Hard Candy Lava

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.

Lisa Frank Nails!

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.

Cleanin' out the ol' Flickr

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

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.

Pics!

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. :)

Comparison post

So, I was at Old Navy the other night, and I saw a Tip Toe polish called "Orchid Fever." It's a bright red-leaning purple with a lot of blue and pink glitter in it and it immediately reminded me of China Glaze Flying Dragon. Since I have a problem, and since I really like Flying Dragon, but it has some issues, I had to grab it.

As you can see, in the bottle, Flying Dragon is a lot more pink than Orchid Fever.


But Orchid Fever has a lot more glitter.


On the nail, well, they're not all that different. Flying Dragon is more opaque. Also, I think my bottle of Flying Dragon has thickened up quite a bit (which is a good thing, it once was way too thin), because when I did my comparison, I was able to get it opaque in two coats.

Orchid Fever is WAY sheer. I had to use four or five coats to get it opaque.

Here's Orchid Fever on its own. Pardon the tipwear, this was after three days of wear. The last few days have been a bit busy. :D


In this photo, I have Orchid Fever on my pointer and ring fingers. Flying Dragon is on my middle and pinky fingers. They ARE quite similar. I sort of prefer Orchid Fever, even though it's really sheer, simply because the glitter is more apparent.

One! Two! Three! Three Polishes! Ha ha ha!

I was channeling The Count. You'll have to excuse me.

I just had an involved discussion with the cashier at my friendly neighborhood Rite Aid about nail polish. I love it when I can randomly inform strangers of my obsession. I told her all about Hidden Treasure and the Zoya polish exchange. I feel like I fulfilled my civic duty for today.

So on to the polishes!

This is a CHI polish I picked up at Ulta. It's a blue/green duochrome called Hot Ring Illusion Around Saturn. This polish is the hotness! I'd never bought a CHI polish before, but I remember seeing this collection when it came out. I sort of wish I'd picked up all of them then because this is awesome!


This is a Del Sol polish called Rock Star. It's a sheer blue glitter. I think I screwed up here because I applied four coats to make it opaque and then barely got any color change at all in the sun. :/
This is in the shade:


And in the sun. You can KIND OF see where it's turning more green, but it's really pretty unnoticeable.


And another in the sun.


The least sparkly of the Zoya Sparkle collection: Nidhi. I don't usually go for tomato reds, but I really liked this polish. The gold sparkle is unique. I got bored with it, though, and konaded over it with a sheer gold polish. Don't ask me what plate I used, because I'm way too lazy right now to look and see. :)


And another!



I actually have no more pictures uploaded, so I guess tomorrow I'll have to upload some more. It's cool having a photo backlog because it makes churning out posts easier. :)

Two polishes!

Today in my photo backlog, I have for you Sinful's Daddy's Girl and Orly Pixie Dust.

I was sorely disappointed in Daddy's Girl. I expected a much darker base, but this was definitely a bright purple with purple glitter.


Pixie Dust was a gorgeous blue-grey with shimmer/glitter. I loved this shade! It's unique to my collection. :)


And I had to slap some Hidden Treasure on it...

Three little polishes

So here are some of my new polishes. I really have ended up with a buttload (buttload should be a scientific unit of measurement) of untried polishes lately. I even have 8 mini Essies to try, even though I HATE Essies (generally, but not always). I found a four-pack of minis for $5 at Ulta from Essie's Fall 09 collection, and JJ bought me the four-pack of minis from their new Resort Collection. That man has to love me if he's buying me more nail polish. I know he thinks my collection is a bit ridiculous now, but he bought it for me anyway. Aww. :)

You know what else is ridiculous? My collection of shower gels and lotions. I have no idea why I buy so many. Even if I bought no more shower gel or lotion, I probably have enough to keep myself clean and moisturized until at least 2015. Hoarder much? Actually, it's more like I shop at Bath and Body Works twice a year -- during the semi-annual sales -- and stock WAY up then.

So anyway. Swatches!

First up is Zoya Alegra. This is pretty, sparkly, and foily, just like Charla and Mimi were. I like this dark, reddish shade of pink on me.


I kept reading about this color on a bunch of different blogs, and it was one of the main reasons I even stopped in at Ulta. The brand is LA Splash, which I'd never heard of before. I did see a LA Splash display in a Walgreen's recently, but it was all eyeliner and no nail polish. Maybe it'll be available at Walgreen's soon. This shade is called Golden Seahorse, and it's a seafoam green with gold glitter in it. It's really a unique color, but I'm not sure it's for me.


And this was my, "I'm bored and I found Hidden Treasure" mani. This is actually a base of Finger Paints "Tough Art to Follow," which I THINK is one of their new shades. It's a really dark olive green. I thought it'd be more forest green, but definitely has more yellow tones than blue, so I say it's dark olive. I was underwhelmed by this color. I didn't even take a picture of it by itself. So here it is with Hidden Treasure over it. Heh.



And there you go. I'm slowly whittling down my backlog of photos. :)

Hellooo!!!

So, I felt completely swamped this last week. I took a lot of pictures, but didn't post at all! So, I'm going to try to do a post a day for awhile. At least for a couple of days, to get through the backlog of pictures. :)

I never actually took a "hand" shot of this polish, but this is me wearing it while in Florida to get married. This is me, unwashed, with no makeup, first thing in the morning, waiting in a cafe for my coffee, so be prepared... but my NAILS are FABULOUS! LOL! I'm wearing Zoya Mimi. And no, that's not the polish I wore to get married in. :)


So I had to go hunt and see if I had any pictures of my NAIL POLISH on my wedding day for this blog. I wore OPI DS Illuminate. This picture was taken after the wedding -- that's my husband next to me. :) We had already started to take shots of tequila at this point...


So yay! Nail-polish related reason to show off pictures. :) We had a super casual beach wedding, but a lot of our friends and family came. Our wedding day was spent, well, getting married, and then going to a restaurant and drinking/eating/socializing. Then a bunch of our friends got together on the beach in the dark and hung out for hours and hours. It was really a great, memorable night!

I'll post again tomorrow with actual nail-of-the-day pics from the past week. This'll be my wedding post!

Giveaway ENDING and nail polish haul

Ok, so I'm supposed to pick a winner for my giveaway today. I just got my spreadsheet caught up with my blog comments, so let's say that I'll count anyone who enters until 5pm Eastern time today (about 3 hours from now). Then I'll pick someone. YAY!

Oh yeah, and I GOT MARRIED ON SATURDAY! YAY! I had a really good time, and hey! I got married! We aren't taking a honeymoon at this time, so no, I'm not posting this from my honeymoon. :)

I also hauled on some nail polish while we were down in Florida. I also finally found Hidden Treasure! YAY! We drove from Athens to down in Florida where we got married. I stopped at a random Walgreens in Montgomery, AL, and there it was! FINALLY!

I wanted to go to the Del Sol store in PCB to get some more of their color change polish, but I didn't have time. But on the way back home, we stopped in another random Walgreens in Florida and they were selling Del Sol! Yay!

And then I hauled in the clearance aisle at Ulta.. and I picked up some other stuff there too.

So, I have all of that plus all the Zoya I got last week. I have a LOT of stuff in my untried drawer right now. This is a picture of everything I picked up on my travels. I also don't really have time to swatch right now, so I guess I'll be doing a nail a day for a bit. :)



And, just because I know I'm going to get terribly backlogged with my nail pictures, let me just go ahead and show you what I've got unposted pictures of. Enjoy!

So, I tried Illusion D'Or over everything for a few days. Here it is over black:


And here it is again over L'Oreal's High Tide.


And here it is over Rimmel's Milk Chocolate!


This is La Playa from the new Orlys that are out now.


Sinful Colors "Rise and Shine," which JJ declared "hideous."


Minted, one of the new Revlons.


Orly Glam, which I found on clearance at Sally..


And the ONLY Zoya Sparkle I've photographed so far, Charla. I really loved this color!!

Black Holos

My fiance had surgery Thursday, so I'm caring for an invalid. He tore his left achilles playing soccer last weekend. He will be hobbling down the aisle in a boot at our wedding in two weeks. Poor guy! He came home from the hospital today and is slowly trying to get around with crutches. That has nothing to do with nail polish, just thought I'd mention it.

Ok, so if I had a favorite type of nail polish, it would probably be the black/charcoal holographic, since I keep buying them. I never have owned the original OPI MPJ, and probably never will (I'm not too keen on the idea of trying to track it down, but if I happened to see it someplace - HAHA - I'd pick it up).

I do own a few black/charcoal holos. I know I don't have Diamond Cosmetics' Chainmail Charm. I need it. I really should grab it since it's only a couple of bucks or so on their website, and I've liked the swatches I've seen of it. One day I will.

When I was out and about trying to track down the new Sally Hansens (I just want the flaky one... but nowhere here seems to have it), I saw the new Petites Color Fever line. They have a color called Black Diamond, which is really pretty close to Color Club Revvvolution. I was skeptical about paying $4 for a Petites nail polish, since their quality hasn't really been the best, and their original line costs what? A dollar, maybe two? However, I was really pleasantly surprised with Black Diamond. Observe!

The holo effect is fairly weak with this one, but it IS there. This is in indirect light. It didn't really come out much better in direct light. :/


You can at least see the effect a bit here.


Then I decided to do a comparison. Then I ran out of time to remove it, so I've actually been rocking a black holo "skittles" manicure for the last two days.. LOL.
Here's what I compared:
L'Oreal Bijou Crystals in B.Rebellious, Color Club Revvvolution, Icing Blackout, and Petites Color Fever Black Diamond.
Icing, your brush sucked. I love this shade, and the formula isn't bad, but the horrible mop-like brush makes this polish nearly impossible to use. I have some spare clear polishes lying about, and I think I'm going to try dumping the clear polish out and decanting the Icing polish into a bottle with a less shitty brush.


I had a terrible time trying to get a good picture of these four. Part of this is because I've been at the hospital a LOT in the last couple of days and just haven't had time.
My observations are this. The L'Oreal polish is probably my favorite of the four. It is the sparkliest. It isn't a "smooth" holo, but is a dark, dark grey that is interspersed with a TON of holographic glitter.
The Icing polish is the only one of the four that is actually BLACK. It also isn't a smooth holo, but is interspersed with holographic glitter.
Color Club's polish has the smoothest holographic effect and also the hardest to capture.
The Petites polish isn't technically a "smooth" holo, but it is smoother and the glitter is finer than in either the L'Oreal or the Icing polish. It is REALLY close to Color Club Revvvolution, and I think that if a person owned one, they wouldn't need the other.

Now for the pictures! Clicking on any of these to get a larger image might be helpful.
On my thumb and pinky are Petites Color Fever Black Diamond
On my index finger is L'Oreal Bijou Gems in B.Rebellious
On my middle finger is Color Club Revvvolution
On my ring finger is Icing Blackout


And again... this one shows the holo-ness a bit better.



Also, I had to run to Sally's this afternoon and found that they now have the China Glaze Poolside collection. They also still have all polishes buy 2, get 1 free. So I picked up half of the collection. I got Pool Party, Sun Worshipper, and Towel Boy Toy. The yellow and green didn't much appeal to me (neon yellow looks icky on me), but I was torn between the pink and the coral. I might go back later this weekend and pick up the other three, but I'm going to sleep on it first. :D


Our Sally's hired a new girl to work there, and while I was talking polish to the cashier, she butted in and was trying to inform me of the "new mint green trend" in nail polish. I wanted to LOL. "Excuse me, missy, but DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA how many nail polish blogs I read?!?" Also, mint green is SOOOOO last season. I dunno, it was just funny. But I'm not a bitch, so I said, "Yeah! I have a bunch of mint greens and I really like them!"

Wedding Polish!

First!
If you haven't yet, go enter my giveaway here: http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/2010/04/giveaway.html
And if you want some polish on the cheap (you pay shipping, that's it), go check out my destashing post here (there's still some stuff left!): http://lissasnails.blogspot.com/2010/04/destashing.html


NOW.
I finally decided on a polish to wear to get married in. I wanted something neutral but still sparkly, so I splurged and picked up OPI DS Illuminate. It's a peachy-bronzey-nudey with holographic glitter. There is some green flash in the bottle but that did not translate to the nail.

I will not wear a full mani of this til I get hitched, but I swatched it this past weekend. OBSERVE!
This is outside, but not in direct sunlight:


And this is direct sunlight! Holo-y goodness!



My cuticles SUCK right now, but I'm working on them. Too busy to moisturize lately, but hopefully all will be well in 2 weeks and 4 days when I get married. :D


P.S. Holy crap, you guys. I have over 100 followers now. Muahahaha! I'm clearly on my way to world domination!