Purchases

Recent additions to my stash have been heavy on the greens - see the whole top row below.

If you've been reading regularly here you've seen some of these already, but I'll go through them all and link to what I said previously, too. Let's see, top to bottom and L-R:

• Colorstay Rainforest, a lovely glass-flecked forest green (I've worn this but didn't take a picture)
• Nostalgic Patricia, which was a St. Patrick's Day release, apparently, and is also really lovely, a mix of green glitters with a sprinkling of purple - see here
• Chroma Chameleon Topaz - supposed to be a chrome, as you might guess. It's an odd color, and very very sheer, but I like it - there's a picture here. It's really not at all what I'd call a chrome, though. (Also it's a small bottle and not at all cheap, so on a per-ounce basis it's actually quite expensive.)
• Dollish Polish Walker Bait, which is LE and already discontinued - you had to snap it up before the Walking Dead premiere, which of course has already happened. It's an olive holo and I like it a lot, although it doesn't seem all that different from the couple of other green holos I had already - I will have to do a comparison at some point.
• (starting on the bottom row) Color Show Black in Mirrors, which is also an LE color but should still be around. I would guess that this set is supposed to be a Christmas release, although I'm not sure about that. It's black-and-silver glitter. The line is called Brocades, I believe.
• Nostalgic Rid of Me, which as you can clearly see is a bright-blue shimmer, and very sheer
• Wet & Wild Gray's Anatomy, another really-really sheer one. I had trouble with it when I tried it - I mentioned it in the same entry where I was talking about Topaz - but it's a pretty color and hopefully the fact that it wouldn't dry last time was just an aberration. I'll report back when I try it again.
• Dollish Polish Deadly Nightshade, another Halloween color, a mixed-size purple glitter (also LE but I think maybe you can still get this one until Halloween)

I have a couple more Dollish colors on the way (one was Redrum, I think) and today I went in Walgreen's and came out with a couple of the new Sally Hansen Triple Shine colors. I also bought a couple of the Hunger Games Glosstinis since I took this picture. But you'll have to hear more about all that later. 

Cougar Attack and VitaSurge

I've been wearing Cougar Attack (I kind of hate the name, but I love the polish) for over a week now, I think - first on its own and then over SC Rich in Heart, which is a really dark brown. I'm not sure how many coats I had on in the last mani, but I think it was a bunch. At least 2 coats of brown and possibly 3 of CA, not to mention base and top coat. It lasted about 5 days, and then today about half of one nail finally cracked off in one big piece. Which I can't say is really surprising with that many coats. My nails are now marinating with Sally Hansen VitaSurge and cuticle oil slathered all over them, and then I think I'm going to do something orange, since it's getting really close to Halloween. I have to trot out the orange at least once a year!

Here are two shots of Cougar Attack/Rich in Heart:

On its own, CA is a lot lighter, of course. I didn't get any pictures of that, though.

Back to VitaSurge - I bought it on impulse because it was on sale, but I was happy to find a good review of it on YouTube. Of course I'd already bought it by then, so I didn't bother to look any further. If nothing else, that video confirmed for me that you're supposed to rub it in rather than just letting it dry - apparently it says so on the tiny illegible print on the bottle. (I think I need to invest in a magnifying glass since this is about the third time this month I've complained about not being able to read things on a label.)

I do have another nail wheel or two coming soon, hopefully - reds and after that, oranges and browns. (I have most of the rest done, after that, too - the pale pinks, one for black/white/gray, and half a wheel full of burgundy-ish colors, plus an overflow wheel for the ones I'd done previously. All that's left to swatch is some top coats and such.)

Fuchsias and such (or, nail wheel weekend)

I probably should not even say "nail wheel weekend" like it's going to be a regular thing. Knowing me, it probably won't. But well, it's alliterative, and it's true for this weekend, anyway.

So I did a whole wheel of bright pinks:

1. He Loves Me, I Love Him... Not
2. Scam
3. Alegra
4. Slammin' Red
5. Fuchsia Glamour (I think - it's mislabeled)
6. Peru-B-Ruby
7. unnamed fuchsia
8. Juicy
9. Reva
10. Kierra
11. Kimber
12. Hasty
13. Raspberry Rush
14. Hot Stuff
15. Dita
16. Ali
17. F*ck and Run
18. Strawberry Electric
19. Shopping Frenzy
20. Status Symbol

Hmm, I can't find the picture of the whole wheel but here are all the polishes, in order and everything. (If the wheel picture stays MIA by the time I finish this post, I'll take a new one and add it later!) You can see the wheel itself in stages below, anyway.

(Added, nearly 2 weeks late: Oh, look, it's the whole wheel!)

1-5:

I have a bunch of pink glitters that are quite similar really. (1, 2, and 4, specifically.) They're not dead dupes but they're pretty close. The Studio M one is a similar color to the other two but is much bumpier. (This is one of a whole line of these super-packed glitters; I wonder if they're started calling them textures, yet.) Allegra, #3, is pretty shimmer-packed but not really a full-on glitter. And the NYC is more of a frost.

6-10:

I was trying not to get into reds and burgundies with this wheel, but Kierra - on the right - is probably the one that shouldn't be here, if any of them shouldn't. It doesn't look all that out of place, really, but I think it's more of a burgundy than a pink. Reva, next to it, looks fairly red on my screen but I'd call it more of a strawberry. Peru-B-Ruby, on the left, is poised right between pink and red - it looks red among the pinks, but if you plunked it on the red wheel (which is up next) it would look more pink.

11-15:

This bunch are the ones that are so bright they annoy me, sometimes. Although I quite like Hot Stuff. Every time I wear Kimber I end up slapping something else on top of it, though. (Usually Reva - they go quite well together.) Dita, on the right, is not annoying, but you can see that it's a bit darker.

16-20: 

Let's see, well, Ali is so bright I tried unsuccessfully to give it away. (I figure by next spring it'll look more interesting to me, anyway.) I like F*ck and Run a lot, as I've said several times lately, and I like Status Symbol, although I rarely remember to wear it. Part of the problem here is that I have SO many pinks that things just get lost in the shuffle! Shopping Frenzy is pretty too, but I haven't worn it much even though I've had it for years. Strawberry Electric is more in the "slightly too bright" category.

Artistic blur, and Patricia

Here's a totally blurry picture of my current manicure that I really like:

It's interesting, right? And it shows you exactly what glitters are in there. See the purple streaks? Yeah, that's purple glitter. However, I think I have another picture somewhere where you can actually see the polish.

The story here is about why this is sort of an unintended hybrid manicure. I know I mentioned at the time that I had ordered a couple more polishes from Nostalgic, since I liked the ones I got so much (F*ck and Run, in particular) and they were still on sale. And I had almost forgotten about that, but they finally turned up this week. And so last night I put on Rid of Me, which is blue jelly with shimmer. And then I wasn't paying attention to what I was doing, and the light in my living room sucks so badly that it's difficult to tell the difference between a blue-green and an outright green, and I accidentally slapped the other one, Patricia, on top of a couple of nails before I noticed. And well, it's really pretty, so I just put it on all of them.

(Just ignore the lobster-cuticles, ok?)
I don't know how much difference the base of Rid of Me makes - I suspect it might be a little less blue-looking. Although as usual, this is a bit blue-shifted in any case - it looks closer to an emerald when I look at my nails in the same light. Anyway, it was an unintended consequence with a happy ending.

Linkiness

Is that a word? Well, you know what I mean. Linky-ness? Linkage? (the latter is the word I use most for this, really.) Links. Whatever. (Note: Nothing here is sponsored.)

This post is mostly inspired by my discovery of More Nail Polish's color guides. If you're not familiar with her already, she is an Australian nail-blogger who has large collections of the brands listed below, and she has pulled together single-page roundups of her swatches of every color of these brands she owns. That make sense? I don't know if other people love this idea as much as I do, but I find this terribly useful. I guess it's something to do with the way my brain works - I like to see all the colors together on one page. All this information is on those brands' websites, I'm sure - I know that's true of Picture Polish because I looked at their website really extensively one time - but I like seeing it all at once. So anyway, here's the links:
Picture Polish
Ozotic
Lynnderella

And yeah, I'm aware that I'm not capitalizing piCture pOlish properly. It's pure crankiness on my part.

(She also has one for Ulta3, which I haven't included just because it's not useful to ME, but it's in her sidebar, anyway, so if you want it it shouldn't be hard to find. I assume that Ulta3 is a version of the Ulta brands available in the US but I have no idea what the relationship is and it just seems like something that's not worth exploring, for me! Your mileage may vary.)


Another cool link:
Definitions of a bunch of (mostly fairly simple) types of nail art:
http://www.jilltasticnaildesign.com/2012/12/nail-art-techniques-defined.html
(this is actually just the rules for a particular challenge, but I still found it useful and I've never seen another like it. I'm sure others exist. Also, for the OCD among you, there are some definite spelling issues there, so if that bothers you unduly I would consider avoiding it!)

Emerald and orange

(Sunday night)

I just put on Pixi Evening Emerald, and it occurs to me that I have a couple of other untrieds in the emerald family - they were among the colors I sort of had put by for fall. The others are Butter London Thames and Illamasqua Veridian. I might just wear them all in succession, as a sort of comparison. Evening Emerald is not what I'd really call an emerald - I think I may have mentioned that when I was showing the green nail wheel. BUT you could call it a blackened emerald, I guess. It's quite dark, but doesn't read as black at all, which is something I always like.

The Pixi bottle is really small - it's tall and skinny, almost like a Julep bottle, and probably is a comparable size, which makes it basically a mini. Which is okay if you know that's what you're getting. (I have gotten the impression that a lot of people don't, with Julep. See Miss Holly's rant about this on YouTube, for one.) Karen gave me the Pixi so I can't complain about the price, for sure! I rarely use up a full-size bottle - I can only think of maybe two or three things besides base and top coat that I have run through a whole large bottle of - but I always worry about running out on the small ones. Maybe we need an in-between size. Actually some companies seem to have quietly gone to .4 oz instead of .5 so I guess that's effectively what that is.


(Saturday - almost a week later!)
I'm taking a class so I haven't had time to obsess about my nails much this week. I sort of intended to do a different green once I took the Pixi off, as I mentioned above, but instead I decided to go textured. I put on Julie G Hot Cinnamon and then decided it was too red and sparkly and looked like Christmas - which is kind of weird since I'm pretty sure the last time I wore it I said it was too orange. Anyway, since this time I wanted more orange, I finally put a coat of Sugar Rush on top of it and was happy. Now it's red-orange.

Hmm, maybe I need a green texture. The only one I have is too pale to suit me! (That's Rock Candy, maybe I can try putting something darker underneath?)

Anyway, here's Sugar Rush with Hot Cinnamon underneath (and some wear I hadn't even noticed on my thumb!):

P.S. It's not as red as it looks here. I assume that's that blue shift I always complain about when I take pictures here!)



Recent manis

I got busy with nail wheels (and, um, SWTOR and Diablo III and occasionally, work) and haven't posted lately about what I've been wearing. Here's what I'm wearing now  - it's blue-shifted as usual, though - it's more yellow than it appears:

That is a Revlon Chroma Chameleon color (Topaz, apparently, although that seems like a poor name for it to me*) -- and I have to say that I am enough of a child of the 80s that I can't type that sentence without getting "Karma Chameleon" stuck in my head. (In fact I was not a child of the 80s at all, I was in my early 20s in the early 80s and I was all into the New British Invasion music at the time. I still love all that music.)

That is FOUR coats - it's very sheer. I may try it next time over something else. It's got a really pretty finish but it cost $8.00 for a very tiny bottle and I'd definitely like to stretch it out a bit.

I also bought Gray's Anatomy (WnW Fastdry) and I tried it out before Topaz, but I had one of those issues where it didn't want to dry. I don't know if it was something where it was disagreeing with whatever basecoat I had on, or whether it was a humidity issue since I do live in the land of sky-high humidity. But it wouldn't set and I finally just took it off and did Topaz instead. I can tell you, though, that it's another very sheer one, just as much so as Topaz. I might put a base of some sort under it the next time I try, too.

Before that I wore yet another very sheer color on its own, and that was F*ck and Run. I think I did three coats plus Seche Vite, and it was still bugging me after that and I put another coat on top of the SV, finally. But I do like it by itself. In most lights it looked sort of coral-red, but it does have pink shimmer in it as well as orange, so it shifts very prettily.

Topaz is a bit chipped so I don't know what I'll do next - try Gray's Anatomy again? Something else entirely? I'm tempted to get into the things I've been saving for fall, especially since we finally had a real cool front last night.  (It's supposed to be 57 degrees tonight (57F, that is) - by our standards, that's fall.)

*Mini-rant:
First of all, I don't think of Topaz-the-color (or the stone) as being green at all - although I know there is more than one color of topaz. And second, the name of the color is written on the bottle in type so small that I couldn't even find it until I looked online and figured out what the name must be. It's written in the same tiny type that they list the ingredients in, you know? It was like reading an eye chart at the optometrist's office or something. Once I knew what the name was, then I looked at the bottle and went, oh, I see a word there that might be "topaz" - at least it starts with a T and maybe has 5 letters! Do they not want you to know the color names? Or do they just assume that everybody is 20 years old and has 20-20 vision? It's just a bit weird! (On reflection, a much more likely answer: they just don't care.)

Nail wheel - pinks, from violet to fuchsia

This nail wheel starts where I left off with the last one, very violet-leaning pinks, and gets less and less violet as it goes along. (That's in theory, at least. I didn't necessarily do a very good job of ordering these. In fact I didn't do a very good job with this wheel at all - it's messy, or messier than usual, that is. In my defense, I did it on a day I wasn't feeling well!)

As you can see, I did the "stripe" thing again on a number of these - black at the tip, another color at the base. I used various pinks at the base - there's a picture of some of them at the bottom, but they're noted on the list, also.

I also almost mixed up two polishes, which is the first time I've done that. I meant to put G-listen To Your Heart as #2, because it's much purplier (that may not actually be a word, but you know what I mean) than It's Bouquet With Me, which was supposed to be #9. Instead they are reversed. But oh well, there is other stuff over there on that right side of the wheel that's very purple, as well. The other thing that bugs me is the big fingerprint in the middle of #13. Pretend you didn't notice, ok?

1. Convergence
2. It's Bouquet With Me ("striped" with Domestic Goddess at base, Jet Black at tip)
3. Domestic Goddess
4. Kieko
5. Morning, Moneypenny (magnetic)
6. Posh Plum
7. Paloma (striped over Posh Plum, JB)
8. Crushed Candy
9. It's Bouquet With Me (striped over Pink Sizzle, JB)
10. Perrie
11. Rory (partly over Perrie)
12. Magenta Mirage (over Jet Black)
13. Pink Sizzle
14. Lilith
15. Reagan
16. Ultimate Pink
17. Gimme a Grape Big Kiss
18. Big City Dazzle (a top coat) (striped over Hasty, JB)
19. Strobe Light (striped over Pink Sizzle, JB)
20. Girls on Film (striped over Hasty, JB)

(I probably should've done like everybody else and numbered these like a clock, starting from the top, but I think it threw me off that they were oval and so I started on the left and then went clockwise. Hopefully people who have been looking at these have figured out my method by now!)

1 through 5:



(See note at bottom about #3 and #4.)

6 through 10:

11 through 15:

Re #12: I have decided that maybe Maybelline knew what they were doing when they called their crackle version "Shredded" - it seems to shred vertically more than other brands do.

16 through 20:

As I noted when I first wore it, #17 appears very, very pink even though it has "grape" in its name and it's grape-scented. This has never made a whole lot of sense to me, but I do like the color.

These were my layering colors - there were more variations in these colors than on some other wheels so I thought my layering colors needed to vary too (except for the black):

I think my main point in taking this close-up picture was to show that Domestic Goddess and Kieko are pretty much dead-on dupes. So if you loved Domestic Goddess or you're feeling sorry you missed it, there's definitely an alternative!