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!!

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!

Color Club Magic Attraction

More sparkly snow-inspired polish because we're supposed to get stuff that sticks to the ground tonight!  I'm trying to also get myself mentally psyched up for tomorrow's expected high of 24 degrees.  Heh... 24.  That's about 55 degrees lower than the expected high in Phoenix... on to that sparkly polish!

Color Club Magic Attraction is from the Fall 2008 Glitter Vixen Collection - one day I will have the entire set! Magic Attraction does have a couple of relatives out there in the polish world. According to Scrangie, it's an available option for the hard-to-find OPI Paris Couture for Sure. It's also related to Hocus Pocus from this year's Color Club Halloween minis. If you're not a frequent glitter wearer and you'd prefer a smaller bottle, this would be a good time to look for that set on clearance.

The chunky holographic glitter throughout Magic Attraction makes this clear-base, silver glitter look sparkly and multicolored. This polish has dense glitter like the other Glitter Vixens so it covers the nail in one coat.  With two coats, it gets as close to opaque as you can get with a clear base glitter. This isn't a fine-grit glitter so double up on the thick top coat.

Despite looking very silver in the bottle, I think this has a pinkish tint in some angles when I wear it.

Indirect Sunlight

Direct Sunlight - Different Angle
but look! I caught some of the rainbow holo sparkle effect in the photo!

Bundle up & stay warm! More glitter to get me through this winter to come *wink*

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!

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!

Rescue Beauty Lounge Plie

This post is dedicated to my best friend who just ordered her wedding dress.  Her wedding's next year and placing that order is one of the first big steps in making it all real.  Maybe next up will be picking out the bridesmaid dresses *cough, cough, wink, cough* 

I picked up Plie in the big, and most likely last, Rescue Beauty Lounge 50% Off VIP Sale at the beginning of November.  Plie is a perfect polish to try out during the work week.  I missed Opaque Nude last sale and Grunge was still out of stock for this sale, but I had to get a cool opaque nude from RBL this time so I picked Plie.  This shade did not disappoint - it's a wonderful nude with a touch of pink.  It really did remind me of ballet slippers.

After trying Dead Calm, Stormy, and No More War, I figured RBL's formula wouldn't let me down, but I had doubts because this was a light nude color.  After all, I picked up Opaque Pink when Opaque Nude wasn't available and Opaque Pink was NOT opaque!  I shouldn't have doubted the polish community because Plie is opaque in one coat, perfectly creamy in two. 

Since it's after the DST flip and I'm at work during sunlight hours, I only have an indoor shot, but this accurate to the pink-nude color that Plie looks on me.  As with all nudes, I think that skin tone really affects how orange or pink or gray-dead the shade can look on an individual's hand.  The finish is much shinier in real life, but I couldn't get the camera to capture it.  I also put the decal on my ring finger as an extra shout out to mi amiga's wedding dress order.

This shade is totally a shout out towards the color scheme my friend is contemplating.  I can't divulge all her details, but she knows what I mean.

Congrats again, Ash!  I can't wait for your big day!!