Pricing FAIL+

Click on the screenshot to enlarge...screenshot says it all.

SoHo de Chanel: Stupendous

I caved and bought the quad from Chanel's Soho collection after seeing pictures of this baby. I was worried that it might be too similar to my Mystic Eyes quad, but it's different enough that I felt like it was worth keeping. (It might just be the Chanel ho in me though) 3/4 shades are very light, and while I was initially dissapointed that the taupe shade was too light, I actually like the sort of understated look this quad gives me. The quality of the quad is Chanel's usual smooth buttery goodness, and I certainly like this quad a lot more than Tentation Cuivre, which I picked up around the same time. I feel that this quad would look gorgeous on someone who is very fair though, so if you fall into that category, it may be worth looking into. It's not a must have though, so if you do happen to miss out on this one, don't feel too bad about it.

Chanel Holiday 2010 Tentation Cuivre quad

Hello! Today's topic is the quad from Chanel's Holiday 2010 collection, Tentation Cuivre. Unlike quads that were previously released in the US, this quad is baked like the European quads. Truth be told, I'm not a fan of baked cosmetics, and this quad is not the exception. While it is fairly pigmented, I feel like the application just doesn't match up to Chanel's usual quality. The US quads are usually very smooth and apply like a dream, but the baked quads just don't give me that impression. I felt like I had to work with it a bit to get it smooth looking on the lids.
The quad contains 4 neutral, rather sparkly shades. While I say that these shades are sparkly, I don't mean that they are sparkly in the glittery sense. Chanel has an interesting way of making things sparkly without the use of glitter. The sparkle is closer to large shimmer particles. However, on my lids, the sparkle doesn't particularly show up, and the shades do fall a bit flat. I don't have a strong opinion on this quad going either way, so if you're on the fence on this quad, I'd say that it's okay to skip this quad altogether this season.

NOTD: Holographic Taxicab

Hello, it's been a really long time since I last posted anything. I assure you that I'm working on a few projects, but for now I hope you'll settle for a NOTD of mine from a few weeks ago that was inspired by yellow taxicabs. I used one of the Bundle Monster plates and my Konad black polish over China Glaze It's My Turn. I'm not usually a fan of gold polishes, but this one actually looks decent against my skin. I attempted to show off the holo, but the lighting in my room's been getting worse.

Anyways, that's all for now. I have a couple palettes swatched already, but I haven't labeled them. I'll be trying to post some pictures of a couple of the holiday items within the next few days at least so you guys have something to look at while I find the time to swatch them. I had swatches of the Orly Cosmic FX polishes, but I didn't really like how they turned out. I'm currently trying to decide if I want to reswatch what I have left or post the ones I have (or not post them at all)

OOPS

I haven't posted in a long long time, and I'm sorry (do people actually even read this?). Work's had me spinning in circles and too tired to post/swatch anything..though I do have the ORLY Cosmic FX swatches sitting on my camera, and maybe 5 bajillion things I should have swatched and updated on (like IMATS...I went, took pictures, and just NEVER posted..or on my new favorite foundation..Burberry Sheer). Mostly it's been general laziness and unhappiness from the stupidity and pettiness of workplace drama.

The second reason why I haven't posted is that I KOed my netbook. I was checking on something on it and since my desk was overflowing with random things, I made the bad decision to place it next to my chair..on the FLOOR. Anyways, I was running around trying to pull things together, and I stepped on the screen....and cracked it. I did, however, have the good sense to put an accidental damage warranty on the sucker (I have a rather mischievous cat..she killed my last laptop by spilling water on it the day I got her..not to mention has put bite marks in both my netbook and my former laptop) so it'll be back in a few more weeks.

And the winner is....

Lovely Miss Ariana! Thank you to all of my lovely subscribers. I will be contacting the winner via email :]

Ulta Professional Glam Goth Set

As I was at the checkout counter at Ulta, I spied, with my little eyes..a set of 5 beautiful mini polishes for $9.95. Eagerly, I snatched up one of the sets and set it down on the counter in front of a the sales associate who was already staring at me like I was completely crazy. Happy with my purchases, I wandered home to swatch myself these 5 beautiful treasures I had just acquired.


For Bitten...magenta/orange duochromatic microglitter in a black base. Absolutely beautiful to me and as far as I know, unique.
Underground..blue microglitter in a black base. Not horribly unique, but still pretty. It's more blue in person, but my camera refused to cooperate.
After hours..shimmery deep purple polish. This one bores me slightly..it doesn't glow at all..and didn't seem to get super shiny for me even after a coat of top coat. It's less blue than this in person.
Black Lace..deep grey cream. You may notice some shimmer on my nails if you click for the ful sized pic..but that's just from tainted top coat filled with the shimmer from other polishes.

Speaking of tainted things...here is Tainted Love, the winner of the collection. This one looked a little meh for me in the bottle, but I instantly fell in love with this one when I applied it. It's a beautiful green with gold sprinkled throughout. Pictures don't do this one justice.

Application on all of these was easy. The brush on these is decently wide and quickly covers the nail smoothly. All of these were 3 thin coats of polish, which dried down fully very quickly. I'm very pleased with this set and highly recommend it. I believe that the set is Limited Edition, so if these appeal to you...run out to your local Ulta and snag yourself a set or two.

OPI Shrek Forever After Collection

I started taking Kendo on Tuesday and unfortunately, quickly realized that long nails were not going to work out with the sport (and it suddenly made sense to me as to why I spent many years in high school and college not polishing my nails...long nails didn't make sense...and I preferred painting them when they were longer). So last night, I cut them down to nubbins..but not before swatching up a bunch of colors. (I ended up skipping Kendo tonight due to illness anyways..so now I'm wishing I had waited until the weekend) I actually swatched the OPI Shrek Collection the same day as the Milani Liquid Metals though...so the coloring's not too perfect on a couple of these as I'm still figuring out the best way to get pictures under the OTTlite. All of these were fairly easy to apply and had a nice self leveling bit to them, so unevenness was not an issue. I may not have let the polish dry enough between layers, which may have resulted in more coats than necessary on a few of these, but I found these fairly easy to work with.

Funky Dunkey; a rich purple cream that's not quite as blue as it appears on my monitor screen. This one was 3 thin coats, no topcoat.

Ogre the Top Blue; This one should be a bit bluer, more vibrant than what shows up here. It was also an easy 3 coats. It doesn't strike me as a particularly unique color, but it's still cute.
What's With The Cattitude? Pastel Blue Cream...nothing too exciting. This one took 4 thin coats. I'm not sure pastel blue goes with this name, but whatever.
Rumple's Wiggin'. Pastel purple cream..there's been a lot of of these popping up this season. This was also 4 thin coats, with topcoat
Fiercely Fiona. I've been really into yellows this year and I'm glad OPI came out with a unique one like this. It's got a slight green tinge to it. This is also 4 coats with topcoat.
Who The Shrek Are You? is a bright light green color similar to that of Shrek's skintone.
This was also 4 thin coats.

Overall, the collection's okay, though not stellar. I'm just a bit bored with creams, since there's been so many released this year. I'm ready for something more fun now. I will give OPI a thumbs up for not adding a pink or red to this collection though.

Just a Small Giveaway

It's caught my attention that I have somehow ended up with 102 followers. Since I've been telling myself that I'd run a small giveaway when I reached 100 subscribers, I would run a giveaway, here is my rather lazy giveaway. I'm kind of taking the easy way out on this one..but I am giving away a 21 pc. Bundle Monster Nail Plate set from Amazon.com. I just got mine in the mail today and the patterns are pretty darned cute. Since they offer free shipping to the US, it seems like an easy option to do (though don't worry, I'm opening this to subscribers from Europe, Asia, and Canada as well since they will ship to these areas as well. If you live outside these areas, sorry, but you're out of luck.)

To enter:
1. You must be a subscriber
2. You must leave a comment (Spam comments will not be considered..i.e. ones that include random links) including a way for me to contact you
3. Entries must be submitted by midnight Saturday, May 15.

On the off chance this goes out of stock by then I will work with the winner to give them something else

Milani Liquid Metals

I know I haven't posted in a while...and the polish stash posts have been on pause since I keep acquiring new polishes that I want to photograph and add to the pictures I've currently taken...I just haven't found the time to do so yet. On the plus side, I did end up getting an OTTlite on clearance at Michaels. It isn't really quite what I was expecting, but it's bright enough to take pictures under for the most part. It definitely doesn't mimic natural light though.

I stopped by CVS yesterday to grab a couple of things I needed and found a new display of Milanis..the Liquid Metals collection. I'm not really sure how many colors there are...but I saw 4 colors in the display; a metallic white, a metallic black, metallic silver, and a metallic purple. I picked up 3 of the 4.

Starting with my favorite, Dot Com is a warm metallic purple with gold sparkle. This is 3 coats...it applied pretty easily.
Next up is 2.0, a metallic black. Out of the three I bought, this one is thicker, less runny. I'm not in love with it, but it's nice in it's own way. I'm pretty sure I have similar colors to this, but none are quite so metallic looking.

Last is Just Browsing, a metallic white. This one is 4 coats, and still sure. I'm not fond of this one at all, but I'm not a fan of sheer colors anyways.

Rise and Shine Face Freshener by Colorescience

I got home from work today to find that my 2nd beauty test tube was waiting on my porch for me. After weeding out all the anti-aging stuff for my mom, I was still left with a pretty sizeable stash of goodies to test out. One of the things I was most interested in trying was this face mist. I love my Evian face spray, and was quite eager to try this one out, since the Evian is well, just water...it mostly just feels good. Anyways, I have this lovely adverse reaction when I put MAC Fix+ on, so just to be safe, I tested this spray elsewhere (back of hand and inner arm).

My first thoughts upon spraying this were, "it smells like old lady...but it's got a nice cooling sensation". This was unfortunately followed by light redness, light bumpiness on the inner arm, and itchiness. The smell, bumpiness, and redness subsided within a few minutes, and then I was left with the light scent of citrus blossoms, which isn't my favorite smell (though I do like actual citus fruit smells).

I did tentatively test this on my face after this, and was left with the old lady smell again, and itchiness, but no redness or bumps. Mostly..I hate the smell, and don't think anything great about the spray. It's pretty much just stinky for a few minutes and then that's it.

Ingredients: Citrus Aurantium Amara (Bitter Orange) Flower Water, Citrus Aurantiola (Lime) Fruit Water, Glycerine, Punica Gerantium (Pomegranate) Extract

I have no idea what makes me sensitive to this...it all seems fairly harmless to me...my skin's kind of odd though

Nail Polish Stash Part 6- Icing, Hot Topic, American Apparel, Finger Paints, Wet n Wild, and Nina Ultra Pro

Here's the next part of my stash; there's a few more parts left. If anyone is kind of wondering why I'm posting these parts so slowly, it's because I'm stalling until I finish taking makeup stash pics...which quite honestly might be a while since I haven't really gotten on them. I have parts of it done, but for the most part, it's nowhere near done...I was really bad about taking them this year...despite having no problems not growing my makeup stash so far this year.











As with the previous posts, if you want to see anything swatched, let me know..I might be a bit slow about it since I just started a new job, and I'm not allowed to wear makeup, polish, or jewelry at work..though I'm starting work in the afternoons for a while starting tomorrow, so it may get done anyways. (I've been cringing at my natural nails the last two days...they're ugly to me, but I can't stop staring...even after buffing them, they're still kind of stained/yellow) I did start swatching the Nubar Fortress collection, with comparisons, but I'm too embarrassed by the state my cuticles were in when I swatched them, and annoyed with the fluctuations in my light source to feel like posting what I already have, so I plan on redoing them. I think I may cave and maybe buy an OTT light if I can find them on sale/coupons. I've been holding out on this since I'd be getting this specifically for the sake of blogging and I'm not entirely sure I could really justify that in my head. More than likely I'll cave on this within a few weeks (bills come first though of course).

Here Come the Rainbows

The sun has been kind enough to come out the last few days, so I've been enjoying my last couple of days of freedom wearing some holo polishes. Between staring in abject horror at my cat walking across the top of my TV and browsing through my folder, I also realized that I had a few pictures I had also never sorted/uploaded..so here they are.

This is China Glaze DV8..to give you an idea of just how lazy I am, this picture's from December...there was cake involved though so I'm not entirely sure I can be blamed for this.
I believe that this was 3 coats...no particular application problems stick out in my head..though I do remember being pissed off because a couple of nails chipped on me on the first day. I also think that this was the last mani I did before my daily changes started.
Here is Dimond Cosmetics Chainmail Charm. It was my first black holo polish and will certainly not be my last (I've since obtained My Private Jet and Revvvolution) This is 3 coats, and in indoor lighting.
You'll have to excuse this next pic of Milani Hi-Res...it's from a couple of months back..and not only was there no sun, but it was one of those days where I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off. I snapped a quick picture in indoor lighting without oiling up my cuticles before I removed it and chopped down my nails. Interestingly enough, this was the most rainbow action I'd gotten from the polish all day. The milani holo polishes are more holographic indoors, and way better on the nails than in the bottle (it looks kind of like bits of glitter in the bottle, with very little holo effect) If you compare it with the other holos I'm posting today, you can see that the finish of the polish is very different from the others...it's still cool though. I did 3 coats of this..no application problems whatsoever.
OPI DS Glamour was my mani of choice on Thursday. It photographs less impressively on short nails than on longer ones I guess, but the holo effect is still there. It was the usual easy to apply OPI and I did 3 coats. I can definitely see the love for this polish...it's a great deep blurple/indigo colored holo polish...very unique.
Here's the polish I've had on for the last couple of days...China Glaze LOL. I actually think I love this polish..it's a beautiful vibrant purple holo. This is one of those rare times where I only did 2 coats. One thing to note about the application of this one is that it's best to work as quickly and with as few strokes as possible on the first coat of this. It's okay to leave the first coat uneven since once it dries down a bit it will self-level out. If you go over parts of the polish again, you're likely to end up dragging the polish off and causing trouble.

That's all from me today...with any luck though my Nubar order will come decently early tomorrow and I can go about swatching the Fortress Collection.

Nail Polish Stash Part 5- Misa, Zoya, and a random Lippmann

I love my Misas and Zoyas...I'll usually reach for my Zoya's when I'm feeling lazy and only want to do 2 coats...it helps that I got most of them with a sale code of some sort. (It's also why there are so many pink Zoyas...I ordered a lot without looking for swatches)