Butter London Marrow

Fall is in full swing for me, I mean take a look at my front yard:


It was fully green just 2 days ago!

I spent an entire evening packing away all my summer shades and pulling out everything I want to wear for fall and lining up all 40 bottles on the top shelf of my desk. So much to choose from! I'm loving teals, vampies, taupes and anything that's really greyed out. I wore BL Marrow a few days ago and it was awesome. I love the hidden shimmer to it, it makes the polish feel a bit like a Chanel, and adds a wonderful depth to a great shade of purple. This wore really well for me, I had 3 full days with no chips!

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:

Chanel Paradoxal

I was really unsure about why I dropped so much cash on this polish. Chanel is hyped up and I'm never sure if I should buy in to the hype or not. This time around though, I'm really happy I did. Paradoxal was worth it! I love the smoked out feel to it and the light shimmer. Sadly I hate the application. Since I'm paying top dollar, would it kill Chanel to design a better brush? And maybe add a little more shine to the polish? I'll forgive you once, Chanel, since this color is so pretty! I don't think I'll be wearing this much in the summer though, it's definitely a fall color.

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.

Worst picture ever of an AWESOME purple

This picture sucks. It's not true to what I'm wearing at all. Not even close. I tried out my new NYS Hot Purple today, and it is LOVE. So. Much. LOVE. It's the most perfect jelly purple ever. With 4 coats, in any normal light, I got perfect coverage with a squishy-looking jelly finish. But in the brightest sunshine ever that's bouncing off fresh snow with the flash of my camera, it shows VNL. No idea why, since I don't see it just looking at my nails. And the color looks kind of blurple-y here, but it's pure purple in person. It's bright and it has a neon-quality to it but it's not a neon.

I've never tried NYS before but it applied really well, and it's a friggin' bargain of a polish! Only $1.60 on TD! I paid a little more since I ordered from a website that still had Amaranth* in stock, but the 5 polishes I got are amazing. While I only have one Nfu Oh, I think the colors and finishes are on par with them on the awesome scale.


*O.M.G. If you even slightly want Amaranth, order it. It's hot. I'm going to rock it for St. Patty's day! I got mine from spabeautysupply.com

Also this is the last day to enter my Who Loves Purple? giveway! As you can see, I love it today :D

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!

Rockin' It!

Before the Superbowl on Sunday I'm going to a Guitar Hero pre-party, and since I've hardly played since the semester started, I've been brushing up on my skillz. I'm pretty awesome lol. Since it's purple week at MUA and I had the perfect untried purple with the perfect name, I tried it out! I'm wearing Essence Rock It, Baby! and it is divine. The color is a true purple, deeper than what my pictures show, and the shimmer in it is a little blue and a little red, which comes out in bright lights, but in dimmer lights they mix together so it just looks purple. Love it! For an accent I wore Rock n Roll, another perfect name for my theme! It has teeny silver glitter mixed with slightly bigger pieces, so pretty! The purple Essence is from their Color and Go collection and it comes in a smaller bottle. I'm always leery of these things, because our American versions of quick dry (Sally Hansen Insta Dri) really SUCK! I only bought one, and while I like some of the new colors, I'm reluctant to buy them... but this little Essence is amazing. It has a wide brush, but it's more like OPI's Pro-Wide, and while it did dry REALLY fast on my nails, there was still plenty of time for me to swipe it on evenly. And it was really easy to work with on top of all that! I wish I could get these nearby!

Best. Purple. Ever.

Grape Pop needs some sort of medal. It is perfection in a bottle. There is not even a hint of blue in this! I like my blurples but they are everywhere. I like to think it's because it's cheaper to make, since way way way back when, purple was an expensive and rare color, so only royalty had it. If you're only going to get 1 from the Up & Away collection, this should be it. Now I'm only saying that today since I've just worn 2 from the collection, my opinion my change later this week lol! Grape Pop applied perfectly opaque in just one coat and flowed super easy on the nail. I skipped the top coat, mostly because I was in a rush, but partly because I want to change my polish again tonight. I'm guessing the Vikes won't win, and I don't need the purple reminder haunting me on Monday! Probably should have worn SV since my nails are too long and I got a dent while I was typing... ugh!


Please excuse the mess, I was in a rush today!

Parlez Vous OPI?

After wearing nothing but bright glitters and bold colors for the last week, I decided to switch to something muted, understated, and overall pretty. This OPI is a little older, but new to me, and it's an instant classic. While I applied this I listened to Freezepop's Parlez Vous Freezepop? Just because the name similarities made me smile.

Not sure if it will ever happen but I'm totally waiting for Sprechen Sie OPI?... A German collection from OPI! Come on, OPI, think of the green you could make and call Lederhosen!! I'm sure it would be awesome!


I'm also kind of lemming You Don't Know Jacques from this collection, is it worth tracking down? Most people seem to like it, but I'm so pale that I don't know if I could work it.