Snap Crackle Pop

I've jumped on the crackle polish train! My brother's adorable girlfriend Nina gifted me OPI's Black Shatter and I couldnt wait to try it. This is a coat of Shatter over two coats of one of my favorites, Sally Hansen Pacific Blue. Results? Pure awesome.

Orly Goth

Well hello! Just a quick post today, I wanted to share a polish I swatched a while ago but never got around to posting. It's Orly Goth!

I like this polish because it'd different than your normal glittery black creme. I wouldn't even call it glitter, I'd say this is more like large silver glass flecks.

See what I mean? They're on the larger side and scattered throughout the polish. They look like stars scattered in the sky!

Wicked

Today's manicure is one of my all time, go to, never fail colors: Essie Wicked.



Here's Wicked in natural light. I know many people aren't fans of the "almost black" look, which this deep, dark burgundy jellyish creme most definitely is. I don't care though, I love this shade. Even though it does look black, it has a depth to it, you see a little of the burgundy peep out around the edges, and in direct sunlight, it shows up a lot more.



In sunlight. Even so, I don't think that this is really a good representation of the color, because unless you're on the beach, you're going to get that black look. I love it, it's super classy and gorgeous.

The only bad thing about this polish is that cleanup is a complete bitch. If you happen to get it on your cuticles, they'll be pink no matter how much you try to clean those edges. I'm actually sort of dreading taking off the whole mani because I know my fingers will be pink and I'll probably need half a bag of cotton.



This girl definitely runs on Dunkin'.

Morbid

Hey all! Hope you had a lovely Labor Day weekend! Mine was great! I went out and caused some havoc with friends, went to a bbq with my boyfriend, and spent a lazy Monday doing some swatches and catching up on my TV. Perfect weekend!

Below is a Wet N Wild color I picked up in one of my Rite Aid hauls over the summer.

In direct sunlight

This dark shimmery polish is hard to describle - it's neither green nor blue, but sort of a blackened mix of both. It's name, Morbid, is perfectly suited to the color, and probably one of my favorite things about it. Application was streaky on the first coat, but covered up with a second.

Inside with flash.

I was sort of disappointed because even with my usual thick coat of Seche, this polish just refused to give me that glassy shiny finish I love. As promising as it looked in the bottle, I think that on the nail, it fell a little flat :( I think I'll give this another try when my nails are shorter - I tend to like darker colors better on nubbins.

Also, big welcome to Nisha of Nail Galore! Click the link to check out her blog :)

Finally - Nfu Oh 52

I ordered Nfu Oh 52 about a month back, and I won't lie; at first, I was stumped. I didn't know what to do with it! I know it had these gorgeous flakies I was dying to get on my nails, but I hated the purple jelly base they were floating in. I tried it by itself, I tried it over purple, over blue, over green, all lighter colors. It just wasn't working for me. So, poor Nfu Oh 52 was banished to the back of my polish drawer, not to be touched for many, many days.

So finally last night, I had had it. That polish was $12 goddamn it, and I'll be damned if I can't make that flaky goodness work for me! So I slapped on a quick coat of an oldie but goodie, Revlon Dark Pleasures in Patent Leather, a dark, dark charcoal grey almost black polish with very fine silver glitter/shimmer. Then I grabbed my Nfu Oh, took a deep breath, and applied.

Behold the blingtastic results!!

How had I ever contemplated giving this away?!! Swapping it?!? Let's view a closeup:

I want to blow that up and wallpaper my walls with it. Paint it on fabric and wear it. Turn it into jewelry. ANYTHING. It's glorious! I love, love, LOVE how the flakies flash from green to turquoise, to dark blue depending on the light. The flakes and shine give this polish so much depth. It makes me think of being on the beach, and looking down through the water at a shiny treasure on the ocean floor.

Apparently I was feeling extra creative and daring last night. I decided to use the matte topcoat I picked up at Icing over one of my nails. And lo and behold, I love that too! I love how the matte makes the individual flakies stand out. I also love how Icing ripped off Essie's matte topcoat's name: Matte About You. Sneaky, sneaky, Icing! 

Do you have any other Nfu Oh's? What's your favorite way to wear it?

PS. Big welcome to Vettelicious! Thanks for joining us :)

Holiday weekend!

Hope everyone had a great fourth of July! Besides loving fire works, having a reason to party, and Monday off, the holiday is special to my family as it's my parents' wedding anniversary! They've been married 28 years and going strong. What an inspiration! 

To celebrate the happy day, I chose one of the polishes I got from my Rite Aid raid. Wet 'n Wild's Wet Shine polish in Night Prowl was perfect for the holiday.

Forget everything else for a second, can we start with how much I love the name of this polish? LOL! Night prowl, rawr! When I saw this on the rack, I knew I had to snatch it up. It reminded me of the New Deborah Lippmann shade, Bad Romance. This is what I thought Bad Romance looked like before I saw the swatch over at All Lacquered Up where you could see the hexagonal glitters.

In any case, I liked it! Not exactly a summer shade but I thought the bright glitter was perfect for Fourth of July. This is magenta glitter in a black jelly base. It went on easily enough not too thick or thin Three coats made it nice and opaque, but even with 2 coats of Seche Vite to get it smooth, it wasn't quite and I think it could have even used another coat. Also, I had some small chips on a few nails after a night of wearing it, so the next day was a new nail color. Taking it OFF was the worst part though, like most glitters it was a pain in the butt and resulted in me with ripped up strings of cotton attached to my fingertips. Le sigh. Still, worth the $1.99 that I paid for it.

This morning I was in the mood for something more fun and summery, so I chose another of my Rite Aid purchases. 

This is a Brucci nail polish, a brand I didn't even realize was still around! I remember this brand from wayyy back when, and I still have a few oldies but goodies in my collection.

Gianna's "Rockin" Blue is a supremely hard color to catch on camera, and it's not even my blackberry's fault this time. It's a bright turquoise-green creme that just pops. This is pretty close to the correct shade, but it's juuuust a hint more green in person. Formula was a dream - gorgeously opaque in two coats, and super duper shiny with a coat of Seche. I wore this in the pool for hours with no damage, so I'm pretty impressed. I love this shade so much it's on my fingers and toes at the moment. For the $2 and change I paid for this, I'd definitely recommend it to anyone. I have another new bottle of Brucci polish and a few old ones, so we'll have to see if they're all as good quality as GRB.

I was fiddling with my old Canon which had what I thought was a broken screen, when suddenly it turned on! Just like that!! I tried it out to see if it would give me better results with the color than my Bberry did, but it no luck, so I stuck with the Bberry pics. 

On a side note, this reminds me of pics I've seen of China Glaze's For Audrey. I'll need to get my hands on a bottle soon and see if they're dupes...

...until next time :)

The Lone Holo

Ok polish fanatics, prepare yourselves for the statement I'm about to make. Ready?.....OPI's My Private Jet is the only holo I own. NOT ONLY THAT, this is the first time I ever used it. EEK!

For those of you that haven't left yet, Here's My Private Jet, a dark grey/black holo, no top coat. Wow, I can see why people love holos so much! Look at the sparkle on this bad boy!

Application was...long. This is four coats to get near bottle color. The first coat was so sheer it was almost hard to see - The good part is that the coats are so thin and dry so fast it's no issue to do four. This could be interesting to layer over another color, I'll need to try that in the future. I even liked how it looked with 2 coats...it was a softer shade, almost brown, which is nice if you're not looking to go too dark on your nails (it is summer after all). Besides the sheerness of it, the formula was good, and the wide OPI brush gave really nice control. I definitely see more holos in my future!

FYI, my cuticles look like that because this one was of the last polishes I swatched of five. Unfortunately none of the other photos are usable  because my blackberry's interpretation of them were not quiiiiite correct lol. I need a new camera and STAT!