Polish Spamarama!!!

I've got almost enough nail polish right now I can almost wear a different colour everyday for 2 years.  And with that being said, here's some polish spam action...

The magnetic nail polish trend is still hanging in their and yet I still don't have the hang of it.  This one is Gold Nugget from Layla.  It's nice but I'm not seeing the colour gold in here. I still have to practice tons more to master this trend before it's all over!

I so badly wanted Essie's Sexy Divide to be totally awesome but instead it ended up being totally awful. Three coats couldn't stop the the bald spots and the thin formula lead to chips within less than 12 of wear.  beautiful in the bottle, disastrous on my nails.

I don't wear a lot of pink polish but when I do, Maybelline's Timely Rose is my go to polish.  It's not childish or bubble gummy in any way.  It's positively lady like!

It's pretty obvious by now that grey nail polish is never going to go away.  Good!  The more funky neutral colours the better and Essie's School of Hard Rocks is a pretty good one with a thick and even formula that went on with ease and had staying power and a strong shine.

I haven't even worn To Buy or Not to Buy from Essie yet so I had to rely on my sister to model this lavender shimmer for me.  It looks so much nicer on the nail than in the bottle doesn't it?

Someday, I'll pick up a bottle of gun metal nail polish and say that I've really bought enough of these types of colours and place it back on the display.  Since I didn't have that voice in my head telling me to "just put the polish down and back away" I bought L'oreal's VIP Status.  You can see a bit of balding at the top of my index finger but that's mainly the fault of an unbuffed nail base and not the polish.

Hey!  Did I hear someone say they wanted to see a picture of Tom Hiddleston, Michael Sheen and Queen Elizabeth?  No? Well too bad...here it is anyways:

Her Royal Highness Must Have Thought He Was Tony Blair!

Stila Gives Nail Polish Another Try

Stila has gotten back into the nail polish game after being out of it for several years.  When the Daring & Delicate nail polish sets were announced a lot of people thought that this was the first time they were offering polish but this isn't the case.  

Daring

Delicate

I'm not sure why Stila stopped making polish. Maybe it wasn't profitable at the time but my sister and I had liked what we had bought enough to have hung on to them all these years.

Way back when, I picked up Rhea, a light pink sheer polish with just enough blue shimmer in it to make it a lavender colour.  It's light, fresh looking and airy and it took three coats to get it to the opacity you see in the photo.  Achieving bottle colour would require patience and probably 5 coats but lucky for me I like a sheer look sometimes.

Nymph is a very sheer orange with a light infusion of fine glitter.  The fact that my nails are stained yellow is actually not doing this pretty polish any favours but it would make a great topcoat for another nail polish or just over nails that are not as stained as mine.  One of the things that I had likes about Stila polish is the bottle shape.  The handle wasn't that great but at least the bottles were really slim and stored nicely.

I'd like to give Stila polishes another try, but I'd rather be able to pick individual polishes instead of picking up a set with colours that I might not be totally interested in having.  Maybe if these sets sell well enough, I have that option!

Polishes That Work For Work

I started a new job this week and along with the usual nerves one gets when going into an all new situation, meeting new people and facing brand new challenges, one of the things that I worry about is the all important first impression.  You only get one chance to make one and as it often is in a business setting, you have to play it safe until you know when you can let your more funky side come out.  So I thought I'd take a few spins with some polish colours that that make a statement but not a super loud statement!

Mindful Mocha by Sally Hansen is a deep chocolate brown creme.  I can imagine that this colour is not for everyone and would probably suit those with a deeper skin tone.  As I am some one with darker skin, I love how this looks.  It's a like a little upward boost from a nude or neutral (and I love those kind of shades).  This is two coats and although there was a minor chip early on in wear, it wasn't a huge chip so it wasn't really an issue for me.

Curry Up Don't Be Late by OPI was one of my favourite colours from their India Collection and now that I come to think of it, it was the only colour I bought from the collection.  A pale sheer gold, my photo fails to capture the really lovely, reflective shimmer in this polish.  That's three coats and it's still quite sheer but it's subtle and is a great choice for summer wear.  Just an aside, something is wrong with my camera and it is failing to snap a sharp picture lately.  I have to figure it out because it's really bugging me!

NYC's Lincoln Square Lavender reminds me a bit of OPI's Sparrow Me the Drama and although they aren't dupes by any means, I might choose to wear LSL or SMD if drying time was an issue.  NYC is always good value for my money, as I usually spend around $2 CDN for one of their polishes and that's always a win in my book!

This one is from my sister's stash and if it wasn't for the fact that we share stuff, I would have rushed out and bought my own bottle.  Desert Rose by Rimmel is a dusty orange creme that exudes mutability to me.  I know I'm using fancy $3 words to describe it but so many orange polishes are such in your face colours, it takes something calmer like DR to stand out from the rest.  Of course it didn't last "Up to 10 days" like the bottle says but it lasted for 3 and that's good enough for me.  Rimmel is a brand that, for some reason, keeps slipping my mind when I'm shopping or looking for something new.  That's odd since I don't dislike the products from them that I do own.  Maybe something is missing the mark for me by way of marketing but the brand doesn't stick out for me.

So there's some tasteful shades for you and I have to admit that I'm going to be slightly frustrated with having to wait until the weekend to wear a blue or green polish. Hey!  How about some 1980's cheesy goodness with Canadian rockers Loverboy?

Purple Pandemonium!

I hope everyone had a great Christmas and got all the presents that they asked for! I thought about going out and facing the Boxing Day Pandemonium that is going on in Malls & Store right now, but then I thought, why?  I got awesome presents and I can’t buy myself a job, so why not stay home, eat ham and turkey leftovers, and post some photos that I didn’t get around to yet!  People, get ready because it’s Purple Pandemonium here at She Has Green Fingers!

First up is two polishes from Sinful Colours in which I was excited to find at my local Pharmaplus store!  I’ve seen this brand on other blogs but as far as I knew, it wasn’t available in the T.O. area so I was glad to see it.  What made me even happier was the price, $2 CDN!  I could have easily bought all the colours they had but it was disappointing to see that they only had a small selection of purple shades.  I decided to hold back on buying too much since I didn’t know what they quality was like but I shouldn’t have worried.

Bali Mist

Let Me Go

I chose Bali Mist & Let Me Go since the other colours they had looked very similar to other polishes that I already had.  Bali Mist is a light purple that’s very reflective, with a hint of duo – chrome that you can see in the bottle but not on the nail.  Let Me Go is a sheer lavender that's even more reflective. It reminded me of OPI’s the Colour to Watch but they are quite different, as CTW has more of a blue sheen to it and is less sheer in its application.  Frankly, these two bottles of Sinful Colours was $4 well spent.  They applied well, dried well and had good coverage, although I did need 3 coats of each since the colours are quite sheer and there was a little tiny bit of bubbling with Bali Mist but not enough for it to be a problem. I’m looking forward to layering with them.

Diva of Geneva

Man, I love this colour!  Seriously, this thing is one of my favourites this year and I never get sick at looking at the red & blue shimmer going on in Diva of Geneva from OPI.  Perfect in every way...

Luminescence

 A couple of weeks ago my sister bought me Luminescence from L’Oreal.  It sort of falls between a dark purple and navy blue but I think it leans more towards purple in my eye.  I like it very much, it’s my thing and as I usually have good luck with L’Oreal polishes. I had no application problems but removing it was a lengthy process.

And just for the hell of it, I’m including this nail fail of mine.  It’s Sally Hansen’s Mystic Lilac with an Essie matte topcoat.  

Ewwww!!!

Man!  That looks just awful, I really should swatch ML as is because that combination is just straight up ugly.

That’s it for now and until next time, don’t break a nail!

The Colour to Watch By OPI

If by chance I actually have any readers and you are from the US, you are probably thinking that I spelled the name of the polish wrong. Well, I'm Canadian and up here "color" is spelled "colour" and that is the way I like it. I finally got my hands on The Colour to Watch and I'd like to thank the staff at The Beauty Outlet at the corner of Yonge & Eglinton in T.O. for sending this polish from an out of town store to their location instead of having me run around town looking for it.

I love lavender but oddly enough, most of the lavender polishes I have are cremes so I was excited to see this lavender with a pretty blue shimmer in it. It's formula is consistent as it usually is when it comes to OPI and it took me three coats to get to this opacity but the dry time was fairly quick. I topped it off with a coat of Seche Vite because since I was travelling for Labour Day weekend and I didn't want to spend time doing my nails. It lasted 4 days without a chip with the added bonus of not chipping while I explored an abandoned building in Stratford, ON, which has got to be the cleanest city I have ever seen...

An Alley in Stratford, ON

I love this pretty colour and liked how well it wore and I'm glad the Beauty Outlet girls went the extra mile to keep my business!

Stash it or Pass it: Stash it!