" from the Essie retail display. It was the only polish I got, and I bought it because it looked interesting. I am a sucker for these blackened teal/blue colors, because I have TWO other polishes that are similar. This color is a retail-only Essie, so it's new. Which would explain why I'd never seen it before. :)

The quality is just so-so. It wasn't worth the $7.75 I spent on it, but it wasn't BAD, either. The brush was too small and narrow, but I think all Essie brushes are too small and narrow. The formula was a bit runny. The first coat was very sheer, and I feared that this was going to end up being a four-coater. But it all evened out and became opaque on the second coat, so it wasn't nearly as bad as I feared.

Anyway, here's Dive Bar:

And my awesome cousin in Houston mailed me several Arezia mini nail polishes that her mom picked up for me in Hong Kong upon hearing of my nail polish obsession. My family rocks. :)
I am going to swatch these just as soon as I have a spare minute. Which isn't now. So here's just a pic of the bottles for now! (And yes, that is the patron saint of bacon hanging out behind the bottles. Don't judge me!)

Get thee to Sally's!!!

2010-12-27T14:34:00.002-05:00

I decided to drop in at Sally's today. Since Christmas is over, I knew they'd have clearance stuff back out. I also had a $5 coupon (for renewing my Sally card) and a 15% off coupon. They ALSO are running a 3-day special where all clearanced items are an extra 50% off.

I got...
Orly Cosmic FX in Rocket Science and Out of This World
Orly French Polynesian Island Spa Kit for Hands
China Glaze Peppermint Cuticle Oil
China Glaze Rejoice Gift Set with Mistletoe Kisses and Mrs. Claus polishes and a red candle

Guess what I paid for all that? $4.53! Merry Christmas TO ME!

Some OPIs

2010-12-26T15:54:00.000-05:00

Here are some OPIs my sister-in-law gave me. She's fantastic!

I'm pretty sure all of these were two coats.

Soho Nice to Meet You:

Apple Of My Eye:

I Don't Do Dishes:

Nomad's Dream (which was much more opaque than I was expecting!):

And DS Vintage (!!!):

And here's a picture of my kitten, just for some extra "aww!" factor:

seen at walmart

2010-12-26T11:10:00.001-05:00

Essie is already @ Walmart!

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We have a winnah!

2010-12-19T00:02:00.002-05:00

The winner of my giveaway is #82 -- Piper!

Congrats!

(I knew I'd still be up at midnight)

GIVEAWAY ENDING!!!! (and Nina Ultra Pros)

2010-12-18T22:12:00.001-05:00

Y'all, my giveaway ends at midnight! You have an hour and 45 minutes to enter! Go here if you haven't already! I'm going to work on my spreadsheet of entries and if I'm still up at midnight (I probably will be), I'll pick a winner and email them then. I added SEVERAL items to this giveaway. A couple of them I've mentioned here, but several will be surprises. Flakies and surprises! Merry Christmas! The package is all wrapped up and ready to go. :)

Now on to the polishes!

First up is Purple X-ing. Gah... I kept reading about this color on other blogs. I'm not sure why it took me so long to pick it up.

The texture wasn't so great. A little thick and lumpy. Grainy on the nails. But purple! With holo glitter in it! The color is fabulous!

I think this was two coats, but I probably should've used three.

Then I also got Mossy Britches. I'm sure I used two coats for this. This is another fabulous color!

And now for your standard ending...

i swear i'll post something of substance soon

2010-12-10T18:18:00.004-05:00

Like, when I have time!!!

In other news, when I totaled up votes between commenters here, commenters on my FB, and my husband and I, here are the votes as to which polish I should use on my nails for tomorrow night (see: http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/2010/12/readers-i-need-your-help.html).

So far Whirlwind White is in first place with 9 votes.
Something Sweet is in second place with 8 votes.
Millennium is in third place with 7 votes.

Everything else lags far behind those three. I'm going to go bathe, shave my legs, and pluck some stray eyebrow hairs. If anyone wants to vote between now and when I get ready to paint my nails tonight, go do it now! The game could totally change! LOL.

OH yeah... and I originally said my giveaway would end December 15. No. I'm going to extend it through midnight next Saturday, the 18th. That gives me Sunday to get all the entries together, pick a winner, and get the package ready to ship on Monday! I also added one of the new Sally Hansen Insta Dri French Manicures in Night Flight/Silver Sweep and TWO of the Wet N Wild holiday eye palettes -- Night Elf and Snow Sprite! So if you haven't, go enter by commenting on THIS POST.

Re: My last post

2010-12-05T18:21:00.001-05:00

Just to give you guys some idea of what outfit this combination needs to go with, here is a picture of me in most of my Santastic glory (yes, I am very goofy).

So now go vote!
http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/2010/12/readers-i-need-your-help.html

Readers, I need your help!

2010-12-05T17:29:00.003-05:00

Next weekend, I will be donning a Santa suit (actually a dress... a very *short* dress... with many accessories... my goal is to look like Christmas puked all over me), and going to my city's Santa pub crawl.

NATURALLY, I need to do my nails for the occasion.
NATURALLY, I want to use China Glaze's Party Hearty for this because, well, my occasions for using that particular polish are very limited.

So I found ten colors that I thought would be good base colors for layering with Party Hearty.
I know what MY favorite is.
My husband told me what HIS favorite is.
But I want to know which layering combination is YOUR favorite. Please excuse the messiness you may see in some pictures -- I did this really quickly. I assure you the actual mani won't be so messy. :)

Each of these shows three coats of Party Hearty over the base color.

Whichever one gets the most votes is the one I'll wear next weekend. :)

On my left hand, I used:
Sally Hansen Salon in Haute Chocolate (thumb)
Revlon Ruby Ribbon (pointer)
Sally Hansen Insta Dri in Whirlwind White (middle)
Orly Shine (ring)
Orly Liquid Vinyl (pinky)
Here is a full hand pic of my left hand:

And by finger:
Over Haute Chocolate

Over Ruby Ribbon

Over Whirlwind White

Over Shine

Over Liquid Vinyl

On my right hand, I used:
China Glaze Emerald Sparkle (thumb)
China Glaze Phat Santa (pointer)
China Glaze Something Sweet (middle, and my personal fave)
China Glaze Millennium (ring)
Orly Meet Me Under the Mistletoe (pinky)
Full pic of right hand:

Over Emerald Sparkle

Over Phat Santa

Over Something Sweet

Over Millennium

Over Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

PLEASE VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE COMBINATION IN THE COMMENTS!
:)

Polish Weirdness from Ross

2010-12-05T10:39:00.003-05:00

I grabbed this set of Color Club polishes at Ross a couple of weeks ago. It was $8. Supposedly, it is the "Every Shade of Indulgence" half of the Untamed Luxury Collection.

There are no polish names on the bottles, but that's ok because the names are on the back of the box, right?

Except... those aren't the right names. I was looking at this last night because I've started swatching them (I won't post 'em til I have 'em all swatched, though) and I realized... I don't think these names go with these polishes. So I consulted the all-knowing google and found Ms. Evil Angel's post herewhere she swatched these colors. Notice how the names she has don't match up at all with the names listed on my box? Now, she's not wrong because Scrangie swatched these colors here and has the same color names as Evil Angel.

So then I went straight to Color Club's website here. Scrangie and Evil Angel are right.

So what's up with my mislabeled box, Ross?!?! I guess I shouldn't complain since I got the whole set for $8, but I am bothered by this because, dammit, I want my polishes labeled correctly!

Too Faced loves Ulta Enchanted Nail Collection

2010-12-05T10:28:00.004-05:00

So I saw this at Ulta for $10 and it looked intriguing...

So I got it!

Four sparkly/foily colors and a bottle of top coat.

I LOVED this set so much! The colors are (from left to right) Sugar Cookie, Spice Drop, Peppermint Bark, Sugar Plum, and topcoat.

Sugar Cookie is INSANE. I expected it to be sheer, and it was. My photos are all three coats, and there is still definitely VNL. This is a sheer white with gold shimmer. But the gold shimmer flashes from gold to yellow-green to yellow to silver. At times you can even see a little blue. Check out these photos:

And now for the rest of the collection...

Spice Drop, which reminds me of a pink version of Zoya Crystal. I guess you could describe this as a rosy metallic with gold sparkles.

Peppermint Bark. Slightly less pink than Spice Drop. More peachy. Same gold sparkles.

Sugar Plum. Same as the other two, but light purple. The sparkles in this one is a little more silver and less gold.

In all, I LOVED this collection! Bad ass for only $10!

And now for your standard ending...

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

China Glaze Vintage Vixens

2010-12-04T23:15:00.000-05:00

I found these super cheap on clearance at Sally's. Even though I'd already bought what I REALLY wanted from this collection, I decided that for super cheap, I'd go ahead and round it out. :)

This is Bogie. It's a nice purply-eggplant nearly metallic shade.

And this is Hey Doll, another nearly metallic shade, but this one is dusty pink.

And now for your standard ending...

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Fast Dry French Manicure

2010-12-04T10:19:00.001-05:00

I found this at Walgreen's the other day. There are two colors, two brushes, and two openings in this bottle. It isn't the usual Insta-Dri brush, either -- I checked. There were several different (6 or 7) colors in the display. I picked up Presto Pink/Night Flight.

I haven't tried it yet, but I'll let you know when I do.

Have any of you seen this? Googling shows no results.

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Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure

2010-12-04T00:05:00.000-05:00

I managed to pick up four of the fall LE colors from this line. I reeeeally liked three of them and really didn't care for the fourth. I BELIEVE each of these were two coats.

Problem Child (loved it!):

Sequin Scandal (loved it!):

Golden Ticket (I actually really like this, and I don't usually go for gold):

Fedora (eh. Good formula, applied nicely, don't care for it on me.):

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

More nail painting fun

2010-12-03T13:57:00.002-05:00

My sister-in-law came to visit and we painted our nails.

She used Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe over a coat of Orly La Playa.

I used Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure over Finger Paints Icy Iris.

Hers:

And all together now!

And now for your standard ending...

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

Kleancolors!

2010-12-03T13:57:00.000-05:00

Another brand I love from the local independent beauty supply stores is Kleancolor. Seriously, I think these polishes are extremely high quality for the price. ESPECIALLY the cremes. Kleancolor does cremes extraordinarily well.

I'm so behind, I already sold most of these on my blog sale, but here are swatches anyway. :) I'm pretty sure all of these were two coats. I probably could've gotten away with one coat for the cremes, but did two just for continuity's sake... or something.

Charcoal:

Jewelry Red:

Plum:

Purple:

Mocha:

Jungle Green:

Melon Green:

Red Sparkle:

And now for your standard ending...

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

OPI Blue Moon Lagoon

2010-11-29T20:36:00.001-05:00

So, I bought this one off of eBay. Evil Bay. You know. But it was SO PRETTY I HAD TO HAVE IT!

Nice light blue holo. C'mon, OPI, do more holos! And not this DS crap -- those are way overpriced and aren't even holo anymore! GOSH!

And now for your standard ending...

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

Wild and Crazy

2010-11-29T20:23:00.003-05:00

So, this is a brand I pick up when I hit up the local independent beauty supply stores. They are very hit and miss. There are a lot of colors that look great in the bottle, but are super sheer on the nail. I'm still a sucker.

This is Wicked. A burgundy/purple with a slight green shimmer. Sort of along the lines of Maybelline Vanishing Venus.

Here it is in sunlight...

And in shade...

Flying Kite, a peach with gold shimmer. This is another color combination I am a complete sucker for. :)

Ticklish Toes, a shimmering olive green.

Erie, an extremely pretty shimmery teal.

And Feliciana, a nude/pink with some chunky shimmer.

And now for your standard ending...

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

Revlon Matte Suedes

2010-11-29T20:12:00.002-05:00

I only got two of these polishes, I suppose. I could have SWORN I bought Emerald City, but I cannot find it in my polish drawer, nor can I find photos of it. So apparently I just dreamed I bought it.

Can y'all tell I'm trying really hard to get through all of my photos? LOL. Tonight I put on the first of my new Ulta Enchanted Nail Collection, Sugar Cookie, and I LOVE it. It's what I WANTED Zoya Gaia to be. But I cannot allow myself to post photos of it til I've posted the other bazillion photos I've uploaded to Flickr. So here's another post for today! Hee hee.

Anywho, I know I bought Ruby Ribbon and Powder Puff from the Revlon Matte Suedes, because I can find pictures of both of them.

I so wanted to love Powder Puff... but didn't. I even tried it with topcoat and it just wasn't doing it for me.

Here it is without topcoat:

And Powder Puff with topcoat:

Still too sheer, and I think I used three coats. Of course, the Sugar Cookie I'm wearing now is still pretty sheer at three coats and I love it... so go figure. Powder Puff just wasn't for me!

Ruby Ribbon, however, was awesome. Two coats. I didn't even try it with topcoat, but I bet it's super pretty that way too.

This was after a full day of work, so there is some tipwear (typical since I didn't wear a topcoat), but I think it held up pretty well! My job is pretty hands-on (I fix computers), so if something holds up this well all day with no topcoat, it's a pretty good nail polish!

And now for your standard ending...

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

Random NYC Colors and polishing under the influence

2010-11-29T14:41:00.003-05:00

Some NYC polishes I picked up awhile back...

Flat Iron Green:

Coral Reef:

MoMA:

And... the worst Halloween mani in the history of EVER. Major, major nail fail using NYC Spring Street and whatever ugly ass Halloween-y looking stuff I threw on my nails! (This was removed really really quickly.) I was polishing under the influence and this is what happened. See, kids, don't drink and paint!

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

Some yellows

2010-11-28T20:53:00.003-05:00

Okay, so I have 109 unposted pictures that have been uploaded. I swatched for HOURS today. I still have 29 untried polishes.

Clearly, I need to get to postin' if I ever want to be current again.

So here are some yellows -- actually, I know I've already sold one of these on my blog sale. That should tell you how behind I am.. ugh.

This is "The Wonder Yellows" from Wet N Wild's Craze line:

This is Sinful "Dumpling."

I think both were two coats. I preferred the Wet N Wild to the Sinful, as it was more opaque. However, I've yet to find a yellow that actually looks GOOD on me. The search continues!

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

Essie and Nail Night

2010-11-28T10:39:00.003-05:00

I am SO far behind in posting pictures. What I do is I upload everything to Flickr, and then turn around and post the pics to my blog, pretty much in the order in which I took them. The next picture I had in line to post was of Essie Limited Addiction, which I bought in the mini 4-pack when I was in Florida in AUGUST. Yes, it is nearly December. Jeez.

Anyway, here it is. It's a lovely dark red jelly. This was two or three coats.

Now, that said...

I know a group of ladies, and we get together every so often for "nail night." There are two nail polish geeks in this group -- myself and another lady -- and the rest I think just humor us. Also, there is usually booze. Booze and nail polish is a winning combination, always.

Anyway, at one nail night a few months ago, I took a few pictures. Enjoy.

She's wearing Orly Space Cadet... I remember this. LOL.

This is my hand... it was Finger Paints Tough Art to Follow with a Nfu Oh on top. I cannot remember which Nfu Oh. I don't own any Nfu Ohs, so I can't just check the bottle. :/

Konad!

My foot w/OPI Blue Moon Lagoon. :)

More Konading..

Finished result.. Man, check out the lined up Nfu Ohs in this pic. I should've taken a picture of THOSE.

And again!

I ended up mattifying my ring and thumbnails. Eh.

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

haul pics

2010-11-27T16:25:00.001-05:00

Sorry, still on cell!
I got the Too Faced loves Ulta Enchanted Nail Collection. Color Club Untamed Luxury and Rebel Debutante. Tres Risk Glamorous Life, Maybelline in Glad to be Green, Rimmel in Grey Matter, and since Ulta NP was b2g2, I got Little Black Dress, Love My Blackberry, Smoke Screen and Jaded.

I still have about 30 other untrieds on top of these. I have a LOT of swatching to do!

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hauling...

2010-11-27T14:12:00.003-05:00

I'm typing this in the car on my way back home from my Thanksgiving holiday in Alabama.

I have now checked NINE CVS stores, and no Perplex to be found anywhere.

I did, however, haul a LOT of nail polish. I only spent around $50, but I am coming back with 28 bottles of nail polish. I think I may have a problem...

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hauling...

2010-11-27T14:12:00.001-05:00

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Cover Girls!

2010-11-16T20:29:00.002-05:00

Two Cover Girl Polishes.

Grapevine. 2 coats. Pretty!

Bronze Beauty. 2 coats. Also pretty!

Also! Don't forget to click here to enter my Giveaway!

And! Click here to check out my stuff on my blogsale!

Incoco Flirt and Miscellaneous

2010-11-14T18:09:00.003-05:00

Thanks to everyone who has purchased stuff from my blog sale! I haven't deleted the original post yet (I probably will by the end of the week), but I created a stand-alone blogger page for it. You can find it here: http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/p/blog-sale.html

I'm also going to add some bath and body type stuff to it... that's another thing I hoard, and I'm really just trying to get rid of things I don't USE. I have Bath and Body Works stuff that I bought last year that I've NEVER OPENED. Ridiculous.

Anywho, I picked up a pack of those Incoco dry nail polish appliques on clearance at Walgreen's... god, it had to have been around last Christmas. I finally got around to trying them. I liked them, but wish I hadn't picked up such a boring color. I had some wrinkling on my pinky, but I think that if I were to try this again, I'd have an easier time with the application and probably no wrinkling. Learning curve, you know. :) Overall, though, I didn't have a terribly hard time using these. They were fairly easy to apply -- easier than I'd thought they'd be actually. I'd buy them again, just in a different color. One day I'll test the wear time on these... but not today.

On to the photos!

Also! Don't forget to enter my giveaway! The post is here!

Blog Sale!

2010-11-13T12:38:00.016-05:00

I have moved this post to a stand alone blogger page.

Please go here to view my sale items: http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/p/blog-sale.html

Thank you!!

Giveaway!

2010-11-13T12:18:00.003-05:00

Ok you guys... I've been talking about having a giveaway for a couple of months now. I'm finally doing it, and a day earlier than I said I would! Hooray!

Here's what I'm giving away:
8 Colorama Nail Polishes in French Tip White, Juiced Berry Tips, Lilac Freeze, Plum Lights, Burgundy Blaze, Turquoise Seas, Candy Apple, and Black Magic

5 Colorama Topcoats in Flames of Amber, Give Me The Chills, Pink Pinata, Ruby Rays, and Blazes of Crystal

2 Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Lavender Pearl and Pink Rose Diamond

AND... whatever other little goodies I pick up between now and the end of the contest. :)

By the way, that Blazes of Crystal topcoat is AWESOME. I think it's my favorite flakie ever. Check this out. Today I'm wearing it over Orly Liquid Vinyl:

And a (new, unused) bottle of that could be yours! Woo hoo!

To enter, you must be a follower of my blog. Please tell me in the comments how you follow me. Leave a comment on this post telling me how you follow and your email address and you'll be entered. That's all you have to do! I'll pick a winner on December 15th!

Good luck!

Sally Hansens, el cheapo nail polish, and a giveaway!

2010-11-12T13:04:00.003-05:00

I only picked up two of the new Sally Hansen Xtreme Wears -- Purple Gala and Mystic Lilac. I LOVED Purple Gala and HATED Mystic Lilac. The latter one wasn't flattering on me at all and my mani bubbled like I've never seen one bubble before (although I'm pretty sure that was user error and not a problem with the formula). It also never dried, even with Out The Door on top. :/
I ended up giving the bottle to my sister-in-law.

Here are my pix of Mystic Lilac:

And here is Purple Gala:

Now... lately, there has been some really cool nail polish spotted in the Dollar Tree here and in Big Lots. I found a bunch of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Dollar Tree several weeks ago. Yesterday, I gave a friend at work a bottle of Hard Candy Beetle I'd picked up for her. Later in the day, she emailed me saying she had a surprise for me. It was Colorama flakies she picked up at Big Lots! FLAKIES! YAY! So I went to Big Lots myself after work and picked up the rest of the flakies I didn't already have. I also bought extras for my blog readers. I also have some Nail Prisms dupes. So.... I'll be having a giveaway. I'll make an official post about it probably Sunday, so don't enter yet. If I can find some other goodies to throw in, I will. :)

Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe

2010-11-02T20:11:00.001-04:00

OK, so I had resisted Lippmann until this point. But all you evil swatchers drew me to this one... I LOVE it. Seriously, it's my favorite high-end nail polish that I own (not that I own very many).

This was three coats. :)

Hey!

2010-10-28T19:27:00.003-04:00

People who read my blog! Yes, you!

I am uber lazy... When I first started this blog, I tried to keep up with all of my followers and follow them back. If not through Google Friend Connect, then through Google Reader (which is actually how I read my blogs anyway).

Then I let my number of followers get away from me... And now I have over 200 and I KNOW a bunch of you have blogs that I don't follow. SO... if you have a blog, would you be so kind as to post the addy in the comments? I'll go through them this weekend and follow the ones I'm not already following, as well as add you to my blogroll.

Thanks!

Butter London Victoriana

2010-10-28T19:11:00.002-04:00

Medium teal blue with lots of silver shimmer. 2 coats. Applied... LIKE BUTTER! HA!

Purple!

2010-10-26T15:21:00.002-04:00

Here is a purple mani I did one day. China Glaze Grape Pop with Zoya Mimi on my ring finger. :)

Wet N Wild Blackmail

2010-10-25T20:46:00.001-04:00

What a huge disappointment this color was. Black with multicolored glitter in the bottle. Black with nondescript glitter on the nail. And the brush was, like, a half-inch-long mop. Poop. At least it was only a dollar or so.

OPI Ski Teal We Drop w/Revlon Star

2010-10-24T21:03:00.003-04:00

So I bought one of those new-ish Revlon glittery topcoats. It was... underwhelming. I got the one called Star. I didn't buy the base color to accompany it because it was plain and underwhelming.

Here is the result of my layering!

Sula Paint and Peel in Haze

2010-10-22T13:47:00.003-04:00

So this is one of those grown up Tinkerbell polishes that peels off. I found it on clearance at Ulta. The regular price of these things is like $8 or $9, which is a little steep to me for a gimmicky nail polish.

Anyway, this was just a bit streaky, but still a very pretty color. I slapped some Out the Door topcoat on top. :)

Maybelline Gray-T Glamour

2010-10-20T16:49:00.004-04:00

So, this was one of those Fashion Week polishes. There are still some picked-over displays in the drugstores around here. Anyway, I felt like most of the other polishes were dupes or dupish to something I already had, but I'm a sucker for a good gray. Which is weird because gray doesn't even look all that great on me.

This applied well -- I think I used two coats. But it dried to a weird not shiny finish. Not matte, not satin, but definitely not shiny. Not a huge deal since I use topcoat anyway.

There is also just a tiny bit of shimmer in this!

P.S. LADIES... I found a whole buttload of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms at my Dollar Tree today. Squee! I got pink rose diamond, purple diamond, white diamond (i think), and... something else. Three of those are holographics, so.. SCORE!

Claire's Shy/Flirty

2010-10-19T20:20:00.003-04:00

This is the last Claire's mood polish I bought. I also think I took this picture in, uh, August, so I had a hard time making the color change show up in pictures. But this polish is FABULOUS! It changes from medium blue to a deep cobalt.

And now the world's laziest nail blogger has made another post. :D

I also broke a nail today for the first time EVER, so I came home and cut my nails off super, super short.

Sinfuls

2010-10-04T20:46:00.002-04:00

These are two Sinfuls I picked up from the dark/Halloween-y tabletop display I've seen in some drugstores.

First is Love Bite, which looked a little duochrome-y in the bottle, but not so much on the nail. I loved it anyway. I think this was three coats. It's black with teal/blue shimmer/microglitter.

Next is Witching Hour, a blackened red. I cannot remember if this was two or three coats, but I do know that I also loved this one.

Hard Candy Lava

2010-10-02T09:08:00.002-04:00

I lemmed this color really, really bad for a long time. However, there are only two Wal-Marts in this town, and only one of them carries the Hard Candy line. And they NEVER, EVER had this color when I'd go in and check.

Until one day... I wasn't even going to look at the makeup. For some reason, my husband encouraged me to, and... there was my Lava.

This is awesome, and I don't usually DO orange. But this isn't orange! It's glittery red-orange, and has a very befitting name.

I can't remember how many coats I used. I think two. This was a decent polish. Coverage and formula were good. I'd buy more of this line if there were any other colors that really appealed to me.

Holy whoa

2010-09-29T18:50:00.002-04:00

I somehow made it to 200 followers! Wow!

I should do a giveaway when I hit 250 or 300... Hrmmm...

Is it inappropriate to give away used nail polish? As in, previously worn, maybe only swatched, but not empty bottles?

The winner of my last giveaway was international, and shipping was horrifically expensive, so I think I may limit this one to US only. Sorry.

Lisa Frank Nails!

2010-09-29T18:44:00.004-04:00

Sooo... I totally ripped this off from another nail blogger, and I feel I must give credit where credit is due. It's due here:
http://kroniclesofakonader.blogspot.com/2010/08/neon-and-leoparda-match-made-in-heaven.html

SO, what I did was.. I painted my nails with a white base. I used Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Whirlwind White. Then I freehanded the stripes using CHG Towel Boy Toy, CHG Pool Party, Essie Funky Limelights, and CHG Flying Dragon. Then I Konaded on top using the leopard print Konad plate. Someone on either my Twitter or Facebook suggested I add unicorns and glitter to make it a TRUE Lisa Frank experience. Well, since I don't have the mad skilllllz necessary to do unicorns, I topped it off with a couple of coats of Cover Girl City Lights.

And I got...

THIS:

I LOVED IT! I actually wore this for a few days before removing.

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Gray by Gray

2010-09-28T11:26:00.002-04:00

Sooo... I also found this color on clearance at a random Walgreen's in August. It's weird -- there were a few clearance colors. I only picked up this one and Naked Ambition. And now, at some drugstores, these colors seem to be gone. But at other drugstores, they're still there. What is this I don't even...

I also think I'm going to attempt to do 31 days of Halloween-ish colors for October. I need to go home and raid my stash to see what I have. I'm thinking any black w/shimmer, black w/glitter, or vampy should do it. I LOVE OCTOBER! And Halloween! And Fall!

Speaking of Fall, it finally actually feels like Fall here in Georgia! Hooray! The 90 degree days were KILLING ME.

Anyway, on with the show. I apologize for the tipwear in these pics. I wore this for several days, because I absolutely loved the color, but the tips wore down something fierce.

I was still too lazy to redo my nails, so I just slapped some OPI Significant Other Color on top. Check it out!

I liked that combination, even though it was a bit odd. :)

Essie Little Brown Dress

2010-09-27T20:59:00.001-04:00

Yet another of the Essie fall minis. This is Little Brown Dress, a super dark brown. I like it ok, but it's really too close to black for me! I think I used two coats here, maybe three.

Orly Galaxy Girl

2010-09-26T15:56:00.002-04:00

I've already posted my photos of Space Cadet. This is the only other color I picked up from the Cosmic FX collection.

I really liked this shade! At first I thought it was going to be dupish to Maybelline Vanishing Venus or Misa Embroidered Emerald, but it really isn't, although they are in the same color family.

Here is an outside shot:

And here is an inside shot (where you can really see what I mean by being in the same color family as VV or EE):

Sally Hansen Naked Ambition

2010-09-20T23:10:00.001-04:00

Heh hehehehehe.... naked.

Found this one on clearance at a random Walgreen's in Alabama. It's from the SH Complete Salon Manicure line.
I do believe this was three coats. It's a pinky nude with some shimmer/glitter in it.
Eh.. it's okay. Nothing special. Would never have picked it up if it weren't on clearance. :)

OPI Ski Teal We Drop

2010-09-19T19:19:00.003-04:00

Y'all, this is really the only color that appealed to me from the OPI Swiss collection... but I LOVE it!

It's awesome, beautiful, well-pigmented dark teal that was nearly perfect with 1 coat, and completely perfect with 2. Any dings you see are the fault of the manicurist and not of the polish. :)

Random layering experiment

2010-09-16T13:57:00.001-04:00

So I was bored one day and decided to layer...

This is Man Glaze Hot Mess layered over Finger Paints Blissfully Blue. I like it, even if it is a bit wintry looking for August!

Claire's Excited/Bored

2010-09-15T16:03:00.003-04:00

This is one of the newer mood polishes from Claire's. It changes from peach to coral depending on the temperature. Peach is the warm color, while coral is the cool color. I had a hard time capturing this one, so pardon the indoors photographs with wet hands. :) It was so hot here in August that I would only get the warm color if I took these outside!

In all honesty, this is pretty, but applying it was a hot streaky mess. Gluggy and streaky and just.. yuck. And it chipped within a day. :(

I know I've spent most of the last few months apologizing for my lapses in posting. So I won't do it again. I haven't lost interest in nail polish, but I am trying to keep my spending at a reasonable level, and sometimes it's just a pain to crank out a post. :) But I still have a massive backlog of pictures. Oh well. This is a blog. It's a hobby, not a job (I have a job!) for me, so I'll post when I get around to it. If this blog were making me money, I'd probably be a little more diligent!

Essie Merino Cool and Comparison

2010-09-02T15:49:00.002-04:00

I want to apologize for the bubbles in this mani... I have had more issues with bubbling lately, and I'm not quite sure what's causing it. I suspect it's summer humidity, since I've not changed basecoat or topcoat. Yet another reason I'm ready for fall...

Anyway, this is the purply-taupe shade from Essie's fall collection -- Merino Cool.

It reminds me of other purply taupes I have.
This is Merino Cool on thumb and forefinger.
Sally Hansen Commander in Chic on middle finger.
Confetti Moonstruck on ring finger.
Essie Mink Muffs on pinky (yeah, it's WAY different from the other three, but I threw it in there anyway).

Mink Muffs is way more brown than the rest.
Commander in Chic is just a tinge more brown than Merino Cool or Moonstruck.
I think Moonstruck and Merino Cool are dupes, or damn near close to dupes. The formula is better on Merino Cool, but the pricetag is better on Moonstruck ($2 compared to $8).

So there you go!

Orly Space Cadet

2010-09-01T14:20:00.002-04:00

Ok, so this is the one color from the Orly Cosmic FX collection that everyone is going nuts over. I can see why. I must say, though, that I am disappointed in the bulk of the collection. Bummer. I had such high hopes for you, Orly Cosmic FX!!!

But this color!!! This color is duochromatic awesomeness. I took a billion pictures and a couple of videos.

The colors, but not the finish, reminded me a LOT of another duochrome I have, Rimmel Zeitgeist. The colors are much the same, but Orly is more glittery and sparkly, whereas the Rimmel is almost metallic.

I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

These are all just Orly Space Cadet on its own.

And here is Space Cadet vs Zeitgeist. Space Cadet is on my thumb, middle, and pinky. Zeitgeist is on my pointer and ring fingers.

And here are a couple of videos to show you what I mean when I say there is a definite resemblance.

Maybellines!

2010-08-31T12:14:00.002-04:00

I found a whole bunch of the blue jean Maybellines at Dollar Tree not too long ago. Since they came in 2-packs, I ended up with some colors I didn't really want. So, here are a bunch of old Maybellines!

Bamboo Yellow. This is four thick coats. This was super sheer, and it's sort of a shame since I actually liked this color.

Fly-By Berry. This is a mauve with what I think is supposed to be silver shimmer, but instead looks like... chunks of sand? Yeah.

Now on to the good stuff!
This is Blue Riders:

Boot Leg (which is AWESOME!):

Blue Bops:

2 OPIs and a Zoya

2010-08-30T13:01:00.003-04:00

I'm trying to update every day... again... Hee hee.

So today, I have, from my vault of unposted pictures, 2 OPIs and a Zoya. I THOUGHT I'd posted all my Zoya, but I actually hadn't. Maybe it's because I have too much nail polish. Nah, perish the thought.

This is OPI Here Today Aragon Tomorrow Suede. It's nice enough, typical OPI Suede (matte with shimmer). Dries very fast, but not so fast you can't get your nail covered first.

This is one of those shades, though, that I really prefer with topcoat. The shiny makes it pop!
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And here is an OPI I picked up on impulse because it was on clearance. No Room For The Blues! It's very dupe-y with Zoya's Yummy. I'll do a comparison sometime.

And here is my lone remaining Zoya, Kalista. It's a beautiful shimmery dark red/brown. I am really digging these types of colors lately. I guess it's cause I know fall is on its way. :)

HEY!

2010-08-29T09:59:00.003-04:00

Guess what!! I'm not dead! And I have a buttload of polishes I need to show you guys, so let me quit being lazy and worthless and make a blog post!

This is a polish brand I found at the awesome Asian beauty supply place. The brand is called Wild and Crazy, and I can get it for $1.49. This was a nice duochrome -- it flashes from mauve to gold and I THOUGHT I saw a little purple in it as well, but didn't really see that so much in the pics. It also bubbled up on me. :( Still a pretty color, and pretty awesome for $1.50!

This was another one I got at the same store. Another Kleancolor (I love Kleancolor so much!). This is a bright blue glitter called Puppy Love. I layered it over OPI No Room for the Blues, but it MAY get opaque enough by itself to not require layering. I don't know because I haven't tried it out.

This is another Kleancolor, a color called Pearl Silver, which is a really nice silver foil.

I hope everyone's doing ok! Sorry for my absence. I've been a crap blogger this summer, and I apologize.

China Glaze Vintage Vixen

2010-08-16T10:20:00.002-04:00

I only ordered five colors from this collection (only! HAH!). I couldn't wait for them to hit Sally's, and since I knew I wanted a bunch, it was cheaper to order from Transdesign anyway. :) It's just as well, because these didn't even show up at my Sally's til last week or maybe the week before, and by the time I got there, there was, like, one bottle of Classic Camel and one of Foxy left. And that was it. :)

So, here's what I got! For what it's worth, I LOVE every single one of them! These were all two-coaters.

Jitterbug:

Emerald Fitzgerald:

Ingrid (LOVE IT!):

Midnight Mission:

Classic Camel (what an odd shade. i do like it, though. so ugly it's cute!):

Catching up

2010-08-15T17:03:00.003-04:00

Sooo... you remember how I ordered some more Zoyas before the exchange ended in June?
Yeah, these are the last two I ordered. I am THAT backlogged. This summer has been epically busy.

This is Indigo. I was so disappointed in this shade. It is a deep, dark blue with holographic glitter that shows up PERFECTLY in the bottle and not at all on the nail. :/ You can just BARELY see it in this pic.

And this is Tart, a metallic-y medium blue that is actually quite lovely. :)

Orly Plastix

2010-08-14T12:04:00.001-04:00

So, since I'm way backlogged, here's a polish I bought a hundred years ago and am just now posting.

It's Retro Red from the Orly Plastix collection. This is the only color I bought from this collection and it makes me go, "Eww."

I don't like the finish. It's satin-y. I don't like the color. Non-descript red-orange. I'll be getting rid of this one eventually.

WOW!

2010-08-09T21:28:00.001-04:00

This is from June of 2009. I still bit my nails then, but damned if I didn't have them painted! LOL! I have NO IDEA what color this is, either.

OPIs and Topcoats and blather, oh my

2010-08-09T20:17:00.004-04:00

I bought the OPI Summer Flutter minis several, several weeks ago and I'm finally going to post them today. Hooray!

But first! I want to whine about topcoats. When I first started using quick-dry topcoats, I thought Seche Vite was the end-all, be-all. I could even overlook how it would get all gloppy in the middle of the bottle. But then it started causing shrinkage of the underneath layers of polish, usually within just a few hours of application. So I moved on. Quick-dry topcoats I have tried:

Poshe - Meh. It works as well as Seche with less shrinkage, but the brush is weird and awkward.
CND Air Dry - This is probably my favorite, really, but it's expensive and difficult to find (for me.. the only place I've found it here is at Trade Secret and it's like $9, and I go through a LOT of topcoat).
Orly In A Snap - This sucked. Only after I purchased it did I realize that only the topcoat itself dries quickly. It does NOT dry the polish underneath.
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri - Same as In A Snap. Don't waste your time.

Currently I am using Out The Door. Even though CND Air Dry works better and makes my nails shinier, the cost is prohibitive. I actually bought the huge ass bottle of Out The Door at Sally Beauty Supply because it was like $9 and is 2.5oz compared to $9 for probably .5oz (I threw the bottle out, apparently, so I'm unsure of the size) of CND Air Dry. Out The Door doesn't shrink my polish, but it also doesn't dry quite as quickly as Poshe, Seche Vite, or Air Dry. However, it works well enough and is cheap, so it's my current favorite.

What's YOUR favorite quick-dry topcoat? I'm open to trying new products that work well that I haven't already tried!

Anywho, here are the OPIs I promised! I believe I used two coats of each of these. I may have used three coats for the glittery ones.
Flit A Bit - A medium orange that I actually LIKED on me! I never like oranges on me!

Flower-to-Flower - A nice bubblegum pink with some silver shimmer in it. I didn't like this one as much as I was anticipating -- it was actually the color from this collection I thought I'd like the most.

Wing It - Ok, this was a weird color. It shifts from pink to orange and has all that glass fleck-y sparkle in it, but the color is kinda butt ugly.

Catch Me In Your Net - I like this, but I already own Zoya Charla, so I'd never buy a full size of this. I have seen several bloggers point out that Charla and CMIYN are dupes, so I'll spare you all the comparison. If I didn't already have Charla, this would be the one full-size I'd HAVE to have. Since I do already have Charla, I didn't buy any full-size polishes from this collection. :)

I'm hoooome!

2010-08-08T11:36:00.003-04:00

Wow, I've barely had time to post here for the last couple of weeks. My dad had cancer, and had to have his kidney removed, so I had to drive down to Florida to be with my mom, since we have NO family there and I couldn't have my mama going through this alone, you know? My dad was in the hospital for six days, but he's recovering amazingly, and the doctor thinks that they've got all the cancer. So we're cautiously hopeful right now.

Anywho, I hit up Ulta in a BAD, BAD way while I was down there (I actually hit two Ultas... jeez). Holy cow, I'm glad that we don't have an Ulta in this town. I'd always be broke. I found SO MUCH STUFF I'd seen online and had been lemming and HAD TO HAVE. I got the Essie Fall Collection minis, I got the Urban Decay Naked Palette, I got the one color I wanted from the OPI Swiss collection (Ski Teal We Drop, it's the only one that appealed to me). I picked up two of the Orly Cosmix polishes, which I thought weren't coming out til September, but I walked into Ulta and THERE THEY WERE. Maddening!

But I'm not posting ANY of that today! Instead, I'm going to dump a whole bunch of photos that have been sitting in my Flickr for weeks. I'll get to the new stuff, uh, like when I have real photos and they've been uploaded to my Flickr. :D

Enjoy the photo dump! I am going to nix the commentary, unless something was particularly awesome or particularly terrible.

Zoya Heather:

Zoya Kalmia:

Zoya Barbie:

Zoya Annie (I gave this one away. The formula was fine, but this shade of orange is NOT for me):

OPI Ink (Why have I never purchased this before? I love it! It's FABULOUS!)

Essie Pretty Edgy (Oh look, it's the day I shortened my nails):

China Glaze Sacred Heart (found for $1.99 at Sally, woot):

out of commission

2010-08-02T20:38:00.001-04:00

I'm in Florida at my folks' house. my dad just had a kidney removed. I picked up the Essie fall minis. this is "sew psyched," a color I'd been looking forward to. for once I actually love a lemming more than I thought I would. this is almost opaque enough to get away with one coat and is a gorgeous color! I love it! get it now!

apologies for the capitalization and cell phone photo. I'm sort of technologically challenged at the moment!

Published with Blogger-droid v1.4.9

Zoya Ki

2010-07-23T10:02:00.001-04:00

Man, I really wanted to love this polish and I really didn't.
I've seen better greeny-purple duochromes. I did get a couple of compliments on it, but I had a really hard time capturing the duochromey-ness on camera.
Here are four pictures. Enjoy! Pardon the tipwear, this was after a couple of days of wear.

Opposite Ends of the Spectrum

2010-07-18T14:06:00.003-04:00

My two favorite polishes that I've used lately come from opposite ends of the price spectrum.

I hit the asian beauty supply place and got a few $1 Kleancolors. This one is called "Beach Blue," but it's actually more teal. A lot more teal than it appears in this photo. I probably could've gotten away with one coat, which has been my experience with Kleancolor cremes so far, but I did two just to make it purty.

My other favorite was Chanel Paradoxal. Good lord. It makes me hurt on the inside to think about how much Chanel nail polish costs, but, eh. I consider it a birthday present to myself. This was the last polish I wore before I severely shortened my nails. I just couldn't deal with them being that long anymore.

This was after a couple of days' wear. This color just looks grey or maybe purply-grey most of the time.

But by using the flash on my camera, you can really see the purple shimmer!

I like it. I don't regret spending the money on it because it's a unique color. :)

Cleanin' out the ol' Flickr

2010-07-17T13:44:00.003-04:00

Hey! Guess what, you guys! Transdesign has Vintage Vixen up. I decided to take some of my birthday money and order all the colors I wanted out of that collection. I've been stalking Sally's to see when they'll get it in, but it's cheaper to buy from TD (at least, it is if you're ordering enough to justify the $7 in shipping). Just thought some of y'all might wanna know. :)

I have a TON of stuff to post! Today, though, I'm just going to post what's in my Flickr and hasn't been posted yet.

I made another Zoya order before the end of June, and honestly? I shouldn't blindly order nail polish off the internet. A lot of what I got in that second order was nice enough, but wasn't an appropriate shade for my skintone. I have a friend at work who's into nail polish. She's black, I'm white, and I showed up one day wearing Zoya Annie, which SO did not look good on me, but would SO look good on her. So I brought it to her the next day and she brought me some stuff that didn't look good on her. So it ended up okay that I cannot order appropriately for my skintone! LOL.

So anyway, today's post is unposted things, and Zoyas, Part I.

First, the RANDOMS.
So I found this 4-pack of mini Borghese polishes on clearance at Walgreens for $5. I'm pretty sure this was a holiday collection. It had a mini of Stellare Notte, two glitters, and a nice burgundy that unfortunately exploded on me so I never got to swatch it. Nail polish catastrophe, y'all!
Anyway, this is one of the glitters. It is, honestly, one of the butt ugliest, least sparkly glitters I've ever used. A brown jelly base with silver and red glitter that didn't SPARKLE. BLAH.

This is another of those discontinued Rimmel Play Fast polishes in a shade called Push It. It's a little frosty for my liking.

And now on to the Zoyas!
This is Kotori. It's a black, or maybe dark grey, jelly base with tons of blue microglitter. I LOVED this! It's gorgeous! The first coat had me a little nervous, 'cause it was way streaky and gross. I think I used three coats for this, but I was very pleased with the end result.

This is Gaia, which was described as white with gold shimmer. I just wish the gold shimmer had been more apparent, but I didn't hate this color.

And this is Yummy. I really liked this one, too. It applied nicely, but it reminds me a LOT of Orly Snowcone and/or Essie Lapis of Luxury, and I have both of those. I should do a comparison.

And now I'm caught up! So I can dump my memory card onto Flickr and not get confused about what I have or have not posted here! YAY!

Lemmings Fulfilled

2010-07-16T09:53:00.003-04:00

So, a few weeks ago, I picked up a couple of colors I'd been lemming from l0verlada's blog sale. Go check her out -- she has a great blog! Dainty Darling Digits.

I got Maybelline's Vanishing Venus and China Glaze Crystal Ball. She even threw in a Sally Girl mini called "Your Majesty." I was happy! I actually wore Vanishing Venus for a few days and got a ton of compliments on it.

It IS a very interesting color. A nice plummy/burgundy shade with green shimmer. I feel like my photos don't do it justice.

And this is Crystal Ball. Another burgundy-ish shade, but this one has holographic glitter in it. It's beautiful!

And this is Your Majesty, a lovely royal purple jelly. I think this was three coats.

Hey you guys!!!

2010-07-13T13:59:00.002-04:00

Guess what!
Tomorrow is my birthday, and I'll be 32. Holy CRAP, how did I get to be 32?!

Some other stuff...
I'm trying to do the Dave Ramsey thing, so I suppose that means I should quit buying nail polish. Curses. Or at least not buy it ALL the time, huh? I need to rediscover some old faves, anyway.

And pics! Just some randoms in my Flickr.
Rimmel Play Fast in Street Wear. Pale taupe with shimmer. Pretty, but not as pretty as I'd hoped.

Neon orange! Not really my color, but fun anyway. :)

OPI - Parlez Vous OPI.

China Glaze Orange Marmalade. Another one I didn't like as much as I'd hoped. It just looked so JUICY in the bottle!

Essie Midnight Cami. Holy smurf fingers, batman! This is pretty on, but removal kinda sucks.

ENJOY!

P.S. I should have a shipment waiting on me when I get home. Paradoxal. I hope I love it as much as I love everyone else's pictures of it, not only because it's going to be my birthday mani, but because it may be the last nail polish I buy for a WHILE!

Huge huge huge Dolla Tree post

2010-07-08T14:35:00.002-04:00

Lately I've been into old Maybellines. I read too many nail polish blogs. I never particularly liked Maybelline nail polish, but apparently they had some good stuff out back in the day, when I bit my nails.

Our Dollar Tree had a TON of really good stuff a few weeks ago. So I hauled. Is it really a haul when it comes from Dollar Tree? I mean, come on. At most, I spent $10.

Anywho, here's what I got. I must say... as lovely as some of these were in the bottle, the prettiest ones had horrible drying issues (as in, they wouldn't. ever.) and most were three coats. I guess I shouldn't complain about Dollar Tree polish.

All of these are Maybelline except for one Sally Hansen.

This is a Maybelline polish called "Ginger." It's not what I would expect from a Ginger. It was okay. I'll probably never wear this one again.

This is "Jaded Blues." I LOVED this color. Blue with gold shimmer and a green flash? Hell yes. This is three coats and it had drying issues.
This is under fluorescent lighting.

Same color, lookit the flash!

Diva Gold. This was actually completely dried up, but the polishes were 2 to a pack and I really wanted the other color. I put some Poshe Reviver in it and let it sit a couple of days. Voila, revived polish. Too bad it's a butt ugly color. This is so not flattering on me.

Khaki Fringe. I'd lemmed this color for awhile, and was thrilled when I finally saw it at DT! Too bad I nicked this manicure minutes after finishing it. :/

Brown Aluminum. Meh. Grey-brown, and not in that trendy "greige" way either. It's alright. Nothing special.

Toasted Host. This one applied okay, but holy brushstrokes! I really am not a fan of frosty nail polish.

Plushed Plum. I really liked this one, a LOT. The color is good for my skintone, it's just out of season for summer. I could see myself wearing this a lot in the wintertime.

Jean Jacket. Brightish blue with some purple shimmer. This is really a gorgeous color.

I put my hand on my leg to see if it was REALLY the color of denim. It's pretty close! But my jeans don't have purple shimmery stuff in them. :)

And the lone Sally Hansen - Snappy Creme. Since "Creme" actually just describes the finish, should the name of this just be "Snappy?" I've wondered that. I like saying "Snappy Creme," but I also like being correct. Heh. Anyway, you'd think a polish called "Snappy" would be a little more, you know, snappy and less looks-like-a-paper-bag-y.

Nail Art!

2010-07-07T10:41:00.002-04:00

Here is some nail art I did recently.

I keep seeing these strawberry nails everywhere, so I decided to do this myself.
I used China Glaze Cherry Pie for the berries, OPI Jade is the new Black for the leaves, and I dotted on black and white with a toothpick for the seeds. I REALLY liked how this turned out. :)

And this is some stamping I did in preparation for a fun weekend. Sadly, this chipped like... three hours later. :( China Glaze OMG stamped with Konad Special Polish in Black with the arrows and stars design from a Bundle Monster plate.

Random Picspam!

2010-07-05T20:42:00.002-04:00

So, I'm way, WAY behind on both pictures and untried nail polishes. Good lord, these things (both of them) seem to just multiply... for no reason. My next sentence was going to be "We hit Ulta today, and..." Oops. I guess I just found my reason.

Anywho, most of the pictures I've yet to post can at least loosely be grouped together into semi-coherent posts. Today's post is the random stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else, and it's just been sitting in my Flickr for ages and ages, begging to be posted.

Picspam!

Here is Essie Turquoise and Caicos. I know I used this in a comparison post, but I'd never done a full mani of it. You know... I think Essie, as a brand, is growing on me. I don't hate it as much as I once did, anyway. I really, REALLY liked this color. I think I used three coats, since it's a jelly and a little on the sheer side.

This is Borghese Principessa Ivory. I was still on the hunt for the perfect off-white polish. This one was 75% off at CVS, and I figured I'd give it a shot for $2, ya know? It was streaky as hell, and I think this was like four coats. Must have been why it was on clearance.

This is Sally Hansen HD in Byte. It was okay. Didn't hate it, didn't love it. Pretty sure this was three coats, since it was pretty sheer.

I liked this one! It's a Finger Paints color - Art Appreciation Apricot. I got it on clearance at Sally. It really was a nice orange-y shade (I never used to wear oranges or corals, but they're growing on me). I have no idea why I didn't take a picture of the polish by itself before slapping some Hidden Treasure on top, but I didn't. Anyway, I call these... nails... OF FIYAH!

Happy Fourth of July!

2010-07-04T12:53:00.004-04:00

Also, happy 10-days-til-my-birthday! If I'd been born in France, my birthday would be a holiday.

So, here's my July 4th manicure. I wore this to a get-together my husband and I went to last night. We came home with a new kitten. I'm a sucker for baby animals. Our other two cats are... lukewarm towards the new kitty, at best. But we're working on it. We have sweet kitties, so I feel sure that with some patience we'll have them all hanging out together in no time!

Oh wait, I was gonna show you a manicure. Here you go! I used Zoya Blair for the red, unnamed Goldie blue for the blue, and I stamped the stripes from one of the Bundle Monster plates and the stars from another Bundle Monster plate using Sally Hansen Whirlwind White. I had to go back over the stripes with my Art Deco nail art polish in white, because the Sally Hansen wasn't opaque enough.

And check this out. This is OPI No Room for the Blues, which I found on clearance at Trade Secret. ALL of the bottles were marked with this price. I had to ask the cashier, "So, how much is this nail polish... REALLY?" (By the way, it was $4.99.) I should try to sell this on eBay for like $75. I mean, it was ORIGINALLY $120, so clearly $75 is a deal, right?!

And because I can't resist... here's a picture of our new baby. I've yet to choose a name. I really like Jezebel. I also like Dobby because she reminds me of a house elf, and the other HP house elves had stupid names. Also, Dobby was awesome. :)

My first RBLs

2010-06-30T09:46:00.003-04:00

Okay, so I had thus far resisted the lure of Rescue Beauty Lounge. BUT, several weeks ago they were taking pre-orders for re-releases of No More War and Scrangie. I HAD to do it. I ordered both. They were calling me.

Now... the formula on these IS just as good as everyone says. But I used Seche Vite as my topcoat with these and HOLY SHRINKAGE. I even wrapped my tips when I wore Scrangie (I NEVER wrap my tips, I'm WAY too lazy for that) and it didn't help. So when I wear either of these again, I'll try a different topcoat. Seche Vite seemed to shrink this worse than almost any other polish I've ever used.

So, of course now I want MORE RBLs. I don't, however, want to go broke, so I'll try to ease myself into a collection... one $18 bottle of polish at a time (and I usually think anything over $7ish is pricy).

Here is No More War. It's so ugly it's cute. This was two coats. I will say that the first coat was rather "eww," but it evened out beautifully on the second coat. Scrangie was the same way.

And here's Scrangie, the much-talked about polish named after the famous blogger. :D

Confetti

2010-06-27T13:58:00.004-04:00

I seem to have amassed quite the collection of untried polishes. I need to work on that.

I found time this morning to do quick swatches of the Confetti polishes I picked up at CVS on Friday.

Honestly, I liked them. Two of the ones I bought were 3-coaters, but the other two were 2-coaters. It's not the greatest polish I've ever used, but it's worth the $1.99 pricetag and the color selection is decent.

Moonstruck. (2 coats)

Fashionista. (3 Coats)

My Favorite Martian. (3 Coats)

Smitten. (2 coats)

Spotted at CVS

2010-06-25T19:09:00.001-04:00

Anyone ever seen these before??!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Two (somewhat) similar blues

2010-06-23T16:42:00.003-04:00

I wore these polishes, like, two days apart and didn't realize til I uploaded the pictures (and had a hell of a time telling them apart) how similar they are.

This is China Glaze Frostbite. True story -- my hubs went to Sally's with me several weeks ago and picked this one out for me. He's so precious! :) This was two coats, but it probably coulda used three.

And this is one of Orly's new polishes, Royal Navy. I wouldn't exactly call that base color "navy," but the blue-green shimmer in this is really gorgeous. I love it! It's what made me able to tell these two polishes apart.

Funky French

2010-06-21T20:12:00.002-04:00

Ok, so I don't usually do french manicures of ANY kind. I can never seem to get the tips straight, so I just don't do it.

I caved and did this one a couple of weeks ago. I really liked it! I used Orly Liquid Vinyl for the tips, Essie Blushing Bride for the nailbeds, and covered it all up with some Seche Vite and Cover Girl City Lights topcoat.

We also finally got our wedding rings last week. Yes, we've been married for nearly two months, but we waited til the last damn minute to order our rings from http://www.etsy.com/shop/fabuluster. Like, seriously, we ordered them the week before our wedding. So we got married with the cheapest bands we could find and ordered these to replace them. I LOVE THEM! Mine has J's fingerprint on it and his has my fingerprint on it. :)

Storage and collection

2010-06-20T14:49:00.002-04:00

Today I actually organized and counted my nail polishes. I only have 222. That's not TOO bad, at least, it's relatively not too bad. I mean, there are people out there with wayyy more than I have. But I'm dealing with limited space, and I DO destash every now and then.

I DID have them organized by color, but that was starting to be a little bit of a pain. Today I organized by brand. Which was also a pain, because there are a lot of brands I only have 1 or 2 of, so my last two drawers are kinda, uh, interesting.

First of all, this is what I keep my polishes in. It's a 3-drawer organizer you can find at Michael's. Apparently it's a knock-off of some Ikea organizer, but the closest Ikea is in Atlanta and while that's only like an hour or so away, I'm way lazy. There's a Michael's here. And they constantly have 40% off coupons. I got both of these for somewhere in the vicinity of $15 to $18 apiece. A worthy investment, I say!

Okay, so we have here some remover, some acetone, a bag with all my Konad/Fauxnad stuff in it, a UPS, a modem, and an external hard drive. Beauty and geekery! My favorite! Also, if you notice, on the right you can see one of my prized possessions -- my Sushi Cat mug I found at Goodwill for a buck. It was so inexplicable I HAD to have it.

Drawer 1: Treatments and topcoats and nail art, oh my. This drawer is never really organized. I have too much of this stuff. I also have the inability to ever finish a whole bottle of basecoat or topcoat. This is the result of that.

Drawer 2: Cotton balls, some mini sets, and untrieds.

Drawer 3: OPI, Essie, and Zoya. I'm not a huge OPI fan, although everyone else seems to looove them. Same with Essie (although I have started to realize that DARK Essie colors are way better than the pastel crap).

Drawer 4: China Glaze, Orly, and Finger Paints. I heart China Glaze and Orly. My favorites.

Drawer 5: Non-drugstore brands that I don't have very many of. We have Goldie, Del Sol, CHI, Tip Toe, Butter London, Kleancolor, Color Club, Rescue Beauty Lounge, Claire's, Icing, Nina Ultra Pro, Manglaze, random asian brand, Chanel, and LA Splash. Yes, it also makes me LOL to have Chanel and RBL in the same drawer as Kleancolor and Color Club. But what can you do?

Drawer 6: It's like CVS puked all over this drawer! All my drugstore brands. This is like, 1/4 Sally Hansen. Also have Rimmel, L'Oreal, Revlon, Maybelline, Wet N Wild, Petites, Cover Girl, blahblah... your normal drugstore fare.

How interesting

2010-06-20T13:44:00.002-04:00

For the first time in ages, I decided to see what search terms were leading people to my blog. Obviously, most of them were nail or nail polish related. Here are the ones that made me laugh my ass off:

1. Only god can judge me now (that's right, because nail polish bloggers are HARDCORE, bitches)
2. Assnude (Yeah, one word. I have no idea either. I sort of want to use this term a LOT now. Assnude! Assnude! Assnude assnude assnude! Yeeeah!!! My inner 12-year-old is giggling her ass(nude) off now!)
3. Nasty toenails (I TOLD YOU my feet were jacked up!)
4. Butt ugly (Yeah. Butt ugly assnude.)
5. Lissa's Feet (Ok. I've had random strangers on Flickr add pictures of my feet to their favorites before. Usually these people are foot fetishists and go around adding random pictures of feet to their favorites on Flickr. This is just getting creepy. Plus, I have ugly feet.)
6. Lissa Rinna nude (Pretty sure they meant "Lisa." I bet they were sorely disappointed in this blog.)
7. What is apocalypse (Valid search, not sure why my blog shows up on the results... unless my blog is a sign of the apocalypse!)
8. Thick and nasty (Uhhhh... huh huhuhuhhhuhuh. Yeah. That's what SHE said.)
9. Lissa nude (REALLY hope those pics aren't on the internet!)
10. Only god can judge me in Chinese. (So people can judge you in other languages? KICK ASS!)
11. Black vulva (Again... I bet they were disappointed.)
12. Bubble butts galore (More like disappointment galore!)
13. Leprechaun couple (I need to meet these people.)
14. Butt ugly women (Well, opinions are like assholes... I may fit this category!)
15. Only god can judge me in Arabic (Ok, so no Chinese and no Arabic. I'll judge you in Italian, then.)
16. Bacon bubble gum (INTERESTING concept. I wanna try it!)

Okay, I was gonna go to 20, but really, it's a lot of variations of "only god can judge me," "bubble butts," and "leprechauns." WHAT THE HELL. There was also a "nude over 50" in there.

Sorry, I'm not over 50. YET. I will be 32 in 3.5 weeks. CRAP. True story -- I drank excessively the entire day when I turned 30 in 2008. So I woke up the morning of July 15, 2008 and vomited excessively. It was a particularly unpleasant welcome to my 30s, but I was NOT HAPPY about turning 30, not one bit. Now it's okay. I'm happier in my 30s than I ever was in my 20s, I'm more stable both emotionally and financially, and things are okay. But still, nobody likes to get older. :)

Weekly post!

2010-06-20T13:32:00.002-04:00

Man, I seem to have so little free time lately. But I'm still taking pictures of my hands every day, the pictures are just slow in coming. :D My apologies!

Sooo, today I have my last Zoya I got from the exchange in APRIL (yeeeah, I realize it's nearly July). This is Freja, which I thought I'd like but really didn't. Also, I had middle nail issues. I smudged it the first time around, then I redid it really quickly, which caused MASSIVE BUBBLING. Check it out. Also, I'm not sure why my cuticles look so icky in this picture. They're looking pretty good right now, actually.

So then I hated the bubbling, but didn't want to take off the polish. So I put Sally Hansen HD in DVD on top and I fell IN LOOOOVE.

You can see the duochromey goodness in this pic. :)

This one too!

I really hate that DVD is so sheer. But I really love that it layers so well and turns any polish into sparkly gorgeousness!

Random swatchery

2010-06-14T14:36:00.002-04:00

Yo! Sorry I haven't posted in a week. I've been, uh, busy. Yeah, yeah, that's the ticket. Busy.

Lately I've been on a search for the perfect coral and the perfect off-white polish. I have no idea why. Those aren't usually "my" colors, but to be honest, coral is totally growing on me.

Sooo... today I just have some photos of some random polishes. There is no rhyme nor reason to this, just stuff I've worn lately and have never posted here. Enjoy! Hopefully tomorrow I'll have more... I'm backlogged once again!

So I finally got around to wearing the last Zoya Sparkle. This is Gilda. Color me underwhelmed. To be honest, the only colors from this collection I NEEDED were Charla, Ivanka, and Mimi. The pinks and reds were just meh.

OMG. This was another polish I didn't like at all. This is OPI Fiercely Fiona from the Shrek collection. Okay. A) Terrible color for me. B) Three icky coats. I put this on, took a picture, and immediately took it off. Like, before it dried. Thank god it was only a mini.

This was an unexpected surprise. First of all, it's orange. Second of all, it's Petites, which is hit or miss, but you can deal with a miss if it only cost $1.50, right? I LOVED this color on me. I think this is what set me off in search of the perfect coral. As you can see, despite the fact that this is called "Passion Orange," it's really more coral than straight orange. I think this was three coats.

This was my first attempt at finding the perfect off-white. This ain't it. This is Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Beige Blast. Three coats, I believe.

Beige Blast alone was boring as hell and a little too sheer, so I Hidden Treasure'd it up.

And another thing!

2010-06-06T22:23:00.004-04:00

Just because I feel like all you people ever see of me is my hands...
(Well, this IS a nail blog, come on!)

Here's a pic of me and my husband... this was at the family dinner the night before we got hitched! Notice the major height difference!

Also, I've lost around ten pounds since then. My goal is thirty by the end of the summer. Maybe if I just buy nail polish instead of food... LOL!

Two posts in one night!

2010-06-06T21:27:00.003-04:00

Glory be, what is this world coming to?!

So anyway, I've made friends with this chick at work. She calls me to fix her computer, I go to her office, fix her computer, and end up talking nail polish with her. It's a win-win situation. I've pointed her to my blog before, but I have no idea if she reads it regularly (if so, I'm talking about you!), and it seems rude to ask. :)

ANYWAY. She asked me what my favorite nail polish brands are, and I said, "Orly and China Glaze." She said, "Oooh! The Chinese beauty supply I go to has a TON of China Glaze!" I was, to say the least, INTRIGUED. However, I've yet to find the Asian beauty supply in town that has China Glaze. I've hit three of them so far, including the one she mentioned, and no China Glaze to be found in any of them. I DID, however, find Kleancolor -- a brand I'd seen mentioned on nail blogs but had never seen in person. And it was $1 a bottle. They also had some NYX Girls for $1 a bottle. So I grabbed some!

Here's what I got.
Kleancolor in Sapphire, Dark Brown, and Blood (which isn't exactly blood red, but who's counting), and NYX Girls in Wild.

I also picked up this Kleancolor topcoat in Aurora, which is a mix of iridescent tiny glitter, larger round glitter, and star-shaped glitter. I don't usually go for this kind of thing, but it was a buck.

Let me say -- Kleancolor is some GOOD STUFF. All of these except for the topcoat were pretty much opaque in one coat, but I did two for good measure. They also Konad (or Fauxnad) exceptionally well. I REALLY need to get back to that Beauty Supply and buy more of these. I mean, THEY'RE A DOLLAR. COME ON.

This is Sapphire. A bit frosty for my liking, but pretty nonetheless.

This is Sapphire with a topcoat of Aurora.

This is Dark Brown. Completely unoriginal, yet perfectly descriptive, name.

And this is Blood. I was expecting a much darker red from a polish named "Blood." This was the thinnest of the three -- after two coats you can still see the slightest bit of VNL. It still applied exceptionally well for a $1 polish.

However, NYX Girls Wild was the WINNER of this whole bunch. This color is a dusty blue-grey that leans way blue. I thought it was a blue-green duochrome at first, but it's not. It's a dusty blue with GOLD shimmer. I've never seen that combination before! It's way unique and I LOVE IT. This is two coats. I still had the slightest bit of VNL, so three coats may be better. I was lazy.

In this photo you can see the shimmer a little better.

So... I need to get myself back to the beauty supply store that sells these, no?

I'm through buying nail polish

2010-06-06T20:08:00.001-04:00

I picked up a bottle of DVD from the new Sally Hansen HD display at CVS. It's official. I'm done. I wasn't gonna get it cause it was super sheer in the photos I'd seen online, but I got it anyway.

It is sheer, but it is MAGIC. I have tried it layered over a couple of different polishes. It transforms them into this foily, glittery blue/purple duochrome awesomeness.

Right now I have it layered over one coat of OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui and I seriously think I might just leave this on all week. I am in LOVE.

Here is a crappy iPhone photo. I'll take a real pic at some point, cause this isn't doing it justice at all!

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

More comparisons

2010-06-03T20:24:00.002-04:00

You know you have a problem when you keep seeing dupish colors in your collection and yet you keep buying more nail polish. I'm hoarding for beauty armageddon.

Here are some taupes (and one brown).

From L to R:
Zoya Dea, Essie Mink Muffs, Orly Prince Charming, Sally Hansen Commander in Chic, and Maybelline Touch of Taupe.

They are in the same order on my hand, from thumb to pinky.

Dea is OBVIOUSLY way different from the rest. (One of these things is not like the others!) So here's a shot of just the four fingers.

As you can see, Mink Muffs and Prince Charming are similar, with Mink Muffs being just a titch darker. Commander in Chic is less brown and more grey. And Touch of Taupe is completely different, and I actually love this color for that reason. It's taupe without being just like every other taupe. And I got it for a dollar at the Dollar Tree. :)

Then I was looking at another mini from that Essie set, and thought that Angora Cardi looked a LOT like Butter London's Teddy Boy. They are quite similar in the bottle.

I just alternated fingers -- Angora Cardi is on my thumb, middle, and pinky, while Teddy Boy is on my ring and pointer fingers.

And in more direct lighting:

They are similar, but not exactly the same. Angora Cardi is more purple and a little deeper. I have no idea what to call this color. Mauve? I dunno. I do like it, even if it is a little boring.

So there you have it. I have one more post planned re: the asian beauty supply, but I probably won't post it til tomorrow or Saturday!

Recent Fauxnadicures

2010-05-31T12:36:00.003-04:00

Wow, Fauxnadicures totally gets the red squiggle underliney thing.

So, I've been having a ton of fun stamping lately since I ordered the Bundle Monster plates. I really prefer the full-nail stamps. I do hate that the Bundle Monster full nail stamps are so narrow. I have fairly narrow nails, but they don't cover my entire nail width. I bet these things would be really horrible for the ladies with wider nail beds than mine. STILL, I've been stamping away. Here are some of my recent looks. I'd tell you what plate the images came from, but I'm way too lazy to go look. However, all of the stamps came from the Bundle Monster plates, and not my Konad or other Fauxnad plates.

Here is Essie Splash of Grenadine with Konad Violet Pearl on top.

China Glaze Flip Flop Fantasy with Konad Special Polish in Black. This one got me a LOT of comments. The neon-y-ness of Flip Flop Fantasy is really hard to capture in photos, but this was BRIGHT.

This was OPI Who The Shrek are You with Konad Violet Pearl for the checkerboard tip pattern. This was my first attempt ever at stamping tips, and let me say... it is NOT easy to get it straight. My right hand was pretty crooked, but I wore it anyway. My pointer finger was a casualty of my job.

This is Essie Lapis of Luxury with Sally Hansen Insta-Dri in Whirlwind White for the stamp. I think I'm going to have to break down and buy the special Konad white polish because I cannot find a white that stamps decently to save my life.

I didn't have adequate sunlight to capture this one, and it was very, very subtle, but I liked it. It reminded me of, say, curtains in a funeral home. LOL. The base is Rimmel Hard Edged stamped with Nina Ultra Pro in Viva La Velvet.

This is what I'm wearing today and I LOVE IT. It may be my favorite one yet. Then again, I love the color combination of aqua and dark brown. This is a base of Orly Gumdrop stamped with Kleancolor in Dark Brown. OH... Kleancolor. I had no idea where to get this stuff, but I went to an asian beauty supply store close to my house, and they had a TON of it for $1 apiece. This is some GOOD STUFF. I actually have another post planned about my trip to the asian beauty supply. :)

Green, Blue, and Purple comparisons

2010-05-30T11:27:00.002-04:00

So I woke up early this morning and sat in bed with a glass of mango iced tea, watching Saved By The Bell and then Zoolander and doing nail polish comparisons. It's nice to be a lady of leisure. :)

Anyway, there are colors in the OPI Shrek minis and in the Essie Resort Collection minis that reminded me a lot of other colors I already had, so I decided to do some comparisons. Unfortunately, it's super cloudy today, but I think I got some decent pictures.

First up, the greens... well, blue-greens. Turquoises, if you will. Pardon the bottle shots, they were all taken on my bed. :)

From left to right: Essie Turquoise & Caicos, China Glaze For Audrey, Orly Gumdrop, Revlon Minted, Essie Mint Candy Apple

The polishes are on my fingers in the same order, from thumb to pinky.

The greenest ones are Turquoise & Caicos and Minted.
I still say Gumdrop and For Audrey are dupes, or at least near dupes. For Audrey may be a TINY bit bluer.
Turquoise & Caicos is actually a jelly. I thought it was a creme til I put it on. Nope, it's a jelly. It's also three coats. Minted is also three coats.
Gumdrop was opaque in one coat.
The rest of the colors are all two coats.

Now on to the blues!

From left to right: Orly Snowcone, Essie Lapis of Luxury, L'Oreal High Tide, Finger Paints Blissfully Blue, OPI What's With the Cattitude.

The polishes are in the same order on my fingers, from thumb to pinky.

Snowcone was opaque in one coat.
Lapis of Luxury is another jelly, another three-coater, and I think it may be a jelly dupe for Snowcone, which is a creme.
High Tide is completely different from the rest of them.
Blissfully Blue and What's With the Cattitude are similar, but not dupes. Blissfully Blue is way more stark, while WWTC is a deeper blue. Blissfully Blue was opaque in two coats, while WWTC took three coats.
Here's Snowcone on my thumb and Lapis of Luxury on my pointer. They are SUPER close.

And now for the purples!

From left to right: Essie Lilacism, China Glaze Light as Air, OPI Rumple's Wiggin.

On my hand, they are in this order:
Pointer - Rumple's Wiggin
Middle - Light as Air
Ring - Lilacism
Pinky - Rumple's Wiggin

Light as Air was opaque in one coat.
Lilacism took three coats. Rumple's Wiggin took two coats.
Light as Air is considerably lighter and grayer than the other two. To my eye, Lilacism and Rumple's Wiggin are absolutely dupes. There may be a tiny difference between the two, but you'd have to really be looking for it to see it.

So there! I hope this is informative and helpful. Now back to Zoolander. :)

Three Day Weekend! Hooray!

2010-05-29T14:16:00.003-04:00

Who knows, maybe I'll do some swatching this weekend. I have THREE DAYS, after all. :D
I haven't actually swatched in awhile. All the pictures I've posted lately were full manis, worn for at least a day (if not two or three).
In the meantime, here are three pictures I haven't posted here.

This is one of the Zoyas I got in the Polish Exchange. Anastasia. It's very fall-like. In fact, I could see myself wearing this a lot during the fall. I got a compliment on this from my friendly neighborhood Rite Aid cashier. :)

This is Rumple's Wiggin (dumbest polish name ever) from the OPI Shrek collection. I'm really glad I picked up the mini set, because almost every polish in that collection reminds me a lot of something else I have. Maybe I'll do some comparisons.

And this is Playa Del Platinum from Essie's Resort Collection. It's meh. I put some Illusion D'Or over it the next day and I really liked the way it looked. However, I failed to take a picture of it.

Pics!

2010-05-27T21:07:00.003-04:00

I'm behind on posting pics here... AGAIN. I just don't feel like doing anything lately. I think it's mostly post-wedding blahs.

I broke down and ordered the Bundle Monster plates. They've been hugely popular on the nail blogs lately, and I had to jump on that bandwagon. Also, way cheaper than Konad. I've been stamping every night lately. :) You can get the plates here. BUT... I haven't uploaded any of those pictures yet, so you'll have to make do with plain ol' nail polish pictures.

And another thing... I don't use makeupalley.com. I mean, I have an account there. But the site's interface is horrible nearly to the point of being unusable, in my opinion, so I've logged in maybe a grand total of five times. Seriously, the site looks like it's still in the early days of the interwebs -- have they not redesigned since 1998? There's better technology now. You should use it. I've never posted there. Whew. Just had to get that off my chest.

Here is one of the mini Essie's I got in the $5 clearance set from last fall. Pink Parka. Okay. I LOVE THIS COLOR! It's bright but not neon. I can't wait to wear this again and stamp all over it. Then again, I love hot pink and black together. I always have. In my mind, 1989 never ended.

This is China Glaze Something Sweet, which I picked up on a whim, I guess. I didn't have a good pale pink. Now I do. Unfortunately, this polish did not hold up to the rigors of my job. Check out my thumb. This also happened on my right pointer finger, but I didn't take a picture of that hand.

And last but not least, we have Zoya Ivanka. This is another one from the Sparkle collection. I like it, but not as much as I like Charla.

I have only three more unblogged pictures. I'll try to post them tomorrow, and then get to uploadin' the ones I haven't yet. It's a three day weekend! Maybe I can do some swatching. :)