Me Encanta Tu Blog Award

Katherine of necessary★nails tagged me with the Me Encanta blog award so long ago that she might have forgotten by now. Finally today I've managed to carve out the time to formally accept and pass it along. I am very much a believer in the "better late than never" approach to most things.



This award comes with questions to answer:

1. Why did you create the blog?
I was posting a lot on the MakeupAlley nail board and reading more and more nail blogs and it just seeemed like doing my own nail blog was the next logical step. I'd done a couple nail polish related entries on my online journal (Hat on Top, Coat Below) but didn't want to turn that into a nail blog, so here I am. I like say that having a nail blog gives me one more excuse to buy more polish.

2. What kind of blogs do you follow?
Mostly nail blogs, a few beauty and fashion sites, some knitting and crafting ones, and personal journals of friends of mine.

3. Do you have a favorite make-up brand?
No one favorite, though I wear mostly drugstore stuff. On my face right now, I've got products from Revlon, Maybelline, Physician's Formula, and Benefit, and Lorac.

4. And a favorite clothing brand?
I don't have one brand I favor. My taste in clothes is pretty basic.

5. What make-up products are essential for you?
Concealer, mascara, and powder. Most days, I wear more than that, but those three are the ones I give up last when I have to skip steps.

6. What's your favorite colour?
Purple.

7. What's your favorite perfume?
I only own one right now, Bvlgari Omnia Amethyste (which I admit I bought in part because of the pretty purple bottle it comes in).

8. What's the film you liked the most?
Oh so many; if I have to pick one, I'll say Nightmare Before Christmas.

9. What countries would you like to go?
Lots! Australia, New Zealand, and China are my top three at the moment.

Passing this award along to these blogs:

Makeup Merriment, who not only posts nail stuff but also makeup and glimpses into her life outside of beauty products. (Have I mentioned I'm a sucker for cute doggies?)

Nails by Alice, who writes in both Italian and English and has great application skills and an enviable nail shape.

Rachel Marie's Nails, a fairly new nail blog that's off to a great start, with a mix of swatches, nail art, haul posts, and plenty of pictures.

The Nail Experiment lives up to its name, with all sorts of fun stuff going on between the swatches, the frankens, and the nail art.

theVEROblog, who showcases nail polish along with other beauty products; I especially like her accent nail manis.

A Couple of Quick Comparisons

Mr. Karen and I traveled to Illinois for the long Thanksgiving weekend, so I spent much of the past few days either in the car or spending time with family rather than updating this blog. Now I'm back to my regular routine, so there shouldn't be any big gaps between posts for the next few weeks. Goodness knows I have many things I want to post about!

A week or so ago, Tamara of Mocha Mish Mash wondered how OPI Samoan Sand compared to Sally Hansen Wet Clay, so I pulled those two out for swatching.




Samoan Sand (top), Wet Clay (bottom); two coats each.

As you can see, Samoan Sand is more peachy and sheer than Wet Clay. They both have a place in my stash.

Before I put away the Barielle and CHI polishes I swatched last week, I wanted to see how a couple of them compared to Chanel Khaki Rose, since I still haven't found a good dupe for that one.


Left to right: Barielle Cashmere or Loose Me, Chanel Khaki Rose, CHI My Cornerstone in Manhattan.


Top to bottom: Cashmere or Loose Me, Khaki Rose, My Cornerstone in Manhattan, Khaki Rose.

The Barielle has much more red in it compared to Khaki Rose (and there's the issue of the secret shimmer; the Chanel has none), but the CHI is pretty close. It's a bit too light to be a true dupe, but for about one-third the price I think it comes close enough.

Holiday Displays

Ah, the day after Thanksgiving, the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season and a perfect time to share all the holiday nail polish displays I've been snapping pictures of for the last month. (Seriously, I saw my first Christmas display the week before Halloween.)

First up, for no particular reason, Orly 'Tis the Season, as spotted at my Sally Beauty:



Left to right: Candy Cane Lane, Glitz & Glamour, Naughty or Nice, Rockin' Rockette, Winter Wonderland, Meet Me Under the Mistletoe.

I've bought three of these Orlys so far; why Winter Wonderland isn't one of them I cannot understand now that I see it again in this picture. I think I thought I'd ordered it online or I would have gotten that last bottle sitting there.

China Glaze called their collection 'Tis the Season to be Naughty and Nice. My Sally's only got about half of the 16 shades. (There were some sets, too, but those were entirely too close to the cash register for even such a generally brave store photo taker like me to want to risk it.)



The Finger Paints Winter Dreams collection (available only at Sally's as far as I know) has six polishes in it; I wouldn't be surprised if I have them all by the time I use my November and December coupons.



Nicole by OPI has four shades in their Holiday Magic collection, one of them a dense multi-glitter that may persuade me to look beyond the awkward bottle shape and buy it. I've seen these at Ulta and Meijer.



Walgreens had this side of the endcap display of Wet 'n' Wild Holiday Magic, which included the Megalast Christmas shades. They are in tiny bottles, but in this display they're packaged with a free top coat, so that makes the $1.99 price easier to take. These shades are named after Santa's reindeer, but I've yet to find a Vixen (there is a Rudolph, that reindeer come lately).



Close up of one of the polish cubbies in the display (someone has shoved bottles that don't belong in back):



I saw a display of just the glitters, no free top coat, at CVS; it was called Vixen's Mittens there.



Rite Aid has what I think are the cutest holiday polishes, the top hat wearing snowmen. Each store has a slightly different assortment, and none of the colors have names, so to avoid getting duplicates accidentally, I resorted to taking group photos of the ones I had already bought and matching those up with the displays I came across.







I've also seen snowmen at Meijer, but not in these displays. At Meijer, they're jumbled into a bin in the stocking stuffers section by the Christmas decor stuff. Meijer has displays with the same artwork as the Rite Aid snowmen ones, but at Meijer those displays have skinny bottles of glitter polish. Some of the colors look the same as the chunky glitter pumpkins from Halloween, but there is also a multi glitter that resembles a less refined version of OPI Mad as a Hatter; I grabbed that one right away.



Meijer also has the Studio M holiday display, Cozy Up to Color.



Left to right: Ego Trip, Cupid & Vixen, Sleigh Bells, Sexy Siren, Gel-ous, Rudolph, Oh Joy, Tinsel Time, and Sugar Plums.

It's a pretty assortment, but I've seen most of these colors before. Ego Trip, Sexy Siren, and Gel-ous are available down the aisle with those same names in the core display, and I strongly suspect several others are re-promotes with new names. Sigh.

I'll have swatches of some of these in later entries and some will show up as nails of the day and some will even be prizes in a quick contest I'm planning for early December. Please stay tuned!

Wheel Q: Dark Orange Shimmers

1. L'Oreal Spiced Up (2 coats)
2. Maybelline Forever Strong Cocoa Power (2)
3. Maybelline Express Finish Copper Kettle (3)
4. Sally Hansen New Lengths Paprika Frost (3)
5. Sally Hansen New Lengths Raspberry (3)
6. Sally Hansen New Lengths Tapestry Frost (3)
7. CHI I am Thankful for My Earth (3)
8. Zoya Shivon (3)
9. Maybelline Express Finish Bronzed Brown (3)
10. Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Chocolate Nut (3)
11. Essie Wrapped in Rubies (3) [mini, is labeled "Wrap N Rubies"]
12. Sally Hansen Beyond Perfect Herbal Henna (3)
13. China Glaze Foxy (3)
14. OPI Romeo and Joliet (2)
15. Sally Hansen Salon Haute Chocolate (2)
16. s-he 437 (2)
17. Zoya Cheryl (2)
18. Sally Hansen New Lengths Nutmeg Frost (3)
19. Sally Hansen Hard as Nails Sultry Creme (3) [not a creme, though the shimmer is subtle]
20. Sally Hansen Salon Bittersweet (3) [even subtler shimmer than #19]











Bottles 1 through 5:



6 through 10:



11 through 15:



16 through 20:



It's colors like these that make me anxious to get everything swatched on wheels so I can go back to organizing by brand; the lines between dark orange and brown and dark red are hard to see sometimes, but I pretty much always know what brand a bottle belongs with.

No post tomorrow as I'll be celebrating Thanksgiving with family. Depending on the depth of my food coma, it may be a little while before I resurface online. Happy Thanksgiving to those of you who are celebrating!

Barielle Style in Argyle

Another fall collection today, this one from Barielle. I posted the display when I saw it back in October but didn't buy any of the polishes because the colors just didn't grab me. But as often happens, a sale enticed me to try some of them later.



Left to right: Aura Angora, Tight Knit, Unraveled Rust, Wool You Marry Me?, Cashmere or Loose Me, Cowl of the Wild.

I got Cashmere or Loose Me because I liked the looks of it when Jenni posted it on nailpolishUK. It's a warm medium brown with a very shy shimmer.







Because I'm a knitter, I had to get Tight Knit, which is a plummy brown creme. (I also had to deal with the price sticker being applied right over the label, so that's what the fuzziness is in the first picture below.)





Finally, even though I doubt I will ever wear it as a full mani, I got Aura Angora, the accent color in the collection. It's a mustard yellow creme and so not my color.





All of these took two coats. I did put a top coat on Cashmere or Loose Me to see if that would coax the shimmer out, but the others are top coat less.

CHI New York City Collection

Continuing my autumn theme, today I have some of the colors from CHI's fall 2010 New York City collection. I spotted this at Ulta a couple months ago; you may remember the display pic I posted then:



Left to right: Snow Angels in Central Park, Subway to Wall Street, Late Night Dinner in Soho, Crazy Cab Ride on Broadway, Ferry to Lady Liberty (missing), Night Lights of Times Square, Carriage Ride to Radio City, My Cornerstone in Manhattan.

When CHI were buy 2, get one free a while back I got three of them, then used part of my Ulta rewards to get a fourth just the other day.

First up is Ferry to Lady Liberty, which was missing from the display when I first saw it. As expected from the color card, it did turn out to be a grey, a very dark grey creme to be more specific.





Subway to Wall Street is a medium grey shimmer. I got an eensy weensy bit of brushstrokiness showing on just a couple nails, which I think points to operator error rather than a fault in the polish forumula.





I wasn't originally planning to get Carriage Ride to Radio City, but it was the most interesting to me of the remaining colors after I grabbed the two greys, so it came home with me. It's a brick red with a shimmer that pretty much refused to show up on the nail under almost all lighting conditions.




Above in full sun; I think I see a hint of shimmer.

Finally, I have My Cornerstone in Manhattan, which is the one I would have gotten in place of Carriage Ride if it had been in the display when the B2G1 was on. In the bottle it looked like it might be too warm-toned for me, but on the nail it turned out to be a milk chocolate creme that I quite liked. I definitely dried darker than it looks in the bottle.





All of these were two-coaters for me. As usual, these swatches are without top coat.

Recent NOTD: Completely Work Appropriate

This past week at work included three full days of meetings with gentlemen from the partner firm which is working with my employer in Germany, so I wanted a mani that was neutral and professional but still with a bit of interest to it. I ended up with two coats of OPI Samoan Sand (pretty much mannequin hands on me, very conservative) topped with one coat of Borghese Postiano Petal (enough sparkles to entertain me when the German guys were talking to each other in German, which I do not speak or understand).







It held up very nicely for the whole work week even though I had no time to add a refresher top coat; the shimmer in the Borghese camouflaged any dullness that crept in.

Recent NOTD: Completely Work Appropriate

This past week at work included three full days of meetings with gentlemen from the partner firm which is working with my employer in Germany, so I wanted a mani that was neutral and professional but still with a bit of interest to it. I ended up with two coats of OPI Samoan Sand (pretty much mannequin hands on me, very conservative) topped with one coat of Borghese Postiano Petal (enough sparkles to entertain me when the German guys were talking to each other in German, which I do not speak or understand).







It held up very nicely for the whole work week even though I had no time to add a refresher top coat; the shimmer in the Borghese camoflaged any dullness that crept in.