Love&Beauty

I realized that I've been doing lots of cremes/jelly's lately and have turned my back on shimmers and sparkles. To rectify that today, I chose another color I picked up during one of my forays into Forever21's Faith section. I don't have the bottle in front of me at the moment and can't remember the name, but I have a sneaking feeling that, like it's other polishes (see brown), it's simply Teal or some other generic name. Anywho, I've been slacking on posts so I wanted to get this up for you guys.

So here's what I'm tentatively calling Teal. It's a pretty jewel-toned blue shimmer, that looks metallic even though it really isn't. I didn't really care for it in the bottle, to be quite honest, and just did this mani because it's been sitting in my untrieds for a while. But I have to say, the longer I wore it, the more I warmed up to it. It's a chameleon polish that looks a bit different in every light. In the sun it's even got a bit of light blue/violet flash, but most of the time you get this pretty metallic peacock color that's slowly grown on me.

Application, like Brown, was really smooth and easy - I thought this would be super sheer, but it was acutally much more opaque than I thought. You could get away with two coats, but I went with three to really get that depth of color. Clean up was a breeze, and it's been wearing impressively well- I'm on day three at the moment with minimal tipwear.

What do you guys think of Forever21's Love&Beauty line?

Hunter

Since acquiring the much sought after Nars Zulu, I've been on the hunt for another polish that would satisfy my green jelly craving. I love Zulu, but it borders so much on black that I wanted to find a jelly where the green is much more apparent.

This isn't a jelly, but the shade of green is divine. Hunter is the last American Apparel polish in my mini haul from a few weeks ago.

Just like it's fellows, the formula is a dream and beautifully opaque in 2 coats.

Is it possible to franken a jelly? Do you just add clear polish to a cream?? Has anyone done this??? I think I'm going to buy another Hunter and a cheap clear to try this out...

Could it be?

Is it...

 It is!

Say hello to the illustrious Nars Zulu!

Nars Zulu is a beautiful dark, dark green jelly that cause quite a frenzy when it first came out as a limited edition color a few years ago.  It was extremely hard to find until Nars re-released it this year as part of their Vintage Nail collection for Fall 2010.

I snapped pics in all different lights so you guys could see how it would look indoors and out. You can tell it most definitely tip toes that "almost black" line and does look mostly black, especially indoors. But you'll catch the green around the edges of your polish and it comes out much more in the sun. Jellies are my favorite so I love that, even though it's so dark, you get that delicious jelly squishiness.

Application was like most jellies - a little streaky/bald spotty on the first two coats, but smooth and perfect by the third. I found that using more polish on your brush rather than less reduces the streak factor - If you're SUPER careful you might get away with only two coats, which would give you much more green and less black...my hands aren't the steadiest so three it was, but I love the "almost black" effect. Drying time is really good on this, even with three thicker coats, and it's super shiny even on it's own - I have a coat of Seche as usual here. Wear was great for Nars Jungle Red so we'll see if Zulu can compete.

I was lucky and have a friend who works and Nars, and who was able to pick this up for me when it was released a few days ago (and on discount!). WARNING - If you have your heart set on Zulu, DON'T WAIT - these babies are flying off the shelves! Have any of you taken the plunge to snatch up Zulu? Do you think it's worth the higher price tag?

Halley's Comet

I was so excited to get my butt over to Ulta the other day and snatch up a few of my favorites from Orly's Cosmic FX collection. Would you believe that when I got there, there were only THREE CFX's left?? And I don't mean three different colors left, I mean literally only three bottles! And of course, neither Space Cadet or Galaxy Girl, which I was really lemming for, were there. But, they were 2-for-1 so clearly, like any polish fanatic, I snatched up the remaining colors anyway. Two I kept for myself, and one went along with the two China Glazes as a birthday present for my lucky friend.

Here's Halley's Comet.

Wow. I've seen plenty of swatches of this as well as it's sister OPI Catch Me in Your Net, but until I got it on the nail I didn't fully get it. I do now. There's just so much depth and shimmer and glitter to this, it's hard to keep your eyes off it. These pics are in sunlight which make it really shiny and bright, but unlike other shimmers and glitters, the "wow" factor doesn't diminish from these when you're inside or in low lighting. The color just gets deeper and richer and continues to glimmer like mad. Even one of my 50-something male coworkers told me yesterday he loved my nails! Lol!

Application was a breeze, three quick coats topped by Seche, and it dried in great time. Although I'm not hugely partial to Orly's rubber handle, I do appreciate why people like the bottle so much. At a hefty .6 oz, which is a bit more than a normal polish (OPIs are .5 for example), it feels substantial and you're definitely getting your money's worth. Especially if you get them 3 for $20 at Ulta like I did!

Here's a closeup of the glass-flecky shimmer.

Do you have a favorite from Orly's Cosmic FX Collection?

Big welcome to Kristine! Stay tuned for swatches of my other FX purchase :)

Some Dupes

With my day off for Labor Day I finally got around to swatching some polishes that were suspected dupes. Take a look and see for yourself!

First were three of my beloved corals. I don't know what it is, I just have a soft spot for these juicy shades!

Pointer and ring finger: Essie California Coral; Middle finger: Brucci Mango Taffy; Pinkie: Sinful Boogie Nights

Right off we can eliminate the Brucci (middle finger). I can see it's a bit lighter than the other two and a bit more pink.

As for the Essie (pointer, ring) and Sinful (pinkie) - I wouldn't say they are EXACT dupe - it looks to me like the Sinful is a tiiiiiiiiiiny tiny bit more saturated, a little more rich. But I'd say that if you have the one, you don't need the other. Considering that the Sinful is only $2 while the Essie is around $8, I'd grab the Sinful and be done with it.

Next up is are my two mint greens.

 

American Apparel office (pointer and ring) vs E.L.F. Mint (middle and pinkie).

In this case, I'd chance it to say that these two are exact dupes as far as color. They're the exact same shade of pastel green and pretty much indiscernible on the nail. The formula is a different story. I found the American Apparel polish to apply much smoother and much more opaque. You can see how lumpy and streaky my middle and pinkie fingers look with the E.L.F. polish. If you're going for value, I'd grab the E.L.F. as it's only a dollar, and should be fine with a third coat. The AA is only $5 though, and for me would be worth the extra dough for easier application.

Lastly are the taupes.

Color Club High Society (pointer and ring), vs H&M Grey Sky (middle and pinkie).

Overlooking the shimmer, these are not as close in color as I thought they were. High Society is a bit warmer while Grey Sky leans more toward it's namesake grey shade. Factor in the shimmer and these two are different enough to justify owning both. Lucky for me I love love love my taupe polishes! They're some of my favorite and definitely some of the classiest of my collection.

Hope this was helpful! I'll keep an eye out for any more dupes in my collection :)

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 :)

E.l.f. Haul!

After only about 6 days, my order from E.l.f. came! Check it out:

from left: Royal Purple, Bubble Gum Pink, Mint Cream, and Pearl.

Mint Cream looks like a dead dupe for my American Apparel Office - I'll need to do a comparison. I think of the four, I'm most looking forward to trying Royal Purple, it's totally different from any other purple shades I have.

I also ordered two tinted moisturizers to try out. I used to use Oil of Olay tinted moisturizer, but that stuff is almost IMPOSSIBLE to find nowadays, so I'm searching for a replacement product.

Did I mention every single one of these products was ONE DOLLAR?? With shipping, I paid $8.37 for all this stuff! Win!

Have any of you ever tried E.l.f. Cosmetics? What did you think?

And just because it's gorgeous and I can't stop looking, here's another shot of my Nfu Oh mani :) 

See the gorgeous turquoise flash in the sun?! **swoon**

Welcome to Oooh, Shinies! Check her out :)

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 :)

A late Marble Monday

This is really frustrating guys. I just can't get back into the groove of marbling! I don't know what's wrong with me! And I'm even more mad becuase this marble just completely ruined the gloriousness of Black Emerald for me. I'm gonna take it off today after work and just start fresh.

Le sigh.

Brucci Black Emerald

GASPPP...

...

...

...HOW. GORGEOUS. IS. THIS???!?

Oh my goodness. I knew I liked this shade in the bottle, the shimmery green with flashes of gold and red was right up my alley, but I had no idea just how ridiculously orgasmic this was on the nail. I could literally make out with my hands right now.



Brucci Emerald in all its blackened, glowy glory is just fantastic. Brucci has once again reinforced my love for the brand with another fantastic polish. It's a little streaky and bald-patchy on the first layer, but slap on a second coat and you are good to GO. Honestly...in love.

Ps. A random eBay listing for this polish I came across claims its a limited edition shade, but I'm not sure how much truth there is to that statement. What I do know is that you need to RUN to your nearest Rite-Aid, CVS, or whatever drug store you prefer and pick up this beauty STAT.

Revised Marble

Here's the marble I tried over Gianna's "Rockin" Blue. I wanted to go for really subtle so I used GRB in the marble as well so only OPI Go On Green would really show up on the nail.

I actually really like how this came out and would do it on my whole mani - it's a classy way marble with this color without making the already bright mani too obnoxious.

On an slightly unrelated note, can we talk about how last time I tried to swatch GRB, it took me HOURS to get a shot that was even CLOSE to the real shade - this time, it comes out no problem!! The color on this photo is right on; and its gorgeous!

On a very unrelated note...

Look at my charge for the week! I'm babysitting my sister's BF's doggie for the week, and she is just the cutest, roundest, fattiest little mush ever!!

Another Rite Aid haul

This one wasn't too bad though, just two polishes.

It seems I can't resist the Brucci polishes. They have some great colors and a really great price: only $2.79 each. I have a couple different taupe-y shades, but no plain old flat greys, so I grabbed Alexandra's "Hot" Gray. And when I saw the shimmery green/burgundy goodness of Black Emerald, I couldn't resist.

As you can see, my Shellac is still going strong at 6 days of wear. I'll post another picture of them in a few days time. I love how gorgeous and low maintenance they are, but I'm also eager to get some bright colors on my nails. We'll see how long they last!

Office

It's been a few days! I hope everyone had a lovely weekend full of fun in the sun, but hopefully you didn't get as sunburned as I did. I'm a little crispy!

I did this manicure Sunday night, so unfortunately I had to snap a few pictures inside and they didn't come out too great. But until I get a chance to redo this, here is American Apparel Office.

Office is a pretty pastel minty green creme. I had some trouble with application; the formula is a little runny and had some cuticle drag and bald spots. This is two coats with Seche top and base, but I definitely should have gone for 3 coats as looking down at my hands now, it's a bit streaky. Otherwise, the color is beatiful, and at $5, an inexpensive alternative for Chanel's Jade.

Didn't get a chance to do a Marble Monday this weekend :( I'll try my hardest to take some time tonight to do one and make it a Marble Wednesday!

Thanks for reading!

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 :)

Inaugural Marble Monday!

Hey everyone! This is the my first official "Marble Monday" post. I first saw this technique on Sarah and Jason's blog CrystalPolish, and I've been obsessed ever since! 

This was my second ever attempt at a marble, using Essie Midnight Cami, a deep, deep shimmery blue (which, by the way, is perfection in a bottle - but that's for another day), and OPI Go on Green, a sheer, irridescent blue-green. MC is also on the rest of my nails in these photos. 

The next day I decided to take the plunge and do my whole mani marbled. It's surprisingly not as BAM, OUT THERE as I thought it would be, it's actually sort of subtle. I used the same colors, Midnight Cami and Go on Green, but oddly enough they came out a lot lighter than the first time. Not really sure why? The colors seems like they were spreading more in the water this time, but I couldn't give you a reason for that. I guess as I do these more and more I'll get the hang of the quirks. Both mani's have Seche base and top coat.

A lot of people have asked my how I did this, and I know it's hard to explain with just words. One of these Monday's I'll post picture step-by-step instructions, or maybe even a video! (eek!)

Until next time :)