Rescue Beauty Lounge Locavore

I've been trying to make a peel-off glue base coat work for me, so that means glitter, glitter, glitter!

It was supposed to be really easy - take some glue like Elmer's, swish it around with a little water in an empty polish bottle, use as base coat, peel off mani when done. Easier said than done because my first few tries didn't work at all! First, I used too much water and the base coat wouldn't dry. Then, I tried again without thinning the glue but I polished my nails before waiting a full 10 minutes for the base coat to dry.  My polish stuck to my nails like cement! Normally, that's good, but not when you want your polish to peel off in one piece. My third try was a charm and my polish peeled off like it was supposed to! What I've learned - glue as a base coat is great if you have 10-15 minutes to let it fully dry, so it looks like I'm going back to regular base coat and Zoya Remove+ for my glitter manis.

For New Year's and my peel-off success, I wore Rescue Beauty Lounge Locavore. This is my bottle from the original Spring/Summer 2009 collection. This shade's been re-released through Ji's Bring It Back voting. I'm not sure if the new version is identical to this one, but I still recommend getting your own bottle while it's still around!

RBL's site says that Locavore is a "melange of gold, silver, green and blue glitter," but it's obvious in my bottle and on the nail that this version also has pink glitter.  The base of Locavore is thin and clear so I'm wearing three coats for opacity and it only takes one coat of Seche Vite to make this mani smooth.

After wearing so many glitter polishes with different shapes and sizes in their mix, Locavore is a nice glitter palate cleanser. All the glitter is tiny and round, the color combination is perfectly celebratory, it's opaque enough to be worn without layering over a base color, it's smooth on the nail, and sparkles for days. I love hex and square glitter and colored jelly bases, but I had forgotten how nice it is to wear a straightforward glitter polish like this.

Happy New Year to everyone!! I hope we all have a great 2013!!!

MAC Dirty Martini + Comparison

 It's almost Halloween and it's time for a murky, swampy olive color!

I used to think light blue polishes were too crazy for me to wear - so stark, so bright, so blue!  I even gave my bottle of Barielle Swizzle Stix away because I just wasn't ready for it in 2009.  I also wasn't ready for the ugly-pretty camouflage colors that were starting to show up.  For its name alone, I bought Dry Martini from the MAC Fall 2009 by Jin Soon collection.  After two years of taupe, mushroom, and greige, I've slowly grown to enjoy these types of shades and I'm finally ready to love this polish!

Dry Martini is a dark, brown-leaning olive green creme.  On me, this polish looks green indoors and brown outdoors.  My bottle had been untouched for so long that it needed some really good mixing.  I don't think I mixed it enough, so it took me three coats to get this polish on opaque and even.

I was so happy with the look of Dirty Martini that I tried to put on an ombre mani with some of my other drab green cremes (I know the OPI has a faint shimmer, but it's only visible 2% of the time so it barely counts as shimmer!). 

Rescue Beauty Lounge No More War (index), Zoya Shawn (middle),
Dry Martini (ring), and OPI Here Today... Aragon Tomorrow (pinkie)

Shawn is a bit dingy looking in the bottle, but it looks so vibrant when it's in the middle of all these brown-tinged greens. I don't have Zoya Dree (still on a low-buy), but I think that green would've fit in much better with the other olive shades. I used two coats on No More War and Shawn and three coats on Dry Martini and Here Today Aragon Tomorrow.

Since the greens looked so different on the hand than they did in their bottles, this mani turned out just to be a comparison swatch.  It's still a useful look at these popular polishes, even if it isn't a real ombre mani!

Catching Up - My Birthday!

I celebrated my birthday in July and my friend made me one of the coolest birthday cakes ever - it was a nail polish bottle!!

She took all of my favorite flavors and colors and integrated them into this cake.  The cap is chocolate, the bottle is funfetti and strawberry layers, and it's all topped in a layer of fondant.

The design was modeled after an OPI bottle, down to
the dots between the "HPI" (happy!) and the cute label name on the bottom. 

It's a shout out to our poodle - that's how we spell our lil Suzie's name

To show the size perspective, here I am with my birthday cake.  

Even with half of the cake served, it's still ginormous!!

Since I had a home-based birthday celebration (movies, pizza, hanging out with amigos), I spent most of the morning straightening up our place.  When I was done, I needed a really quick mani change - perfect time to use a matte.

I went with Harlow from the Zoya Matte Velvet Winter 2009 collection.  It's a red-based purple matte shimmer.  I was good to go in two coats and a few minutes.  The Zoya brush, as always, means there was no extra clean up needed.

Matte shimmers are one of my favorite finishes, especially Zoya's.  A matte finish is cool on its own, but the shimmer adds an extra pop of interesting complexity.  Harlow goes to show that a shade can still be special, even if it was a last minute mani choice.

Zoya Paz

I had my nails done at a salon for my friend's wedding this past weekend. It was a Girls Day Out and I wanted to join in the fun even if that meant giving my nails to someone else to polish... well, I loved the awesome cuticle pushing but I'm still in the process of reshaping my nails back to a more matching length and shape. What's up with salons filing my nails diagonally? This is the third time this has happened to me - are my finger tips crooked or something??

After a few days of wearing a sheer shade for the wedding, I couldn't wait to wear one of my favorite neons.  Zoya Paz is from the Summer 2009 La-Di-Da collection - this was the bright cremes counterpart to the Ooh-La-La metallics. La-Di-Da has been spotted at Ulta recently, so keep an eye out for it if you want the polish but don't want to pay the online S&H.

Paz is an ultra bright fluorescent safety neon orange - aka new traffic cone bright! I used three coats of Paz because the formula felt thin for a creme, but that thinness helped make application completely foolproof. No chance of dragging, uneven patches, or pooling with this polish.

Paz dries quickly to a semi-matte finish, which reminded me of a glowing ember. I prefer Paz with a shiny top coat because it really amps up the shade to full traffic cone brightness. Of course, the neon intensity is hard to capture in a picture - I think the bottle in the bottom pic would be closest to color accurate if the orange was just a bit brighter.

This polish glows in all lighting - it is truly intense and not for the timid polish wearer. Paz is one polish that definitely makes me happy - its brightness, unique color, super easy application, even its name! I wholeheartedly recommend it for a daring pedicure if the glowing highlighter brightness is too much for your hands.

Que Suerte! China Glaze Carnival Lights

China Glaze Carnival Lights is one of my glitters from their Specialty Collection. I love wearing this polish - I've already gone through half my bottle! This is one of my favorite polishes and, as of this past Friday, it's my official Good Luck Polish!

Carnival Lights is a medium pink-magenta jelly base glitter filled with tiny square silver glitter and larger multicolor hex holo glitter. This glitter lays so smooth on the nail - no grit at all! The silver glitter is very prominent with indoor lighting, so it looks like sugar sprinkles on a pink cupcake. In brighter light, the holo glitter stands out even more and the base looks lighter.

I think this would make a pretty layering polish - I would try purple or blue first - but I haven't worn it layered yet because I love the look of jelly-base glitter too much. The pictures above are with 3 coats for full opacity with no VNL. I'd prefer the look of 2 coats, but it seems to wear longer with 3.

I wore this polish on Friday to keep my spirits high while we waited for a phone call and we ended up getting the news we've been waiting for - more details in a bit when everything's official and planned. Carnival Lights was the perfect polish for me to wear when I wanted to feel happy and bubbly inside and out. It's my luck polish!

My Arizona - Barielle Falling Star

I was born and raised in Phoenix, and I lived over 6 years in Tucson while I went to school for my undergrad and grad degrees. Both sides of my family have lived in Arizona for the last century. AZ is never far from my mind, but I couldn't think of anything else this weekend since the tragic shooting in Tucson on Saturday morning.

After all the news coverage and phone calls with my Arizonans, I wanted to step away from the shock and sadness. This isn't a political blog, so this is a polish post dedicated to peace for my home state. 

 AZ FACTOIDS

Arizona became the 48th state on February 14, 1912 (yep, Valentine's Day!).

In 100 years, the State population has grown from 200,000 people in 1910 to over 6 million in 2010. 

The State Economy's growth and development is attributed to our 5 C's:

Cattle, Cotton, Citrus, Climate, & Copper

Phoenix is one of the sunniest cities with an annual average of 85% possible sunshine and 8 inches of rain.

Falling Star is from the Barielle Fall 2009 All Lacquered Up Collection. This shade is a medium blue creme base with small round copper glitter.  In some indoor lighting, it takes on a darker dusty cornflower hue.

This polish is thick and runny so I had a learning curve trying to get it on nicely. Practice helps and, after a few manis of experience, I'm able to get it on smoothly and opaque in two thinnish coats.

I'm learning how to use my new Ott!

As soon as I saw the preview of this polish, I knew I had to have it. This is a pretty shade of blue and a unique glitter-base color combination. The formula might not apply like butter, but this is still one of my Top 10 Favorite Polishes from 2009.

I see copper - I think of the 5 C's. I see a deep medium blue - I think of the afternoon sky after a summer monsoon rain. I feel like I have a little piece of Arizona on my nails when I wear Falling Star, so I'm going to wear it a few more days as a personal visual reminder of hope for a future without violence.

Snowed In! China Glaze Nova

We made it back to the city hours before the blizzard hit on Sunday. Our borough had an unofficial snowfall of 23 inches - the snow was bad, the response to the storm was worse. We were lucky to have our power, cable and internet stay on the entire time, but not all of my friends were so fortunate. And they have little kids. So they watched Beverly Hills Chihuahua on DVD over and over and over... so I call this layering mani "Blizzard Blackout" and dedicate it to all the New Yorkers who were snowed in this week.

I used one coat of Jesse's Girl Blackout (a freebie I received at Nails Night Out) and two coats of China Glaze Nova. These shots were taken in indirect sunlight. I think the first picture shows more of the holo rainbow sparkles, but the second is the crisper glitter shot.



I really like the brush on Jesse's Girl polishes. I didn't have a cleanup brush (I dropped mine *in* the bottle of acetone) and I couldn't get out to get a new one, but it turns out I didn't even need one. I wish the cap wasn't so large and rectangular because it makes it unwieldy, but it's still a great brush.

Nova is a glitter from the China Glaze Specialty Collection. It's filled with small silver square glitter and larger holographic hex glitter in a clear base. This is definitely a sparkly eyecatcher!  Next time, I'm going to try layering it over silver like Dori at Kiss My Acetone did earlier this month.

Related Side Story: I wore Nova to work and a coworker asked if I had snowflakes on my nails. The other ladies who were able to make it to the office quickly deduced that I had a "blizzard" mani on and renamed it "De-licorice-ous" to get our minds off the snow-filled streets. De-licorice-ous!!

Zoya Luna

What a Tough Tuesday!  Really!!

It started in the morning and didn’t stop all day - snow flurries came down during the morning commute for the first time this winter, I get yelled at by a crazy lady when I’m trying to get my takeout, I finally catch a bus after work & get told the stop right by my house is being removed soon, our upstairs neighbors overrun their sink and flood our kitchen with disgusting yellow water, I spill my chili dinner on our living room carpet – BUT I changed my polish to something very happy successfully so the day ended on a very positive note.

This is Luna from the Zoya Winter 2009 UltraGlitter collection.  I love Zoya's descriptions, so here's an excerpt - light, shimmering sheer silvery dove gray base loaded with silver glitter.  Just a quick side note - one reviewer on Zoya's website commented they expected a clear base so they must have gotten a bad bottle. Maybe they should read the description before buying and definitely before posting a review?  Sorry for the snark - I said I had a rough day!

Since the day was overcast and snowy, I have some indoor shots.

Looking a little matte, but still glitteriffic...

A glossier angle!

-Flash-

I put Luna on in two thick coats - if you use thin coats, you'll need 3 to get full coverage. This was the sparkly version of today's flurries - the little glitter is the falling snow flakes against the milky gray base that looks like that cloudy sky. This is a lot more sparkly and twinkly than the real stuff we had today, and it definitely brightened my day. Ultra Glitter!

China Glaze Medallion

I really love the glitters from the China Glaze Specialty Collection.  I saw them on Scrangie, got some to try for myself and I've really been hooked ever since. Honestly, NYC weather can make me feel pretty gloomy.  I don't like gray clouds and drizzle for days and days. I like putting on glitter polishes when I'm feeling kind of down and China Glaze Medallion helped me make it through the dreary, cold winter.

Since it has been a pretty dry summer in the city, I haven't worn it in a few months, so I decided to wear it for a very happy weekend just to celebrate. What was I celebrating? A roadtrip to DC to see Idina Menzel and Marvin Hamlisch in concert for my birthday!!

This is a clear-base cool gold glitter. There is a ton of holographic and larger hexagonal glitter thrown in among smaller gold and silver glitter. It's a rainbow of glitter. Blue, pink, green - you see something different sparkle up at you every time the sun hits it.

This swatch is taken with two thick coats. That's it. And check out the coverage! China Glaze didn't promise full coverage in two coats and I definitely wasn't expecting it since this has a clear base, so I was surprised and very pleased when I put on the first coat, let it set for a minute, put on the second coat, and... hey, it's time for a thick top coat - already?! - incredible.

The first time I wore this, I kept looking at my nails and thinking BLING-TASTIC!!! That's why I wore it for New Year's, my birthday, and every other time I wanted to feel extra sparkly.

Orly Country Club Khaki

Talk about Nail of the WEEK! Country Club Khaki is from the Spring 2009 Orly Prepster Collection, which was only one of three collections they released that season.

My husband has been encouraging me to invest in some more Orly polishes because of their wonderful rubberized top.  He tends to be my polish opener because I can never get bottles, jars, anything open. Before Country Club Khaki, I had one Orly polish that my mom had bought me randomly because it was on clearance at Sally's. 

This was such a nice polish to put on - easy to open, easy to apply, opaque and smooth in two coats, wonderful!  My cuticles have been such a wreck from the new soap at work.  I use lotion afterwards but nothing can defeat the dryness of that awful soap!  This polish made my hands feel elegant but edgy. It's a light brownish taupe creme that worked on my skin tone like a Nude But Not shade.

I liked this shade so much I put it on in Tuesday and didn't take it off till Friday night.  I wore this polish for almost an entire work week!  Go Orly!!

Nubar Chocolate Caramel

I went to Nails Night Out in NYC last October. It was at the Martini Bar by Union Square. It was a great time - great drinks, yummy munchies, tons of polish people, and my first polish goodie bag. One of my gifts was a base coat, top coat, and Tiara from Nubar.  I LOVE Nubar's Foundation Base Coat. If I had to live with one base coat for the rest of my life, this would be my base coat.

Nubar had a St. Patrick's Day sale, so I decided to try out some of their colors and they arrived today! The first one I had to try was Chocolate Caramel from the Winter 2009 Chocolate Truffles Collection.

I love chocolate on Fridays - why not wear it on my nails? This polish is such a luscious brown-gold. All day I kept looking at this polish and wondering what tasty treat it really really reminded me of - chocolate, coffee, some kind of candy? I still don't know for sure, but I know whatever it is must be yummy. I'm definitely wearing this the next time I'm going through chocolate cravings. It's a visual appeasement.

Chocolate Caramel is a crazy sparkler with a warm medium brown base and golden shimmer. Many of the pictures I've seen of this polish have been in full sunlight to show off the shimmer. This makes the polish look so warm that it's practically a bright orange-ish or yellow-ish brown. It's definitely a shimmery polish, but those pictures didn't really show the green hints in the shimmer. I swear there's even flecks of pink in some light. 

My NOTD mani was two coats of Chocolate Caramel over Nubar's Foundation Base Coat and topped with their Diamont Seal & Shine Top Coat (of course I was going to try out their polish with their treatments).  The application was nice and their brush is so easy to use. I'm looking forward to trying out the rest of the Nubars I picked up!

Color Club Fashion Addict

I'm in the mood for spring. Still. After two days of rain and slightly cooler temperatures, there wasn't supposed to be a drop of rain today (and there wasn't) and the high was in the low 60s. That's not the best, but it definitely beats a high in the 40s!

I love pastels, but I was in the mood for something a little different so I decided to go with a color from the Spring 2009 Catwalk Queen Collection.

Color Club does excellent holo polishes and this is definitely one of them. The holo finish of Fashion Addict isn't as linear and intense as the China Glaze OMG collection. I think it's closer to to the scattered-sparkly finish of CG Kaleidoscopes.

This opaque, sparkly, rainbow of a light purple holo is just two coats of Fashion Addict without a top coat. There was no application issues at all, especially if you let the first coat dry first to prevent any drag on the second coat. Holos dry so fast that waiting time isn't even an issue.

Depending on the light and angle, this polish's base color can look more pink or more silver than light purple. If you want a real silver holo, go with Worth the Risque from the Femme Fatale half of the Color Club Spring 2009 collection.  If you love the pastel purples of this spring, but you need a getaway from creme finishes, go with Fashion Addict. It's such such a sparkly way to celebrate the return of sunshine after this crazy winter!

Barielle Beaches & Dreams

It's Spring Time!!!  Well, it feels like spring in the City so I'm celebrating this nice break in weather while it's here.  

Beaches & Dreams is a light peach creme from the Spring 2009 Shades by Barielle Sun Goddess Collection.  This was a very work appropriate collection and I think this was the "edgiest," most unique shade from this group.  I like pastel cremes that have a starkness to them.  I think it makes me look a little tanner while still feeling spring-like and feminine.

This polish is nice and opaque.  It only needs 2 coats.  Really.  A third coat would make it look too thick and it's so pretty in two.  I don't remember Beaches & Dreams being this easy to apply last year, but it was a breeze to put on this weekend.  I know my clean up's a bit spotty, but that's on me for trying out a new brush - not the polish.

Ok, time to head back outside.  Suzie has been stuck inside so much this winter because she's only a lil Toy Poodle and bad winter weather doesn't agree with her, so I've got playtime to make up!  One more YAY for spring weather!

China Glaze Atlantis

Atlantis is a dark turquoise-teal jelly base glitter. This has smaller silver glitter and multicolor holographic glitter.  I wore this polish as soon as I got back from Florida to keep the vacation going.

This polish is a glitter from China Glaze's Specialty Collection. These glitters are incredible! They raised the bar so high for all other glitters for me. Different size glitters, unique base colors, holo surprises - anything and everything you can imagine has been packed in to the Specialty Collection glitters.

This swatch was from the first time I wore Atlantis and I was playing around with the different looks from different coverage. My middle finger has three thin coats, my ring finger has a thick third coat, and my pinkie has two really thin coats.  After I put on top coat on it for the first time, I had to tweet rambling thoughts along the lines of "I've never seen anything quite like you, Atlantis. Beautiful Carribean oceany jelly sparkle fest glitter of awesome."

I love the base color so much - we honeymooned in Aruba and this base IS Carribean Blue. I even appreciated the way-too-bright-before-coffee lights on the subway ride to work because it gave the rainbow holographic glitter a mesmerizing sparkle. On repeat wears, I've aimed for coverage somewhere between my pinkie and middle finger so I can clearly see the base and the holo glitter stands out the most.