Frazzle and Aniploish

Recent NOTD: Revlon ColorStay Midnight

2012-01-30T16:43:00.003-05:00

Today I am back at my computer full time after spending last week once again enjoying the mountains in northern Idaho. Here's one of the snaps I took at Schweitzer Mountain:

If you're a regular reader, you might be thinking "what Sally Hansen strips did she wear this trip?" The answer is "none". I did bring some along, fully intending to put them on as soon as I called an end to the wear test I was doing of one of the new Revlon ColorStay shades, Midnight, a deep teal-leaning blue creme. I usually have no qualms about mixing brands between base, color, and top coat, but in ColorStay's case, I went ahead and bought the base and top coats, since I remember the previous incarnation of the line when the color and top coat were only sold together, as a system.

Still, I was curious to see if the matching base and top coats made a difference, so when I did my manicure a week before I left for my trip, I used the Revlon ones on most of my fingers, but my usual base and top coats on my ring fingers (all over a first layer of the Esmalte strengthener). I used two coats of Midnight.

It dried a touch darker than the bottle color, but definitely still looked blue even in low lights which made me happy. It was plenty shiny with both the Revlon top coat and my usual Sally Hansen Insta Dri.

The displays for this relaunch tout "Up To 11 Days of Shatterproof Color" (the fine print says that's when used with their base and top coats). I'd originally intended to take this off after about a week so I could put on strips for my trip, but when it came to that point, the polish still looked pretty good, so I left it on. Here it is six days in, showing some tip wear but no chips, and it's still fairly shiny.

Six days later, so twelve days total, I did have a chip, and more tipwear, and some weird texture on some of the nails that is more likely the fault of cleaning products I was using at the ski condo than the polish (it happened on both Revlon and Sally Hansen top coated nails). I found the big gap at my base from nail growth more distracting than the wear, actually. This shot also shows the dark face of this color; this shot was taken under the fluorescent light in the ski condo kitchen.

Based on my experience, which is admittedly not a scientifically valid sample, I'd say the new ColorStay is long lasting and doesn't require the matching base and top coat to be that way. I did like the ColorStay top coat; it dried almost as quickly as the Sally Hansen Insta Dri and held up equally well.

Since I subjected you to chips and tipwear, here's a pretty picture to make up for it, sunset fading over the mountains one night of my trip:

Since I didn't spend very much time online in the mountains, it's going to take me a bit to catch up with comments and emails and such. Please bear with me.

NerdLacquer It's Just a Flesh Wound

2012-01-27T11:00:00.000-05:00

Today I've got the last of Monty Python trio from NerdLacquer. It's Just a Flesh Wound has "...a fierce black base with small and medium black, red, and copper hexagonal glitter, plus black and charcoal microglitter and big silver hex glitter. This color always triumphs, and will still look fearsome even if a passing king lops one of your arms off. Looks amazing as a top coat over black or red. Also might challenge the other polishes in your collection to a duel; best to store it separately." Yep, that said black glitter, and I'm completely fine with it.

These swatches are three coats plus topcoat.

I want to try this over silver as well as the red and black mentioned in the description from NerdLacquer. Maybe over a charcoal shimmer, too.

NerdLacquer Pinin' for the Fjords

2012-01-26T10:00:00.002-05:00

Here's the second in the trio of Monty Python polishes I bought from NerdLacquer, Pinin' for the Fjords. Again, I quote the shop description; this is a "...sparkling Norwegian blue with lavender and silver glitter, small and medium sky blue hexagonal glitter, charcoal micro glitter, and large silver hex glitter. Beautiful plumage, though not much of a conversationalist. You might have to nail this shade to your fingers to keep it on." Hee—these sorts of descriptions tell me she's not just picking names out of a hat for these.

I swatched three coats plus top coat.

I didn't get a chance to play with layering this one. I'm thinking it'll look good over silver and blue and probably lilac, too.

Wheel K3: Glitters from Borghese and Maybelline

2012-01-25T12:00:00.002-05:00

A bit of throwback theme for this Nail Wheel Wednesday, since none of these polishes are in the brands' current lineups (though the Borghese are recent enough that you may come across them in stores that don't turn over their stock really quickly).

(all except numbers 2 and 3 have topcoat in addition to coats noted below)

1. Borghese Scintilla Red (3 coats)
2. Borghese Purple Confetti (2)
3. Borghese Mediterraneo Sea (2)
4. Borghese Nero Magico (2)
5. Borghese unnamed mini (3) [I really wish they'd made this in full size]
6. Borghese unnamed mini (4)
7. Maybelline Express Finish Silver Spells (2) [base has yellowed with age on some of these Maybellines, including this one]
8. Maybelline Express Finish Planet Pluto (2)
9. Maybelline Express Finish Glitter Luminous Moon (2)
10. Maybelline Express Finish Shooting Stars (2)
11. Maybelline Express Finish Glitter Bolt of Blue (2)
12. Maybelline Express Finish Twinkle Twinkle (2)
13. Maybelline Express Finish Glitter Pink Stars (2)
14. Maybelline Express Finish Glitter Twinkle Pink (3)
15. Maybelline Express Finish Far Out Fuchsia (2)
16. Maybelline Express Finish Glitter Red Comet (2)
17. Maybelline Express Finish Clearly in Love (3) [required fishing for the hearts]
18. Maybelline Express Finish Red Hot Hearts (3) [also needed fishing]
19. Maybelline Express Finish Celestial Shimmer (3)
20. Maybelline Express Finish Special Sparkle (4)

Bottles 1 through 6:

7 through 12:

13 through 16:

17 through 20:

NerdLacquer Crunchy Frog

2012-01-24T11:00:00.001-05:00

Looking at the swatches in my backlog to decide what to post for today, I saw a lot of my favorite thing, glitter, so decided since I'd already started with the Milani yesterday, this will be glitter week. Those of you of a creme and shimmer persuasion may want to take a break until next week.

I don't remember where I first heard aboug NerdLacquer. I do know that what turned me into a customer was finding out that she'd created a trio of custom-blended polishes inspired by Monty Python. I watched that show with my mom when I was an impressionable youth and later with my husband—we still quote lines from the show to each other from time to time. I just couldn't resist getting polishes with names like the one I have to share today, Crunchy Frog.

The NerdLacquer stores describes this as a "...revoltingly gorgeous milk chocolate shimmer base with emerald glitter, small and medium grass green hexagonal glitter, olive microglitter, and you might also notice some large chunks of silvery white. The bones, obviously. If we took the bones out it wouldn’t be crunchy, would it?" The bones—I love it!

I used three coats of Crunchy Frog plus topcoat for these swatches.

I couldn't resist seeing how this would look layered, so pulled some greens and a brown to try it with. Left to right below, it's Crunchy Frog, OPI Who the Shrek Are You, Zoya Shawn, and Essie Lady Godiva.

Above, top to bottom: three coats of Who the Shrek Are You plus one of Crunchy Frog, two coats of Shawn plus one of Crunchy Frog, three coats of Crunchy Frog by itself, and two coats of Lady Godiva plus one of Crunchy Frog. I think Shrek might be a bit too light and bright to make a nice base for this; I liked it better over Shawn and Lady Godiva, with Shawn being my favorite (most frog-like, I suppose).

Above, close up of Shawn plus Crunchy Frog in the foreground, with Shrek plus Frog twinkling in the background.

I'll have the other two polishes in the Python trio later this week, and based on how much I like them, I expect more NerdLacquer will join my stash soon.

Milani Twinkle and Fuchsia

2012-01-23T10:00:00.004-05:00

I still haven't seen all of the new Milani glitters in person (I read somewhere that they're supposed to come out in February, though Milani has most of them up on their website now). I went ahead and tried out two of the ones I did find and buy: Twinkle, a blue/purple in the One Coat Glitter line, and Fuchsia, from Jewel FX.

Here's Twinkle on its own. This is a bit different than the original release One Coat Glitters (like Purple Gleam); it's got both large and small glitters instead of just small ones, and I don't see any way it could cover in one coat. I used two and still see a fair bit of my nail showing through.

I added one coat of Fuchsia on top to make it a real party on my nails. This has small and large hexes, all the same color; its large ones are a lot bigger than the ones in Twinkle.

None of these swatches have top coat, so they're a bit bumpy; not as bumpy as I'd expect from such chunky glitters, though. The next time I use these, I'll probably layer them over a complementary shimmer or foil.

Scanning Saturday: Sally Hansen Brochures

2012-01-21T09:34:00.003-05:00

Here's the latest batch of brochures I've picked up in my drugstore travels; Sally Hansen seems to be the only brand that does these, though once in a while Sinful will have nail art instructions on their displays.

First up, Diamond Strength, showing the new colors. The only store where I've seen all of these so far is Walgreens, but I expect once the core displays are updated they'll be in more places.

The new Salon Effects strips designs/colors:

The Salon Manicure nail care products (I'm confused about the combined cuticle remover and balm, since I wash off the former and like the latter to stay on but maybe this is some newfangled formula):

I'm going to be online only sporadically for the next week, so you might notice me falling more behind than usual in replying to comments and e-mails. I'll probably post at least a couple entries, but I may slack on that, too. I'll be back full force on the 30th or 31st.

Christian Dior Waterlily

2012-01-20T13:44:00.001-05:00

Today I have the first Christian Dior polish to grace my stash. I wanted the first one to be Rock Coat last spring, but by the time I decided that, it was sold out. When I heard about this spring's colors, I zipped right over to Nordstrom's website to look at them before they disappeared. I was quite excited to see that Rock Coat was back in stock. I didn't stop to research whether it got re-issued or added to the core line or what; I just put it to my cart with the two spring 2012 polishes, Waterlily (green shimmer) and Forget Me Not (red violet creme). As it turned out, Waterlily arrived first, all by itself, and since it was my first Dior, I didn't want to wait to try it but swatched it as soon as I could.

I used two coats, no topcoat. That silver cap pulls off to reveal a black plastic one, which is ribbed for easy grasping. This polish is supposed to have a rose scent, but I didn't really notice it, perhaps because I've been trying to fend off a cold and am a bit stuffed up.

The shimmer in this is on the subtle side, but it's still visible in indirect indoor light, as in above photos. In brighter light, like the sunlight filtered through a window screen, as below, the shimmer does of course show up a bit more.

Since I have made nearly no progress on de-duping my stash, I found plenty of green shimmers to compare with Waterlily.

Left to right: Christian Dior Waterlily, Milani Dress Maker, Catrice Sold Out Forever, Claire's Dreamcatcher, Charlotte Russe Jade. Most of these were not as pigmented as Waterlily. Sold Out Forever was two coats, but the others all needed three to achieve a similar level of opacity.

Thumb, above: Charlotte Russe Jade. Other fingers, top to bottom (above and below): Christian Dior Waterlily, Milani Dress Maker, Catrice Sold Out Forever, Claire's Dreamcatcher.

These are all really close to each other. Waterlily is a touch darker and a bit more yellow-toned than the others.

Of all the shots I took, the one above most dramatically shows the difference between Waterlily (top nail) and the cooler mint shimmers (in this case, Dress Maker). Unless you're on a mission to have all the greens in the world, I don't think you need Waterlily if you've already got a Chanel Jade wanna be (or Jade itself—I skipped it because at the time I was holding firm against luxury brands; you see how that stance has gone by the wayside).

Handmade Duochrome Topcoats

2012-01-19T13:02:00.003-05:00

Back the normal color scheme today, with fingers crossed that my image host doesn't have any more hiccups. I have something special to share: three topcoats that my friend Diva hand mixed using pigments and magic.

I didn't want to use these up too fast, so for swatching purposes I did skittles. I don't remember which bottle was which, but I did write down the colors when I put them on my nails (over Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme); top to bottom it's Red to Green, Gold to Green, Blue to Green, and Red to Green again.

Look what happens when I tilt my hand just a bit—do you see the green peeking out from the orange-red on my index finger? The hints of gold showing up in the green on my middle? The rich blue on my ring finger?

Outside in the winter sun, the sparkles in these flare up like whoa!

Here I managed to capture the green side and the orange-red side of the polish at the same time (top and bottom nails below):

Then I went back inside and aimed the flash at my fingers and that got the gold in the green/gold to pop out (middle finger below):

I spent the rest of the time I wore these wandering around my house and wiggling my fingers around; here they are in the sun coming through my bedroom window.

These are great fun, and I'm curious to try to them over other colors. As always, it's a matter of finding the time. Too bad swatching isn't a real job that someone will pay me to do.

Wheels T4 and U4: Dark Grey and Black Cremes

2012-01-18T10:47:00.004-05:00

Some websites have gone dark today to protest the SOPA and PIPA acts being considered by the U.S. Congress. Some people are choosing to not use the internet at all today as part of that protest. I'm doing neither, because I don't think anyone from Congress reads this blog, and I suspect they'd be just as happy if I didn't get online and learn stuff about what they're doing. I have turned my background black as a symbolic gesture because I think the acts as proposed are a bad idea, and I don't think they're the best use of my government's time when the economy is still struggling and millions of people in this country don't have any health insurance. For intelligent words on the subject, read what John Scalzi has to say.

Nail Wheel Wednesday is observing SOPA Blackout Day by featuring dark grey to black cremes.

1. American Apparel Factory Grey (2 coats)
2. Studio M Not So Subtle (2)
3. Joe Fresh Fog (2)
4. Pure Ice Kiss Me Here (3) [I don't get this name at all; kiss me here on this grey spot?]
5. Barielle U-Concrete Me (2)
6. Nailstation Dapple Grey (2)
7. Essence Surfer Babe Pointbreak (3)
8. Essence Denim Wanted Fivepocket Grey (3)
9. Diamond Cosmetics Matte Smoke (2)
10. Barry M Grey (2)
11. Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Tailored Creme (5) [this has done that weird getting thinner with age thing]
12. Essence Colour & Go Movie Star (2)
13. GOSH Miss Grey (2)
14. Sephora by OPI Break A Leg-Warmer (3)
15. Ulta Smoke Screen (3)
16. Piggy Polish Grey-T (2)
17. Depend unknown (2)
18. Ulta Smoke Screen (3) [yeah, I really did put this on the wheel twice because I didn't realize the mini was the same as the full size soon enough]
19. Zoya Kelly (2)
20. CQ Eggplant (3) [if you see a real eggplant this color, do not eat it]

Bottles 1 through 5:

6 through 9:

10 through 15:

16 through 20:

1. Ulta unknown (3 coats)
2. Nina Ultra Pro Never Glum Plum (3)
3. Essie Smokin' Hot (2)
4. Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Grey Area (2)
5. Joe Fresh Eggplant (2) [again with the grey eggplants, yuck]
6. Ulta Professional Black Lace (2)
7. CHI Ferry to Lady Liberty (2)
8. OPI Suzi Skis in the Pyrenees (3)
9. OPI unknown (2)
10. Ulta unknown (2)
11. Rimmel Lycra Wear 10 Black Satin (2)
12. Wet 'n' Wild Wild Shine Black Creme (2) [almost 1]
13. Revlon Lunar (2)
14. Wet 'n' Wild Fantasy Makers Black Creme (3)
15. Maybelline Colorama Black Magic (2)
16. Essie Licorice (4)
17. OPI unknown matte (2)
18. Sally Hansen Lacquer Shine Lustrous (2)
19. Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Jet Black (4) [this one was actually meant to be sheer, it was an early version of the idea later seen in Dior's Rock Coat or Essence's Rock Top Coat]
20. Orly Matte Vinyl (2)

Bottles 1 through 5:

6 through 9:

10 through 15:

16 through 20:

Essence Irreplaceable

2012-01-17T17:18:00.003-05:00

The other day maisenzasmalto posted photos of Essence Colour & Go Irreplaceable, and I thought it looked like it was crying out to be layered over something like China Glaze Channelesque. When I had some time for swatching over the weekend, I couldn't immediately put my hands on Channelesque; I admit I didn't try very hard once I found Below Deck, which is pretty much the same thing (see squared nails' comparison here). Irreplaceable was actually in the first place I looked, the taupe/tan/neutral shimmers section of my unswatched Helmer drawers.

I put two coats of Below Deck on all but my ring finger, which got three coats of Irreplaceable. I then topped the Below Deck digits with one coat of the Essence.

The shimmer in Irreplaceable is quite dense; close up it looks like mini flakies and there are a lot of them swimming around in the tan base.

As a layering polish, Irreplaceable is quite assertive; the tan base blended pretty well with Below Deck but it didn't fade into the background like the base of a lot of layering polishes will.

If you're looking for a warm glitzy neutral, Irreplaceable can fill that slot. If you're looking for a versatile gold layering polish, keep searching.

Pop Beauty Aquatic Glitz

2012-01-16T14:20:00.003-05:00

Some weeks back I was on the hunt online for some polish (a Paul & Joe from fall, if I recall correctly) and came across some Pop Beauty glitter shades I hadn't seen before. Since I liked the other glitters I have from them, I went ahead and got these new-to-me colors. Aquatic Glitz is the first one I got around to trying. It's a mix of little glitter particles in mostly blue and green with some silver and holo scattered in there, too. I used three coats and should have added a top coat but did not.

One thing that was different from my other Pop Beauty polishes was this bottle had a separate label on the side rather than the information being printed directly on the glass, which meant I could actually read the shade name instead of it blending into the glitter behind it.

I liked the look of this quite a bit, and think Aquatic Glitz is quite a fitting name for it.

Despite this being a new polish in my collection, I felt I'd seen it before, so went looking through the Helmer drawers. What do you know—I discovered not one but two possible twins for it: Funky Fingers Baby Baby Baby and Color Club Beyond the Mistletoe.

Looking rather interchangeable in the bottles; how about on the nail? I took Aquatic Glitz off two of my nails and used those nails for the other brands, using three coats of them like I had to for the Pop.

Can you see a difference? How about if I make things a touch less blurry?

As far as I can see, these are identical triplets. Top to bottom, it's Pop, Color Club, Pop, Funky Fingers. Much as I like this, I don't think I need three bottles of it. Now to decide who's going on the destash list. Based on bottle shape, Funky Fingers is out; that big footprint takes up valuable room in the drawer. Between the other two, I think there's a slight edge to Pop, as all my Pop are in that same bottle with the same matte silver cap. But if I get rid of the Color Club, I'll be breaking up the Beyond the Mistletoe set—of course I got them all; I like glitter and having complete sets. I think I need to get over the sets thing, though, so I guess that means the Color Club needs to go, too. If hadn't already bought the Pop, though, my choice would be the Color Club because it's just as opaque and has just as much in the bottle for less money.

Sally Hansen Smooth and Perfect

2012-01-13T15:05:00.004-05:00

Despite my ranting about Sally Hansen bringing out yet another new line (I have around two dozen different ones in my collection at least, and I can't really tell the difference between all the various formulas), I can't stay mad at her for long. When I saw the new Smooth and Perfect ones on sale, I got a couple to try.

The first one I have to share is Dune, a peachy tan. I don't usually go for colors like this, having overdosed on them during my years of working in a very conservative job, but I thought I'd try this one, figuring it might be good as a camouflage color when my nails are going through a rough patch (like I used Zoya Melodie for last week). On the woman on the brochure, these polishes are opaque, but at three coats, I still had visible nail line. I was okay with that, since the color is light—sheer is more acceptable to me with a light color for some reason.

This has a pearly shimmer to it that's very subtle. It settled nicely; this did live up to the "smooth" part of the name. I wouldn't go so far as "perfect"; that's a really high bar.

To add some interest, I tried adding a layer of Glass Slipper, from the newly relaunched Diamond Strength line.

I've seen some discussion about whether or not Glass Slipper is a flakie. I say it is. Those iridescent white things floating around in the bottle are irregularly shaped (like soap flakes or instant potato flakes) and once on the nail, they lay nice and flat. I'm not wearing topcoat over them in these photos, and you can see how smooth it is. That they don't have a color shift doesn't make them any less flakie, just less flashy.

The second shade of Smooth and Perfect I got was Sea, the green one, which is much more of a Karen color than Dune. I used three coats of this one as well, and it was not quite opaque at that point. I must have accidentally used thicker coats on some of my nails since they don't quite match each other in coverage, but I'm not sure it's something I'd notice if I weren't staring at them in close up.

Like Dune, this has a subtle pearly finish. I'll be interested to see if this line gets expanded to non-pastel shades, which aren't usually pearly like this.

I had to try Glass Slipper on top of this one, too, and quite liked the effect.

Where do you stand on the Glass Slipper flakie question? Or the Smooth and Perfect question—is this different enough to be a new line?

Actual NOTD: Zoya Jem

2012-01-12T11:18:00.001-05:00

Because I'm running the Zoya giveaway (thanks to Verve 360 nail salons in Pittsburgh PA), I thought to pull out my own bottle of Jem when it was time to do my nails this past Sunday. (I haven't bought Anja because I managed to convince myself I have enough purple cremes in a range of hues and values.) Upon taking off my old polish, I was pleased to see no signs of new peelies; you can bet I put the Quimica strengthener right back on with this manicure.

Over the Quimica, I put Instant Artificials, then two coats of Jem; it's so pigmented that I might have been able to stop at one if I'd used a thicker first coat. I topped with Sally Hansen Insta Dri top coat and as I'm typing this, four days later, I just see a bit of tipwear and no chips.

Indoors, Jem mostly shows the pink side of her shimmer, though you can catch glimpses of the gold, too. Since there was some sunshine when I put this on, I went outside to see what I could see.

Later I snapped a couple shots of Jem's different faces inside, in the sunlight coming through a window. Most of the time it looks plummy and purple, like this:

But sometimes the light hits it and the gold shimmer makes the purple go off in a bronze-y direction:

As purple shimmers go, this one is quite nice, and I'm glad to have it in my collection. The giveaway for it and Anja closes tomorrow at noon my time, for continental U.S. residents only (when someone else puts up the prize, they get to make the rules).

Wheel J3: Glitter from Lippmann, Revlon, and Jesse's Girl

2012-01-11T12:10:00.002-05:00

Nail Wheel Wednesday is back! I am really hoping the world does not end in 2012—I'm going to need more time than that to get all my unposted (and still to be painted) wheels online. Today I have my favorite finish, glitter.

(3 coats unless otherwise noted below; all have topcoat added)

1. Deborah Lippmann Glitter in the Air
2. Deborah Lippmann Marquee Moon [I'm still wondering if this shimmer with scattered/submerged glitter would be happier on a shimmer wheel than here with its flashier siblings]
3. Deborah Lippmann Today Was a Fairytale
4. Deborah Lippmann Lady Sings the Blues (2 coats)
5. Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe
6. Deborah Lippmann Bad Romance
7. Deborah Lippmann Razzle Dazzle
8. Deborah Lippmann Some Enchanted Evening (4)
9. Deborah Lippmann Superstar
10. Revlon Street Wear Midas
11. Revlon Street Wear Hologram
12. Revlon Street Wear Psychedelic
13. Revlon Street Wear Groovy
14. Revlon Street Wear Illusion
15. Revlon Street Wear Disco
16. Revlon Street Wear Serene
17. Revlon Street Wear Charming
18. Revlon Sparkle (4)
19. Revlon Red Glitter [this one has been kicking around in my stash for ages; I think it was a holiday limited edition in the 90s]
20. Jesse's Girl Confetti (4) [they re-used this name when they relaunched the line for a blue/violet duochrome shimmer]

Bottles 1 through 5:

6 through 9:

10 through 15:

16 through 20:

Recent NOTD: Zoya Melodie Plus a Couple Disturbing Photos

2012-01-10T13:26:00.004-05:00

(The disturbing part comes later; I'll warn you ahead of time.) Last week my nails were clothed in Zoya Melodie, which Zoya describes as a "pink-toned light creamy brown nude neutral with a sprinkling of fine silver glitter" and classifies as a metallic finish. Sorry, no—I'm not buying the metallic thing at all. Silver shimmer does not a metallic finish make. Also, on me at least, it doesn't pull pink at all. I've seen photos of it looking much more rosy on other people, though, so I can see where Zoya got that part.

Zoya rates this as a 3 out of 5 on their sheer to opaque intensity scale. I only used two coats and had no visible nail line, which I thought was great for paler color like this.

Warning: the photos coming up may frighten small children and sensitive souls.

I went neutral with this manicure so as not to attract too much attention to nails, which really took a beating when I was on my Christmas trip. Not only was there the usual problem on a ski trip of wet gloves, but I helped Mr. Karen with projects around the condo and also did way more dishes than I usually do (at home that's his job; I have got to remember to buy new rubber gloves for our next condo stay—I used the ones that were there to do some staining in the summer and now they're no good for kitchen use). By the last day of the trip, I was missing chunks of the Sally Hansen strips on the tips of several nails, not because the strips chipped or failed but because the nails underneath had peeled and flaked away. I have no good excuse for what happened next: instead of taking the strips off the proper way, with nail polish remover (which I keep at the condo, so it wasn't a matter of not having access), I peeled and scraped them off using my nails as tools to do so. If there were such a thing as a nail blogger license, mine would have been suspended for that. The one minor saving grace in the situation was that I had that layer of Orly Nail Defense under the strips, which meant the adhesive on them stuck to that and not directly to my nails, so I didn't do too much additional damage with the scraping.

Here's what my nails looked like when I got home—so not pretty:

My right hand had the added feature of a scrape left when I dug out a huge splinter on my index finger (there's a smaller splinter still under the skin next to it at this point). I couldn't bear to show my thumbnail on this hand; it got the brunt of the tool duty so really looked like crap.

Looking at that mess, I decided it was time to try my new weapon against Mr. Peelies, Quimica Alemana Esmalte Endurecedor de Uñas, which my friend turtlechick was kind enough to pick up for me and send the last time we did a swap.

This is serious stuff; not only does it have formaldehyde resin, it has straight up formaldehyde. You definitely don't want to drink this one (or slop it on your skin).

It's too soon to tell if the Quimica stuff it going to work for me, but if the smell is any indication, I think it will—it reminds me of the old school extra chemically stuff I used back in the day, when my nails grew scary long. (I should see if I have any photos of them—this was long before digital cameras but I think I might have a film shot or two I could scan.) I do already know that it appears to play nicely with my other nail products. I used one coat of the Quimica followed by Instant Artificials, then the two coats of Melodie and Sally Hansen Insta Dri topcoat and got barely a chip in seven days. The polish on my right thumbnail did suffer some damage, as I just do not seem to be able to stop using it as a scraper for price tags and such. Perhaps I should bandage it for a few weeks so I'll be forced to break the habit.

*****

Reminder to folks with a continental U.S. mailing address: my Zoya Giveaway of Anja and Jem thanks to Verve 360 Nail Salons closes at noon Eastern U.S. time on Friday (January 13th).

New Year, New Displays

2012-01-09T13:18:00.001-05:00

When I posted my last round of display photos, I was looking forward to seeing the Revlon ColorStay relaunch. I have now seen it (or rather, seen them) but before that, I saw some other things—many things, so settle in.

Just before Christmas, my Meijer put out a mini display with five colors of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure. They put it in a dark cave of shelf, so it might be hard to see in the photo, but this is labeled "new shades", not limited edition.

Left to right in the bottles, the shades are Good to Grape, Greige Gardens, Cherry Cherry Bang Bang, Hidden Treasure (more about that in a minute), and Bittersweet. (The first two are switched from the order of the swatch ovals on the bottom of the display but I didn't move them because the guy who'd just put out the display was about five feet away from me and we'd chatted about how he'd been drafted to work in health and beauty that morning so I didn't want to be all "oh, no no, these are in the wrong place".)

So about this new Hidden Treasure—Sally, what are you smokin'?! It's bad enough you re-used the name, but to re-use a name that originally belonged to such a special, highly sought after polish as the original flakie Hidden Treasure—that's just wrong. If you like the name so much, why not give us back the flakie? Other companies are doing flakies right now, so surely the raw ingredients are out there.

In fact, Finger Paints has just done a collection of flakies called Special Effects. The first time I saw it, I had to snap a photo with my phone; I'd left my camera at home because I didn't really expect to see these out on Christmas Eve since they weren't slated to be released until January. (Given how much newer my phone is than my camera, I maybe should take all my photos with it, but I'm not as fast with the adjustments on the phone so might be too obvious futzing around in the stores with it.)

I've since seen the Special Effects display again at a different Sally store, this time with a card next to it showing how to apply these over black, which I think is an excellent idea, since if you're not a nail person, you won't necessarily look at the flakies and know what you're getting. There are five different ones here: Flashy (orange/green), Flecked (green/blue), Motley (blue/purple), Asylum (red/blue/orange), and Twisted (blue/green/red/orange).

Another thing I had to take pictures of with my phone was a L'Oreal display at CVS. Now those brushed gold caps in the holiday collection display I saw in November make more sense—it's a re-launch.

There are many, many colors here, way more than I recall being in the line in its most recent iteration before this. They were arranged in four groups: Trend Setter, Iconic Muse, Femme Fatale, and Hopeless Romantic.

Trend Setter has Tweet Me (yellow), Boozy Bunch (orange), Check Me Out (bright pink), Penthouse Pink (pale pink, which doesn't seem too trendy to me), Club Prive (minty teal), and VIP Status (deep greyed green).

Iconic Muse has Violet Vixen (the berry from the holiday display), Paparazzi Pleaser (medium purple), Safari Chic (dusty green), Now You Sea Me (turquoise), Jet Set to Paris (blue), After Hours (navy), Greycian Goddess (grey), Stroke of Midnight (charcoal, from holiday), and Because You're Worth It (gold, from holiday).

Femme Fatale has Tangerine Crush (soft orange), L'Orange (orange), Devil Wears Red (red), He Red My Mind (red), Caught Red-Handed (yep, red), Rendezvous (also red), Red Tote (slightly dark red), Haute Couture Red (very dark red), and Breaking Curfew (vampy plum, last one from the holiday display).

Hopeless Romantic has One Stop Base (clear blue), Top of the Line (clear), I Will (soft white), Satin Sheets (ivory), How Romantic (pale peachy pink), Wishful Pinking (slighty darker peachy pink), Sweet Nothings (peach), I Pink I'm In Love (warm pink), Pink Me Up (pink), Walk on the Beach (palest peach), Versailles Romance (pale orange), Mauvelous (dusty peach, not mauve at all to my eye), Smell the Roses (rose pink), Spice Things Up (orange pink), Charmed I'm Sure (rose gold), Greyt Expectations (pale mauve), Eiffel for You (taupe), Butterfly Kisses (purple pink).

I later saw these new L'Oreals at Meijer, built into the core display in the regular L'Oreal section in the aisle.

Target also had new L'Oreals in an aisle rather than on an end, but their display didn't have all the colors:

What Target did have on an end was Essie. The Luxe Effects we've seen before, plus Play Date (2012 Go Overboard collection), Meet Me at Sunset (2011 Braziliant Collection), Sand Tropez (2011 A French Affair), Smokin' Hot (2010 Winter collection; nice to see this again!), Armed and Ready (2012 Go Overboard collection), and Go Overboard (2012 Go Overboard collection).

The Nicole by OPI Kardashian collection has started showing up at places other than Wal Mart. I've seen them at Ulta (all the colors), Meijer (all the colors), and Target (only some of the colors). I am only going to include one photo, because I am still uncomfortable with the whole idea of this collection. (I did push aside my discomfort long enough to buy some of the colors at Meijer, figuring if I was supporting fame whores by so doing, I was also supporting a Michigan-based retail company and perhaps the two balanced each other out.)

Meijer also had the Valentine's Day display for Studio M, Fall in Love with Color. This is the usual mix of core colors and re-promotes with a few new colors. The one that interested me the most was Fame & Fortune, which looked like a red version of Color Club Covered in Diamonds. Top row, left to right: French Tip, Date Night Red, Slammin Red, Drama Queen, Foil Me Once, Hot Like Lava, All That Razz, Falling in Louvre. Bottom row: Tru Passion, Neon Pink, Neon Pink (again), Pinking of You, Passionately Yours, Fame & Fortune, Dance for France, Clearly in Love.

Meijer is the only place so far that I've seen the Wet 'n' Wild Megalast re-launch displays. Most of these colors are the same sort of classic pinks and reds that dominated the old lineup, but there are a few new shades that looked interesting to me. Top display, left to right: On a Trip, Tropicalia, I Need a Refresh-Mint, Heatwave, Disturbia, Candy-licious, Haze of Love, Wet Cement, I Red a Good Book. Bottom display: Break the Ice, Private Viewing, Sugar Coat, Through the Grapevine, On a Trip, Undercover, I Need a Refresh-Mint, I Red a Good Book, Wet Cement.

Rite Aid had a new City Color display with yet another bottle shape. None of these called to me, though the rose design on the top of the bottle was a nice touch.

Rite Aid also had the saddest thing for a polish hunter to see—a completely empty display of something I'd never seen there before and would have very much liked to have bought: L.A. Girl Glitter Addict. I am hoping that if I go back, more bottles will appear. It could happen—I've seen that sort of thing other places.

Walgreens had a Sally Hansen display with a whole mix of things in it. The center section was stuff I'd seen before: some of the new Salon Effects plus the Smooth and Perfect colors.

On the sides, there were what looked like new colors for other lines. Insta Dri had four: In a Flash, Pumped Up Pink, Vigorous Violet, and Gone Grey.

Four new Xtreme Wears, too: Coral Reef, Pink Satin, Violet Voltage, and Golden-I.

There were eight colors of Diamond Strength that I hadn't seen before, which I thought was odd since in most stores, the newly re-lauched bottles haven't even made it to the core display yet. Top row: Something Blue, Bride to Be, Together Forever, Sweetie Pie. Bottom: Princess Cut, Something New, Heart to Heart, Black Tie.

And now, finally, the Revlon ColorStay re-launch. The old ColorStay line was a favorite of mine, even though the no-basecoat thing made me nervous and the way they made you buy the color in a set with the special topcoat meant there was always topcoat leftover since the colors weren't usually one-coaters. This time around, the colors are more interesting, the topcoat is sold separately, and the is a base coat. I first saw these at Walgreens just after the first of the year; they were at the bottom of a larger ColorStay display with eye makeup taking up most of the space. Colors in the front: Base Coat, Top Coat, Pale Cashmere, Calla Lily, Provence, Passionate Pink, Cafe Pink, Wild Strawberry, Delicious, Sorbet, Buttercup, Marmalade, Red Carpet, Velvet Rope, Fall Mood, Cayenne. In the back: Sequin, Coastal Surf, Indigo Night, Spanish Moss, Stormy Night, French Roast, Rain Forest, Bonsai, Amethyst, Rich Raspberry, Bold Sangria, Stiletto, Blue Slate, Midnight, Bare Bones, Vintage Rose.

Other places I've seen this line at haven't had all the colors. CVS had a display with 28 shades (including the two slots for top coat):

Meijer had a 20-slot display:

Also saw 10 of the colors on an end display at Target. I hope at some point all the stores will get all the colors in the core displays so I can get the ones I want at my convenience (and on sale; these are more expensive than even the Top Speed Revlons).

If you're still reading, congratulations for making through. Given the accelerated pace of retail season, I expect to be back before too long with a bunch of spring displays. Oh, and if you're a completist, go back and read the addendum to yesterday's entry; I found more information on those Milani glitters.

Mysterious Milani Glitters

2012-01-06T17:06:00.002-05:00

I'm working on a display post, which I hope to get up on Monday, but here's something else I've seen recently:

Those are some new-to-me Milani One Coat and Jewel FX glitters I found at a Meijer store a couple days ago, not in a display on an endcap but stuffed into random slots in the core display. I've never heard of any of these. Left to right: Twinkle, Pink Flare, Hot Pink, Lavender. Twinkle is bright blue and bright purple. Pink Flare reminds me of OPI Teenage Dream but with much smaller holo hexes. Hot Pink is fuchsia and silver holo hexes. Lavender is lilac hexes with small purple glitters.

Today I went to a different Meijer and didn't find any of the first four glitters but did find a Jewel FX called Fuchsia. Here it is under my desk lamp at work:

Where did these come from? How many more are there? I wish I knew.

*****

Addendum, 09-Jan-2012: thanks ABOP/laquerlove, the lovely lady from Another Bottle of Polish?!, I now know more about these glitters. Here's a photo she snapped in her Sears store (used with her permission):

Evidently what we're looking at are expansions of the Jewel FX and One Coat Glitter lines. The new Jewel FX colors are Fuchsia, Lavender, Teal (need it), Hot Pink, and Red (also need it). Not sure of the names of the One Coat Glitters, but it looks like a wine, a teal, Twinkle (the blue), a lilac, and Pink Flare. I am hoping these all show up at Meijer soon, which I think they might since they are clearancing some of the non-glitter ones.

A Tale of Two Annes

2012-01-05T17:57:00.007-05:00

Anne was one of the polishes that won in the same Rescue Beauty Lounge Bring it Back vote that brought me Locavore. Sometime after people started getting their orders from that batch of releases, I heard some rumblings that at least one person who'd missed Anne in the original release and bought a bottle from the re-release thought that the new version didn't look like some of the promo pictures for the original version and wondered if there was a problem. Given how many polishes do change from batch to batch, I understand that completely. I, being not entirely of sound mind when it comes to buying nail polish, had a backup of original Anne so was able to swap that for a new one (having used the bottle I bought in the re-release as the non-glitter prize in my holiday givewaway) and thus satisfy my curiosity about this issue, which is how it came to pass that I compared Anne to Anne.

They look pretty darn similar in the bottles, as one would expect. Original Anne is on the left, new Anne on the right. (The new bottles have a code printed on the glass near the bottom in the back.)

Here's a close up of original Anne:

And new Anne:

At some angles, in some lights, I could get new Anne to look duller than the original (new on the right):

But then I'd change the angle a bit and they'd look like twins again:

As we know, polish in the bottle is not necessarily a good indication of what it'll look like on the nail, so I stopped twirling the bottles this way and that and instead twisted off those caps and put one of the Annes on two fingers and the other on two other fingers. Can you tell which is which?

Top to bottom, that's original, new, original, and new; two coats of each.

Since the nature of shimmers usually shows up better in sunlight, I took myself outside. Since it's winter, the sun was not exactly blazing, but I was lucky to get any sun at all.

Here's one of the most illuminated shots I got; new Anne on the left, original Anne on the right.

Still outside, here's new Anne on top and original Anne on the bottom:

And finally the same two fingers with the focus shifted—new Anne in focus on top and original Anne blurred on the bottom.

I don't see a difference between these two. Being shimmers, they do both change as the light they're in and the angle they're being viewed at changes, but if I hadn't taken notes about which was new and which was old, I couldn't have written this entry because I wouldn't know how to label the photos. In fact, at one point, I got the bottles mixed up and had a moment of panic before I remembered the printed numbers on the new one.

Congratulations to Ji Baek on her quality control. If she'd made My Private Jet, I bet we wouldn't have four or five or seven versions like we've gotten from OPI.

Zoya Giveaway Thanks to Verve 360 Nail Salons in Pittsburgh PA

2012-01-04T11:50:00.007-05:00

Nail Wheel Wednesday is having a hard time getting back into the swing of things after its holiday break, so it'll be another week before that feature returns. Instead, today I have something even more fun: the opportunity to spread the nail polish love by finding bottles new homes. Today, courtesy of the kind folks at Verve 360 nail salons in Pittsburgh PA, I have two pretty purple Zoya polishes to give away to a reader in the continental U.S. They're Anja, a deep burgundy-leaning purple creme, and Jem, a red-toned purple with pink and gold shimmer.

Photos from zoya.com

Things to know:

—Open to readers in the continental U.S. only.
—Contest starts now and will close on Friday, January 13th at noon eastern U.S. time. (That will make it someone's lucky day!)
—I'll use random.org to select the winner.
—Once I've e-mailed the winner and gotten her (or his) mailing address, I'll pass that along to Verve 360 nail salons in Pittsburgh PA, and they'll mail the prize directly to the winner.

How to enter:

—Comment on this entry telling me why you want these two Zoyas in your stash. If your name on comments does not link to a profile where I can find a way to contact you, please include your e-mail address in your comment.

***Contest is now closed***

Update 16-Jan-2012: Congratulations to Hana, whose number came up when I asked random.org to pick a comment.

Grey Gradient Seasoned with Pepper

2012-01-03T17:01:00.003-05:00

Sponging has been on my list of things to try for a long while now, as has playing with the black glitter polish that mrsrexy kindly sent me in a swap because she knows I'm working on my black glitter avoidance issues. When a friend of mine did a mani that combined sponging and black glitter, that inspired me to finally give both things a go. (I would link to her version, but if she has a blog, she's hiding from me.)

For this, I used two coats of Orly Mirror Mirror as my base color, then used a makeup wedge sponge to add Rescue Beauty Lounge Stormy and Studio M Slated, then finally added two coats of Nubar Black Polka Dot. I should have added top coat, too, but I was too excited to get to the picture taking stage to stop for that.

I see there's room for improvement in my sponging, though for a first try I think it's pretty good, if I do say so myself. I want to work on getting a smoother transition between the shades next time.

As for the black glitter, I like it in this mani. I'm not ready to start sprinkling it on everything, but I can see a place for it in my stash.

Do you have any sponging tips for me for next time? Where do you fall on the black glitter issue?

Recent NOTD: Sally Hansen Snow Bunny

2012-01-02T12:29:00.002-05:00

Hello again, I am back behind my keyboard as of today. It will take me a while yet to catch up on e-mail and comments, so I didn't want to hold up posting again until that happened. I spent most of last week skiing at Schweitzer Mountain in Idaho, so the Sally Hansen strips in the limited edition holiday design called Snow Bunny seemed perfect for the trip. Due to the busy-ness of the days leading up to my departure, I left home with my nails nearly bare, protected by just one coat of Orly Nail Defense (seen here in the food court of the Seattle airport).

I took advantage of my long layover in Seattle to put on the strips, which I'd packed in my carryon. I ran into one small problem in that I'd neglected to bring a scissors to cut them so I could use only one of the two packs. I found that if I was careful, I could fold back the clear top sheet and tear the strip against that edge. It took me a few tries to perfect this technique, so I ended up with shorter pieces for some of my nails than would be ideal, but it wasn't too bad.

Because I was flying on Christmas Day, I wore a festive red and green outfit, and the strips coordinated perfectly.

The strips also went nicely with the sock monkey I brought along to keep me company.

I never did get any photos of these in the sun, because it was decidedly not sunny on the mountain that week. That's okay, because clouds are what the snow comes in and without them, there's no skiing. The lake did peek out from under the clouds sometimes.

It was warm enough that I was able to take my gloves off and not freeze my hands in order to get this daylight shot of the strips and scenery:

All in all, it was a great trip. Here's me grinning on the slopes on Friday; I had the whole run to myself at this point, which made me even happier.

I did fit in some swatching before my trip, so you'll see those photos in coming days (and my nails will appear to have magically grown, because I did the swatching before I trimmed them back in an attempt to avoid breaks from all the stuff I do on vacation that I don't do at home).

Top 20 of 2011, Part 5

2011-12-30T17:00:00.001-05:00

I'm calling this last installment of my Top 20 the Special Effects Division. It's anything that didn't fit into the first four, and there are some special things here.

Jessica Disco Diva had to be on this list somewhere, and here it is. It bumped GOSH Holographic off the list because it's just a bit more holo-y.

Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure had to be here too. I have other flakies, but this was my first, and I still love it. (Maybe next year it'll move to the Nostalgia Division, or even the Hall of Fame, if I decide I need one of those so I can put more new things on the list. Like Cult Nails Clairvoyant, which almost made it.)

Here is it over Borghese Poema Orchid:

And over Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Café au Lait:

And Sally Hansen Salon Pat on the Black:

My final choice for my Top 20 might be considered a bit of cheat, but it's my list so I'm allowing it: Sally Hansen Salon Effects. I wore these strips nine times this year as of this writing, which I'm pretty sure is way more than I wore any other polish. Not all the designs are created equal, but I've been plenty happy with almost all of them. Here are just a few examples—

Girl Flower was the first design I wore, and they were still going strong on Day 6 of ski trip:

Misbehaved gave me a much neater fishnet than I'd ever be able to achieve with stamping (at least at my current state of skill):

Spun for You went to Disneyland:

Yeah, they're pricey, but they deliver on the promises on the box, and there's always sales and CVS Extra Bucks to get them a bit cheaper.

So there you have it, my Top 20 for 2011. I can't wait to see what 2012 has in store. More holos, I hope! What are your nail polish wishes for the new year?

Top 20 of 2011, Part 4

2011-12-29T16:00:00.001-05:00

Oh, the Glitter Division. How I struggled to choose just a handful of polishes for this group. I ended up keeping three from last year: Borghese Purple Confetti, OPI Mad as a Hatter, and Deborah Lippmann Across the Universe.

Purple Confetti is on the list because despite the vast quantities of glitter in my stash, the only other polish I have that's remotely similar to this one is its sibling from the same collection, Mediterraneo Sea. I don't know how Borghese managed to have the glitter not get covered up by the deep opaque base color, but I'm glad they did. Without top coat, it dries matte, which I find very interesting.

With topcoat, it still holds my gaze.

Mad as a Hatter is just a wonderful jumble of colors that I love looking at it whenever I'm wearing it.

It's even gorgeous when it's blurry:

Unlike the first two glitters, Across the Universe has a very controlled color palette, just blue and green, but the balance of hues and values in it means it's not boring.

I love layering Across the Universe over blues and greens; here it is on (top to bottom) China Glaze Towel Boy Toy, Zoya Charla, OPI Jade is the New Black, and Sally Hansen Salon Navy Baby.

Butter London No More Waity Katie made the list because it combines three of my favorite things: glitter, purple, and purple-taupe. I know some people had problems with the formula of this one, but I found it pretty well behaved. On its own, it builds to a nice depth, with the glitter floating at different levels in the taupe base.

One coat over a taupe base (here it's Nina Ultra Pro Never Glum Plum) gives a similar look with fewer coats required.

And finally, Locavore. Of course this had to be on here. I wanted it so much for so long, and when it got here it did not disappoint. It looks good alone; it looks good layered. Given that I tend to prefer silver over gold, I'm a tiny bit surprised I love this as much as I do.

Top to bottom in the photos above and below, that's Locavore by itself, then over Revlon Gold Coin, over Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Anemone of Mine, and over Sinful Last Chance.

There are so many other glitters I would have liked to put on this list. Maybe someday I'll do a Top 20 Glitters list. Or Top 50. China Glaze did a collection of 50 glitters, why not me?

Tomorrow my Top 20 of 2011 series concludes with the Special Effects Division.

Top 20 of 2011, Part 3

2011-12-28T15:00:00.001-05:00

Nail Wheel Wednesday is taking a well-deserved Christmas break but will return in 2012. Today I've got the next installment of my Top 20 list, the Shimmer Division.

Estee Lauder Ultra Violet is a returnee from last year. It's purple and pretty, and I like the luxe bottle.

Chanel Paradoxal is also coming back for another year. I consider it the shimmer version of China Glaze Channelesque; an un-boring neutral.

Finger Paints Mistletoe Mischief came out last Christmas and is my favorite deep green shimmer. So nice and squishy!

Cult Nails Let Me Fly is another new addition to the list. It's a wonderfully murky turquoise.

Tune in tomorrow for Part 4, the Glitter Division.

Top 20 of 2011, Part 2

2011-12-27T13:00:00.001-05:00

Today it's the Creme Division. Let's start with the two from last year's list that I brought along to this year's: Orly La Playa and China Glaze Channelesque.

La Playa is still my favorite blue creme. It's flattering on my skintone and stays blue in almost all lighting conditions.

As an aside, look how much better I've gotten at holding bottles since the I started this blog. (La Playa was in the Viva collection, which came out about a month after I started Frazzle and Aniploish in April of 2010.)

La Playa is a great base color for any number of layering polishes. Here it is under Finger Paints Sapphire Sparkle:

And under Cult Nails Clairvoyant:

Channelesque is my ideal purpley taupe. All newcomers are compared against it, and while they often match in color I've yet to find one that makes me want to give up the original. This one could almost have gone in the Nostalgia Division, because I hunted for it and felt quite a thrill when I found it in a nail supply five years after its release and a while after it had been discontinued. (When it came out, I was in one of my low maintenance nail phases and paying no attention to new polishes.)

Essie Berry Hard is a newcomer to the list this year. It's got the same qualities as La Playa, just in red. I like this one so much I bought it three bottles of it (which I realize is excessive, and I have swapped away one of them).

Also like La Playa, Berry Hard is an excellent base color, such as under Essie As Gold As It Gets:

Or Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure:

I use Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme from the Wild Shine line so much that I decided it deserved a place in my Top 20. I think it's the best value in my whole stash: 99 cents for .43 fl. oz. but often on sale for 25% or even 50% off, and it covers in one coat. It's my go to black underwear for layering (I used it with Turquoise Opal for yesterday's entry) and my go to black for stamping. Here it is by itself, one coat, no topcoat.

Here it is stamped over Stila Nail Shimmer in Juno. (Talk about nostalgia; I bought that the first time I ever set foot in a Sephora store, years and years ago. I just now realized that the Stila bottle has black stars on it, just like the stamping I did.)

I think every nail polish collection needs some cremes in it, and these are my favorites. My first runner-up in this category is Sally Hansen Insta Dri Whirlwind White. If I was doing a Top 30, that would probably have made the cut.

Coming up in Part 3: Shimmers.

Top 20 of 2011, Part 1

2011-12-26T11:00:00.001-05:00

I didn't get my act together in time to submit a Top 20 for the boards this year but decided I'd do it on my own anyway. To come up with my list, I looked at what I chose last year and what I've worn since then and also thought about which bottles of polish I'd be most likely to keep if ever decide to do a radical de-stash (I wouldn't say such a thing is likely at this point, however). Of course my first cut at the list had rather more than twenty polishes on it, so I had to make some tough choices. Instead of posting my whole list in one entry, I decided to group them into categories and post one category each day this week. Today, it's the Nostalgia Division, which are polishes that survived all my stash purges of the 80s and 90s and 00s.

First up is L'Oreal Rose Délicat. I wore this one a lot during the mid- to late-1980s, including at my wedding. When my love for nail polish re-ignited in a couple years back, this was one of the first bottles I pulled out to swatch. Here's a photo I took of it in December of 2009. (Look how un-stained and un-peely my nails are. Those were the days. Let's ignore my lack of cleanup, okay?)

The photo above shows one coat of Rose Délicat. When I grabbed it to swatch for this entry, I used two coats, but it's probably more the effect three would have been when it was new, since it's thickened up noticeably. I didn't put any thinner in, but I'm going to have to if I want to use it again. For the swatch below, I added some OPI topcoat to level out the goopiness from it being so thick.

I admit this one is on the list purely for sentimental reasons. I have a lot more interesting polishes in my collection now and even in the pale peachy shimmer category I have prettier ones, but this one is special to me. Look how low the level in the bottle is—that's how much I wore it back in the day.

And look at these ingredients—no Big 3 Free here. Dibutyl phthalate? Yep, we got that, and toluene, too. You can't see it in this photo, but the original price tag is still on the cap; I paid $2.98 at Osco (which at the time was a separate drugstore; now they're all rolled into Jewel-Osco grocery stores if my visits back to Illinois are any indication).

The other polishes in this division are all carryovers from last year's list, starting with Revlon Street Wear in Grape. I remember when the Street Wear line first came out; the colors were so different than most of what was in the stores then and so different than what I was wearing. They looked edgy and a little strange to me, but I did buy some. The only one that's still in my stash from those original purchases is Grape, saved by my love of all things purple. I've since swapped for a lot of other Street Wears, but Grape has a special place because it's been with me the longest.

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Purple Diamond was one of the first holos I owned. I'm not sure I even knew the word holographic at that point; I just knew it was pretty. In indirect light, its rainbows are shy.

In direct light indoors, the holo starts to show, even in low light situations.

There was no sun when I was swatching this, but this flash shot should give you an idea of how it looks in full rainbow mode. This is two coats, which is a tiny bit on the sheer side; three would give more depth.

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in Turquoise Opal was another revelation to me—my first duochrome polish (again, before I knew the word to describe it).

Is is purple? Is it teal? Is it both? It all depends on the light. Sometimes pink and even gold show up, too, though I didn't manage to capture them on camera this time.

I didn't know about layering things over black when I first got Turquoise Opal, but I do now. Here's one coat over black:

I'm glad I held on to these four polishes. I'm sorry I didn't keep more from that era but thanks to swapping and blog sales and Dollar Tree I've been able to replace most of what I regretted destashing, plus picked up some things I never bought in the first place.

Coming up in part 2 tomorrow: Cremes.

NOTD: Christmas Glitter Explosion

2011-12-24T09:00:00.000-05:00

I could have also titled this entry "The More Glitz the Merrier". Here's whats on my nails:

This is Orly Nail Defense plus Instant Artificials plus Studio M Gift of Gold plus China Glaze Twinkle Lights plus a nameless red/green chunky glitter snowman plus Sally Hansen Insta Dri topcoat.

The China Glaze is a mini bottle (though not the smallest mini; I have a Ruby Pumps that's about half this size).

Twinkle Lights is a bit overwhelmed by the other two polishes; you can't really see it too well unless you get close, but I think it being there helps pull the look together. My bottle doesn't seem to be as opaque as some other bloggers; I used two coats and it didn't come close to covering the gold base, which was fine since I wanted the gold to show, but I don't ever see I'll want to wear Twinkle Lights alone at that rate. Maybe I just didn't shake the bottle up enough or something.

Merry Christmas to those of you celebrating! I'm planning to limit my time online during the holiday week so I can focus on spending time with family and friends, but I have scheduled some posts and will probably pop in now and again since I do love my internet.

Recent NOTD: Sally Hansen Laced Up

2011-12-23T11:01:00.001-05:00

Considering how resistant I was to trying the Sally Hansen Salon Effects strips when they first came out, it's sort of surprising that now I have very little trouble talking myself into using them, even when I'm not going on vacation and thus won't maximize my wear time. This particular week, my reasoning was I was very busy all weekend so wouldn't have time to do a regular mani and have it dry fully before bedtime on Sunday plus I had a busy week at work (every fourth week I'm pretty much stuck at my desk from 12:30 to 5:30 and can't work from home at all so don't have the the time I'd otherwise spend commuting for doing nail stuff). Strips to the rescue! I considering using one of the limited edition Christmas designs but decided I wanted to get more than five days out of those, so went with Laced Up, a black lace on beige design.

If you think you've seen these on me before, you have. This is my first repeat mani in quite a while. I'm better at applying these strips now than I was back then, so I didn't have any wrinkle-caused wear issues this time.

Before I took them off, I experimented with putting Essie As Gold as It Gets over the top, leaving one finger unchanged for comparison purposes.

Top nail is just the strip; this is four days wear at this point. Bottom nail has one coat of gold over the top.

I quite liked the effect with the gold—it was like a fancy lace evening dress for my nails.

End of the Year Displays

2011-12-22T11:12:00.001-05:00

I thought my last display post was going to be the final one for the year. I was wrong. In the last couple weeks, I've seen more new stuff and wanted to post while it was fresh. This won't be a marathon tour like some of my display posts, just a quick survey of what I've spotted at a few stores lately.

Ulta had Nicole by OPI mini sets called Icy Color; these have the four foil shades from the Liquid Metal collection from this past spring: Miss Independent (cool-toned pink), It Starts With Me (peachy rose), Rich in Spirit (silvery blue), and The Next CEO (gold). I so wish they'd make the bottle shape of the full-size ones match the minis.

Then over in the OPI section at Ulta, there was this unlabeled display of China Glaze. Evidently these are Ulta holiday exclusives, but I didn't hear that from Ulta. I wouldn't have even been looking out for these if some other ladies hadn't found them and posted about them. Top to bottom, there's Ultamate Holiday (gold glitter with scattered holo), Fireside Glow (coppery glitter with scattered holo), and Mistletoe Me (fuchsia foil). You can see some great swatches (and even a video) of them over on The PolishAholic.

Moving on to CVS, they had some short pimp canes with only
five colors in them compared to the ten in the ones I'd seen before. These were all shimmers in mostly muggle-safe colors. There was a deep blue one that looked interesting, but not interesting enough for me to buy the other four colors to get it.

Quite near the mini pimp canes there was something surprising: a Wet 'n' Wild Ice Baby display. When these first popped up they were only at Walgreens; the display even said "Exclusively at Walgreens". Well, that exclusivity must have been a limited time thing, because here they are at CVS.

Then, as I was leaving the makeup section and heading out of the store, I saw a whole big display of a brand I've never seen before fastened to the end of the haircare aisle. Spoiled, it's called, and there looked to be around 40 colors. This said CVS Exclusive on it. We'll see about that, I guess.

There were a couple of chunky glitters in there; you know those came home with me. There were some finer glitters, too, but they looked suspiciously like Sinful Colors shades. There was a warm green one that reminded me of Call You Later, and a warm purple one that looked like I Miss You.

Moving on to Rite Aid, there was a new City Color display. This one had yet another bottle style—I can think of three they've had for this brand so far, and near as I can remember, there have only been four displays since the brand first showed up. I picked up a couple of these bottles to check if they had color names (they didn't seem to) but none spoke to me and told me to take them home. I think they were all shimmers, but I didn't spend too much time inspecting them.

On another shelf, there was something interesting from Sally Hansen: nail care products with the Salon Manicure line name on them. Remember when the Complete Salon Manicure polishes first came out and the brochure said they included base coat and top coat right in with the color? Evidently Sally has realized that most of us still use a separate base and top coat with them, so is providing some new options in that area, along with a swirly cuticle remover/cream.

On yet another shelf, there was something even more interesting—limited edition Valentine's Day Salon Effects designs! There are five different ones: Love Always (the word love and hearts), How Romantic (graphic rectangles), Speed Dating (hearts), Are You Single (swirls and hearts), and Cross My Heart (hearts and x's).

One thing I was hoping to include in this post was the Revlon Colorstay re-launch; some people have seen that display at CVS, but I've been to five CVS stores in the last week and haven't spotted it. The way these things usually work is I'll post this entry today and then see the display on my way home tonight. I guess in that case I can do an addnedum, since I really truly don't think I'll do another full display post between now and the end of the year.

Nail Wheels Galore

2011-12-21T16:05:00.003-05:00

Today instead of one wheel for Nail Wheel Wednesday, I have a whole bunch. Chester had asked me about how I organize my wheels, and I thought other people might like to know, too, so I'm turning my e-mail to her into this entry.

Right now my Helmers are separated into swatched and unswatched drawers, and the unswatched ones are sorted by color and finish (purple shimmers, red cremes, glitter, crack, and so on). At the moment I also have some overflow boxes, but I'm pretending I don't so let's not talk any more about those. When I'm deciding which colors to put on a new wheel, I pull out an unswatched drawer and just sort the bottles into groups that look like they go together. Sometimes I get fooled and end up with situations like a dark purple on a red wheel or a subtle shimmer on a creme wheel, which bothers the OCD side of me but which I figure I just have to live with for now because if I stop to re-do wheels that have problems I will never ever finish this swatching project. And I must finish the swatching project so I can get my Helmers back sorted by brand so I can find things and not be distressed by the jumble of all those different bottles crammed in together.

I try to paint lighter colors first, moving to dark ones as I go around the wheel, because I like the way it looks and in theory should mean similar colors end up near each other which is good for comparison purposes. Sometimes I get fooled by the bottles here, too. Doing test swatches on paper first would probably help, but that would take so much time and as alluded to above, I'm impatient to finish these wheels. When it comes to glitters, I put them on wheels by brand/collection rather than color because so often glitters are more than one color and it seemed easier to just let them be with their brandmates.

When I did my first wheel, I labeled it A, because I'd numbered each nail tip and liked the idea that I could combine the wheel's letter with the tip's number to get a code to put on my spreadsheet so I could find the swatch of that color from there. Of course, once I got past 26 wheels, this coding system didn't work so well, and thus I had to add a number after the letter for the wheel designation (A2, B2, etc.) As I paint the wheels, I write down which polishes are on them in a little notebook, so I can grab a wheel, see a color I want, and look in the notebook to see what it is.

When I first started painting wheels, I stored them in a plastic tackle box I had on hand, but that wasn't ideal because the wheels had to lay on top of each other, so I couldn't see them at a glance. Now I store them in little wooden crates that we get at the grocery store when we buy clementines. They're just the right size for two rows of wheels to fit side by side, and I can them and flip through them easily. Cremes go in one box, shimmers in another, and glitters and everything else in a third.

This may seem like a whole lot of record keeping and nonsense to some of you, but this sort of thing deeply appeals to the part of me that led me to get an accounting degree. I like to keep track, make lists, do spreadsheets. I like it even more now that I don't do it for a living (though writing software does use those same logical parts of my brain still).

Recent NOTD: Modern Christmas Mani

2011-12-20T17:29:00.002-05:00

Here's what I had on my nails all last week; doesn't it look festive?

It's Orly Wandering Vine plus Cult Nails Clairvoyant, and I was quite pleased with the combination.

Here's a closer look a Clairvoyant (formerly known as Unicorn Puke in its limited edition phase), because it's quite worth looking at.

I did seven coats in all: OPI Nail Envy (Sensitive & Peeling), Instant Artificials, two coats Wandering Vine, two coats of Clairvoyant, and Sally Hansen Insta Dri topcoat.

I'm looking forward to trying Clairvoyant over other base colors, though that's going to have to wait a while because there are too many other things I want to do. I don't think I'm going to be one of those people who gets bored when they retire. I would retire tomorrow if I could afford it!

Sinful Colors Holiday 2011

2011-12-19T15:31:00.002-05:00

Thanks to my friend Lucy, who lets me play with her promotional samples before I forward them on to her, I had the chance to try all the polishes in the Sinful Colors holiday display for 2001, called Wish.

There are two nail art colors: Fashionista (far left) is a silver glitter and Flower Girl (far right) is a gold shimmer. The polishes in between are Daddy's Girl (deep purple shimmer), Midnight Blue (blue shimmer), Out of This World (silver white shimmer), Sugar Sugar (red shimmer), and Last Chance (deep green creme). I already had Daddy's Girl, Sugar Sugar, and Last Chance in my stash, so they are re-promotes, but I'm not sure about the others.

I started my swatching with one of the colors, I didn't already have, Midnight Blue. This is a royal blue with very fine shimmer particles. I used two coats here, no topcoat.

I then added dots with Out of This World. My vision was that the dots would be like snow falling down into drifts on my tips, but my skills were not quite up to the task (the snow on my middle finger, for instance, appears to be falling in some wonky formation, and some of my dots are donuts). I hope you can see how packed with silver shimmer the polish is, though.

Sugar Sugar seemed the the most festive of the remaining polishes, so I put that on next. It's a pretty red shimmer with a bit more pop to it than Midnight Blue. This is two coats plus topcoat.

To decorate Sugar Sugar, I chose the Flower Girl nail art striper and attempted to make a design that looked like a Christmas tree ornament, the shiny ball kind with hand painted motifs like my Grandmother had on her tree. I don't have a lot of practice using stripers, so I had trouble gauging how much polish to load on the brush and how much pressure to apply when making my lines. I also tried to use the thin and floppy striper brush as a dottting tool, which was perhaps not the best idea. I added topcoat to at least level out the layers somewhat. As with the snowdrifts, I think the idea is fine, just the operator needs more training.

Sinful Colors polishes (regular and nail art both) retail for $1.99. Around here, I see them at Meijer, Rite Aid, and Walgreens.

The polishes shown in this entry were provided free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider.

Recent NOTD: Jessica Disco Diva

2011-12-16T16:52:00.004-05:00

You're going to want to settle in and get comfortable for this entry because I loved this polish so much that I took eleventy billion photos of it and had a very hard time cutting down that number when trying to decide which ones to include here. The polish in question is Jessica Disco Diva, which I got a heads up about thanks to Rachel of Rachel Marie's Nails. I don't run across Jessica in my usual travels, so didn't know they were doing a silver holo. It comes in a set called Hologram Chic along with a base coat named Retro Revival. (The bottles I got say "Hologram Top Coat" on them, rather than "Hologram Chic" as shown on the Jessica Cosmetics site, but I'm not fussed about that since it's the right stuff in the bottles.)

Doesn't look like much in the bottle, does it? Once it's dry on the nail, the rainbows start to peek out, even in indirect light:

This is two coats of Disco Diva. I put Instant Artificials on my nails first, then the Retro Revival base, then Disco Diva.

Take it outside into the sunlight and blam! Full on linear holo rainbow goodness!

Sunlight coming in through a window works, too:

No sunlight? No problem. It made pretty, pretty rainbows in my windowless laundry room lit just by the two-bulb ceiling fixture:

I was having such fun looking at this that I didn't want to take it off, but I did want to see how it looked compared to two other silver holos in my collection, GOSH Holographic and China Glaze OMG.

For the non-Jessica holos, I used Instant Artificials followed by Nfu Oh Aqua Base, then two coats of color. OMG didn't seem to like that base coat combination and got a little lumpy. Here's what they looked like in indirect light:

Top to bottom: Disco Diva, Holographic, Disco Diva, OMG.

In regular room light:

Top to bottom: Holographic, Disco Diva, OMG.

In sunlight through a window:

Left to right: OMG, Disco Diva, Holographic, Disco Diva.

As you can see, both Disco Diva and Holographic have bigger holo particles than OMG, and I think Disco Diva's might be slightly larger than Holographic's. Much as I love Holographic, and I do—it was on my Top 20 list last year—Disco Diva has taken over as my favorite silver holo. It seems to throw off more rainbow-y rainbows. Holographic is a very close second to it, though, and I'm not letting it go.

Holographic (top), Disco Diva (bottom).

My plan the day I put on Disco Diva was to swatch it, do a comp, then take it off and do a holiday-themed mani. Once I had it on, though, I just couldn't face removing it right away, so I painted the rest of my nails with it and turned it into a full mani. (I did leave the two fingers that already had Holographic and OMG as they were and wore it out that way—let's call it holo skittles.) Because I was going to wear this a while, I decided to try adding topcoat. I used my trusty Sally Hansen Insta Dri in the red bottle, and at first I thought I'd made a mistake, as the holo turned plain silver where the topcoat went on. Once it was dry, though, the rainbows were back! I did leave one nail un-topcoated to see what would happen and if I could notice any difference. After a couple days, the nail without topcoat definitely showed more wear, and the ones with topcoat had just as pretty rainbows, so I'll be using topcoat with this in future.

Disco Diva without topcoat (top), with topcoat (bottom).

The set of Disco Diva and Retro Revival retails for $24, which puts it in the OPI DS range per bottle, but this holo is way, way better than any of the recent OPI DS polishes. I'm hoping Jessica does more holos like this, in more colors. I like this one so much that I broke my "no more backups" rule for it. I don't think I'll run out, but I did seriously consider putting it right back on after I took it off, and that hasn't happened to me in a long time, so I decided it was worth it to have a backup just to keep my anxiety levels down.

Chanel Mimosa

2011-12-15T15:43:00.004-05:00

Some of you may remember me waffling about buying Mimosa in past months. Today I have that yellow shimmer to share with you, but I didn't have to buy it. This is thanks to Polish Pauper, who tried Mimosa and decided it wasn't for her, then thoughtfully offered her bottle to me. We figured out a swap and before too long I had Mimosa in my hands, with Chanel none the wiser (I don't think Chanel reads my blog, whereas I'm sure they do track my purchase history from their website).

Given the troubles I've had with lighter-toned Chanel shimmers before, my expectations for Mimosa weren't overly high, so I wasn't surprised when it needed three coats, was slightly streaky, and kept its shimmer hidden in most lighting situations. In my lightbox, it took on a decidedly lemony cast (i.e. sharp and bright and every so slightly green-tinged).

When I took it out in the weak winter sunlight (yay, we actually had some in my part of Michigan the day I swatched this), it looked warmer and flashed its shimmer more.

You know I love my comparisons, so I went to my nail wheels to find the most similar yellows in my stash. I came up with Revlon Top Speed Electric, Revlon Street Wear Taxi, and Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Solar Creme.

Note: Solar Creme is not really a creme; here's a close up of the bottle. Maybe Sally Hansen figured the shimmer was so shy they'd just call it a creme.

I used three coats of all of these, and all showed the same lemony inside, warmer outside face as Mimosa.

Top to bottom: Mimosa, Electric, Taxi, Solar Creme.

None of the dupe candidates were an exact match for Mimosa, but any would make a fine alternative if you have them. If you don't want to spend Chanel money on a yellow shimmer, Electric is still available in stores. I wish the Street Wears were still in stores; here's a closer look at Taxi, which was the best behaved of this group of yellows.

Polish Pauper also sent some fantastic extras with Mimosa, but I'll leave those as a surprise for later entries. (Looking at my "to be swatched" queue, probably much later entries.)

Wheel R2: Pink to Wine Shimmers, Plus a Contest

2011-12-14T17:10:00.001-05:00

Why pinks and wines and roses and rubies today? Just because it was the oldest wheel I hadn't yet posted.

1. Revlon Colorstay Always Pink (3 coats) [I was a huge fan of these when they first came out, even though I wasn't really comfortable not using base coat]
2. Sally Hansen Salon It's a Sheer Thing (3)
3. Borghese unlabelled mini (3)
4. Elf Pearl Pink (3)
5. OPI Pink Before You Leap (3)
6. OPI Thoroughly Modern Millie (4)
7. Sally Hansen Maximum Growth Vital Violet (3)
8. Revlon Ruby Ribbon (3)
9. Sally Hansen Salon American Beauty
10. Sally Hansen Maximum Growth Adoring Amethyst (3)
11. Essie It's Genius (3)
12. Rimmel Play Fast Killer Queen (3)
13. China Glaze Sugar Plums (2)
14. Zoya Valerie (2)
15. OPI Royal Rajah Ruby (2)
16. Borghese Bella Berry (2)
17. Borghese Bella Blackberry (3) [I don't know if they also made Bella Blueberry and Bella Boysenberry]
18. Savvy Red Caviar (2)
19. Finger Paints Just Plum Fun (2)
20. Color Club unlabelled (2)

Bottles 1 through 5:

6 through 10:

11 through 15:

16 through 20:

*****

My Season's Greetings Giveaway is over, but ASK Cosmetics is having one that runs until December 22nd. They're giving away a big prize package of their nail, skin and hair care products worth CAD$250. See Lisa's Nailcare Blog for details on how to enter. I am not affiliated with this company, but I might become so; I've read some good things about their nail conditioner and am hoping to get to try it out next year.

Recent NOTD: Essence Studio Nails

2011-12-13T11:53:00.003-05:00

Weekend before last I came across the Essence Studio Nails Nail Fashion Stickers I'd bought back in the summer when Ulta had the display. I'd read some not too favorable reviews of these after I bought them, which didn't make me excited to try them, but there they were so I figured I should use them. Of the two I had, I chose the black lace on pink design, called 07 All or Nothing.

The package said they'd last up to 5 days, half as long as the Sally Hansen Salon Effects box promises. That was fine, since that'd get me through the work week. They were less than half as expensive as the Sally Hansen strips, so it's not like I had paid the same for less wear time. The application process was similar to the Sally Hansen strips, except there's no orange stick or file provided, and there's no clear top sheet on the strips to remove. The Essence strips are a bit thicker; I found them easier to handle but harder to smooth over the curve of my nails. There are fewer sizes provided that with the Sally Hansen, and it was harder for me to find ones that fit my nails well, but it worked out okay. I had some bigger gaps around the strip than I'd like on some nails, and smaller gaps on others, but when they were all on it looked fine.

Wearing these, I did find I was noticing the edges of them catching on things, probably because of the thickness of the strips themselves. I probably could have gotten used to that. What really bothered me was how fast they started to look worn. Here they are after about 24 hours--not pretty:

Not only were the tips showing a lot of wear, the black part of the design was flaking off in spots well away from the tips. Since all I'd done in these was sleep and do my office job, I didn't think there was any reason for this sort of damage to have happened so fast.

By the end of day two, it was so bad I called a halt to the experiment. Just look at this mess:

The directions said to just peel them off to remove, which I did. I'm pretty sure I took a layer off my nails in the process—that's one way to get rid of stains, I guess.

So overall, I can't recommend these. Sorry Essence; you do a lot of fun polishes, and I wish you'd send more of them over here, but these strips are not good. I have one more package of these and think if I wear them at all, I'll just have to plan to only have them on for a few hours.

*****

In a more positive vein, Apothica (a sponsor of this blog) and the related site SkinCareRx are doing 12 days of giveaways on Facebook, starting today and running through Christmas Eve. They're going big, too: total prizes between the two giveaways are worth more than $5,000. To enter go to their pages here: Apothica and SkinCareRx.

Paul and Joe Holiday 2011

2011-12-12T17:04:00.002-05:00

Somehow all the nail polishes from Paul & Joe's Holiday 2011 collection, Ornamental, made their way to my stash. Okay, they made their way there because I ordered them. I definitely wanted one of them, was intrigued by a couple more, and figured if I was going to get three of the colors, I might as well get all five and make the completist in me happy. Here they are, left to right: 020 Home for Christmas, 021 Hallelujah, 022 O Holy Night, 023 Merrily on High, and 024 Rockin' Around.

I included the numbers up there because that's what's on the bottles. If the names are printed on the label somewhere, I haven't found them. As you can see, this isn't a typical assortment of Christmas colors, though they are named for Christmas songs. There's a green, but it's a light lime. The closest to red is a warm rosy pink. The gold has a bright bronze cast to it. Lilac and blue green round out the collection.

These came in green and silver patterned boxes, which are nice, though I didn't like them quite as well as the flowered ones from Summer 2011.

Home for Christmas was the one I was least certain about getting, since gold is the hardest metallic for me to wear. This is definitely the least flattering of the group on my skintone, but I'm still glad I bought it because I don't think I have any other polishes like it. The pink sparkles in it were an especially nice surprise. This is three coats, no topcoat.

Hallelujah, the lime green one, is a glitter topcoat. In the photo below, I'm showing one coat on my index finger (top) building to four coats on my pinky (bottom). No topcoat, and it's surprisingly smooth without it for such a glittery formula.

I love that this one is full of square glitter, some small, some larger. As much glitter as I have, very little of it is square. I noticed that these polishes were made in Japan; maybe that's where all the square glitter is hiding (and round—one of the summer Paul & Joe polishes had big round glitter in it, and that's also rare in my experience).

O Holy Night has square glitter in it, too: small blue, silver, and teal bits in a teal shimmer base. I used three coats of this one, though could probably have stopped at two. It could have used a topcoat as it was a bit bumpy on its own.

Merrily on High is what I think of as a spring color, a warm lilac shimmer. I have to give the brand credit for not naming this Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, as I've already run across too many variations on the name sugar plum for holiday polishes. At three coats, it was just a touch short of completely opaque, but certainly wearable.

Rockin' Around is a pretty shimmer in a warm pink color that makes me think of summer. In some lights, you can see sparks of orange and purple in this one. This is also three coats with no topcoat, and you'll see just a hint of visible nail line.

I couldn't resist trying the two glittery ones together, and oh my goodness, that worked out quite nicely. This is three coats of O Holy Night with two of Hallelujah.

It's like some fabulous undersea party! New Year's Eve at Neptune's castle, perhaps.

I've never seen this brand in stores, though I don't go to all the stores, so it could be out there. I've gotten mine from Aphotica.com (a sponsor of this site), b-glowing, and Urban Outfitters.

Season's Greetings Giveaway Winners

2011-12-10T11:47:00.001-05:00

Here are the ladies whose numbers came upon random.org when I drew winners in my most recent giveway:

Prize #1 Rescue Beauty Lounge Locavore is going to Sarah right here in Michigan. Well, not right here, exactly, or I'd probably have tried to talk her into meeting in person to hand off the prize because I love getting together with fellow nail polish afficiondos.

Prize #2 Red and Green Glitter will be moving south to Florida to live with Michelle.

Prize #3 Blue and Silver Snowmen are heading all the way to France to join rock-or-not's stash.

Prize #4 Nails Inc. Glitters will be returning to their home country in the UK; they were won by Beauty Shades.

Prize #5 Rescue Beauty Lounge Anne is on her way to Deborah of Love. Varnish, chocolate and more....

I was right that not everyone loves glitter as much as I do; the most popular prize this time around was Anne. I wasn't sure how the Nails Inc. polishes would do, since I've never included gently used bottles in a giveaway and had no idea if my view that used polish is no problem (unless it's from a salon that thins with remover) was shared by a lot of other poeple. Evidently is it, because there were a lot of entries for that prize; it actually ended up in second place behind Anne. I'm glad, since I'm planning that 2012 will be the year of de-duping my stash, and surely there will be some prize-worthy polishes I need to let go of.

Thanks to everyone who entered!

Flakies are Fun

2011-12-09T13:03:00.002-05:00

I rarely go into Sephora stores, since they haven't had the sense to locate any of them along my usual shopping routes. I guess they don't have to, since periodically I'll make big online orders because they send me codes and offers and such to entice me. My latest box from them contained The Donmar, a flakie polish from Nails Inc. that's sold in a set with Chelsea, a purple-leaning black creme. Because I don't like to be told what to do, I tried The Donmar over a base of Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure in Pat on the Black, a black-leaning plum creme. Two coats of the creme followed by two coats of the flakie got me this:

I was curious to see how The Donmar compared to some other flakies, so I pulled out my newest one, Essie Shine of the Times, and my oldest, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Hidden Treasure.

I used one coat of the Essie and Sally Hansen flakies because that seemed to give me a similar flakie density to two coats of The Donmar. On the nail, they all show an orange/green color shift but aren't identical. It depends on the light, of course, but in general I'd say The Donmar tends to green more often than the other two, which tend to favor their orange/rust faces.

Top to bottom (all over SH Pat on the Black): Shine of the Times, The Donmar, Hidden Treasure.

I held my nails at all sorts of angles to see what I could see (all in same order as above).

Then I put China Glaze Matte Magic over everything to see how that would look. Interesting, I decided.

Are you yeah or nay on flakies in general? Did you hunt for Hidden Treasure when it was released?

Christmas Crack Fail

2011-12-08T16:49:00.002-05:00

I had intended to do a festive Christmas look with some new crack I'd gotten from the Color Club display, but things didn't quite work out. The idea was fine: gold with dark red and dark green crackle on alternate nails. I chose Revlon Gold Coin for my base and applied two coats topped with OPI RapiDry to give the crackle a nice slick base to shatter on. Color Club Burgandy Blaze (yep, -gandy, not -gundy) and The Great Divide came next. The problem was that what looked dark green to me in the bottle (okay, teal-leaning, but still green enough) turned out to look blue on my nail. Last I checked, blue was not one of the top two Christmas colors.

As soon as I did my index finger I could see this was not going to be what I wanted, so I just played with the crack instead of doing a whole manicure. I used thin coats of crack on my index and middle fingers and thicker ones on my ring and pinky. You can see the differences in the patterns that result. I did add topcoat even though I didn't think I'd wear this out because crack needs topcoat to look its best.

Can you see why I thought The Great Divide would be green? Maybe it would be more green on a different base color, but I wanted gold for this look so didn't experiment.

If I hadn't had my heart set on green, I would have liked this just fine.

Here's Gold Coin on its own; looks like there's a fair bit of silver in there which means it gets along with my skintone better than most golds.

*****

The winners of the Season's Greetings Giveway have been chosen and notified by e-mail. I'll announce them all when I've heard from everybody.

Wheel R3: Teal and Turquoise Cremes

2011-12-07T15:24:00.002-05:00

I've got some calming cremes for Nail Wheel Wednesday today. Teal, turquoise, Tiffany, robin's egg—whatever they're called, I like them. Maybe it's the Pisces in me, longing for the sea.

1. OPI Mermaid's Tears (3 coats)
2. Sinful Open Seas (3)
3. Essence Colour & Go You Belong to Me (3)
4. Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Barracuda (3)
5. Rescue Beauty Lounge Bikini Bottom (4)
6. Essence Surfer Babe The World's Coolest (3)
7. Nox Twilight Poseidon (3) [my story about this color is longer than fits in a sidenote, so I'll put it below the bottle pics]
8. Sally Hansen New Lengths Marble Creme (3)
9. Finger Paints Tiffay Imposter (2)
10. Orly Frisky (2)
11. Sinful Savage (3)
12. Finger Paints Carnation Creation (2)
13. CQ Corduroy (2)
14. Orly Viridian Vinyl (2)
15. Diamond Cosmetics Don't Teal My Heart Away (2)
16. Color Zone unnamed (2)
17. Pop Beauty Turquoise (2)
18. Nailstation Court Circuit (2)
19. CND Urban Oasis (1) [yep, one coat]
20. Nails Inc. Portland Place (2)

Bottles 1 through 5:

6 through 10:

11 through 15:

16 through 20:

Regarding Nox Twilight Poseidon, I had an extra bottle of this that I swapped with someone over on MakeupAlley back in February or March. I hadn't put a photo in my listing; I usually don't because I'm not trying super hard to move my stuff and mostly swap with people who know what they're looking for already anyway. Some time after my end of the swap got to my partner, I got a message from her saying that the Poseidon I'd sent was not the real Poseidon and implying I'd altered the bottle by adding a lot of white and clear. I knew I had not done that. I knew that bottle looked like the bottle I still had in my stash, and every other bottle of that color I'd ever seen at Meijer, which was the only store around here that sold those polishes. Yet my partner had another bottle of Poseidon in her possession that was a much brighter blue, similar to the one seen on Scrangie. I'd never run across that version, so it never occurred to me to mention that the bottle I had up for swap was a dusty color. This situation really bothered me, so I scoured the web for photos taken by other people who had the same version I'd gotten and sent those links to my partner. She did see my point and it all ended up fine, but I still can't look at Poseidon without remembering that icky feeling I got when I read that first message saying she thought I'd sent a bad polish. (Yes, I do have problems letting go.) Interestingly, when I was poking around today looking for an example of the bright blue version of Poseidon, I found an entry from Emerald Sparkled in which she talks about how her bottle of Poseidon faded from bright blue to grey. It's been a while since I painted this wheel, I should go look and see if my Poseidon is grey now.

*****

Today's the last day to enter my Season's Greetings Giveaway, so if you haven't already, do eet.

I Got Yer Displays Right Here

2011-12-06T13:32:00.003-05:00

It's only been a couple weeks since my last display post, but I've seen enough new stuff since then that it's time for another one.

At Meijer, I spotted a Color Club Fractured display attached to the side of an endcap. This had some colors I hadn't seen from this line before as well as some I had. The full line up, starting at the top left: Kiss & Break Up (bright purple), Do You Want a Piece (darker purple), Burgandy Burst (dark red), Explosion (orange), The Great Divide (teal), Tattered In Gold (gold), Broken Tokens (silver), Smash Hit (black), Clean Break (white), and Splitting Image (blue).

While I was in Illinois over the Thanksgiving weekend I not accidentally ended up at a few different Walgreens stores, because the ones there have different things than the ones here. Like this holiday-themed Pure Ice display:

Or this Pure Ice display, with pairs of color and crack packaged with little color-coordinated nail files:

One Illinois Walgreens also had a Kleancolor Crack display; I've never seen Kleancolor anything at my Michigan Walgreens. There were six colors here: Red Crackle, Green Crackle, Teal Crackle, Blue Crackle, Purple Crackle, and Brown Crackle. There was a slot for Black Crackle, too, but that was sold out and the slot filled with another color.

At a Target in Illinois, I saw the mini sets that were sold out of the Nicole by OPI display I shared in the last go-round. One set, Merry Must Have Minis, had All Reinder Go the Heaven, Extra Snowflakes Please, Miss Claus' Night Out, and How Rude-olph. The other was Merry Mini Hit-Makers with Justin Bieber colors: Coral Denominator, Not a Gold Bigger, Fuchsia Wife, and I Pink I Love Him.

An Illinois Walgreens was the first place I saw the Revlon display with new colors, though since I've been home I've found this in Michigan Walgreens as well. These appear to be new core shades, though some are ones we've seen before with new names. From top left: Knockout, Sparkling (looks like Lippmann Some Enchanted Evening to me), Saucy, Charismatic, Foxy, Dreamer, Mysterious, Classy, Fashionista, Smoldering, Extravagant, Charming, Impulsive, Sassy, Posh, Scandalous (apparently the old name, Facets of Fuchsia, doesn't fit the new scheme), Flirt, Naughty (looks like Perplex got renamed too), Fearless, and Graceful.

There's another version of this new Revlon display that I've only seen at Bed Bath & Beyond so far (I'm fortunate to have one of the BB&B stores with a health & beauty section on my way home from work). This display has more colors in it than the Walgreens one. By the time I got to it, a couple shades were already sold out, but not the one I was most interested to see: Whimsical, which is quite like Lippmann's Glitter in the Air. The lineup here, starting top left: Foxy (brown shimmer), Sparkling (rosy pink glitter), Classy (peach), Knockout (black creme), Mischievous (taupe), Scandalous (fuchsia glitter in black), Flirt (purple leaning pink), Impulsive (purple), Radiant (formerly known as Blue Mosaic), Posh (green), Sassy (lime creme), Charistmatic (light orange), Muse (green leaning tan creme), Zealous (acid green), Timeless (light grey), Fearless (orange red), Whimsical (pink and blue glitter in light blue base), Angelic (pink), Dreamer (light blue), Mysterious (blue), Smoldering (grey shimmer), Charming (light purple), Fashionista (teal), Chic (no idea), Elegant (also no idea), Saucy (red), Popular (formerly known as Starry Pink), Bewitching (red), Extravagant (deep rose), Naughty (taupe shimmer), Graceful (light brown), Stunning (silver & holo glitter, looks like Belle).

Bed Bath & Beyond also had the Color Club Beyond the Mistletoe glitter collection: Gingerbread (gold), Beyond the Mistletoe (turquoise), Holiday Splendor (green), Sugar Plum Fairy (light lilac), Candy Cane (purpley pink), and Jingle Jangle (blue).

Essie Luxeffects (which I've been calling Luxe Effects) has finally started showing up in stores around here. Glitter and flakies and shimmer top coats—I've been looking forward to these! Ulta had them in one of the standard six-slot Essie displays (I think they just change out the cards in back); since there are only five colors in Luxe Effects that bothered my OCD-ness just a bit. Left to right: As Gold as It Gets, Set in Stones, Pure Pearlfection, A Cut Above, Shine of the Times, and As Gold as It Gets (again).

At Walgreens, there was a dedicated Luxeffects display with the five polishes in the collection plus five core colors, and the display suggested pairings. If I'm interpreting the little color squares correctly, Sew Psyched was matched with As Gold as It Gets, Eternal Optimist with Shine of the Times, Wicked with A Cut Above, Marshmallow with Pure Pearlfection, and Merino Cool with Set in Stones.

Rite Aid had a four-polish display; this was missing Shine of the Times, the flakie, which was disappointing. Why play this game, Essie? As long as you're going to be in drugstores, why not put all the colors there? And don't say because you have retail exclusives to make up for it, because we saw those pop up in salons this season, so they weren't especially exclusive, were they?

Sally Hansen continues to churn out new stuff; the latest I've seen is the relaunch of Diamond Strength with a new bottle shape and a mix of old and new colors. I heard this showed up at WalMart first, but since I try to avoid that place, I didn't see it until it hit CVS. Some of the colors were missing from this particular display, and someone (not me) had rearranged the remaining bottles to fill in gaps in the rows. At least this will give you an idea what to look for if you're after any of these. But they're new core, so there's no rush.

Walgreens had an endcap that combined the new Diamond Strength line and Gem Crush. This had a full selection of the Diamond Strength colors: Flawless, Diamonds, Platinum, Aisle Be There, Glass Slipper, Brilliant Blush, Champagne Toast, It's Chiff-on, Pink Promise, Pulled Sugar, Lavendar Marquis, Love Bug, Must-Have Iris, Fuchsia Bling Bling, Diamonds and Rubies, Red Velvet, Honeymoon Red, 3K or More, Nude Shimmer, Antique Bronze, Royal Romance, Wedding Crasher, Save the Date, and Black Diamond. There's also a Diamond Flash Fast Dry Top Coat, which I might have to try.

China Glaze Eye Candy popped up at Ulta and Sally Beauty. It looked like the Ulta display had room for two full sets of the six glitters in the collection. When I got there, it was full but there were three of some colors and none of others. The display at Sally had only four slots to start with. Not matter, I ordered mine online.

Finally, at CVS, over by the hand lotion because there's still candy piled up in the beauty area, I saw a Confetti display with colors I've seen before but just not in this configuration. Left to right: All That Glitters, Sugar Plums,
Rhapsody in Blue, Tinsel, Green With Envy (which I liked better when it was called My Favorite Martian, but maybe they got sued by whomever owns the rights to that name), Sprinkles on Top (used to be Ice Ice Baby), Blue Glitz, Snow Day (not sure, but looks like Happy Birthday).

This might be the last display post for 2011. I can't think of anything I'm still waiting to see, though I didn't know those Revlons were coming so it could be I'll be surprised by something else in the next few weeks. Seems a little late for anyone to get stuff out for the holiday shopping season, though.

Recent NOTD: Icy Winter Combo

2011-12-05T13:12:00.004-05:00

Today I've got a mani I liked so much I wore it days longer than I'd planned to. I was going for a wintery look think it worked out quite nicely. The key ingredient was a polish I got in a swap with mrsrexy, so I'm going to copy her and do this entry Canadian Nail Fanatic style, showing the finished look first and then the steps along the way (since it's me, there aren't that many steps).

I started with Confetti Rhapsody in Blue, a slightly greenish blue metallic-leaning shimmer. I put two coats over treatment (Orly Nailtrition) and basecoat (Salon Sciences Instant Artificials) and topped with Sally Hansen Insta Dri Anti-Chip topcoat.

I wore the blue by itself for a couple days before adding stamping with Sally Hansen Insta Dri Whirwind White and an eight-pointy star sort of design from fauxnad plate m69, which is the closest thing I have to a snowflake.

I topped it off with Nubar White Polka Dot, which is the one I'd gotten from mrsrexy (along with many other pretties that I hope to get on my nails before too long). I was so happy with how this glitter looked that I couldn't stop at one coat and did two, for more of a snowy effect. I added OPI RapiDry on top of that. (I'm not giving up my Sally Hansen quick dry, but I figure it's good to have a backup plan in case it goes the way of Nail Quencher and Prisms and Magicals and Chrome Nail Makeup.)

I loved looking at this, seeing the tiny glitters winking at me and the big glitters floating over the stamped "snowflakes". Thanks for the Polka Dots, mrsrexy; they really made this mani! I ended up keeping this on a whole week, even though I'd had two polish changes planned (yes, I'm a planner, and about every fourth week I can fit in two swatching sessions instead of the usual one). Due mostly to laziness, I left my thumbs alone when I did the stamping and glitter, so I can report that the Confetti on its own lasted surprisingly well for me, with no chips and only minimal tipwear. Not bad for $1.99 (or maybe it's up to $2.19 now, I forget).

Speaking of mrsrexy, she's having a giveaway right now with a big prize package of polishes and stamping plates. I grabbed a copy of her photo of the goodies so you can see for yourself:

Her contest is open until December 21st. (Mine closes on the 7th, so go enter if you haven't already.)

More Sally Hansen Brochures

2011-12-03T12:23:00.002-05:00

If two episodes makes a series, let's call this Scanning Saturday. I picked up the brochures for the two newest Sally Hansen lines, and as with the Complete Salon Manicure one, I don't want to keep them around my house but do want to document them before I drop them in the recycle bin. (I suppose I could take them back to CVS and slip them into the display, but I'd likely forget and they'd ride around in my backpack for months—besides one of them seems to have some schmutz on it.)

Here's Gem Crush (which I bought all of already):

And Smooth and Perfect (which I've bought none of yet, though I am intrigued by the idea of streak-free pastels):

Hope you're all having a good weekend! Here it's mostly chores so far—I'm on laundry load two of probably six or seven (being gone for Thanksgiving meant things piled up, literally)—though I did make blueberry pancakes for breakfast, so that was a good start to the day at least.

Recent NOTD: Sally Hansen Show Your Stripes

2011-12-02T11:57:00.003-05:00

For my Thanksgiving week nails, I went with Sally Hansen strips as I am wont to do when I'm traveling. I chose the black and silver Show Your Stripes pattern, which was a one of the limited edition patterns for Summer 2011.

My nails are still short enough that I could do my whole mani with only half the strips in the package. I'm thinking of just keeping them this length even if I manage to stop damaging a nail or two every week by doing something dumb (usually reaching for something without paying attention and jamming a tip into a hard surface); when I look at photos from my long ovals from early October, they look weird to me, like those aren't my hands or something. I don't know; maybe I'll get used to it again as they grow out.

I used a coat of Orly Nail Defense under these this time because my nails were feeling like they needed it. On day six, I noticed a couple of the strips starting to lift at the base of my nail. I don't know that the Nail Defense was to blame, though I haven't used it as an undercoat before, just Orly Nail Envy, but I'm wondering. The Nail Defense was from my last remaining old formula bottle, which has some old school chemicals in it that might not play nicely with the strips, which are 3-Free. On the other hand, if they didn't play nicely, why would that only show up on day six? Maybe it was a side effect of knitting; I started a pair of socks late that week. I don't remember doing a lot of knitting with these strips on before, so maybe the yarn is rubbing against the base edges and lifting them. In any case, they did last through the holiday weekend, which was my main goal.

Recent NOTD: Orly Sea Gurl, Cracked

2011-12-01T12:17:00.003-05:00

Fowl Play got most of the attention when Orly's Birds of a Feather collection came out, including from me, which is why it took me so long to try Sea Gurl, a deep grey shimmer. When I did try it, I liked it very much. It's packed with metallic shimmer, yet doesn't get all brushstroke-y like metallic shimmers sometimes can, and I got great coverage in two coats. Impressed as I was, I know my tendency to get bored when all my nails look the same, so I added accents of China Glaze Oxidized Aqua on my ring fingers and thumbs. I didn't wait quite long enough for the base to dry, so the cracking on my left hand wasn't as good as on my right (which I do first, so it was drier). It still kept me entertained regardless.

See—better cracking on my right hand (worse moisturizing, though):

Anecdotal evidence shows that even though many in the nail world are over crack, muggles are still interested. At the last two family gatherings I've been to this fall (wearing SH strips, because I was traveling), I've been asked about crack by various relatives, most of whom don't even wear polish.

Wheel V2: Orange-y Shimmers

2011-11-30T13:31:00.002-05:00

We had our first snow that stuck this morning, so I felt like going warm for Nail Wheel Wednesday. I'm getting to the point in my wheel swatching project that I'm getting close to the end of some colors/finishes (provided I don't buy more, which is always a possibility), so this one has everything from pinky corals to a very deep rust.

1. Revlon Sublime Strawberry (2 coats)
2. Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Peach Pavé (3)
3. Nox Twilight Citrus (2)
4. L'Oreal Rocking' Pink (2)
5. L'Oreal Mandarine (3)
6. LA Colors Color Craze unknown (3) [why can't they label their bottles? why!?]
7. Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Poppy (2)
8. Hoof Hands Ditty Dottin' (2)
9. Essence Multi Dimension Object of Desire (2)
10. Sally Hansen HD Hi-Definition Wavelength (2)
11. Piggy Polish TomaTOES (2)
12. OPI All Shook Up (3)
13. Ulta A Tail of Two Cities (3)
14. Milani Metal Gear (3) [could be two coats, I just got carried away]
15. Piggy Polish Copper Harbor (2)
16. OPI Man of La Mancha (3)
17. OPI Take the Stage (3)
18. Sinful Serena and Chloe (4)
19. China Glaze Iron Cross 360 (3)
20. CHI Carriage Ride to Radio City (2) [the shimmer is so subtle in this one it might as well be a creme]

Bottles 1 through 5:

6 through 10:

11 through 15:

16 through 20:

*****

Don't forget to enter my Season's Greetings Giveaway, if you haven't already done so.

Recent NOTD: SpaRitual Solitude, Plussed

2011-11-29T15:19:00.005-05:00

SpaRitual is one of the brands I've gotten involved with only recently. It doesn't seem that widely distributed in the places I frequent; I've never seen it in a bricks and mortar store, and only a couple of my go-to online retailers stock it. I did see SpaRitual swatches pop up in my travels around the blogs and boards and some of those piqued my interest, especially when I read that the brand is affiliated with Orly, one of my favorites, so I ordered some bottles and swapped for a couple more. Solitude, a dusty purple creme, is the first one I've tried for a full mani. I used two coats of this color, but three would have been better, since I noticed a few thin spots after I got the topcoat on.

I wasn't as enamored with this one on my nails as I was with it in the bottle; it seemed to lose some of its interesting dustyness. It was fine, really, just not quite what I'd hoped. Maybe it would have been better in the sun, except we didn't have so much sun while I had this on. I wore it by itself for a few days, hoping it would grow on me, but finally had to spice it up with a stamped funky French a la Fingers. I chose the houndstooth design from Konad plate m63. For the stamping, I used Sally Hansen Chrome Nail Makeup in Carnelian Chrome, which I bought from nailXchange's blog sale (which she appears to have extended until today), and which I chose especially for this mani because it was pink and would likely annoy Fingers. What can I say, we just have that sort of relationship.

There's a certain amount of wonkiness in both my stamping and my freehand tips, but on the whole I was happy with it, and it was certainly a lot more interesting than Solitude alone.

I only did the tip on my thumb to mix things up, and used OPI RapiDry instead of my usual Sally Hansen Insta Dri topcoat to seal on the chrome.

Chromes are something, along with Prisms, I'd like to see Sally Hansen bring back. Sally seems to have a short attention span, so maybe one of these rounds of lines coming and going she'll revisit the good ideas from the past. When the chromes were first out, I don't think anyone was stamping, and they're great for that.

Season's Greetings Giveaway

2011-11-28T18:06:00.023-05:00

With Thanksgiving behind us here in the U.S., many of us turn our thoughts to Christmas. Regardless of what you celebrate at this time of year, I believe there's no bad time for free stuff, so I'm giving away a few sparkly things that seem appropriate for the holiday season.

Prize #1: Rescue Beauty Lounge Locavore

Which you probably remember from my last post.

Prize #2: Red and Green Glitter

Two of this year's snowmen—a red and green chunky glitter and green and gold microglitter—teamed up with the star from last year's Wet 'n' Wild Megalast holiday collection of mini polishes, Prancer.

Prize #3: Blue and Silver Snowmen

I saved these guys from last year; there's blue microglitter, silver with scattered holo glitter, and blue foil. I swatched the silver and the foil here.

Prize #4: Nails Inc. Glitters

I feel a little weird about this one, since unlike all the other prizes these are not brand new bottles I bought specifically to give away. These are the bottles I swatched for the comparison post last week. Now that I know I have fine dupes for them, I really don't want these around to remind me that I could have bought something else with that money. I'll feel much better about it if I can send them to a home where they'll be welcomed instead of resented.

Prize #5: Rescue Beauty Lounge Anne

I know not everyone likes glitter (Fingers, I'm talking to you), so here's Anne, the murky-in-a-good-way green shimmer from the Tudor Queens collection. I swatched her with her sister queens here.

To keep it simple, as this season of joy, peace, and love can also be a season of stress, all you have to do to enter is tell me your e-mail and which prize is your favorite. I'll choose a winner for each from the names which favorited that prize. International entries are welcome. I'll be closing the contest at midnight in the Eastern U.S. time zone on Wednesday, December 7, 2011. Good luck, and thanks for reading!

P.S. While you're waiting for this prize draw, if you're into glitter, you might want to go visit Beanie's blog sale; she's now got the frankens I swatched here, here, and here on offer.

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Locavore is Here!

2011-11-28T10:51:00.001-05:00

You may remember that way back in April, I got all bossy and told you to vote for Locavore in Rescue Beauty Lounge's Bring It Back contest, because it was the one RBL glitter I did not have and I really, really wanted it. Happily, Locavore was one of the winners, and I ordered it as soon as the pre-order e-mail came. Then there was the waiting, but finally Locavore arrived!

My delight at completing my RBL glitter set was a tiny bit dimmed by the box in which Locavore showed up—I don't store my RBLs in their boxes, but if I ever decide to, this one won't match the other two glitters. I've never seen these red boxes before and do not like them. Part of what bothers me (besides the not matching my other boxes) is that they've got the regular RBL colors on sides and back, so the red front and top looks extra clashy. (I am also not happy that the limited edition sticker is slightly out of skew; for $18 a bottle, I expect little things like that to be paid attention to.)

That's more than enough whining about the packaging—the important thing is the polish. I decided to introduce Locavore to some coordinating colors from my stash: Revlon Gold Coin, Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Anemone of Mine, and Sinful Last Chance.

Above, top to bottom: Locavore alone, Locavore over Gold Coin, over Anemone of Mine, and over Last Chance. All are four coats with top coat; the layered looks have two of color and two of Locavore. I didn't use base coat because I was just swatching; I will not make that mistake with Last Chance again—I got some serious staining from that one and I wasn't wearing it for very long at all.

Above is a closeup of Locavore alone; I really felt four coats were needed for maximum bling, but a normal person would probably be happy stopping at three.

Using a gold base (as in foreground above) seems like a good way to get the look of pure Locavore without having to do so many coats. Next time, I might try a yellower gold to better match the gold glitter bits in the RBL.

Of course I love it over purple; that lets each of the glitter colors stand out.

Deep green is a good base for Locavore, too. I'm so glad I finally have this glitter in my stash! As promised back in April, I did buy an extra bottle of this to give away; it'll be part of my holiday contest which I'll announce either later today or tomorrow depending on how smoothly it goes at work this first day back after the long holiday weekend.

Glitter Comparisons

2011-11-23T16:40:00.002-05:00

Two posts in one day? Believe it. With all the family stuff going on over the Thanksgiving holiday, I'm not planning on posting for the next four days, but I have so many things I want to post that I decided to just get this one done today. It's a followup the the glitter wheel I posted this morning, with the ones that looked the most dupe-y to me.

First up, Sally Hansen Gem Crush Be-Jeweled and Wet 'n' Wild Color Icon It's All in the Cut. They look really similar in the bottle, don't they?

It's All in the Cut (left), Be-Jeweled (right).

On the nail, the only difference I could spot is that the glitter in the Sally Hansen is less dense. I used four coats of Be-Jeweled and three coats of It's All in the Cut, plus topcoat in both cases.

It's All in the Cut (top), Be-Jeweled (bottom).

Top to bottom: Be-Jeweled, It's All in the Cut, Be-Jeweled, It's All in the Cut.

The Wet 'n' Wild wins this battle of the light purple with pink glitter—it's cheaper and covers better. Too bad it's limited edition. The Sally Hansen is not bad; it will build, and near as I can tell it should get restocked since the display didn't say limited edition (and the bottles have numbers on them with the shade names--usually Sally's limited editions do not have numbers).

Next up, the purple with fuchsia glitters: Wet 'n' Wild Back Alley Deals and Nails Inc. Special Effects Bloomsbury Square.

Back Alley Deals (left), Bloomsbury Square (right).

Back Alley Deals (top), Bloomsbury Square (bottom).

Top to bottom: Bloomsbury Square, Back Alley Deals, Bloomsbury Square, Back Alley Deals.

I used three coats of each plus topcoat, and couldn't really tell a difference. Wet 'n' Wild wins this battle, too, since the Nails Inc. is $9.50 at Sephora versus the $2.99 I paid for the Wet 'n' Wild. But again, there's the limited edition problem with the Wet 'n' Wild. Why you no make these core, Wet 'n' Wild?

Finally we have Nails Inc. Sloane Square, Wet 'n' Wild Diamond in the Rough, and Sally Hansen Glitz Gal.

Left to right: Sloane Square, Diamond in the Rough, Glitz Gal.

You maybe don't even need me to tell you how this one came out, but I will. The Nails Inc. and Wet 'n' Wild took three coats to Sally Hansen's four, and even then Ms. Sally was still more sheer than the other two.

Top to bottom: Sloane Square, Diamond in the Rough, Glitz Gal.

Left to right: Diamond in the Rough, Glitz Gal, Diamond in the Rough, Sloane Square.

You can really see by this point that I was getting so aggravated by the fact I'd bought all these dupes in the span of a few weeks that I rushed through cleanup. Looking on the bright side of my buying spree, I was able to do this post as a result and at least showed some restraint and didn't get all four of the Nails Inc. glitters. Poking around the web, it appears that Wet 'n' Wild Believe Me It's Real is close to Nail Inc. Connaught Square and Cost Is No Issue is close to Fitzroy Square. I am glad there are so many glitters coming out but sure wish there were more variety instead of all these dupes.

And with that, I am off for the holiday. Happy Thanksgiving to those of you celebrating this weekend! I am thankful for all of you that I've "met" through this blog, and those of you who I haven't had the chance to meet yet but who take time out of your day to read my posts. Without you, this would be 99% less fun.

Wheel X5: Glitters from Wet 'n' Wild, Sally Hansen, Nails Inc., and Amour

2011-11-23T10:32:00.001-05:00

This makes two glittery Nail Wheel Wednesdays in a row, and I'm good with that.

(3 coats plus topcoat unless otherwise noted)

1. Wet 'n' Wild Color Icon It's All in the Cut
2. Wet 'n' Wild Color Icon Back Alley Deals
3. Wet 'n' Wild Color Icon Believe Me It's Real
4. Wet 'n' Wild Color Icon Cost is No Issue
5. Wet 'n' Wild Color Icon Diamond in the Rough
6. Wet 'n' Wild Color Icon 24 Carats
7. Wet 'n' Wild Color Icon Rockin' Rubies
8. Wet 'n' Wild Color Icon Give Me a Price Quote
9. Sally Hansen Gem Crush Showgirl Chic
10. Sally Hansen Gem Crush Blingtastic (4 coats; I'm not sure what happened here)
11. Sally Hansen Gem Crush Glitz Gal
12. Sally Hansen Gem Crush Cha-Ching
13. Sally Hansen Gem Crush Lady Luck
14. Sally Hansen Gem Crush Be-Jeweled
15. Sally Hansen Gem Crush Razzle Dazzler
16. Sally Hansen Gem Crush Big Money [my favorite of the Gem Crush]
17. Nails Inc. Bloomsbury Square
18. Nails Inc. Sloan Square
19. Amour Rain Glitter
20. Amoure Black Glitter (2)
15. Sally Hansen Gem Crush

Bottles 1 through 4:

5 through 8:

9 through 12:

13 through 16:

17 through 20:

Eighteen of these twenty polishes joined my collection in the last month or so, which somehow makes it extra frustrating that there are a few sets of dupes in there. On the positive side, comparing them means I have plenty of material for my next post.

Pre-Black Friday Display Report

2011-11-22T13:59:00.003-05:00

Post-Thanksgiving holiday shopping madness is almost upon us here in the States, so it seems like a good time for another display post. In the spirit of holiday excess, there are a lot of photos in this post since there's a lot of new merchandise in the stores.

Let's start at Ulta, where I do still drop by even though their rewards program in my area gets more and more annoying every quarter. This time, the only nail polish on the list of rewards is Ulta salon line, which I already have every color of that I'm even remotely interested in. Guess I'll end up getting another perfume I'll rarely wear. But enough of my whining about that, let's see what they've put out on the shelves lately.

These Ulta brand Nail Prints showed up just after my last display post. There are some cute designs, but no way am I paying $12.50 for them. I can't even make myself buy the Sally Hansen strips for full price, and I already know I like those and that they'll wear well. A few of these designs look quite similar to some that Sally Hansen already did.

Ulta had the full six-color display of Essie Cocktail Bling for Winter 2011, with Cocktail Bling, School of Hard Rocks, Bobbing for Baubles, Size Matters, Jingle Jangle, and Brooch the Subject.

They also had the Essie Dive Bar display, which is a grouping of previously released shimmers: Dive Bar, Steel-ing the Scene, Jamaica Me Crazy, Sexy Divide, Trophy Wife, and Over the Top.

Looks like Piggy Polish has two holiday displays this year. The first, Jingle Belle, is green and gold, with Jingle, Belle! (lime green shimmer), Ivy Leaf in Santa Claus (deep green creme), and Baby, it's GOLD outside (weathered gold shimmer).

On, Prancer! is the second Piggy Polish display. This one is red and purple, with Prancer (red shimmer), Just called to Sleigh Hello (red glitter), and Moonlight & Mistletoe (plum shimmer).

My Ulta visits didn't line up very well with the OPI Muppets release; by the time I saw the displays some colors were sold out already. Good think I'd already bought the ones I wanted online.

I did see a fairly full display of the OPI Ulta holiday exclusives, but wasn't overly excited by them because as Polish Wasteland, pointed out, there's nothing that special here. The deep pink glitter, A Sparkle Yule Love, looks just like Excuse Moi from Muppets. The charcoal glitter, How's It Snowin'?, is a dupe for Nina Ultra Pro Glamrock. The red jelly glitter, Speak for Your-Elf, is pretty, but I would have much rather had a purple jelly glitter instead.

There were new polish colors in the Pop Beauty section, including three kinds of crack, which they call Crash: Split Silver, Wrecked White, and Broken Black. There were also new foils: Naked Metal (rose gold), Golden Metal (gold), and Ruby Metal (out of stock, so I'm not sure but I'd guess reddish pink). Looks like to make room for the new ones, they took away all of the ones that used to be there except Violetta and Pinkest, which oddly are the only two from the old lineup that I hadn't yet bought. (There were a few bottles left of the old colors.)

The last new thing I spotted at Ulta were the Nicole by OPI holiday glitters, which were in a display with two colors of Texture Coat (a.k.a. crack).

I also saw the Nicole by OPI holiday polishes at Target. They had the glitters—Glitter in My Stocking (gold), Orna-ment for Each Other (red), My Sleigh's in the Shop (fuchsia), and Snow-man of My Dreams (blue)—along with a red shimmer called Berry Sweet and four Texture coat colors. Below that, there were two-packs (Chrome for the Holidays with You Can Sleigh that Again and Brrr, Brrr Burgundy with Come in from the Coal'd) and empty slots where something good must have been because they were all sold out (I think it was mini sets but I'm not sure).

Meijer had put out the Studio M holiday display. As typical for these seasonal ones, it's a mix of core colors, re-released, and Color Club dupes. Top row, left to right: Gold Glitter, Slammin' Red, Silver Lining, Sex Symbol, Purple Medallions, Special Effects, Gel-ous, Drama Queen. Middle row: Wonderland, Naughty & Nice, Snowed In, Dashing, Orna-mint, Gift of Gold, Bluecicile, Reindeering. Bottom row: Sugar Plums (looks darker than last year's version), De-luxe-cious, Sleigh Bells, Magnetism, Cupid & Vixen, Drama Queen (yep, in here twice), Ego Trip, and Oh Joy! (looks yellower than last year's).

The snowman mosh pit was in full swing; why they're cheaper than the pumpkins were I'm not sure since they're just as cute if not cuter:

The last time I was at Meijer, I saw three Sally Hansen mini sets: HD Hi-Definition, Xtreme Wear, and Insta-Dri. This time there was a fourth: Diamond Strength.

Besides the Sally Hansen minis, there were plenty of other options for nail polish sets at Meijer. The Super Glitz Collection had six full-size bottles of glitter polishes. There were two Ornaments mini sets, one with all glitter and one with a mix of finishes. There were scented minis in square bottles.

My eyes about popped out when I saw this next display at Meijer: 24 new designs of Sally Hansen Salon Effects strips. 24! Nowhere on here does it say limted edition, so I'm wondering if they're going to be discontinuing some or all of the existing designs or expanding that section of the core display or what. I guess we'll find out once it happens, since Sally Hansen is not known for keeping the nail world informed of her decisions. In the meantime, I will be distracted by deciding which of these I need to stock up on when they go on sale. The solid colors in this group (eight of them) are much more on the classic end of the spectrum than the ones in the current core display, which I really could have used last summer when I wanted some to wear to a wedding. I can see myself wearing any one of the 16 prints, depending on the occasion. There's Sweet Tart-an (pink and wine argyle), Tri-bal It On (black and white geometric), Brattlesnake (tan and black snakeskin), Queen of the Jungle (giraffe), Spring Fever (bright flowers), Stripe-Tease (red and black horizontal stripes), Tie-Dye for (pink and purple tie dye), Tattoo Much tattoo scrolls and flowers), Love Letter (black handwriting on soft white), Animal Instinct (red and black zebra), Lust-rous (silver and gold glitter on black), I Love Lacey (black lace on red), Mod About You (peach/purple/blue quilt!), Aflorable (sage/red/white vines), Tweed-le Dee (black/white tweedy plaid), and Hear Me Roar (black/blue dalmation spots).

To fill the void now that the hunt for Wet 'n' Wild Ice Baby is over, Walgreens has put out a few new things for me to look at. They had a subset of the new Sally Hansen strips (and they were clearancing the neon solid ones in the core display):

Walgreens also had things I've not seen anywhere else, starting with this L'Oreal Colour Riche holiday collection. The brushed gold caps are round, which is a different look than we've seen from L'Oreal in recently. Four colors here: Because You're Worth It (gold shimmer), Stroke of Midnight (charcoal shimmer), Violet Vixen (berry creme), and Breaking Curfew (deep plum).

Also at Walgreens, I saw Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure packs with two colors and clear for $9.99, which is a good price if you need clear and don't already have the core colors in the pack. The Chic Collection is gold and red, while Flirty is bright and light pink, Glam is silver and wine, and Haute is taupe and black.

Still at Walgreens, there were Kiss Nail Dress full-nail stickers for $7.99.

There's not much to report from Rite Aid lately. They do have some holiday mini sets similar to those at Meijer. Instead of six polishes in the round bottles, they have two assortments of four colors packaged with nail gems. Their assortment of scented ones isn't quite the same as at Meijer, either.

The only other new thing I've seen at Rite Aid recently was a Wet 'n' Wild Little Luxuries set with nine Color Icon minis. I know I showed one of these last display post, but this one has a slightly different assortment of colors. the biggest thing with this one is what looks like a dupe for last year's Prancer Megalast mini: chunky red glitter.

Moving on to CVS, I was once again confronted by the annoying practice they seem to have instituted region-wide this holiday: candy in the beauty section. These shelves here, between the nail polish pimp canes and the Revlon mascara standing display, should have nail polish displays on them. Or makeup displays. Or even those holiday perfume and bath products gift sets that pop up everywhere this time of year. Not candy. I like candy; I have no trouble finding the candy in the candy aisle. Candy in the beauty section is just not right.

Because of the candy situation, the Sally Hansen Gem Crush display was relegated to a top shelf next to some shampoo. Oh, so much glitter. Eight colors: Showgirl Chic (silver), Cha-Ching (red), Big Money (cool gold), Bling-tastic (turquoise), Be-Jeweled (lilac), Razzle Dazzle (dusty rose), Lady Luck (deep pink), and Glitz Gal (charcoal). I had actually seen this display at Meijer a few days before, but it was nearly empty, with only about four polishes left. It could be due to them being priced at $5.99 at Meijer and $7.39 at CVS. This doesn't say limited edition on it, so I'm hoping for a restock and sale at Meijer.

Right next to Gem Crush was another new Sally Hansen display (also not labeled limited edition), Smooth and Perfect. Seriously? Another new line? Where is that going to go in the core display? What's going to get bumped? And why do we need this particular line? It hides ridges, the display says. Well, okay, but so does a good base coat. Allows 20% more oxygen to reach nails, it says. Since when do my nails need oxygen? Streak-free, it says. Hmm, now we might be talking sense. These are all pastel ice-cream colors, which do have a tendency to streak. But why not just improve the formula for an existing line and re-launch? I really do not need yet another bottle shape and size in my Sally Hansen drawers (when I get back to storing by brand, now predicted to happen in summer 2012). Eight colors here as well: Fog (very light tan), Linen (pink), Dune (tan), Satin (slightly darker pink than Linen), Whisper (lilac), Air (light blue), Sea (light green), and Sorbet (peach). These all look pearly in the bottle. They might be quite pretty on the nail but a) I am not in the mood to buy pretty spring pastels right now and b) see above for ranting about a new line.

Whew. That empties my display photos folder for this go 'round. If you got this far, thanks for sticking with it!

Recent NOTD: Miyo Princess Plus Water Decals

2011-11-21T12:19:00.005-05:00

For a change of pace from all the glitter and dark colors I've been wearing lately, I decided to go sheer and pink with my nails. I use Miyo Nailed It! in Princess, one of the polishes I got in my swap with Akuma Kanji. This shimmer went on quite nicely; I used two coats and there was no streakiness like sometimes happens with light colors.

Pretty as this was, my short attention span meant I couldn't leave it alone for too long, so a few days later I added some water decals that the Born Pretty nail art store had sent me for review.

I selected a pink and purple design I thought coordinated nicely with the Miyo, then peeled back the protective plastic sheet and snipped out some stripes. (I suppose I could have cut through the plastic as well and then removed it, but that seemed like it would be more fiddly than just cutting the decal sheet.)

I got a surprise when they slid off the backing after I wet them with water; there was a lacy white border I hadn't noticed against the white backing paper. I think these decal stripes were designed to be used as fancy French tips, but I went a different way and put them vertically down the length of my nails. They slid around pretty easily when they were still wet, so I was able to get them mostly straight (though I did tug too hard a couple times and get some tiny rips in the pattern). After they were dry, I sealed them with top coat (OPI RapiDry, which played nicely with the decals). These decals are so thin that once the topcoat was on and dry, I couldn't even feel them when I ran my finger over my nail.

This set of decals is available on the Born Pretty site here, starting at $4.73 for one set with quantity discounts available. Use code KARENDK31 for 10% off.

The water decals used for this entry were provided to me for free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the products for my own use.

From the Archives

2011-11-19T16:58:00.002-05:00

I was flipping through some old magazines this morning before putting them in the recycling bin and found a Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure brochure stuck in one of them. It's got a list of the orignal core colors for this line, which came out in late 2009 (replacing the Salon line, whose square bottles and rubberized caps I still miss). For historical purposes, I thought I'd scan it (and now the original can got into the recycling bin, too).

Quite a few of these are in my stash now. I think I've got all of the Brights & Vibrants column and most of the Metallics/Stones, but I'm not sure if I have any of the Classics.

Dr.'s REMEDY Holiday Hues

2011-11-18T16:13:00.004-05:00

As I teased yesterday, I received the Jolly & Joy holiday collection from Dr.'s REMEDY and wanted to get these swatches posted today before the special pricing of $14 on three of the colors expires.

(Image courtesy of Dr.'s Remedy.)

Because it's a holiday collection, I decided to do Christmas skittles with ESSENTIAL Emerald and REVIVE Ruby Red. Essential has very small silver shimmer particles in a true green base; I used three coats. Revive's shimmer is tone-on-tone, with red shimmer in a deeper red base; it's got a lot of depth to it even with just the two coats I used. When I was applying these, I was afraid they were going to be brushstroke-y, but they settled out pretty nicely.

I tried PASSION Purple with an accent nail of RESOLUTION Red Glitter. Both of these were three coats, and I added topcoat to the glitter to smooth it out. Passion is a plummy purple with a subtle shimmer (but not so subtle it disappears in normal light like some do). Resolution is a rosy pink, not what I would have pictured from the "red glitter" appended to its name.

I saved the best for last: SERENE Silver Glitter. Based on the press release, I wasn't especially excited about this one; I have plenty of silver glitter in my stash already. (I know, I know—what can't I say that about?) Once I had the bottle in my hands, though, I was intrigued. It's not just silver glitter; there are pops of frosty blue and bright pink in there as well.

I think we've all had polishes that look good in the bottle but which don't translate to the nail; this is not one of those. I liked it so much on my nails that I was making plans to order my own bottle before it dried, which wasn't very long as I only used two coats plus topcoat.

Here it is blurry; still pretty:

And here it is in low light, all sparkly:

Thanks to an onset of winter-like weather consisting of clouds and snow flurries, I was not able to get any sun shots of this one. I bet they would have been super sparkly, though. I can't think of another polish I have that's quite like this one.

As mentioned yesterday, SERENE Silver Glitter, RESOLUTION Red Glitter, and ESSENTIAL Emerald Green are on special for $14 a bottle through end of today on the Dr.'s REMEDY website or by calling 1-877-323-NAIL to order (if you're ordering over $50, the code HOLIDAY should work for free shipping; I couldn't get that part to work on the website.) Dr.'s Remedy is on Facebook and Twitter, too.

A Couple of Announcements

2011-11-18T11:27:00.001-05:00

Apothica, which came on as a sponsor of this blog earlier this year, is offering a 20% friends and family discount on most brands through midnight Mountain Standard Time on Wednesday, November 23rd, if you use the coupon code FRIEND20 at checkout.

I used this code to get some pretties from Paul & Joe and Deborah Lippmann. Some SpaRituals were tempting me, too, but I managed to check out before they jumped in my cart.

In other news, I made a Google+ page for this blog; if you'd like to follow there, click here:

Frazzle and Aniploish on

Since Google+ came on the scene (and Facebook continues to mess with their format in ways that annoy me), I've been spending less time on Facebook, but if you'd like to see a FB page for this blog, let me know in the comments. If there seems to be interest, I'll finally publish the FB page I made ages ago and never did anything with.

Dr.'s REMEDY Fall Fever Collection

2011-11-17T16:23:00.003-05:00

Today I've got a brand to share that I've never tried before: Dr.'s REMEDY. Their fall collection consists of three colors: BALANCE Brick, DEFENSE Deep Red, and NOBLE Navy. (Capitalization as per the labels.)

I started my swatching with Balance.

I know it says Brick right there on the label, but it pulled a lot more red on me than the rusty orange color I think of as brick. No matter, it's a nice red that covered in three coats.

One of the selling points for this polish line is that it was created by two podiatrists with an eye toward making a healthy alternative to traditional nail polish. It's not just free of the Big 3 chemicals, it's enriched with stuff like tea tree oil.

Defense came next; it's described as deep red, and it certainly is. So deep it tends to look black in some lights. I used three coats of this one as well, though I probably could have done two if I'd made them thicker.

I saved my favorite of these colors for last: Noble. It's a navy blue, not as deep blue as Defense is deep red. I used two coats of this one.

These polishes are available at the Dr.'s REMEDY website for $17 per .5 oz. bottle. Right now through end of the day tomorrow, November 18th, they've got three of their holiday polishes on special for $14 a bottle (SERENE Silver Glitter, RESOLUTION Red Glitter, and ESSENTIAL Emerald Green) and you can get free shipping for orders over $50 if you call 1-877-323-NAIL to order and use the code HOLIDAY. (The three polishes are priced at $14 on the website as well, but I couldn't get the free shipping thing to work online.)

As I was getting ready to post this entry, the holiday collection arrived in the mail; I'm going to to my best to swatch those and share them tomorrow before the special pricing on three of them ends. Here's a bottle pic so you can see the lineup:

Because I'm going to send these along to Lucy, they don't get to stay in my stash, but I'm strongly considering getting my own bottle of Noble. You know I love blues.

The polishes shown in this entry were provided to me for free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider.

Wheel I3: Glitters from Finger Paints, Hot Topic, and GOSH

2011-11-16T17:19:00.002-05:00

I can never go too long without glitter, so that's what I've got for Nail Wheel Wednesday.

(3 coats unless otherwise noted; all have one layer of topcoat added and some could use another)

1. FP Sparkle Top Coat
2. FP Floatin' on a Cloud
3. FP Oh My Stars
4. FP Winter Wishes
5. FP Psychedelic Sunshine (2 coats)
6. FP Holly Good Time
7. FP Merry Mittens (could be 2 coats; had to do three since I smudged the 2nd one)
8. FP Mulberry Madness (2)
9. FP Wicked Glitter (4)
10. FP Peaceful Purple
11. FP Laugh My Art Off
12. FP Sapphire Shimmer (4)
13. FP Easel-y Entertained (4)
14. FP All You Need is Color (4)
15. HT unnamed green glitter (2)
16. HT unnamed purple glitter
17. HT unnamed black with holo bar glitter
18. GOSH Bright Passion
19. GOSH Magic Star
20. GOSH Green Hawaii

Bottles 1 through 5:

6 through 10 (taken with flash):

11 through 14:

15 through 20:

I definitely see some dupes here that I can destash at some point. I certainly don't need two bottles of holo bar glitter in a sheer black base; I'm not that rock 'n' roll. I also don't need Sparkle Top Coat, Floatin' on a Cloud, and Magic Star all in my stash. Which would you let go of?

The Other Two Frankens by Beanie

2011-11-15T14:01:00.006-05:00

I couldn't swatch only two of the frankens I won from My Blue Lacquer, so today I have the remaining two, completing the set that started with Las Vegas Watermelon and continued with Blue Sangwich. Now, because I have a lazy streak, I did swatch the last two together, using Purple Nerple with Are You Yellow-ous? as an accent nail. I used four coats of each.

Purple Nerple has different sizes of holo glitter and some small purple glitter and some even smaller silver glitter. It's like all my favorite things in one polish. I really want to experiment with layering this one. Next time I will have to spend enough time to coax some of the really big hex glitters out of the bottle.

Yellows can be so tricky, so it was a nice discovery when Are You Yellow-ous? applied well and looked good. Maybe there's a touch of green in there that makes it work for me; I'm not sure. I do know that Beanie made great color choices when adding the glitter to this; they all go together so nicely. (Next time I will get some of those stars out. If I'm not feeling too lazy, that is.)

Another thing I know is that it's hard to hold two bottles at one time.

I hope Beanie comes back to her blog soon with more frankens, because this batch is quite good.

UPDATE 28-Nov-2011: Beanie has now got these glitter frankens on offer in her blog sale. I swatched the other colors here and here.

Steel Ball Nail Art

2011-11-14T11:48:00.003-05:00

Born Pretty nail art store continues to enable me to try new things on my nails. This time they sent a set of steel ball decorations. They came in a set of twelve colors in screw top containers. I believe the colors can vary from set to set; I got a nice mix of greens, purples, blues, bright pinks, and a dusty yellow.

My first thought when I saw these was "sprinkles!". I considered trying a cupcake mani (see a version from Rins here) but wasn't feeling that confident about my freehand abilities so instead did a geometric accent nail on my Owl's Lust/Pitch Black Glimmer mani using two colors of balls.

To do this, I taped off a triangle on my nail, laid down a coat of Gelous in the open area, then picked up balls with the flat side of an orange stick and patted them into the wet polish. Then I moved the tape to do a second triangle opposit the first. The last two I didn't use tape for but just put the balls in the open areas. I pushed the balls around with the pointy end of the orange stick to try and get them where I wanted them, then covered the whole design with a thick layer of Gelous. Next time I'm going to try a different top coat, as the Gelous took some of the color off the balls, most noticeably the blue grey ones.

These balls are available on Born Pretty's site here. They cost $5.41 for one set; quantity discounts are available if you buy more than one at a time. They also have a wheel with 12 colors of steel balls for $3.33 (look in the Glitter/Fimo/Slice/Sticker section of Nail Art Decoration). Use code KARENDK31 for 10% off.

The steel balls used for this entry were provided to me for free for review purposes. The content of the entry was not dictated by the provider, and I get to keep the products for my own use.

What I'm Putting on My Face

2011-11-13T09:33:00.001-05:00

Time once again for the very occasional feature Skin Care Sunday. Last time I did this was back in April. A few of the products have remained in my lineup but there's a lot of new stuff, too.

Here's what I use in my morning routine (non-gym mornings, anyway). I'm still washing with Purpose soap (not pictured) and putting the CVS Firming Lift Eye Cream on. I'm almost out of that; I like it enough that I'll probably repurchase it, provided they haven't discontinued it like happens with so many things I like. The Boots No. 7 Calm Skin Redness-relief Gel is something I picked up online several months back. It's not really a gel, more of a lotion, and I don't think it's reduced my redness, so I'm not going to be buying it again. I just splurged and ordered something pricey to take its place; it had good reviews on Beauty.com but time will tell if it works for me. For extra hydrating of my undereye area, I'm using L'Oreal Revitalift Complete Eye; this is a sample that came with some hair color. I like it pretty well, though I wonder if I need somethng even more moisturizing at my age. The Aveeno Ultra-Calming Daily Moisturizer SPF 15 is my last step before makeup. I don't like this nearly as well as the SPF 30 one they used to have in the Ultra-Calming line. If the new anti-redness stuff I just ordered works even a little bit, I'll dump the Aveeno and find an SPF 30 moisturizer (maybe I'll go back to the Eucerin I had before).

At night, I wash with Olay 2-in-1 Daily Facial Cloths (I cut them in half so a box lasts longer). Every other night at least, I follow with Stridex Alcohol Free 2% salyclic acid pads (also not shown). Three or four nights a week, I use the RoC Multi-Correxion Night Treatment, and the other nights, I do the Alpha Hydrox AHA Souffle followed by L'Oreal Age Perfect Night. A friend who does a lot of reading and research on skin care recommended the Alpha Hydrox for my chest skin; it's got 12% glycolic acid. The CVS Retinol Eye Cream I use every night.

And this is the face I've got to show for all this skin care. Still redder than I'd like but that's what makeup is for.

Recent NOTD: L'Oreal Owl's Lust and Nicole by OPI Pitch Black Glimmer

2011-11-11T13:42:00.002-05:00

When Pitch Black Glimmer came out last year, I was still holding pretty firm to my conviction that I didn't need any more of their awkwardly-shaped bottles in my Helmers. By the time I decided I needed to stop discriminating against them so I wouldn't miss out on some interesting colors and finishes, this black and silver and holo glitter was long gone from Target stores around here. Turtlechick to the rescue! She sent me Pitch Black Glimmer in a swap we did last month, thus saving me from being tempted to violate my principles and pay crazy eBay prices for it. Thanks, turtlechick!

I'm still working through my black glitter issues, so I chose a dark-ish base for my first outing with this NOPI. Owl's Lust is from L'Oreal's Project Runway collection; it's a dark red creme which covered in two coats. Here are a couple of a progress shots before I put on the glitter (or did a proper cleanup job):

I added only one coat of Pitch Black Glimmer to the red (I don't want to use it up too fast, not that I've used up a bottle of color in the last decade or more) then added my usual Sally Hansen Insta Dri topcoat.

I never can find a graceful way to hold that goofy bottle.

I love the multi-colored flashes from the holo glitter in this.

By the end of the four days I had it on, I wished I'd used a slightly lighter base color so the black glitter would have shown up more. I call that progress.

Blue Sangwich and Glitter in the Air

2011-11-10T19:57:00.003-05:00

Late entry today because I was fighting with getting my photos uploaded. I was about to give in and just give up control and do them through Blogger but finally used clues in an e-mail I got from my hosting company to figure out a tweak to my FTP setup that worked and here I am.

When I posted the frankens from Beanies and swatched the pink one last week, a lot of people commented that they'd like to see the blue one, Blue Sangwich. So here it is, three coats of it (no top coat):

Multi glitters in a colored base always make me think of Deborah Lippmann. Beanie's Blue Sangwich is a blue cousin to Lippman's Candy Shop, but I don't have Candy Shop (yet, anyway), so I pulled out Glitter in the Air to sample instead. This is four coats, no top coat:

And here are the two together:

I think you can tell which is which without me telling you. Blue Sangwich is more of a fun party, with lots of colors flitting about, while Glitter in the Air is a more quiet gathering.

UPDATE 28-Nov-2011: Beanie has now got these glitter frankens on offer in her blog sale. I swatched the other colors here and here.

Wheels X2, Q3, and S3: Blue Cremes

2011-11-09T15:27:00.003-05:00

Lots of blue cremes for Nail Wheel Wednesday today. These are not all my blue cremes, of course; they're not even all the blue cremes I haven't yet shared. Someday I may purge deeply enough to get down to this number, but I've no idea when that might happen. After I retire from work maybe?

(2 coats unless otherwise noted)

1. Vollare Joy 87
2. Wet 'n' Wild Megalast Bird Bath (3 coats)
3. Sally Hansen Insta Dri Blue Away
4. Petites Color Fever Creme Blue (3)
5. Ulta Pro Jet Lag
6. P2 Energetic Blue [such a cute flower-shaped bottle]
7. Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure Model Behavior
8. Sephora by OPI Slushied
9. Maybelline Express Finish Blue Brilliance
10. Essence Colour & Go Let's Get Lost
11. Mode Miss Europe 149
12. Essence Nail Art Twins Bonnie
13. OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui
14. Joe Fresh Persian Blue
15. Nails Inc Denim
16. Orly Sapphire Silk
17. Studio M Get the Blues
18. American Apparel Peacock
19. Pop Beauty Punk'd
20. Color Zone unlabeled

Bottles 1 through 5:

6 through 10:

11 through 15:

16 through 20:

(2 coats unless otherwise noted)

1. Barry M Blueberry Ice Cream
2. Piggy Polish Wave to Go (3 coats)
3. Sinful Paradise
4. Barry M Cyan Blue
5. Barry M unnamed mini
6. Zoya Breezi
7. OPI Ogre the Top Blue
8. CND Anchor Blue [almost a 1 coater]
9. LA Colors Color Craze unlabeled [I think it's Static Electricity]
10. MUA 9 (3)
11. Piggy Polish Skip to My Blue [almost a 1 coater]
12. Wet 'n' Wild Blueberry Fizz (3)
13. Jessica Blue Blast (3)
14. Maybelline Express Finish Matte Mint (3) [mint? really?]
15. Studio M Painted Eggs
16. La Femme Beauty Blue Creme [that's what it's called, simple and direct]
17. Revlon Top Speed First Class [a Target exclusive, I believe]
18. Essence Denim Wanted My Boyfriend's Jeans
19. China Glaze First Mate
20. Rescue Beauty Lounge Dead Calm

Bottles 1 through 5:

6 through 10:

11 through 14:

15 through 20:

1. Essie Borrowed & Blue (2 coats)
2. Pop Beauty Baby Blue (2)
3. Maybelline Express Finish I-Scream Lilac (4)
4. Joe Fresh Powder Blue (3)
5. Borghese Castello Blue (3)
6. P2 Charming (2)
7. Maybelline Express Finish Pie in the Sky (3)
8. Borghese Capriccio Blue (3)
9. Essie Lapis of Luxury (3)
10. Hello Kitty Blueberry (2)
11. H & M Blue My Mind (2)
12. Wet 'n' Wild Craze Tagger (3)
13. Revlon Top Speed Royal (3)
14. Essence Colour & Go Just Rock It (1)
15. Nina Ultra Pro Sailor (2)
16. Wet 'n' WildColor Icon Black Fog (2)
17. Borghese Mezzanote Blue (2)
18. Massini Fall Promo Shade (2) [I think this was later released as Ballroom Blue]
19. Studio M Decidedly Devious (2)
20. Finger Paints Cobalt Cardigan (2)

Bottles 1 through 5:

6 through 11:

12 through 15:

16 through 20:

As expected, I didn't get the rest of my stash onto wheels this past weekend, but I did make a noticeable dent in the unswatched queue and did a lot of sorting to set myself up for being able to quickly do a wheel when I have a spare half hour or so.

In Stores Now

2011-11-08T16:50:00.002-05:00

Time for another display round up; now that Halloween is over, the winter displays are taking center stage. There's a lot of new stuff out there, so settle in for a spell!

First though I have something that's not a display but which I spotted next to one: a public service announcement about using thinner from OPI, which I saw at Ulta. I hope muggles who'd otherwise ruin their polishes by adding remover will heed this advice.

At a CVS I don't normally visit I finally saw confirmation that Confetti Tiara is being discontinued, along with several other colors in the line. I don't care about the others, but Tiara going away is a real loss, since it makes a great base for frankens (though it does yellow with age, as you can see in this last bottle standing—though I haven't had that affect any of my frankens yet).

I forget where I saw the four-color edition of the Essie Cocktail Bling display—probably Rite Aid but it might have been Walgreens. Colors in this one are Bobbing for Baubles, Size Matters, Cocktail Bling, and School of Hard Rocks. I feel like I must have seen the full six-color display, which has the four shown plus Brooch the Subject (pinky tan creme) and Jingle Jangle (lilac creme), but I don't seem to have a photo of it so perhaps I'm confusing reality with the internet again. (This display I do have a photo of has a mirrored surface behind the Essie name, which I didn't notice until I was editing photos and saw my festive Disneyland shirt there.)

I definitely saw this next one at Rite Aid: Hedy's Ma.nish.ma. (how's that for an annoying brand name?) "holographic" nail color. The quotation marks around holographic are mine; these are not holographic by any reasonable person's definition. Duochrome, maybe, but NOT HOLOGRAPHIC. Just because Essence did the same thing doesn't make it okay. Four colors here (left to right below): Way Out Fuscia (their spelling), Blaster, Space Silver (this one might have a scattering of holo glitter, but not enough to redeem the collection), and Beyond Opal. (The polishes in this particular display are not lined up behind the correct names printed on the display, but I was in a rush and did not re-arrange them.)

The rotten luck I had finding Wet 'n' Wild's On the Prowl before Halloween turned around when it came to the Walgreens exclusive Color Icon Ice Baby collection. One store had two nearly untouched displays of these glitters when I stopped by (they did not stay that way after I got to them, though I didn't buy them out completely—I do have some small measure of self-control.) Shades in this one are: Rockin Rubies, 24 Carats, Give Me a Price Quote, Cost is No Issue, Believe Me It's Real, Back Alley Deals, All In the Cut, and Diamond in the Rough.

While I was at Walgreens, I also saw the Sinful Christmas display, called Wish. No new colors here: Out of This World, Daddy's Girl, Last Chance, Sugar Sugar, Midnight Blue, and three nail art ones I didn't get the names of but I'm sure I've seen before.

Speaking of Sinful, one of my Rite Aids had a new core display for them, with the nail art polishes along the top. Since this store previously carried only about half the number of polishes and no nail art colors, I was happy to see this.

That same store had Wet 'n' Wild Little Luxuries gift boxes with nine mini Color Icon colors in them. I couldn't tell if any of these were new shades, but some are quite pretty. I've read that this is going on sale Thanksgiving weekend but even at the regular $4.99 price it's not a bad deal for all that variety.

My CVS stores have been pretty much a polish wasteland for a while, but they have put out a few new things recently. I saw a big Revlon display that included the holiday polishes I'd previously spotted in the Spice It Up display at Bed Bath and Beyond.

I walked past this tall standalone Confetti display a few times because I thought it was just the core colors in a different configuration, but finally took a closer look and found some names I didn't recognize.

Tinsel has holo glitter in a clear base; I have other versions of this but it sure is pretty.

Other ones I hadn't seen before were Blue Glitz (not glitzy; a pale blue with a brighter blue shimmer that reminded me of Chanel Riva) and Rhapsody in Blue (a greenish blue shimmer that seemed like it might be foil-y). I also saw two other names I didn't recognize, but I fear these are re-promotes, which annoys me. The two bottles below are My Favorite Martian (core color) and Green with Envy (new to this display). Can you tell the difference? I can't. Ice Ice Baby (core) and Sprinkles on Top (new) were a similar pair.

Next to the tall Confetti display were this years nail polish pimp canes from Shades of the Season, which have ten polishes for $9.99. Last Christmas these had mostly boring cremes, but this year they look much more interesting. My store had two versions, one of which had some intriguing glitters. I skipped last year's but might pick one of these up.

Sally Hansen has some mini sets out for the season: HD Hi-Definition, Xtreme Wear, and Insta-Dri. I believe these are all core colors but the tiny bottles appeal to me anyway. So far I have resisted but who knows how long that will last.

I ventured into Sally Beauty for the first time in a while and was rewarded with the sight of all sorts of new pretties. There were two colors of Finger Paints Crackle Effec that I hadn't seen before: silver and red. (Of course I already have silver and red crack, so left these there).

Finger Paints holiday collection this year is called Merry & Bright and has seven colors: Comet's Collar (lime shimmer), Winter Sky (turquoise shimmer), Yule Be Merry (pinkish red shimmer), Frosty Night (silver glitter), Santa Kisses (red glitter), and Drummer Boy (turquoise shimmer).

Orly Holiday Soiree was there, too. Six shades: Androgynie (black with multi glitter), Au Champagne (white shimmer), Ingenue (purpley pink shimmer), Le Chateau (very dark greenish blue creme), Ma Cherie (red creme), and Oui (purple with gold shimmer).

And China Glaze Let it Snow, with Blue Year's Eve (blue shimmer), Champagne Bubbles (gold shimmer), Glittering Garland (green shimmer), Holly-Day (dark green creme), Icicle (silver foil), Poinsettia (orange-y red creme) Ring in the Red (red glitter), Snow Globe (pale multi glitter), Tinsel Town (charcoal glitter), Twinkle Lights (gold/red/green glitter), Velvet Bow (dark red creme), Winter Berry (red creme). Some of these were already gone by the time I got there (or were never there; with my Sally's one never knows). There were also a variety of China Glaze holiday gift packs; some of these had the new holiday colors in them and some had core colors.

I've never seen Color Club at Sally's before, but they had some this visit: Scent-uous Holiday, a bipolar collection of scented polishes with three traditional holiday colors and three over the top chunky glitters. There's Gingerbread Man (gold foil), Kiss Me Mistletoe (green shimmer), Santa's Cinnamon (red glitter), Orna-minted (silver bling-tastic glitter), Sugar Plum Yum (purple and green chunky glitter), and Very Merry Berry (blue and fuchsia chunky glitter).

I generally try to avoid Wal Mart, but there's one right by the Sally's and curiousity got the better of me this time. I spotted a mostly-empty display of Salon Perfect polishes—looks like I missed out on some cheap crack.

And then I saw the Nicole by OPI Kardashians. I am deeply conflicted about these. On the one hand, I am incredibly annoyed by people who are famous just for being famous (or making a sex tape or whatever it is these women do). On the other hand, glitters. It was embarrassing enough to buy Justin Bieber polish; I just don't know if I can bring myself to do Kardashians.

Let's wipe that nastiness out of our brains with the best part of the holiday polish season: snowmen! They showed up at Rite Aid before all the pumpkins were even all cleared out. I am going to have to study my existing snowman army befor I go all crazy collecting this year (though I already grabbed a red and green glitter that I knew I didn't have).

I know there's more to come this season; I haven't seen OPI Muppets or Essie Luxe Effects in person yet, for instance, and I've heard rumors of a Sally Hansen glitter collection, too.