Unexpected Mini-haul

I went to get my hair did yesterday, and arrived a little bit early.  Upon entering, I saw the most beautiful words a nail junkie can imagine:  "Everything on this table $1."  My hairstylist, who knows about my weakness, was kind enough to whisk me away before I could completely obliterate the display.

There wasn't a lot to choose from, mostly reds and berries, but I'm still not sure I shouldn't have gotten more.  What you see above (L to R) is Cuckoo for This Color, Sweet as Annie-thing and Ginger Bells.  What you don't see (because it's rolling around somewhere in the nether-regions of my car) is I'm Not Really a Waitress.  That one, of course, is a classic, so I suspect you already know what it looks like.


I'm really tickled with this haul.  I mean, seriously....ONE DOLLAR OPI.  Wanna see the first to grace my nails?

Sweet as Annie-thing

Ooh, moody.  No, wait, not moody.  HOT.  Yes, it's hot as Satan's balls outside (does Satan have balls?), so my camera lens fogged up immediately.  I sorta like this look, though.  It's got...ambience?  Anyway, Sweet as Annie-thing is a really classy golden-toned red, with just a hint of warm shimmer in the bottle that you really don't much see on the nail.  As with most OPI, it was pleasingly opaque at 2 coats.  Also as with most OPI, it's a trifle runny for my taste.  I did have to spend a fair amount of time on cleanup.  This was apparently released in January 2009, so I'm not sure how easy this is to find at this point.


See how long my nails are getting?  Go ahead, take a good look now.  I don't think it's going to last much longer.  They get flimsy at the tips (I've actually already got a chip on this less-than-6-hours-old mani because of my crappy nail stregth) and I just type too dang much to keep them like this. 


Enjoy your evening, folks, cause tomorrow is...bum bum bum...MONDAY!  G'night, everybody!

Pink Wednesday, the abridged version

If today were any other day, and I were considering not posting, I'd shrug my shoulders and say, "Meh.  Tomorrow."  I'm a busy girl.  I got things to do!  People to get angry at!  I can't post every day!  But y'all, it's Pink Wednesday, and I am NOT going to let you down.  I AM, however, going to let class out early, so to speak.  Forthwith:

Finger Paints "Hue Left a Message?"  Nope.  It was the ghost that occassionally haunts the lower left corner of my photos.

The end.

If you like pina coladas...

Don't buy this polish, cause it doesn't smell anything LIKE pina coladas.  It smells more like someone doused a shirt in suntan lotion, and the smell didn't come all the way out in the washer, so now it smells like suntan lotion AND laundry detergent.  I'm not saying that's a bad thing; on the contrary, it's a lovely smell, even if it doesn't quite live up to name Revlon gave it - Colada Fizz.

What we have here is Essie One Day Without Blues/Coat d'Azure on the tips, and Colada Fizz on the rest of the nail.  Unlike its siblings Watermelon Fizz and Grapefruit Fizz, this gentle blue shimmer does NOT want to build up to opacity like a good jelly would.  You can barely see the blue there in the shimmer, can you?  I'm okay with that, it's just sort of the oddball of the family that way.

There really is one in every family.

Play with your pinks!

Umm.  Hmm.  That doesn't sound right. 


Yeah, I'm just gonna leave that there for a second.


Hokay!  Now that the the 14-year-old boy in me has said hello today, time for Pink Wednesday!  If I'm gonna keep this weekly tradition up, I'm gonna have to get creative, lest the pinks outnumber anything else in my collection.  I am a tomboy.  I cannot have that.  SO, it's time to experiment!  Watch what happens when you cover last week's Cover Girl Rose Coral with Zoya Gigi.

I am so sorry about my pinky.  It was recently in a horrible onion-chopping incident. 

 

I.  Kind of.  LOVE THIS!  I really do!  Put Gigi over a darker pink really made the usually-subtle silver shimmer POP!


Run along now...grab a nail wheel, all your pink polishes and see what happens!

Surprise!

I've just participated in a spur-of-the-moment swap with my very best friend Rebecca, who lives on the opposite side of this fine nation of hours (how rude of her).  She's good people, and she decided that she would be only too happy to swap her OPI DS Sapphire for my Deborah Lippmann Lady Sings the Blues.


Well, wasn't I just tickled to find that she'd included a bonus, Wet N Wild Rock Solid Sparkling Diamonds.  I've never seen these cute little bottles! 

 Rebecca admitted she'd really only picked it up by virtue of its adorable design (and who hasn't done that?), but I think after she sees what it's done to a couple of my newest purchases, she's going to end up with swapper's remorse. 

Finger Paints Tough Art to Follow before...

...and after!

China Glaze Electric Pineapple - "Before" on the ring finger, "After on the rest.  Crummy picture.

Brilliant!  With my OPI Black Shatter moving towards the next realm of existence (which would be non-existence in its case), I'm delighted to have another topcoat that gets me excited about throwing it on top of every creme I apply.

By the by, I should point out that I LOVED Tough Art to Follow, and the jury is still out on Electric Pineapple.  I am surprised by how much I liked the look of this yellow against my cool-toned pale skin, but it was tough to apply to my satisfaction for reasons I can't quite pinpoint.  Just plain unforgiving?  Not sure.  I suspect by the time this summer is out, I'll never want to see it again.

You only live once, and you can't take it with you when you go.

God, I am a sucker for a promo.


If you've been about the nail blogging community much at all, you've read about A-England.  Like them on Facebook.  Go.  Do it now.  I'll wait.


You back?  Great.  Now wait.  If you're lucky, they'll run another promo like the one they just did...FREE SHIPPING.  For shipping from the UK to the States, that's a pretty sweet deal.  I ended up paying about $44 for 3 polishes, which is still a bit of a splurge, but I'm here to tell you and show you...WELL WORTH IT.

Tristam

 

 

Perceval

 

Lady of the Lake

For the love of all that's good and holy, click to maximize.  These colors are absolutely, beyond a shadow of a doubt, AMAZING.  They applied like a dream, had obscenely good wear and were absolutely stunning.  Perceval was photographed after two days and an oil change performed by yours truly (and her brother).  I'm not even kidding.

I would not lie to you.  I may want to, but I wouldn't be any good at it.  So the next time you want to splurge on some fancy-schmancy non-drugstore polish, splurge on A-England.  You heard it here fifteenth.  Over and out.

Flip out!

Okay, you will pretty much never see me post a promo or press release that has the potential to be posted by a multitude of other bloggers, but I BELIEVE in this stuff:



It is an amazingly good product.  Trust me, once you use it, you'll absolutely agree that it's worth every penny of its retail price.  But now you don't even have to worry about those pennies!  You just have to buy something from Zoya or Qtica!  C'mon.  You know you've had your eye on something anyway.  Just buy it. 

Zoya:  Your friendly neighbourhood polish dealer.  The first one's free, but you're gonna have to pay for the rest.

Truth in Advertising

After last week's Pink Wednesday tirade, isn't this refreshing...truth in advertising!  This is Cover Girl Rose Coral...

...and what can I say?  It's, um, rosy coral!  It is topped with a coat of Cover Girl Ruby Dust.  That's the gold sparklies that you see.  This is the first warm glitter coat I've ever owned, and though I didn't know I needed it, I'm glad I have it!  At only a dollar, this is a Big Lots WIN.

Things that are cute

 My niece.  She has a couch to her left and a large ottoman behind her...and she's perched squarely in the middle of the coffee table.  Did I tell her to get off of it?  Heck no!  Nieces and nephews get to do whatever they want, and they get hugs when they're through doing it.

Cats napping in the sun.  There is just something so charming and enviable about this sight.  I just ache to be that at peace in my life.

Manicures like this.  So bubbly, airy,  light.  So...not me.  This is Cover Girl Amethyst Mist over the pure white of Finger Paints Paper Mache. 

Here's hoping everyone's Sunday came with a healthy dose of cute, as mine did.

On pinks that aren't.

I confess, this Pink Wednesday is a bit of a bait and switch.  But I simply must call the attention of the polish-addicted world to a very real issue: polish misnomers.  These are polishes whose manufacturers have given them names which are not only stupid and nondescriptive, they're downright misleading.


You may recall one of my earlier entries on a Pink Wednesday, Finger Paints Give Pink a Chance.  Perhaps you'll remember that it was really much more coral than pink.  Might I have suggested to the fine folks over at Finger Paints a name that is both more accurate and still befitting that collection's 60's theme?  Perhaps "Instant Coral's Gonna Get You"?


Now witness Wet 'n Wild's Hannah Pinktana.  Some of you may know that this is sort of the sister to Blue Wants to Be a Millionaire, which I loved.  Here's Hannah...

...in all her PURPLE glory.  I ask you, is this pink?  NO!  It is not.  C'mon, Wet 'n Wild, if you wanted to bestow idiotic, television-inspired names upon your polishes, why didn't you just call this Hannah Purpletana?  So it has an extra syllable in there...it is still both stupid and color-accurate!  That ought to have fit the bill! 


Lordy.  I am just in the wrong line of business.  Anybody hiring a polish-namer? 

Damn you, auto-correct!

A polish worthy of U2

I have had the incredibly good fortune (for someone who is not made of money) to see two rock LEGENDS in the span of about a year:  Paul McCartney last summer and last night, U2. 


Oh.  My.  God.  I don't fancy myself the most cultured or most educated music lover, but I know what I love and I know what speaks to me.  When I first started getting into music and developing my own taste in my early teens, I remember the bands that first stuck out to me, and the big three were Pearl Jam, R.E.M and U2.  This was probably around the time that U2 were in Zooropa-mode, but I fell madly in love with their Joshua Tree-period music and earlier.  LOVED LOVED LOVED it.  I had Rattle & Hum on VHS, and man, I wore that tape out. 


U2 have not been in Nashville since I was just shy of a year old, so needless to say, I and several tens of thousands of my closest friends pounced on the chance to be a part of this rare experience.  Let me tell you, it did not disappoint!  I simply LIVE for those moments when it becomes almost impossible to believe that you are where you are.  Opening notes of "Where the Streets Have No Name"?  One of those moments, without a doubt.


But enough of my sappy love letter to last night.  What, you may ask, was I wearing?  Well, THIS:

PAKOW!  Whaddya think of this stunner?  This is Color Club "Worth the Risque," and it is a God-send for those of us who live in the States and cannot easily lay our hands on GOSH Holographic.  It is also MUCH cheaper than any Nfu Oh holo, so I'm gonna have to call this a beautiful bargain.  (Excuse the minor chipping.  This was on the second full day of wear, and the tipwear was actually only on my weakest nails; tends to happen as the nail underneath flexes.)  All in all, I'd call this a polish befitting a night with rock stars.