Smoke and Illusion

Because I'm bored and I was surfing around on Zoya's website, I give to you some cool colors I've never paid attention to before (for the record, these are probably going to be affiliate links):
Anaka (a "glam pink")
Nimue
Suri - not actually new to me per se but now I suddenly want it. Figures. Last night I almost placed a Zoya order and then didn't because I couldn't decide on anything I "needed" to have badly enough. (Then later on I ended up ordering something from Llarowe instead. I really can't afford all this stuff I've neededbeen buying lately!)

I was originally looking for this color (Savita) which I found buried in my Pinterest boards, but apparently it is discontinued. Darn. From there I got to the purple page - I have a lot of stuff from that page already - Jem, Kierra, Carly, Juicy, & more - but I continue to find new (to me) and interesting ones.

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Well, in the "what's actually on my nails" category, the layers and layers of pink glitter did eventually chip, as I suspected they might, so I took that off this morning and put on Black Illusion, the one that's supposed to be a dupe for Zoya Storm Smoke. (Added: I always want to call it "Smoke" for some reason. Hopefully I have found and corrected the places where I did that - except for the entry title which I'm not changing at this point!) I haven't tried SmokeStorm myself, so I can't speak to that, but it does have the scattered holo like the other Zoya Ornates do. You can see it a little in the picture, at least!

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I found this picture that was labeled "stash 2011" and I was trying to figure out if this could possibly have been my entire stash at the time. (I suspect it might be, but only if I had cleaned out some of my really old stuff that I had before this!)

This was obviously after Karen sent me the "Wicked Wonderland" set (which was a blog prize and she assured me that I had indeed legitimately won, but then she probably had considerably fewer readers at the time) but it must be before we did our first swap, because I don't see any of that stuff. Also I recognize the spoils of a couple of online shopping orders around that time, which account for all the Orlys and Essies and the Butter London - I didn't have any of those brands before that. (Most of the Hard Candy's are in the Wicked Wonderland box and I think the Wicked Wonderland polishes were in the little pink Hard Candy bag, I think because I had all the minis in there.) The rest of my collection at the time was mostly drugstore polishes (mostly Revlon and L'Oreal and Sally Hansen), plus some OPIs which I was buying at Kroger's. Also, I was on a big SH Xtreme tear around that time - you can see a bunch of those lying on the bedspread in the middle.

Possible spoilers for Karen, and lots of coats of glitter

Here is Shelby topped with Big City Dazzle, not that you can really tell much about the latter: 

I can't remember at what point in the process I took this picture, but I was in experimenting mode, and after some FIVE coats of BCD, I also later pulled out one of the Color Theory pink glitters that I had never tried, and added a couple of coats of that, on top of the rest. There's so many coats of nail polish in this mani (ten, I think, counting base coat) that it's a wonder it hasn't just peeled off in sheets. So far so good, though, and as far as I can tell all the Color Theory added was some extra shinyness.


I'm really kidding about the spoiler business in the title, because Karen has had the box I sent her for our swap for several days now, and although she's been terrifically busy this week, I gather, still, I assume she's had time to open it by now, and it's "safe" for me to post my picture of what I sent her for my half of our swap:

(I didn't crop this because I thought you might be interested to see what I've been taking my pictures on lately. It's the lid of a plastic box. Hey, it works!)

So this is (L-R across top row & then the bottom):

• Funky Monkey
• OK 1 More Margarita
• Morning, Moneypenny (in its box - this entry has pictures of my bottles and magnets unboxed, if you are curious about the contents)
• Fantasy Makers black mini (which was just a bonus thing; I suspect Karen may already have one but I found it and thought it was cute, so I threw it in)
• Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time
• Hot Mess
• Is that Silva? (in box)

She picked out the Orchid colors, from the pictures I took. She sent me five names, thinking that would be more than enough in case they were out of something, but then my HEB store decided to start its BOGO sale early and I was able to get four of the five for half-price, and they didn't have the fifth one. I mentioned hunting for something for her, a few entries back, and that was the elusive fifth polish, but I went to all of the other stores near me and didn't find it. It was "It's Definitely You Not Me" - which is a very packed-looking glitter that you can see in one of the pictures here. But meanwhile she realized I had mentioned finding the Skyfall magnetics, and I ended up buying those for her instead of worrying about more Orchids. We figured out what I ended up spending over and above the cost of the four Gumdrops she had already bought me, and she is sending me something equivalent. I trust her to come up with something cool. (She offered to send money; I offered to let her send money if coming up with the "something cool" was a problem, but she said it wasn't, and I figured I'd really rather have the surprise!) (Karen and I have known each other for more than 10 years now, I guess, and although we rarely meet in person since we live in distant states from one another, we have shopped together - and made quilts together - over the years, and I figure she knows me well enough to come up with something I'll like.)

Big City Dazzle, Shelby, and more

(Thursday)
Mini-haul from CVS, all glitters:

1. Deeper Dive (Spoiled) - another 49-cent score on yet another blue-green glitter. I think this one is darker than most of the ones I have already, though.
2. Big City Dazzle  (NYC NY Minute Sparkle Top Coat) - looks like multicolor glitter in a pink base, but it may be hard to tell until I try it (ooh, cute)
3. Fairy Dust (Khroma) - I didn't even know this brand existed. The Kardashians, they are everywhere. But I thought this looked interesting - it's gold, but on the champagne side. A subtle gold, possibly!

I haven't even mentioned the Butter Londons I bought last week when they were having their online sale, I don't think. I got a shipping notice, and they are due here next week, so I think I'll wait until they come to say more about that.

I stuck a picture up on Instagram yesterday - first time I've done that in ages - but I'll share it with you guys as well. Alegra over Blackberry, as discussed in the last entry:

I said yesterday that I was probably going to take this off last night, but I haven't yet, since it still looks pretty good. There's a bit of wear but surprisingly little, considering. If it's still on by tomorrow night I will be extremely surprised, though.

(Friday)
That's gone, and now I am wearing Shelby with a ton of coats of Big City Dazzle (see #2 above) on top of it. Shelby alone was a bit too pale to be flattering on me. (I suspected that, and yet I ordered it anyway because it was just so pretty.) Big City Dazzle has a pink base, I think, so maybe it deepened Shelby just enough to make it look better on me. I dunno, but I do like it better than I did with Shelby alone. Obviously Shelby is one of those colors that's going to be a layering base for me.

(Shelby, as tends to happen with milky cremes, was a bit goopy and streaky, although it looked decent enough after the 2nd coat that I stopped there. I will try to get a picture of the final result later.)

Not so Blackberry

(Tuesday)
Those of you who follow me on Twitter have heard this part already, but for the record: Blackberry is gorgeous. That's Scherer Petites Blackberry, although it doesn't actually look anything like a blackberry whatsoever. It does look like some nail polish I've had in the past (or still have and can't quite place). Anyway, it's a slightly-blackened red, beautiful and glossy and just somehow really eye-catching. I was really expecting it to be considerably darker, looking at the bottle, but I like it just the same. It's still not really what I'd call a summer red, but it's cherry-ish enough that nobody is likely to notice if they're not looking close.

(Wednesday)
Here is a picture, but the photo may be deceiving about the color on my nails - at least, I've looked at it on two different computers and on one it looks much darker than the other. So YMMV and all that (as is always true, let's face it).

You can see some tipwear if you look close, and this is probably coming off tonight because of that. I washed my hair, and that's always hard on my nails - I know that means I'm probably doing it wrong when I wash my hair, but I never have been successful in correcting that!

I have no idea what I'm putting on next. I think I'm saving Sooki for some sort of 4th of July manicure next week, so maybe I'll do a pink or a purple in the meantime. I will of course report back on that.

UPDATE: I picked up Zoya Alegra thinking I would put that on next, and then I thought, well, y'know, it looks awfully close to Blackberry, in a way (although it's much more berry-ish, ironically), and the next thing I knew I was wearing a coat of it on top of Blackberry. And it's quite beautiful. It punches up the berry-ness and adds a metallic sheen without completely covering up that beautiful deep color that I liked so much. I'll probably still end up taking it off later because I didn't put on more top coat and I'm sure the tips will be worn all over again by the end of the day, but it's a lovely combination and I'm glad I tried it.

Zoya BOGO haul, plus Essence

Every time I get a new purple lately I post saying it's the BEST THING EVER, and well, Zoya Mira is not going to be the exception. It's a medium purple cream, slightly dusty, not too dark. It's gorgeous.

(As usual, iPhone picture from the car. It's the only way I usually remember to get pictures at all!)

Here are all the Zoyas that came in the mail yesterday, plus the two Essence colors that I bought at Ulta the other day:

The picture is a little wacky - the lighter polishes (and especially the little sample bottle of Remove+, which you can barely see at all) are wanting to wash away a bit, but at least you can get the idea. I'll put in Zoya links, how about that, so you can see what they actually look like.
(Zoya links are affiliate links, for the record.)
Top row: Zoya Shelby and Perrie
Middle row: Zoya Reagan, Ali, Mira, and the phantom Remove+ bottle
Bottom row: Essence Break Through; Zoya Alegra, Sooki, Dita; Essence Ultimate Pink

The colors included in the Zoya sale seemed to be summer colors from past years - I know Reagan and Shelby were from last year's Beach collection - and I had bought almost all of the Surf collection (the foils) but only bought one of the Beach colors! So that's great as far as I'm concerned, I'm filling in the holes in my collection!

(If you've observed that the second picture was not taken in the car, you're right. But it still sucks. At least Zoya bottles have flat sides, so they don't roll around all over the place. It makes them much easier to arrange.)

Makeup

Today's nails: Essence Ultimate Pink, a bright rose-pink that almost exactly matches my pink work polo. I couldn't have matched it this well if I'd been trying, but I didn't even realize they were the same color until I was getting dressed!

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I mentioned buying makeup base while we were on our trip - that's the one on the far left in the picture below - and that got me to thinking about posting a picture of the makeup I wear. This isn't my makeup stash per se because I don't really have a stash to speak of any more - or not in the sense that I think of when I think of a nail stash, anyway, where I have a range of stuff to choose from. This is it, practically. Besides this, there are a few things that I carry around in my purse or in the car, and a few similar items to these that I will discuss, and then maybe a few old eye shadows and things that I haven't gotten around to tossing out yet. Nowadays I only buy makeup when I run out of something, for the most part.

So what's here is:

1. Maybelline Fit Me, color 110
2. L'Oreal Color Match, color C2
3. L'Oreal Color Match, color C3
4. Smashbox Bionic mascara (sample size)
5. Urban Decay De-slick
6. Benefit Boi-ing concealer
7. Benefit thrrrob blusher
8. Omnia Amethyste cologne
9. (bottom row) Clinique Surge Protector (sample size)
10. Vivienne eye serum
11. Revlon Colorburst in Lollipop
12. Sephora powder puff (which could really use a good washing!)

One reason there's not more here is because I had to quit wearing eye makeup. I guess you'd say I became allergic to it, or at least hyper-sensitive. The bottom line is, it makes me cry continuously when I have it on, so I got to the point where I gave up on wearing it. For years before that I wore at least a little mascara, and often a neutral eyeshadow and sometimes eyeliner too, but all that's gone by the wayside now. I did find the mascara at the top of the picture in my stuff, and so I put it in the picture as an example of the last mascara I did wear, but I haven't touched it in a couple of years so it definitely needs to be discarded. (For the record, I did really like it other than the whole allergy thing.) At one point I bought one of those Sephora sample sets that was all mascara for sensitive eyes, and EVERY SINGLE ONE of them still made me cry. I was hoping to find one or two, at least, that I could wear, but no. So after that I decided I was done with trying. Mascara doesn't make you look any better if it makes your eyes red.

Makeup base: the L'Oreal Color Match is my usual brand. The reason there's two bottles of it here is that after buying C2, which was a hair too light, and then C3, which was a hair too dark, I finally started mixing them together to get my own custom shade. So apparently I'm a C2.5. Walgreen's is always having BOGO-50% off sales on these anyway, so I just buy them two at a time, now. - You can tell looking at that picture that the Maybelline one is even paler than the other two, and it really is considerably paler than even my annoyingly-pale skin. The formula seems to be almost identical to Color Match as far as I can tell. They may ALL end up mixed up together!

Mascara I've covered already. The powder is colorless and I just use it where I tend to be shiny. I try not to overdo - I don't want that old-lady look that you get from too much powder!

I inherited the dark circles under my eyes from my mother - who actually had them even worse than I do, so I guess I shouldn't complain too much. Sometimes I just use extra makeup base as a concealer, but I also have a variety of concealers that I use. (And I have to be extra-careful not to get any of these things into my eyes, or we're back to the crying I was talking about above.) I've used Physician's Formula a lot over the years, and the Benefit ones are good, but the concealer that I'm carrying around in my purse these days is Maybelline Luminous in Ivory. It seems to do a good job. (Most of the print has come off of mine after a few months of bouncing around my purse, but I guess it's this stuff.)

The blusher pictured is my old box of Thrrrob, which is almost empty, and I looked for it at Sephora last winter when it started to run out, and didn't find it, and was on the verge of panic when I figured out that Benefit still had it on their website. Whew. So I do have a new one now, as well. I have trouble with both lipstick and blusher; what I've figured out over the years looks best on me is something poised right between purple and pink, and it can be a hard color to find. My very favorite ever was another Benefit color - I think it was called I Lotus'd You Looking, but it was LE and is long-gone. Thrrrob is the best substitute I've found, and I've looked at a lot of brands. The lipstick in the picture is Revlon Lollipop, which is slightly too pink, but I've found if I put it on really lightly, it looks really good. I do have some other things: a pink WnW lip balm that I really like, and a Benefit super-glossy lipstick that I'll have to see if I can find the name of. Lipstick is probably the one makeup thing where I still experiment around from time to time.

As far as the things there that aren't really makeup - moisturizer and cologne - the only colognes I own these days are this Omnia purse spray, which I've had for several years, and a bottle of Clinique Happy, ditto. I don't wear a lot of cologne these days but I do like both of these.

Moisturizers - I love my Vivienne eye serum but given that they're one of those annoying companies that sell from carts in the mall, I'm not entirely sure I'm going to buy any more when this finally runs out. It was very expensive, too, although I've had it for a good while and it's still going strong. As far as a more general moisturizer, I've been using the good old yellow Clinique stuff since I was a teenager (when it was a brand-new thing), and I also like their Moisture Surge, which is what's in the picture. I've also used Neutrogena off and on. I've always had oily skin and it's just now starting to dry out enough - bear in mind that I'm 53 - that moisturizer is becoming a bigger issue. I used to buy a small bottle of Clinique and it would last me several years. Nowadays I have to buy the big pump one - but it still lasts me a while.

Not blueberry, and an Ulta trip

(Wednesday)
I like Not So Blueberry much better than I expected, partly because it's, well, not so blue at all. It's a blue-leaning medium-purple microglitter that reads more like a foil, really. I guess calling it blue-violet would be pretty reasonable, although it's on the violet end of that, even. It looks like it would be sheer, but two coats would have been plenty, if I had been patient enough to let it dry. I messed up the finish and added a third coat to compensate - although in my defense, it took quite a long time to dry. (It's probably extra-humid here at the moment, although, y'know, I live in Houston, where it's always humid. We've had pretty damp weather for this time of year, just the same.)

I don't have pictures yet, and probably won't post them when I do, come to think of it, since I might as well leave Karen a bit of a surprise, even though she knows exactly what she's getting, for the most part - but I've spent a fair bit of time this week finding the items for our swap. First of all, my HEB store had a BOGO sale going on on their Orchid brand, so I got four bottles for the price of two. Then I went running around to several other locations to see if I could find one elusive color, which I never did find. (Karen did not ask me to do this, you understand; I just got intrigued by the hunt.) Then Karen realized that I had said that my HEB store had the Skyfall Magnetics and she asked me to see if I could get some for her, so I went back to the first store again, which is the one that's right down the road from me. When I did, I realized why they had the BOGO coupon sale when none of the other locations had had it: it was actually supposed to be this week's sale, not last week's. For some reason, they had started it early. Which I'm terribly glad about because I would have been very frustrated if I had bought those Orchids only to have them go on sale immediately afterwards!

(Friday)
Yesterday I ventured into Ulta, which I don't do much because it tends to overwhelm me. So many choices! I snapped a rather blurry picture of the Butter London display, and a much better picture of the CK one:

Calvin Klein makeup was all the rage when I was a teenager/young adult, so it makes me rather nostalgic. I had some and I wish I could find pictures to show you - I tried googling and so far have found nothing. But I don't remember them selling nail polish back then. It's possible they did, though.

All I ended up buying at Ulta was a couple of Essence polishes, a pink and a purple, and some shampoo for fine hair that was marked down. (My hair has always been fine, and seems like it's gotten even more so since it started turning gray. Getting old(er) sucks, y'all.)

Stash additions, first half of June

First of all, I would like to say that Glee over Tenacious Teal is utterly gorgeous and I love it. Probably one of my favorite layering combinations ever. (Just had to get that opinion out of the way.)

Now, here's a semi-organized picture of everything I've bought since the end of May:

Top row:

1. Pink Sizzle (LA Colors)
2. Is That Silva? (OPI Skyfall Magnetic) and its magnet
3. Morning, Moneypenny (OPI Skyfall Magnetic) and its magnet - which reportedly is not horizontal stripes, as its label implies - I'll report back on that

Middle row (all from CVS):

1. Cougar Attack (Spoiled) (which was 75% off, even though it wasn't marked)
2. Tenacious Teal (Color Show)
3. Magenta Mirage (Color Show "Shredded")
4. East Village (NYC "In a New York Minute")
5. Not So Blueberry (Revlon) (you can see the 75% off label on this one, plus the red label that says "scented when dry")

Bottom row (all from Rite-Aid):

1. Black Illusion (L.A. Girl 3D Effects)
2. Blackberry (Scherer "Petites")
3. Rich in Heart (Sinful Colors)
4. Dusty Spring Fields (Hedy's Ma.nish.ma. 'stoned' collection)
5. Glee (Jesse's Girl)

Note that everything came from a drugstore or grocery store or Family Dollar, so it's not all THAT much money involved. But still, I feel a bit guilty. I went to the grocery store yesterday, mostly to get Orchid-brand for the swap with Karen, but inevitably I came out with Morning, Moneypenny. I did say that I was going to buy another one if they still had them, and they did, and I did. They have the third one, too, which I forget the name of at the moment, but it's gold. We'll see how long I can hold out on that one.

I'll take pictures of what I'm sending Karen later, and of course I have another dozen or so polishes on the way one way or another, not only the Gumdrops I'm getting from Karen but a ton of Zoyas from the BOGO sale. (Another reason for the guilt.)

Make me feel better: what have you bought lately that you shouldn't have?

Teal and Glee

As you can see, I just redid the blog's format. This is the header I had on my bead blog, which is long-dormant. A couple of weeks ago, I finally got around to doing what I'd been thinking about doing for a good while: I went back to the person who made it in the first place and asked her to change the title for me. (Thanks, Vanessa!) Otherwise it's identical - the header, that is, not anything else. I am going to have to tweak the layout a fair bit before I'm entirely happy with it but I'll do that later. But I am happy because I always did really love that header. It doesn't have anything to do with nail polish but it's pretty and colorful and thus apropos to the blog's name, anyway!

Back to nail polish: One of the polishes I bought in Ohio was Black Illusion, and I knew nothing whatsoever about it, so I'm pleased to see (in the link below) that it's a dead dupe for Storm, which I have had on my Zoya wishlist for ages and have never gotten around to getting.
http://demapixie.blogspot.com/2013/04/zoya-storm-la-girl-black-illusion.html
(I just did a huge Zoya order for the BOGO sale - which I think ends tomorrow btw - so I think Zoya will survive without me purchasing Storm. I will naturally be reporting back further on these purchases later on. And also on Black Illusion, when I get around to trying it!)

Pictures - not great pictures because they were taken on the dash of the car, but then that's nothing new for me!

Tenacious Teal:

And, Tenacious Teal with a coat of Glee (Jesse's Girl) on top of it:

You can tell it looks different here, but in actuality it looks considerably more different than you can tell from the picture. Glee is a microglitter, and somehow the finish just didn't show up well in the picture. It's quite shiny and pretty. I like this combination a lot.

More Orchid pictures

Here's one I seem to have missed last night:

(I caught this because I remembered that So You Think You Can Salsa was in that display post that I did post. There is some discussion in the comments of the last entry about core colors and such, if anybody other than me and Karen is interested.)

(Which reminds me that Karen is the only person who ever posts comments, even though I know some other people are reading at least sporadically. Come out of the closet, you guys! I like comments!)

This one doesn't seem to be there, either:

 Two of the three Orchid colors I own are right next to one another in this picture - both are really packed glitters. That's "He Loves Me... I Love Him NOT!" and "Funky Monkey" - both of which I like, but have a tendency to forget to wear. (The third one that I own is Island Couture, which seems not to be core.)

Orchid - mostly for Karen but the rest of you may browse!

Karen and I are doing a swap - she reports that she's already bought me all the JulieG polishes I wanted - but I have been highly remiss (although admittedly I had a decent excuse, yes) in posting the pictures I took over a week ago for her to attempt to pick colors from. The display is a mess - if I get a chance as we trek across East Texas tomorrow I might hit another H-E-B and see if they have anything different! But this is numerous close-ups of the polishes so that you can hopefully see the names. (Bonus: many of the names are quite amusing.)

Here's a display, which will be no help. And ignore the coupon sale since it's presumably over by now. (Also, what those 2 blues are doing in the "RED HOT" display, I don't quite know.)

I'm pretty sure that's Essie Magnetics down on the row below!

This looks suspiciously like several of the same color here:

And this looks suspiciously like a bottle of OPI :)

There may be a couple more, but I'm too sleepy right now to be able to tell them apart.

Dusty and teal

I was going to take a picture of Dusty Spring Fields before I took it off, but my phone is being uncooperative. (Specifically, the battery is dead, and it's not charging fast enough to suit me.) Here and here* are the only pictures I found in a cursory google search. (Google's habit of correcting your spelling gets very annoying when you try searching for a name like that one!) I really did end up liking that color. It reminds me a bit of SC Winterberry, although I think Winterberry is more purple.

*The second one is one of Karen's periodic display posts, and you have to scroll way down to find it. The pictures are so similar I thought at first they were the same ones, but on closer examination they are not. The polishes are misplaced in both pictures, but not in exactly the same way!

Next up: Color Show Tenacious Teal. It's (I think) the last one of the last batch of polishes I bought that I hadn't tried.** I googled this too, and once I added "polish" to the search so that it quit showing me Maybelline's eye shadows of the same name, I found Short 'n Chic's review of this color from last year, and I had exactly the same problem she talks about with the watery first coat. But somehow it seems to fix itself with the second coat. It's like magic! (Ok, maybe not, but it's a bit surprising.) I remain a bit annoyed by the name, though, since it's actually not what I'd consider teal at all. I suppose "Tenacious Green" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

**Not even close. See here. I did wear East Village, and I tried on the shatter one on one nail, which hardly counts, but even if it does that still leaves two more I haven't tried yet.

Back at Rite-Aid

Another Rite-Aid haul:

1. Hedy's Ma.nish.ma. 'stoned' Dusty Spring Fields (purple-leaning taupe)
2. L.A. Girl 3D Effects (hologram) Black Illusion
3. SC Rich in Heart (my Evernote list called it a "red-brown shimmer")
4. "Petites" 56 Blackberry (blackened red) - made by Scherer, apparently
5. Jesse's Girl Glee (blue-green glitter)

The Sinful Colors was on my "wishlist" - which I keep on Evernote and write down colors I see (mostly online) that I especially like. (Evernote is great because it syncs between my various computers and my phone, and I can easily consult my list in a store.) A lot of times the colors are LE's and I never find them, but I do stumble across some of them from time to time. I've looked for Rich in Heart at various stores and never found it up til now, so I figured I'd better snag it while I can.

Rich in Heart and Blackberry are both fairly fall-ish colors, which isn't to say I won't try them out before then. (Blackberry in particular, I suspect I will go ahead and try, maybe both.) I have a black hologram from Chirality, but it seemed a little lighter-color in the bottle than the L.A. Girl one does. We'll see about that. And to tell you the truth, the Jesse's Girl reminds me of (Butter London) Henley Regatta, on reflection, although I think the glitter may be smaller. I guess we'll see about that, too.


(Later) East Village off, and it came off quite nicely, for a blue-green. And it still didn't look at all bad, as far as wear goes. I decided to try Dusty Spring Fields, and I think that "purple-leaning taupe" as I said above, is pretty close, except that it's really more of a light (or even medium) brown than a taupe. It's quite dark, once you get two coats on and dry. But it does lean purple, in some lights. I'll be interested to see it in sunlight.

East Village

I've had on NYC East Village since Thursday, and it's holding up really well. It looks the same as I expected it to from a distance, but it doesn't really behave like a foil even though it looks a bit like one. It's super-sheer; this is 4 coats and you can still see my nail line a bit when the light hits it right. It reminds me more of something like SC Let Me Go, a sheer pearly thing.

I'm looking at my nails compared to this picture on my screen and it's slightly paler and considerably greener than it looks there. I would call it a dark aqua, really.

Here's Is that Silva (resting on a hotel towel):

One makeup note (not something I talk about much):
We packed hastily for this trip, and I managed somehow to forget my makeup base, even though I got everything else, makeup-wise. We went to a Wal-Mart in some small town in Arkansas, and I bought the cheapest one I could find, which was Maybelline Fit Me for (I think) five dollars and change. And it's really not bad. It seems to be similar in concept to L'Oreal Color Match, which is what I wear normally. I think I ended up buying the very palest one (#110, I think).

Also I just found the bit below, which I wrote on Thursday and forgot that I didn't post:

I am so very tired. We got to Ohio late yesterday and we have been doing stuff ever since, with a short break for sleep last night. Rob was a pallbearer so he had to be at the church at 9am, although I am not really clear on why since the funeral wasn't until 10:30. Just to make sure the deceased was there ahead of the mourners, I guess. So I got up much earlier than I am accustomed to, in order to make sure that Rob got there on time, which he did. And now that stuff is all over, and I am just sitting here feeling exhausted and marking time until I feel ready to sleep. 

If anybody thought my nail polish [Is That Silva?] was inappropriate, they didn't say anything to me. Of course I am the person who wore green nail polish to my own father's funeral last year, because it matched my green shirt. I never have seen what was inappropriate about that, really, but my sister seemed to think it was, anyway. (Pft.) I wore that same green shirt today, in fact, but it was so cool here that I had to wear a jacket over it. 

Is That Silva?

I remember reading about the OPI Skyfall polishes when they came out, but somehow I completely missed the fact that there were magnetics along with everything else. Or maybe it's more that I just ignored them. I haven't been that hot to try magnetics, and then I tried the Essie one (mostly because I liked the fishnet pattern) and it didn't work well at all. But the OPI one with the little pincher-shaped tool did a much better job of controlling how close your nail got to the magnet. I found it did the best when you laid it down on the table and stuck your finger inside and let it sit there a minute like you would with something like a UV light. Except for this it just takes a few seconds. As shown here, the magnet that comes with Is That Silva? is diagonal stripes. As PolishAholic notes in her entry, the wider part of the stripe comes out quite transparent - I did put a thin coat on and let it dry first before I did the thick layer that I put under the magnet, but in any case I don't object to visible nail line as strongly as a lot of people seem to, so it probably wouldn't have bothered me anyway. (I may get a picture of my own eventually, but not tonight. It's been a long, long day.)

Other notes:

• The glitter is really pretty in the sunlight but not overly flashy. Really the total effect is elegant and fairly subtle, considering that there's glitter and stripes involved!
• I'm not sure what the actual retail price is meant to be for these - PolishAholic, as linked above, thinks it's supposed to be $17.50, which is fairly outrageous. I couldn't find them at all on OPI's website - does that mean they're discontinued? - even though the regular Skyfall colors were still there. I did poke around on eBay and Amazon and found prices to be kind of all over the place, but in general anywhere from $9-18. If it's discontinued, it hasn't gotten all that hard to find yet, I'm guessing! But in any case, apparently I got a bargain, because I found it at my grocery store, stuck up on a top shelf, for $7.99. If they still have any left when I finally get back home, I'm totally buying another color.

Color of the Day

If you haven't already seen these "Color of the Day" things that have been floating around on Tumblr, look here. There's several more of them, and they're pretty cool.

I have always been fascinated with color, since I was a kid - and I was a kid in the 60s/early 70s, so the color palettes available during most of my childhood were pretty limited. I never understood that. Nature has a variety of colors, so why couldn't you buy those? (Questions of chemistry and production costs and other practical considerations did not mean much to me when I was 8.)

I did most of my growing up in a house built in 1968, with carpet & appliances entirely in 1968's hot color, avocado green. I was 35 or so before I started liking green again. Likewise, it took me years to recover from the 1970s onslaught of warm colors. If you weren't there to remember it, everything was almond (aka beige), pumpkin orange, harvest gold, and brown. At least that's how I remember it. I do remember having some clothes that were other colors so it can't have been entirely true, but it seemed that way to me.


My color of the day today has been bright rose pink - Zoya Lara, to be exact. It looked really pretty but the peelies got it - the whole tip of my right index finger in particular was a peeled mess - so it's gone now. I am contemplating whether OPI Is That Silva? is an inappropriate color to wear to pre-funeral activities, which is where I'm going to be tomorrow. (By that I mean not a wake but a "viewing" - which is a custom I abhor. But that's another subject completely and this is not the place to go into that!) Actually silver-gray seemed more mourning-appropriate than bright pink, really, until I noticed how very sparkly this particular silver was (not to mention the magnetic stripes that are going to be involved). I think I'm going to try it anyway.

To buy or not to buy

Today's nails: Pink Sizzle, the L.A. Colors one I bought last week. It's a very dark, slightly-frosty rose pink. I really like it.

I actually tried putting the crackle/shredded polish on my thumbnail on top of this, just to see what happened, but they're too close to the same color and if it cracked you couldn't even really see it. So I finally just put another coat of Pink Sizzle on top of that. I'll have to try the crackle again on top of black or something where I can see it.


I was supposed to be in a "no-buy" period, which lasted for a while, but which I've obviously been caving in on lately with the Llarowe purchases and such. So then I told myself that I could buy single polishes of brands I don't already have - this occurred to me after I saw the L.A. Colors at the store the other day and realized I had never tried that brand at all. I was really thinking of low-priced and maybe mid-priced brands when I said it. But I might've walked myself into a corner a bit with that. Assuming my goal is to not buy a lot of nail polishes, well, that may not be so great because there are a LOT of brands, let's face it. And I was thinking from the beginning that sub-brands counted as different brands, too, so that left it open for, for example, the "In a New York Minute" brand from NYC - I had tried the base brand of NYC but not that one. And of course I've owned Maybelline in the old days but not the new Color Show stuff. Most of the mid-priced "salon" brands I've already tried a good bit - Essie, OPI, Orly, Zoya - but there's at least one big exception there, and that's China Glaze. I have never owned a single one. I'm gonna have to pick out one really great color and try out China Glaze. As far as the high-priced brands, well, I do have a couple - a Butter London, a couple of RBLs - but this absolutely does not mean I can buy a Chanel, tempting as it is sometimes!

(This is what inevitably happens with things like no-buy periods - I behave myself for a while and then I go on a big binge. I am very predictable that way.)