OPI, Let Me Entertain You

When I first put on this polish it reminded me quite viscerally of the polishes I used to wear four years ago:  mostly bright, metallic, almost-offensive hot pinks/fucshias/magentas that were not creme in any way, shape, or form. Let Me Entertain You could've nestled quite well with that old collection (I used it up).  I'm not sure how I feel about that.

On the other hand, Let Me Entertain You is most certainly a winner of a polish:  it's a bright, saturated, not-quite-pink-or-red polish in that glassflake-shimmer finish that's been so popular lately.  (I'm beginning to think that this finish is the perfect alternative for people who love the way glitter looks but hates the way it removes.  These aren't hard to remove at all with a good square of felt and your favorite nail polish remover.) I used two coats here and, although it's quite bright and true to the bottle, you can see a bit of VNL.  If I wasn't so lazy I'd do a third coat. 

I'm really loving that hot pink flash you see on the nail.

I have to admit:  I think that Let Me Entertain You is the winner of the OPI Burlesque collection. I was feeling kind of 'meh' about the multicolored glitter--I like mine a little more fine and a little less multicolored--and I thought Tease-y Does It was really close to Ulta's For Bitten.  I own The Show Must Go On and despite the amount of compliments I get on the color I can't quite get into it. But this one is showy, nostalgic, sassy, and I relish in the nostalgia and the brightness of my hands. :) It's a lovely color.

For anyone who's curious--it's also a dupe of Zoya Alegra. I'm fascinated to see how it'll compare to Hard Candy Fabuluxe, but I can't illustrate the comparison myself since I don't have the Hard Candy. Obviously the finish'll be different, but still...

Hmm, lots of dupes going on this year, dontchathink?

OPI, Dazzled By Gold

Dazzled By Gold is an Ulta-exclusive Holiday OPI that came out in 2009.  I saw it at Ulta, picked it up, heard tons of raves about the awesomeness of this polish, and then never wore it.

Isn't that absolutely insane? The truth, though, is that I'm very uncomfortable about wearing gold. Although it has a tendency to look good on my skin, I think it blends a little too much with it and then turns the bling into something a lot more obnoxious.  It always, always, always looks good on me--but I'm always afraid of wearing it initially. In any case, I found it in my drawer just a while ago and sucked it up. Good thing, too, because this baby is beautiful.

Here it is coming alive in the glint of sun:

What makes Dazzled by Gold so wearable is the fact that it's made entirely of little flakes of two (at least, I can only identify two kinds) kinds of gold:  glitzy, lux 24K; paler and more demure gold glitter. The overall look is foily and much like the finish on both Hard Candy's Mr. Wrong and Milani's I'm Online--the texture is partly what brings out this polish's appeal.

And look at how it shines in the sun and how it just glows in shade.

This was three coats. You can still kind of see the (messy) tips of my fingers--I might wear some sort of opaque nude color underneath this just to make the layering a lot easier.  Gorgeous polish--I'll probably reach for this again during the holiday season.

OPI, Mad as a Hatter

It just occurred to me that, although I've shown you swatches of MaaH on my birthday, I've never shown you a complete swatch. Well, summer is great time to wear glitter, anyway, so here it is!

It has a uniform silver flash, I think, which is what startled a lot of people when they figured out that this color had multicolored glitter in it, but I think that's why I love it.  Three coats, a little bit thick, but easy to work with. Also, its lasting time is much longer than Absolutely Alice, but ... well, AA is sparklier.

Mmmm, nom.

OPI, Deer Valley Spice

So, I found this little pretty when I was out browsing in the dusty old attic of a vintage shop when I found this old thing, black label, pretty red, and all dried up. I figured this could be the point where I made my Great Argument On The General Awesomeness of Thinner by going home and showing everybody how awesome thinner can be with this polish.

So I bought it, and took it home, envisioning thinner awesomeness on a beautiful old color, and wearing it proudly. then I walked into my apartment and about five minutes later we suffered a complete blackout.

Not that it deterred me, oh no. I restored this polish to its original, chemically, fluid goodness with the help of candlelight. It took a lot of shaking and peering through the dimness to see if any chunks were left, and then giving it a lot more shaking than normal just to be a twat. This is about the time when I started the orange-red failgradient.

Turns out that Deer Valley Spice is part of the OPI classic collection. Oh well.

It's a lovely color, nonetheless--less a blue-red shimmer and more a  blue-red creme with a whole lot of pink shimmer particle, Deer Valley Spice took three coats because it was so sheer. I can't speak for whether or not that's how the formula is or that's how the formula reacts when most of the bottle is Seche Restore, but nonetheless that is how many coats I took.  It's a bit of a firebomb, classic red... and I do love it. Despite its juiciness it can't help but remind me of fall at its best. Or of really obnoxious red sportscars.

(Yeah, okay, maybe that's not the best picture.)

I miss the good old times when OPI polishes weren't horrifically not-punny.

OPI, Sedona Seduction

OPI Sedona seduction is a black label from the 1998 Spring-Summer collection, which means... it's about twelve years old. (Awesome.) This was given to me from a friend of mine--hi, friend~--who was very supportive of my crazy.

You can totally tell that this polish is a 1990s survivor, though--look at that frost! It was a bit of a bugger to apply--see the index finger; that's me trying to cover up dings but discovering that frosts don't like covering things up--but I think the color itself is actually kind of cool. It took three coats, in a wonderfully normal OPI brush, and a really, really steady hand. (My nails are frankly too small for the OPI pro-wide, although it does create a nice shape at the top.)

I don't think I hate frosts as much as I think I do--Sedona Seduction reminds me of Cinderella's ballgown, or the cold light of the moon, or airbrushed metal, or... well, anything but the name of the polish, actually. One would think that Sedona would be vaguely red or orangey? I don't know.

All in all, one of the jewels in my collection, for a myriad of reasons. :3

NOTD: Magic Wishes

... What can I say?  I wanted an exuberant, eight-year-old manicure. It worked.

This is two coats of You're Such a Kabuki Queen by OPI, from the 2005 OPI Japanese Collection. It applied in two absolutely perfect, fuss-free coats, dried glossy, and was generally just awesome.  It's not a color that I'd call unique--a very cool-toned warm pink, just a few shades from being obnoxious--but it's lovely. I then put on two coats of pa A44, which contains holographic stars and round holo glitter in a sheer blue shimmery base--and it turned me into a maniac. Stars are HARD to fish for! And then putting them on top of the nail in a regular sort of pattern is impossible. I should've taken an orange stick and pressed them onto the nail, but I'm insane and decided to fish for them anyway. Then they wouldn't stick properly and kept either scratchimg on random surfaces, or simply tear off--see the two indents on the pinky? Goodbye, stars.

That said, the way these stars shimmer is incredible:

The light they reflect is ridiculous.  I wore this to a dance event and even under dark lighting I could see them glisten. Woot. :)

Aaand one more pic, because I feel bad about the sudden disappearance (although for good reason. I have a GIANT post coming up soon.)

Another look, in shade. :)

How do the rest of you deal with shaped glitter? Suggestions would be... awesome.

OPI, Tasmanian Devil Made Me Do It

Two coats of OPI goodness. A color I'd classify as straddling the line between orange and red, and vibrant to boot. Perfect application, awesome, awesome, awesome--chippy.

Admittedly, this is the wear of day two, if that explains all the scratches and the tiny chip on the side.  Am I having bad manicure week, or something? Because there's something horrifically wrong with everything I've been wearing lately.

It must be the lack of quick-dry topcoat. Yes.

Anyway, I love this color. Vibrant, bright, easily applied, and screams high-energy summer days. :)

OPI, Absolutely Alice

I own a lot of blue sparkly stuff. I can't seem to keep my hands off of them. I'm not a huge fan of the sparkly, but sparkly blue things are another matter entirely. So it's not a huge surprise that I picked up Absolutely Alice. I'm a huuge Alice in Wonderland geek to begin with and it's... a sparkly blue thing. It just seemed right.

And, as I'm sure as this image shows you--Absolutely Alice is REALLY sparkly, really dense blue glitter in a clear base interspersed with little flecks of gold. How dense? Two coats. The flecks of gold really bring it to a completely new level--I keep thinking that it's really peeking out and glinting against the blue. It's charming and surprising and whimsical in ways I hadn't really thought that a sparkly blue ever could be.

And here it is in shade. Shade always captures glitter particle really well, but I'm sorry about the corpse hand thing.

See the glinty-gold?

And an unintentional blurry shot. Absolutely Alice is so sparkly it broke my camera. :)

I did discover, however, that perfect app and gorgeous color, etc, aside... Absolutely Alice chipped in far less a time than I had expected. Glitters wear like iron on me. Absolutely Alice came off in sheets in three days. Boooo.

OPI Hollywood Blonde

Okay, first things first--this polish is almost impossible to capture on camera.

Secondly, it's gorgeous in a way that I can't get to translate into pixels.  I was quite fortunate to run into Hollywood Blonde in my local CVS--they have a rack of OPI polishes, some of which are discontinued and/or black label--and snatched it up because I'd heard that it was essentially a beige Princesses Rule! I LOVE Princesses Rule!, but the warm pink translates to a pale color on the nail and is sparkly-stark on my skintone, so I figured that the warm, champagne version would be way better.

Do you see what I mean about the similarities between this polish and the formerly-swatched Princesses Rule!? (that looks funny.)  They have the exact same finish, and it shows; it has a sugar-sprinkled effect in sunlight and a stark textured effect in shade. Both polishes take three coats and still have VNL, although because the polishes are so shiny I don't particularly mind. It is--actually--almost a mannequin hand color, but it probably seems that way because it's sheer and it's difficult to judge because it's sparkly.

Lol my hand looks creepy and dead in here, but please try to ignore that for the quality of shimmer I FINALLY managed to capture. :)

Anyway, I think I need to try this polish a few more times before I decide whether or not it's awesome--but I like it! Definitely a work appropriate color that I could wear to the office, if I ever go to the office.

Gradient NOTD

Haha, I totally did this last week when I had the time and the energy to do it, but here is my first ten-finger gradient manicure!

Want another looksee?

Of course you did.
I used OPI's India Mood for Love as well as Butter London's Billy No Mates. The leftmost pinky is pure India, then I kept adding a drop of grey into a little dish (fine, the lid of a plastic water bottle) and mixed it with an orange stick gradually until I ended up with the dusty grey-pink color on the opposite pinky. The effect is very, very cool when you're holding your hands precisely as shown in the images above. However, once separated:

(This pale hand is like five times more damaged and goopy, I know, but it got really thick really fast. Work quickly, or keep thinner around).

On separate hands, the effect is very subtle. A little too subtle, perhaps? It makes me laugh how the eye perceived a huge distance in color difference between the two thumbs, so I looked like I was wearing hot pink on one hand and dusty pink on another. Nobody could tell what I'd done until I put my fingers together.

Note to self: next time, do separate gradients on both hands.

I've been surprisingly busy lately--want proof? I'm wearing two colors of nail polish right now, and four fingers are massively chipped.  I do not yet have time to change it until I finish the final tomorrow morning, and I have a little breathing space while I work on the final essay I'm writing--which is just about half-cooked, but I'd like it to be further developed.  I'm a mess. I pat myself on the back when I eat food. I just want this to be over. D:

On the other hand, I've used up both Princesses Rule! And India Mood for Love! And half of Billy No Mates. I've replaced the two (I did say I have to keep using four, hah) with Borghese Almondine and ChG Emerald Sparkle, and I'd love to show swatches soon.

Wish me luck.

An Apology, Some Nail Art, And Some Giveaway Updates

I've been working a lot more than I'd intended to this week, including training a new girl. Mostly because she's the new girl and I suffer from Older Sibling Syndrome (i.e., anybody who I am responsible for, I treat as though they don't know how to do anything by themselves), I ended up doing a bunch of the grunt work mostly reserved for the Clean Guy who just happened to take the day off.

While hauling around boxes, grinding coffee, and tossing out trash, I broke three nails.

They weren't badly broken. I figured, hey, I'll just go home, repaint my nails, call it a day, etc. So I did. I didn't re-file them down, or at least smooth out the rough edges so they wouldn't catch on anything, or some sort of logical endeavor that'd help you from exacerbating the condition.

So now I have one badly broken nail, and a couple of other raggedy little fingernails due to bleach. And tears.

Please, please, PLEASE be nice to my current NOTD:

Please ignore the finger frazzle, and that break on that finger...

(Sunlight)

Just don't let it distract you, yeah? D:

that said, this is two coats of billy no mates, with little drops of Indi-a Mood for Love over the nail, swirled by a T-pin. If you like I can make a tutorial over the weekend; it's really not very difficult!

 

 I imagine that using this technique would also be cool after screwing up a French, or a diagonal, or a moon mani, actually. Just blur the edges in a tendril-like manner! Awesome. 

Okay, the giveaway updates:   I realized that I hadn't really specified the bits and baubles that I'm giving out! Here they are: 

  

  

  

Two Pa glitter polishes, and one lilac holographic Sally Girl. Am I awesome? I'm totally awesome. 

International readers welcome, just want all the information I ask for two posts below (or here, if you like), etc. etc. etc. 

Oh. The China Glaze Outta Bounds and Essie Outrageous Orange do not have pictures yet, sadly, because I left them at my parents' house. I hadn't realized I'd hit 100 followers so soon, so I thought they'd take up less space and would best be left there.  I was wrong, clearly, but I'll have them sent to me asap. For what it's worth, Outta Bounds is an emerald green frost/shimmer that has a whole lot of pictures over the internets, and Essie Outrageous Orange looks like a neon but is in truth a very bright and sexy coral jelly. 

So, yes! Carry on. : )

First Water Marbling Attempt

Note to self:

 

 Shade.

 

I think I need two coats of Princesses Rule! before I cover it up with marbling attempts. 

I marbled with Princesses Rule! and Indi-a Mood for Love, in case anybody's curious. I quite like the pattern--there's something weirdly cherry-blossom and kimono-patterned about it, but it needs to be more opaque to be impressive. 

It's my second day wearing this mani, and I still have good wear, by the way. 

Giveaway post below! :)

OPI Mad as a Hatter

It's my birthday!

So I get to wear whatever polish I want. Because it is, after all, a birthday and because I'll be watching Kooza today (and so I'm not completely behind on the times), I decided to wear OPI Mad as a Hatter over my previous manicure, Butter London's Billy No Mates.

And then this happened:

It just looked really good alternating like that. :)

MAAH (if you didn't know) is a limited edition OPI from the Alice in Wonderland promotion series.  It's a clear polish diffused with multicolored glitter--primarily silver and purple, with green, orange, and gold mixed in, I think. It's not ridiculously shiny. I own more glitters that are far more sparkly than this one, but I enjoy it. I think part of the reason why it looks that way is because the glint given off by the polish is entirely silver... not multi-colored.

One blurry, one side-clear:  that was about as non-insane as my camera went when it was MAAH.

It's opaque in three thin coats, two if the way you coat is slightly thicker. I also got better glitter distribution the flatter I laid the brush against the nail. Application is... okay, as far as I'm concerned. I'm not too wild about the OPI pro-wide brush, but my nails are insanely tiny.

 

 I like how from far off, it looks like I've used some kind of silver-purple against Billy No Mates (a polish I like the more I use it... funny, cause I hated its guts before but I quite like it now). : ) 

Admittedly, it also reminds me of the paper topic that I'm writing about right now, which is due tomorrow...

 
 

Oh, one last thing:  two coats of topcoat for good gloss. Otherwise, your polish remains gritty. 

Venus Creatures NOTD: Roxana

"I think I may say now that I lived like a queen, or if you will have me confess that my condition still had the reproach of a whore, I may say, I was sure, the queen of whores....

 

 ... for no woman was ever more valued or more caressed by a person of such quality, only in the station of a mistress.

 

I had, indeed, one deficiency which women in such circumstances seldom are chargeable with, namely, I craved nothing of him." 

(A more traditional Valentine's Day NOTD this time around:  two coats each of OPI Indi-a Mood for Love, index and ring garnished with ChG Five Golden Rings, and ring with a gold lace rubon. All of them are lovely polishes <3)