Saturday, April 30, 2011

A Royal Wedding/Spring Football manicure!

So how do you combine a Royal Wedding and Spring Football? With a manicure, of course!

I had some great ideas about potential manicures for the royal wedding, like using a polish from butter London (since they're British, of course!) but with UW spring football game today I decided to combine the two! And conveniently, since purple is one of UW's colors and it also happens to be the color associated with royalty... tada! 

I decided I had the perfect new polish: Ultra Violet by Estée Lauder. I originally saw this polish reviewed over at All Lacquered Up and wanted it pretty much immediately. It's a red-based purple glitter and is so beautiful. This now becomes the most expensive polish I own at $19 (but I don't have any Dior ($21) or Chanel ($25) yet, but we'll get there, I'm sure!) but it applied really easily, dried very quickly and was super easy to work with.

Anyway, here are some photos: I'm not thrilled with how my photos have been turning out recently, so I'm playing around with stuff. Hopefully I can find a solution.

Indoors with flash:

In the sun:

Looking a bit more red:
 
Close-up of the glitter in the bottle:

Monday, April 25, 2011

If you like neon, you'll like this!

I saw this on Twitter earlier today:














 


American Apparel is releasing a limited edition set of neon nail polishes, according to refinery29.com. Supposedly they came out today in stores, although I haven't had time to verify that-- however, they do appear to be online. So if you're into neon, or really like AA, I'd jump on these asap! I am not sure if I want these or not, but I tried to order them online and they aren't being added to my cart, so I don't know what the issue is there. It also says they're not available in any of the stores near me, so I don't know if it's a glitch in the system or if they are already sold out.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Rescue Beauty Lounge - Dead Calm

Now that all my family is gone after Easter/Dad's birthday, I have time to post something again! I wore this color a week or so ago.

So, after purple, I am a huge sucker for blue polishes. I love blue! Seriously, if it's blue, I want it. When I first discovered Rescue Beauty Lounge, two of the polishes I bought were blue. This is Dead Calm, a deep dark navy blue. I've seen this polish described as cobalt blue, and in the bottle it definitely looks more cobalt in appearence (actually, sort of like a blue Crayola crayon melted down)-- but in real life it's much darker, closer to navy with some green in the base.

On to the pictures!

With a flash:

Natural light:

Some up close photos:

Friday, April 22, 2011

Zoya Nail Polish Earth Day Exchange









In honor of Earth Day, Zoya is letting you exchange your old, chemical-laden polishes for new Zoya polishes! You can get bottles of polishes for $4 (instead of the normal $8), and must order a minimum of 6. You get your new polishes and send your old polishes (non-Zoya) back so they can be disposed of properly! A nice bonus is that you don't actually have to send any polishes back to take advantage of this offer (though if you're like me, it would make you feel a bit guilty).

You can read all about this promo here and you have until April 27th to take advantage of it. Get on it!

Tulips and nail polish!

My mom is in town for Holy Week and she brought gifts: tulips and a bottle of nail polish!

I got Houston We Have A Purple (kind of a dumb name, but the color is great!) from OPI's Spring 2011 Texas Collection. I love that my mom knows to bring me nail polish as a hostess gift.

Saturday, April 16, 2011

Rescue Beauty Lounge - Spring 2011 Iconic/Ironic Collection

So, I became hooked on RBL polishes right before the Spring 2011 collection was released and so of course I snatched them all up before they could sell out. (Currently, none are sold out, so you're in luck if you want to snag one!)

RBL polishes are all 4-Free, so no harmful ingredients! The bottles are square glass and easy to handle. My only quibble are the brushes, which while flexible don't spread as much as I would like. But the polish applies like butter, so it's not really an issue. These polishes also dry pretty quickly, which is awesome.

Insouciant:
This polish is a grayish lilac color with a blue shimmer. This color changes a lot depending on the light you're in-- sometimes it's more gray, sometimes more purple, and sometimes the shimmer is really apparent. I used two coats here.

In this picture, under artificial light, you can see some of the shimmer in the bottle and on my nails: 

With a flash:

Shimmer! So pretty:

And one more:

Decorous: 
This is described by Baek as a "ladylike cocoa" and as if "a chai latte had a baby with a malted milkshake." There's a hint of shimmer to make the color dynamic and changeable in different lighting situations and keep it from being too boring. At first, the color isn't that attractive right out of the bottle, but with two coats and a nice shiny topcoat-- it's gorgeous. 

Under artificial light. You can see the shimmer in the bottle, it's a little more difficult to see on the nail. Under this light the color isn't not quite as attractive as one would hope:

Natural light; the color is much more attractive here:

With a flash:

Iconoclast: 
This is a rich ebony color with multi-colored glitter to give it some pop and make it a little different from a lot of other black polishes out there. This is two coats. 

With a flash; you can see some of the shimmer on my ring finger:

Artificial light; you can really see the rainbow of glitter in the bottle:

Natural light:

Recherché:
This is a smoky plum/brown color and the only creme of the collection. My only disappointment is that the color is a lot more reddish plum in the bottle and it's a lot darker on the nail. However, it's still really gorgeous and doesn't look too black. This is two coats. I also had a very difficult time capturing this baby with my camera-- it's very shiny and also photographed a lot dark than it actually looked in most cases.

With a flash; the color comes across as a little gray here: 

Artificial light:

Natural light:


Natural light w/flash:



And that's the Spring 2011 collection! Gorgeous! I am wearing Recherché right now for Palm Sunday. I plan on wearing Iconoclast for Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. I was planning on wearing Decorous on Easter with my fun, bright colorful dress and nude heels.

Friday, April 15, 2011

Pink Nail Polish - Controversial?!

Only if it's being painted on a little boy's toes, apparently.

The following ad has been on J.Crew's website for the past week:

The quote, by the company's creative director Jenna Lyons says: "Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon."

Needless to say, some people out there are outraged that a mother would paint her son's toenails pink. Using nail polish is a "girl" thing and pink is definitely not a color for boys-- at least according to some. Personally, I think the whole kerfluffle over this is ridiculous. With all that's going on in the world, we are concerned about a boy wanting his toenails painted pink?! I think there are more important things to worry about, people. Kids often want to copy their parents and certainly some pink polish is not going to confuse this little boy as to which gender he is. Goodness!

Thoughts?

Rescue Beauty Lounge Bring it Back Vote!

That's right, the Bring it Back vote is on right now at Rescue Beauty Lounge! You can vote for two colors, but you only get one chance to vote! The voting goes for 48 hours only, until Sunday April 17th at 10am EST. There are so many great colors-- I still can't decide! But whatever wins you can be guaranteed it's going to be great. Go here to vote.

Monday, April 11, 2011

Rescue Beauty Lounge - Scrangie

Had a great weekend in Portland with all my family! But now it's back to work and so I have a new post!

Back in 2009, Ji Baek, the owner and creator of Rescue Beauty Lounge offered the chance of a lifetime to three lucky nail polish bloggers-- they got to create their own nail polish! And this is one of the results, Scrangie (whose blog is linked to the right). Supposed to be based on a beetle's wing, this is a purple/blue polish with a green iridescent shimmer/glitter. So pretty! I've got lots of pictures. Application was a dream-- I've got three coats on.

RBL polishes are expensive ($18/bottle) but well worth it, in my opinion. The colors are all fabulous.

With flash:

Without flash:

Shimmer:

And a few more, since this is so pretty!



This polish is so pretty and unique-- I'm glad I snatched it up before it sold out. If you're interested, you can vote for it in this year's Bring it Back vote!

Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Coming soon: Zoya and Recue Beauty Lounge!

I just bought a bunch of Zoya polishes because they were having a buy-one, get-one sale.

We have the Summertime Collection:


And the Sunshine Collection:


I also have a bunch of new Rescue Beauty Lounge polishes, including the Spring 2011 Iconic/Ironic collection:


Hopefully I'll be able to swatch all these after my vacation in PDX this weekend.

Palate cleanser

So after all of those super bright colors I was wearing last week, I decided I needed a "palate cleanser" for my nails, as least color-wise. The other week I stopped by the Fred Meyer down the street to check on their polish selection and realized that I had forgotten they actually sold OPI. While browsing I noticed they had a last chance bin with some sale OPI polishes. I grabbed several, including one called Pink-ing Of You. I think it's actually a part of the bridal collection (from many years ok) but I don't have many (hardly any, really) pink polishes in my collection. So I decided to snatch this up.

The color is a nice pastel pink-- a shade I would liken to cotton candy or associate with baby girls. The formula was a little iffy-- it is a sheer polish, so I am wearing three coats here. (I actually went back and redid it with four.) I found the polish the be a bit streaky and uneven so even if I wanted to wear it super sheer I don't think it would have looked great.

Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Bright Spring Shades

In effort to bring some spring into my wardrobe, I got some polishes on sale at Sephora and they are very bright.

Here are the polishes! From left to right they are Access 24/7, Lost Without My GPS, Special Request, Hi Def, and IM Beauty. Four of these (all by Special Request) were part of the Spring 2009 Digital Diva Collection.
 

You can see that two of the polishes look very similar in color. Here's another picture where I think you can see a little bit better that they are not quite the same. 

Access 24/7: 
This is described as an "opaque juicy magenta pink" and indeed, it's very pink. Think Barbie pink. But I don't wear a lot pink, so this is kind of a fun one to have around to spice things up. Unfortunately the polish was a little thin and streaky and it took three coats to get looking good enough to wear.
Swatch from Sephora:
On me:

Lost Without My GPS: 
Described as an "opaque bright vintage orange-red", this is definitely bright. Practically neon, it's so bright. It's a coral-ish hue, and alternates between being more red or more orange depending on the light. Again this polish was thin and streaky and took three coats to get look this nice.
Swatch from Sephora:
On me this polish isn't nearly as red as Sephora advertises it to be.


Special Request:
So in the bottles, this and Lost Without My GPS look very similar. However, on the nail they are not quite the same. Described as an "opaque modern tangerine coral", this is really orange. There are definitely red tones, and in certain lights it takes on a reddish melon tinge that's a little more mellow than the bright tangerine that was predominant. Like the others, this took three coats to get it looking this nice and probably could have used another coat.
Swatch from Sephora:
On me:


Hi Def: 
So those last two both red-orange, but this was orange orange. Like, mac n' cheese neon orange orange. Described as an "opaque rich tangerine", this definitely lives up to it's name. This was three coats.
Swatch from Sephora:
 On me:


IM Beauty: 
This is described as an "opaque bright buttercup yellow" by Sephora, this was again thin and streaky (it's a theme!) and needed three coats to get looking this nice. This is a nice springy yellow color, though, and I liked it. I also think it looked decent on me, which is rare, because I can't really wear yellow.
Swatch from Sephora:
On me:



Some fun colors, but they were all a little bit difficult to work with, so I'm glad I didn't pay full price and I can't imagine I will go back to them too often.