Untried Wednesday: Essie Coat Couture

Happy Wednesday all!  The week's halfway over and the weekend is coming!  The first day back after a long weekend is always hectic at work, so I'm hoping today I get a breather and some time to catch up.  Probably not.

Today I have Essie's Coat Couture from the 2015 Cashmire Matte collection.  Originally, I was not interested in these polishes at all.  I was just not into the matte crazy that had been going around.  They all just looked like polishes in my collection, but matte.  Really, I don't wear matte polish, I always top coat.  A perfectly glossy manicure just does things to me.  ;)  So what's the point?  Fortunately I was gifted to of them by my polish wifey.  She knows me better than I do.  

Coat Couture is a purpley gray with blue shimmer running through it.  The formula was smooth and easy to work with.  It was almost completely opaque in one coat, but I did have the odd patch, so I did two coats.  It's just such a pretty color and the blue shimmer almost coats everything in a flash.

I did want to include a picture of Coat Couture glossy.  The blue shimmer is more defined this way.  Either way it is a gorgeous polish and I loved wearing 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. ;)

Mani Monday: French Tips

Happy Monday!  I hope everyone is having a great day so far.  Today, for Mani Monday I thought I'd go with a slight twist on a classic and do a french tip mani.  Let me know what you think!

For my base I used three coats of Cuccio Color's Los Angeles Luscious which is a sheer nude toned polish with a lot of gold shimmer.  Once it was completely dry I used my usual Nail Vinyls in the Single Chevron design to outline the tips of my nails and painted on one quick coat of Zoya's Purity.  

I only kept this manicure on long enough to take pictures.  Honestly,  am really not a french tip kind of girl.  They're just not my thing.  I do think that it is a nice combination and I think it would look great on many other people, but on me it's just meh.

 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. ;)

Hard to Find Friday: Urban Decay Zodiac

Happy Friday everyone!  This week is finally over.  In case you did not already know, the beginning of the month at a bank is always hectic.  Between rent, mortgage payments, payday, social security, and credit card payments you're lucky if you get a moment to breathe.  So I am glad I finally get a couple of days off and some time to play with my nail polish.  :-)

Today I have for you Urban Decay's Zodiac.  It is a blackened green shimmer that took three coats to be completely opaque.  If you are not as picky as I am, two coats probably would have been enough, but I did find the odd patch on my nails.  I really like this color and the effect it has.  It looks almost reptilian on my nails.  I bought this polish on clearance at Nordstom Rack a few months ago, so I'm not sure if it would still be there.  If you do manage to find it, I would pick it up.  And besides, the bottle is cute.  

 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: OPI I Don't Give a Rotterdamn and Funky Fingers Elsa

So I have a basket of untried polishes sitting on the floor by my desk.  Usually I am good about cycling through them, but I don't even know what happened lately.  I've picked up a couple of bottles here, a couple there and now I have a bunch.  Plus I have quite a few Black Friday orders coming in and two swaps this month.  So I need to get on the swatching of these babies!

This is OPI's I Don't Give a Rotterdamn from the Spring 2012 Holland Collection.  It is a elephant gray  with a heavy silver shimmer.  I have heard this described as dusty blue, but I don't see that at all.  It did have a bit of a sheer formula, so I used three thin coats for my picture and was perfectly happy with the opacity.  Strangely enough I don't really have many gray polishes so I'm glad to have it now.

I topped it with Funky Fingers Elsa, from their Frozen trio they came out with last year.  It is a glitter topped with small icy blue hexes and a few medium hexes.  I did just a single coat on the nails and it had a pretty good glitter pay off and dispersed pretty well.  I kind of wish that this polish had snowflake glitters like the other two in this collection, it would be fitting for the Snow Queen herself.

Don't forget!  My giveaway is still open until Saturday, so make sure you enter here.

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. ;)

Hard to Find Friday: OPI Meet Me on the Star Ferry

I have recently discovered that I love destash swaps and sales.  I've found some really unique hard to find polishes and some extreme lemmings in destashes.  The baby I picked up in a destash, not knowing anything about it other then I thought it was pretty.  When I looked it up online, I found out exactly how HTF it was.  Meet Me on the Star Ferry is from OPI's 2010 Hong Kong collection.  What??  I randomly found a pretty polish from a four year old collection?

Oh be still my polish beating heart.  Meet Me on the Star Ferry is a mauvey purple shimmer polish with maybe just a touch of frost.  The formula is amazing and was opaque in just two coats.  Considering how long my nails are right now and the shimmer of the polish, the fact that it is only two coats for opacity is crazy.  I adore this polish.  I've owned it for about a month and I've already worn it twice.  I don't own anything like this in my collection, so at least for me, it's super unique.  If you can find this for a reasonable price, get it!  Don't even think twice.  

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. ;)

Swatch Saturday: OPI OPI Ink

I am so sorry about how late this is guys.  My computer has gone and died on me completely and I hate doing full blog posts on my iPad.  I finally managed to steal the boytoy's computer so I'm back!  So let's get on with it.

I love wearing purple.  Between the combination of my skin tone, black hair, and not quite dark brown eyes, purple has always looked good on me.  I am a sucker for purple make up, usually eyeshadows, but especially nail polish.  Whenever I want to try a new brand, I usually judge them on the quality of their purples.  While OPI is not a new to me brand by a long shot, OPI Ink is a fantastic polish.

OPI Ink is a dark, vampy, purple polish with purple and blue shimmers.  After taking close to twenty pictures, this was the only one that came close to showing the blue.  In the sunlight, from the right angle, this polish also looks navy thanks to that shimmer.  It was so pretty and shimmery that I actually managed to keep it on my nails for three days.  It probably would have lasted longer on them, but I had to move on to my next post for you guys. ;-)  For me that is a huge deal because I am quick to get bored with a color.

The final selling point of this polish?  It only required two coats!  I am so used to polishes that need three coats that when I find one that is a two coater, I am in love.  One coaters are glorious.

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: OPI On Her Majesty's Secret Service

I love going to small, mom and pop beauty supply shops.  You can always find some really cool stuff.  Sometimes I find older collections, or rare nail polish brands.  Other times the polishes are just really cheap.

On the same trip that I found my bottle of OPI Stranger Tides, I picked up On Her Majesty's Secret Service.  When the Skyfall collection came out in 2012, I was not particularly interested in the polishes.  I bought one of the Liquid Sand polishes and was not impressed.  Now I know I picked up the wrong bottle that day.  I kind of love On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

I know that this picture makes it seem unimpressive.  It just kind of looks like a gray shimmer, but in person the also has bits of purple, green, and gold shimmer.  The whole thing is in a blue base, and if you weren't so crazy OCD about visible nail line like me, you would actually be able to see the blue.  I enjoyed this polish so much that I am not very upset about the touch of VNL on my pinkie there.  I used three coats in the picture for opacity.

As a 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. ;-)

Las Vegas Nail Polish Haul

So almost two months ago I declared I would not buy any nail polish for six weeks.  The end of the six weeks actually fell on my Vegas weekend, so ever better.  Once I was there and had already done a little nail polish shopping at Sephora and H&M, I walked into one of the two ABC Stores in Planet Hollywood Miracle Mile and was greeted by this display.

So of course I bought some for myself.  Along with some for my mom, my partner in crime, and totally awesome nail mail buddy Megan at You've Got Nail!  This is what I ended up getting through out the weekend, minus two more cuticle oils, one color change polish, and two more regular polishes that were all for Megan and all Island Girl.  I didn't need her seeing my haul picture then knowing what I had gotten her!

As soon as we got home, I HAD to try one of these, it was like an itch that wouldn't be sated until I tried something.  I ended up picking Island Lei, a pink metallic color with silver shimmer in it.  It painted on in one opaque coat and I love the color.  The only problem was that the color came off in huge sheet.  It's okay if you're like me and end up changing your polish ever other day, but for normal people, not so great. 

Just to finish this all off, I'm going to add a picture that has nothing to do with nail polish, but it's nerdy and in Vegas, so it's acceptable.  I went to the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, all excited for a ice blended mocha, then they charged me $7.  Seven dollars for a coffee?!  I almost threw a fit until I saw their tip jar.

Fluttershy is my favorite pony, ever.

February Nail Art Challenge - Day 1 Hearts

Since we know I love instagram, it would come as no surprise when I say that I found a nail art challenge and had to do it.  This is Californails' challenge, aptly called the "Totally Doable, I Have a Life! Challenge".  Instead of doing a new nail art every day, you are challenged to create something new every few days.  It's good because then it forces me to try new things.

Okay so maybe it's not the most impressive thing, but this was my fifth attempt.  I just got so frustrated with everything that I just gave up and stuck heart shaped confetti on my ring finger on top of Opi's Princesses Rule!  Originally my plan was to stamp multiple hearts on my nails.  First I used Julep's Grace as a base to keep Princesses Rule from being so transparent.  Unfortunately, it just would not dry.  It kept getting smudged and shifting around.  I suspect that is why Julep's Madison smudged when I used it last time in my first post here.  

So I just took it all off, and did three coats of Princesses Rule.  Then the stamp hearts smeared everywhere.  I took off all the nail polish again and tried cutting heart shapes out of some tape to sponge on some red hearts, and the tape messed up the pink.  Eventually, I just suck the nifty confetti on top of Princesses Rule, heavily covered the whole thing in top coat and called it a night.  

So maybe the challenge isn't off to a fantastic start, but I'm still going to try my best to go through with it.  Next challenge is flowers, hopefully it goes better than this one and I don't cop out by using the flower shaped rhinestones I have sitting in my box of nail junk.  

On the plus side, I do love Princesses Rule.  It's a shimmery, girly pink that is really subdued for when you want to change things up from the usual crazy colors.  It is really sheer though, in the pictures I used three thin coats to get that amount of coverage and there is still a little bit of visible nail line.  

Zoya 3 Free Special: Morgan, Sophie, Ginger

Whenever I buy nail polishes, a lot of the time I pick them based on the name.  Sure I have a bunch of duochromes just because I love the color shift, and I have a ton of blues because I love oceanesque colors.  But in the end if I like the name of the color, I have to have it.  For example, I have a giant lemming for China Glaze's It's a Trap-eze, because of the internet meme based in Star Wars.  Every time I see swatches, all I can think of is Admiral Ackbar crying "it's a trap!"

The same rules apply to names.  Any and every company that has a trio of nail polishes called Morgan, Sophie, and Ginger, I have to have them.  So when I heard about Zoya's 3 Free special and I found the colors, I had to get them.

Ginger was probably my favorite out of all three.  It's a great bright orange with gold shimmer. In the picture I'm wearing two coats, only to cover a few bald spots.

Morgan is a Barbie pink creme that I wanted to love so much, but it fell a little short. It was really thin and needed three coats to cover a visible nail line. It was bright and really pretty, but it started chipping right away.

Sophie was the one that surprised me the most.  It wasn't particularly impressive in the bottle, and this picture does not do it justice, but it got onto my nail and I adored it.  It's a brick red creme, and surprisingly I do not have a color like it in my stash.  I have multiple bright reds, but nothing like this.  I painted on smoothy and like Ginger, only needed two coats.  I topped it with Sally Hansen's Insta-Dri Anti Chip top coat for the glossy shine.

Julep Cindy Swatch

When I first started getting in nail polish, I spent a whole bunch of time reading blogs, and on Pinterest.  I kept hearing about Julep, and their Maven program.  Come on, $20 a month for at two to three nail polishes that are trendy and chosen to best fit your style?  It's a steal!  Especially considering that they're fabulous colors and good quality.

At some point I got Cindy, I don't remember if it came in a box or as an add on.  I just remember picking it because I didn't have any green polishes and it was sparkly.  For the longest time it just stayed in my nail polish case and for whatever reason I never picked it up.  Well I finally used it and it is fantastic.
Cindy is a grassy green jelly with tiny green and gold glitter, though it is a little hard to notice the gold in the picture.  I had to do three coats to get this coverage because at two I still had a little bit of a visible nail line.
I got a ton of compliments on this color.  My favorite was "I like your nails because they're my favorite color.  Green, like money."