Teaser Pic!

Guess where I went today??

More later!

On Vacay!

Just wanted to let you all know that I am on vacation until May 11! I probably will not post until then but when I get back I hope to have lots of goodies to share!

March/April Haul

Whew! Really been buying way too much stuff!

Tokidoki Robbery Palette - I've been contemplating this purchase for a long time but I saw it on sale for $25 so I decided it was finally time. I really like all the colors!

Urban Decay Show Pony palette - Six pretty colors, a travel-size 24/7 pencil in Zero, and a mini Primer Potion, all on sale at sephora.com for $16!

Essie It's Genius, China Glaze LOL, China Glaze Gamer Glam - Got the Essie on sale at Trade Secret and the CGs on ebay.

Cover Girl - Found Midnight Forest and Sand at the Dollar Tree ($1 for both!) and the other two were purchased on ebay.

Cover Girl Orange Slush, Pink Ice, Arctic, and Krypton-Ice - ebay

Chameleon Blue Sky, Calypso, Blue Frost, Galactic - According to the company's website, these can only be found at Rite Aid.

Chanel Mimosa - Love yellows, I hope this one has a Chanel-worthy formula.

Lippmann Bad Romance, Across the Universe, Lady Sings the Blues, Today Was a Fairytale - My first Lippmanns! Of course I would go for all the glitter, haha.

MAC Little Girl Type and Ice Cream Cake - Pretty pastels! I returned Mischievous Mint.

Clarins Patient Pink, 230(!), Pink Shimmer - I bought 230 and the other two were included as free gifts. I will have to take some proper pictures some day, 230 really is as amazing as everyone says!

I was supposed to be banned until our vacation next week, but most of these were purchased with gift cards so it doesn't really count, right? :p

Black/Blue Mani

I did this one a while back but I wasn't very happy with it. Besides the fact that the overall look is kind of sloppy and random, the black acrylic powder I used to make the bow smeared everywhere. I had to paint over some parts with the nail polish again, making it look really messy.

The base is Color Club Take Me To Your Chateau. I did the bow on my pointer using acrylic powder and the one on my ring finger is just hex glitter pieces and a black rhinestone in the center. The lace parts are stickers.

Definitely not my best work but oh well, you learn from experience.

OPI Dazzle Me over American Apparel Office

I think that my biggest nail polish love is light blue, but mint green is up there too; I have sooo many! Anyway, a friend of mine gifted me with OPI Dazzle Me, silver shimmer/microglitter in a pale green-tinged base. I thought this would be perfect over a mint green, so I wore it over AA Office:

I think this is two coats of Dazzle Me over two or three coats of Office. I really like this combo, it gives a bit more visual interest to a plain cream. Very nice topper.

Milani Gems over MAC Something About Pink

I did this one a while ago, because I was feeling festive:

Milani Gems over MAC Something About Pink. This is the new version of Gems, with pink glitter. I don't have Lippmann Happy Birthday to compare, but I think they are pretty much the same except for the fact that the small glitter in Gems is hexagonal and the small glitter in HB is square. This didn't turn out quite as well as I had hoped; I am wearing three coats of each polish but I think it would have looked better with just one or two coats of Gems. I love the new Gems though! The pink glitter makes it more like party glitter rather than a holiday polish.

Happy Friday!

Rescue Beauty Lounge Bangin

I am not really a red nail polish person, but I do think that everyone needs a few. I was feeling inspired by a new red lipstick I tried (more on that in a later post), and Rescue Beauty Lounge Bangin really fit the bill.

It's a bright, almost-orange, coral red. Perfect for spring and summer, sexy and fun at the same time. Formula on this one was great, easy to work with and perfect in two coats (that's how many I'm wearing in the photo). I'm thinking about putting it on my toes, too.

On another note, I think I've finally found a base coat/top coat combination that works (for me) with RBL. I have heard that if you use their Treatment System, it works well. The Treatment System consists of Base Coat Prep, Base Coat, and Top Coat. From what I have read, BCP is basically a thin, clear, sticky base and Base Coat is a milky, ridge-filling base coat (Top Coat is just a clear top coat). I mimicked the Treatment System by using Orly Bonder as the BCP, Nail Tek Foundation II (ridge-filling base) as the base coat, and then Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Anti-Chip Top Coat instead of Seche Vite, since SV is not 3-free. When I used just Orly Bonder and SV with RBL polishes, my manicure would literally start chipping in less than 12 hours, even before taking a shower. So far, my new combo is working well with Bangin! I might try this with other polishes as well.

I have to admit, part of the reason why I bought Bangin is because I thought it was pretty close to the color of one of my favorite pairs of Christian Louboutin shoes!

Not an exact match, but very close. Everyone needs some red lipstick, red polish, and red shoes!

MAC Quite Cute Bottle Comparisons

I picked these up on Friday and decided to do some quick bottle comparison pics.

Here's Ice Cream Cake (middle) next to Something About Pink (left) and Diamond Cosmetics Cotton Candy. ICC is a beautiful, blue-toned Barbie pink, and I really don't have anything like it. Definitely a keeper.

Here is Little Girl Type next to Essie Lilacism. This picture isn't the greatest but LGT is paler and a bit more gray-toned than Lilacism. I love pastels so I think it's worth owning both, but if you're not a huge lavender fan you can skip this one.

Mischievous Mint (middle) next to Revlon Minted and Essie Mint Candy Apple. Compared to Minted, MM is a bit darker and more blue-toned. Compared to MCA, MM is more green and just a shade darker. I think I will be returning this one since I have so many mint greens already.

Hope this helps!

China Glaze LOL

Whenever I see swatches of the OMG collection I always regret missing out; I wasn't into nail polish back then. I'm hoping to be able to fill my lemming with Nfu-ohs for the most part, but some of them are pretty unique. I really loved LOL and ended up winning it in an ebay auction for a good price! Here's my newest score, China Glaze LOL:

It's a dark purple linear holo. LOVE! This picture is taken with flash so this is what it would look like in bright lighting, but it's more subtle in low lighting. It looks like a metallic dark purple in low lighting, but I still like that color too! I am wearing two coats in the picture. It was a bit watery and hard to control, but I think this is better for applying a linear holo. There's less chance of bald spots which is a fairly common problem with holos, especially since they dry quickly. As with any linear holo, I skipped the base and top coats. This makes the polish easier to apply and maximizes the holo effect, but the wear is pretty bad. I took the picture less than 12 hours after applying and you can already see a bit of tip wear.

I was kind of worried that the holo wouldn't show up against the dark color, but that is not the case. It is a bit more subtle than it might be against a lighter color, but the holo effect is still strong. I actually don't have many purple polishes, but this was a great first step to expanding my purples!

Someone needs to start making colors like this again!

Cover Girl IceSlicks

I already swatched Anti-Freeze a while ago, but I recently bought a few more on ebay so I thought I'd do a comparison. I did these all over Diamond Cosmetics Crushed Velvet which is actually a dark purple, but it looks blue in the pictures.



All of them go on clear and the glitter is iridescent. The glitter in Arctic ranges from cerulean to teal, depending on the angle. The glitter in Krypton-Ice goes from teal to yellow-green. Orange Slush's glitter goes from red-orange to yellow-orange. Pink Ice has the same glitter as Orange Slush, plus a royal blue glitter. Anti-Freeze has the same royal blue glitter as Pink Ice, but also small specks of pale green glitter (possibly the same as the glitter in Krypton-Ice).

I really love all of these! Even though I only wore the different colors on each finger for this comparison, I loved wearing them so much that I did it on my other hand too. There's a good amount of glitter as a top coat, I am wearing two coats of each color. Not dense enough to wear by themselves, though. As much as I love these, I do have some complaints. First of all, they REEK! I'm sure it has to do with the chemicals (pretty sure these are not 3-free) but whatever the reason, they smell like rotting garlic or something. I don't even mind the smell of most nail polishes that much but these smell gross. The other big complaint I have is that they do not seem to mesh well with 3-free polishes. I put Seche Vite over my mani, but it was still dent-able for at least two days, maybe more. Also, I'm not sure if this is a well-known fact that I am just discovering, but it seems like when you put SV over polishes that take a very long time to dry, small cracks eventually form in the polish. Weird. Still, I love these glitters so much that I am willing to deal with it all; I don't think there is anything similar out there right now.

I know people have been able to find these at their local Dollar Tree locations, but I bought these on ebay. If you are lucky enough to find some, pick them up!

Chameleon Calypso

I was at Rite Aid the other day and came across this brand, Chameleon. Most of the colors are duochromes (if not all), but I was afraid it might be too brushstroke-y so I just picked up this one. Well, I think it's amazing! I promptly went back the next day to pick up a few more colors. Here is Calypso:





Isn't it amazing? The primary base color is kind of a metallic pinkish lavender that changes to a pale bluish silver, but in between there's dark blue, gold, and maybe purple? The duochrome effect is very strong. The finish actually wasn't frosty, it kind of reminds me of the Sally Hansen Chrome polishes; metallic, but no brushstrokes. The only thing is that it really shows every imperfection on your nails, so it might be good to use a ridge-filling base coat. Also, I added Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Anti-Chip Top Coat but it didn't seem to have any effect at all, almost as if it had been absorbed into the polish. Weird. Other than that, the formula was pretty good. It was pretty easy to work with, but it dries very quickly, almost as quickly as a matte. You have to work fast with a fair amount of polish to prevent bald spots. I am wearing three coats in the pictures and you can actually still see through my nail a bit when I hold my hands up to the light, but the metallic finish really hides the sheerness.

Chameleon polish is made by Scherer, same company that makes CQ and petites (they were all in the same display when I found this one). According to the company's website, you can only find these at Rite Aid and they were $2.99 for .4 oz. There are some on ebay, but they're pricey.

I really love this color, can't wait to try the others!

Essie One Day Without Blues = Coat Azure CONFIRMED!

I suspected this so I did a search and found this:
http://holographicheather.blogspot.com/2011/03/why-im-blue-about-one-day-without-blues.html

Yup, it's the same as Coat Azure. So, if you missed out on the Toms/Essie promo, you can still pick up the color!

In other news, sorry for not posting in a while! I've just been lazy about uploading photos but I will be updating soon!