L'Oreal Shocking Green

Short post tonight - it's been a hectic day and I'm a bit worn out!

Shocking Green is...well, green, obviously. (My descriptive skills are falling a bit short here.) A medium yellow-toned green to be exact, with some gold/orange/green shimmer in it which didn't really show up well in the pictures. It look a bit greener in the first pic than it actually is; the next two are more color-accurate.

Here it is in sunlight:
Oh, goodness, that is one ugly-bug of a polish shot! Please excuse the hard-scrabble-looking dirt background - I was late taking the pics today and had to follow the evening sunlight into a bare corner of the garden...That's where I tried to plant some sunflowers that failed spectacularly, and now it looks as if someone had salted the earth and nothing will ever grow there again. :( Anyway, where was I? Oh...back to the polish, with flash this time:
When I stopped at the beauty supply store today to pick up some polish thinner, still wearing this polish, the cashier asked me, "Is that 'Who the Shrek Are You' on your nails?" I don't have OPI's Who the Shrek Are You in my collection to compare it with, but judging from the swatches I've seen online, maybe it might be close...though I don't think the "Shrek" polish has shimmer in it, does it?

Pics are two coats, plus base and top coats.

Do enjoy the weekend, everyone! :)

Maybelline Express Finish 50 Second Nail Color - Scene Steeler

A very dark steely gray polish, with a silvery shimmer. I like this; I'm very fond of the darker, more vampy colors, and I think this one makes my nails look like black pearls.

It went on quite nicely, dried very quickly, and wore well (as well as anything ever does for me - I'm really hard on my nails most of the time.) Pics are three coats, plus base and top coat.

Here it is in the sun: (hmmm...looking at this picture I can see that i filed the nail on my third finger really unevenly - dang!)

And in shade:
Incidentally, I stopped by Rite-Aid this evening, and since I can never pass by any nail polish displays without stopping to take a look, I had a quick glance. They had a Sinful Colors Shanghai Nights Display, but they were all out of Bamboo, which is the only one of that collection I was really interested in...Lol, I guess everybody else was, too! I did spot a nearly full Sinful Colors Colors of Darkness display tucked away on a bottom shelf. All of those colors looked verrrry vampy, and I am verrry interested in at least a few of them. (Which means watch this space for swatches...;)

Vampy, dark, and brooding colors (yay! ;D) seem to be quite the trend in Rite-Aid at the moment; I also happened upon a Wet'n'Wild Color Icon Insomnia display, which was all about dark, vampy reds, blues, and purples and glitters in black jelly bases. I am currently quite intrigued by most (ok, all) of them as we speak...There are only two of each color in the display and they seemed to be going fast.

I did notice one thing about the Wet'n'Wild Insomnia collection, though - one of the colors, Prowler, a purple glitter in a dark jelly base, looks to me like an exact dupe of Night Prowl, one of the polishes in the regular Wet'n'Wild display. Since I already bought Night Prowl in the 0.43 bottle for ninety-nine cents, I don't think I'm going to be in a big hurry to pay $1.99 for 0.29 oz of Prowler... Just sayin'... All the other colors in the display, though, looked new and different.

Claire's Ocean Breeze

Blue skies and butterflies...

I admit, I bought this polish purely out of curiosity. I had never tried a layered polish before, and I wondered how it would come out on the nail. It was also part of the ten-for-ten-dollar polish sale I lucked into a while back at Claire's, so for a dollar I figured I'd give it a try.

Well, it came out blue. I'm not sure why; as a sticker on the top of the cap instructed, I did not shake it, and I tried to be careful to dip the brush all the way down into the bottle to try to pick up some of the layered colors. It still came out blue.

It is, however, a very lovely blue, a color that makes me think of cloudless summer skies. Here it is in the shade:
And in the sunlight:
Although the polish seemed a little thick (I'm guessing maybe it has to be to maintain the layered effect in the bottle instead of all mixing together) it went on very smoothly, dried in a perfectly reasonable amount of time, and was completely opaque in two coats. (The fact that it's flooded onto my cuticles in the pics is entirely the fault of my shaky hands, not any flaw in the polish consistency itself.) The wear is good, as I've found it to be with all of the Claire's polishes I've tried so far - no chipping, smudging, dinging, or tip-wear after two days.

Before I took the pictures, I decided to fancy it up a bit with some pink and white butterfly and flower nail art stickers on the middle finger (which is usually where things go horribly, tragically wrong for me because I'm apparently sticker-challenged and always end up with the darn things stuck firmly somewhere I don't want them, and then ruin my manicure trying to pry them off and re-stick them. That's why I only did one nail on each hand; it turned out pretty well this time and figured I'd best not push my luck!)
I absolutely love this shade of blue! :)

I wonder, though, is there a trick to applying layered polishes that I just don't know? Has anybody else tried them and gotten a multi-colored effect?

Ooops!

While trying to figure out my camera issues, I accidentally deleted all the pics of this weekend's manicure (yeah, I'm a real whizbang with stuff like digital cameras sometimes! ;-P), so I'll have to redo and re-photograph that one later. Sorry, guys...Please bear with me - the camera is fairly new and I'm still learning how to use it.

And I'm in mourning for my nails, which did not survive an encounter with the hood release lever of my car on Sunday night. So, thanks to my car's need to have oil put into it, I'm going to have to try to rock a set of nubbins for a while.

In the meantime, though, here's another post about me messing around with glitter! :D

I'm calling this franken "Tarnished". I wanted a gothier glitter that would be dark yet still sparkly, but not the more usual silver, pink, red, or purple glitter in a black base, etc...So I started off by mixing a pewter-colored glitter into a clear base. Then I added a bit of silver glitter, a touch of dusky lavender glitter, a sprinkle of black glitter, and just a hint of iridescent glitter for extra sparkle and to light up the darkness a little, and this I what I ended up with. Here it is in full sun, doing it's sparkly thing:
And in the shade, still sparkling away:

I love glitter! Have I ever mentioned that? ;)

Now, I'm off to re-read my camera's instruction manual so that I can provide you with a post about an actual polish next time, instead of a post about me dumping a half-ton of glitter into a bottle of clear polish and going, "Oooooohhh, sparklyyy :D!!!!"
Hope everyone's week started off well!

Maybelline Express Finish 50 Second Nail color - Summer Sunset

I'm experiencing technical difficulties at the moment. I can't get my camera to transfer pictures to my computer properly. I did manage to upload two of the five I had of this polish, although they're hardly the best of the lot...I'll be working on fixing the issue.

Anyway, here's a polish that was much, much prettier in the bottle than it is on my nails. When I spotted this one in the store, it was a gorgeous coral pink color with an almost glass-fleck golden shimmer; the perfect summer color, I thought. Since I adore glass-fleck polishes, I snapped it right up - only to find that the drool-worthy gold shimmer didn't show up nearly as much on my nails. Disappointing. :(

I figured it was going to be somewhat sheer, so I used a white base coat. And sure enough - the pics show four coats plus top coat, but looking at my nails in the sunlight, I could still see some streakiness. It really could have used another coat. Now, I'm impressed if a polish is opaque and matches bottle-color in two coats, I'm not really phased by doing three coats, I can even tolerate a four-coater for the sake of a great color...but five is really pushing it, in my opinion. Sigh...I realize I may be biased here; I'm just not a fan of sheer polishes.

So...this wasn't a bad polish, by any means. It's still a rather pretty color, and it did dry quickly, although I didn't time it to see whether it dried in fifty seconds (Am I just imagining things, or did they change that? Didn't it used to be "sixty seconds"?). It just wasn't what I was expecting or hoping it would be, and was too sheer for my personal taste. Oh well...at least the polish I replaced it with for this weekend turned out to be a beauty - I'll have pics of that one up on Monday, once I've straightened out my camera issues.

I hope everyone has a terrific weekend. See you at the beginning of next week! :)

N.Y.C. - Empire State Blue

First of all, welcome to each one of my followers, and thank you!! :) I'm so thrilled that there are people who actually want to read my ramblings! When I started this blog, I didn't know if I'd ever have any followers at all; I can't believe that now I have ten! I can't tell you what a joy it is to be able to share my love of polish with people who actually understand and share my obsession. I hope I can continue to make my blog interesting to all of you.

Now, on to the polish:

I couldn't get a color-accurate photo of this one, no matter what I tried. In real life, it's several shades darker than it looks in these pictures, and it also has a lot more blue in it. It's a peacock blue with blue-green shimmer.

This pic (in sunlight) is the closest to the actual color, although it's still a little too light:
I dearly love blue and green polishes and I have (far too) many of them, yet I don't think I've got another blue quite like this one in my collection. However, I thought it didn't look quite as pretty on the nail as it did in the bottle for some reason. The shimmer didn't show up quite as much...I guess polishes can be funny that way sometimes; occasionally what looks stunning in the bottle will turn out to be just kind of ordinary on, while a polish that looks a little average in the bottle can turn out to be a real knockout when you wear it.

I still think it's very pretty, though.

With flash:
It went on much more sheer than I expected. I ended up using a white basecoat to hide the dreaded VNL (Wet'n'Wild, my standard white) and it took four coats to reach bottle color. So all the pics are four coats plus base and topcoats.

Glitter Franken - Electric violet

This is a lot more glittery and sparkly than it looks in the pictures.My camera doesn't do well with glitter...or purples, apparently...None of these pictures captures the color or the sparkle quite accurately.

I made this one with some super-fine glitter from the dollar store (Oh good heavens, why don't I just go ahead and re-name this blog "Look What I Found at the Dollar Store!" and be done with it? ;-P I promise, not all of my polishes came from the dollar store - I just made a big haul there a couple weeks ago, and am just now getting around to actually taking them out of my stash of untrieds and wearing them.)

Anyway, I used a bright grapey purple glitter in a clear base to start with. Then, because I thought the reult was pretty, but a little boring, I added a bit of fuchsia glitter to brighten it up a bit. Then I let it sit for a week or so before I tried it out on my nails. By that time, some of the color from the glitter had transferred into the clear polish, so what I ended up with was a fuchsia-and-purple glitter in a bright purple jelly base. I'm calling it "Electric Violet" because I like it when the polish I'm wearing has a name, and I couldn't think of anything better to call it. If anyone has any suggestions for a better name, please don't hesitate to say so!

This pic is closest to the actual color:
...but still just looking kind of bumpy instead of glittery! (It did dry a bit rough to the touch, since it's so packed with glitter. I did three coats for coverage, plus base and top coat.)

I took this one indoors with flash and purposely blurred it a little to try to capture a little of the glittery sparkle:
Oh, well. I guess that's what happens when your camera can't handle the bling...or the color purple. :)

Thanks for looking!

Claire's 14 Karats

First of all, I must apologize for posting pics of this one pre-clean-up; I was in a hurry to catch the last of the sunlight before yet another sudden summer thunderstorm came rumbling through.

I'm finally living up to the title of my blog; my nails are indeed gilded!

I really liked this gleaming golden color. For some reason, it reminds me of ancient treasures, like a golden statue that might have been discovered in the tomb of an Egyptian pharaoh, perhaps...(I know, I think of odd things sometimes. :-P) It was a bit more prone to brushstrokes than I expected, but on the plus side, it only took two coats to be perfectly opaque, and I wore it all weekend with no major chipping.

And it matched perfectly with the gold embroidery on a dress I wore this weekend:

I wish I had thought to take a picture Of my nails while I was still wearing both the dress and the polish...Why do I always think of these things just a little bit too late?

I was lucky enough to find this one a few weeks ago when Claire's was having a ten-items-for-ten-dollars sale, so it was an amazing bargain at a dollar, but I would have been happy to have paid full price for such a pretty gold polish!

In full sun:

In shade, no flash:
All pics are two coats, plus base and top coat.

Sally Hansen No Chip 10 Day Nail Color - Eternal Expresso

I'm a bit late posting this one, but I do want to get it up here today, since I'll be away for the weekend.

This polish is an older Sally Hansen that I found at the Dollar Tree (I'm always finding stuff in dollar stores; have you noticed?) It came in a two pack; I really bought the package for the other color that came with it, but I do like this one as well. It's a very pretty medium rose color. (To me the name Eternal Expresso would seem to suggest more of a coffee color than a pink, but what do I know? :-P It does seem to be somewhat pinker on the nail than in the bottle. I had a bottle pic, but my camera refused to transfer it for reasons I can't even begin to fathom. Sorry. I may try again later.)

It's quite frosty, actually more so than it looks in my pics, and can be a little brushstroke-y (but really not too bad), so that's something to be aware of if you don't care for frosts...As you can also see in the pics, it had a few minor chips on the tips of my nails by the morning of day two, which is a bit ironic, considering that "No Chip" is actually on the label. As for it being "10 Day Nail Color" - well, no polish has ever lasted anywhere near ten days on my nails, no matter what I do, so I won't even attempt to judge that claim!

Pics are three coats, plus top coat and base coat.

I'd like this one better if it didn't chip quite so easily.

Have a wonderful weekend! :)

China Glaze - Sacred Heart

This one surprised me a little.

Indoors, it looked almost like a...well, like a dried-blood red. Lol. That doesn't sound very attractive, but I really liked it. Outdoors, however, as you can see in the pics, it looked bright red-orange. When my mother saw it, she said it was the color of bittersweet berries: photo of bittersweet: Joene's Garden


It's labeled a neon, and while it doesn't seem neon-bright to me exactly, it does dry to a semi- matte finish like neon polishes tend to do. The pics show three coats, plus top and base coats.

Whether it's red or red-orange, neon or not, I still like it and will definitely wear it again. :)

Does Sacred Heart change color like this for you, too, or is it just my weird skintone making it look different in outdoor lighting?

Mystery Polish

I found this nail polish in an independently-owned dollar store nearby - not Dollar Tree. (I love going there; they always have odd things that I never see anywhere else. I like odd things! ;) I like Dollar Tree, too, but the one near me seems to go ages without ever getting any new nail polish in.)

It was in a little cardboard display box with no brand name on the box. There's no brand name or color name anywhere on the bottle either - just a circled black dot and a symbol that looks kind of like a hand making an "OK" symbol. The front of the bottle says: "NO:2839". On the bottom is a circular silver label with the words "color cosmetic" and the number "23".

Here's a close-up of the bottle:
Whatever it is, it's a beautiful deep ruby red. It went on flawlessly, and is on it's second day of wear with no chips, dings, or tip-wear (and I'm really hard on my poor nails, so that's quite good wear for me!).

Pics are two coats plus base and top coat, and are taken in shade (we've had yet another dreary rainy day here).

I've been trying to find out what brand this polish is, to no avail. Even my normally reliable Google-fu has failed me this time. I'm stumped. If anybody out there knows anything about this mystery brand, do please let me know. I'm really curious.

L.A. Colors Color Craze - Wired??

Just a quick post tonight. I've not been feeling well, and today was kind of stressful, so I'm running a little low on energy. I wanted to get this one posted, though.

I think this one is "Wired", from what I can tell by looking at color swatches online. The name's not printed on the bottle anywhere, and I absent-mindedly threw away the packaging the name was printed on. (Incidentally, I hate it when companies don't mark the name or at least a number somewhere on the bottle. I always intend to label those bottles myself, then I always forget, because I can be a bit woolly-minded sometimes.)

Anyway, this color is a really pretty deep, bright blue, almost a cross between a light navy and a glowy cobalt. It applied with no problems at all, and the pics show two coats plus base and top coat.

However - and this is one of my pet peeves - there was one major problem with this polish. I did my nails with this in the early evening and went to bed five hours later with my manicure in perfect shape. And - to my annoyance - woke up with sheet marks all over my nails. You can sort of see them in the pictures. I just don't have any patience with polishes that stay tacky that long. I really do like the color, though, so I'll probably give it another try sometime in the future to see if it dries any better.

I found this at the Dollar Tree along with about eight or nine other colors. I certainly hope they don't all have drying-time issues, since I bought one of each. Has anybody else tried these and had a similar problem or was it just me?

Wet'n'Wild Craze - Rustic

A beautiful shimmery bronzy-rusty-brown color with a golden sparkle to it in the sunlight.

Went on very smoothly; pics show three coats, plus base and top coat. It would have been just fine with two coats, but I almost always prefer three.

In full sunlight:
My camera couldn't fully capture the shimmery bronzy-golden beauty...


In shade:


The bottle had a "new" sticker on it when I bought it the other day, though I'm pretty sure I've seen it in the Wet'n'Wild display for nearly a year now, if not more. I always passed it up, since shades of brown don't usually catch my eye as readily. Lately, though, I've been gravitating towards autumnal colors (maybe, although I'm still enjoying the summertime delights, I'm starting to subconsciously long for my favorite season.) I'm glad I finally went ahead and bought this little beauty.

For many people this might be more of a fall color than a summer one...I have to admit I don't usually wear my nail polish colors seasonally; I just go by what I feel like wearing at the moment. But I will definitely be breaking this one out again on a crisp fall day, when it will match the falling leaves...only more sparkly! ;)

Jordana Lilac Hearts

This one is little shiny lavender hearts mixed with tiny iridescent glitter in a clear base. Here, I've layered it over black to get the little hearts to stand out more. I think it would probably also look good layered over a darker purple, or maybe even white for a more subtle, pastel look.

Pics are two coats over a black base, plus top coat.

It's a sweet-looking polish, very girly with all its little shimmery hearts, but the only problem with it is that, like some other similar polishes I've tried, the little hearts really don't want to be picked up by the brush. After two coats which ended me up with about six little hearts unevenly divided among all ten fingers, I resorted to digging the hearts out of the bottle with a toothpick and sticking them on my nails. It ended up being a little time-consuming for what I'd originally planned as a quick, just-for-fun Saturday manicure. Also, a few of the hearts had fallen off by the time I took these pictures on the afternoon of the second day.

Overall, though, it's a cute effect if you have the time and patience (or are more skillful than I am at coaxing the hearts to stick to the brush), and it's certainly worth the money I paid for it at the dollar store - not the Dollar Tree, but a little local independently-owned one. I don't think they carry the full color selection of Jordana polishes, but they're the only place I've found them around here. They also had versions of this polish with pink and red hearts, respectively, which I also got and will be swatching at a later date.

We finally got a little weak sun late this afternoon after a day of July downpours, so you can see some of the sparkle from the glitter in the sunlight in the third picture.

Essie Fishnet Stockings

My very first Essie! (I've since caved and bought two more.) I got this in a two-pack at my local Ross, along with Berry Hard.

Very pretty, classic cherry red color. I can imagine this being worn by a forties-era movie star. I think the name's cute, too...

Both pics are outdoors, in the shade, the second with flash. (No sun again today.) Two coats plus base and top coats. I think I really should have done three, as in certain lights it looked fantly streaky. Beautiful red shade though, and nice wear - no chips or tip wear on day two, when these pics were taken.

Again, I must apologize for the sloppy paint job (and for pics taken pre-cleanup!). Bad blogger! No OPI for you! It seems that these days I just can't manage to paint my nails without slopping a tidal wave of polish onto my cuticles. In my defense, though, I was trying to polish them with a needy dog climbing on my lap for attention, so I'm kind of surprised I didn't end up getting polish on my elbows, inside my ears, or in my hair...:-P

Needy dog is needy (and a little too close to the camera):
My "baby", Bebe

Just look at those eyes: big limpid pools of "Feeeed meee, plaaay with meee...LOOVE MEEEEE..."

Don't worry, though - the pup got lots of love and cuddling as soon as Mommy's nails were dry!

Have a great weekend!

Petites Color Fever - 531 Fairy Pink

My first post! Why am I nervous? Lol!

First of all, my apologies for the abominable state of my cuticles; I'm currently going through my annual summertime desert-dry hands phase. Also, on my second finger you can pretty clearly see the latest "owie". I was playing with my mother's cat when he made a claws-out grab for the toy and missed, snagging my finger instead. Ouch....

So my hands are not so pretty right now, but fortunately this polish is! I'm usually not crazy about the paler pink polishes (on me; I love the color pink in any way, shape, or form but the paler ones usually make my skin look too washed out and muddy), but this one has enough deeper and mauvey tones to it that I think I can pull it off.

This polish is a little hard to describe - it seems to be an almost-holo. It's a shimmery mauve-toned pink with loads of tiny silvery holographic or prismatic glitter. It's subtle yet eye-catching.

Try as I might - and I did try; witness the many photos spamming this post, my camera just wouldn't pick up the silver shimmer in this polish, even with flash, but trust me- it's there and it's lovely. I was hoping to get a pic of it in full sun, but we were deep in the June Glooms for most of the day today, and it just wasn't happening.

As for application, the polish went on very smoothly. The pics show three coats over an opaque white base coat (Wet'n'Wild Wild Shine 449C French White Creme) with a topcoat. Without the white base coat it would probably have been a little more sheer. I could probably have gotten away with two coats very satisfactorily, but I have an irrational hatred of VNL (Visible Nail Line), so I preferred three coats plus white base. It did bubble something awful on my nails as t dried, but that might be because it was over one hundred degrees and very humid when I was applying it - or maybe I was just in too much of a rush (which also explains the somewhat sloppy job - apologies again.)

This is now one of my favorite pink nail polishes. I think it's very aptly named as well - it does remind me of a fairy color, dusky and pale at the same time, shimmery, and just downright pretty. It's a shade of pink that you might see in the sky at twilight on a warm summer evening just after the sun's gone down, plus a ton of prismatic sparkle. Love.