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.

Nail Art!

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.

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!

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!

Claire's!

Sooo... I've been wearing Claire's mood polishes all week this week. I've been withholding pictures until I've worn them all. Post to follow, probably Saturday since I will be out doing the happy hour thing tomorrow after work. :)

BUT! When I last ventured to Claire's, there was a whole bunch of stuff on clearance AND there was scented nail polish. I had to buy! Buy! BUY! I'm such a sucker.

Here's what I got.
First up, I got two of the scented polishes, in Bubble Gum and Cotton Candy. Cotton Candy is better scented than Bubble Gum. They are both sheer glitter polishes, with small and large hexagonal glitters. I can't remember how many coats I used in my swatches -- it was either three or four. These would probably be good for layering, but who knows how that would effect the scent.

Here's Bubble Gum:


And here's Cotton Candy:


I also picked up these two polishes on clearance. They had a thing going on where all of their clearance stuff was 50% off the lowest price, so I got both of these for $1 or so.

Rockstar (which reminds me vaguely of the Orly Foil FX stuff, but less shiny):


And Hollywood, which is an AWESOME silver/white with small silver glitter and larger holographic glitter. I love this! I need to layer it over something.



Furthermore, I will be doing a blog giveaway. It is written. I think I'll go for it when I hit 75 followers. But I'm buying stuff now to be given away once I hit that mark. Maybe before. I got my package from Chromatic Misadventures today, and feel the need to pay it forward. Details to follow.

Greens for Friday and Saturday

Y'all, really, I am super tired of wearing green. But I'm gonna stick it out. :D

I also have a confession...
I cheated and bought nail polish today. Not much. But some. I confessed to JJ and he didn't seem to remember that I was going to quit buying it til May. So, I won't remind him. :D

Anywho! Yesterday, I wore Milani's green holo, Hi-Tech. I really love this nail polish! I couldn't take a great picture since it was cloudy and rainy all day. Meh.


Today, JJ picked out OPI's Jade is the New Black for me. I stuck a St. Patrick's Day nail sticker VERY CROOKEDLY on my pointer finger. It was so freakin' ugly. Bah. Oh well, whatever, it was just for a day.

Green of the day!

Today it's China Glaze DV8. This does lean blue, although not as blue as this photo would lead you to believe, but it's green enough. And I like it a lot. :)

Today JJ and I are going to go see Alice in Wonderland (yippie!) and then go eat tasty foods. He's been a little sickly for the last few days. It'll be good to get out.

And it's beautiful today! I think I have seen more snow in the last year than I've seen in my entire life. This is Georgia, people! If I wanted snow, I'd go live... somewhere where they are supposed to get snow. I hope this crap is over. It's supposed to be in the 60s for the next several days and that is perfectly fine by me!

Anywho, I wanted something sparkly and not boring for our hot date today, and this is what he picked out of my bucket o' greens. Good job, JJ!

Orlys and Ultas and China Glazes, oh my

So, this is the last of the stuff I got last week. I'm on a no buy til May. MAY!!! Hehe. I need to use what I have, though, and not end up on A&E's Hoarders, so it's just as well.

I have 3 Ultas, 3 Orlys, and 3 China Glazes to show you. Let's start with the crappiest ones -- the Ultas.

So, a couple of weeks ago, Ulta had this deal where if you spent $17.50, you got a bag o' their makeup for free. I'd never used Ulta's brand makeup before, and finding $17.50 worth of stuff to get wasn't that hard, so, you know, score. Note: I am not a fan of Ulta's makeup. Srsly. Oh well, it was free. Anyway, I ordered one nail polish and two polishes came in the free bag o' makeup. The one I actually paid for was pretty cool. The two free ones were NOT.

This is what I bought -- After Party. It's silver and red glitter in a clear base. This was... 3 or 4 coats. I'd probably layer this over a red if I were actually wearing it and not just swatching it, but this is all by its lonesome.


The two free polishes I got were Sunny Romance of St. Tropez, a shimmery yellow, and Something Blue, a shimmery medium blue.

These were both pretty sheer, and sort of hard to use. Look at this brush! It's miniscule!


And this is FIVE COATS. And I don't even like yellow. But I didn't have a shimmery yellow, so, you know, welcome to the collection.


This is Something Blue. It's ok. Pretty enough. I don't hate it. I'll probably never wear it again. At least it was free. This was, I believe, 3 coats.


So, basically, the Ultas get a big ol' "meh" from me.

On to the Orlys!
So I got two of the Foil FX polishes and the only one of the Sweets collection that blew my skirt up (at the time... I am now sort of lemming a couple more of the sweets, but we'll see how I feel in May).

I love the Foil FX! It's so shiny-shiny and pretty!
This is Shine.


And this is Rage, which I loved way more than I thought I was gonna! It's Rose Gold and/or Bronze depending on your definition.


And this is Snowcone! I don't have another blue like this. I really like it! This is one coat...


ON TO THE CHINA GLAZES!!!
So I picked up Metallic Muse, because I didn't own a green chrome and also because I wanted to use it for Konad. I swatched it anyway. ;) The bubbles are awful.


I also picked up another of the OMG collection - QT. It's awesome! Dark pink holo!


ANNNNND... I got Grape Pop from the Up and Away collection. At first I was really wanting some of the pastels in that collection, but when it came time to order I talked myself out of it. Grape Pop is a really nice "royal" purple creme. I also don't own another color quite like this -- my darker purples are all shimmers. :)




SO... what now? I think tonight I'm going to pull out all my greens and try to do a green a day til St. Patrick's Day. I'm pretty sure I own 17 greens. If not, I'll see what I can do about having a different green-themed mani every day til St Pat's.

Holos Holos Holos!

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

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

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

So... here we go.

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


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


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


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


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


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


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


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

Nails of the Now

I finally busted out with the houndstooth. :)

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

Good Morning!

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

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

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

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

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


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


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


This is slightly more color-accurate.


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


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

Wow!

Let me interrupt my swatching to show you this color! Holy crap! It looked cool in the bottle, but OMG it is terrific on my nails!


L'Oreal Bijou Crystals in B.Rebellious

I could see that it looked black with multicolored glitter. When I opened the bottle, the polish was very, very thickened, so I used some Poshe Polish Reviver to thin it out some. Speaking of polish reviver, I WISH I'd known such a product existed years ago when I would throw out nail polish that had gotten thick or goopy, like nail polish does when it's old.

I probably used 30 drops of reviver in this bottle, but it was SO worth it.
This polish is a charcoal jelly with holographic glitter! It's so pretty! It was opaque in two coats. Check it out:


Ahhh!!! I love it! Why doesn't L'Oreal make cool colors like this anymore? Every time I look at their polish now, it's all reds/nudes/pinks. Maybe a brown and a vampy red, but nothing like this stuff.

Four Randoms

Here are four random polishes I own. And now... it's only new stuff or interesting manicures I'm doing from here on out. Hooray!

First up is Rimmel Torrid. I love this color! It looks much browner in the bottle than it does on. But as you can see, it's a shimmery dark red with maybe some brown tones.


This is Finger Paints Decked With Dazzle. It's a shimmery, glittery, almost foil-y bright pink. It was one of their Christmas polishes and I picked it up at Sally on the cheap. I didn't like this as much as I thought I would, but I can't put my finger on why.


Here is Orly Goth. It's black with silver glitter sparkles. I love this! I have to nurture my inner goth girl from time to time. This is probably my favorite black.


This is DV8 from the China Glaze OMG collection. This collection came out before I really got into nail polish. We'll refer to that time as "the before time." However, there are still plenty of e-tailers selling this stuff. From the swatches I'd seen online, I thought this color would appeal to me the most. I love it! Holographic teal, hell yes! The formula was, um, less than great. I kept pulling the polish up on my first coat, leaving bald spots, and it was a little frustrating to apply. This is two coats, though, so it evens out decently well. This is totally going on my toes when I get a chance to redo my toenails.



I didn't do anything interesting with my nails tonight. I removed the zebra Konad from yesterday and applied some Mad as a Hatter, so that's what I'll be wearing to work tomorrow. I guess I should stop doing my nails once a day. :)