Rimmel: Night Before

I love the two Rimmel polishes I have! Although I think their one coat claim is COMPLETE bullshit. This was 3 or 4 coats - I don't remember. But certainly not one. This polish is really sheer. But it is worth the work in my opinion.  

This is Night Before - a gorgeous blue based polish with purple and pink shimmer. Phenomenal.

Essie: Turquoise and Caicos

Here is a polish from the Essie Resort 2010 collection which came out this past spring. It really is a crappy formula. Super sheer, balding spots that are hard to get rid of, and a long dry time all come together to create a trifecta of crappiness. But there is one redeeming quality - the color. I love the color. But a very very similar color is China Glaze For Audrey. And I never have any formula or application issues with For Audrey. So for me, it is a no brainer to go with the China Glaze. The only color difference really is that Turquoise and Caicos has a tiny bit more of a greenish tint. It reminds me a little bit of mint chocolate chip ice cream in these pictures. And another difference is that this polish is pretty jelly-like whereas For Audrey is a straight up creme. 

I am in the For Audrey court. Has anyone else compared the two? If you have, what do you think??

Teal Patchwork

My second attempt at a patchwork mani didn't look much better. It is just so hard to get the tape lined up properly. And I had major problems with creating a good seal - polish kept leaking through and I would have to re-do it. Such a hassle. 

I used China Glaze For Audrey for the base, China Glaze 2nite for the blue holo, and China Glaze Liquid Leather for the black.

Also - sorry that these pictures were taken indoors but I wanted to take this mani off as soon as I finished it (at 11pm), but I wanted a picture of it - for progress's sake. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll be so good at doing patchwork manis that this will be laughable.

Green Patchwork Mani

This is a horrible horrible first attempt at a patchwork mani. They look soooooo beautiful on Chloe's blog. But damn - they are kind of hard to get perfect. Hopefully practice will help. But this is definitely not pretty. 

I used OPI Jade is the New Black as the base, and then layered China Glaze Emerald Sparkled and China Glaze Liquid Leather over it using tape. 

OPI: Suzi Says Feng Shui Part 2

I wanted to repost some more color accurate pictures of Suzi Sayz Feng Shui because it is a polish that I generally overlook in my polish drawer, but as soon as I put in on, I think "Damn! What took me so long to wear this?" and I wanted to give you a better understanding of why. 

Borghese: Stellare Notte

These pictures totally don't do this polish justice. This polish is sparkly, duochrome goodness. 

Trust me. Vampy Varnish did an awesome job of capturing it. 

OPI: Ink

While I was at Ulta buying my brother a Christmas gift to give to his girlfriend (why are guys so lazy??) I grabbed a few extra things for myself. And one of those was OPI Ink. And I am sooooo glad I did! Although it does look much cooler in the bottle, I still really love the purple glitter awesomeness. It is like a brighter China Glaze First Ticket. It alway looks purple, no matter how dark the lighting. And in the sun it looks brilliant! Like a dark version of a combination between China Glaze Flying Dragon and Blue Sparrow. 

Close up - I don't know how to get a clearer picture of this. I've got to play around with my camera more.

(On a side note - I hate uneven bottle labels. I wish I could peel it off and stick it back on properly.)

New Storage!

Yay! I went to Ikea yesterday just to browse around with my mom (she had never been to Ikea! Can you imagine?) and look for new nail polish storage containers and  I ended up finding the PERFECT nail polish storage system. I seriously am in love love love with it. It is a bit large for most people, but I figure I have a lot of polish and I didn't want to get the small one and end up having to buy a second one in a year. 

Here it is in all its glory. It is about as wide as my helmer that I got at Walmart. Not too bad. And it is about twice as tall - I'd say around 3 1/2 or 4 feet. For reference, I am 5 feet tall and I can clearly see over the top of it and into the top drawer..it comes up to about my boob/shoulder area. 

I was originally going to grab the one that All Lacquered Up has when I saw it, but I am so glad I kept my eye out and found this. It is soooo much nicer. And it was only 119 bucks! You could get the small one, which is half the height for 79. The drawers as high enough to fit all of my polishes perfectly.

This system really makes my polish collection seem small. I guess that means I'll have to buy a bunch more. Yay! 

This is a drawer of top coats/base coats and things like cuticle oil and remover. All that good stuff that I want to keep separate from regular polish. I really should take pictures of all of the stuff in here. One day I will get to it. 

So far I have just organized the polishes that I have swatched so far.

Blues/Greens

Purple/Pink

Orange/Yellow/Red

Silver/Black/Metallic/Neutral

My nail art drawer.

And unswatched/untrieds that I am trying to get through.

It would probably be easier to get through if I stopped placing 80$ transdesign and 8ty8beauty orders. Damn nail polish addiction. It is killing my bank account. 

Revlon: Frankly Scarlet with Slipper

Okay, after seeing these glitters on Scrangie's site and hearing her rave about them I knew I had to grab them when I saw them at Big Lots (2 in a package for 2 dollars - could it get any cheaper?). So, this is one of the two packages I grabbed. I assume the polishes are meant to go together, and this set certainly does. But the second set I grabbed is a sheer gold polish with dark blue glitter - which I don't think goes nearly as well as this. But anyhoo - on to the polish.

Okay - I realllllllly really like this red. I mean REALLY like it. It isn't super dark or saturated, instead it reminds me of a light, summery cocktail or something. Okay - that is a strange association. But I'm just trying to say it is not a dark deep red that I would associate with fall or winter. It is bright and cheery. It has a beautiful subtle shimmer in it. I would grab another set of these for this polish alone. 

And here it is layered. The above picture is one coat and the picture below is two coats. I have to say - I don't really like this glitter that much. It has some pros (like drying in 30 seconds - seriously. I put that coat on and grabbed my camera and by the time I finished taking the picture it was dry as a bone), but I just don't like how sparse the glitter is. 

And in the picture below - there is just something about it that I don't love. It made me like the base polish less, which is never good. I just think it is weird. 

Color Club: Puccci-licious

Here is my ideal purple color - a nice blue leaning cool purple. This is Pucci-licious by Color Club. Surprisingly this polish dried matte. I guess it is so bright it is slightly neon, although I wasn't expecting that to be the case when I ordered it. But I enjoy the matte-ness, because that means it dries super fast. 

China Glaze: Cccourage

This is what I would normally consider a polish fail, but looking at these pictures I know not everyone may agree with me. But these pictures make this polish look great - in real life it is a gritty frosty mess. I wish the glitter showed through more with this. On the bright side, the color is nice. With a different glitter I think this polish would have been a hit.