Saturday, August 30, 2014

Swatch Saturday: Orly La Vida Loca and Fingerpaints Mistful Thinking

In case it wasn't obvious by now, I'm not the biggest neon afficionato.  If I do wear them, it's usually on my toes or under black glitter.  I love China Glaze's Glitz n' Pieces for that.  When I was trying to pick a color to swatch today I had pulled out most of my favorite dark polishes, but I couldn't seem to settle on any color.  Finally it occured to me that I had a strange itch for neons.  I chose Orly La Vida Loca and Fingerpaints Mistful Thinking.  I don't know why, but they were demanding to be used together.

Let's start off with this.  I don't believe in white bases for neons.  As Nicole from Young Wild and Polished has said, "white bases are for bitches".  I personally hate having too many layers of polish on my nails.  If I'm lucky I may only have three layers on my fingers, and that means a sticky base, a single coat of color, and top coat.  Usually I will have closer to five, since most colors aren't opaque in a single coat and I also like to use Opi's Nail Envy under everything.  So really, adding two to three coats of a white polish is unappealing to say the least.



Mistful Thinking is a neon green cream, probably lime green.  It reminds me of Essie's The More the Merrier, which I have swatched here.  For the picture, I painted three coats.  It painted on evenly and was pretty opaque at two coats, but I did a third to cover up a little bit of VNL.

La Vida Loca is a neon pink with a blue shimmer.  I am on a never ending quest for the perfect pink polish with blue shimmer that is opaque.  This is the closest I've come to it. This is three coats and it's so pretty, but as you can tell on my middle finger, there is still some visible nail line.  La Vida Loca did paint on pretty evenly.

I kept staring at my nails trying to figure out what they reminded me of.  Then it hit me.  Do they look familiar to you?


As the usual kind reminder, these products were purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have companies send me free stuff to review them. ;)



Friday, August 29, 2014

Hard to Find Friday: Lush Lacquer Mr. Bubble and Illamasqua Phallic

What happens when I start talking about how San Diego never really hits over 85 degrees?  I get two days straight at 90 degrees.  Ug I've been dying here.  It's terrible.  You know, with my 90 degree weather.  :-P  I only complain because we don't have air conditioning at all and I'm a big baby.

Originally, when I was choosing my HTF Friday polish I eventually decided on Lush Lacquer's Mr. Bubble for a couple of reasons.  I LOVE this polish so much.  The first time I saw it was in SunOnWater11's stash.  I kept threatening to steal her bottle, so being the amazing person she is, she found me a bottle in a destash sale.  She also told me that the reason that Mr. Bubble was so difficult to find was that Lush Lacquer had been slapped with a few cease and desist orders in the past.  The first was for their brand its self from the cosmetic company Lush.  The second was by The Village Company, which owns the bubble bath Mr. Bubble.  Lush Lacquer did end up changing their name to Polish Me Silly, but they pulled Mr. Bubble.  Last I heard, the company was looking into a supplier that could get them the glitters for Mr. Bubble and they would just rename it, but it has been a while.

I also chose Illamasqua's Phallic as my base color.  So when I went searching online for somewhere to link to purchase it, I discovered that none of the US stores have it anymore.  I had originally purchased this polish at Sephora a few years ago, but it looks like they stopped carrying the brand.  Someone let me know if I am wrong, but the only place I could find to buy this polish was on Illamasqua's site itself.  It is an English brand, so that makes it even more difficult for most people to get it now.  They do offer international shipping, but I wonder if that means that it will be shipped by boat instead of my air, making it take weeks to arrive.  So hey!  I have two Hard To Find polishes for you guys today.

First off, let's start with Illamasqua's Phallic.


Oh be still by polish heart.  I had forgotten how gorgeous this polish was.  It is a midnight blue polish, so dark it is almost black with a bit of shimmer.  Two coats and it is perfection.  Thought looking at my cuticles, this may be a stainer.  This picture is without top coat, so it is that glossy and reflective on its own.


Mr. Bubble is a glitter topper in a clear base full of medium and small hexes along with small glitters in pink, blue, and white.  For being as old as it undoubtably is, it was a pretty good glitter formula.  The glitter was this thick from 1-2 coats.  I wish I could have gotten a few more of the larger hexes on my nails, but they had all sunk to the bottom of the bottle.  I'm going to need to dig out some more stainless steel mixing balls to add to the bottle, but that should fix it right up.  

Over all, I am happy with these polishes.  If you manage to find either of these guys in a destash or by luck at a random Sephora, get you some!  When I had purchased this Illamasqua polish, and my handful of other ones, they had been about $14 a piece.  Now they are 14.50 pounds.  (Sorry, I have no idea how to add the pound sign on this computer) That would make them just shy of  $24!  That's more expensive than my beloved Deborah Lippmanns that I refuse to buy at full price.  

As the usual kind reminder, these polishes were not sent to me for review.  I got it as a birthday present or bought it myself.  :-)

Wednesday, August 27, 2014

Untried Wednesday: OPI How Great is Your Dane?

I am so ready for fall.  True, fall and winter in San Diego doesn't really get colder than 65 degrees, but it doesn't mean I'm not ready for dark colored polishes.  I am a little goth kid on the inside, so I've been craving some dark colors for a while, especially after a summer of pinks and bright blues.



Today I bring you a darker, more professional looking polish.  I can wear a color like this to work and not have to worry about it being too eye catching, for a professional setting.  This is OPI's How Great is Your Dane? from the current Fall 2014 Nordic collection.  This is the first OPI collection I have been interested in for a good while and I managed to get my hands on a couple of them.

How Great is Your Dane is a very nice, cool tone, taupe brown cream with a hint of purple.  I adore colors like this that you cannot really describe with just one word.  It painted on with two coats.  Even sitting in 85 degree weather, when I look at my nails I can almost feel the fall breeze.


As the usual kind reminder, this polish was not sent to me for review.  I got it as a birthday present.  :-)

Monday, August 25, 2014

Mani Monday- Mad Love Affair

Guess who's back?  Back again!  I feel like a clip of Eminem needs to be inserted here.  I guess that reference dated me a tad.  Now you know that I was a teenager in the early 2000's.  :-P  Bad news first, my computer is still being a pain and totally needs to be updated.  I don't see it getting fixed any time soon.  Good news is that if I don't need to click my mouse pad very much, or if I'm not on it for very long, I can totally still do my blog posts on it.  So yay!  Let's back into it then.

For Mani Monday, I bring you guys a pretty mani that would be cute for a special date night or Valentines day.  I used Opi's Affair in Red Square, Squishy Face Polish in Truly, Madly, Deeply, and some heart shaped NailVinyls.



Affair in Red Square.  Oh be still my polish loving heart.  All I can say about this polish, is that it is the sexiest red I have ever seen.  Two coats and you get a bright, glowing, and shimmery polish that is just gorgeous.  Ah! I just cannot control myself.  It may be my favorite red polish.

Truely, Madly, Deeply.  I love white based crellys with different color combinations.  This polish has white and red hexes, and black glitters, hexes, and small glitters.  Three coats and this polish is opaque enough to cover the nail line, but still sheer enough to show the glitters underneath.  While three coats may sound like a lot, that's usually par for the course when it comes to crellys.  If it were any more opaque, you would not be able to see the nifty glitters.  To top it off, the color combination reminds me of Resident Evil and the Umbrella Corporation.  So hey, any polish that reminds me of zombies is always good.  Squishy Face is currently down from what I assume is a restock frenzy, but you can find her shop here.  To keep up on her sales, you can follow her on Instagram.

Have I said before that I love NailVinyls?  They make nail art so easy and it looks like you are super talented.  As I've said before, when you work with any tape product, make sure your polish ENTIRELY DRY.  If not, it will pull and destroy your base colors.  It's happened so many times for me it is ridiculous.  There was cursing and screaming.  Stuff was thrown around the apartment.  It was not pretty.  These heart shaped NailVinyls were a limited edition release for Valentine's Day, so unfortunately they're not available on the store front.  Though there are plenty of vendors on Storenvy that sell vinyls and probably have heart shapes.

I placed a heart on my middle finger and painted one thick coat of Affair in Red Square over the whole nail, and quickly removed the vinyl with needle nose tweezers.  I did make a tiny ding, so I carefully painted over the dent.  Finally I cleaned up my edges, top coated my nails, and voila!  Completed, cutesy nail art.  I loved the way this ended up and I will have to do this again next time the boytoy takes me on a special date.  ;-)

As the usual kind reminder, these polishes were not sent to me for review.  I got them as a birthday present.  :-)