Mood polish!

FINALLY! I got my pictures uploaded and now I'm totally going to spam you with pictures of Claire's Mood Polish. This polish is pretty sensitive to temperature, and each polish had a "cold" color and a "hot" color. What happened with me was that the color on my nailbed tended to be the "hot" color, while my tips would be the "cold" color. Instant funky french manicure! I thought it was pretty cool. :)



There are five colors in this collection:
Wild/Calm - A pink/purple with lots of shimmer, and my personal favorite of the bunch
Innocent/Daring - Grey/beige-ish-mustard-ish-yellow-ish.. I don't think there is a person alive who would look good wearing that ugly ass beige/mustard yellow color.
Peaceful/Confident - Teal/Blue. Pretty enough, but the color change was extremely subtle.
Fabulous/Funky - Magenta/Neon Pink. This was wayyy more neon than I was expecting!
Happy/Earthy - Green/Neon Yellow. This one was BRIGHT. I mean, like, highlighter bright.

I took a few photos of each. Enjoy the picspam!

Wild/Calm - purple is the "cold" color and pink is the "hot" color.






Innocent/Daring. YECH.








Peaceful/Confident. I had a fairly hard time trying to photograph this one.








Fabulous/Funky. In the first pic, you can see where I dipped my pointer finger and middle finger in cold water to try to make the color difference really visible. This one was also difficult to photograph.









EDIT. I totally forgot to add the Happy/Earthy photos. OOPS! Here you go:

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.

Four randoms and some news

Hey! I actually won a blog giveaway today! WOO HOO! I never win anything! But I DID win Chromatic Misadventure's giveaway! Go check out her blog!

I HAVEN'T HAD STREET WEAR POLISH SINCE HIGH SCHOOL! I'M SO EXCITED I MIGHT POOP! Hee hee.

Anywho, I'm trying to drag out posts of the swatches I did Sunday. I actually broke down and bought all five of the Claire's mood polishes (I liked the first one so much, I had to go back and get the rest. It's a problem. Really.), but I'm wearing one polish a day every day this week, so I won't have pictures and a post until Friday or Saturday.

So I'll just drag out my unposted pictures for as long as I can. Which should be about a week. :) These are four polishes I picked up at Sally Beauty Supply. Mostly on sale! Mostly...

I picked up ANOTHER of the Orly Sweets at Sally. I really do fail at not buying. Anyway, I got Pixy Stix. Lately, I am really digging Orly's formula. I am so not an OPI girl. Give me Orly and China Glaze, dammit! OPI chips too easily and is too expensive and, frankly, boring (at least most of the time, although they do have their moments).

Anyway, here's Pixy Stix. It's a bright pink that leans a little coral or salmon. This is two coats. Someone with more skills probably coulda gotten away with one.


And here's an older (last year?) Orly I picked up -- Prince Charming. It's a very dark taupe. Almost brown, but greyed out enough to be called taupe. Also two coats.


I also picked up the only polish from China Glaze's Up and Away collection that I felt I NEEDED. Light as Air. It's a very pale lavender, and while I have a similar color, it's Essie (Lilacism, to be precise). I freaking hate Essie's streaky ass polishes, and crappy brushes, and $8 price tag. I will never buy another Essie. As God is my witness. Light as Air is similar, applies better, and is WAY cheaper. I need to do a comparison. I have several polishes I want to compare. Maybe next weekend.


Last, I picked up (on clearance!) a Nina Ultra Pro in Viva La Velvet. This is a bright, nearly pink, red metallic. I LOVE this type of red on me. I foresee myself using this a lot around Christmas time. This one also applied nicely, two coats.

Whoa!

I hit 50 followers! I feel like I should do the customary 50 follower giveaway, but I don't need to spend anymore right now, and I don't feel like I should give away used nail polish. Hrmmm.... what to do?


THANKS, everyone, for following me! :)

No buy FAIL

Yeeeeah, I fell HARD off that no-buy wagon. Well, sorta hard. I fell anyway. At least what I bought was cheap! Super cheap! Dollar Tree cheap!

I spent a great deal of time today swatching, but I'll not post it all today.

What I will post are the goodies I picked up at Dollar Tree. Enjoy!

Maybelline - Touch of Taupe. This is a light taupe. I don't believe I have a taupe this light (well, I do now). It applied nicely in two coats.


Then I picked up two Sally Hansen Salons. The first one is "Stormy Blue," which is a slate blue that is nearly gunmetal gray. It's just okay. The formula was alright. This is two coats.


Then we have Arabian Night. I showed you this on my jacked up feet, but here it is on my hand. For the life of me, I could not pick up this color or the shimmer accurately. I'd describe this as a blurple (not quite blue, not quite purple) with gold shimmer in it. This really is a super awesome color. You may want to click on it to see the larger version.


Then we have Maybelline Salon Expert in Riveting Ruby. It's a red jelly with what looked like gold shimmer in the bottle. The gold does not show up on the nail, though. It's still pretty. I'll probably wear this on my toes soon.


Last is NYC Metallic Nail Glossies in Molten Metal. This is a really pretty foil-y pewter color. I really like this a lot! It's almost as shiny and blingy as the Orly FoilFX colors, but not quite. Still, this was part of a Dollar Tree 2-pack, and is well worth the 50 cents I paid for it.

Nails of the last three days

Man, I've been so busy at work lately and then so tired when I get home that I don't want to take the time to upload pictures and post them. So, my apologies for not being on top of this!

I have just about abandoned Seche Vite in favor of Poshe topcoat. I started suffering from the dreaded tip shrinkage (that sounds dirty but isn't). It's when you use Seche Vite as your topcoat and within hours you can see the tips of your nails. It grabs the polish underneath the topcoat and shrinks it. Meh. Poshe doesn't dry as quickly, but it doesn't shrink either.

But anyway!

Here were my nails on Tuesday, March 16. I used Wet N Wild Morbid. I really dig this color. It's almost black, but has enough green shimmer to be interesting. I cannot remember if the reason you can see the tips of my nails is because of shrinkage or if it's because I've been really hard on my hands this week. My new job is much more hands-on than my last job and I come home nearly every day with the tips worn.




This was my St. Patrick's Day mani, which sounded much cooler in my head. I used China Glaze Emerald Sparkle and stamped the houndstooth Konad design on top using Orly solid gold. Then I threw some tacky nail stickers on my ring finger. It was festive. :D


Today I used the second polish I got from the Orly Sweet collection -- Gumdrop. I LOVE this color. I was expecting it to be much more green, but it's a really pretty turquoise. I would like to do a side-by-side comparison of this with China Glaze For Audrey. Maybe Sunday I'll spend some time comparing polishes and taking pictures.

I've been using Orly Bonder lately as my basecoat. This was done using Bonder, two coats of Gumdrop (although the formula on this is freaking awesome -- I probably could have just done one coat), and a coat of Poshe on top. Let me tell you, I was HARD on my hands today. I was moving stuff around and opening up computers and was just generally rough on my nails today. I just knew that this was going to chip or wear off, but I took this photo at the end of the day, after I got home, and had barely any wear at all. You can see a minor ding and minimal tip wear, but nothing major. Good stuff!

Greens and leprechauns and FEET, oh my!

Woo hoo!

Yesterday, I wore Sally Hansen X-Treme Wear Lime Lights. This polish is super sheer, so I used this tip and layered it over a nude basecoat. I really liked it! I couldn't quit adding stuff to it, though. I added a couple coats of Orly Prisma Gloss Gold on top and then I added leprechaun nail stickers. Only god can judge me. I think I had, like, 50 coats of polish on my nails.




Today was China Glaze Wagon Trail, which I've seen described as dark olive green, but as I stared at it today (I really do love this color), I decided that there is no actual green in this at all. Just brown. And some shimmer. So I cheated, but not intentionally. :)



AND... ok, so I have jacked up toenails. I mean, they are thick and nasty and just.. ugh. But Imma show you anyway. You've been warned. Please, leave the page NOW if you don't want to see thick, nasty, jacked up toenails.

Okay.

You've seriously been warned.

Don't go any further if you don't wanna see my feets.

OKAY. So, I stopped in at Dollar Tree on Saturday. I bought nail polish. I know I shouldn't have, but I did. And they had all these great sorta-old Sally Hansen Salon Nail Polishes. This one is called Arabian Night. Perfunctory googling tells me that this was released in Spring of 2008. It was part of a two-pack, the other color being some boring ass nude or pink that I'll probably never wear. I really need to unload some of the ugly "other" colors from Dollar Tree two-packs.

Side note: I believe that the best Dollar Tree in existence is right here in Athens, GA. Seriously. There are two Dollar Trees here, and one of them is just a normal Dollar Tree. The other one is like... Dollar Tree heaven. It's the biggest Dollar Tree I've ever been to and they almost always have interesting nail polish.

SO ANYWAY. I put Arabian Night on my toenails. And I really wanted to show the readers of my blog, but I really wanted to warn you, I have ugly toenails. So I didn't take this in macro mode, in full sun. I took it in my living room, at night. But this color.... OMG. I'm going to have to do a real, honest-to-god swatch ones I'm past all these damned greens!

Ladies and gentlemen of my blog, may I present to you....

MY FEET! (and yes, that is a beer... and nail polish... and a netbook.... on my coffee table. that's how i spend saturday night. that's how i roll. don't judge me!)



AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

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!

Woo hoo! Today's green was Claire's Dreamcatcher. I really love this color. Unfortunately, this required four coats to be solid. It's not streaky but it is a little thin and I had issues with application. So this is four coats with two coats of Poshe topcoat (which is my go-to topcoat as of late). This DID survive a rigorous workday though, which is more than I can say of any color this week. No chipping, no tipwear, and my workday involved a lot of lifting things and using my nails as tools (a no-no, I am aware).

So... hooray!

Green of the day

Ok, y'all, I am so freakin' sick of wearing green I could just puke. But I said I'd do this, and I will, but after March 17, I'm so not wearing green again for a long, long while.

Also, I got a wild hair (hare? heir?) up my ass last night and chopped off my fingernails. Like, with clippers and everything. Then I filed them. Usually I just file them to remove length, but they've gotten really thick and strong and it's a CHORE to file them. So I just cut 'em off. It's weird looking at them. I'd gotten so used to having mini-talons. However, I really think I like this length a LOT better. They certainly don't get in the way as much.

Anyway. Today's green was Sally Hansen Trendy Creme, which was a Dollar Tree find for me. JJ picked it out last night. Come to find out, his method is to pick all the "ugly" greens first. To be honest, I didn't much care for this color when I first bought it, but I think I like it better now. I guess I should use the two-wear rule for all polishes.

I used three coats. It looks a little rough in this picture because a) my cuticles are a little rough right now and b) I hacked off my nails after I painted this color on. WHOOPS.

Greens of the last 2 days

Ahhh! I got behind! Actually, these are the greens my fiance picked for yesterday and today. I started a new job yesterday and I am way behind on my internets since I can't just sit at my desk and surf all day anymore. Boo hoo.

This is what he picked for yesterday, Monday. It's Orly Enchanted Forest and I slapped this on haphazardly in about 10 minutes before I went to work.


And this was the green for today, Sally Hansen XTreme Wear Green With Envy.



Woo hoo!
Also -- HI, new followers! :)

Cheat Day

So, I'm not wearing green today.
I am going to a friend's Alice in Wonderland-themed party later on this afternoon. We're supposed to dress in appropriate attire, but uh, I don't have any Wonderland-y attire, so I'm just going to go looking... insane. When in doubt as to what to wear, go for the insane and/or homeless look.

Anyhoo... Of course I had to do something fancy to my nails. And of course I had to use one of the OPI Alice in Wonderland polishes. And of course there are no greens in that set. So, I'll go back to greens tomorrow (probably tonight, actually). But for today, it's blue and gold.

I sort of did the ruffian-inspired thing. Except, instead of using a dark color on my tips, I used Absolutely Alice. I painted my nails with Orly Solid Gold, applied tip guides around the base of my nails, and slathered on a few coats of Absolutely Alice on the top part. I like how this brings out the gold glitter in AA. This could've been neater (yeah, if someone else were doing it!) but I like it anyway. :)

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!

Green of the day and a request for input!

Helloooo! Last night JJ picked out the green from the pastel set from Claire's. Ya know, I really didn't care much for this one when I swatched it, but with careful application and a good topcoat, it's definitely growing on me. Like a fungus.




In other news, I am getting married in 62 days and I need to decide if I'm going to do my own nails or spring for a professional manicure. I'm getting hitched on the beach, barefoot, and I'm pretty sure I'm gonna spring for a professional pedicure since my toes are effing nas-tay. But if I do my own nails... whatever shall I do? What color? Konad? No Konad? Sexy? Innocent? TOO MANY OPTIONS!

Another obsession of mine is BPAL. Granted, I'm not as into BPAL as I was a year or two ago, but it's still there. WHAT PERFUME AM I GONNA WEAR?!? OMG! I hate decisions!


With these types of obsessions, how have I not ended up on Hoarders yet? I joke about that show, but for real, the boy and I are both packrats and my house cleaning skills are sadly lacking. But I watch that show and feel better. My house may not be sparkling clean, but it's picked up. I mean, we do at least shove shit into closets sometimes. Jeez. :D

Green(ish) of the Day!

Day three of greens is China Glaze Metallic Muse. This isn't as green on my nails as it is in the bottle. But... I like it nonetheless!

What will JJ pick for me tonight?!?! I'm so curious!

Butt Ugly Green of the Day!

I hate this color. So, of course, this is what JJ pulled from the bucket o' greens last night.

This is Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine in Glow. I topped it with LA Colors in Glittering (iridescent glitter in a clear base) to try to make it more interesting. I think I may have just made it butt uglier.

Oh well, at least it's only for today. I hope he chooses better tonight. :D

Green of the day!

So last night I gathered up all my green polishes and put them in a basket. Then I let JJ pick which one I'd paint my nails with. I think I'm going to continue this for the next 18 days (that's how many greens I have) because I'm terrible at making decisions like this. He picked OPI Gargantuan Green Grape Matte. Oh no! I hated this polish as a matte because it looked downright putrid on my nails.

I put a topcoat on it and I actually really like this glossy. It's a nice spring green. I realize it's not the same shade as the regular, glossy Gargantuan Green Grape, but I still like this shade.

Then I stuck some nail stickers on. I looked through my Konad and Fauxnad plates and I don't have anything remotely resembling a shamrock... or a leprechaun... or a pot of gold... or beer. And I don't think I can freehand paint those things on my nails. So, flower stickers it is!

I took this photo this morning against a lovely backdrop of sleet and snow. WTF. This winter has been way more snowy than I'd like. When I was little, growing up in south Alabama, it would snow, like, once every five years. And that's enough for me. I am SO READY for spring this year.

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.

I'm back!

Didja miss me? I still have pictures to post. :)
I had a friend in town all weekend, so I painted my nails Thursday night and removed it last night. My manicure for the weekend was OPI Mad as a Hatter on top of Zoya Ibiza. It wore like iron! And I used the tinfoil+cotton balls trick to remove it -- I'd never actually removed glitter like that before, but it worked awesomely.

This was my mani after 3 days of wear (not too shabby).


And this is what I did last night. I tried the swoop mani, using Orly Snowcone, China Glaze Grape Pop, and Nina Ultra Pro's silver metallic (does this have a name? if so, it escapes me). The lines could be straighter, and it could be less goopy in places, but overall I dig it. Besides, most people aren't looking at my nails in full sunlight in macro mode. :)