Anna Sui 504

Anna Sui 504

I really wanted to love this polish. I hadn't seen anything else like it: dark auburn jelly with a lot of gold glitter and green iridescent flakies. I mean, what a combination: it's so unusual! Well, I loved the color, I love the gold glitter, the brownish jelly, the typical candy-floral Anna Sui scent (and the cute rose-shaped bottle)... but the flakies were less than fab. Stiffest. flakies. ever. The small flakies were okay but the large pieces didn't spread very well and stuck up in weird angles on my nails. I kept on piling on the layers (I think the above shows four or five?), trying to get more flakies but to no avail.

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I recently needed a super fun mani to cheer me up so what did I decide to paint my nails? I decided to paint them OPI Catch Me in Your Net which is a beautiful polish and is stunning on its own, but I wanted more.... so I topped it off with an Anna Sui glitter that I picked up earlier in the month called 101.

So what's the deal with these Anna Sui polishes? For one, they come in really cute packaging!

The bottle is a rose and on top of the handle, there is also a rose! So adorable. (sorry for the dust) The polish is also supposed to have a rose scent. Although, to me it smells like processed lychee fruits. Very sweet and kinda gives me a headache after a while if my fingers are close to my nose for longer than a few minutes.

Downside? They cost $15!!!!!!!! I bought this at the Anna Sui boutique in Soho, NYC... I also had to pay NYC tax on it :( It's been kinda rough lately so I splurged a bit and bought two polishes from the boutique. This is what my mani ended up looking like: OPI Catch Me in Your Net with Anna Sui 101 layered over it, two coats each.

This picture is in natural light so you can see the individual pieces of glitter and sparkles. Anna Sui 101 is a sheer bright blue jelly with round bright blue, aqua, and green glitter. And a couple more pictures just because I loved this mani so much...

You can sorta see the green peaking through from the OPI! I think that's what made this mani so so pretty :) This made my mani so freaking SPARKLEY, couldn't stop staring at it and didn't want to take it off!! After a day of wear and doing things with my hands, the scent started to fade though which I was thankful for, but kinda sad at the same time because by day 2 it was completely gone. I bought this shade and another one that I haven't tried yet. Would I buy Anna Sui again? Probably not since it was so much money unless she comes out with some super unique gorgeous colors!

Anyone else try Anna Sui?? Thoughts? Tips?

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Anna Sui #606

Yup. In Chicago. Giving a talk today. Eep. Eep. Eep. Eep. Eep.

Anyway.

I was overjoyed to see that Urban Outfitters started carrying Anna Sui polishes online. I've been looking for a reliable place to order Anna Sui polishes from for years now. Some people are turned off by it but I really do enjoy the candy rose scent the nail polish dries down to: it lasts for days.

Anna Sui #606

Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for these polishes were dampened by the fact that I did not really enjoy any of the three polishes I ordered. For $15+shipping, it's in the category of, "It had better be phenomenal or I'll be pissed." And because they were not phenomenal... Anyway. Anna Sui #606 is a bright orange jelly with sparse multisized gold glitter. I like the color. I like the glitter. I like the combination of the color and the glitter. And, of course, I love the candy rose scent. And I love the rose-shaped bottle! BUT... four coats and still not opaque? And then took forever to dry (with Gelous bc and Diamont tc). Which then meant my nails got ruined when, two hours later, I continued work on a decoupaging project (a birthday gift for my SO several weeks ago -- he's a great cook so I made him a recipe binder).

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As pristine as the newly fallen snow: some white swatches

This is probably going to be a visually boring post as it is devoted to one single color: white. But hopefully it'll be informative to somebody -- hopefully, D's whet some appetites on white nail polish with her Underware comparisons.

I'm pretty much always on a quest for a perfect opaque white creme. WnW White is often recommended. But in my experience, it isn't as fab as WnW Black. Very streaky and chalky on me.

I can't locate photos of all the opaque white polishes I've tried out and so before I forget, here are some of the ones I've tried but won't be showing photos of:

• Anna Sui 015: Soft white. As much as I love the candy rose scent of these polishes, this one was a nightmare. Three coats, totally uneven, goopy, and it never dried. (And it resembled White Out in texture.) Smelled nice... but nice-smelling nail polish is of no use to me when I can't wear it!

• Rescue Beauty Lounge Underware: Stark white. D's covered this one already. I've heard tell that this is a brilliant one-coat wonder! For me, that was simply not true. Three coats, also uneven. I tried it under the pastel jellies like Bikini Bottom for the "lit within" look... It looked pretty bad because the Underware was very streaky. So whatever power other people have over RBLs... I certainly do not possess it.

• CND Cream Washed: Beige-white. Not opaque at all. Trust me, I tried...

• OPI Alpine White: Stark white. It's been years since I've used it but have found this to be a pretty trustworthy white: two coater for me, IIRC.

OPI Tickets to Paradise

This is definitely not meant to be an opaque polish: the photo above shows five or six coats. It also leans a bit pinkish grey. It's a very nice polish with a pleasant jelly finish but not quite what I want in an opaque white creme.

Missha WH001

Soft white. Four coats, still VERY uneven. It was only a couple of dollars but totally not a worthwhile polish for me.

CND Brilliant White

Stark white. Four coats, very easy to build (please ignore the ugly chips that happened because it refused to dry for hours and hours). Certainly very close to what I want in a white (opaque, smooth and creamy in texture) but four coats was pushing my patience. Brilliant White was probably one of the better ones I've tried though!

American Apparel Cotton

Cream white. I like how soft this white is: it just has a tinge of tan in there. It does even out in three coats -- and does apply quite nicely for a white -- but man oh man, did this totally not dry at all.

Revlon Street Wear White Out

And saved the best for last: I need backups of this one. It's closer to a softer white than a super stark white. Passable at two coats but really needs three... but when you apply that third coat, it's opaque white polish perfection. So smooth (though not glossy). And so easy to apply! I hate having a discontinued polish be an HG of any sort -- and thus, the search continues -- but really, quite a jewel of a polish and one of the ones that I got for 4 for $1. :)

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Old NOTD, Rescue Beauty Lounge Purple Haze

Do you know how much I hate that I'm starting to love RBL polishes? I can't afford to not-dislike this line! But noo... the cremes have to apply so nicely and the colors be so pretty.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Purple Haze

It's a bit less saturated and a teeeny bit bluer IRL. Really smooth application, which was heaven after an afternoon of swatching polishes that were goopy or too sheer. I keep telling myself that though this one wore gorgeously (with Diamont topcoat) without even the terrible tipwear I'm used to, one of my three RBLs (Locavore) chipped off in less than six hours... and my bottle of Grunge is nowhere near grunge-y. I keep telling myself: it's a FLUKE. One out of three are not good odds for a brand. That's a 33.33% success rate in finding a polish that doesn't disappoint me... and for this pricetag -- well, not this one specifically because I got it in a swap -- it's gotta be great. So NO MORE RBLs unless I get them on some crazy sale or am able to swap for them.

Shush, I know three is a really small N.

In other news, the continuing saga of my tuition: after I got my tuition adjusted as an in-state student, it's been telling me I owe them $4000+ still (as an in-state student). Because I'm a TA, I'm supposed to get financial aid that pays for my education and health benefits which brings the total I owe to ~$350. But even though I've already started TAing this quarter, my online account still tells me I owe them $4000+! Which is an amount I can't afford to pay because I don't have $4000 lying around. Anyway, today was the last day to pay my tuition without being assessed late fees. Which I had anticipated... which is why I was after people a week ago to correct my tuition bill (after three weeks worth of chasing people down to change my residency). But it didn't happen.

So today, after an hour of my department's administrative assistant calling everyone she could think of -- NEVER EVER disrespect your department's admin assistants, they can make your life much easier or much harder -- we finally figured out WHY my financial aid has not been paid out. Get this:

1. My financial aid has not yet been applied to my account, which is why it says I still owe $4000+.

2. The reason my financial aid was has not yet been applied to my account is because I am not a registered student.

3. The reason I'm not a registered student is because I'm not allowed to register unless my tuition has been paid.

4. I can't afford to pay my tuition until my financial aid has been applied to my account.

I apologize to any kidlings or proper people who are reading this but WHAT. THE. FUCK. Now I have to traipse over to the Registrar's Office (the ones who delayed this whole process to begin with because of my residency thing) and get some special permission to register despite my not paying. And because I am now paying late, I will have to pay late fees. Thanks. A lot.

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NOTD from Labor Day (and reader request): Anna Sui 02

If I had an endless supply of money, I would probably blow a good portion of it on Anna Sui polishes. As it is, I depend on people de-stashing and swapping or selling their Anna Sui polishes for cheap to supply my habit.

For those of you who aren't familiar with the brand, these polishes have a strong candied rose perfume scent. I think it's adorable and it lingers long after a mani has set and dried (as long as you haven't layered it over anything that makes it smell like bugspray which is what happened to another time I used an Anna Sui polish). Two days after this recent mani application, my SO was still commenting on the scent. I don't think he was commenting favorably on it but I favored it so on it stayed. :)

Anna Sui 02

It's like candy. Sweet-smelling candy. With glitter! Unlike a lot of my chunky glitters, these big chunks are actually circular (as opposed to hexagonal). There are also square and small hex glitters, all suspended in a dark pink jelly. Three coats are pictured above and because it's a jelly, you can see all the glitter from even the first coat -- which I'm led to believe is the point. And if it isn't the point, it should be made the point. I love jelly glitters with depth!

Close-up of Anna Sui 02

Glitter is good stuff. I didn't like glitters as a teenager; didn't even like it that much a couple of years ago. But now, it's like, "Give me glitter... or give me death... by glitter." What makes this great is that I gesture a lot when I'm talking and even more when I have sparkly nail polish on -- that or it seems like more because it's more attention-catching. Since I work with a bunch of language people, they're always aware of what gestures I'm using to accompany my talk. The new grad student in my lab always comments on it. Actually, the first time I sat down socially with him, I was wearing a holo nail polish (I think it was ChG Kaleidoscope Him Out) and he interrupted me and asked if I was capable of talking without gesturing. My answer: "Nope." I mean, seriously -- I'm incapable. It helps me keep track of my thoughts (so-called "cognitive offloading"), it captures my audience's attention... and I don't feel fully expressive without using gesture: my gestures don't necessarily have set meaning unto themselves but they complement what I'm saying with words.

There's a whole psychological literature having to do with gesture: how we gesture, why we do it, how it might help us process information. Super nifty stuff! If anyone's interested, I recommend Susan Goldin-Meadow's book Hearing Gesture: How Our Hands Help Us Think. (You can read a preview of it here through Google Books.) University of Chicago's Goldin-Meadow -- great name, eh? -- is a fantastic writer: her writing is so clear and engaging, whether it's in a book meant for a wider market or in research papers meant for her colleagues. She uses solid examples from real life but she's also talented at making complex research accessible without dumbing it down . Really, one of my favorite academic writers. And her research is so cool. Squee!

(If only gesture research wasn't such a pain in the ass: I mean, I complain about doing audio transcripts of conversations. Video transcripts of gesture research is where the real pain is. My lab was all into gesture research the year before I matriculated and my advisor, who is pretty laissez-faire, was happy to go along with the zeitgeist. Now she's like, "You're interested in gesture? Let me recommend... NOT gesture." It's just too time consuming and no one wants to spend eternity in grad school. If and when I get tenure in... 12+ years, I'll do some gesture stuff. For now, spoken language is fun enough.)

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My first BB Coutures! (and a couple of others)

Yesterday, I wrote what was probably one of the longest emails in the existence of mankind. Which isn't too impressive because email hasn't been around so long (in terms of the existence of mankind). Like I've mentioned before, the research project I was an RA on back in 2004 is finally being written up for publication in a peer-reviewed journal. The professor I worked for sent over a draft for critique. And I wrote a very, very long one. I'm not sure it was that coherent. It took me about six hours to figure out what I was trying to say and I kind of feel sorry for her that she woke to that email in her inbox this morning.

It was a lot of fun to revisit the project, which was on children's language acquisition, especially since the theoretical orientation of my PhD program differs a lot from the theoretical orientation I was trained in during college. And it was fabulous to write for the first time in a month (woot vacation! woot not being so sick that I can't even sit up!), even if it was just a rambling email. I should be doing a lot more research-oriented writing, not just because I have to be doing it, but because I really enjoy it. I love writing, I love ideas, I love letting my mind wander all over the place and reading a whole bunch of articles and eventually coming down to some sort of deadline -- usually one that has whooshed right by -- and pulling it all together. I love choosing words, reordering thoughts -- trying to say exactly what I mean. Doesn't always work but I usually have fun doing it.

Anyway, having stared at the computer for hours yesterday, I decided to stare at my nails today and do some swatching. My untrieds box was full again so I spent some time swatching about 15 polishes (and taking pictures). Amongst my untrieds were my first two BB Couture polishes that I had swapped for. Coincidentally enough, the woman I swapped with currently lives on the same street I lived in Somerville, MA for the first two years after I graduated from college! Small world. (Well, it was a big street.)

These did apply very smoothly but I can't say they were precisely my cup of tea; I haven't tried enough yet to make up my mind about the brand. First up...

BB Couture Venice Party

If the had been sun out today, it would have been easier to see the blue opalescent glitter in this polish...

BB Couture Blind Love

I thought this was going to be more silver but it turned out to be more pewter and I really don't know how I feel about pewter; one of the reasons I'm holding out on ChG Cords, I guess.

Another polish I swatched out was Chelsea Psycho Green (also courtesy of a swap!), which looks like it might turn out to be a NARS Zulu-like jelly but then dries slightly matte.

Chelsea Psycho Green

Chelsea Psycho Green layered with Anna Sui 235, which has blue and red opalescent multi-sized glitter suspended in a jelly of a non-descript shade (actually, it looks like a muddy jelly but applies clear)

Weird thing about Anna Sui polishes: they're perfumed. At first, it smells floral... and then it smells like bug spray.

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