Celestiale Silver

This is a pretty polish called Celestiale Silver that I picked up back in my college days, before I became the giant polish fanatic I am now. It's funny that some of my favorite and hard-to-find polishes, like OPI My Private Jet and Loyalty Island Lilac were picked up when I was oblivious to their rarity. But, I digress. Back to Borghese...

I've been wearing this oldie but good from for about 6 days now, and with the exception on one nail (which has a tendany to peel), it's pretty much chipless! Man, this wears like iron! This silver went on relatively sheer, so this is 3 coats, but application with Borghese polishes are a breeze. They have a super wide brush, even wider than the OPI brush, which is perfect for me and my wider nail beds. I can do my pinkie in a single swipe! Some people who have narrower nails may have some problems with this brush though.

I can't bear to put another photo with the ouchie on my pointer :( That was a few days ago though so it's mostly healed up :) I'm ready for a new mani tonight, so stay tuned! Welcome to An from An's Life and An's Photo Shoots, and Sonidlo from Sonidlo's Nail Polishes!

Eggplant Frost

Well hello there! Sorry for being MIA, but I'm back with a gorgeous new color to make it up to you :)

 

Say hello to Wet 'n Wild Wild Shine in Eggplant Frost.

I am in freakin LURVE with this color. At first I was a little angry at it - You need to do relatively thick coats with this or it streaks and lumps in a major way. After making a mess of my thumb and redoing it, I got the hang of it and the rest of application was fine. I used three coats fir depth.

 

I was using and old bottle of nail polish remover for cleaning up, and couldn't for the LIFE of me understand why it was nearly impossible to  get the polish off my cuticles and edges. Had I inadvertently bought some sort of super polish that could only be removed with pure acid or something?? Then I realized that the remover I was using must be older than I thought and all the active ingredient must have evaporated. Sure enough, I got another bottle and all was well. Phew!

But besides that debacle, this polish is totally fine. I bough it because it looked cool, and it wasn't til I put it on that I realized just how ridiculously awesome and beautiful and SHINY it is! It's hard to describe the sort of electric glow it gets from having this aqua blue shimmer/metallic over the deep purple. It's reminiscent of Elf Royal Purple but about 10x the awesomeness.

 

Do you love?!

Welcome Lois S., Andrea Trenary, and to my biff Erin of Frame of Reference!

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?

Midnight Affair

Today's mani is grandma in my collection, the beautiful but beat up Revlon Midnight Affair (791). Man, this bottle looks like it's been through hell and back!

In direct sunlight.

Nothing wrong with the color though! Not sure how this polish came to me but I'm going to assume it was my sister's. This is a beautiful dark navy shimmer that's definitely quenching my dark and vampy polish urges. While watching the Big Brother finale on Wednesday, I kept seeing Kathy's dark tips and knew I had to make a switch from my recent reds. 

Indoors, this polish is dark enough that it could be mistaken for black from far away, but up close you can still see the blue shimmer. Outside or in bright lights though, the blue definitely jumps out more and is just gorgeous.

With flash.

Application was easy, just two coats for bottle opacity, but I would let each coat dry in between or you may risk getting a bald spot or two. The only thing I don't like so much about this polish is that it doesn't have much of a shine to it by itself. A thick coat of Seche Vite was necessary, and I'll probably apply another when I'm home later today.

I'm wondering how close Midnight Affair is to my beloved Essie Midnight Cami. Similar names and colors, I'm thinking they're dupes. We'll see! 

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 :)

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 :)

Summer Fresh

Today I have another swatch from my H&M mini mini haul. This is Summer Fresh, and light peachy creme with a very subtle silver shimmer.



This is two coats. Application, like Grey Sky, was good, and the color is OK, but it's definitely not my forte. Though I originally planned to do a full mani of this, I only ended up doing one hand for a swatch and it came off. Good thing this little guy was only $1.95.



This was the second polish in a nail nightmare that took almost FOUR HOURS of my night people. Four hours!

My original intention was a marble over yesterday's Grey Sky, which I really loved. I used Grey Sky, OPI You Don't Know Jacques, and an OPI shimmer I can't remember at the moment. I really liked the combo, but messed up a few nails so I decided to swatch Summer Fresh instead (I will definitely do that marble again because it was really cute! Stay tuned). After deciding NO on Summer Fresh, I went to a favorite of mine that I haven't yet featured on here, American Apparel L'Espirit, and beautiful lavender/periwinkle cream that applies like a one-coat wet dream. I was good to go until I was enlisted to help the 'rents drag some luggage and other such things into the house (they just came back from vacation last night). Some terrible nicks and smudges made me bid L'Espirit adieu.

So THEN, I thought it might be good to go back to my E.L.F. haul and swatch Pearl, a shimmery white. BIG mistake. Guys, don't wait for a pic, take it from me. This is one of the worst, streakiest, brush-strokey mess I have ever applied. I can't ever promise you'll see it because I don't know if i can bear putting that monstrosity on my hands again. We'll see.

I tried to save that garbage with a coat or two of a bronze shimmer, but it was hopeless. I lost all faith in my collection then, and, deflated and downtrodden, I put on 2 coats of Sally Hansen Nail Growth Miracle (A strengthening and lengthening treatment I've used for years and swear by) and a coat of Seche and went to bed.

It's not a happy morning when you wake up and realize you have to go to work like this:



For the sake of your own retinas, DO NOT click for a close up.

Pray for a better nail day for me today, dear readers. I can't go on like this!!

H&M Haul and Grey Sky

Hello everyone! Hope you all had a lovely weekend :) I had boyfriend over for the weekend so couldn't do my normal manicure routine for fear of boring him to death lol! Saturday I took him over to the Garden State Plaza for a celebratory treat because he finally took his Bar exam. I made an appointment at The Art of Shaving for him to have the "Royal Shave" - a straight razor shave with all kinds of face masks and lotion and other goodness. Guys like getting pampered too! If your man has a special occasion or you just want to do something nice for him, I definitely recommend taking him to their Barber Spa for special shave :)

Anyway, boyfriend wasn't the only one who got treats! I dragged him into H&M and did some browsing, and picked up 3 mini polishes along with my two tops!

From left: Summer Fresh, Grey Sky, Blue Sky.

Of course the first color I wanted to try was Grey Sky, a pretty taupey-grey with a very delicate, fine silver shimmer. I really just can't get enough of these colors. They're just so classy and sophisticated!

I was VERY pleasantly surprised with the application of this polish. The bottle is teeny tiny so I was expecting a pain in the ass tiny brush, but it actually applied really well! The brush was short, yes, but the bristles were soft and the brush pretty wide which made application easy. I wasn't expecting very much from the formula either, but it was smooth and easy to work with, no cuticle drag and minimal streaking on the first coat - this is two and the color is smooth and opaque. I wish I had taken a pic of just one coat. I actually liked it a lot, it was just a sheer wash of a light mauvey color.

This shade reminds me a lot of one of my other favorite taupes, Color Club High Society. I'll need to do a comparison soon and see just how similar they are side by side. HS doesn't have the shimmer GS has, but the shimmer's so subtle that if they're the same shade, I think it'd be fair to call them dupes. We'll see!

I just thought this was fun :)

Stay tuned for swatches of Blue Sky and Summer Fresh!

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 :)

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!

The Icing purchases

These are two polishes I snagged at the "The Icing" over at the Garden State Plaza. Apparently, The Icing is the "big girl" version of Claire's, which caters to younger girls. I was informed of this differential by the teenaged cashier, who seemed quite offended when I held up a bedazzled flask, laughing, and joked that it was kind of inappropriate for a young girls store...chill out chica!

Anyway. On the right we have a matte top coat! At first I really wasn't feeling the matte trend. The neons I have, like Essie Bermuda Shorts, dry matte and I hated the way they look. But as I've seen other bloggers use matte top coat over different polishes, especially sparkles and shimmers, it's kinda grown on me. I love the idea of the top coat rather than a matte polish itself, as you can make any color you want matte! I'll have to try it out soon!

On the left is a pretty light green shimmer that flashes pink and purple, called Peacock. It looks pretty sheer so we'll have to see how it looks on the nail.

I don't own any China Glaze's yet, but isn't this bottle shape similar? I thought the racks of polish I saw from outside were China Glaze, which is why I went running in! Good thing I still found these two that peaked my interest :)

On an unrelated note...I need to feel the love guys! If you're reading this, consider giving me a follow! I've just my one follower and I'm not feeling the love :( Let me know if you're out there! Thanks for reading :)

Night Life

So my marble attempt last night was once again a bust. But I won't give up! I'm going to try again when I get home tonight, and hopefully I'll finally get up a marble for this week, even if it is 3 days late. 

Anyway, today's polish is part of my Harmon's haul from last week. This is Rimmel Night Life.

I don't own Chanel Paradoxal, but is it just me or is this in the same dusty purple/taupe/shimmer family? Paradoxal seems to have more blue and less gold to it though. I feel like I could definitely franken a Paradoxal dupe with this as a base! Hmm...

I really like this color. It's a chameleon - sometimes it's more on the brown side, especially in the fluorescent lighting of my office, but out in the sun the purple shines through. You can see the pretty gold shimmer in every light and it's just gorgeous. This is three coats, but I think that mayyy have been one too many. The first coat I thought felt pretty thin but it seem to thicken up as I went along. Next time I'll either wait longer between coats or only use two because this was a little gummy and took a while to dry, even with Seche Vite. Hmm, I'm thinking I need to invest in some polish thinner...

Blood-sucking Sunday

In honor of one of my favorite shows, TrueBlood, I've decided to start Blood-sucking Sundays. Every week I'll show you some dark, vampiric, blood-sucking themed polishes! For the record, I am not a vampire-obsessed, twilight-humping weirdo. TrueBlood is my only vamper love, because Alexander Skarsgaard and all the other men on it are disgustingly, droolingly, mindblowingly hot, and there's lots of dirty sex scenes ;)

This week I thought I'd do a comparison of three colors in my collection that look like perfect dupes.

From left to right: Brucci Black Cherry, Nicole by OPI Deeply in Love, Essie Swing Velvet. In the bottle they look very, very similar; only Essie stands out with what looks like a bit more gold shimmer than the other two.

                               

Same order from pointer to ring. It looks to me like Black Cherry and Deeply in Love are almost exact dupes color wise. They're the same shade of dark burgundy with a hint of magenta shimmer. Application, on the other hand, was completely different. I had a lot of trouble with the Brucci polish - it was thin and had tons of cuticle drag. Worse of all, it was a complete bitch to get off. It stained my fingers pink and wouldn't come off for anything! I was really surprised because the formula of Gianna's "Rockin" Blue, the Brucci I wore all last week, applied really well, I had no problems at all. The Nicole shade was the opposite, but I can't totally blame the formula as the bottle is three-quarters of the way empty and has thickened up a bit.  

Swing Velvet is an old favorite from back when I used to have acrylic nails as a teen. I'm wondering if I got this bottle from a salon, and thats why there's no Essie stamp on it? Seems odd. Anyway, SV is a little richer in color and definitely has lots more gold shimmer. I like this more than BC and DiL, I think the gold gives it a more sophisticated feel. No surprise, the formula is much better too. It went on nice and smooth and was very easy to control. It also looks more blood-like than the others. Care for a taste, Eric Northman?

Stop by tomorrow for a new Marble Monday!

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 :)

To New Beginnings

Welcome fellow nail polish fiends! I decided to start this blog after coming across so many others run by women such as myself (and yourselves) who are obsessed with polish! After moving home from college and unpacking countless boxes, paired with a thorough dig through my room and a fight with the sister (don't ask how that resulted in me acquiring MORE polish, but it did), I realized that I have a freakish amout of nail polish! What better way to showcase them (and what better excuse to buy more?)! So let's get into it!

I know that looking down at my hands and seeing a pretty color makes me smile, so I'm going to start with an old hard-to-find favorite of mine.

This is OPI's Loyal Island Lilac. This polish is from the 1997 South Seas collection, and it's a gorgeous soft shimmer gray with teeny tiny silver sparklies and just a hint of lilac when the light hits it a certain way. My bottle is more than half empty so application was a little thick, but still good. This is two coats of a pretty sheer polish, so it's not totally opaque, but for a color like this that works for me. 

Funny enough, I had no idea JUST how hard to find this polish was til recently! To be totally honest, I don't even know where I got it. Did I buy it? Did I swipe it from my sister, mom, or a friend? Did I dream this polish into existence?? I've no clue, but I do know it's been a fave for years. I was doing some Googling recently in search of a new bottle, and imagine my complete anguish when I found out it was from 1997 and discontinued!! I'm going to have to stalk eBay and probably spend a pretty penny to get another one :(

Hopefully my pics will get better soon as I'm out a camera right now and working off Blackberry pictures. Bear with me! Thanks for reading :)