OPI Red My Fortune Cookie

I've been so into reds lately, but this one was a disappointment. I was so glad this was an RBL Bangin' dupe, and I'm also really glad I saved myself over 10 bucks because I was not liking this red. It's borderline neon and very in your face, and I didn't get a sexy feel from it, which I expect from my reds. Tossing it into the swap bin!

On a positive note, I wore this for 4 days (that's not the positive part, I was so sick of it lol!) and it still looked great! Check out the minimal wear on this mani!

Goodbye, Summer!

Summer is over and so are summer mani's, but I'm so ready to move on to fall! These were the last things I wore in August:

Butter London Victoriana, just as amazing as it looks! I think this is seriously a must have.

China Glaze Strawberry Fields, which I got tons of compliments on. I liked it but I'm still not a huge fan of pink on my fingeres.

Essie Turquoise and Caicos. My dear Essie... Why do you make it so hard to love you? I've come to terms with the skinny brush, we're good, we're cool.... but why do you need 3 coats and then take FOREVER to dry?! I don't like having a dented mani. Love the color though.

Essie Lapis of Luxury. Same problems as the above, though this time I scheduled my mani with some downtime so I wasn't using my hands for an HOUR after my mani.... still got dents. Which really sucks, because this color is amazing.

I'm already in to my fall color stash and it keeps growing a little bit every week. I can't get enough of fall colors, but need to use them quick because as soon as OPI Burlesque comes out it's glitters all the way!

Vampy Sunday: Off With Her Red!

So it's not really a vampy color, but after seeing last weeks True Blood preview I thought this would be the most appropriate color seeing as how the Queen of Louisiana is making an appearance tonight. Seriously, is there a better Sophie-Anne color? She wears red herself and the name couldn't fit any better. I'm seriously in love with red creams right now, this one is no disappointment. It's slightly tomato-y and a perfect pin-up color. This was 2 coats and a trouble-free application. And look, so shiny!! What's not to like?

New Butter London's

Butter LONDON announced their new shades last week and I could not wait to buy Marrow. I've been hyped about it since it was shown during fashion week. I have an extreme passion for dark purple! So I ordered that and, oops, the other 3 new shades jumped in my cart too! I'm so excited to do full mani's with these, but I needed a small taste of them today so I did a quick skittles. They clash with the other 6 fingers still being pastel blue, but it's okay to have an ugly-eccentric nail day every once in a while!

From left to right is Marrow, Victoriana, All Hail McQueen and Bumster. Marrow is a deep purple with a whisper of shimmer. You have to know it's there to even see it, and even then it really doesn't show, but it does add a certain depth to the color. Victoriana is, color-wise, dupey to RBL 360, except this baby is loaded up with silver shimmer, it's so pretty! All Hail McQueen is the total star of this collection. It's a holographic neutral, something that I normal wouldn't even look twice at. It's not that I'm not a huge holo or neutral fan, I just never really go for them. But together they make the cutest little taupy-holo baby! I'm so glad I did with this one, I think it looks great with my skin tone! Lastly is Bumster, which confuses me so much. It is gold. I wish I could just leave it right there. But without a shimmer it doesn't really seem gold, it seems like a caramel color. But it really is gold! Not sure if it goes with my skin tone too well but I'm still going to rock it because the color is so interesting to me.

It was cloudy today so I didn't get the best pictures to show off the holo. When I do a full mani with it I'll pick a sunny day! But for now, here it is with super flash:

And no flash:

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 Lincoln Park After Dark

While I like vampies much better in the fall, I've been so absorbed in vampy TV (True Blood sucked me in... haha, get it?... I know, I'm terrible) that I had to switch it up. Sadly Lincoln Park After Dark, a much loved OPI, is a miss for me. Let's face it, it's black. That's all well and good, but I was hoping for a deep rich shade of purple, and while I see it in the bottle it doesn't translate on the nail. I hope to have better luck with my next vampy...

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!

Essie Pretty Edgy

After having naked (and sad) nails for a week, I needed something bright. Essie Pretty Edgy arrived yesterday in the mail and I seriously couldn't wait to put it on. And I have to say, this color really pisses me off, and the reason is because it is so awesome... and it's Essie. Honestly, if Essie came out with colors like this (and the Resort collection) and added a new brush, she would dominate. I wouldn't even mind shelling out full price on a regular basis. But as it stands, her hits, while amazing, are too few. But I guess I shouldn't complain, because I really love this color. I dare say it might be the most perfect kelly green in existence. It's bright, bold, and feels crisp and fresh. It was perfectly opaque in 2 coats, which is always a crowd pleaser, and this color is so me it's not even funny. I even have a pair of Wayfarer sunglasses that match it almost exactly! Sadly, with this revelation, Jade is the New Black has been shoved deep into my OPI drawer... I only have room for one green on display on my desk and Pretty Edgy is now the reigning champion of that title.

I could add to my Essie rant, talking about how funny her bottles are to hold when taking pictures... and how my fingers never quite settle on them in the right way... but I'm just gonna let it go because I seriously can't stop looking at my fingers!

Other stuff I've been wearing

So I realize there was a huge gap in between blogs, and it was all due to a really bad break I had on my photographed hand. I still took pictures, but they're only with 2 fingers. I still like to show what I've been wearing, even if I didn't follow through with clean up and it's only half a hand!

RBL Coral was huge on my lemming list for the longest time, but after putting it on I was disappointed. Yes, it is the most true coral shade I've come across, but it's so freakin' bright on my fingers! I have a couple other shades in my stash (OPI My Chihuahua bites and something from Forever 21) that are close to dupes and only a fraction of the price, so this really isn't a must have. I kind of regret dropping the cash on such a not-unique color. And it didn't even hold up, I had chipping within 18 hours.

Much like Coral, Butter LONDON Artful Dodger was has been on my lemming list a long time. A looooong time! I put in an order as a belated b-day present for myself, along with a few other shades. Unlike Coral, however, this one far exceeded my hopes. I fell in love with this the instant I put it on. It's the most perfect turquoise cream ever. It applied beautifully and wore like iron for 4 days.

I took a quick bottle comparison picture just to show the color. Artful Dodger is bluer than China Glaze Flyin High but greener than Essie Shelter Island.

Butter LONDON Fash Pack was the only BL shade I waivered on. There weren't a lot of swatches around for me to check out, and I couldn't tell if it would look good or terrible on me. At the last second I added it too my order and I'm SO glad I did. As if the perfect greigy color wasn't enough, there's a hidden pure gold shimmer to it that adds amazing depth. This also applied perfectly and wore like iron for 4 entire days before I removed it.


The gold shimmer:

Butter LONDON doesn't seem to get a whole lot of love on the NP blogs, but it's really highly ranked for me. They put out amazingly unique shades with cute names and they recently changed their formula. The change includes a bigger bottle and change to the brush. You can now easily remove the top square cap to reveal a round top to grab.


Let's compare the new Tramp Stamp to the old bottle of Portabello Pink.

The new bottle has a sticker telling you that the top portion is removable, the old bottle is pretty much impossible to remove (unless you get all Hulk on it, which I was unable to do...)



Overall, I do think that Butter LONDON is worth the money, but I recommend ordering from beauty.com. I did so, and I received a free bottle of Portabello Pink, free shipping and $10 off my entire order. Even though the free NP isn't my type, I can use the bottle for a franken and I still got a much better deal compared to the Butter LONDON website.

StrangeBeautiful Volume 4 part 3

Let's start with the most strange of the bunch. A very wrong color choice of a cheap foundation. This color I'm not really getting. It reminds me of caramel popcorn (yum!) but I'm not really sure that's something I want to wear on my nails. I might be liking it in the fall or winter but it's too warm for spring and summer. This was 2 coats.


This is the grey, which I couldn't figure out the name of. It's a pretty standard gray with a slightly brown undertone to it. Not strange at all for the nail polish world! I love any shade of gray, I think this lighter one will tide me over until the next RBL sale when I plan to order the two awesome grays there. This was 2 coats.


An orange turban in a 15th Century Florentine portrait titled Matteo Olivier. This color is amazing. It's the most unique orange I've ever come across. It's slightly burnt but still has a crisp feel to it and it's bold without being neon and in your face like the standard neon oranges that pop up in the summer. I'm making this my official summer pedi color! This was 3 coats.


Overall this collection is really awesome. I can see myself wearing 7 out of the 8 colors over and over again, and maybe I'll eventually warm up to the last one. I'm so glad I splurged on this now, it's so perfect for summer!

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!

StrangeBeautiful Volume 4 part 1

I've been so intrigued with StrangeBeautiful for months. The idea of having a nail polish "wardrobe" but wowed and bugged me. While a majority of the colors in their first few collections were, for me, ranging from to-die-for-beautiful to pretty-enough-to-lem, they still had a few ick-I-would-never-wear-that-EVER shades thrown in the mix. But from the looks of Volume 4 they fixed that last problem, I'm totally digging every shade!

I'm hoping to get all of these swatched this week, but here's a first look in to the collection:

Here's the teal shade. I ordered these from Lucky Scent and although the names are listed, I'm still not 100% sure which name goes to which shade. I'm pretty sure this one is called Verdigris, which according to Google is "a common name for a green pigment obtained through the application of acetic acid to copper plates," and according to Google Images looked pretty close to this picture. But anyways. I love this teal. This definitely falls under to-die-for-beautiful. This color is the reason why I typically don't do swatches, because I wanted to wear it for the next 4 days rather than just 14 minutes. It applied flawlessly, was opaque in 2 coats, and I was extremely impressed with how it dried. I did not use a top coat for the swatches, but it dried to a high gloss shine and a full 10 minutes after the swatch did not dent when I ran in to a door. All of that without SV, amazing!


And here's the greige. This name I could not figure out. Greiges have been my thing lately, they're subtle like a neutral from a distance but up close they're surprisingly edgy. This shade sets itself apart from others in my stash with a slightly muddy-browny quality to it. Greige was another 2 coat flawless application, but it dried with just a hint of a jelly finish. Love it!


This was just a quick shot taken of the entire collection. I haven't found anything close to any of these colors in my collection, but I'm still going to do some comparison pictures just to give an idea of how they look next to their cousins (like that olive green and RBL No More War, they're very different!). If you have a request, shout it out in the comments and I promise to swatch them!

I think I should apply for hazard pay...

So I've had a crazy couple of weeks. I started a new job, finals are going on until Monday, and I have stupid boy problems going on right now. On top of all that, I keep breaking my nails that are still weak from the winter. I filed them all down, which seems to help, but I keep chipping my NP at work. I think I need to apply for hazard pay, lol.

Really though, I love my new job. I'm working as a waitress at a restaurant that just opened, and with the tips I'm making, I just don't feel right complaining... but I'm gonna do it anyways! Chippy nail polish aside, company policy states that nails should be, "Well groomed, short, and no outrageous colors." I do believe that 95% of my collection could be labeled "outrageous" by company standards. I've been playing it safe the last few weeks, and my heart actually broke when I received my new RBL's in the mail. Diddy Mow and 360 are still in their boxes, I can't even pull them out to admire because I really don't know when I'll get a chance to wear and appreciate them.

Back to the hazard pay. Last week I wore OPI You Don't Know Jacques. I tried to take a picture earlier on in the mani but I just couldn't get the light to work. By the time I took the picture, there was damage to my nail. If you look at my middle finger, you can see a crack running through the nail polish. I don't do silk wraps so I took a clipper to it (this is starting to sound like a horror story, lol!) Other than my unfortunate break, I adored this mani., Since I can't wear "outrageous" colors, I need to find a way to by edgy, individualistic and fashionable without being just plain boring with my mani's (more on that later), and this color fits the bill. It's so work appropriate yet unexpected.

The mani I wore this week was OPI Baguette Me Not. This one I absolutely hated. While application was up to OPI standard, the color pulled really orange on me, and not in a good way. Cool toned gals might want to stay away from this one. Sadly I'm still wearing it now, and since I have to work the morning shift I have no time to change it!
This week I hauled from Strangebeautiful and Butter London. Butter London haters do not read any further, because I love them, and you can't bring me down! I adore the little square bottles and I don't think the application or wear time on them sucks. But what I love most is that I can get awesome neutrals that are still edgy and have a fashionable feel to them. The best part of that is the names. How can you not feel awesome wearing a color called Aston? I hauled 4 neutral colors and one bright lemming. Also coming up, whenever I actually get it, is the new Volume 4 from Strangebeautiful. I've been on the fence with ordering from them for so long, just because I would adore 5 shades and be iffy on 3 from a volume, but I loved the look of all 8 from volume 4 so I went for it.

What colors are you looking forward to? Anyone interested in the new Vintage Vixen collection from China Glaze? I'm a little wary since they described so many as frost!

Catching up on NOTD's

I know I've totally been slacking with posting the NOTD's, but I'm still (mostly) keeping up with them between homework. So here's what I was wearing this past week:

The Summer Days collection continues to impress me! I totally love Raspberry Festival. At first I thought it was too red, but it's a perfect raspberry color so I really can't complain. I loved the shimmer in it! This was with 2 coats though I probably should have done 3.



For my birthday last Wednesday I pulled out Essie Greenport, which I was saving in my untrieds for a special occasion. And it made me feel so awesome on by birthday! The color completely lived up to all the hype that surrounded it and totally lived up to how awesome I had built it up in my head. I'm really glad I was able to get the Essie, but I've heard L'oreal came out with a collection of 3 exact dupes for the North Fork collection. I'm still hunting them down to have back ups! This was with 3 curse-filled coats (how much do you hate that teeny tiny F^%@ing brush?!) to cover the initial streakiness. I didn't like the overall look of 3 coats, it always looks to thick on my nails.



And finally the NOTD that I'm on day #4 of, OPI Lunch at the Delhi. I adore this. On my super pale cool toned skin, depending on the light I see red to sometimes orange, but most of the day in normal light It's a perfect dusty warm toned coral. This was 2 coats but I probably should have done 3 here also. I hate how white my nail line is!


Also don't forget to enter my Great Barrier Reef giveaway! You can come back every day for an extra chance to win :D

RGB Haze

It's so rare to come across a Perfect 10 polish, but this is one of them! It applied flawlessly, the color is so loveably shroomy, and the shine on this is seriously epic. This took 2 coats, and the finish on it is somewhere between opaque and jelly, the only word I can think to describe it is "milky". I absolutely adore everything about Haze! RGB is still a new brand to me, this is my 2nd time ordering from them. I went for Haze and Steel and they arrived in 3 days. A big plus is the company always offers free shipping! I'm surprised they don't get more love, maybe it's because they have a limited color range, but several months ago they did come out with a color for the new mint trend. I'm hoping they come out with more colors soon (maybe a turquoise?), but until then I'm loving my small RGB collection!

Without flash:

With flash:

Easter M&M's

So here's my totally non-unique pastel "skittles", but I call it an M&M's because I like them better! I think like half the nail board did something similar, so even though I'm not an original, I totally loved it. I also went shopping while wearing this and got so many compliments!

These are all from Up & Away, from thumb to pinky: Peachy Keen, Lemon Fizz, Something Sweet, Re-Freshmint, and Light as Air. Lemon Fizz is a complete PITA to apply. It's probably the worst polish I've ever worked with. There were so many bubbles, and even though I got them smoothed out, on my right hand I have a spot where a bubble burst so there's a huge pit mark! I've never seen that happen before! Despite that, I still like the color, but I don't think I'll get to doing a full mani with it anytime soon. Something Sweet was the best of the 5, it applied nicely for a pastel, and I'll probably wear this one a lot because it's so sweet and girly.


My birthday is a week from Wednesday and I ordered a few polishes today so they would be here in time. From RBL I got 360, Diddy Mow and Coral, which I'm SUPER excited about, and then I ordered about 8 polishes from a few other places, 5 of which are some shade of coral since that's what I'm totally in to right now! I'm still on the hunt for more awesome shades, so what are your fav corals?

More Purple!

So I mentioned that during Spring Break I stopped at Ulta, which I had never been to before. I hadn't even planned on going to Ulta, but on the way to the Imax theater we passed by one and after getting tickets and 3-d glasses we had some time to kill. So after convincing 2 men that there would be guy stuff too (there wasn't), and after crossing the stoplight-less and pedestrian-awareness-is-apparently-optional Highway of Death, I made it. And it was heaven. So much polish! So much hair stuff! So much makeup! So many sales!!! I bought a bunch of the 2 dollar Ultas. My favorite was the line up of about 6 shades of coral. It's like they heard I was coming and made a display just for me! Today I pulled out a medium purple cream (which I can't remember the name of). It's right in between ChG Spontaneous and Grape Pop, but of course try telling my camera that! It's a true purple, not the blurple you're seeing.

Application was a roller coaster ride of emotion for me. While the formula applied just fine and the brush was neither amazing nor sucky, I had major issues with little fuzzies. After 2 coats the color was perfectly opaque but the finish looked like I had sat like a statue for a week and let dust collect on me! There was much cursing. I reached for the acetone, but somehow talked myself off the ledge and put on SV. And surprisingly, it came out fine. So I'm not really sure if this is what all the polishes are like, or maybe it's just the cream ones, or maybe it was my fault (though I'm discounting that, I'm pretty awesome :P), but since my nails look okay I'm not going to condemn this polish.

Did NOT fall in a lake...

It's been a long and fun Spring Break! I'm sad it's over, but I need to get a new mani!! I've been wearing RBL Recycle since Tuesday night. Between St. Paddy's day, going to Minneapolis, then making a trip to Duluth, I didn't have a spare second to even take a picture so I did this afternoon. While putting it on, I wasn't super impressed with the RBL brush, it didn't make application the easiest. But I'm seriously amazed at how this thing wore on my nails. This picture is after 5 showers, a combined 2 hours swimming and another 3 or so hours in hot tubs, PLUS many many hours playing slot machines and all I have some normal tip wear and zero chipping. Very nice, RBL!


I also ventured for the first time in to Ulta and picked up a bunch of the Ulta brand NP, stopped by Sephora (which I haven't been to in 2 years! Far to long) and picked up several $OPI's, and came home to 3 swap packages, so I have too many new colors to choose from... I can hardly contain my excitement!

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

Greens #10, 9 & 8

I was trying to save my most anticipated greens for next week, but caved and put on OPI Jade is the New Black today. I was hoping it would live up to the hype, and it totally did! I can tell I'm going to be wearing this one a lot, it's the perfect dusty cream green. It applied flawlessly and was perfect in 2 coats. Also I filed down my nails yesterday, it seems like every 3 weeks my classes all pile up big papers and projects and I do a lot of typing. It's so much easier to do the work with nubbins!

It's raining out today (OMG rain! I've missed you!) so I took pictures under an Ott light. I've never done it before but this picture is completely accurate!


I swatched China Glaze Paper Chasing yesterday. I adore this color, so much so that I wore it for 4 days straight last August. But when I took it off I had terrible stains, so this is another one I'd steer clear of. If that doesn't deter you, it took 3 coats to get this and it chips easily. I was sad about this one, it was one of my most anticipated from the Kicks collection. And green #8 was butter LONDON Thames. I like it, but it's similar to the Essence I wore a few days ago, and I like the Essence much more because it's less blue. I'm swapping it away; I won't miss the color but I will miss the little square bottle... so cute!




Also MAC's Liberty of London collection came out yesterday, YAY! If you're interested in the Blue India NP you can use the code LIBERTY and get free shipping with no minimum amount. My awesome mom placed an order for me last night, along with a bunch of lipsticks I've been lemming. I'm pretty excited!