The latest trend in nail polishes is the textured polish, which seems to translate into "makes your fingernails feel like they've been covered in sand paper". This might partially explain why OPI decided to make their new finish Liquid Sand. For me, I really like how this type of polish looks but I don't particularly like my nails feeling so gritty and scratchy that I'm afraid to rub my eye for fear of cutting my corneas. Here's some photos of what I've picked up so far:
Stay The Night from the Mariah Carey Collection
Never a fan of the singer's music but at any rate, I still very much like this polish with it's glitter that lacks all the sparkles which usually comes with a glitter polish. If they made a version of this with orange glitter in it, I'd buy it in a heartbeat because it would like the the lava and ash from a volcano.
Jinx from the 007:The Bond Girls Collection
I hadn't planned on buying Jinx but when I saw it in the store, I couldn't resist it. Its coral/orange/gold tones are a perfect summer shade and I'm going to be keeping this one on my toes for a while. Mainly because Liquid Sand polishes take more time to remove than the more traditional polishes and I've found that using pure acetone is the best way to remove them.
Vesper from the 007:The Bond Girls Collection
This one was the shade I had originally stepped into the store for. It almost looks like mud in the bottle and lacks reflective properties but I'm still found of it. I love a deep dark purple.
What Wizardry Is This? from the Oz: the Great & Powerful Collection
You know what other colour I like? That's right...Green! What Wizardry is This? is more of a khaki and despite being a dark colour, it has lots of sparkle to it. I took a purposely blurred photo to emphasis that fact.
What Wizardry Is This? from the Oz: the Great & Powerful, Out of Focus
I've noticed a few nail bloggers have found the dry time on Liquid Sand polishes are very long but I've found my experience to be different. These polishes dry to a matte like finish which usually dry quicker than a more traditional polish does and that made these my "go to" polishes during tax season when I worked a lot of overtime and did have much "me" time. I also like that they stick to your nails like glue and can wear them for up to a week at a time and not see a single chip. Tip wear, yes but no chips!
So I'm not sure how long this trend will last. It wasn't long ago every polish company was rushing out "crackle" polishes that are now heavily populating clearance bins or magnetic polishes that are collecting dust on store shelves. I guess I'll enjoy it while it lasts....
Long
time no blog!Sometimes little things in
life like jobs and money gets in the way of even smaller things of blurting out
your little scribbles about like what you think about the latest in nail polish
colours.In the past month I’ve been
dealing with 99 problems and thank god a bitch ain’t one!I’ve been dealing with this kind of stuff:
1.Insomnia 2.Lack
of energy 3.Writing 4.Job
searching 5.CV
Updating 6.Job
changes 7.Large
drop in income
Yes,
these are miserable sounding things but if I try hard enough, I can sort the fun
stuff too!In the past month I’ve:
1.Dyed
my hair purple
Or
more like I dyed my grey hair purple and since I dyed it on top of the black
dye job that I had done while I was in NYC visiting family, it only affected my
roots.It looked like purple was my
natural colour.Oddly, only 2 people out
of 100 in the accounting firm I work at noticed my hair was purple which means that
either no one really takes notice of me or my showing up one day with purple
hair wasn’t anything unexpected on my part...I
used Manic Panic’s Ultra Violet.The
label reads “semi permanent” and it really lives up to that claim.After one week it had faded so much that the
colour was barely noticeable and that was without washing my hair!I’m of Afro-Caribbean descent so I don’t wash
my hair daily.Once a week or bi-weekly
is the norm for me so I can imagine if you are of one of the races who has straight
hair and washes it constantly, this might not be the product for you.
2.Me & My Family Met Norman
Reedus
I Give You One Guess Where My Other Hand Is...
Some families go to Walmart to get their portraits done but not mine: We head out to Toronto's Fan Expo for that! For
reasons that I don’t even understand myself, I’m a fan of actor Norman Reedus.He’s been in some good movies (Blade 2), mediocre
movies (A Crime, The Notorious Bettie Page), some god awful crap (The Boondocks Saints) and whatever AMC’s The Walking Dead thinks it is.If you watch that show then I really hope you appreciate the irony of
this photo, as Reedus plays a racist hillbilly on TWD but he’s
surrounded by a bunch of Black people who were actually happy to see him!
3.Me & My Family Met Gillian
Anderson
I am Fangirling So Hard Right Now!
This
had me so damn excited that I can barely remember the picture being taken.The X-Files is and will remain one of my all
time favourite shows and I was so obsessed with Agent Dana Scully that I wore a
pantsuit and a long coat all through university and spent most of my time
pissing off my classmates by routinely telling them that their “theories were unsubstantiated”.No wonder I didn’t get invited to any keggers...
But what
about nail polish, you ask?Well it just
so happens that I bought some (despite my now limited income) today I have for
you Zoya’s Feifei.Whose name that is, I
don’t know and if there’s someone out there with that name then I’m sorry to hear
that.At first glance it made me think
of Faye from last year but then I look at it again and see how wrong I am.Feifei is a much more blue polish in
comparison to Faye and the flecks appear more like an orange/copper
colour.They’re not dupes by any means
and I can safely say that I don’t have another colour like this in my
collection.Nice!
Magnetic nail polish, once all the rage...now collecting dust in drugstore bins! I think the best thing about these polishes is that once the trend is over, you still have a decent looking and fast drying polish even if you don't use the magnet on it! At any rate, I like this one from Color Club called Hipnotic, it really reacted well to the magnet and has some pretty good depth to it, plus it was cheap!
I've been spending so much time in my own head lately that you'd think my birthday was coming up. It's not, but that hasn't stopped me from feeling like a mopey, sad clown on a dusty black velvet canvas. Somebody painted it but who the hell wants to buy it?
Nail Inc. has got a few new duochromes out, two of which are available right now at Sephora's all around the GTA. The first one I tried out was Cheyne Walk, a medium purple shimmer that reflects a kind of brown. Man I love duochromes but they are always difficult to photograph and you always have to take a series of them in order to make sure that the viewer can see all of the different ways that the polish captures the light. If I didn't snap a few in the shade you wouldn't be able to really see the duochrome effect at all. Direct sunlight just seems to blot these kind of polishes out. And if this wasn't a douchrome, I can't say that I would have been enthusiastic about it as it looks a little washed out with my complexion.
That aside, i had no real issues with the application. It had a smooth finish ad was free of link and bubbles but it did take a little bit more time to dry than other Nails Inc.
Man, it's just turning out to be a ho-hum summer for me, and I had high hopes since my month of May was pretty good in comparison to the awful year I'd been having up until then. I know I could use a little adventure and romance but it’s not like some Prince Charming is going to ride up on a
white horse and take me away...
A quick stop in a Shoppers Drug Mart on Dufferin Street & Lawrence Avenue led me to an almost empty display rack of Essence cosmetics. I'm curious to know why I've never seen this brand of makeup in any other SDM in the GTA except for that one. They certainly don't carry it anywhere near where I live.
I bought 2 polishes and one of them was Where's the Party?, a purple green duochrome that leans a bit on the frosty side. Considering the cheap price, it was less than $2 CDN, it's a pretty decent looking polish and has some really nice tonally transition to it and it looks good. However, I got to tell you the formula was hard to work with. It was too thick, bubbled and actually lived up to the promise of being a quick dry polish by becoming extremely sticky coming out of the bottle by the time I got to the second coat. I doubt that I'd be able to get 3 more wears out of it before it would begin to dry up and be unmanageable.
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!
I've been dealing with illness these last couple of months and because of this, I have been completely exhausted. By the time I make it home from work (I'm waiting until I'm scheduled for surgery before I take sick leave) I barely have the energy to put my pyjamas on and crawl into bed. And while I'm at work, the most common comment I get from my coworkers is "You look terrible! Are you feeling OK?" I know that none of them are trying to insult me and they are genuinely concerned but it's still hard to hear it.
As a result, I've been wearing much more colourful makeup and nail polish to try to draw attention away from my sickly appearance. That's where a polish like China Glaze's Gothic Lolita from the Electropop collection comes in to brighten the mood! Anyone who reads my blog knows I love purple and this one is one of the snazziest I've seen in a while. It looks like a creme polish but upon closer inspection, you can see a very fine blue shimmer throughout...Nice! Although it's a little patchy in it's application (as you can clearly notice on my ring finger). It's bright but not in a garish way and you could get away with wearing this in an office which is something you can't say for half of the collection.
I am still trying to get myself to get on the "I Love Glitter Polish" train but I just can't seem to get on board. Nails Inc. can call this polish a 3D glitter "special effects" but that doesn't change the fact that this is still just a glitter with the same matte finish and lack of durability that usually comes with this types of polishes. Plus there was this problem...
What the FACK!!!
As you can see, the brush was crap! Shelling out $15 on a polish and then finding stray brush hairs sticking out doesn't do much to build brand loyalty. Even though my experience with this polish wasn't great, I do really like the blue & purple colour combination and it was one of the less difficult glitters in terms of removal. Since I like my nails to look more precise than how this ended up, at least this colour is going to look great on my toes in the summertime.
Ever look at a polish in the bottle and say to yourself "Oooohhhh!!!" but when you paint your nails just look at them and say "Eeeewwww!!!"? That's what happened after I bought Maybelline's Purple Trend at the Great Canadian Superstone during Boxing Week. Its dark purple tone with a teal blue shimmer looks so great in the bottle that I snapped it up and as you can see, it photographs really well. But, look at it! It just looks awful on me. Like some kind of slimy liver got stuck on my fingers. It's a real shame that this polish looks so bad because it's staying power was fantastic. I've had it on for 5 days and there's not one single nick, chip or crack in it. What a shame!
As much as I love nail polish, I have to admit that sometimes I can suffer from a feeling that I can best describe as a "lack of new things" vibe that I think comes from seeing the same brands over and over again and having to make the weighty decision of "should I buy this creme or shimmer finish?" As the popularity of nail polish has growth hugely in the last few years, manufacturers have had to get a lot more inventive and/or innovative in order to stand out in what is now a very crowded market. More often than not, some of these "innovations" are just retreads of ideas tried out in the past like matte finish polishes, polishes in pens and crackle top coats. I've seen all of these trends before (let's face it, I'm old!) and I've tried them all too but one type of polish eluded me for a while and that was magnetic nail polish.
Magneto, Do Your Thing!
This in itself isn't new. I've seen them often on many other blogs in the last few years but somehow I either missed out when the polish was first available and since I don't shop online as much as I used to, my options for purchasing were limited.
But now magnetic polish is all over the place from high end retailers like Sephora to your local pharmacy which is where I picked up these two polishes to try out:
First up is Trafalgar Square from Nail Inc. London which is finally available at Sephora stores in Canada. They didn't have too much to offer by way of colour choices. In fact, the Sephora that I bought this from only had two: a dark grey/black and a dark purple.
The second polish is Velvet Groove from Layla. They had a larger choice of colours that included blues & greens but I think I chose this colour because I still would have liked it even if it didn't have tiny magnetic particles in it. As you can see, I had a few issues with the application, which obviously takes more time to do than the usual process.
The process is simple though. You paint your nail and while the polish is still wet, you hold the magnet (which is part of the bottle cap) over your nail for a few seconds as it pulls on the particles to form a design on your nail...
Kind of Like This, Only With a Lot Less Charisma.
And you better work fast because both of these polishes dry like lightning and you'll just end up with a very frosty looking finish. Oddly enough, what helps this process work is much like what it takes to get to Carnegie Hall: Practice! I botched up my first two attempts on my pinkies and ring fingers by holding the magnets so close, I smudged my polish with the bottle caps! The first photo is the Nails Inc. cap and the second is the Layla cap.
The Handy, Rounded Guide for Your Nail Didn't Stop Me From Smearing the Polish.
Oops! I Did it Again.
Two words of advice. If you buy the Layla polish and you smudge your nails with the bottle cap, do not wipe the polish off or you will end up ruining the effect of the magnet design as seen in the above photo. The second is you really should work in a well lit area so that you can see what you're doing and avoid mishaps.
So now for the final word. Which one is the better polish of the two? As far as the application process goes both the Nails Inc. and Layla polishes are on the same level but when it comes to results I preferred the Layla polish since once I got the hang of the magnet, the results were much more dramatic.
I recently picked up Ruby Rush, one of the Fall 2011 colours from the Insta-Dri Line from what was a pretty full display at my local Pharmaplus. I don't know if shoppers are not into the usual fall "go to" colours that always come out at this time of year or if it was the fact that the display was tucked away on a bottom shelf. Maybe they're just looking for something different in terms of polish.
If you're looking for something different, you won't find it in this colour but that's not necessarily a bad thing. This types of wine coloured shimmer polishes are usually a core type of colour. Like a pure red or a nice clean nude polish, you should expect to find at least one colour like this in every polish lovers collection.
There were no issues with application and it did dry quickly as advertised but the formula was a bit thin. It ended up chipping by the end of the first day of wear, so if your looking for something that will last more than a couple of days, then Ruby Rush is not for you.
As for polish buyers wanting something new, I can't help but wonder if we're reaching the end of the crackle craze. While at the same Pharmaplus, I found a completely full display for a polish line called Layla. Their take on crackle nail polish is called a Graffiti Effect topcoat but it just adds up to the same thing. I decided to give the purple colour (the polish didn't have a name) I bought a try on top of Ruby Rush right before I removed it.
If you look closely, you can the problem with the polish right away. When I polish my nails, I start with the pinkie and work my way over to my thumb. That way I don't accidently bump or smear a wet nail so you can see that while the polish is cracklingly very well on my pinkie but by the time I got to my thumb, it wasn't doing so well. If you're wondering, I dipped the brush for a new sweep of polish for each nail. I guess I can't grumble since it was under $4 CDN but that was the mark down price: It was originally priced at $15 CDN! So if you live in the GTA and you want to try out a crackle polish, $4 is fairly reasonable.
Looks like I might be getting that urge for purple nails again now that I've taken an another look at Jacy by Zoya. A red purple that at first looks like a creme, but on closer inspection, you can see that there's the slightest hint of blue shimmer to it. I found the formula a little bit sticky in this polish and there was an issue with application, as you can see with the slight bald spot on my ring finger but it's not a deal breaker...Oh Zoya...I still love you!
I made it through the first week of my new job in one piece and I can certainly say that for an accounting firm, it's one of the more liveliest places I've worked at in a long time. I'm hoping things keep going well! But since I'm back in an office setting, I've got a nice calm colour to show you and a not so calm colour. First up New York Color's Bryant Park, a muted gold with a nice amount of shimmer.
Now, I know what you're thinking, enough with the New York Color already but, dammit, they make a good product! If a polish allows me to apply it 1/2 an hour before I go to bed, then that's a polish I'll keep buying and using.
I wish I could say the same thing for Grape Fizz by Revlon, yet another scented polish and the second line of scented polishes that they have released this year.
Ok, I have to say it. How awful this this polish? It's not a question, it's a statement! When I saw it in the store I thought "Oh, so pretty! Like a cross between Urban Decay's Toxin & OPI's Merry Midnight." I was not expecting the watery, see through washout you see in that photo. That's three coats and it's full of bald spots thanks to its uneven application. I took twenty two photos and that's the best one I could get with this massive disappointment of a polish. It's possibly the worst polish I've bought in years and I have 436 bottles of nail polish. To say this one's the worst is saying a lot! Grape Fizz is $5 CDN that I could have flushed down the toilet! The best thing I can say about it is that it smells like grape flavour.
I wore that terrible polish when I went to see Hugh Jackman In Concert last night at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto. My sister & I took my Mom as a birthday present but to be honest, it was a present for me too! Hugh Jackman has been bunching up my panties for 11 years now (looking at him should be counted as one of my hobbies) and I have sat through some horrible movies (Kate & Leopold, Someone Like You) and a couple of great ones (The Prestige, The Fountain) to gawk at the man that I can officially say is the most gorgeous male I've ever seen with my own two eyes:
That's Not a Good Picture...
That's a Good Picture!
Being the big old Tony Award winning Broadway lover he is, I was expecting that the show would have a significant amount of cheese to it and don't get me wrong, I love musicals and I love cheese but I wasn't expecting Hugh Jackman to mount one of the most entertaining shows I'd seen in years. I am not babbling through a haze of lust to say that the show is fantastic and if there's anyway you could see it, you should! Jackman's energy and enthusiasm is infectious, he's a great singer, he's extremely funny and has a gift for comedic improvisation that had me laughing so hard I couldn't breathe and my Mom can't stop talking about his ass shaking. Yes, Hugh Jackman shaking his ass...
......!!!!
Whoa, sorry about that, I just drifted away in my own mind there for a minute! Within the space of 2 hours Jackman sang numerous medleys of the best of Broadway (including "I Feel Pretty"), did the Readers Digest version of The Boy From Oz (his Tony winning role), told amusing family stories, turned the intro of the Music Man into a rap, chatted up audience members, even dragging up a man from his seat and making the poor guy dance while he sang "Fever" and it was all awesome. But the two real stand outs in the show made my evening for two completely different reasons. Number one is this happened:
When Leia Met Logan!
"Carrie Fisher is in the audience tonight!" Jackman announced and being the nerd girls my sister and I are, we jumped out of our seats screaming "OHMYGODWHERE!!!" Fisher is in town with her show, Wishful Drinking (that show's fun as well) so she stood up, they traded quips, hugged and giggled and probably inspired Fan Fiction. Maybe I should write "The Tale of Princess Leia & the Wolverine" myself because I had a huge nerdgasm when all of this happened. Geeks live for these moments!
Secondly, when Jackman and crew broke into Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's version of "Over the Rainbow", I cringed. I really dislike that version of the classic tune and I didn't want to hear it again regardless of who was singing it but my attitude changed when two didgeridoo players came down the aisles (I've never heard them played live before) and Jackman was joined onstage by an aboriginal woman singing along in a native aboriginal language. It was amazing, people were crying. The woman was Olive Knight, who was a co-comissioner of the Bringing Them Home Enquiry that was established by the Australian government in response to efforts made by indigenous communities concerned about the lack of awareness of the history of the forcible removal of the Stolen Generation. The work of Knight and her peers helped lead to the Australian Federal Parliament Apology in 2007. It wasn't just a performance, it was an honour to be in the presence of someone like her.
I'd like to take a moment and welcome my new follower, Christina, to my blog! I'm really glad you enjoy my prattle! Thanks so much!
I'm going to leave you with one of my favourite songs of all time, Courtesy of Wolverine!
