One can never have too much purple.

I hadn't planned on painting my nails this colour the other day, but I was feeling especially sick, stressed, and generally sorry for myself and decided to indulge.

This is China Glaze First Class Ticket, which came from the pretty fantastic Vintage Vixen collection from last fall. That collection had some pretty awesome polishes in it, didn't it? Unfortunately the only other one I have is Riveter Rouge, but I'm always on the lookout for more!

First Class Ticket a deeeeeep purple (slightly less blue IRL than in these pictures) shade with some really neat blue shimmer. I'm a big fan of polishes that have interesting shimmers, and I feel like this definitely falls under that umbrella.

I ended up having to use three coats for full opacity, but if I had been more careful I probably could have just used two. In these pictures it's four coats though, because I swiped a quick one over top to cover tipwear.


I originally thought this picture was a fail, but when I looked at it in Xee, I noticed that it really shows the blue shimmer well, especially if you view it larger.

I'm sure you noticed this, but my nails are back to being nubs again, though not as nubbly as before. I think I actually prefer this length (for myself), though. I feel like my nails start to look really weird when they get to be too long, but maybe that's just because I spent so long being a chronic nail-biter.

What was your favourite polish from the Vintage Vixen collection? Or did you not like any of them at all?

Hope you're having a wonderful week, thanks for reading!

Possibly my favourite pink ever.

Hello lacquered lovelies! Happy Wednesday! And you know what that means, right? My post is late, so I'm sure you've seen these everywhere, because there are so many lovelies participating now, but it's Pink Wednesday! Yay!

I'd fallen off the wagon with these for the past couple of weeks (pink is daunting for me, sometimes as daunting as red) but I decided to go for a polish that I've worn before but haven't shown. I can't remember why I didn't. Maybe the pictures turned out badly? I wish I could do this polish justice but it's been miserable here for the last few days, so I did my best. Trust me when I say that it's beautiful.

My pink for this week is China Glaze Ahoy!, a beautiful magenta glass-flecked jelly. It's so beautiful. I used three coats for full opacity and colour pay-off, though it's beautiful at two as well.

Sometimes I like taking bottle pictures, and this is one of those times. This is literally what the bottle looked like while I was looking down at it at my kitchen table, getting ready to paint my nails. Excuse me while I drool.

So this is what it looks like in my kitchen with a desk lamp on it. It's actually pretty colour accurate, but I mostly like it because you can see the little flecks in it. So so pretty.

Super close up and blurry to show the flecks!

And then I figured that I should try stamping over it. I used Nicole by OPI It's Possible! and M57, obviously. Everything went well except for my middle finger - I messed something up there but that's a user error, because I still suck at Konading.

But yeah, that. I actually really like this and it got me a TON of compliments in the two hours that I was out in public today. I just need to work on my stamping!

What do you lovelies think? Do you like this colour? I sort of wish I hadn't stamped over it, just because Ahoy! is so beautiful, but I think the jelly base gives it lovely depth.

Also, you might have noticed, but I'm going to be starting to posting PR releases. I know that you guys will have seen them already, but I figured, some friends read the blog and probably don't read loads of other nail blogs, so maybe they'll see something they like! I'd also love the opportunity to talk with you lovelies about what you're looking forward to!

Okay, I just have one thing left to say. My roommate and I have been quoting parts of this to each other for the past couple days, and some of these are hilarious. I don't care if they're real or not, they still make me laugh. I need more friends like that!

Done for real, gorgeous dolls. Do you like Ahoy? What's your favourite polish from the China Glaze Anchors Away collection? I actually really loved the whole collection but this is one of the first times I can ever remember a pink being one of my favourites!

Thanks for sticking with me this long if you made it! Friday's post is going to be a big celebration because classes are ending! It means that we're going into exam time but... classes are ending and I'm really relieved. I hope to talk to some of you in the comments! I'm going back to respond to the rest of the comments from Monday's post, I was terrible and feeling bad for myself because I was feeling so gross. It's no excuse!

Thanks for reading!

Dr's Remedy Wear Test

Hello again ladies! I'm taking another break from paper writing and sneezing to give you all a proper post. Yay!

Do you remember those Dr's Remedy polishes that we showed you a while ago? I decided I wanted to do a wear test on them to see how they stood up to being worn for an extended period of time. To do this, I skittled them across both hands (3 coats of each for consistency) over a base of Seche Rebuild, and then alternated between fingers with Seche Vite and fingers without. This way each polish was worn on at least 3 fingers, and had topcoat at least once. I left the polish on for 5 days before taking it off.

Left hand, day 1. From thumb to pinkie: Revive (topcoat), Healing, Desire (topcoat), Revive, Healing (topcoat).

Right hand, day 1. Apologies for the awkward placement, I'm really not used to taking pictures of my right hand, and my camera isn't meant to be used by lefties. xD Thumb to pinkie: Desire, Revive (topcoat), Healing, Desire (topcoat), Revive.

As mentioned in the original review, these polishes all applied well and are super shiny without topcoat.

Ready for the results? Here they are! Sorry about the yellow nails.

Left hand, day 5. There is extensive chipping on the thumb and pinkie, a bit of chipping along the side of the index, and little more than tipwear on the middle and ring fingers.

Right hand, day 5. My index finger had the most damage by far, as you can see. There are a few chips on all of the other fingers except for my pinkie, but while I was cleaning on the last day almost all of the polish on the index finger chipped, snagged, and peeled right off.

In the time that I was doing this test I didn't baby my nails, nor did I go out of my way to be brutal to them. I just went about my usual routine (minus painting my nails each night, obviously) and this is the damage that my nails took.

I noticed that it was the nails that had topcoat on them that seemed to chip the most and fastest, which was interesting to me. Perhaps it was just user error though, I'm not exactly perfect.

All in all though, I thought they wore pretty well. Most of the chipping occurred after 2 or so days, so a really careful person could probably get away with wearing it for longer without chips. I tend to change my nail polish every night, every other night at the latest, so I probably wouldn't have ever had any problems with these ever if I hadn't decided to wear test them.

Do you folks find wear tests like this to be useful? It was tough for me to go so long without painting my nails, but I'll absolutely do it again if it's something that you beauties want to see more of. :)

*The polishes in this post were sent to us for review. For more information, please see our contact/disclosure tab above.*

Stylish Blogger Award!

Happy Tuesday ladies! I'll have a proper post up for you in a little while, but I figured I'd take a little break from paper writing and sneezing (I seem to have picked up some kind of virus as well) to respond to this tag that was sent to us by the beautiful Shang at Feminine blog the other day.

This has been floating around the internet for quite a while, and the rules are as follows:

1. Thank and link back to the person that awarded you this award.

2. Share 7 things about yourself.

3. Award 15 discovered great bloggers.

4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the blog.

Kirsten and I have both already done the 7 Things tag, so I'm gonna try and do this again without having too much overlap. I apologize if I re-state anything I said in the last one, I guess I'm just not a very interesting person. xD
Anyway, seven things about myself:
1. I have traveled in 12 different countries, including Canada.
2. I'm related to someone with a Guinness World Record.
3. I was a makeup junkie long before I ended up in the world of nail polish. I don't even want to think about how much money I've spent at Sephora.
4. I hate talking about tests right after I've written them. You know those people that wait for you after getting out of a test in school and they're like "OMG what did you get for number x?". Yeah. I hate them.
5. When I was very wee, my favourite song was "Rock n Roll High School" by the Ramones.
6. I actually like The Police.
7. At the end of a long week at school, the last thing I want to do is watch something intellectual, so I often watch Jersey Shore.

Now, for the other bloggers! Most of these aren't recently discovered at all, but they are blogs that I read on a regular basis that I think deserve more attention.
1. Life and Polish
2. Colour Coated
3. Never Unpolished
4. DizzyNails
5. PolishMeHappy
6. A Little Glitter and Sparkle
7. Ali's Nail News

8. Nail-Anon
9. Patsy's Polish
10. Rikki Nails
11. Rachel Marie's Nails
12. Polish Obsessed
13. Spooky Nails
14. Nevertoomuchglitter
15. Canadian Nail Fanatic

These blogs are in no particular order, and there are TONS more out there that I love. I know that as soon as I hit "publish" I'm going to remember a bunch of people I should have put on here (EDIT: people like The Girl with a Bow). So if you're reading this and don't see yourself, JUST PRETEND I PUT YOU ON THERE. Also, if I've tagged you there's no obligation to respond if you don't want to. I won't be offended. [:

Thanks for reading, ladies! Like I said before, I'll have a regular post up for you in a little bit, I just want to get some more work done on this stupid paper. :D

The first orange I've ever loved.

Hi lacquered lovelies. I'm not going to be writing much today as I feel pretty dreadful. I'm not too sure what's going on, but about halfway through the day yesterday I started to feel really sick - clammy, headache, sore throat etc. And my glands are swollen today. Holla giiiiirl, this always happens to me in the last week of classes. Bah!

Today I have the first orange that I've worn on its own and loved. This is Nicole by OPI Fresh Squeezed. I really wanted a summery nail colour and I was rooting through my stash and decided to go for this one. In the bottle, it has a bright pink flash that I could see sometimes on the nail. Sadly, 100 pictures could not capture it.

This was three coats, because it is a bit sheer, no topcoat because... actually, I don't remember why, but the drying time on this wasn't too horrible, so maybe that was why.

In the shade. I love the way it looks here, so so pretty.

And full sunlight. Excuse the weirdness on my ring finger, I did this around 4:30 in the morning when I was pulling an all-nighter. Oooh school.

Yum!

I love this colour. I've noticed that NOPI seems confused about their new brush - I see it on some colours, including older/core colours, and some new colours don't have it. Weird! I got some of the new colours from the spring collection and only two of them have the new brush, out of the five I got. Weirdness.

Finally, I just want to ask you all to keep Landa in your thoughts. She's got a kiddo in the hospital and I'm sure she'd really appreciate your well wishes. She's one of the sweetest people I've "met" through blogging and I wish her and hers all the best. I guess I'm thinking about this after everything that happened with Ange and her giveaway. I have a lot more that I could say on that but I'm going to stop. I feel so achey that even my hair touching me hurts. What's up with that?!

What do you guys think? Do you like this colour? I've never been big on orange but I'll make an exception for this polish, it screams summer to me and I'm ready for summer. Not because I like warm weather/sunlight (I'm a ghost so I don't really) but because it means classes are ending. This semester has been rough and I'll be glad when it's over.

Thanks for reading, lovelies!

Purple holo comparison!

Moving pretty slowly today, ladies. I went to a concert last night and, in the course of events, ended up with some pretty intense bruises in my armpit. Dunno if you've ever had a bruise there, but it's amazing how much it limits your mobility.

Anyway, on to the polish!

Today I've got a quick little comparison post for you folks between Color Club Wild at Heart and China Glaze Virtual Violet.

In these pictures I put Virtual Violet on my thumb and middle finger, and Wild at Heart on my index and ring fingers. My pinkie finger was having a bit of a hangnail tragedy, so it was excluded. All nails are two coats of polish without a base coat, but I added a quick coat of Seche Vite onto my middle and ring fingers to see if it made much of a difference.

Outside, sunshine

Both of them are purple holos, which is totally amazing to me. They're also both scattered holos, but they're trying really hard to be linear. Wild at Heart is a couple of shades darker than Virtual Violet, and I really like it for that. Dark colours are the ones I like best. :)

Inside, "natural" light bulb

Inside, "natural light bulb", blurred slightly to show holo effect

As you can see, it looks like Virtual Violet, in addition to being lighter than Wild at Heart, is a bit more holographic. It's trying harder to be linear, as it were.

The formula for both of these polishes was wonderful, and they dried super fast. For an impatient person like me, dry time is a big deal.

I still think I like Wild at Heart better than Virtual violet though. The shade of purple is one that appeals to me more. Virtual Violet is still stunning, but I think it really needs direct light to look truly awesome, whereas the base colour of Wild at Heart looks good enough to me that I'd wear it in any weather.

Which one of these two do you like best? Any particular reason why?

Thanks for reading!

If you haven't seen it yet, I let you all take a peek into my purse on Elizabeth's blog yesterday! While you're there you should definitely check out the rest of her stuff! She's totally adorable in pretty much every way.

Lemming slaying

Happy Friday, lacquered lovelies! Today I have a beautiful polish for you. I'm going to think about this as I write my exam this morning, wish me luck!

This is a lemming slayed. I've been killing them a lot lately, part of the reason for my no buy (unless it's a sale, since we all know that it doesn't count if it's on sale!). This was a longtime lemming of mine. I was only randomly reading nail blogs when the OMG collection came out (in 2009, I believe) and had no idea that Sally's even sold anything besides hair products... I know. It's sick when you consider how much time and money I spend there now!

Anyway, this polish is from that collection. DV8 was my most wanted from the OMG collection, although I got my greedy paws on LOL first. I have OMG on the way in the mail to me (stupid Canada post) and shall hopefully be able to get my hands on L8R G8R, and then I'll have all the ones that interested me. DV8 is a beautiful teal holo, it's bright and amazing and we're in love. Totally in love. I finally broke down and got DV8 on evilbay. It's crazy, I got LOL for $8 but I paid.. well, go look on evilbay for DV8, the price has actually gone up since I got it. :|

This was two coats, no base coat and no topcoat. And no, no staining here! Though it would've been worth every single stain if it had. :)

This is a picture I took with my phone. I twitpic'd (twitpiced?) it and gushed about how pretty it was. I'm surprised that my phone managed to pick the holo up!

So, what do you lovelies think? Do you like DV8? Do you like the OMG collection?

And have you killed any lemmings lately? If so, what did you kill?

Thanks for reading and I look forward to responding to any comments! <3

These are a few of my favourite things.

I probably shouldn't have given this post that title. Now I'm going to have Julie Andrews singing in my head all day. Great.

But it really fits when I'm talking about Nina Ultra Pro Purple Xing.

Outside, overcast

This polish just has so many things in it that I like. It's purple, it's full of glitter (lots of which is holo), and it was on sale. You may remember that I showed you this polish once before under Black Shatter, but it really deserves to be seen on its own. The picture above doesn't really show the true colour, it's much less blue in person as is evidenced by the other pictures I have.

Inside, "natural" light bulb

This is much closer to the actual colour of it, it's definitely a "true" purple in person. It's a little on the sheer side so I ended up using four coats of it, but it's totally worth it. The sheerness means that the glitter in all of the layers shines right through.

Inside, "natural" light bulb

Unfortunately, my camera fails miserably at capturing the glitter on my nails. It picks the glitter up REALLY well in the bottle, but for some reason it just didn't like to show it on my nails. Sadface. :(

Inside, "natural" light bulb

It doesn't look all that fantastic without a topcoat either, unfortunately. I don't think the polish itself has much natural shine, and it's incredibly lumpy from all the glitter. But with a two coats of China Glaze Fast Forward? Super awesome.

I actually had a horrible dream the other night that I picked up my bottle of Purple Xing and it was almost empty, and when I went to Sally's they were sold out and weren't going to get any more. I woke up terrified and spent a few frantic minutes searching through my stash to make sure it was okay.

Do you ladies like polishes like this? I know I sure do. What polish do you like to keep on hand for when you're feeling a little bummed out and need some cheering?

Posting this was so intimidating.

Hello lacquered lovelies! Today I have a polish that was terrifying for me to wear, along with a confession that might get too personal for some of you. I encourage you to skip to the end of all the text of this post if you don't want to read about me and feelings and stuff.

So this is Essie Limited Addiction. It's a pretty bright red creme that looks almost squishy like a jelly but doesn't apply like one. I used two coats and had a bit of shrinkage but I can't evaluate if it's because of the polish itself or because of my routine. I mix it up too often, I think. In the sunlight, it's a really bright red, but indoors it looks more brick coloured - brownish red.

This was two coats. The formula was good, kind of watery like most Essies seem to be but nothing to difficult for me to work with.

Full sunlight. But see how lighting can make such a huge difference...

It looks like a completely different polish here! Weird, right?

Now, this is a horrible picture, but I'm only showing you it because I burst out laughing when I saw it. My nails were super super shiny and you can actually see my roommate in them. Weird, right?

Now, onto the block of text. I hate wearing red nail polish. I hate it with a passion. Actually, I don't just hate it - I'm afraid of it. I'm afraid of how attention-grabbing it is, of how bright it is, of how traditional/expected it is and how it's considered sexy. This sounds stupid, but I'm totally serious. I don't know why a girl who glitterbombs like nobody's business (seriously, if you check our tags for "glitter", you'll see that most of the posts are mine!) thinks red is attention-grabbing, but I do. Or why I have a problem wearing red when I wore a neon shatter and thought it was weird that people kept commenting on it. 

Here's a fun fact: For about four years of my teenage life, I never wore any colour. Ever. How unique, right? ;) I basically never wore any colours ever, unless forced to. Usually, the only pop of colour that I had was in my mani. Black, of course, with a carefully chosen accent nail of bright red... and let's just say that it wasn't my ring finger. Yeah. I was classy.

I try to force myself to wear red nail polish a lot, but it doesn't usually work. A week or so ago I wore Ruby Pumps to work. Yes, I had RP and had never worn it. Yes, it's a crime, blah blah. It was so so pretty and I did love it, just not on me. I got a ton of compliments on the polish and instead of showing off my nails like I usually do when that happens (... what? I'm just being honest), I would blush and hide them. Red nail polish scares the living something or other out of me. I know it seems really stupid but I can't help it. I think part of me hating it also has to do with the fact that I have really bad social anxiety sometimes. Like, I've always got social anxiety problems, sometimes they just get really bad. My giveaway sign (for the heart pounding/knees weak/head thundering with blood/blushing like mad/hands shaking symptoms... yeah, it's a problem) is that I start rubbing my forearm. It's hard to explain, but I basically run the heel of my hand down the middle of my forearm and down the back of my hand. I usually get bruises from this (oh anaemia) or it stays red for hours. I've found ways to lessen my social anxiety at work (by not looking directly at people and asking them questions related directly to what I am doing instead of giving them a chance to make small talk... mean, I know, but just someone asking me how I am before I can ask my usual "would you like a bag?" throws me off so badly that it takes me a while to recover) so most of my coworkers/supervisors haven't seen my anxious sign for a while, unless things are tense at work. Like they were today. I was tweeting about it and so many lovelies responded and gave me twitter hugs, I felt loved! Anyway, I spent the whole day that I wore Ruby Pumps doing that. So yeah. That's the story of why I'm afraid of a nail polish colour.

The weird thing is, I still stay away from most colours in my clothing, but I do like to wear red. Just not on my nails.

What about you lovelies? Do you have a nail polish colour that you feel uncomfortable about wearing? Are you very shy? What have you found to help you get over that shyness?

Thanks for reading, if you read it all! <3

GIVEAWAY WINNER!

Whoo! Hello lacquered lovelies! Kirsten here! After a month, our giveaway is finally closed! I must say, it's a bit of a relief for us, so many entries! Nicole was a total champ and did the rest of the validating that I hadn't gotten to last week (hahaha so a ton of them, basically) tonight while I was at work so we could post this right away! Just so you know, 431 people didn't actually enter (obviously haha), that was just the system we devised for validating entries and crediting extra entries. I think after a fair amount of removed entries (for not being done properly... guys, please check the giveaway hints tab above, it makes me sad that we had to do that so many times!) there were probably about 270, thereabouts. Anyway!

The winner of our giveaway is...

JULIA NATALIA!

Congratulations! These polishes are going all the way to Poland! See why I was excited about this? Polish going to a Polish lacquered lovely? *Drinks more Red Bull* I'm pulling an all-nighter to get a paper done but I wanted to make sure this was taken care of first! Congratulations again, Julia Natalia!

Nicole's turn to talk!

Thank you sooooooooooooo much to everyone who entered, I wish I could give you ALL a prize for being so awesome. Seriously. When I'm having a long-ass day at school, all I have to do is think about how sweet you all are and I'm smiling again.
I don't have much else to say other than thank you a zillion more times, and big congratulations to Julia Natalia!

Grown Up(ish) Nails

Hello there!

So, if you've been following the Facebook page, you might know that I had a job interview yesterday! Being me, I had to come up with an interview-appropriate manicure that still had a little bit of personality. This is what I ended up with.

Outside, sunlight. WTF weird shadow on my cuticle

It's 3 coats of Rimmel Steel Grey (which is NOT what I think of when I imagine steel or grey), one of those "greige" colours that have gained quite a bit of popularity. Before I bought it I ended up looking it up on the internet to see what other people have to say about it, and discovered that it's widely accepted to be a dupe of both Sephora by OPI Metro Chic and Sally Hansen Commander in Chic. So if you like Steel Grey but already have one of the other two, you really don't need it.

This isn't my favourite type of colour, it doesn't have nearly enough pop to it, but I don't think it's terrible either. As far as neutrals go, it's pretty nice. I know lots of other people go nuts for these sorts of shades, but they just don't do it for me.

Inside, "natural" light bulb

After Steel Grey and a coat of China Glaze Fast Forward Stinkfest had dried, I divided my accent nail in half diagonally with a piece of scotch tape and painted the exposed nail with my trusty Renova Venus Glaze. Venus Glaze is the clear glass-fleck polish that I picked up in Mexico and used in my Sparkle Overdose. I'm not sure I'd ever want to wear it alone, but it's good for adding a little extra sparkle to an ordinary manicure.

After Venus Glaze had dried, I put on another coat of topcoat and it was done!

Inside, "natural" light bulb

I really like the way this turned out. The sparkle from Venus Glaze didn't really show up all that much unless the light hit it, so it was like a secret little surprise. I don't know if this will make sense to anyone other than myself, but just having a teeny bit of subtle sparkle on my nails gave me a huge confidence boost for that interview.

Have any of you ladies ever done something like this for a job interview, done a "mature" manicure but given it a little bit of a twist of personality?

Have you ladies checked out Diana's blog sale yet? There's still tons of cool stuff left and it's all really affordable. So if you've got some polish money and want to help out one of the sweetest girls I've ever met, head on over and check her stuff out!
If you're not familiar with her, I'd definitely recommend poking around her blog and looking at her pictures and posts. The fact that she's Australian is cool enough to warrant a visit IMHO, but she's also got some neat polishes that us non-Aussies don't get to see very often.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to reading and responding to your comments!

More green? But HOLO!

Hello lacquered lovelies. Happy... Monday...? Yeah, I don't buy it when people say that either. Oh well, what can you do! Today I have a pretty awesome polish for you, Nubar Reclaim. Mmmm, holo.

Reclaim is a light green holo. It's clearly not pastel, so I mean "light" more in a "it's not emerald" sort of way. I'd say it's almost grassy-ish, if your grass is awesome and has rainbows in it. I hope it is.

This was two coats, though I've heard people say that it was a one-coater for them. I think I just need to try being more careful with my application!

Whew! Gorgeous. This is another scheduled post, as most of mine this week will be. It's nearing the end of classes and I have term papers and journalism stories galore to do. And then we go right into exam period... yay... So there might not be as much writing as I normally like to do. Apologies in advance! In other news, I've given myself the task of swatching what is now residing in a plastic shoe container. I'm oddly excited about it!

I don't usually do this, but on Wednesday, I'll have something for you that's actually quite intimidating for me to be posting... you'll see why!

Thanks for reading, lovelies, and have a great day!

Mini Konad Tutorial Video!

A few weeks ago Rebecca (PolkaDots) asked us what technique we used for Konad stamping onto our dominant and non-dominant hands, so we filmed her a little video!
Enjoy!



If you've got any questions or ideas for things that we can use in future videos, let us know and we'll do our best to help you out!

Thanks for reading!

Diamonds for a Baroness

Happy Saturday ladies (and gentlemen?)! I'm really happy that the week from hell at school is completely over, I can't remember the last time I was that stressed out.

The end of hell week included two separate birthday celebrations for one of my good friends, the second of which was last night. The little genius that she is, she organized a murder mystery party and made characters for everyone to play out during the night.

My character's name was Baroness Silvia Lekinstein and, among other things, I liked to decorate myself in diamonds. When the time came for me to choose my manicure for the night, the choice was obvious!
China Glaze Drenched in Diamonds. It's a very light silver shimmer polish loaded with glass-fleck and, although it may just be the power of suggestion, it definitely makes me think of glittering diamonds.

This is three coats of Drenched in Diamonds over one coat of China Glaze Avalanche; because DiD is so sheer, I decided I would put a silvery polish on quickly underneath to try and minimize VNL and give it a good base. I could still see VNL at some angles, but it wasn't in-your-face.

Drenched in Diamonds applied beautifully, and it's just such an interesting polish. I've had it since December, but this was the first time that I've actually worn it. Now that I've seen it in action, I've got all sorts of ideas for layering combinations with it.

Do you think I did a good job with the diamond theme on this one? Have you ever been inspired to create a manicure based on some jewelry?

Have you seen the Facebook page that I set up the other day? Since Twitter scares the pants off of me for some reason, I figured I could use Facebook to keep in contact with any readers that would be interested. Stop by and check it out!

So much China Glaze green/Friday fail!

Hello lacquered lovelies! Today I have an oldie but a goodie (goody?) - one of my favourite polishes ever. Are you surprised that it's green? I hope you aren't, I should hope I made my adoration for green clear by now! I'm also going to show you my St. Patrick's day mani (that was an exercise in frustration with my camera!) and a Friday fail! Let's get going!

Gussied Up Green is from China Glaze's Rodeo Diva collection. It's a gorgeous deep green with amazing shimmer. It tends to look black indoors but this baby shines in the sunlight! It's so beautiful that it makes me a bit sad. Sadly, I had some weird tipwear/shrinkage here... I dunno what it was! It's obvious in one picture but I fixed the others... so yeah, I have no idea what was up there. Also, I had to take these pictures as the sun was going down, so the lighting is weird (guys, my hands aren't orange) but the polish colour is pretty true to life, so I didn't worry about making sure my hands looked as corpse-like as they do in real life. This was two coats plus topcoat!


My hands sort of look like this irl...



No fake tan but the shimmer! *Drools*



Macro!

And this was my St. Patrick's day mani (why do I keep writing Valentine's day?)... China Glaze Four Leaf Clover, a mid-toned neon green and ChG Emerald Sparkle, a deep green jelly with amazing glitter, one of the most beautiful polishes ever. I used a double basecoat for this mani because FLC is very very pigmented - if I'd applied it well, it probably could have been a one coater, but I used two. I used three for Emerald Sparkle, just because I love the depth of it so much!

My camera seems to think that FLC is a brighter sister to For Audrey... FAIL.

Speaking of fails, want to know how silly I am? I thought Emerald Sparkle would work well in a water marble... yeah. The glitter looks JANK that way. I wanted to try a green water marble for St. Patrick's day but it was an utter fail. All the pictures are terrible and pre-clean up, but you can get the idea. I've learned my lesson about glitters, I guess? Let's see. I used China Glaze Paper Chasing, Emerald Sparkle and Emerald Fitzgerald. UGH. So so bad. The rest of the nails were way worse but I couldn't get them to focus. :(

VOM. I couldn't believe how gross the glitter in ES looked. :(

And fiiiiiiiiiinally, I did a guest post on Elizabeth's blog today as part of the What's in Your Purse Friday series! Yay! You can go check out my glitterbomb of a purse and judge my hand lotion addiction. Fun for the whole family! I also included my theme song... it's pretty awesome, if I do say so myself!

WHEW, long post! Okay! Thanks for reading, my lovelies. I will talk to you all in the comments! <3

Happy St Patrick's Day!

Hi ladies!
I feel like I'm saying this a lot lately, but I'm sooooo sorry about my cuticles in this post. This winter has been absurdly dry, and the enormous amounts of stress from the last week or so of school has really just destroyed my ability to not pick at things. They're not bloody or anything but... well, you'll see what I'm talking about. If my photoshop skills were any good, I'd fix them.

This is my St Patrick's Day manicure! My mum keeps telling me that I like super strong tea because I'm part Irish, but I've never actually met any of these Irish relatives so I have no idea if she's just confused.

For this manicure I used a base of Color Club Rule Breaker, which is a teal-leaning green that I'm totally in love with. I don't have all that many greens in my collection (Kirsten gets the prize for that), but the ones I have are pretty incredible.

Rule Breaker covered perfectly in two coats, and the dry time was pretty excellent, but I'm coming to expect that from Color Clubs.


I thought I had a proper shamrock stamp, but apparently I don't. This is close enough though, right? It's the sort-of shamrock/heart stamp from Konad plate m22, and I'm quite fond of it. On the actual plate it has a little stem, but I couldn't get it to transfer onto the stamp at all. Boourns. I wanted to stamp with something sort of gold, so I mixed in a few drops of OPI She's Golden with my special Konad white polish, but it only really succeeded in making the white a little more sheer.

Oh well, I'm still happy with it!

Are you gals doing anything special tonight? Are you wearing a green manicure or have you gone for something else?

Pretty dusty

Hi lacquered lovelies! Today I DON'T have a pink mani to share with you! I think I'm pinked out, I will be back with more pink next week though! I've really been craving soft creme finish polishes lately, so I have another Essie to share with you. I needed this after I saw Jen's swatch of it. I wish I could explain my attraction to colours like this but how can you explain love? YEAH, I brought that one out. Yeah girrrrrrrrl get it. I'm trying my hand at my first time-scheduled post, so it's actually 1:30 AM as I write this and edit the pictures. I wish there was some way it would tweet for me automatically too... I probably just suck at this. Anyway!

Essie Coat Azure is a dusty, sort of mid-toned but almost vibrant/bright (it's so hard to explain colours like this, because if it's dusty can it really be vibrant? But it is, in a way) blue with hidden shimmer that really comes alive in the sunlight. It's so gorgeous! I used two coats, no issues at all here. I've heard that some Essie polishes have nightmare formulas but I don't own many (and the ones I do own seem to sit in my "untrieds" drawer for a while) so I couldn't tell you. I've had good experiences so far! Though I'm dying to wear Zoya Gemma lately. I just want it to be sunny so I can really do it justice. My roommate thinks our dear Gemma is hideous. Sometimes I'm pretty sure she doesn't have eyes.





I had something that I wanted to share with you guys, but thankfully, it seems that the person has taken a hint. I'll keep you updated though!

Also, I've been getting some Facebook messages and emails from some of you wondering which one of us is on twitter all the time. It's me haha, I have a sick addiction. Probably 99% of the comments you see on blogs were also written by me, but I usually sign them so you probably already knew that. Anyway, the point is that pretty much all the time, if you're wondering who you're interacting with, it's probably me! What can I say, I just like talking to you! :)

That's all for today, lovelies. What do you think of this colour? What's your favourite creme polish? Do you like hidden shimmer or do you want it to be more in your face? Also, will you be rocking green this St. Patrick's day? What green are you going to sport? I've currently got a beautiful China Glaze green on, from one of my favourite collections ever. I think I'll have to post on it if I can get some light to do it some justice!

Have a beautiful day, gorgeous girls!

Stellare Notte (and a funny video)

Hi ladies! This week is completely kicking my ass, but I've still made sure that I'll be able to have posts for you on my designated days. You know, because I love you and stuff.


Today's post is about one of the two Borghese polishes that I have. This one is called Stellare Notte, and according to Google translate, it's Italian for "Starry Night". I have never seen any kind of night sky that looks like this, but that's okay! It's still super pretty.

The picture above really shows the dark charcoal base, but it fails to show the gorgeous green/pink duochrome shimmer!

Fortunately, a wee bit of sunshine during my lunch break at school allowed my phone to take some pretty good pictures of it.

I know phone pictures really aren't the best, and I sincerely apologize for that. They're not that terrible though, are they? I've tried taking pictures of this polish in the sunshine with my real camera, but for some reason they just come out looking terrible.

I have no idea what's going on with the side of my middle fingernail, it looks like someone took a bite out of it. It probably happened in last night's caffeine-fueled paper writing frenzy.

The formula on this was pretty good, it was nice and opaque in two coats but I added a third because that's just how I roll. I only own one other Borghese and I've never worn it myself (I've used it on other people though) so I can't really comment on whether or not good formulas exist in the rest of their polishes, but this one was definitely easy to work with.

How do you guys feel about duochromes? Do you like this combination of green and pinkish?

Finally, I just have to share this with you guys. I was doing actual legitimate research for a school project and came across this little safety video from sometime in the 90s. If you're friends with me on Facebook or saw the tweet I made last night, you may have already seen it, but I think it's definitely worth another look.

Stay safe!