My Halloween Manicure: Sally Hansen Pumpkin Spice

I am wearing a pretty simple Halloween manicure. Pumpkin Spice was released as part of Sally Hansen's fall collection-- not necessarily for Halloween. However, the colors in the polish make it a pretty Halloweeny polish. Pumpkin Spice is orange glitter suspended in dark brown or black base (it's hard to tell and I've read conflicting things on other blogs). At first, even though a lot of bloggers raved about this polish and I wasn't immediately impressed. I saw this polish all over the place and deliberately didn't picked it up. But seeing all these pictures grew on me and I decided to snag a bottle before they all vanish-- inevitably there would be only one bottle of the polish left. So I finally snatched it up and I'm glad I did. It's really pretty and works for both fall and for Halloween.

I decided than rather to try and make it opaque by building up coats of the glitter, I decided to layer it over my dud version of Black Magic. In these pictures I used three coats of Pumpkin Spice. It applied really well and personally I love the way it looks over the black base.

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Isn't it pretty? I really want to try this over a deep red or a brown. I think it would be gorgeous over one of those colors.

Happy Halloween, all!

Wet n' Wild Behind Closed Doors

The next polish I have from the Wet n' Wild On the Prowl Collection is Behind Closed Doors. This a collection of red glitter - large hexagonal pieces and much smaller round pieces - that are suspended in sheer black base. This is a polish were you can layer it make it opaque, but I didn't really want to deal with that, especially since glitter is such a pain in the butt to remove. So I used two coats of my WnW Black Magic (without the glitter) and then applied one coat of Behind Closed Doors. It applied really nicely-- got a lot of glitter in just one coat. I love how this looks over the black creme base!

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Apparently, Behind Closed Doors is a very close dupe of Deborah Lippman's Ruby Red Slippers. You can see a comparison post over at Vampy Varnish. Personally to me, they look close enough and Behind Closed Doors only has a $1.99 price tag, while Ruby Red Slippers is $18. The only issue is that Behind Closed Doors is a limited edition polish and difficult to find while Ruby Red Slippers is readily available at several retailers.

Wet n' Wild Ready to Pounce

Because it's a night game tonight, I have lots of time to make a post before then. Today I have another Wet n' Wild polish, from the limited edition On the Prowl Collection, released in time for Halloween. This collection has been raved about by bloggers, so I started stalking my local drugstores and happened to get lucky one afternoon at my local Fred Meyer. So far, that's the only place I've seen this collection. Since the polishes are $1.99, I decided to grab a couple of the glitter polishes (which you'll see soon) and of course, the one purple polish in the display! Ready to Pounce is a beautiful deep plum polish with a lot of pink shimmer. This is especially evident in the bottle:

Really gorgeous. Unfortunately, despite looking fabulous in the bottle, I was less than thrilled with the formula. It was a little thick and while it would apply well near my cuticle and then I would have issues as I tried to spread it out towards the edge of my nail. Because of this I needed three coats to get nice even coverage.

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You can see that the polish got gloppy around my cuticles on my middle and ring finger.

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Ready to Pounce is really pretty; I just wish the formula had been a bit better for me. I'll be posting some of the glitters tomorrow!

Football Friday: OPI Grape... Set... Match

Finally, back to Football Friday! There was no Football Friday post last week due to the fact that I was out of town for a wedding. Not that it would have helped-- UW got embarrassed at Stanford, losing 65-21. That's even worse than our loss to Nebraska and there was nothing redeemable about this loss-- it was like we didn't even bother trying to play.

But leaving that behind, this week is Homecoming at UW and we host the Arizona Wildcats for a night, the first of two in two weeks. Currently 'Zona is 2-5 (while UW is 5-2) and actually fired their coach mid-season. However, despite looking terrible for the first half of the season, Arizona crushed UCLA last week in a surprising turnaround, while the Huskies apparently forgot how to play football all together. Additionally, for Homecoming this year, our coach has made this a "black out" game, meaning the team will wear black jerseys/pants instead of our traditional purple jerseys and gold pants. UW actually debuted this look last year for our first ever Thursday game:

Looks pretty sharp, right? Little tangent now about football uniform fashion. It's become the next big thing for schools to jazz up their existing uniform rotation by adding "non-traditional" colors. Some schools *cough* Oregon *cough* have taken this to an extreme and have a different combo of colors and uniforms every week to the point where it's hard to tell what their school colors actually are. Washington has stayed fairly traditional over the years, aside from a few minor tweaks. I won't bore you with the details. Needless to say, wearing black uniforms was a pretty big jump for UW. I for one like the black uniforms, but I'm glad that they don't make frequent appearances (two last year and one this year so far).

Anyway, on to the polish!! Since I will be sporting my black jersey tomorrow night I decided that I wanted to stick with a nice purple polish that would pop. I decided to pull out a purple polish I hadn't tried yet-- OPI Grape... Set... Match from the Serena Williams Grand Slam England Collection, released this past summer. I have only heard raves about this polish from every review I've read and well, they're right. Grape... Set... Match is a stunning bright royal purple with pink and blue shimmer in it. This is a really stunning polish.

Look at all that gorgeous shimmer! Unfortunately, while my camera picks up the pink shimmer in the bottle, it fails to pick it up on the nail. Instead, you see a bunch of the blue. In reality, this a much more red purple polish-- the "grape" in the name is very appropriate. For the pictures I used two coats, but when I went to apply this for my manicure I decided to use three thin coats to really bring this polish to life, and to give it a bit more depth. You could definitely get away with two medium coats, though. I used Cult Nails Get It On base coat and Wicked Fast top coat with Grape... Set... Match.

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Next week is a huge game for UW-- the last game in Husky Stadium as we know it and we face our most hated rivals in the Pac-12: the Oregon Ducks! I promise to have more than just a purple polish next week!  Until then, let's go Dawgs! Beat the Wildcats!

Sephora by OPI Kitty Loves Black

This is another Halloween polish, although it was released last year by Sephora. It's been kicking around in my one of my polish drawers since I found it on sale sometime last spring, but since I was swatching some other Halloween polishes, I decided it was time to break it out. Kitty Loves Black is a charcoal grey polish with some blue shimmer in it. In the bottle this looks really black-- I'm glad you can see the grey base here. The formula on this polish was ok, but a little on the sheer side. I needed three coats to get opaque coverage.

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I'm not totally in love with this polish. It's kind of cool because it's a bit unusual, but it doesn't really scream Halloween. Which is ok, actually, but I'm just not totally enamored of it. I can't quite put my finger on why, but it just doesn't grab me.

Wet n' Wild Fantasy Markers Night Glow (with Rescue Beauty Lounge Undewear)

My first glow in the dark nail polish!! I've honestly never used glow in the dark polish before, but I have to say I'm kind of in love with it now. Wet n' Wild Fantasy Markers Night Glow is a glow in the dark top coat. As you can see from the bottle, it basically looks like a bottle of glow in the dark goo. And I suppose that's basically what it is.

And I suppose that's basically what it is. I decided to layer Night Glow over Rescue Beauty Lounge Underwear to get the full effect of the polish. I picked up Underwear in one of my pre-orders... I can't remember why exactly; probably because I figured it might make a nice base coat for sheer colors. Underwear is described as a "clean lit-from-within white neon that is striking on its own, or use it as a base coat. It turns any color layered over it to neon-bright." I needed two coats of Underwear to get a nice, streak-free base coat, but I think it would be possible to that in one coat if you were careful. Underwear is highly pigmented, but a little on the thick side and therefore prone to dragging.

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So now... onto Night Glow! Wet n' Wild recommends using 2-3 coats alone, so I used 3 coats over Underwear. Night Glow gives the white polish a kind of greenish/yellowish color and if you hold under a lamp for several seconds, you get a really nice glow. I didn't time it or anything, but I left this one on my swatching hand when I went to bed and did this right before I turned off the lights. The glow was kind of distracting! I kept want to play with my fingers.

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Glow in the dark! Both these pictures are a bit blurry (the first one especially) but it gives you an idea how this polish looks.

I think I'm in love with this! Where has this been all my life and why haven't I played with this before?! It's awesome! Definitely couldn't wear this everyday, but this would be awesome at some party with black lights. I need to find an excuse to wear this now!

Wet n' Wild Fantasy Markers Black Magic vs. Black Magic

Next up from the Wet n' Wild Fantasy Markers Halloween 2011 Collection is Black Magic. This is a black creme polish that has silver and orange glitter suspended in it. The formula on Black Magic was excellent; I got full coverage with two coats.

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I really like this polish. Halloweeny without being over the top. But... this wasn't the first version of Black Magic I picked up. The first bottle I picked up from a local drugstore had no glitter in it! It was just a plain black creme!

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This version of Black Magic was a really nice black creme-- something I don't actually own! I only needed 1 to 2 coats for nice opaque coverage. For whatever reason this mistake occured, Black Magic is an excellent polish. For the novelty, I think the 'real' version of Black Magic with the glitter to be worth it-- even though I don't know if there are any other drug stores that got the wrong polish. Just make sure to double check your bottle if you're picking this up!

Wet n' Wild Fantasy Markers Purple Potion

Sorry for the long delay in any postings. My husband's cousin (the bride) got married this weekend, so we were out of town for the wedding. The bride asked my sister-in-law and I if we would play a flute duet for the wedding-- which we agreed to, not knowing that she intended us to be the only music for the ceremony at all! Whoops. Despite some disorganization, everything worked out very nicely and it was a lovely wedding and we had a lot of fun. So I apologize for the lack of posts and no Football Friday, not like it would have helped UW this weekend. Blergh. But anyway... off we go with another Halloween polish!

Next up we have a Fantasy Markers Purple Potion. After seeing this polish featured on a few other blogs, how could I pass it up? In addition to just being adorable with the little tombstone bottle, it's purple!! Actually, Purple Potion is purple glitter in a black base. The formula on Purple Potion was decent, if a little on the thick side. I only needed two coats to get full, opaque coverage-- the first coat was a little patchy so two was definitely necessary.

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Purple Potion is a really pretty polish and I definitely love it. I tend to think of Halloween colors mainly in terms of orange and black (maybe green also) but this purple polish definitely fits well in a Halloween collection-- and even better, at just about any other time of the year too!