Catching Up - China Glaze Classic Camel

Part One - Starting a New Job...

After being unemployed for way too long, I'm finally going back to work! In Arizona. In August. None of my New York work clothes felt light or bright enough to wear. When I first started working in NYC, I tried to wear my AZ khakis to work. They were quickly replaced with darker trousers that could hide the random subway schmutz. Now that I'm back, so are my khakis!

I also had to pick out my first day at work polish. It had to be something work appropriate but special. Riding the khakis high I was on, I went with related shade for my mani - China Glaze Classic Camel from the Fall 2010 Vintage Vixen collection.

Like its name suggests, this is a light camel shade. It's a yellow-based beige filled with gold fleck shimmer. My bottle was separating a bit and I didn't roll it as much as I should have to get it back to smooth consistency, so I had to put on three coats for full, even coverage.

I know this collection was supposed to be 40s themed, but this polish looks like the 70s on me and I love it! The gold shimmer is subtle indoors and the polish takes on more of a beige look. With full sunlight hitting that shimmer and my undertones, Classic Camel becomes more yellow/golden.

When I have to do work appropriate, this is how I like to do it. This shade looks like a nude on me at first glance, but the gold shimmer and slightly quirky base color still keep it interesting for me. I'm still rocking full glitter on the weekends, though!

Zoya Ivanka & Charla

If you haven't heard, Zoya is offering a free bottle of Ivanka AND Charla with any online purchase (US Only) while supplies last or until Thursday, June 16 at 11:59 EST.

Both of these polishes are from the Zoya Summer 2010 Sparkle collection. I've worn both these colors so far this summer because the warm weather has put me in the mood for bright shades. I want sparkle and iridescence until the hotter triple digit days of July when it looks like everything is radiating heatwaves - that's when I'll wear my neons. These polishes are definitely bright and sparkly!

According to Zoya, Ivanka is a "mermaid green sparkling metallic." The gold-with-hints-of-blue duochrome are very visible in the bottle. On the nail, this translates to a green that is bright and cool with tons of gold shimmer.

Charla is a "tropical blue sparkling metallic." I love turquoise polishes and this is one of my favorites. It's not a neon but it's still so bright and sparkly that my camera thought it was radioactive in the sunlight. Charla is packed with gold and green glitter that doesn't disappoint in any lighting.

Both of these polishes ran on the sheer side, probably due to the thin formula that lets the glitter swim through and set at different levels in the base. With three coats, you get sparkly depth and almost-full opacity. Zoya is not known for being a fast drying polish, but these polishes dry extremely quickly - even with three coats. They also dry smooth and grit-free.

If you don't have these two polishes or any of Charla's known dupes, don't wait to take advantage of Zoya's deal. They almost sold out today, but kept the deal going because their VP had them fill more bottles. Rush, rush, rush and go get some awesome free polishes!

OPI Show It & Glow It + A Winner!!!

This is going to be a busy weekend - friends from grad school are getting married and the festivities start tonight.  I wanted something festive and sparkly while still keeping it light and spring-y.

I decided to layer one coat of OPI Show It and Glow It from the 2010 Holiday Burlesque collection over two coats of OPI Lucky Lucky Lavender from the 2010 Spring Hong Kong collection. Of course, I topped it off with a coat of Gelous and Seche Vite for the ultimate smooth and shiny finish.

And now I'm ready to be a guest at a spring wedding!!

Thanks a bunch to everyone who entered my Fun Friday Giveaway :)  I received three times more entries in this giveaway than I did for 50 followers - whoa!!

The official winner of the Fun Friday 100 Follower Giveaway is...

*drum roll*

 ...checking the spreadsheet...

...Livi from Olivia's Nails!!

She's been blogging since August 2010, so head on over to her blog and see what she's been showing off.  I never would've thought to layer Revlon's Star over a dusty purple, but she did. This is totally my next layering mani. Go check it out!

Have a great weekend and try not to play too many tricks on this April Fool's Day - Happy Friday!!!

China Glaze High Hopes

I was on a blue-gray kick last week, so I had to kick it up a fun color notch for hanging out with a cool cousin-friend before she flew back to the chilly northern Midwest.

High Hopes is a bright pink-coral (a degree brighter and it could be a neon honeysuckle) creme from the China Glaze Up & Away Spring 2010 collection. I've had excellent application from every polish I picked up from that collection. High Hopes flows on smoothly in two coats and dries to a high shine (maybe I could call it patent honeysuckle?).

Sun - Looks more pink

Shade - Looks more coral

Here's a fun shot with cousin-friend's camera after dinner. 

Look how orange High Hopes can look in dim lighting! And it's so shiny!!

In some lighting, High Hopes even took on a more muted red look, but the color was too intense for my poor camera to focus on properly. Maybe one day soon *cough, July birthday, cough* I'll have a new camera that can show off all the colors that polishes are capable of achieving.

All my fun with dinner, movies, and hanging out didn't distract me from the 100 Follower Giveaway! I have two more polishes to show that you could win...

Pure Ice Busted and Dreamy

Look at that iridescence on the left. Is that a jelly multicolor glitter on the right? These polishes look even cooler in person!

If you want them, fill out the Giveaway form before Thursday night. 6 more giveaway polishes will be getting unveiled before then - come back to check them out :)

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Purple Gala

What to wear for Mardi Gras?  Something purple, something gold, something festive & sparkly... time for Purple Gala!!

This is a limited edition polish from the Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Xtreme Wear line. The display didn't specify a season and it started popping up in July and August, so I'll say it's from their Fall 2010 collection.

Purple Gala is a sparkly foil with purple, silver, and gold glitter in a smoky purple base overlaid with lots of larger gold glitter pieces. You'll see more purple versus more gold depending on the lighting. This polish was opaque in 2 coats, but I put on a third coat for a little more depth.

This was a challenging polish to find even after it was recently released. Since that was almost a year ago and this is a limited edition shade, it might be near impossible to get Purple Gala now.  But never fear! If you like the look of Purple Gala, I recommend picking up Hard Candy's Mr. Wrong, which is close enough in color and finish to be a dupe to the casual observer.

Essie Wedding 2010 Collection

While exploring our new city, I stopped by the Ulta and found some Essie Mini 4 Packs on clearance for $5. I'm off to a bridal shower this afternoon so here are the shades from the Essie Wedding 2010 Mini Collection. All of these swatches are shown with 3 thin coats over a pink-tinted ridge filler base coat and Redi Quick Dry top coat.

Walk Down The Aisle - a soft, creamy white.  This was my least favorite of the set because it was so streaky!! This shade was probably about 90% even after 3 coats and a leveling top coat. I think it looks wonderfully elegant in the shade and less direct lighting, but OPI Funny Bunny will still be my go-to sheer white because its formula is easier to work with.          

Petal Pink - a sheer light pink. This shade wasn't streaky at all. Why wasn't Walk Down The Aisle this easy to apply?  Petal Pink looks like a very light white-pink in direct light with a more pronounced pink tint in the shade. I'm not sure this will replace China Glaze Innocence as my go-to sheer pink, but this was a good polish for this mini collection.

Show Me The Ring - a white shimmer with a gold flash. This was the most opaque polish in the set. I couldn't capture it in these pictures, but there's a beautiful multicolor microshimmer that sparkles in the sun. The lower the lighting gets, the golder this polish looks.

Sunlight - White Gold Shimmer

Shade - Light Gold Pearl

Main Squeeze - a light gray shimmer with a lilac flash. I could see a blue and pink hidden shimmer in the sunlight - I think that's what gives this shade such a strong flash that it almost looks like a gray-purple duochrome effect.

I thought this was a comprehensive mini bridal set - streak-free sheer pink, soft white, white-gold shimmer, gravender shimmer.  It has a classic feel with a touch of new spring trendiness.  The mini brushes are full and I didn't find one stray wonky bristle.  I also love how cute the box is!

There are little squares of the colors inside all over the box.  Each polish even fits in right by their corresponding shade square on the inside of the box.  And even though they're minis, the polishes still have the "e" on their bottle top. I appreciate these little details :)

Now off to the first bridal shower of my wedding-packed year!!

Party of Five Glitters vs. Gems

The universe knows when you're happily wearing a new polish that you don't want to change. That's when you find the new displays of polishes that everyone has been talking about. And those displays are full. How does the universe know?!

While I skipped around Walgreens looking for some new conditioner wearing My Kind of Cool Aid, I found the new Wet N Wild Fast Dry polishes. I picked up a few, including Party of Five Glitters, which is another potential drugstore dupe for Lippmann Happy Birthday. I left MKoCA on a few more days and finally have some comparison shots of Party of Five to share.

Party of Five Glitters is a clear-based polish filled with large silver hex glitter, medium light blue and fuschia hex glitter, and smaller red, green, and gold hex glitter. Isn't that 6 glitters? Maybe the tiny gold glitter is really a reflective silver? Back to the real question - This $2 option is better for your wallet than a $16 polish, but is it worth the savings against the $5 Milani Gems? Comparison Time!

 

Party of Five looks significantly more pink than Gems 

when the bottles are side by side.

I used one coat of Wet N Wild Black Creme as the base 

to make the glitter nice and visible.

1 Coat, 2 Coats, 3 Coats, 1 Coat of Party of Five Glitters

Party of Five has a thick clear base and it makes getting the glitter on the nail challenging. I thought the first coat of this "fast dry" polish was sufficiently set so I put on a second and third coat to get more glitter on the nail. What happens when you pile coats of thick polish on top of wet polish? Bubbles. And I didn't get enough glitter on the nail to cover these major bubbles up.

2 Coats Gems, 2 Coats Party, 1 Coat Gems, 1 Coat Party

Gems has a slightly different color combination of large and small hex glitter - no fuchsia, more green - but the difference is definitely less visible on the nail than it was in the bottle. Gems has a thinner base and it feels like there's significantly more glitter landing on the nail in every brushstroke. It seems that Gems also dried faster, smoother, and shinier than Party of Five.

I think with a little thinner and some more drying time between coats, Party of Five Glitters could be a fun glitter polish to use again. If I wanted to save some money, I would buy Party of Five instead of Happy Birthday. If I could only walk out of a drugstore with one glitter polish, though, I'd definitely pick Gems over Party of Five. I don't need an odd fuchsia hex here and there as much as I need the sheer density of the glitter bomb fiesta that Gems provides in two coats. Pow!

Blue Mooooon

This was a random draw from my Untried box this morning - Wet n Wild Blue Moon. It was one of the new Wild Shine shades released last year in their main collection.

My husband's been playing Fallout New Vegas recently. Blue Moon is one of the very few songs that plays on the game's "radio" and I had been planning on wearing this shade soon. I kept putting it off because I figured it was going to be a plain, maybe even a little boring, navy shimmer. I put two coats on... and when I look the moon had turned to gold... lol - ok, not really, but Blue Moon really is very pretty.

It gleams, it flashes and it doesn't look black in any light.  I'm so glad it was sunny for a bit before the light snow we're supposed to get today so I could see all of this awesome blue and green shimmer. 

Sunlight - The Gold Shimmer doesn't make it from the bottle to the nail
but the Teal/Green Flash does.

Shade

It's affordable, easy to find, and I personally haven't seen a navy shimmer this interesting to look at since OPI came out with Russian Navy (which this isn't a dupe of - RN is darker with a pink/purple shimmer).  For a buck, everyone should have their own bottle of Blue Moon.

Revlon Perplex - UWS Brunch Time

I love Broadway musicals.  When I was younger, living thousands of miles from the Great White Way, I'd make my siblings, cousins, friends, everyone watch PBS's Great Performances, the Tonys, and the odd random tour performance with me.  Now that I live here, I like suprising friends with tickets to actual shows (thank you, TKTS!).  This Sunday, we took our friends to see In The Heights and they took us to brunch on the Upper West Side. 

If I was going to be dining on microdairy cheeses and gourmet sausages while sipping bellinis, I figured I should switch up my sparkly holiday polish for something chic... perfect time to try out Revlon Perplex!

This is a dark grayish taupe with a faint purple shimmer - much like its pricier alternative Paradoxal.  Like other taupes, it can pull purple, gray, or a muddier brown, depending on skin tone.  For $4-5, it's definitely worth trying this shade out if you can find a bottle.

Indirect Sunlight - Dark Gray with Purple Tones on me

Flash to see the Purple Shimmer on Nail & in Bottle

Perplex went on deep and glossy on me in two medium coats.  It didn't agree with my Gelous-Seche Vite combo, though.  That's not tip wear in the pictures. That's major shrinkage :( Even with wrapping, it just pulled away from the edges.  Since I'm changing back to my holiday glitter bombs tomorrow, I'm not that upset, but next time I wear it, I'll try another top coat. This shade is awesome - I gotta make it work without shrinkage!

Deborah Lippmann Lady Sings The Blues

I picked up this polish in A Polish Problem's awesome blog sale.  Megan has a great selection that she keeps updated, her prices are decent, and the polishes come very quickly bundled tightly in layers and layers of bubble wrap.  Thank you, Megan!

This is my 2nd Lippmann polish - I'd love more, but even with sales, it's very hard to find these polishes under $14 each.  You could buy a set and get the price closer to $12 or $13, but what happens if you don't like all of the included shades?  I want way too many other polishes to let myself buy something that I feel halfhearted about and I do love my blue polishes so I was happy to pick this one up on its own.

Lady Sings The Blues is one of the three polishes from the Fall 2010 All That Jazz Trio. I wore this shade to celebrate Hanukkah with my husband's family this weekend.  Doesn't it look like a party with the sequin glitter?  This is large hex and tiny square silver glitter throughout a navy blue base.  Some polish had leaked out in transport so I added clear polish to revive and thin it to a slightly more jelly consistency. I think it brought the glitter out a little bit more. Even with all this glitter and the dark base, the formula made it easy to do clean up and removal - no smurf fingers! really!!

Sun - The smaller glitter is more visible

Shade - That glossiness is from Scrangie's tip to use
Gelous + Seche over glitter polish

I like the effect of the glitter swimming through this polish because it gives the glitter a multicolored effect - some pieces look more blue and some look more silver as they lay in the polish at different levels. This polish was so pigmented that I only used one coat with minor touch ups. This polish also had great wear - with all of the holiday baking, cleaning, and running around, I only had minor tip wear after 4 days.

Holiday Season! - Milani Gems

I know it's late and tomorrow's a Monday, but I had to fit in this post because... I loved our four day Thanksgiving weekend, I love the holiday season (counting down the days to Christmas in AZ), and I love my husband for going out of his way to find Milani Gems for me.

I've been looking for Gems - it's a Milani Jewel FX off their Rockstar Heavy Glitter display - and the one display that I've found had all of the other polishes and two empty spaces where Gems was supposed to go. So close, so far!!  That was the only display I even found after looking in many other Duane Reades, CVS, and Rite Aides.  It's becoming a pattern with drugstore collections that the polish gets found once I stop looking for it.  And that happened again this time.

My husband goes out in the windy cold weather to get us some Dunkin Donuts breakfast - I'm addicted to their coffee - and comes back with the last bottle of Gems from the last CVS in Staten Island that I hadn't checked.  He's too sweet... awww.... so I put Gems on as soon as I could to show my appreciation.

My goal is to wear festive holiday polish looks through New Year's and here's my first post-Thanksgiving Jolly manicure - Orly Enchanted Forest layered with Milani Gems.

The Bottle Buddies Pic - aww, they like each other!

1 coat of Milani Gems over 2 coats of Orly Enchanted Forest

I love this festive glitter! Gems is supposed to be the $5 sibling to a Lippmann Polish that's more than three times that price. It's true that when macro shots of the two polishes are compared there are slight differences. Gems has large and small hex glitter and the color combination is slightly different. Lippmann's Happy Birthday has large hex glitter and small *square* glitter with a little more pink in the mix. I think Gems is definitely a good dupe-ish substitute and I'm so happy to have it!! 

Good luck to everyone else who may be on their own drugstore searches - you can find those polishes!

A GingerKittyDesign!

I'm a sucker for a sale - I picked up some RBLs, some Zoyas, and I got my very first piece from GingerKittyDesigns.  My bracelet just arrived yesterday and I've only taken it off while I slept and cleaned around the house.  It's gorgeous and I love it that much!

GingerKitty sells her designs through Etsy and the big thing is she handcreates each piece using nail polish of your choice.  She has a wide variety of beloved shades from OPI Absolutely Alice to Essie Starry Starry Night.  I ordered one of her new bracelets in purple.  She was beyond wonderful to work with - asking what colors I'd like, what kind of effect I'd prefer - I even got to pick my favorite out of multiple samples before she placed it in the setting.  Of course, I recommend checking her site out for yourself.

It's like looking at a galaxy on my wrist. It's so sparkly, so delicate, it's so pretty!!!  I'm not sure exactly polishes went into this final design, but GingerKitty did mention looking forward to trying Zoya Goldie when I asked for swirls of gold and silver through the purple.

In honor of my purple bracelet with a hint of Zoya, I'm wearing Valerie this weekend, which I, of course, picked up during their latest sale.  

Valerie is from the Zoya Winter 2010 Flame collection.  They describe this shade as a "royal purple with dark violet, red, deep pink and gold iridescence amplified by a glittering sparkle finish."  It's like Yasmeen got a makeover from this summer's Sparkle collection.  I think the shade shot really shows that glittery iridescence running through the bottle.  It was opaque in one coat, perfect and deep in two.  Yay for Zoya!

Nubar Knight's Armor

I don’t dislike this polish, but I’m definitely confused by it.  

This is Nubar Knight’s Armor from their Fortress Collection of grays.  It’s a charcoal base packed with square silver glitter.  The silver stands out, but I prefer more integration with my glitter polishes. I feel like I could have achieved the same effect layering a clear silver glitter over a dark gray. 

Sunlight - no bottle because we're on vacation & I left it at the house

The base of Knight’s Armor looks like a jelly but it’s overwhelmed by the silver on top. I love jellies and glitters combined in one polish – like CG Atlantis – and I’ve never seen a charcoal jelly, so I really would’ve liked to see some more of that base.  This was two coats and I was on the fence about a third.  It would’ve helped a few of the barer spots, but it also would’ve meant more glitter and I already felt overwhelmed by what was already on the nail. I think I would’ve liked the overall look more if it had been two polishes layered.  I would have had more control over the transparency and levelness of the jelly base without maxing out the silver glitter on top. 

I still loved the Nubar brush and this polish’s wear, but I only *like* the actual shade. Even a few days of wearing it didn't change my opinion. I know a friend who would love this polish so I think I should gift it her way so she can give Knight’s Armor the full appreciation a Nubar deserves.

Nars Zulu

My Zulu finally arrived on Tuesday evening! After all the hype, I was kinda nervous about my first face-to-face encounter with Zulu. When I finally got the nerve up to open the box and put it on, my fears were quickly assuaged. This dark green jelly flowed on to my nails like it wanted to be there. It was opaque, smooth, and very shiny in two coats.

I thought I loved Zulu because of what it symbolizes to the polish community - rare, coveted, completely beloved for its long awaited return. After it applied like a dream, I decided that Zulu had lived up to my expectations. Then I wore it to work this week and it completely blew me away!

My coworkers often check my polish to see the new shade I'm wearing. Normally, they come up to my desk and check my hand. Not with Zulu! They spotted it within minutes of saying hello from cubicles away. We'd be discussing something else and suddenly "What are you wearing? What's it called? Can you bring the bottle to work tomorrow?" They've asked the name of my polishes before, but never for a bottle loan. These ladies get their nails done, but they're not hardcore polish fans and Zulu still reached out and pulled them in.

What did Nars put in this polish? Zulu is bottled magnetism! (That's why I took my pictures with a magnet while my bottle was out on loan with a coworker.)

Sun - Visibly Green & Jelly - see those edges

Shade - Glossy & Dark

This is my first Nars polish and Zulu has incredible wear on my nails. When I took it off on Saturday evening - 4 full days of typing, baking, and even washing dishes without gloves - I still had polish on 4 of my 5 nail tips where I had wrapped the ends during the original mani! I rarely get chips, but I tend to get tipwear within hours even with wrapping.

I think I need a backup of this polish! I wonder if I can still find it anywhere...

Zoya Edyta

There was a one day sale for Zoya Remove+ about a week ago. I picked up Edyta from the Fall 2010 Wicked Collection and I put it on as soon as I brought the box in from my doorstep. 

In their promotional preview, Zoya described Edyta as a "fern green sparkling metallic."  Since then, Zoya has expanded their description to "A complex mixture of gold, olive, blue-green and smoky grey with a sparkling metallic finish. A dark shade balanced with sparkle for a dramatic look." 

I've tried out some shades hoping to find a nice dark olive-like green shimmer and they've never worked out because they look too black or too gold.  Edyta isn't a true olive green polish, but it is the shade I've been looking for!  This is one of the first polishes in awhile to make me just stop and say "....whoa..."  It flowed on to my nails and I felt like they were... gilded.  Gilded in green opulence...  Andi Translation:  This polish was like velvet on the nails - luxurious, textured, rich.

This is two coats, but it probably could have gotten away with just one with touchups because it's that nicely pigmented.  These are both shots in direct sunlight, but with different angles that show off the color differently.

See the blue-based green base

and the sparkly charcoal & gold effect visible on top and throughout the shade.

There's so much shimmer and sparkle to this polish in the sunlight - green, gold, blue.  I had the feeling of opulence when I wore Edyta and I'm looking forward to wearing this rich polish through the fall and winter.

Revlon Bubble Gum

I finally found a display of the Summer 2010 Scents of Summer Collection! I did it! I did it!!

Drug stores are so small around here so I rarely find cool polish displays, even when I'm actively looking for them. I found this display at the same Rite Aid I found my Maybelline Pie in the Sky. Their cosmetic section tends to look like a tornado hit it, but under all the mess and understocked shelves, this store is now 2-for-2 in my search for seasonal drug store polishes.

After a few happy days of sunshine, the rain rolled in. To counter the drizzles and brighten my day, I decided to try out Bubble Gum.

I tried to capture a really quick picture of Bubble Gum in the sunlight when the clouds briefly parted. Definitely not the best picture, but I wanted to show how how hot pink this polish can look.

In the sunlight, it's definitely a bright girly fuschia.

Inside, it's a bit mellower, but still bright pink:

(ooh, look how the CND Solar Oil soothes the cuticles, aah)

Bubble Gum is a bright medium pink creme. A slightly standard color, but these shades look good with my skintone and the color itself makes me feel happy. The formula was easy to use - slightly on the thin side. There was slight VNL at two coats, so I used three coats for my mani. For scent purposes, I decided to skip a top coat. This polish dried so glossy!  

You can smell the scent once the polish dries. This polish's bubble gum scent lasted about 2-1/2 days for me. I thought the scent was like Bazooka bubble gum. My husband thought it was like the bubble gum fluoride from his childhood dentist.

Since it's on my nails and not overwhelmingly strong, I'm really enjoying my scented nails. To be honest, I even tried talking with my hands more while I was wearing it to see how often I could smell the bubble gum. Ok, maybe I'm enjoying my scented nails a little too much!

Zoya Gwin

Gwin is from the Zoya Spring 2010 Reverie Collection.  Zoya describes Gwin as a "sunny melon metallic." I describe Gwin as pink-toned orange with a strong gold shimmer.

This polish really has a lot of iridescent shimmer. There are flashes of gold, yellow, and even green shimmer running through it. This is a lot more apparent in sunlight. Here's a blurred picture to show off some of sheen. It's like you think you're looking at a bright juicy orange shade and... it's glowing! from inside!! the shimmer!!!

My husband bought me the Reverie set a few months ago and today he picked up Maybelline Sunset Prisms for me. Yay for bright colors with a shimmer flash! (By the way - Lacquer Laine has a full swatch of Maybelline Sunset Prisms and it looks like this is one of those polishes that has a different color batch out there. One is orange with a green flash. One is pink with a gold flash.)

Side by side in their bottles, I thought Sunset Prisms might be a possible dupe for Gwin. On the actual nail, Sunset Prisms is a lighter melon orange shade. It's the early spring cousin to Gwin.

Gwin's on my index and ring finger.
Sunset Prisms is on my middle and pinkie finger.

Gwin is a darker orange with a gold flash and pretty much opaque in two coats. Sunset Prisms took four coats to get opaque but the gold shimmer and green flash is more obvious in most lighting. They both had decent formulas. Even though, Sunset Prisms took twice as many coats to get rid of VNL, it actually dried faster than Gwin. Not bad! Sunset Prisms even had a good brush - and it's a Maybelline Express Finish!

Soooo... since both of these polishes were nice to work with and they are related but different colors, both are staying put in the stash. No dupes this time!