Nail Shape Experiment Failed

So I went on vacation to Central Europe for a few weeks. My general rule for vacations is to not wear polish at all. Bring a nail file and some cuticle cream and call it a day. I love nail polish, but not enough to lug around all the equipment and chemicals I need to keep my manis looking presentable.

Still, that means that my nails come home looking worse for wear. Cuticle cream is not enough to protect my forever weak talons from the elements, peeling, my teeth/mouth.

Upon my return home, inspired by

1. a lady on the subway with THE MOST PERFECT almond shaped nails I have ever seen (so elegant; I swear the look was flawless),
   
2. Adele's nude nails at the VMAs, and
   
3. the peels going on in the corners of my nails,

I decided to try almond shaped nails.

First came the round phase, which I quite liked. Then, as my nails grew away from the nail bed, I tried ever so slowly to fashion them into a more pointed shape.

This is what they looked like after 3 weeks.


(1 coat Essie Waltz, 1 coat Essie Vanity Fairest)

Yikes. It was even more insanely creepy and weird in person. Turns out, VNL does have the ability to sicken me.

I also hated wearing dark colors with them, drawing attention to these monstrosities. But the nails looked better all hidden away.


(2 coats BBCouture Erotic Night)

My most obvious problem is that my nail beds are too short and flared for this look to work after just one month of trying.

The fact is, I would have needed at least another 3-4 weeks of unbroken nail growth (impossible) to properly pull the look off, and I wasn't willing to deal with the ugly duckling phase in between. Especially since (i) I didn't know if the end result would look good on me and (ii) it would have been impractical anyway, given my keyboard-focused job.

Oh well, back to normal squoval nubs. (And back to regular posting!)

Maybe I'll go oval like K2K. I did quite like it.

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A few from my Top 20; re-swatched

In December, MUA's nail board had a Top 20 survey and I went on a swatching binge of my Top 20 colors of all time. I've posted these colors before, but I like these swatches better.

China Glaze Recycle

(2 coats)

Cool greys don't look so great on me so I love this one, which seems to have just a touch of brown in it.

BB Couture Moon Over Manhattan

(2 coats)

I need to pull this one out for a full mani soon. It's been too long.

Diamond Cosmetics Cherry Tobacco

(2 coats)

This is so freaking underrated. This has got to be one of the best reds ever.

Essie Limited Addiction

(2 coats)

Another great red. In terms of number of wears my #1 polish of 2010 by far. So many manis.

read more "A few from my Top 20; re-swatched"

A Couple of Wine-y Red's: Napa Valley Red & Galaxy Girl

BB Couture's Napa Valley Red

(2 coats)

I had been lemming this one for a long while. Finally got it and it turned out not be quite as jelly-ish as I had hoped. Oh well!

Orly's Galaxy Girl

(2 coats)

Eh cute but I'm good.

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Some old BB Couture NOTDs: Paradise, Caterpillar and Moon Over Manhattan

And thus begins my effort to try to post all of my old swatches that I haven't ever gotten around to posting -- part of my massive and massively delayed spring cleaning efforts. I will try to get to the rest of the China Glaze Vintage Vixen posts this weekend though. :)

BB Couture Caterpillar

I think this is an incredibly cute color: kelly green with gold shimmer. The day I took the photo, it was overcast so it's hard to see the shimmer... but it's there! Three coats. Typical great BB Couture application. I believe this is from the Spring 2010 collections (the bug, butterfly themed ones).

BB Couture Paradise

Mmm, lobster claws. I love this color but it did impart a certain lobstery look to my skin. It kind of reminds me of the color of calamine lotion, maybe a shade more purple than that. This was from the Haiti collection. Three coats, again, really wonderful application.

BB Couture Moon Over Manhattan

This is a relatively old BB Couture. I've had for... oh, probably a year before wearing it. I LOVE this shade: dark blue with a hint of green with silver microglitter. It's jelly but not quite as squishy as most BBC jellies I've encountered before.

Closeup of Moon Over Manhattan

It's not a sparkly polish but it's got spark to it. :)

read more "Some old BB Couture NOTDs: Paradise, Caterpillar and Moon Over Manhattan"

NOTD: BB Couture Horned Devil

This is 3 coats of BB Couture Horned Devil, from the recently released Butterfly Collection. Horned Devil is, as Flinty mentioned a few weeks ago, similar to Hermosa Surfer Girl - it's multi-colored glitter suspended in a jelly base. I do have some visible nail line (VNL) though I can't always see it - it depends on the lighting. I had to use 3 coats of topcoat to get it smooth. I am absolutely in love with this color. I'm also trying a new pic style, what do you think?

Sunlight:


Blurred:


Semi-shade:


Shade:


You can purchase Horned Devil from overallbeauty.com.

Are any of you trying to lose weight right now? One unfortunate side of graduate school has been weight gain for me. :-/ I finally weighed myself this weekend and it turns out that I've gained about 15-20 lbs. :( Aside from a few pairs of jeans that were always a little tight on me, my clothes still fit so I'm not sure where this weight has gone, but I'm convinced that I need to start dieting. I already work out about 5 days a week, 45 min - 1 hr (usually cardio, strength training on odd days) so I'm not sure what else to do workout-wise. If anyone has any tips, I'd be happy to hear them!

Thanks for looking!

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BB Couture Spring 2010: Man Bug and Horned Devil NOTDs

BB Couture does glittery jellies RIGHT. None of this gloopy formula with obscured glitter that has no sparkle! They have beautiful jellies that just shimmer with multicolored microglitter.

BB Couture Man Bug

This is the seafoam (slightly minty) green version of BB Couture Sea of Cortez. Gorgeous sheer jelly with a ton of gold, green and possibly silver microglitter. This is three coats and even though I'm not a fan of VNL in most polishes, I do think it works for these types of BB Couture polishes. I loved this as an NOTD when I wore it a week or so ago. (What is a Man Bug anyway?)

BB Couture Horned Devil

This one is ON FIRE. It reminds me of BB Couture Hermosa Surfer Girl, one of my favorite jellies. It's orange-y red with a truckload of gold, green and red (possibly?) microglitter that just lights up my nails. Such an awesome, lively polish. Again, this is three coats and so squishily jelly. :D Definitely one of my favorite NOTDs of late.

read more "BB Couture Spring 2010: Man Bug and Horned Devil NOTDs"

RBL polish comparisons - Square Pants & Teal

I'm finishing up all the RBLs I own today.

Square Pants

(4-5 coats - I can't quite remember)

This one actually has a very slight shimmer to it. Unfortunately, for any fans of this one out there - Square Pants got discontinued recently. I wore this as a mani quite some time ago (last summer) and, like the other RBLs from this mini-collection, it would not dry. But never mind all that, check the streakiness! 4 coats (at least) in and still?? Biissssh plz.


Kokomo

(3 coats)

I like this one more. 3 coats and it's much less streaky. And I think the yellow is a little more flattering. It's just really hard to pull off see through yellow w/out the mind going to places.


***

Teal

(2 coats)

OK. This is color win; it deserves all the praise it gets. But, ugh, I found it to be a chippy SOB. Still, I'm taken w/ this one because the color is so gorgeous. I found the coverage to be almost as good as Dead Calm but not quite. It needs two coats but you can almost get there w/ 1.


I'm surprised there aren't a ton of dark teals out there. Here are mine.

Nfu-Oh 570

(3 coats, middle finger is Teal)

Look at that bottle color! 3 coats and I'm no where near it. Plus this is a jelly, which Teal is most definitely not. Moving on.

StrangeBeautiful Vol1 and Vol3

(Index Vol 1 - 2 coats, Ring Vol 3 - 2 coats)

I think your favorite here comes down to a question of taste. All those colors are awesome. If you like a little more green to your turquoises go w/ Vol1, a little bluer go Teal, a little dusty go Vol3. And the application is universally decent w/ all three. Although, Teal is decidedly less thick. So Teal probably wins the application contest.

I'm ashamed to admit I haven't worn either of the SB teals as a NOTD yet. So I can't speak on that.

Kokomo and Teal win.

FINISHED!

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RBL polish comparisons - Bikini Bottom & Recycle

My second to last RBL comparison post features a couple colors I'm kind of eh about and one formula I'm crazy about.

Bikini Bottom

(3 coats)

I love milky sheers. Their look just works w/ my skin, what can I say. The drawback is that they tend to be very streaky. (Necessitating multiple coats, which I am unwilling to do for swatches. Sowwy :) ) Bikini Bottom is no different. While I don't mind paying upwards of $10 bucks for a streaky sheer, $18 is just too much.

Electric Avenue

(Middle & Pinky EA 3 coats, Ring BBC 3 coats)

This is not a good replacement option. The color is less pronounced and I think a little bit greener. Worse, it's even more streaky.

Anybody else have any good replacement options for Bikini Bottom? CG Moody Blue perhaps?

***

Recycle

(2 coats)

After swatching this one, I decided I needed to wear it as a NOTD again because I wasn't fair to it the first time. Initially, the color bored me to tears (it still does; I think both Illamasqua and Orly did dark green better), so I ended up putting silly rhinestones all over the pinky and then taking it off altogether w/in a few hours.

Second time around, the wear was great. I wore Recycle for almost 3 days without issue. The last day was the day I moved and my nails held up reasonably well considering the beating they were taking.

Recycle and No More War are the only 2 RBLs I own where I am satisfied w/ the lasting power and the formula. They both have similar consistencies, definitively needing at least 2 coats to get good coverage. Interesting...It wasn't the 1 coaters that impressed me most but the 2 coaters. So, folks, I only own 8 RBLs...Are there any fanatics out there that can tell me which RBLs need at least 2 coats and have that almost-a-jelly creme consistency?

Rampage

(Middle and Pinky Rampage 3 coats, Ring Recycle 2 coats)

It's a little deeper, a little richer, a little jellier, a little cheaper, and a little better.

#569

(Middle and Pinky #569 3 coats, Ring Recycle 3 coats)

Unfortunately, I don't have Orly's Enchanted Forest to do a comparison shot. I bought it right before Xmas and brought it home w/ me for the holidays. My sister saw it and squeeled. What can I say, I'm a sucker for spreading the NP love.

So in lieu of that, here's a kind of unfair comparison w/ 569. Sigh...I love almost black jellies. They are just so cool. I'll say this, Recycle certainly beats 569 in the application and longevity departments (I am not happy w/ Nfu-Oh's jelly formula). But in the color department...

So for now, Bikini Bottom wins in my sheer light blue race. Not an auspicious triumph, however. And Rampage wins in the deeply talented dark green tournament.

read more "RBL polish comparisons - Bikini Bottom & Recycle"

Old N-Art-OTD: icy gradient using BB Couture Electric Avenue, ChG Nova and Claire's Hollywood

I'm flying to New York tonight so I thought I might post a pic of a mani inspired by cold, ice and snow. I've tried a few gradients before but this was the first that turned out presentable. It was so hugely thick by the time I was done with it, it looked like I had fake nails on.

Indoors with flash:

In the lightbox:

Outdoors in the sun:

I used BB Couture Electric Avenue (a icy pale blue jelly that took five coats to even start to resemble opaque), Claire's Hollywood (a mix of fine silver glitter and small holo glitter) and China Glaze Nova (big hex glitter mixed with small holo glitter). I messed up a couple of times so I kept on having to paint new coats of everything on top of what I had already done: by the end, there were at least a dozen coats of polish (including base and top). Took forever to dry and I got bubbles but I loved this look and kept it on for over 36 hours (which is a lot for me these days!) Just long enough to wear to my SO's work's holiday party at least.

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BB Couture Tropical Sunset

So here's the game I play regularly with my swatch photos:

Phase 1: take photos.

Phase 2: decide to not upload them until I get a whole bunch.

Phase 3: upload them, select the ones I want to use, crop them.

Phase 4 (usually two weeks after uploading them): regret not LABELING the photos with the names of the polishes.

Phase 5: spend hours trying to match polish pic with polish name... which is especially a challenge with 500+ polishes... and the fact that I do swap/sell somewhat regularly so by the time I get around to labeling the photos, I may not even have the polish anymore.

Phase 6: give up on ID'ing those photos and just take photos of other polishes and immediately upload and label those. Swear to myself I'll always be that vigilant.

Phase 7: Go back to old habits. Rinse, repeat.

As a result, I have about 40 unlabeled photos (in about 1000) of polishes taken awhile back but that I can't post them because I've been a slacker. Also, some were taken half a year ago when I was barely above nubbin (the last few weeks of my first year of grad school included a lot of nail biting) so they barely look like my nails. Witness:

Okay, they're a tiny bit more than nubbin. But not by much. Pretty sure I gave this polish away. FingerPaints website is a pain and a half for accurate representations of their colors. Am I ever going to figure out what this somewhat ordinary pink with gold shimmer is? Is it worth my time? And then I always get paranoid about being wrong: I don't want to say this is one polish when it might be another.

This is typical flinty-esque slacker behavior. The slacking off that happens early on inevitably extends the process of doing things later. I do this with my research too. I run analyses and fail to label my output and graphs and then have to work backwards weeks later to figure out WTF I did. Me and my sucky habits. I'd have so much more time if I just do things when I'm supposed to do them.

Anyway, the reason I went on this whole long thing is because I just went through the process of backtracking to figure out what this polish was: man, I'm inefficient! I did this swatch a month ago. Looking at the time-stamp has convinced me that this was the mystery hot pink polish (actually, hot coral pink) that I was under my Amour Rain Glitter swatch: these current photos were taken on Thursday, October 15th at 2:32pm and the Rain Glitter photos were taken on the same day at 2:37pm.

BB Couture Tropical Sunset

Like I said, hot coral pink creme. Practically neon and a little more corally than it appears in this photo. As with most BB Coutures, application was easy-breezy and the above was two coats (how dumb is it that I remember how many coats I used but I don't remember the names of the polishes?). I'd rather it as a pedi shade personally since I'm not much for neon-ish pinks on my tips (let's face it, I'm not much for neon-ish pinks anywhere) but for those who like this color family, it's a great polish.

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Old NOTD: BB Couture Sea of Cortez

BB Couture Sea of Cortez

For those who can embrace the VNL... what a jelly! Vivid blue with of blue, green and silver (it looks like) microglitter. Like most BB Coutures, it applies like a dream. In this case, three coats (so no, probably can't get rid of the VNL). This tipwear is after two days with Diamont.

Close-up of Sea of Cortez

It's like sailing on a gorgeous fake glittery ocean. :)

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Some more BB Couture swatches!

Another Monday. I so don't want to go to school right now. One week in and already exhausted!

First up, a polish that's been posted everywhere.

BB Couture Green Goblin

Dark green creme. For some reason, the application on this one was harder than the other BB Coutures that I've tried: a bit thick and hard to control.

BB Couture Green Goblin with La Femme Sapphire glitter on top

Two layers of this blue and gold glitter suspended in dark dusty blue jelly. Gorgeous in the bottle, not as fab on the nail. The above shows three coats.

BB Couture Hot Spot

Very bright orange (almost red) with gold shimmer. Went on nice and easy. I don't think it looks good on me though.

BB Couture Hound Dog

Dark chocolate creme with highly glossy finish. Three coats is pictured above; it could've used a fourth coat because it was still slightly uneven. True, this was a quick swatch and I probably could've exercised more patience in application but there are a lot of polishes that I swatch quickly that are even in three coats. Still, I love this polish.

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BB Couture Swatches 2

This is Part 2 of my BB Couture haul. This second half is comprised of 6 dark colors. Overall the application and formula that came w/ the darker colors was so much nicer. Most were 2 coaters, applied nicely, and dried well. Again, they are ordered from least favorite to favorite.



Spellbound & Obsession. 2 coats each.

Are you friends w/ any identical twins? You know how they can look the exact same unless you know them well and then you pick up a few characteristics here or there that you can use to tell them apart? Maybe a crooked ear, a nicer jaw line, slightly darker hair, one's a little shorter, one has creepy eyes, etc etc. That's basically what we're dealing w/ here. Both are vamps. Both have subtle shimmer.

In the bottle they look different. Spellbound is clearly plum based whereas Obsession has more of a red wine thing happening. When I applied that first layer you could really see the difference. However, upon second coat they became virtually identical. They both darkened up and were nice and vampy. Also, in certain lighting they looked close to black.

I listed these as least favorite because there is nothing particularly original about them. I have a couple just like Spellbound in my possession already. They're both lovely vamps than aren't going to give you any trouble in terms of application.

Which one you get depends on your coloring, if you have warm based tones, go for Obsession. Cool based tones should go for Spellbound. B/c of this, I prefer Obsession. I generally find red wine vamps look just a bit better on me than plum ones. I'll probably swap Spellbound. However, I'm holding onto Obsession b/c I didn't have a red wine vamp w/ shimmer in my collection.


Maleficent Magenta. 2 coats. (Real life color is a bit more purple.)

Again applied well and was even after 1 thin coat and a second slightly thicker coat (my general polish application MO). Nothing wrong w/ this color, a deep purple w/ shimmer. It's just a little blah to me. I think I would have liked it a whole lot more if it were just a creme.


Midnight desire. 2 coats.

Oooh this one was scawwwwy. The flash from the camera shows off the shimmer but it also lies and gives this one a bit more life than it has in reality. In the bottle this color is breathtaking. A blackened purple w/ PINK shimmer throughout. On the nail it's a bit less interesting. The first coat tells you what you're dealing w/ this. This polish is not purple at all. In fact it has a dark blue base. But as you layer on the second coat, the shimmer builds and turns the polish more purple. This is also pretty much the closest polish I have to black other than black/charcoal. It is really dark. The only word I can use to describe this interesting fellow: Goth. This is definitely gothy. All Hallows' Eve, here I come!!


Balboa Beach Bunny. 3 coats.

A purple jelly base (w/ a bit of shimmer) w/ red, blue, and silver glitter. This one is clearly the sibling to Dragon's Breath (dark red jelly w/ same glitter). I like it, not as much as Dragon's Breath, however. Older bottles of this polish had bar glitter as well. Sadly this one didn't at all. A disappointment. But I'm still buyin' what this bunny's sellin'.


Erotic Night. 3 coats.

God I love a jelly. Look see? No shimmer, glitter, anything sparkly to be seen, and it's my fav. This is a great color and something I don't have in my collection. A dark red that isn't vampy (it has a pink-y base to it). It's really sexy. However, this one had the worst application of this bunch. You definitely need 3 coats to get it even. And there was still some cuticle drag. Still, I love and I will wear it many times.


So there we have it. This half applied much better, but there were fewer colors I imagine I will be wearing frequently.

read more "BB Couture Swatches 2"