Honest Babes

I pretty much covered my description of Obscurity here, but I do want to say that Obscurity's wear does depend on the quality of your base.  I must've used CND's Stickey (my non-Big 3 Free bottle, no less ) or Ridge Out (possibly more likely ) as a base coat this time, and the wear has greatly improved.  I wouldn't bank on this color lasting forever- I have the very, very tiniest bit of tipwear after a few days- but the lasting quality is not as poor as I had once believed.

In these images, the base coat on long nails is NailTek Foundation II.  On the short nails, it's one of the CND base coats I mentioned above.

Can you guess what book that is?

I must first apologize for the state of my nails.  I finally got tired of having long nails and chopped them all off.  It's pretty clear that I should have spent way more time with the nail file than I did.  I'll just have to do better when I do full hand swatches!

Left to right, all OPI- Unripened, Obscurity, Sanguine and Nevermore:

Let's get the most boring part of this entry taken care of immediately, shall we?  Essie's Velvet Voyeur (732) is your standard issue vampy color.  It's more purple/berry-toned than some I've seen, which is nice.  But unlike some of my fellow bloggers, I didn't find the formula to be that easy to work with.  I still had some patchy bald spots, though I guess you could blame that on me.  Or my base coat, Barielle Natural Nail Camo.  I can feel a base coat break up ready to occur.   I think I ended up with three to four coats before I was satisfied, but it was way dark then and not as purple as you can see in the bottle.You'll want to click this if you like glitter!

This is a complete 180 degree difference from what I'll be posting tomorrow, but these colors are so pretty that I couldn't not post them.   The indigo is Solitude (ignore the "new" band- it's been out for a while), the light minty green is Delight, and the light blue is Full of Life.  The latter just wouldn't photograph properly and is much more of a powder baby blue.Click if curious!

Lippmann's Lady Sings the Blues and Across the Universe debuted during the Nordstrom Anniversary sale, and I'm sure you've seen them on every other blog by now.  What can I say- I got distracted by other colors.  A magpie is me! Wall of text and four pictures of dubious quality...

OPI's Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous (NL Z18) is a dark gray shimmer bordering on foily. The shimmer looks like a lighter silver, but I've heard there's also the usual pink and aqua shimmer in this polish as well. I think I've seen it all of about two times; I see silver shimmer 99.9% of the time. But that's not disappointing- this is one blingy polish! If you like how this one looks in the bottle, you'll probably like it just as much on the nail. I probably wouldn't have picked this color up if I hadn't bought the display, but I definitely like it and enjoyed having it on my nails.

I used CND's Ridge Out base coat over really peely nails, two coats (possibly the equivalent of three on my thumbnail) of polish, and Wet n Wild top coat. I'm surprised by how well this wore and how nicely it obscured the poor state my nails are in. Heavy shimmers cover a multitude of nail sins. You'll notice the ridges and what appears to be tipwear on my pinkie, but that's only because I used nail polish remover on that nail at Sephora. In the sun and under strong light, I do see a little transparency at my nail tips. But I usually don't notice that, so I'm happy with two coats. If you're looking for a slightly darker base color, Sinful has a color out called Full Moon that looks similarly shimmery in the bottle. Piggy Polish also has a similar color called Midsummer Midnights, but it's almost as costly as the OPI.

Onto the pictures!

So my blog was down yesterday.  While I'd like to say that it was because of a redesign or software upgrade, it was due to a power outage that knocked out my blog server, a mail server and my own personal computer.  Boo.   To add insult to injury, my aloe plant doesn't look too happy in his new digs, something (I'm voting woodpecker while my husband is voting ants) ate through part of our front wooden railing overnight, one of the cats had a hairball issue who knows when and I just found it today, and I really could just kill for a Mexican Coke but that's more carbs than I'm allowed to have even over two meals.  Being diabetic blows.  Wah wah wahhhhh.

One of the major things that really gets my goat right now is something that really shouldn't have been all that difficult.  I ordered three of the new butter Londons from ulta.com, plus the bL nail polish remover, on 7/31 and received an order confirmation that same night for everything I ordered.  Fast forward to today, when I called to find out what happened to my order, because obviously it wasn't here.  I was told that it shipped out today, and the gal on the phone said she had no idea why.  Two hours ago, I got the order shipment notice, and go figure, All Hail McQueen was not on it.  It also said my total for the order was still the amount I'd owe if AHMcQ had been included.  It would have been nice if the gal I spoke to earlier had actually looked at my order and noticed that it was delayed for a reason.  So at this point, it looks like my only option is wait for the package to get here, refuse delivery, wait for Ulta to get it back, have them credit my charge card, then try to figure out where the polishes are still in stock.  What a big pain.  I don't think it should have taken a week for the order to ship, and I do think that they should have contacted me when it became clear that the whole order wasn't going to ship.  (Sephora.com will cancel your order if it looks like an item isn't in stock.  I now see why.)  It even looks iffy that I'll get a free shipping code out of all this annoyance if I do decide to keep what I ordered and wait until AHMcQ does ever come back in stock.  For now, I highly suggest ordering directly from butter London, or waiting for Beauty.com to get the polishes in stock. Do not order from Ulta.com unless you like drama in your life!

The other thing that bothered me this week, polish-wise, was that the place I get my OPIs didn't have the individual polishes for sale.  Not wanting to have driven out there for nothing, I bought a display box, cursing myself the entire drive home.  What on Earth was I going to do with a display?!  And these polishes I didn't even want?!  Well, as it turns out, it's a solid collection and the display is cute, though I doubt I'll be keeping everything.

I keep trying to tell myself, "Deep breaths!  Zen!"  I have to go get ready to go to a comedy club- first time in years- but before I go, I have two things to say:

Thanks for listening to me whine.  A preview OPI swatch for you for all of your troubles:

AND HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, NATHALIE!!  I'm glad it was so good!  I wish you a very wonderful next year of life!

What's a gal with a chipped manicure and some extra time to do in Sephora?  Why, swatch glitter topcoats!  I tried on two of the newer Sephora by OPI top coats, Sparkle Me Silver and Only Gold for Me.  SMS is described as "clear with rectangular silver iridescent glitter" and that's pretty accurate.  This polish has a clear base with rainbow bar glitter, or, if you really hate it, hair glitter.  Some people think it makes your nails look hairy, and while I don't share that opinion, I still think about it when I see this type of glitter.   OGfM is described as "clear with chunky and micro gold glitter."  It has a clear base with gold hex glitter and much smaller gold glitter.Both shown over Nicole's Peas and Q's polish...

I did part one of my China Glaze Vintage Vixen swatching yesterday, and even though it's 3am, I'm going to try to power through these.  Because I promised!More pictures and less YouTube versus yesterday...

I recently picked up some of China Glaze's new Vintage Vixen collection, and I'm pretty happy with most of what I got.  Tonight I'm going to focus on four of the colors I purchased, saving the other five for later tomorrow.

Here are bottle pics for three of the four I'm tentatively reviewing tonight:Click for pics- swatches and bottle!

After seeing the promo image for the new Sephora by OPI Rocker Chic collection, I was a little excited.  It had some potential.  But I am sad to report that, at least for me, there are some duds in the collection.Pictures and thoughts, as usual...

I'm assuming that Sephora by OPI's Rocker Chic collection is the fall collection, but I could always be wrong.  Here are a few bottle pictures and a swatch picture.  This is just a sneak peek; more will be coming tomorrow! Whoops, forgot the cut here the first time!

***Disclaimer: I always hesitate to post my own opinions on non-polish items that could be inflammatory.  I am not aiming to offend anyone!  So I'm going to take a deep breath and post this, because it's been on my mind.  As always, please feel free to comment or e-mail if you agree, disagree, or couldn't care any less.   This is a big, daunting chunk of text, so feel free to click the "next item" in your reader or scroll over this! ***

Rodarte for MAC, Ginger + Liz and Oprah

I bought four polishes during RGB Cosmetics' birthday "buy one, get one free" sale- Dove ("light blue grey"), Minty ("mint green"), Punch ("peachy pink"), and Crimson ("blood red".)Bottle pictures...