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....
I can’t harp enough about how much I love
this super shimmer red.I ‘ve been
hanging onto some very old Revlon polish that I believe I bought around 15
years ago because despite the fact that there are literally thousands upon
thousands of polishes out there, it not easy to find a really great looking red
polish like this one.The formula and
application for this polish is much better than OPI has been in the last year
or so (and by that I mean the dismal quality of the Holland Collection).The polish comes with one problem: it stained
my nails so badly that it took twice the amount of time to remove it and I had
to give my nails a buff to completely get rid of the splotches it left behind.
Deustch You Want Me Baby?
The colour orange has never been high on my
list of favorites.Something about a bad
orange can make anything and everything look cheap no matter how much you paid
for it. Despite the fact that I look great in orange, I have a good chunk of
orange shirts and a pile of orange makeup just for that reason but not because
it pleases my eyes.Still, this is a
lovely orange shimmer and an almost perfect fall shade.I would recommend it more highly if the
formula was a durable as Danke-Shiny Red is but unfortunately, it isn’t.
Anybody know what time it is? Why it's Tom Hiddleston All The Goddamn Time...
I couldn't help agree with nail blogger Penelope PitstopYKD when she noted on her blog All Things Nails! that Essie's Action looked exactly like a creamsicle. There's no better description for it than that so I'm not even going to try except to say that the only thing that keeps me from completely loving it is the large amount of bubbling that I experienced after applying three coats of the stuff. Perhaps I was too hasty and didn't wait long enough between dry times. Maybe when I do my toes with this it'll be better!
I don't know where Sally Hansen gets off calling this polish Bronze Yourself when that thing is so clearly orange. Not that I'm complaining, I think that this colour looks fantastic but it is just not bronze! Even coverage in two coats, no streaking and a good dry time. If you can find this anywhere and you like a nice orange shimmer, then this is a good pick for you.
What time is it? It's Tom Hiddleston Time, all the goddamn time...
It Would Be Nice if Someone, Hell, Anyone, Would Look At Me Like That.
Ahem...Glad to get that off my chest, again. The Amazing Spiderman could turn out to be a perfectly acceptable movie but it's going to take me a really long time to find out if it is because of Andrew Garfield and his yucky behind...he just turns me off so damn hard...
Thank Goodness I didn't get turned off by OPI's Amazing Spiderman Collection though. I wasn't looking too forward to the latest of the movie polish tie-in's since I found the quality of OPI polish in the past year to be significantly lacking. It appears to be turning around because this collection seems to have gotten back to the kind of polish quality I'd come to expect from the company.
Call Me Gwen-Ever is a bright coral creme that is so pigmented that it went on streak free and almost opaque in just one coat. And that's exactly how many coats I'm wearing in the photo above...one! How's that for a big step back up to quality? Now I've got to admit that Orange is not my favourite colour by a longshot: I don't enjoy looking at it but I actually look fantastic in the colour so I've got a lot of it in my closet and in my makeup drawer. The one thing that I don't like about CMGE is it's name. Considering the fate of Gwen Stacey in the Silver Age comic, well, Call Me Gwen-NEVER if that's what you consider "saving" some one's life...
WHOOPSIES!!!
Number One Nemesis is a dark green shimmer that needs at least three coats if you want to achieve a smoother and even coat. It's pretty but it's way too thin and sparse that I can't really say that I'd recommend it highly.
ButInto the Night is another story all together. I absolutely love this colour! A dark blue shimmer that otherwise defies a more detailed description for it. It has the same kind of application issues as NON but it's so damn pretty I couldn't stop looking at my nails when I was wearing it. That's hardly productive but come on, look at it. I did not expect to love it so much.
Yeah, so I'd probably see the new Spidey if that Garfield guy didn't make my ladyparts dry up. But if you read this blog, you already know what I like...Hey everybody!!! What's green, has two horns coming out of his head and touches himself whenever I think about him?
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!
I've been seeing Sally Hansen's Pumpkin Spice on a lot of blogs in the last few weeks and I thought it looked pretty cute for a glitter polish (glitter is not my favourite). Maybe I should have read their posts as opposed to just looking at the pictures! Then I would have realized that I needed to put a black base coat in order to make this polish really look its best. That's why that despite the fact that it looks pretty terrible in this photo (that's 3 coats) I don't have anything negative to say about it's thin black base colour and orange glitter because I know that if I take that step, it will look great!
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?
I have got a serious case of the blahs...I don't know what it is. Maybe it's the gloomy weather we've been having in T.O. or maybe I'm stressed out about school with a group project and final exam looming on the horizen plus being sick with I don't know what, but I'm just in a funk! So I thought I'd try to liven things up a little bit with some spring-like colours to try to cheer myself up:
Flamingo
I think I might have bought Gosh's Flamingo 2 years ago but didn't get around to wearing it until the constant rain and grey skies just wore me out. I'd call it a candy pink, like strawberry saltwater taffy...mmm, taffy! It was good in two coats, ended up applying very smoothly and went chip free for 3 days.
One afternoon after being dismissed for the day from jury selection, I stopped by a Toronto institution for salon supplies, Toronto Barber and Beauty Supply, a store that has been in operation since 1937 to check them out since I hadn't shopped there in a few years. I'm glad I did go back, because even though the only polish lines they carry are OPI,Essie & China Glaze they are priced for a $1 less than other retailers and a lot of polish from their recent lines were discounted too. I was able to pick up Life Preserver and Lighthouse from China Glaze's Anchors Away Collection for Spring 2011 for $4 CDN. So if you live in the GTA and haven't visited this store before, I would recommend that you give them a try.
Life Preserver
Life Preserver is a slightly muted orange creme that I like so much, I was half tempted to chuck out the rest of my orange polishes for being to loud. Orange is fine but it's actually my least favourite of all colours. But I have a fair amount of cosmetics in orange because it really suits me well and I like how this polish isn't shrieky. It was good in two coats but there was some rather long lint that was already in the polish which hampered the application. It's not the first time, I've had lint problems with China Glaze. It's gotten to the point that I just expect that some straggler is going to be hiding in the bottle just waiting to drag across my nail and muck things up!
Lighthouse
Lighthouse is also from China Glaze's Anchors Away Collection and it's a super shimmery bright yellow that took 3 coats to get it to the opacity that you see in the photo. Not that it's a complaint from me but it may not suit other peoples tastes. I find it suits my skin tone well but I also could see that, perhaps if you are more fair skinned, it might make your fingers look a little washed out. Surprisingly, there was no lint in this polish!
I guess one of the things I like about these two polishes is that when I see the two colours together it makes me think of my canaries, Patches & Sherbert:
