NOTD + polish binge, part 2

The first of half a dozen (or more) glittery manicures to come:

This is 2 light coats of Love Potion 99.9 over Xtreme Wear Purple Potion. I think when I took the picture I was only wearing Glitter Food as a top-coat - everybody including NPB, the maker, says to put another top-coat over Glitter Food, because it's not all that shiny, and that's absolutely true - but actually I liked the not-so-shiny effect. After I took this, I put on a coat of Seche Vite, and then I ended up putting on another coat of Sally Girl Matte. I may put another coat of Glitter Food on and see if that gets me back to the original state (which was somewhere in the middle).

I didn't pick "half a dozen" out of a hat above, here's where that number came from:

Six Lynnderellas, count 'em, six. Plus a Lippmann glitter and a KB shimmer one, and the mini from Initial Lacquer, which I had never even heard of - it was a bonus. So was Fly, next to it, at the bottom and also TWO sets of nail appliques. (I have a picture of one of them, I'll stick it at the bottom. The other one had gone rogue at the time I was taking pictures and I couldn't find it.)

If you want to know, here is the list of everything in the picture. I'll have some posts coming up with swatches and stuff too, but here are just the names for now:
Top row: Very Pretty Vampire, VamPink, Good Girl Gone Bad, Fly mini and Viola mini
Bottom row: Love Potion No.99.9, Blue Rouge, Forget You Not, Excuse Me I Blurpled, and Cauldron Drippings

(I do feel like I should mention that while the three at the top right look very similar in this picture, they are in fact not so much. The Lippmann is a microglitter and the other two have pretty dissimilar glitter mixes.)

I've probably mentioned where the Lynnderellas were coming from before, but Oh Three Oh Four's blog sale is definitely still ongoing as of the time I'm writing this, and there's still a ton of stuff left, so check it out if you're into Lynnderellas (and for that matter, there are some other HTF brands at the bottom, too). I highly recommend the customer service - Dulcie was awesome.

Here's the one nail applique - the other one was a different brand:

(I should have one more minor installment on the binge, and then I'm done. The only thing I haven't gotten is the two items I ordered from Llarowe. But I'm pretty sure I got a shipping notice on it so it'll be along in the next few days, I'm sure.)

Polish binge, part 1

I've bought a lot of stuff lately. First there was RBL's 50%-off sale. I was trying to restrain myself, so I only bought two:

One from the latest blogger collaboration, one from the RBL+R29 collab. I've got some swatches but they're all mixed up between these groups, so they'll either end up at the bottom or in a different post, I haven't decided. (I marked out latest because I decided I was wrong about that, Scrangie was from the second collab set, I believe, but there's also now a third one which is brand-new and wasn't included in the sale.)

Here are the Rescue Beauty polishes out of the box:

Scrangie will be a great fall color (So will the Butter London I bought at Marshall's, which is Bit Faker, a bronze/mixed-metal glitter. See below.) Bubblegum Punk is described as a cellophane finish.

The next thing to show up were the two things from Nail Pattern Boldness, in the middle in this picture between the BL and the RBL's:

This is Alpha Nail, a top coat, and Glitter Food, which I've been meaning to buy for ages. Bit Faker was just an extra that I picked because I saw it - and because it's a color I've always especially wanted.

Here's the latest Sephora order:

This is a New Black ombre set, called Graffiti (the individual polishes don't seem to have names), Formula X Explosive, Nails Inc Alexa Lace, and below, a little brush set that was on sale plus a YSL lip gloss sample. (Most of this stuff looks like it's left over from last New Year's Eve! very glittery. I think I recall the Alexa polishes coming out after Christmas last year, but I could be wrong.)

Here are the brushes:

They're purse-size, of course, but they look like they're still good quality. That looks like a really good blush brush! I may end up using that one at home...

(I'mna save the swatches for a separate post, this is long enough already. Also the Lynnderellas from Oh Three Oh Four showed up since I started writing this post last night! They are of course totally gorgeous.)

August Ipsy and a wet postcard

 Here's the Ipsy postcard-of-the-month (corny) and a Cirque postcard. Remember me saying that my Cirque package was wet? I'm not kidding. The actual merchandise was fine, but this is what it was like for the part that was outside the plastic.

Here's the August Ipsy bag (plus a stray item!):

• La Fresh Group Good Night. Night Cream (I love LaFresh's moisturizers)
• Marc Anthony Nourishing Argan Oil of Morocco Oil Treatment
• Skone Cosmetics Luxe Doubler Eye/Lip Pencil in Wine
• 'Pencil Me In' Cosmetics Natural Eyeliner Pencil in Boysenberry
• Hikari Cosmetics Lip Gloss

(The Smashbox BB cream didn't come from Ipsy, apparently - I was confused. It probably came from Sephora.)

(Ipsy loves to give me pencils and hardly ever gives me nail polish, go figure.)

NOTDs minus pictures

(Tuesday)
I'm not doing a normal nail-of-the-day post, because I didn't get a picture of what I had on before - and I had it on when I took the swatch pictures yesterday, I just didn't think of it - and what I have on now, I've worn before and got a picture of. The latter was She's Beyond Kelp! and the former was Jin Soon Gossamer over my previous Are You Jelly? mani. Gossamer is one of those whitish top-coats - it looks in the bottle like Travel In Colour but it doesn't color-shift (or colour-shift?) like TinC does. It just adds a pretty little gossamer effect instead.

I already had started this new mani before Rob brought the mail in, or I'd probably be wearing something different, because my RBL purchases from last week's 50% sale came. (I've been a bad, bad girl in the last week as far as nail polish purchases are concerned. I bought a couple of things from RBL, a couple of sale things from Sephora, a couple of things from Llarowe's closeout sale... and then I took a look at Oh Three Oh Four's blog sale, which I successfully managed to ignore back when it first started - but I looked, and there were still a lot of Lynnderellas left, and several of them are now on their way to me. At least I didn't pay full price for anything, but I still spent an awful lot of money all told. I'm not going to try to tell you what-all I bought, exactly; I'll take pictures of it as it comes in.)

(Wednesday)
I got more nail mail today, and it was one I didn't even remember to mention in the list above - a couple of things from Nail Pattern Boldness including Glitter Food, which I'm certainly going to need given the coming influx of Lynnderellas. See why I say I was bad? I already confessed to Rob that I went kind of nuts - it's hard to hide when all these packages keep coming. I think after the big Lynnderella splurge I'm probably done for a while, though. Hopefully.

The other thing I bought besides Glitter Food was Alpha Nail, which I knew was another top-coat. When it arrived I took a look at it next to Bubblegum Punk, which arrived yesterday, and also next to Gossamer, which I'd just had out - and I got out a nail wheel and the WnW Black Creme, and I now have new swatches, which I don't have pictures of but I'm going to tell you about just the same. I knew that Bubblegum Punk looked, well, shinier than the other two. The interesting thing, to me, was that over a black base, they all appear to be made out of exactly the same type of glitter - something very finely-milled - but none of them are remotely the same. Bubblegum Punk is absolutely shinier - its fine glitter is multicolored and noticeably splashier. Gossamer and Alpha Nail look almost like twins, except that one is pink and one is blue. I have a couple more things that seem like they might be in this ballpark - Jesse's Girl Fire Fly, for one, as well as my old standby Travel In Colour - so I'll probably add those before I try to take pictures. But the early results are very interesting, I thought.

Let's see, I did take more pictures than I posted yesterday, so let's see what I have that I can stick at the bottom here so as not to be absolutely wall-to-wall text. Oh! here we go, this isn't related to anything else so it goes fine here:

This is a new storage box that I bought at Target on my last trip there. I had bought that one larger one that I complained about being too flimsy, so I bought two of these somewhat smaller ones to replace that. They're sturdier and stackable, and you can see that you can cram a lot of polish in there. I took the flimsy one and threw a lot of stray samples and stuff in it, and since they're lighter they work much better.

(These boxes are Sterilite and they're about 10" long - I got out the ruler - by 6" wide and around 5" tall. That's very roughly but it'll give you the general idea. I was measuring at the top although they're a bit smaller at the bottom.)

(I still have all my nail polish collection in plastic boxes of various sizes, but if I keep collecting at my current rate I'm going to have to give in and make a trip to Ikea!)

Bright pinks

I realized, when I looked, that I have no less than FOUR bright-pink (or violet-pink) nail polishes that I have bought or was given in recent months. Rob gave me Free Spirit for my birthday as part of a duo, and then I bought the other three on my own. I didn't think at the time that any of them were particularly similar. And, well, they are and they aren't:

L-R: Ichi Hanami, Are You Jelly?, Free Spirit, Hyped (1 coat of Ichi Hanami, 2 coats of all the rest)

(note: I said below that I thought Hyped wasn't available from Sephora, but I was just poking around there and it is, as of 8/29. Four bucks, such a bargain!)

Depending on the light, these four can look pretty similar. I'm not entirely sure that the picture above is 100% accurate to what I was seeing, but you can get the general idea quite well. Ichi Hanami is somewhat redder, and has a metallic/foil finish. Hyped, on the right, is somewhat more purple, and very shimmery, although you can't really see either of those finishes too well here.

It's the two in the center that are closer. Are You Jelly? and Free Spirit look pretty close to identical in the bottle in some lights, but you can see that they are in fact not. Are You Jelly? is not really what I would call a traditional jelly (it's a semi-jelly? I dunno), because it's not all that squishy and closer to opaque than most jellies. Free Spirit is a creme (Actually Polish Hound says it's a crelly. I'm never sure of a crelly when I see one unless it's very obviously jelly-like, but it certainly is not much more opaque than Are You Jelly is.) Both of these are pretty close to opaque in two coats. but Are You Jelly? is slightly more purple and slightly lighter, where Free Spirit is more pink and a little darker.

And because I haven't put the brand-names anywhere else, here are the bottles, in the same order:

Ichi Hanami is from Pretty Serious' Museum of Naileontology collection, as I recall. I'm not sure offhand what collection Are You Jelly? was originally in, but it's been around for a couple of years so I'm pretty sure it's in China Glaze's permanent/core line. Free Spirit, as I said, came as a duo, with Frozen as the other polish, and I want to say it was called the Sister Duo, which if you've seen Frozen makes sense - or for that matter, probably you can puzzle that one out to some degree even if you haven't, since the movie and its merchandise has been totally inescapable for, what, going on a couple of years now. (I hadn't seen it until recently, myself.) Aaaand, well, I don't remember which collection Formula X Hyped was in, either, but in any case I think it's discontinued, since I bought it marked down rather severely recently. The others are still around, as far as I know, and I imagine Hyped can still be found, too. (But it's late, and I'm not looking right now.)

NOTD: Are You Jelly?

Apparently this color is so bright that one of my co-workers stopped in her tracks to look at it when I walked in the door:

This was taken in the car in the parking lot, so it's daylight and not under the fluorescent lights like a lot of my pictures are. I was trying to get a picture of it at its most neon but I don't think I captured it. Anyway, Are You Jelly? is an extremely bright, almost-neon purple/pink. (Some pictures I've seen look much more purple than this. What I've mostly been seeing is a super-bright fuchsia with very definite orchid leanings. It might be fair to call it a raspberry color.)

If you look close, you can probably see where the surface of the nail is a little bumpy. I started out trying to do a syrup mani, but eventually I gave up. So there's more polish on the tips of my nail than there is at the bottom. This is a more-opaque-than-average jelly - it's sheer, but not as sheer as a lot of them, and it just didn't really work for what I was trying to do.


Added: I've been doing more online shopping than I really ought to - I have another moisturizer on the way, for one thing - it's this one, which is another thing I found through Ipsy. I had never heard of Leeanni Eco, but I really liked it, so figured it was worth trying in the full-size. I also got another LaFresh sample in the new box, which I was happy about - this time it's the night cream. I'm starting to think that moisturizers are my new addiction. But meanwhile, I did buy more nail polish as well, from the RBL one-day sale. (I have it in my head that I bought something else, too, but I have no idea right now what it was, if so.)

NOTD: Lichen

I had Lichen on a pinboard somewhere ages ago, but when I saw it on sale on Cirque's website, I hesitated because I was worried about it being too yellow-green. It's totally not, though - it has a gold flash to it, for sure, but it's not yellowy in the way that's unflattering to me. It's a darker green than I was really expecting, but I love dark greens and I'm crazy about this one.

This looks pretty decently-cleaned-up, which is amazing because it started as a mess. This polish is pretty near to a one-coater, but I had to use up some extra getting it evened out - due to my own bad application, mind you, because the formula is great. I just gotta stop putting on nail polish when I'm half-asleep!

Oh, also I have to put in a good word for Cirque's packaging, because the mailing envelope came to me inside one of those USPS "oops, sorry" bags. The bag was kind of ground to bits and was wet (what the hell happened there?) but the polish and its little box were in plastic and were dry and undamaged.


Here's the same picture I used yesterday, because I didn't go into what I now consider proper detail about these polishes, so I'm remedying that:

L-R:
Lichen (Cirque) - dark olive-green microglitter with gold flash
Metamorphic (Formula X) - gray on gray, a charcoal microglitter in a sheer base (although it also has a bit of scattered rainbow flash in some lights)
Hyped (Formula X) - bright, almost-neon purple with glass-fleck shimmer in cooler purple/blue tones. Really beautiful.
Tiramisu (Sephora Collection mini) - medium brown creme, opaque in 2 coats

Also, I don't know how well you can tell, but the Formula X bottles came plastic wrapped, as more and more stuff does. (Actually you can sort of tell - I'd already used Hyped when the picture was taken, so it's unwrapped, but Metamorphic is still wrapped. You can see the difference once you know that, I think.) The old-hippie part of me thinks the plastic wrap is wasteful, but then again, I've had enough experience with the "feral customers" (I think it was Karen I heard that phrase from) at Walmart etc, to feel that there's a good reason for wrapping them.

Stash additions + other Sephora purchases

I've had that Sephora free-shipping thing (Sephora Flash) for months and I haven't used it much - until the last couple of weeks when I've ordered twice. I have the nail polish from the first purchase to show you (although everything else from that order has gotten scattered) and everything from the second order.

I have one Cirque polish here, which did not come from Sephora, I ordered it direct from Cirque. Everything else here is Sephora.

L-R: Lichen, Metamorphic, Hyped, Tiramisu

The Cirque polish, of course, comes in a cute box, because it's that kind of brand:

The second Sephora order was mostly for blush, because I was almost out and my old Benefit favorite, Thrrrob, is discontinued. Here you see the new blush on the left, and the remnants of my old one on the right. (I broke it up on purpose because I was down to the point where it was too difficult to get it onto the brush as it was.) I wanted something that leans more purple, and this one, as you can see, is slightly more purple than Thrrrob, although not hugely so. I did find one Urban Decay blusher which was even more purple than this, but it was also darker and I was afraid it would be overpowering on me. The new one is Marc Jacobs, and the color is Outspoken.

I don't usually buy much "designer" makeup, but I liked the color and it wasn't actually much more expensive than what I usually buy (it was $30 and I think I paid $28 for the box from Benefit a couple of years ago, although Benefit's pan size is definitely larger).

(This is a very shiny box. It took me a minute to figure out that what I was seeing at the bottom, there, was the reflection of my fingers wrapped around the camera.)

Here's the contents of the second Sephora box. The Make Up For Ever card has a sample attached to it, and then my other two samples were both perfume, Polo Blue and an Acqua di Gio one which is mostly covered up here by a bigger moisturizer sample that I can't tell you the name of offhand. I want to say the brand-name was Belif. (I believe it was this stuff.) And then the Nirvana Black bottle is not a sample, but a purse-size that was a 100-point bonus - it's 0.7 ounce. (As a comparison, the standard sample size for those tiny spray vials seems to be 0.05.)

I was intending to use this brush for blusher, but I think it's too soft for my taste, at least for that purpose - I'll probably end up using it for powder instead. I may just keep using Benefit's brush for a while, even though it's somewhat the worse for wear.

(Is it just assumed these days that everybody has their own brushes?)

(Also, I just noticed that you can see the size of the Benefit box - it's .42 oz, as opposed to .15 for the Marc Jacobs, so almost three times as much. This better be a great color.)

NOTD: Tiramisu + flakies

One note first about my last manicure, where I had on many (and some quite thick) layers of polish: they were still wearing tolerably well, but over the weekend, I pushed one nail up against something, without much force at all, and the polish just popped off the nail in one piece, like it was a press-on nail. I knew it was thick, but not that thick.


So now I'm wearing an awfully fall-ish manicure. People are out shopping for fall clothes here, but I don't know how they could stand to actually try them on, because it's been in the high-90s to low 100s here for the last week or more. It's freaking hot. I am totally ready for fall, but that's not really why I came up with the manicure; it was really just because I had Tiramisu, and I decided to start with that. Tiramisu is either a medium brown or a really dark tan, depending on how you look at it. (I bought it on sale a couple of weeks ago, and it's gone from Sephora's website now, but here it is on Amazon. But bear in mind that it's a mini, and it's nothing unusual, so I certainly wouldn't recommend paying that outrageous price for it.)

After I put on two coats of Tiramisu, I went into experimental mode. Tiramisu is quite pretty, really, but it's a brown creme, and I am just not into the cremes lately. (If you're thinking so why did she put this on in the first place? well, so was I.) So first I put Fire In The Sky over it, and it looked pretty but I was wanting more coverage than even two coats provided, so I put a coat of Shine Of The Times on top of that, and then I was happy. I mean, you can still tell there's brown under there, but it's a very, very glowy orange-y brown (with green flash) now. (My co-worker thought it was a different polish than I had on yesterday, because yesterday she didn't see the green flash, and today she did.)

You're not getting the full effect, here. I couldn't capture it with the iPhone at all.

Added: Here's a better one, taken a day later with the Canon. This isn't wearing fabulously well, but at least here you can see more of the flaky goodness.

I mentioned whenever I tried it before that Shine Of The Times goes on very thick. I think that the two flakies are pretty similar color-wise, but Fire In The Sky seemed not only less thick, but much more of a shard texture. It looked very pretty, it's nothing against Fire In The Sky - it's just that I wanted the thick coverage right then, for this mani, and I wasn't getting it.

Details (1 coat unless specified):
Nail Nutrition Strength Formula
Bridge the Ridge base coat
Tiramisu (Sephora Collection), 2 coats
Fire In The Sky (Pretty Serious), 2 coats
Shine Of The Times (Essie Luxeffects)

NOTD: Layers of raspberry

I wore Kashmir for nearly a whole week, and I never remembered to get a picture of it. However, here's a whole post full of Kashmir swatches - unfortunately the giveaway at the end of the post has ended. Honestly, I have to say that in real life the glittery stuff in Kashmir doesn't show up quite as well as it does in those beautiful photos - however, it shows up enough to make this far more interesting than a standard purple. I really loved it, in fact.

The next thing I put on was Formula X Hyped, a new purchase. I wasn't really supposed to be buying anything else, but it was Formula X! on sale!! something I am apparently powerless against. I only bought two, although I bought some other sale items that were not nail polish, as well - like the retractable kabuki brush. Besides Hyped, I got Metamorphic, a gray glass-fleck-looking color, and also a Sephora Collection mini, in Tiramisu, which is brown. (It was $1.) Anyway, Hyped is a sort of Radiant Orchid color, a bright red-violet with lots of shimmer and a matte finish - but I wore HK Girl over it so it's very shiny. It's one of those colors I couldn't stop staring at. However, it turned out to be rather chip-prone, and after a day I patched it and started playing with Daphne's Disco Party. I don't have pictures of either of these stages, but basically I did a really terrible attempt at a fade mani and wore that for a day. And then it occurred to me that Are You Jelly? (which I also got recently) was a pretty similar color to Hyped, so I made it into a jelly sandwich, which is the thing I do have a picture of (not a great picture, at all, but hey, it's what I've got):

This is visibly wearing, and I'm wondering about Hyped, on the bottom of the sandwich, but Hyped has been on for 72 hours now, so if you look at it like that it's not bad. I didn't put any more topcoat after Are You Jelly, so that might be part of the problem too - but on the other hand there are multiple coats of HK Girl underneath it - and my bottle of HK Girl is getting down to the bottom now, so it's getting very sludgy down there. (They were thick coats, is what I'm trying to say.) And I'm not even sure what basecoat I used. So the jury is still out on this, really. But boy I love the color.


Nail polish linkage: ooh, Nouveau Cheap notes that Kiko Cosmetics' online store is now open in the US. This is a European brand that I only know about from hanging around with nail junkies, and they have some colors that I've long coveted. (I'd better stay away from that website for a while!)

I don't see anything up on the website, but does everybody already know about how Llarowe is scaling back? I got a couple of e-mails about it, and I assume many of you guys are on the same mailing list I am. There's going to be a big clearance sale coming soon, in any case.

July Ipsy bag + skincare purchases

I was thinking over the weekend about what I had bought full-size versions of, that I got on Ipsy or from other boxes. There are several, now:

• Indie Lee Brightening Cleanser - actually when I started trying to use this every day I found that my middle-aged skin was too sensitive to take it. But I still like it. It's a bit acidic, which is a problem for me for daily use but also means it exfoliates rather well, and I find myself using it on my arms and neck when I think they need some gentle exfoliation. I don't know if I'll buy another bottle when this is gone, though, since it was not cheap.
• Good Day moisturizer from La Fresh - I adore this formula and I'd be slathering this all over if it was cheaper, but since it was $40 for a rather small amount (1.7 oz) instead I gingerly dip my finger into it and try to use as small an amount as I think will do the job. But it's great, even so.
• Marcelle Golden Glow BB Cream - this just arrived the other day, and I'm still messing with it, but boy I loved the sample, and I didn't think from the color name that I would, at all. They say it's good for all skin-tones, but cosmetic companies are always saying that, I didn't pay much attention. But I wanted to try it anyway - believe it or not, I had never tried a BB cream - and I loved it so much I went and found the full-size one. (You can also buy Marcelle's products from Marcelle's website, in the US. They're a Canadian company, apparently. But I went with getting it from Birchbox since shippng was free.) 

Another thing I got from a beauty box that I love - I think this one was from Walmart's - was Olay 7 eye cream, which has a creamy whipped-feeling texture similar to the LaFresh moisturizer. That's not something I ever looked for in the past, but I find now that I really like it. I may be going out to buy that one eventually, too.

So here's Ipsy's July box, the highlight of which is the Tarte bronzer:

• Jelly Pong Pong 2-in-1 Shadow/Liner
• Vasanti Cosmetics Brighten Up! Exfoliating Cleanser
• Tarte deluxe Amazonian clay waterproof bronzer (in Park Avenue Princess - I looked and I don't see that you can even buy this on its own, normally, only in a kit. But this appears to be more or less a full-sized product, not a sample.)
• Crown Brush Professional Tweezers
• Octavio Molina Hair La Playa Salt Spray

Bronzer is not something I use a lot - or well, ever - but I'm going to play with it a bit. I've always stayed away from bronzer, mostly because in the old days they were invariably very orange-leaning, and orange just doesn't suit me. But this isn't orange-toned or even warm-colored at all, really - it's a pretty neutral-looking pinky-brown. So I'm going to experiment.

As far as the other stuff, I'm still in the process of figuring out how much eye makeup my stupid sensitive skin can tolerate, but I'm finding that a bit of eyeshadow usually doesn't seem to be a problem, and I'll definitely try out this one. Same issues apply to the exfoliating cleanser (i.e., try it out cautiously). And certainly another pair of tweezers never come amiss. I'm not sure about salt spray, but I'll probably try it out too. Salt spray is supposed to give you beachy waves, right? That doesn't sound like a bad thing.