Honest Babes

China Glaze made three different colors for Ulta for the holidays last year. As soon as I saw them on The Polishaholic, I knew I had to go out and look for them! While I love to have complete sets, I opted to buy the two holo polishes because I knew I wouldn't wear the pink.

Fireside Glow (1062) doesn't look all that holographic in the bottle. I didn't expect too much of this cinnamon (dark honey?) and silver shimmer, but when the light hit it, wow! I can see red, yellow, blue and green holo even in low light, but those colors are more muted and don't stand out much. But this is great under bright light or in the sun! It's almost muted enough to be office-appropriate and then blingy enough for after hours. I had low expectations for this one, but they were definitely exceeded.

I used three coats for Fireside Glow. I used one coat on my pinkie at first to show how sheer it is. If you have a polish that's of a similar tone, you could layer FG over it. In the bottle pictures, I have three coats on all fingers. FG can feel a bit gritty; I used OPI's regular top coat, then China Glaze's Fast Forward top coat, then repeated those two steps and it's a bit smoother.Do you like holo? If you do, click here!

I found a new display of Essies at Target today. It included some older colors, the Luxeffects collection and three new (to me) colors- Play Date (300), a lavender crème with more red than blue; Armed and Ready (708), which struck me as a dark khaki green with maybe a little brown added and bronze shimmer (others have been describing this color differently, so take my evaluation with a grain of salt); and Go Overboard (740), a dark teal crème.

Imagine all of those with a little more green in the base. I had a lot of trouble getting everything in this set to photograph accurately!If you like blues, you'll like clicking here.

Can I just say how underwhelmed I am with Chanel's April, May and June polishes? April (my flawfree birth month) seemed like a washed out cranberry, May a pretty but dupable pink and June a nude peach that needed more peach in my opinion. The Glossimers were pretty, though. Repeat after me: no new lipglosses! Expensive ones at any rate. Loopholes are a wonderful thing...

This is A Sparkle Yule Love (HL C51) from the Deck Your Nails set. The set is an Ulta exclusive, along with the same full-sized polishes, for the holiday season this year. ASYL has a dark pink base with multicolored glitter- red, silver, fuchsia, green, blue... I don't own Excuse Moi! (or any other color) from the Muppet collection and even I could tell that this might be a dupe. EM was one of the few Muppet polishes that I was interested in, so I'm fine with this bizarre decision to rebottle an existing color or only tweak it slightly.

Do people like these cuts? Do they even care? Inquiring minds want to know.

**CAUTION: NERD(LACQUER) ALERT** I am going to be geeking out for the Trek-esque polishes because they bring back such good memories. A great color of polish is wonderful, but it's even better when it evokes a feeling or memory. That's what I think at any rate.

My first choice of NerdLacquer to swatch was Warrior Ethos because I must admit that I prefer the Klingons over the Vulcans (Purely Logical) and the Romulans (Cold & Calculating.) Three coats by itself was perfect opacity. If I hold my finger up to the light, I can see my nail tip, but otherwise it looks opaque. I love the different colors and sizes of glitter in Warrior Ethos- everything just works for me. I think this is a great unconventional holiday red and I've been surprised by how well it's worn for me.

A lot of pictures... for serious!

I was going through my posts- those that have been published and those that were started but never completed- and noticed that this one was ready to go. Pictures already edited and added. And it was written on Halloween... of last year. "Timely" is not my middle name. Hard Candy's polish now retails for $4, which is a slightly better price. I've noticed that while there is a core group of colors that the Hard Candy display says should be there, there are often other colors mixed in with that stock. If you don't see a "position" for Sky, it may be behind the other colors. On with the old post:

Hard Candy rereleased one of their older polishes- Sky (322), a soft baby blue polish with a faint blue pearlescent effect.  This one is sadly sheer, but one thin coat and two thick coats was OK for me.  If I held my nails up just right, I could see some VNL, but most of the time I couldn't.  I couldn't see the blue shimmer most of the time, but it's a nice touch.  I'm not entirely sold on the fact that this was US$5 at Walmart, but maybe it'll grow on me.  I will say that this polish did give me lobster hands, so that's part of my reluctance to call this one a complete winner.

A few more images...

I had avoided signing up for Etsy because I knew what a time suck it would be. Cute, clever one-of-a-kind handmade items like jewelry or stationary? Totally up my alley. If you had told me a month ago that I'd be buying nail polish on there, I would have scoffed at you. But one night last week, I followed a link to someone's Flickr. She had pictures... of Star Trek-themed nail polish. Within 24 hours, I had not only signed up for Etsy and wasted hours browsing, but I had also bought the Trek polish set and another polish to go with it. If you're selling something that references Star Trek ("The Next Generation" in particular), I am certainly going to take notice and then potentially hand you all of my monies. Which was the case here. 

NerdLacquer sells a variety of geeky polish influenced by awesome things like Doctor Who, Star Wars, the actual universe and Monty Python. (Love that!) I opted for the Trek trio as well as Don't Panic. While Amanda's pictures are excellent, these polishes exceeded my expectations when I opened the box and unwrapped them.

I've been having trouble with my Nikon, so I finally reset the settings a few nights ago (perhaps in anticipation of getting these polishes) and hoped for the best when I took pictures the day I received my NerdLacquer package. I found a patch of late afternoon sunlight and tried to work quickly.

Today I tackled the lightbox. These pictures may be a bit big, so I apologize if you have to scroll to see everything:

My first choice to swatch was Warrior Ethos, so I will have swatches up soon (and I really mean it this time!) I noticed that NerdLacquer's next set might be "Firefly"-themed. Will there be a color called Curse Your Sudden But Inevitable Betrayal? A girl can hope! And after you buy NerdLaquer, just try to not make up polish names referencing your favorite shows and movies. Based on my experience with Warrior Ethos and Amanda, my overall impression of NerdLacquer can be expressed in macro form as:

I need to get to editing some of my pictures! Until then, here's what I'm wearing right now as an actual manicure- one coat of Perfect Formula Pink Gel Coat, one coat of Essie's Sugar Daddy and then two coats of Lippmann's Stairway to Heaven.Click if you don't mind sheer manicures!

This is the culmination of things I've found interesting over the last few days. Sorry, no pictures! The ones I wanted to add kinda stink, so I need to retake them. 

I've been waiting on Ulta to get the OPI Muppets collection, but it doesn't look like that's going to happen anytime soon. At this point, I may forgo the Muppets and save for the Holland collection instead. Thanks a Windmillion is killing me softly. And speaking of pale greens (I'm surprised this trend is still going, to be honest), I am DYING to get my hands on the Spring 2012 Dior green called Waterlily. Here it is on the nail.

And speaking of Ulta, apparently OPI is discontinuing 14 colors: Calendar Girl, Sit Under the Apple Tree, Give Me A Coral Sometime, Peach-a-boo!, Red Hot Ayers Rock, Chapel of Love, Bullish on OPI, Take the Stage, My Big Break, Paint My Moji-toes Red, Bronzed to Perfection, Clubbing til Sunrise, Bling Dynasty and Chopsticking to My Story. From what I understand, they may all be on sale, two for US$10, but I didn't receive that Ulta ad so I don't have the exact details. (Thankfully this was reported on Ulta's Facebook page.) To be honest, I'm kind of surprised that a majority of those colors are still around.

Is it me or do these Inglot flakies look like the Nails Inc Gossip Girl flakies?

Did Karl Lagerfeld actually have anything to do with the cosmetics and nail polish for a Sephora line? If only WWD was free to read online! Not that I'm a fan of his or anything...

Does anyone else randomly check magazine giveaway pages? I'm not really digging Glamour's stuff this month, but People StyleWatch has the Kardashian Kolors from Nicole and Lucky has Zoya. I really want the Guerlain set from StyleWatch. And speaking of the Kardashians, I support this.

No joke, I have about a hundred different comments about this report from Cleveland on CND's Shellac. Yes, you do have to do research into any beauty treatment you're thinking about getting... unless you're making a snap decision on the spot. You can only do so much in that case. And sure, looking at bottles is probably a good idea, but that isn't the first thing I think of when I'm getting a pro manicure. (The last time I got my tips done with regular polish, the manicurist used clear polish as a base coat, then base coat as top coat before sticking me under a lamp. Whaaaat?) I'm not surprised that some people had wear issues since it seems that not everyone applying Shellac knows what they're doing. But I think it's cool that this news team looked into something nail-related!

If none of that was even remotely interesting, maybe this video will be worth your time. I laugh every time I watch it.

I wrote this on August 21st, intending to post it before Halloween. I tend to put together blog entries and then forget all about them.  But the tone of this one matches my mood. It's cloudy, kind of cold, rainy and just plain gloomy. The entire side of one of my clogs has pulled away from the bottom of the shoe. And did I mention I inadvertantly punched myself in the face today (this was truly spectacular), doing something to the nosepads on my glasses so the bridge is on my nose? I hate that. Now I have to go get them fixed. Boo humbug.

I loved the look of OPI's Halloween 2011 polish Zom-body to Love. Such a pretty shade of green, and actually glow in the dark to boot! I resisted buying it, even after seeing swatches, but as soon as I saw it in person at Ulta... score!Only regular light pics here... no GitD!

The Wyndham Collection, AKA the Blair duo from the Gossip Girls collection, includes a teal crème as a base color and a flakie top coat meant for layering. Kensington (381) looks like a dark teal when you apply it, but dries a darker teal black as the description says. As long as you don't wipe too much polish off before you apply it, it is a one coater. One coat of The Wyndham (401) gives you a good amount of flakies that are green, blue green or blue, depending on the angle of your nail.

I'm really impressed with The Wyndham duo. The flakies are very visible unless you're in the dark and very smooth, too. The whole duo is US$20, and I'm not sure Kensington is unique enough to account for half that price. At least it applies decently. The Wyndham is certainly worth the other half of the price. I wish it was available by itself!These flakies are pretty awesome if I do say so myself.