Mini Blog Sale

SOLD OUT

All polishes are 1 mani usage unless as shown or otherwise noted.


Nars Tzigane - $12






Soo Nails S28 - $1
Hema Nail Polish 04 - $1
Catrice I Scream Peach! - $3 SOLD


OPI:
William Tell Me About OPI - $5 SOLD
Ski Teal We Drop - $4 SOLD
Let Them Eat Rice Cake (90% remaining) - $4


BBCouture Kokomo - $4
BBCouture Obsession - $6


Nfu Oh (FYI the colors in this photo are a little too light, darken them all a bit):
NFU553 $7 SOLD
JS26 $7 SOLD
NFU569 $8 SOLD
NFU565 $8
JS42 $5


Cetuem 108 - $4 (75% remains) SOLD


Cetuem 191 - $6 SOLD


Cetuem 216 - $6 SOLD


American Apparel Mannequin - $2 SOLD


Lippmann Glitter in the Air - $15 SOLD


Lippmann Supermodel - $13 (2 mani usage) SOLD


Rescue Beauty Lounge Underwear - $12 SOLD


NARS Midnight Express - $13 SOLD


Chanel Morning Rose - $25 SOLD


Dior Pure Diamonds - $18 SOLD


Lippmann I'm Not Innocent - $11 SOLD


Inglot 852 - $6 SOLD


Models Own Nude Beige - $4 SOLD


Chanel Paradoxal - $18 SOLD


BB Couture Midnight Desire - $5 SOLD
Orly Secret Admirer - $2 SOLD
OPI Planks a Lot - $4 SOLD

read more "Mini Blog Sale"

Classic vamp - OPI LPAD

A complete and utter classic for winter...OPI Lincoln Park After Dark.

An impossibly dark and rich purple...reminds me of stumbling into a jazz club after too many drinks - everyone is smoking, everything is hazy, but the music wraps around you like a mink stole and makes you just want to purr...

kittytokaren

read more "Classic vamp - OPI LPAD"

China Glaze Ginger

Things I am a sucker for:

1) Spice colours,

2) Holo glitter.

This is a two in one! I love the colour - it's subtle but striking. There are flecks of silver microglitter that give the polish a bit of dimensionality in sunlight, and the scattered holo really pops in low light. It's pretty sheer so 3-4 coats are needed for opacity, but this lasted through me stripping wallpaper and repainting*, so I'm impressed with the wear.

*I've finally accepted that my 'study' is a total mess. It is, or rather was, basically the least appropriate room to do work in. I tried to de-decorate the room when we moved in by getting shot of the four different kinds of textured wallpaper, but somehow the job never got finished (and nor did the skanky carpet get replaced, or the broken radiator, or the window with the half-inch gaps outside the frame...). So I finally ripped the last of it off, repainted, made curtains, yadda yadda. The best part is that doing all this allowed me to buy a new bookshelf and filing cabinet. So part two of Operation Study involved sorting through six years of non-existent filing, which was three days of hell. But I am DONE, the room is no longer freezing, and I can find my journal print-offs. Result, and totally worth the three broken nails.

read more "China Glaze Ginger"

Clean Slate - Essie T-Bills Putty

I'm struggling in my relationship right now, so I needed a "clean slate" polish. Something neutral that wasn't sugary sweet and pink. Essie T-Bills Putty has rapidly become one of my favourite nudes - I used it previously as the base of my new French mani.

A beautiful neutral creme...just perfect. It is quite similar to my old stand-by - Essie Jazz. It is a bit lighter and a smidge pinker than Jazz, which you can see here:

(L: T-Bills Putty, R: Jazz)

The formula was old-school. Runny, watery, chemical-laden, but buildable. This was 2.5 coats.

Pretty, but not enough to mend a broken heart.

kittytokaren

read more "Clean Slate - Essie T-Bills Putty"

OPI Funkey Dunkey and Mad as a Hatter

After my last go at glitter tips, I decided to buy some of those PVC stencil things (off ebay) and try doing it properly. This is the result! The base is funkey dunkey (two coats) with two coats of mad as a hatter and two coats of lumos, to try and smooth out the gritty tide mark where the glitter met the creme. The Alice glitters are my absolute favourites - Burlesque really didn't tickle my pickle in comparison - and I'm terrified of using them up, so I like the fact that I can wear them as tips and not waste them quite so much (since both seem to chip on me when worn as full manis, meaning I usually only get two or three days' wear).













Funkey dunkey is a great 'Cadbury' purple. I just love mad as a hatter - the glitter is so bright and cheerful. Interestingly, I see the purple most in the bottle (it lives with my purple polishes) but wearing it over purple seems to bring the silver out more. I had a hell of a time doing this mani, though. I left the base for a couple of hours before stenciling. I don't know if the base wasn't thoroughly dry, or if the stencils are just vicious, because removing them pulled huge chunks of purple off on about 50% of the nails. Fortunately it's a thick cream so I touched up the bare patches in two coats and was able to cover the join marks with top coat, but it was a total PITA. So next time I will sleep on the base coat and be careful not to stick the stencils too hard.

read more "OPI Funkey Dunkey and Mad as a Hatter"

black nail polish

black nail polish

read more "black nail polish"

Gateway drug - SpaRitual Sacred Ground

So this is a bit of a story...

As some of you know, I have a strict "brand rule". I stick to a couple brands that I know work for me and have good lasting power for two primary reasons - a.) it limits my spending and b.) saves me the frustration of trying to get formulas to work for me that just...don't.

I placed an online order a while back and included some polishes a friend wanted - one of them being SpaRitual's Sacred Ground. The company accidentally sent me two of them, so I felt it was destiny for me to try it out...before I gave it away of course.

Lo and behold, I loved it.

(The pictures I took looked so much colourful in Photoshop when I cropped them. Somehow when I put them in here, the depth and beauty of the shimmer was lost. Maybe it will work on some of your monitors and it's just Blogger being weird??)

A gorgeous polish...a gunmetal grey base that seems to have hints of smoky purple and/or green...with warm gold and purple shimmer. Incredible, without being over the top. AND the formula was great. I now count SpaRitual and Orly as "allowed brands"...I wonder if this will be really bad for my wallet?

Have you tried SpaRitual? What do you think?

kittytokaren

read more "Gateway drug - SpaRitual Sacred Ground"

China Glaze Starboard

So, it only took me six months to wear this one. Actually I probably like this more for Autumn than Spring anyway; it has a slightly dusty, warm quality to it that I usually associate with leaves. In the picture it looks a little like Illamasqua Elope and while they're in the same family, this is much more muted and subtle. And only two coats, which is a bonus.

read more "China Glaze Starboard"

Berry Yoghurt - Essie Neo Whimsical

Trying to sneak one last summery polish in before I go full-on fall!

Essie Neo Whimsical - it really reminds me of multi-berry yoghurt - my favourite!

This borders on "not really working for my skin tone" as it makes my hands look a bit dirty, but its such a cute little colour, I can forgive it!

Are you ready for fall or still holding onto summer?

kittytokaren

read more "Berry Yoghurt - Essie Neo Whimsical"

Illamasqua Load

Load and I have history. The first time I applied this was on the train on the way to a gig (Innerpartysystem's last London show, in case you're interested. Probably not.) In retrospect, I was a little ambitious thinking I could get away with applying a pastel in a moving vehicle. The result was pretty predictable: it went everywhere and I looked like I had advanced stage leprosy. I wore gloves to the gig. So I cursed it, and filed it away in my drawer.

Giving it another go, I think I was much too hasty to dismiss this. Yes, it requires a lot of care to apply. It's thick and a bit gloppy and messy like most pastels, and takes three coats to opacity. It's obvious if the coats don't quite line up, because you get thick, semi-opaque tidemarks around the edges, which irks me a bit. I don't like having to work to get my polish perfect, since it's usually one of my 'kick back with a beer and bad TV*' activities. It also takes a bit of a while to dry.

And yet...I LOVE the colour! And in the pictures, it looks so perfect, so the work is definitely worth it. (Though I say so myself). It's such a gorgeously versatile shade, cream being one of my favourite colours, and it looks lovely on. Definitely worth the extra effort. This even works as a stamping or overlay colour because it's thick, which is unusual for such a pale colour.

As an aside, I can't help being reminded of buttercreme. Honestly, Illamasqua try their hearts out to come up filthy names, and all I can think of is food. Mmm...cake.

*Not so bad, lately - I'm totally hooked on both Forbrydelsen and The Killing and have been watching them simultaneously. Really great, both of them!

read more "Illamasqua Load"

Something a little special - OPI Merry Midnight

With so much hubbub over Orly's release of Fowl Play - a near dupe to OPI Merry Midnight - I thought I'd bust out the original and see how it felt!

This is OPI Merry Midnight over OPI Lincoln Park at Dark - prepare for many pics!

Merry Midnight is a very complex polish full of different colours of glitter and flakies...

...slightly subdued by a dark purple jelly base...

...so you can tell it's special from a distance, but you can really appreciate it up close...

Yikes. And I'll stop after that close-up of my cuticles.

I'm not typically one for glitter + flakies + sparkles + OMG, but I love this. I think that the dark-ish base makes it work for me! I've worn this for several special and fun party occasions, so it has a lot of great memories in it for me as well. I know Merry Midnight is a little hard to find right now, but from what I've seen of Orly Fowl Play it seems like a great substitute. Pick it up if you can!

Do you own either OPI Merry Midnight or Orly Fowl Play? Love/like/hate?

kittytokaren

read more "Something a little special - OPI Merry Midnight"