Hard to Find Friday: Deborah Lippmann Million Dollar Mermaid

Happy Friday all!  Boy am I glad for the weekend.  This week has just been dragging and it needed to be over on like Tuesday.  I bet some of you feel the exact same way.

This is Deborah Lippmann's Million Dollar Mermaid from the Summer 2013 "Mermaids" collection.  It is a light tangerine micro glitter with gold shimmer and small orange hexes.  The formula was easy to work with and was smooth.  I used three coats for full opacity, but two would be fine if you are not as finicky as I am about VNL.  

I am not a huge fan of oranges, I own like three and one of them is entirely just for nail art, but I like this one.  With my skin tone it almost looks neutral.  But then it is

a Deborah Lippmann polish that references mermaids, so of course I have to love it.

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. ;)

Untried Wednesday: OCC Electric Sheep and Deborah Lippmann Boom Boom Pow!

Happy Wednesday all!  I hope that the week has been going well for you all.  I'm still managing to kick NaNoWriMo butt and blogging consistently, so go me.  Today I have two untried polishes to show you all, so I hope you enjoy them.  Also, what is up with my skin that I have lobster hands?  My skin is usually not this red.  I'm going to blame it on the dry air and fluctuating temperatures here in San Diego.  It is totally not fun.   

On my thumb, index, and pinkie fingers I have wearing Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics in Electric Sheep.  It is a dusty lilac cream with a bit of silver shimmer.  I love these kind of colors and the best part about this is that it is a one coater.  The formula is a little thick, but nothing that you can't work with.  Electric Sheep was released in OCC's Spring 2013 Sci-Fi Lullabies collection.  It was named after Phillip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? which was the inspiration behind the 1982 film Blade Runner.  It is still available on Sephora's website, but not on OCC's site.

Now on my middle and ring fingers I am wearing Deborah Lippmann's Boom Boom Pow! from the Winter 2010 collection.  It is a mixture of gold hexes and actual 24 karat gold dust.  This works best as a topper, but I wanted to see if it would become opaque.  For my picture I used four coats and could still see a touch of nail line.  So this one you want to limit to topping polishes.  It is a beauty and totally glad I got my hands on it.  I bought this at Ulta on clearance and it is still available on the website.  It is also listed on the Deborah Lippmann website, but it is full price there.  If you happen to be in an Ulta, make sure you check out the clearance section.  I've found lots of other Deborah Lippmanns for at least 50% off, so don't ever discount it.

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. ;)

Untried Wednesday- Deborah Lippmann Hit Me With Your Best Shot

Guys, I love Deborah Lippmann polishes, like so much.   I own fifteen, which if you think about that fact that they retail for $18-$22, is kind of crazy.  In my defense, I've only paid full price for one of them, which was Mermaid's Dream and I still regret nothing.  The rest I got cheap or as gifts from the Boytoy or Mama LacquerVixen.  I love all of my Deborah Lippmann polishes... except for this one.

This picture is three coats of Hit Me With Your Best Shot.  Now looking at it right off the bat, the color looks fine, just not particularly impressive.  It's a dark gray with the slightest bit of blue shimmer in the sunlight.  I kept trying to capture the blue, but my camera just would not capture it.  The very meh color could have been saved with a good formula, you know considering it is a high end brand and retails for $18.  This was three coats, and if you look closely at the right corner of my pointer finger there is a bald patch.  My right hand is worse.  I would have liked the polish a whole lot better if the formula was actually good.  Lucky for me, I bought this polish on clearance from Beauty Brands for $4 when they were discontinuing their Deborah Lippmann polishes.  If I had boughten this at full price I would have been very upset.  I was so disappointed I couldn't make myself even clean up the edges, I just wanted to move on to the next color as soon as possible.

As the usual side note, this polish was purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have people send me polishes just to review them. ;-)

Hard to Find Friday: Deborah Lippmann Wicked Collection

Woooo!  It's Friday once again and here I bring you Hard to Find Friday.  My pick for today is Deborah Lippmann's Wicked collection.  It came out late last fall, I believe exclusively to Sephora and the Deborah Lippmann website, in celebration of Wicked's ten year anniversary on Broadway.

I got to see Wicked when it was playing at the Pantages Theater a long while ago and I adored it.  It is probably one of my favorite musicals of all time, second to Phantom of the Opera.  It gave such a different spin on the original story of Wizard of Oz that you walk out of the theater having completely different feelings for the characters.  And the music was amazing.  Seriously, Idina Menzel has the most amazing voice ever.  Like when I'm driving in my car blasting to the soundtrack and belting out the songs, I die a little.  Partially because my voice cracks and I can't do it too, but mostly because she's amazing.

As much as I know that people love listening to me ramble like a crazy fangirl, let's get to the important stuff, nail polish.  This collection includes three mini sized bottles with the names One Short Day, Defying Gravity, and Popular.  I feel each of the polishes do a good job of referencing their songs.

First off, wow I'm sorry how blurry my nails look in this picture.  Also I look a lot tanner than I really am.  If I had seen this before I would have taken a new picture.  Unfortunately, my index finger is already chipping, which is not against the polish but my own body chemistry.  Polish never lasts on that finger.  :-(  Let's see if I can do a good enough job of describing my opinions on this collection.  

One Short Day is a dark emerald jelly polish with green glitters in in.  The formula was pretty thick and went on opaquely in one coat.  Pretty awesome I think.  I think it does a pretty decent job of capturing the glitz that is the famed Emerald City.  Defying Gravity is a slightly dusty, emerald cream.  It was opaque in two careful coats.  I had to go over one nail with a third coat to cover up a little patch.  Now, Popular was the polish I had the highest hopes for and the one that disappointed me the most.  It is a bright pink polish with a hint of blue shimmer, which I love.  Unfortunately, the picture is the polish after FOUR COATS.  There is still a ton of visible nail line and I hate me some VNL.  That and sinking glitters are probably the two things I hate the most with polishes.  If it had been just a little more opaque, I would have loved it.  It would have been an awesome jelly polish, but it's just so sheer.  

All the other reviews that I have seen of this polish set have been very positive, so it makes me wonder if I got a dud when it came to Popular.  I hope that is the case because if it is, this is a very solid collection I think.  Both greens were pretty and had good formulas.  Popular would have been amazing if it was not so sheer.