Glitter In My Stocking fom Nicole by OPI

Glitter In My Stocking from Nicole by OPI was the nail polish that I so badly wanted to wear on Christmas Day this year but as you can observe from the photo, you can see why it didn't turn out that way.  Glitter polishes are not really my thing.  The look is not my favourite (I find it looks childish but that's just me) and I hate the gritty texture, so I was excited that I found a glitter polish that I loved the look of.  It made me think of the decorations on my tree so what was there not to like about that?  The yellow gold with the sprinkling of red and silver drew me in but I forgot what a pain in the butt wearing glitter polish without a durable topcoat actually is.  After a few hours and a couple of chores, I had a huge amount of chips in the polish and no amount of reapplication would solve the problem.  Bummer!...It's so sparkly!

Essie Winter Collection 2010 Minis

Left to right: Hot Coco, Going Incognito, Silken Cord, Masquerade Belle

The holidays are coming up and I'm trying to get in the festive mood with some "Christmas" colours.  So I picked up the Essie Winter Collection Minis for 2010.  I'm starting to like Essie colours more and more since they've been a bit more adventurous with polish colours than they used to be.  No longer sticking to reds and pinks, I now come to expect that Essie will be putting out greens and blues on a regular basis:

With diffused overhead lighting

These four creme colours certainly say "Christmas" to me even though the polish names don't and that's fine. No need to go overboard and get gimmicky all of the time!  The application had two real stand outs with Silken Cord being the best and Masquerade Belle being the worst.  Silken Cord went on perfectly in two coats while Masquerade Belle was kind of streaky.  Hot Coco and Going Incognito are in the middle with no real problems so 3 out of 4 is pretty good.

With Flash

As far as the colours go, you get a medium taupe, forest green, bright red and a deep wine in this set.  I'm very fond of Hot Coco and Going Incognito cause taupe and green are my thing but I could do without Masquerade Belle.  It's pretty, but I've ODed on wine polishes lately so it's not a must have for me.  As for Silken Cord, my photos cannot begin to capture how intense a red it really is.  It's so bright I would swear it could guide Santa's sleigh through a Christmas Eve Storm...

Not that it could ever replace you Sweetie!

I can recommend the set as a whole but if I was going to buy just one colour, Going Incognito would be my choice with Silken Cord and Hot Coco in a tie for second.

Shim - Merry Chic by OPI

Now that Halloween is past, I'm looking forward to Christmas and the first real snow of the season.  Although, I live in Toronto  and the natives think it snows a lot in this city.  It does NOT snow a lot in Toronto.  Been here 10 years and I swear, the snow has never been higher than my knees (I'm 5 foot 7 inches so I'm not short) yet when I head back to my home town of Montreal, the snow can reach up to my waist!   I'm looking forward to the cold!  I know, it's bizarre!

Anyways, this also means that I'm looking forward to Christmas nail polishes!  But until I buy some of this years polishes, I thought I'd revisit some older seasonal colours.  Here's Shim - Merry Chic from OPI's Holiday Wishes Collection from 2009.  It's a light bronze shimmer with warm coloured flakes and a small amount green & blue glitter.  When this came out last year, it seemed that a lot of the polish bloggers didn't really like it.  But I really liked it!  These kind of colours suit me well and the flakes & glitter is subtle, plus it wouldn't look too out of place in a conservative workplace, not that I find myself in conservative workplaces these days.