Rescue Beauty Lounge Moxie

Tonight's polish is from Rescue Beauty Lounge-- Moxie! Moxie was recently brought back as part of RBL's Vintage Bring It Back vote. I'm not sure when Moxie was originally first released, but it has been sold out for awhile. Ji describes Moxie as "a not-so-innocent pearly white. Wave your hand at that cute Steve Carrell-ish guy across the room and layers of gold sparks will fly from your fingers. You’ll find that the seat next to you will quite suddenly be taken."

To be quite honest, Moxie isn't really a color I gravitate towards normally. But the pictures looked really pretty and I heard a lot of good things about it so I decided to get it anyway. And I'm definitely pleased with the polish. Moxie is really pretty!! It's white but not at the same time-- there's a lot of lovely golden shimmer running through out the polish. I feel like it should look "old" but doesn't. It's a pretty shapeshifter. You'll be able to see from my pictures below that sometimes it looks more white and sometimes more golden. I used three coats in the pictures below and you can see that it is still a little sheer, but not too badly. I probably wouldn't wear less than three coats, though, because of the visible nail line. This also gets a little brushstrokey if you aren't careful, due to the metallic shimmer. I noticed the drying time also seemed a little long, but part of that is probably due to the fact that I used slightly thicker coats than normal, especially after realizing with the first coat that it would be on the sheer side. I know it doesn't necessarily sound like it, but really, Moxie wasn't bad to work with and applied fairly well. On to the pictures!

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Very unusual and pretty! I was initially unsure about this polish, but was pleasantly surprised with how much I liked it. With my new appreciation of white polishes, this is definitely a cool one to have in my collection.

Julep Kim

The polish I have for you today is Julep Kim. This was part of a set I got in December from Julep-- Holiday Silver Belles, along with Leighton and Vanessa, both of which you've already seen-- and I swatched this during the holidays. Kim is a really lovely metallic charcoal grey polish. Julep calls Kim a "dark, gunmetal grey. Smoky and mysterious." and that's a pretty accurate description.

While Kim is similar to Leighton in that it's metallic, so you do have to be careful of brushstrokes. Despite that, I found Kim very easy to control and apply than Leighton, which was a nightmare. So hooray for that! I only needed 2 coats to get nice opaque coverage. Kim is very shimmery and pretty-- very similar to a england King Arthur.

I apologize for these pictures-- I'm not really happy with the way they turned out. For seem reason they all seem blown out, especially the ones that I took outside. Not really sure what happened there! I hope you can at least get a sense of the color and appearance of Kim.

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Cult Nails Clairvoyant/Unicorn Puke

The last polish from the Cult Nails Super Powers Collection is Clairvoyant! But Clairvoyant has a secret... it is also known by another name-- Unicorn Puke!! For those of you who aren't necessarily obsessive nail polish fans, there is a famous polish out there, Clarins 230, which is a magical color-shifting duochrome polish that is also known as "Unicorn Pee" in the nail polish world and is incredibly hard to find these days-- you can find bottles of Clarins 230 on eBay for upwards for $60. Yikes!

Instead of trying to tell you the whole story of Clairvoyant/Unicorn Puke myself, I'll let Maria's words do the talking. From Maria's blog:

"If you follow me on Twitter, you saw a sneak peak of this one last night. I am still a color short for the winter collection, but I know I want a flakie. I have been working on a flakie for another blogger, and ideally that will be the flakie, but I couldn't help but play around. In my mind I wanted something like the infamous "unicorn pee" but with flakes instead of shimmer. I didn't quite make it, but I fell in love with it as it is, so I stopped there. I lovingly named this Unicorn Puke. That will not be the official name, but for now it works."

Due to popular demand, Maria decided to do a limited run of bottles labeled Unicorn Puke-- these bottles have gold writing on them and are individually numbered. Of course, I was in love with unicorns when I was younger and how I could resist a polish with the name Unicorn Puke?! I couldn't. I managed to get a bottle, which was lucky because they sold out within several hours of the bottles going on sale on the Cult Nails website. 

So let's get down to business! Clairvoyant/Unicorn Puke are exactly the same polish, just in differently labeled bottles. This polish is a sheer purple jelly base that is literally packed full of multicolor flakies. Amazing! It looks so pretty in the bottle alone, but it looks even better on your nails!

Because Clairvoyant is sheer, it is meant to be worn over a base color, though it you like sheer look you can wear this alone on your nails. Here I have layered 1 coat of Clairvoyant over Time Traveler, which if you remember is a deep royal blue jelly polish. Hopefully at some point in the future I will have time to layer Clairvoyant over some other polishes but right now you'll just get a lot (and I mean a lot!) of pictures of this combination!

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Is this gorgeous?! I love it so much. And even better is that this was only coat-- a little goes a long way! I love this because it reminds me of a stained glass-- mostly because of the variety of colors. I can't wait to see it layered over some other base colors. I will definitely try it over black and a purple... any other suggestions? Maybe a dark green or a dark red.

Now unfortunately, Clairvoyant is currently sold out on the Cult Nails website, but Maria promises it will be soon (the website says February 2012)! I would grab a bottle when it comes back-- this polish is magic!

Cult Nails Mind Control

After a bit of a delay (sorry!) I have another polish from Cult Nails Super Powers Collection. Tonight's polish is Mind Control! And like the name suggests, this polish is rather hypnotizing. Mind Control has a deep charcoal jelly base that is chock full of purple shimmer. The base is quite dark and reads black, but isn't quite. The purple shimmer is not shy and subtle, oh no-- and it definitely gives the polish an overall vampy purpley tinge, despite the dark base color. Because of the sheerness of base, Mind Control definitely requires at least two coats-- I have used two in the pictures below. The first coat went on a little sheer, but two actually covered quite nicely. Mind Control went on very smoothly and dried very quickly, and dried relatively shiny even with all the shimmer. Of course, I used the Cult Nails Get It On base coat and Wicked Fast top coat here.

It was a bit difficult to capture this polish with my camera, but I do think I've managed to capture the shimmer well.

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Another stunning polish from Cult Nails! At the moment, this is a unique polish to my collection and I think it's fab!

Cult Nails Power Thief

Tonight I have another polish from the Cult Nails Super Power Collection-- Power Thief. This polish features a deep cocoa brown base with some amazing silver shimmer. I went back to Maria's blog, R3 Daily, and found her own words about why she created Power Thief, which I quote below:

"This is a color that I did for me and only me. LOL. I found a pair of shoes that are a taupey brown color with the silver/pink/blue shimmer that is in Let Me Fly and My Kind of Cool Aid and just had to have those shoes. Even more I needed to make those shoes into a polish! The end result is a milk chocolate brown polish with amazing shimmer."

And this is seriously a fantastic polish. Maria knocked it out of the park! Power Thief is not quite a one coat polish, but covers beautifully in two easy coats. The formula was great and easy to work with. The polish also dried really quickly, and I used Cult Nails Get It On base coat and Wicked Fast top coat to give it a nice shine (though Power Thief did dry relatively shiny, if I remember correctly). On to the pictures! 

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It surprised me how much I liked this color on my nails. I don't generally gravitate towards brown polish, though I have started to appreciate the color more, and this polish is amazing. The shimmer makes this polish incredibly beautiful and unique and I love it!! I reminds me of a slightly darker and more shimmery version of RBL Decorous, which I also love. This is a fantastic and I'm so happy Maria decided to make if for herself, and then the rest of the us!

Power Thief ($10) is available for sale at Cult Nails.

Football (Non)Friday: Sugar Bowl Edition

First Football "Friday" post of the New Year and last one of the season! My other favorite team, Michigan, plays tonight in the Sugar Bowl against Virginia Tech, one of five BCS games. I'll be honest, it was a little surprising that Michigan ended up in BCS bowl, but hey-- we'll take it! Since UW and Michigan are not playing on the same day, I can do a post for each of the games! Michigan has made it back to a BCS bowl game for the first time since 2007, and this represents the first time that Michigan and Va Tech will meet on the football field. I hope it's a good game-- I really have no idea what to expect out of it.

For Michigan, I'm going simple and wearing Cult Nails Time Traveler. Maria of Cult Nails describes this as the "perfect royal navy jelly", which is a pretty apt description because Time Traveler shifts between being a dark navy or bright royal blue depending on the light, which I love-- you'll see it in the pictures below. But what I really love is that when Maria was putting this collection together, she appealed to the Culties to help her come with various super powers she could name the polishes after. Originally, this polish was slated to be named something else, but Facebook convinced her to name this gorgeous blue after everyone's favorite time traveler, the Doctor (from Doctor Who)! If you don't know what the show is, Doctor Who follows the adventures (through space and time) of the Doctor, who travels around in his blue police box, the TARDIS, with his human companions. Some very astute Culties realized that this dark blue polish was the perfect match for the Doctor's ship and so taking their cue, Maria decided to name it Time Traveler.


In case you're wondering, this is what the TARDIS looks like:

Perfect, right? Well, Time Traveler is seriously royal navy jelly perfection.  This baby is a one coater!! All the pictures below are one coat, with Cult Nails Get It On base coat and no top coat. While two coats would probably be best, as you can see a few thin patches on my ring finger, it's pretty darn close. I find the formula to be a little on the thick side, but nothing you can't work.

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I love this polish so much!! It's freaking gorgeous, and I love blues. Sometimes a polish changing color in different lights annoys me, but in this case, it's awesome. I love both the navy and the royal blue aspects to this polish. So gorgeous. I could wear this forever. Love it!! I think this definitely climbs up the ladder of my a) my favorite blue polishes and b) favorite polishes of all time.

Revlon Spice It Up

Today I bring to you the eponymous polish from Revlon's Spice It Up Holiday 2011 Collection-- Spice It Up. I originally saw this over on Polished Claws Up! and immediately feel in love with it, so I started scouring the drug stores for it. I was able to find a virtually untouched display at Walgreens and grabbed this and Mistletoe-- and then went back for a few more later.

Spice It Up is a deep burgundy polish that has red and gold shimmer throughout. This color doesn't necessarily scream out "holiday" but there is a lot of richness and depth to this polish so it fits in perfectly. This went on really nicely-- formula was great. This is nicely pigmented and so only two coats were necessary to make it opaque. This is another Top Speed polish, and I don't recall any issues with drying (as in, it didn't take very long to dry between coats). My pictures make this look more brown, sort of similar to Julep Boris & Nicole, but Spice It Up is definitely more red. The second picture in artificial light really shows you the red sparkle, though it's a bit blurry when you blow it up to full size.

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I really like Spice It Up. I'm sorry my pictures don't capture more of the velvety redness of the polish, but this is definitely a winner in my book. If you see this, I would grab it!

Revlon Snow Bunny

Happy 2012 to everyone! I hope you all had a good time sending out 2011 and ushering in 2012. Has anyone made resolutions?  I have made a few that pertain to this blog:

1) Be better about my daily hand care and nail maintenance
2) Post more consistently
3) Swatch all of my un-swatched polishes (this is a stretch)
4) Explore other realms of makeup (not something that will necessarily end up on the blog, but for my own enjoyment)

 Nothing necessarily life-changing in any way, but some goals I have going into this brand new year! Now... onto the polish!

I'll be the first to say I am not really into white polishes. Plain white polishes, while they do serve a purpose, remind me too much of white-out (and therefore middle school) and I can't bring myself to wear a plain white polish alone. However, after seeing recent white polishes from a few holiday collections, I was intrigued enough to pick up one: Revlon Snow Bunny from their Spice It Up Holiday Collection. (Plus, I love the name!)

Snow Bunny is a snowy, shimmery silver white polish. Not surprisingly due to its light color, it's a little on the sheer side, but using thicker coats can make this polish pretty much opaque. I used three coats in the pictures below. You can see a little bit of visible nail line on my ring finger, but in real life it's not that noticeable. Unfortunately, using thicker coats did make the polish slightly gloppy and does take longer to dry.

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I like Snow Bunny because it's a not a stark white-- the shimmer makes it interesting and fun and wintery.  Snow Bunny has a very light and ethereal quality to it-- sort of light and fluffy, like snow banks. I think the shimmer makes it fun and wearable, while the color is perfect for winter.