Holy Holographic Batman!

Hey there!

Today I got a "Get anything of your choosing free" coupon from Sally Beauty in the mail, so I decided to stop in when I was out and about. Well, as I was opening the door my eyes zoomed over to the display for the Tronica collection from China Glaze (which officially launches tomorrow in Sally's but mine put them out early). Well, I damn near ran to it and promptly picked up every color in the display (sadly Hyper Haute and Gamer Glam were nowhere to be found). Here I have sunlit skittles of the other 10 in the collection.

Note: Please pardon the lack of clean up... My hand is still broken (I took off my splint for the pics), and I didn't have time before I lost the sun to clean up the cuticles.

Electric Magenta... pinker in real life, and more holographic then this picture indicates

3D Fantasy... GORGEOUS... rosy, bright, slightly less holo then the rest of the collection, but the color makes up for that.

Digital Dawn... holographic roan... brown with a strong red lean, really different

Cyberspace... Pretty holo neutral. one of the strongest holo effects in the collection.

Hologram... great holo silver... reminds me of Color Club Worth the Risque and China Glaze's OMG's lovechild. 

Virtual Violet... My favorite new holographic purple... rich, not too red, fairly strong holo-y goodness.

High Def... pretty, kind of acid-washed looking blue. One of the least holo in the collection.

Techno Teal... Teal, pretty, but underwhelming. Not a very strong holo, but applied beautifully.

Laser Lime... The most holographic polish in the collection... Not this pale in real life, very summery feeling.

Mega Bite... Much yellower in person, with a stronger holo... I prefer this to the gold from the OMG collection.

A note about these holos... They are a softer holo then the OMG polishes, but they apply so much better then the OMG's, with no bald spots and seven out of ten of these swatches are 1 coat, the 3 with 2 coats are Laser Lime, Hologram, and Cyberspace. The pigmentation of these are lovely, all of them are bright and attention grabbing (with the exception of the very neutral Cyberspace, which gives me holographic mannequin hands in person, though these pics don't show the awesomeness). Anyways, that's my haulage... I feel that I will pick up the last two from the collection as soon as I find them.

Until Next Time.

Good News & Bad News

Hey there!

So the good news first... I'm finally getting a break from my crazy crazy work schedule, meaning I'm having the time to polish and post (cue the emoticon cheerleaders)

*\o/*   *|o|*   *\o/*

The bad news is I broke my hand. Specifically the hand I photograph for my swatches. Granted, I'll still photograph it even with it in it's ugly ace-bandage-y brace (because I refuse to cast it), but it means I can't change my polish anywhere near as much as I was planning to, so bear with me.

In the meantime, here's a pretty pretty I had sitting in my unposted folder.

This was one coat of China Glaze Happy Go Lucky under two coats of China Glaze Lighthouse. I wish these showed how multicolored the shimmer in Lighthouse was... there are tiny flecks of green or blue in it and they are STUNNING. I couldn't stop looking at my nails with this combo.

I love yellow polish. Especially bright happy uber-shimmery yellow polish.

Anywho, I'll be back soon with some of my more awesome formula'd polishes.

Bad Blogger, No Cookie.

Hey There!

Yes, I know I am a very bad blogger, but unfortunately (and fortunately I guess) I've been working crazy crazy mad hours this month since a girl at my work quit and I've been covering everyones' shifts...  I'm planning on getting on a blogging schedule as soon as the month is over and my hours normalize again, so bear with me... In the meantime, I have a couple of different manis to show you today... one of my photogenically fail mani from this morning (that in person was STUNNING... stupid photo fail), and one of the current shiny non-photo fail mani... so here we go...

This was Sephora by OPI (SOPI)'s Who Let The Dorks Out from the new Glee collection, a super gorgeous metallic teal with a slight purple duo-chrome, topped with Jesse's Girl High Intensity nail polish in Firefly, a slightly milky whitish jelly base with gold/green/blue glass flecks... In reality it had this light underlying purple flash and depending on the light those gorgeous little gold flecks looked spring green, but alas this was the only photo I could get of it that was even half way decent so I took it off this morning. 

Now on to current events... OPI's Show It & Glow It from the Burlesque Collection

This is a super pretty mostly purple and silver glitter polish with bits of orange, blue, yellow, and a teensy bit of green thrown in. Two coats to be completely opaque, dries in a flash, miserable to remove, needs thick topcoat to be smooth, but is so very very pretty.

Giving Me A Technicolor Whirl

Ok so the title of today's blog is random, but this polish always reminds me of that old Disney Channel movie Zenon: Girl of the 21st Century, which I must have watched a hundred times or so growing up... and to be fair it totally fits with this polish.

This is China Glaze's Nova, one of the 50 glitters they put out a few years ago, and it's pretty amazing. It's lots of silver and holo hex glitter shoved in a clear base. Super shiny, super sparkle-y , super pain to get off, but totally worth it if you want crazy crazy glitter nails. So here we go...

^Direct Sunlight^

 ^Direct Sunlight, Blurred to show the ubersparkle^

^Indirect Sunlight^

^Indoors with flash^

This is 3 coats with two coats of Seche Vite for a smooth finish (but with a little shrinkage, alas). 

Thanks for following, I'll see ya soon.

I Wore My Black & White Dress For

Hello all,

Today I just have a quick swatch of a franken I made at 2 AM this morning during yet another bout of crazy crazy insomnia that I call The Birthday Massacre (named after a band, with a song that the title of todays blog comes from).

Now, I was going for a Big Sparkle-y Glitter in a black base, and overall I'm marginally satisfied with my results, though I think I added a bit too much black and not enough clear to the base, because this is SUPER opaque in two coats with not enough glitter shining through for my complete satisfaction... anywho, to the pictures

^ Multi-colored large hex, medium green square, and micro gold, blue, and green glitter in black ^ 

^Sunlight, showing some of the micro glitter^ 

^Sunlight, showing the full opacity^

So that is it for now... promise to get to some other lovely choices now that the weather seems to be improved.

Designer Series Sapphire

Hey there!

In case you couldn't tell by the blog's name, I love holographic polishes. Like shout it from the rooftops, introduce them to my parents, ghetto-blaster above my head playing "In Your Eyes" in love. With that in mind, today I have the one holo in my collection that I am merely in like with, OPI Designer Series Sapphire.

 ^ Direct Sunlight ^

  ^ Indoors w/ Flash ^

^ Indirect Sunlight ^

Now don't get me wrong, this is a pretty color... it's just not what I expected. In real life it's not as blue as almost all these pictures make it out to be. The closest picture color-wise is the last one which shows how icy and almost silver this color is, but it doesn't show the slightly pinkish pearl effect that appears in low light. I love how holographic this color is, and it's surprisingly opaque for a color this light (all pictures above are 2 coats). 

Like I said, in like with this holo, but not in love.

My First Lemming.

Hope everyone had a very happy non-denominational capitalist winter-time gift giving season!

Today I am happy to say I have fulfilled my first ever major lemming, that is to say, the first HTF polish that I saw and just HAD to have. The story of this lemming started with Lextard and her Flickr of amazing swatches. There it was tucked into her superbly organised lists. For a year now I had scoured ebay, amazon, 8ty8beauty, transdesign, VNS... no where ever had it. Then came the awesome blog sale of Michelle at A Stroke of Color that I stumbled upon a little after midnight on my birthday. My biggest lemming was ordered, coming to me like like a sweet sweet present on Christmas Eve...

The original version of China Glaze's No Way Jose.

I love the gorgeous glass fleck and the bright-yet-pale purple of this baby. This was 3 coats for complete opacity, and drying time was kind of on the long side (due to the fact that this is old-school non-B3F), but I sooooo don't care (that's what they invented Seche Vite and drying drops).

Called On Account Of The Rain

Sooooo yeah...

Haven't posted in a while... was hoping to rectify that in the upcoming week, but the meteorologists keep saying storm of the century, so no sunlight to swatch in. In the meantime I've had a birthday and a week to accumulate more polishes, all of which I'm dying to try swatch as soon as the sun comes out.

In the meantime, here's my cat Annabelle caught mid-roll. She's adorable, and I need a polish the color of her eyes.

Cry Me A Riva

Hello,

Firstly, be warned... I lost a fight with a mop at work two nights ago and came out with three nails broken down to the very nubbiny-ist of nubbins... it's not pretty, but they will grow out, and I actually think it's kind of cute with today's color choice, which leads me to...

A nice franken (that is to say, a homemade mix) of the much hyped, much overpriced Chanel Riva. I personally have no problem paying some steep prices for polishes (I'm looking at you, Rescue Beauty Lounge)... but I draw the line at Chanel's normal $23 a bottle... needless to say I wasn't gonna cough up $30 for something I could make on my own for $4 with polishes I bought at Target.

Anywho, here's my (from what I can tell based on swatches of the real thing) very good dupe of Chanel's Riva.

^ Direct Sunlight ^ 

^ Shade ^

^ Indoors, Indirect Sun ^

The first and last photos show that lovely in-the-bottle shimmer that Riva has, but the second I think is slightly more accurate to the color. This franken has a bit of the squishy look that Riva seems to get when built to full opacity, but the difference is that this is opaque in two light coats.

My Recipe for it is as follows:
1/2 Wet and Wild in French White Creme
1/3 New York Color in Cashmere Creme  
1/6 Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Blue Me Away

I also added a few drops of Revlon's Powder Puff because it was initially not light enough but I had run out of the W&W... but I don't think it changes the outcome too much.

All in all I'm quite happy about this color... is it entirely new and unique like Jade or Paradoxal was? No, no it's not. Is it a pretty pretty light blue that makes me happy? Yes, yes it is

Gems for Trixie

Hey there!

Today I have my very first Nail Of The Day... A blindingly blingy combo which was described by my brother as "a clown exploded on your nails" composed of one coat of Zoya's Trixie covered by one coat of Milani Jewel FX in Gems.

 Gems is a fantastic glittery explosion of medium sized silver, orange, gold, and green hex glitter, and small blue, green, silver, gold, and red round glitter in a clear base. I think this could be totally opaque on its own in 2-3 coats, and it is relatively smooth for a glitter this chunky.

Look at that bottle... sooooo pretty.

^ Indirect Sunlight ^

^ Uber-sparkle in sunlight ^

To my layman's eye this looks a heck of a lot like Lippmann's Happy Birthday, which I will do a comparison of once my bottle of Happy Birthday arrives. The main difference I can see is that Lippmann's hex glitter seems larger in other swatches I've seen, as well as having more colors of glitter, and possibly being less opaque, but if these things aren't super important to you and you're looking for a less expensive alternative, Gems is a real winner.