80s nails & a haul (pic heavy)

this is the manicure i wore for my friend's 80s themed birthday party a few weeks ago. everyone loved them haha, it was good times. i used essie's flirty fuchsia and massini lightening blue. as you can see, i freehanded the triangles (cuz they suck a bit haha). but it was a last minute decision as i was running late for the occasion.

as i am feeling brave, i've included a few select pictures of some of the festivities below:

RBL scrangie & plie

i had to take advantage of the huge sale Rescue Beauty Lounge had a while ago, seeing as how i would probably never spend $18 on a single (small) bottle of nail polish and i really wanted some of their colors. plus i was dying to know if their formula was really as boss as everyone says it is. so...it being around christmas time, i asked my lovely amazing older sister clarrisa if she would get me some as a present. which she did! she got me scrangie, recycle, and starfish patrick. and she picked out plie for herself. here are the first round of pics.

scrangie, created by the beautiful scrangie, is everything i thought it would be. shimmery, slightly red based, blue, purple duochromey amaze-a-balls goodness. lovely! this is 2 coats.

lamp light

sunlight

w/ essie's matte about you

plie, borrowed to swatch, is a creme, which i hear is Ji Baek's specialty. and wow, seriously, idk if the polishes are worth $18....but maybe close to it. they're pretty darn good. this beautiful nude pinky neutral was a dream to apply. i didn't especially love the color on me, however after wearing it a day, it seemed to wash me out a bit. but i'm sure my sister will love it! this is 2 coats.

lamp light

more to come, have a great sunday everyone!

china glaze up & away pt. 1

here are the first few China Glaze Up & Away collection polishes that i have worn so far. there hasn't been enough sun (or effort on my part heehee) to do a swatching session with all of them, so i've been just wearing them as full mani's and doing flash pics. so sadly there is only one sun pic below. oh well! i think the colors are pretty accurate nonetheless.

something sweet is a lovely opaque pastel pink. this is 3 coats. the formula on this was a bit thick, but one of the easier ones to manage from the collex. 2 coats still looked a bit streaky, but 3 covered them nicely. i love the bit of lavender undertone the color has, which makes it look a bit mod.

high hopes was definitely one that i loooooved, it being a CORAL and all (i heart corals) and this one did not disappoint. super pigmented, as with all the other polishes in this collex, it looks almost neon in some lights. this is 3 coats, only because it leaned towards one of the thicker ones. i got so many compliments on this polish i could not believe it.

weak sun

lemon fizz was the hardest polish to work with out of these few. it was very thick and streaky, but so are MOST yellows, so i'll let it slide. a few drops of thinner next time and i'm sure it will be cake. mmm...yellow cake. haha, anyway, i really loved how this turned out tho, very nice color. 4 coats.

i wanted to do a comparison shot between lemon sorbet by nubar and lemon fizz by ChG.

lemon sorbet is on the left, lemon fizz on the right. as you can see, sorbet is the slightest bit  more pale and dare i say..easier to work with. fizz is great for those who need a warmer tint to their yellows tho.

grape pop is my favorite out of the bunch so far. it cannot do wrong in my opinion! two coats and you're outta there! and i swear, i probably could've done just one. the second coat just MELTED into the first, like my nails were painting themselves. and hardly any cleanup with this one. perrrrfection. i think the color is pretty close to how it looks in the pics, but maybe a tad less blue.

 *the above polishes, with the exception of grape pop, were sent to me for consideration from the PR company. all opinions stated above are my honest opinion.*

big polish haul

i had some time before class tonight so me and my sister (who i haven't seen in almost two weeks and that i usually see daily) got to hang out and shop a little. yeah...

i binged.

big time.

above are the OPI Hong Kong polishes: suzi says feng shui, red my fortune cookie, dim sum plum (minis), hot & spicy, and jade is the new black

these are random ones i picked out at the mall: hot topic (no name) kind of easter looking colors minty teal and bright lavender, icing mint 2 be and weekend rendezvous, and OPI Louvre me, Louvre me not.

and that's not all the polish i've gotten in the last week...

i bought some of china glaze's amazing up & away collection from transdesign, then china glaze sent me three polishes for review purposes. (i'm missing grape pop in this picture, but i purchased that one too): lemon fizz, something sweet, peachy keen, re-fresh mint, heli-yum, flyin' high, four leaf clover, and high hopes

orly provided me with some polishes from their bloom collection: ginger lily, wild wisteria, and thorned rose

orly also sent these polishes from their new sweet collection: gumdrop, pixy stix, and lollipop - with their adorable little matching flavored/scented mini lip gloss key chains

AAAANNNDDD i picked up OPI smitten with mittens on sale at smith's market, of all places, my sister got me the sephora by opi ocean love potion, china glaze golden spurs was from my transdesign order, the orly prisma gloss gold (which i forgot to shake up before i took the picture) and orly enchanted forest double pack was on clearance at sally beauty so natch i snagged it up.

*PHEW* i have a lot of swatching ahead of me. a. lot. not that i'm complaining ;)

gift from maria

here is a quick post on a present i got from my dear maria from "polishing the nails!" blog (aka rijah). what a sweetie huh! it was our own little christmas exchange. she gave me the awesome essie "cuddle with color" collex minis, three depend polishes(!), and a barry m polish i was majorly lemming, racing green :D she also wrote the nicest note and sent me a sweet little reflective ghost! i named him "Bernard (BER-ner-d) Mason Swallow" and he is hanging next to my desk at work!

have a great day my sunshines!

meeting gildedangel

i had a great saturday this weekend! so i am from utah, utah valley to be more specific, and i found out a while ago that me and gildedangel from Naive Nails blog and i live pretty close to each other! she lives a hop, skip, and a jump up north from me in the salt lake city area. how awesome is that?? so we of course had to plan a get together to meet and swap and go polish shopping.

it is way cool to finally get to talk to someone in person that you feel like you already kind of know thru blogging and twitter etc. although i did bring my (fellow polish fiend) friend mickelle with me just in case...haha :) we both had the best time with samantha (aka gildedangel)! we met up at Ulta, bought WAAAAY too much polish, then headed over to have lunch at Chipotle, mmmmm good, and then trekked to the closest mall to stake out their Trade Secret, Beauty Express, Icing, Claire's, and a bunch of other places. it was amazing and i love having a polish/blogger friend so close!

this is me and samantha in icing

mickelle buying waaaay too many earrings (she's so funny!)

this is samantha with the coolest most ridiculous "mink" muff thing on a chain we saw. i wanted it so bad, cuz it was so crazy haha!

this is me in forever 21 with a selection of their ugly hats and glasses, woo hawt!

samantha and i before we parted ways for the afternoon

samantha, me, and mickelle cheesing it up for the camera!

my haul from Ulta: ChG custom kicks, ChG sky high-top, ChG paper chasing, OPI in my back pocket, and essie st. lucia lilac

my swaps from samantha: sinful colors burgandy apple, OPI significant other color, OPI DS reflection, OPI bogota blackberry, and OPI fuchsia fling

you can read her post and see her haul HERE :)

nyx asphalt

i adore nyx polishes, i don't have enough of them! the bottle shape is divine and the colors are really unique. asphalt is the perfect name for this guy, a black (almost greyish) jelly-like base color with mult-colored & sized glitter pieces. it really does look like asphalt haha, but way better because of the bling! but not too glitzy, a toned-down gal would feel comfortable rockin' this polish right along with us glitter-bombs. understated but totally hawt. this is 3 coats, no topcoat.

p.s. these pics were taken with a crappy camera that i have since returned, but i took a LOT of swatch pictures with. please bare with me as i will try to edit their horribleness to the best of my ability.

the second pic has more lamplight shining on it and you can see more of the jelly-like quality to the base. i la la love this polish! it really reminds me of sephora by opi's 212 but not brown based and smaller (?) glitter pieces. i think i like this one better tho, it's cheaper!

polish present

this is a short post because believe it or not, even though school is out for a while and i'm back from vacation, i'm still kinda swamped right now haha. haven't gotten any posts together juuuust yet but i will be back with a vengeance soon :D

a while ago on a post i made a comment about two zoya polishes that i had been wanting forever, and one of my lovely kind generous amazing readers Amy contacted me letting me know she had the colors i had been lemming and didn't care for them. and imagine my SURPRISE when a few weeks later i received a giant box full of polishes from her! miss Amy sent me all of these polishes pictures below (i apologize for the poor picture quality). tons of zoyas including Pasha and Ki, the ones i had been desperately wanting, some china glazes, a hard candy, an opi and my first nicole polish!

i was flabbergasted at my good fortune and wanted to thank Amy personally again. can't wait to show you all the swatches! i've already worn a bunch of them ♥

essie luscious lips

this lady-like pale pink is called luscious lips by essie. it came out with the summer 2009 collection, with some of my very favorite essie shades--chubby cheeks and cute as a button. it has a very nice formula, i needed only 3 coats. i was expecting it to be streaky but it pleasantly smoothed out by itself. i had shorty nails when i wore it as you can see and i hate having to layer on tons of polish with short nails, it makes for tons of clean up and can feel yucky.

i decided to spice it up a little and took a que from steph over at steph's closet a.k.a. "the queen of polka dots" and try some white dots. i used a small dotting tool i got at walmart or somewhere like that and some acrylic paint. then i covered w/ seche vite because the acrylic paint is not waterproof. i really liked the result :) what do you think? (some of them look weird but it's just the shine of the camera haha)

secret santa gift

i was lucky enough to be a part of nicole of magic maid's blogger secret santa gift exchange this year and thought i would do a post to show off my nice gift from pam of nail-e-glance. she sent me some awesome diamond cosmetics polishes--the matte collection, and some nail art beads and sunscreen.

matte smoke is a nice grey that went on very well. i found that all these mattes were pretty easy to apply as far as mattes go. they dry to a more "satiny" texture than stark matte in my opinion. but i really like the finish.

matte mulberry is a pretty purpley-orchid color that i haven't seen before in a matte shade so i like that this is unique and bright compared to the other dark shades you usually see in matte collections.

matte burgundy is probably my favorite out of these three, it went on the easiest and it's so vampy and the satin texture is really awesome on such a dark polish! these were my first diamond polishes and i am super happy with them. thanks again miss pamela!!