Happy Fourth of July!

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. :)

Boring Sunday at work

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

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

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

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

So, here we go.

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


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


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


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




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


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


Rose shimmer (this is really pretty):


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


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


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




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

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


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