OPI What's with the Cattitude?

Okay. I'm not even going to be humble about it. This polish looks friggin' amazing on me. It's like a cashmere sweater for my fingers. Sadly, it's not a very "me" color... one of my friends even grabbed my hand and asked me if I'd fallen and hit my head before doing my nails! Even though What's the with Cattitude doesn't really go with my personality, I love, LOVE the color. It's amazingly cute, and with the buzz about the upcoming Chanel, it's looking like it's going to be a trendy color. This was with 3 coats; 2 thin and 1 thick, and it applied really well for a pastel shade.

OPI Yoga-ta Get This Blue

Seriously, you do! I don't even have words for it. It's bottled blue shimmery perfection!

For only the second time in a year, I cheated on Seche Vite, but this time it was with the notorious Poshe. And wow... I might be a convert. It's less thick than SV so I didn't get any bubbles (though I rarely got them from SV I was still always paranoid), and I'm on day 4 of this mani and it still looks exactly like day 1, not even a bit of tip wear! The only downside to Poshe was that it wasn't as shiny as SV when I first used it, but what really makes it better is that it hasn't lost any shine like SV does and it hasn't scratched up from normal day to day abuse. It still looks exactly like I just put it on. Poshe, I do believe this could be a forever kind of relationship! I need a few more trials runs before I dump SV though.

I also have Russian Navy, and considering how much I love this one was thinking about tracking down Ink. Thoughts? Is it worth it if I already have the other 2?

OPI Ogre the Top Blue

Continuing the theme of brights, I put on Ogre-the-Top Blue yesterday. This one is definitely an eye catcher. It's bold. It's a cute color but I'm not sure how much I'll really wear it. Too bad since the formula was amazing! OPI has really stepped up their game. This one is so pigmented that I nearly got away with one coat, but I ended up doing two to even out some slightly bald spots. It also applied perfectly, of course, since it's OPI. I'm a little disappointed with the lack of shiny-ness; Seche Vite can add a good amount of shine but I like a polish that can contribute to that factor. Though I may be a little biased since my last mani of Pretty Edgy was sooo shiny. As a side note, can't wait to wear that one again. I actually didn't want to take it off, which is rare for me since I love to change things up!

StrangeBeautiful Volume 4 part 2

The poem Lapis Lazuli by William Butler Yeats, aka the blue. I had a hard time getting this to photograph well. It looked fantastic on my nails, all super richly-blue and smooth and shiny, but my camera lightened up the shade and made it look dull and kind of icky. Trust me, in real life, this one is a stunner. As if the color wasn't awesome enough, I did this swatch with 1 coat. Also for reference, this is deeper and richer than OPI Ogre the Top Blue.



Pink color of Rose champagne, the pink. I'm completely smitten with this shade. It's so elegant! I've said it before, but I'm not in to pink polishes. They're a dime a dozen from every nail polish designer out there and it's tough to find a shade that's unique enough to love, but this is one of them. I can actually see myself wanting to wear this more than once. This was with 2 coats and also dried super shiny with no top coat.



Aged Chartreuse, the ugly-but-loveable green. I adore ugly greens. With the new shades from OPI Shrek being so popular I hope this becomes a trend. Maybe Chanel will come out with Avacado, Under Ripe Banana and their own Rich Chartreuse as a mini ugly green collection? I can only hope! When I start applying this I was unimpressed with it's sheerness, but it turned out to be a buildable jelly and only took 3 coats to be opaque yet squishy. Is there anything more lovable than a jelly ugly green? I think not.



And to top it all off, the color reminded me of my favorite guilt-free snack... pickles!

We interrupt our regulary scheduled greens to show you...

BLUE INDIA!

My MAC order arrived this morning exactly 7 minutes after I got out of bed. That NEVER happens to me; if shipping says 5-7 days, it always takes 7 for me, and UPS the guy never gets here before 5 pm. But MAC upgraded my shipping for free and I guess the UPS guy owed me one! I could not have been more excited... Until I put on Blue India. I love this color. Love. We are getting married. It's been raining here, and I love the rain, and this color goes with it (I think I should just start coordinating my nails to match the weather). Most people are calling this blue, and it's even in the name, but I think of it more as a moody gray that leans heavily on the blue side. But my camera doesn't feel the same way! These pictures are quite inaccurate, and I tried everything possible to show you the real deal because this polish is amazing. It's much more gray than what you're seeing.

This was my first MAC NP and I've been extremely worried about application. You know you're a polish-holic when you're MORE worried about applying a polish you haven't even gotten yet than you are about your pharmacy unit exam. It's a sickness, people. I literally sat up an extra half hour last night thinking about what I was going to do if this didn't apply well when I should have been concerned about barbiturates. All that aside, I had zero problems applying this. If not for the different brush I could have compared this to an OPI polish. The consistency was perfect and I only needed 2 coats.

Inside, no flash, under an ott light:



Outside with flash:

Are you getting Blue India? Or any of the new Rescue Beauty Lounge's? I want all 3 of them but I vowed to wait for my birthday. I think miss Ji is bluffing when she says she's running out of them!

Oh, and I got an A on the test. :D

I know you caught me cheatin'...

Dear Seche Vite,

I know that you know about last night. And I know that you know it was terrible. It was a moment of weakness, I thought there might be something better out there, but I was wrong... so wrong. China Glaze Fast Forward and I are done. Plus their brush was much smaller, and you know size matters... Please accept my apology, because I will never leave you again.

Last night I tried out New York Summer Hot Sky Blue. And it is HOT, much like the others with the same name. It's everything I wanted Dating a Royal to be, a true blue jelly. 3 coats and it was squishy-jelly-love. But look at what Fast Forward did! Weird bubble looking things, hardly any shine, still dentable HOURS later and I woke up with sheet marks, which I've NEVER had before! Ick.


Here's some awesome pictures to balance out the bad top coat! I picked up Sinful Green Ocean today, my Walgreen's had appx 1 million on display. It's my first flaky and so pretty! This quick swatch picture does not do it justice, I see everything from green to purple in the flakes.




And the rest of my new NYS polishes. I need to order more soon!

Happy Pancake Day/Mardi Gras!

I'm not terribly religious now, but was raised Lutheran and we celebrate Mardi Gras with Pancake Day. And it is the best non-Christmas-non-Easter holiday EVER. I LOVE PANCAKES! For dinner I'll be making about 60 pancakes topped with chocolate chips, sprinkles, peanut butter, buttery syrup, marshmallows, cream cheese, bacon, almonds, pecans, jam, bananas, blueberries, strawberries... and I might share. Depends on who's nice to me. It's good to be the master of the griddle :D

Back when RBL had their big sale, I had 0 interest in glitters. Now I can't get enough of 'em. And I really regret not getting Locavore, but I'm too cheap to spring the $26 it would cost to buy and ship it. But for just $4 I made a knock off! I started with 1 coat Pure Ice Strapless, then did 1 coat Sinful Frenzy and topped it off with 2 coats of Sinful Call You Later to get all the gold-y goodness. I remember seeing a Pure Ice color that was similar to Frenzy but had darker purple, and I think that probably would have worked better, so I'll probably try that next time. Otherwise I really like my knock-off, and it might not have the prestige of RBL but it gets the job done.





Also don't forget about my giveaway! I'm really hoping to get to 137 followers so I can giveaway 3 awesome polishes!

72 hours with Suzi Says Feng Shui

I don't really ever wear my polish for more than 36 hours, but I went away this weekend, so what I used Friday morning had to last the whole weekend. I picked Suzi Says Feng Shui. It's an awesome blue, and even after 72 hours I wasn't sick of it. Plus I got tons of compliments from my family, which is always nice. I also got a lot of, "(grabbing my hand) OMG are those your REAL nails?!!" And I am now the master of the humble nod and the, "Yes, YES they are real. Nice, right?"

I was super impressed with the lack of wear. There was not a single chip, not even a teeny tiny one, and you can see here the tip wear was minimal. Very nice, OPI! I'm sure I'm late to the game with this realization, but it was my first time wearing OPI for more than a day. Formula was OPI standard, completely buttery and flawlessly creamy.

China Glaze Flyin' High

I'm still wearing MPJ and loving it, though it'll probably come off tomorrow since the 3 Hong Kongs ordered came today! I can't wait to get Jade is the New Black on my nails. Last week I was wearing Flyin' High for 3 days, it's so pretty! I don't have any colors like it, it's a perfect turquoise. Oddly enough, this picture shows the exact bottle color, but my nails were actually a bit greener than the bottle color. I hate when that happens, but I can forgive this color. This is one of the better ones from Up & Away, the formula was great and look at how shiny! This picture was pre-top coat!

C-O-L-T-S!!!

For the Super Bowl I'm wearing Claire's Chunky Blue! I'm still disappointed that it couldn't be the Vikings, but my favorite quarterback is definitely Peyton Manning! Chunky Blue has just made my top 10. It has a wonderful blue jelly base, but with 2 coats there's enough coverage so there's no VNL. There's a heavy amount of silver and deep blue glitter and large silver hexagons that hide in the base. I love that they're not right in your face, like they're really a part of the polish and not just sitting on top like a glitter top coat. I think with 3 coats you would be able to have some hexagons buried deep underneath, but even with 2 coats you get this amazing depth from the polish. I also bought Chunky Green, which I haven't had a chance to wear yet but I'm sure I will this week. I remember it also came in Chunky Silver, Gold and Purple, and I'm going to go back and get them all! The purple wasn't very purple but I think I can add some blue until I get the color I want. The application on this was really good too, and I was really pleased with the randomness of the glitter distribution. This polish is a big winner!

This picture shows the true color:


And this one shows the awesome chunky glitter goodness:

Next day: This polish came off in sheets. Ugh. I'm pretty pissed. I've only had it on 24 hours, and even though I was sitting in a jacuzzi for an hour, I've never had peeling this bad. I wore this polish with CND Sticky and Seche Vite for top coat, and I use my jacuzzi 2-3 times a week and I've never had this happen. Yuck. I think next time I'll time this so I don't wear it when I use the jacuzzi, because I do love it otherwise.

ETA: Removal was a nightmare... I've been using the foil method for glitters for a long time, and while some need a little bit more time than others, removal has never been an issue. I let Chunky Blue sit for 5 minutes, and while all the blue came off, it left about half of the hexagons behind on my nail every time. And they had to be scrubbed off. And they got everywhere... I definitely need to spend the $2 to get the angry beaver tub for the next time I wear these. Yes, despite all the issues I had, I still love it... I need help lol.

Essence Groovy

I love Essence's polishes. Their colors are so wonderfully deceitful! In the bottle, Groovy looks pretty blue, but you put it on and you get these hints of teal... so it's a super blue teal, right? Then you get near something blue, say, your jeans, and that blue makes Groovy look like a slightly-greened blue. It can't make up it's mind, and I don't want it to. And this one is a delicious jelly. I love everything about it!


For fun, I pulled out 2 other polishes that I'm constantly moving from my drawer of blues to my drawer of greens and back again. I can't decide where to put them! On the left we have the lighter China Glaze Flyin' High. This was my first time swatching this color and I am SO excited to do a full mani with it, it is wonderful! And on the right is American Apparel Peacock. I typically keep this one with my teals, but every once in a while I see it in another light and it goes with my blues.

The Definition of "Whelmed"

"I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?"

Name that movie!

This quote stuck with me while I was applying my nail polish last night. I've been lemming OPI's Dating a Royal for a long while, and when I read reports saying that it was very jelly, I quickly tracked it down and worked out a swap. And the bottle came, and the color was great. Not as great as I was expecting, but still great. Not to be deterred, I started to apply. And the first coat was magic... jelly blue that flowed over the nail, the perfect watery blue. But then the second coat went on, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but it was sadly buttery and opaque. And that was that. A perfectly opaque lovely shade of blue. Maybe I had put this up on a pedestal for too long, but it's not what I was expecting. Do I like it? Definitely! Do I love it and want to wear it for days on end? Nope. It's already been covered up with Absolutely Alice.


I think my clean up is getting better! I managed to get a clean margin without taking off half my nail polish this time lol!

Is there a bottle of nail polish in your stash that didn't live up to your expectations? I'd love to hear about it, I feel a little bad that I'm putting down Dating a Royal like this...