Dior Ebony with Confetti Tazmanian Devil

Today I am a very sad panda. I've had to cancel my flight back home to New York because I am sick as a dog. It's going to be a lonely Thanksgiving for me... :(

Confetti Tazmanian Devil over Dior Ebony

Trying out my brand new iPhone 4S camera. Not bad in non-well-lit scenarios (and while lying in bed, too dizzy to move)! Super cheerful manicure (three coats of Tasmanian Devil over two coats of Dior Ebony). What is it about glitter that makes life just a tiny bit better?

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OPI Red Shatter over OPI Rally Pretty Pink (Serena Williams collex)

OPI Red Shatter over OPI Rally Pretty Pink

I have been so pleasantly surprised by the gorgeousness of the Serena Williams collection -- I think I may have almost all of them -- but Red Shatter was a disappointment. First of all, Rally Pretty Pink is, as the name suggests, really damn pretty. And Red Shatter kind of is a dull jelly... which just makes the manicure look lifeless. :( I wouldn't hesitate to try out Red Shatter on, say, a white creme but it seems a waste to use it on an interesting shimmery polish.

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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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Nicole ...Spotted! over Dior Nirvana

Nicole ...Spotted! over Dior Nirvana

Nicole ...Spotted! (one of the dumber polish names, imo) is multicolored (blue, gold) and multisized glitter (some hex, some micro) suspended in a turquoise jelly. The polish alone is pretty sheer so I layered it over Dior Nirvana, whose color is pretty much a perfect match for the Nicole jelly. It was less sparkly than I expected it to be, leading me to suspect that it might actually be a better layering polish over a contrasting color. Still, it was a nice way to extend my Nirvana manicure for another day before I got bored of it. :)

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Chanel Peridot

My new academic year's resolution -- besides to finish my qualifying exams at the end of the Winter 2012 quarter -- is to be more consistent about posting here!

Chanel Peridot

Got lots of compliments on this one. It felt more like a foil to me than a duochrome and oddly enough, the duochrome is more pronounced in the photos than in real life. Still, it was sparkly and bright. A little streaky on the application and you can see some evidence of brushstrokes. Three coats, thinner than I expected though. The photo was taken on the fourth day of wear and, as you can see, it was still chip-free!

Close-up on Peridot

So bright, it burns. :)

I've been up to quite a bit lately. Attended a wedding in Seattle. Saw friends that I haven't seen in a long time (all of whom seem to be in wedding planning mode... so there was a lot of conversation about cakes and caterers, dresses and... more dresses). There are a lot of pregnant women in my life so I'm making quilts, burp cloths and other basic, easy-to-sew baby items. I have also started making quilts for Quilts for Kids, an organization that provides handmade quilts for children in hospitals. I don't get that much time for hobbies and volunteer work, so it's gratifying to be able to kill two birds with one stone on that one. Attempting to make a dress from a 1952 pattern... I suck at sewing darts but now I'm super picky about buying clothes because I'm so aware of how they're made and how they fit. I tried to herd my RAs and got a bit of participant running done in the last two weeks of the summer quarter. I'm doing a little bit of freelance editing for an academic in another country who needs a little help with English and English-language publishing. My own paper just got slung back to me for a second revise/resubmit and I'm writing this post while trying to force myself to read all the comments VERY VERY CAREFULLY so I can see exactly how dumb I am. (Seriously, I can't type numbers. It's a very bad thing to be bad at as a researcher!) I went to the dentist for the first time in three years: I needed two appointments to properly clean my teeth (ugh) and I found out that my previous dentist did a crappy job applying two of my crowns, and thus they need to be replaced (double ugh). Lots of dentist visits. Though I like this dentist and his office a lot: they're the most cheerful bunch of people and all patients get a flower at the end of their appointments. I'm getting LASIK in about a month, so there's been a lot of back and forth to ophthalmologists (and one day I'll spell that correctly on the first try -- I forgot the first 'l' again... at least I got all the 'h's this time). I can't wear glasses because all the glasses I've ever had have given me a splitting headache and my eyes seem to have developed an allergic reaction to all sorts of contact lenses in the past year. It's a sh*tload of money but I'm hopeful that it'll be a good investment. And I'm slogging through a huge backlog of NOTD photos and trying to get some of the summer and fall collections swatched. So I've been busy... and spending more money on fabric than polish lately. A history of cosmetics obsession translates really well to sewing and fabric choices.

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China Glaze 108 Degrees

You know, I received this from China Glaze in the spring (and wore and photographed it in spring) but it seems much more appropriate to post this in summer, don't you think?

China Glaze 108 Degrees

Hot magenta jelly with either pink or purple shimmer. It is HOT. (The polish, not the weather. At least, not for me.) Still some VNL at three coats, as befits a jelly. :)

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Many, many pictures of OPI Rally Pretty Pink

I spent most of the three days I wore this staring at my nails. Staring at them indoors, staring at the outdoors, staring at them during the day, staring at them during the night... and taking photos of most of that process.

OPI Rally Pretty Pink (outdoors in direct sunlight)

(outdoors in indirect sunlight)

(indoors in lightbox)

(indoors, indoor lighting, no flash)

I never thought I'd ever go so nutty over a pink shimmer! But it's so much more than just a pink

shimmer. It's a ton of gold foil (and green shimmer, perhaps?... though that might just be a trick of the light) suspended with a pink-purple jelly that can look like a slightly dusty magenta or a really rich red-leaning purple, depending on light and angle. Three coats -- could've used a fourth because it's jelly and the more you put on, the more shimmer you get! But three coats was sufficient. There was no color that it looked like "most of the time" (hence the many photos in different types of lighting situations). So changeable, so lovely. It sparkles so hard, it burns.

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Dior Nirvana

Dior Nirvana

Nirvana indeed! A wonderful teal polish that has a very subtle but very real blue shimmer. I'm so glad Dior has started releasing more interesting shades because for awhile there, I was afraid I would have to start to enjoy reds, pinks and beiges in order to ever get a Dior Vernis fix. :P Two coats. Looked great for all four days I wore it.

Closeup of Nirvana

I took maybe two dozen photos with the express goal of trying to capture the shimmer. You can kind of see it in this closeup photo. I didn't even notice the shimmer when I applied it. I only realized it was a shimmer polish when I got out in the sun. (It was a great moment because my first thought was, "Aw, man, did I accidentally get some shimmer polish mixed up with my Diamont again??" (No, I didn't.)

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Dior Aloha (Electric Tropics, Summer 2011)

Dior Aloha

Ahh. A neon orange creme I can get behind. Neons always screw with my camera so just imagine this photo as being less red and more screamingly neon. Applied gorgeously: it could've been fine in two coats but I did three. As usual for Diors, it dried quickly. I didn't use the topcoat that came in the Electric Tropics set (and honestly, was miffed that I had to pay extra for a topcoat I didn't want) so this was just using Poshe. Photo was taken on Day 3.

Oddly, the bottle was made out of orange-tinted glass. The tint was actually far more muted than the actual shade of the polish, which makes me think that they didn't want it to be so screamingly loud in their displays. (Otherwise, why on earth would you put nail polish into anything but a clear bottle? What's the point?) But it is loud. And I love it.

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Illamasqua Radium

I love this polish. Love love love.

Love love love love.

Illamasqua Radium

I wore this for four or so days? I believe this was taken on Day 3: just a bit of tipwear in evidence. It's such a great green polish: it's between lime and grass and is full of yellow and light green shimmer. This was three coats.

Closeup of Radium

So bright, so green! So up my alley. I wore this in May -- yes, it's a very long backlog of NOTDs I've got -- and it was such a great pick-me-up spring color. :)

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Color Club Wink Wink Twinkle (Starry Temptress, Spring 2011)

I remember reading somewhere that they had a great experience with these polishes and that they were smooth and easy to apply... and it's entirely possible that they are just better at nail polish than I am but... umm... this wasn't cool. (I mean, neither are my cuticles here but my cuticles didn't make application hard nor made it dry extremely bumpy.)

Either way, not really pleased I bought the entire collection on faith. I should stop doing that.

Color Club Wink Wink Twinkle

As I already mentioned: bumpy, goopy, hard to apply. I'm okay with the dull, non-sparkly glitter. The color is pretty cool, a neon-ish red-leaning purple. But.... yeah, nothing special and I could've skipped it and had no regrets.

Closeup of Wink Wink Twinkle

Cute story about the SO and his trying to engage in the activities I enjoy:

We were in the mall and I had a Groupon to a beauty supply store that I wanted to spend. This store carried most of the Deb Lippmann collection and I was trying to decide between Don't Tell Mama and Wicked Game. Having nothing better to do at the moment, he started pointing to each of the polishes and proclaiming whether he thought they were good or not.

He went down the row and when he got the the fabulous Lippmann glitters, he was like, "Wow, I would put any of these on my toes. Even the pink one [Some Enchanted Evening]. I hate pink but I would wear that pink one on my toes."

And then he got to Bad Romance and was like, "I would wear this on my fingers! Can you get ALL of these?" (He pointed to all the glitters.)

"Uh, honey? I HAVE all of these."

Anyhoo, he's currently walkin' around with Across the Universe on his toes.

He has the most uncanny way of enjoying the MOST EXPENSIVE things. When Bath and Body Works still regularly had their non-holidays Temptations 3-in-1s, he routinely preferred the twice-as-expensive Philosophy 3-in-1s. He likes the LUSH solid shampoos ($10 each) but vastly prefers BIG or Curly Wurly ($22 each). Whenever I give him a few nail polishes to choose from, he picks the most expensive. (I mean, the boy likes his Chanel and Dior. But never Color Club or Milani! Or even OPI! WTF, dude.) And he doesn't know the prices of any of these things.

Lately, he's been using my Dermalogica Microfoliant because he had a ton of peeling skin from sunburn/windburn while going whale watching for four hours without any sunblock. While we were at the beauty supply spending my Groupon, he saw a Dermalogica display and asked, "Hey, is this the stuff I've been using? I like it. Maybe you should get more."

"Did you use it up ALREADY??" I've had it for years and was thinking that if he had used it all up unnecessarily, he was going to foot the bill for the next one.

"No, but maybe you should stock up." So, I went over to the display, picked up a Microfoliant box and showed him the price ($50). He just sort of stared in shock at the pricetag.

My response: "Maybe you'll be more careful about not spilling two teaspoons of it all over the counter next time."

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China Glaze Fault Lines Crackle over Huemorista Hidden Rainbow

I wasn't ready to take off my Hidden Rainbow mani so I put ChG Fault Lines over it.

China Glaze Fault Lines over Huemorista Hidden Rainbow

Errr. This was not pretty. Is there a reason this dried so dull and cracked so sadly? C'mon, it was a purple shimmer crackle! That's practically a formula for gorgeous, no? :( This is one thick coat of Fault Lines.

Fault Lines over Hidden Rainbow

Yeah, doesn't look better in closeup... at all. Yuck.

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Huemorista Hidden Rainbow

Some enterprising nail polish aficionado is selling her own homemade nail polish on etsy! Check out her store, Huemorista. I bought six of her nail polishes (which come in those cute mini bottles) awhile back and have only had a chance to wear one of them so far.

Huemorista Hidden Rainbow

If it were slightly more blue, it would be what I wanted Lippmann Glitter in the Air to be. But as it is, it's a grey-tinged off-white with a lot of glitter of different colors and shapes within. It's just translucent enough that glitter in other layers will show through but not so translucent that the glitter is bright. It's a nice subtle, playful look and I enjoyed it. This was four coats... not because it wasn't opaque but because I wanted more glitter on the nail. :) Alas, it got chippy on me fast. Be sure to shake it up a LOT before using; the tons of glitter settles on the bottom of the bottom.

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OCC Beta (or "how not to make a polish")

Why "Beta"? Like beta carotene, like in carrots? Yes, it's carrot-colored... if carrots were made of neon and were radioactive.

OCC Beta

I love OCC nail polish. I think they do some of the most beautiful dark cremes: they apply "like buttah" and are long-lasting with a good bc/tc combo. So what on EARTH were they smoking over there when they made this polish?! Holy crap. Let's talk about the great things first: it's an awesome, amazing, gorgeous color: freakishly bright neon orange.

And that is all for the great things. Now the "meh, I can live with that" things: it was a bit hard to apply and took three coats to get even, despite that it's a pretty saturated color. Like most neons, it dries matte.

And now, the bad things. Or just one thing: IT WAS BUMPY. There were LUMPS of... something (maybe pigment?) in the nail polish. You could see the lumps on the brush... and you could definitely see it on the nail (and you can see it in the photo). And it was horrifying. I do not recall ever seeing a polish with lumps like that and I've seen many polishes. I don't even feel good about giving it away for free, it was such a turn-off of an experience.

Bumpy glitters = normal.

Bumpy cremes = not normal.

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Dior Beige Lotus

Total impulse buy from a Duty Free shop at the Taipei airport. Twas my conference mani.

Dior Beige Lotus

I actually really like it. It's a good neutral with a bit of sparkle. Two coats, a typically great Dior experience. (Why are they sooo expensive though??)

Conference went well though it was absolutely exhausting. I almost forgot my poster in France, which wouldn't have been bad because I don't really have any more use for it. Still, it cost $120 to print so keeping it is a matter of principle.

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OPI La Paz-itively Hot Matte and au revoir for the week! :)

I'm off to France today. Love conferences in cool places. I also love that the NSF came through with $1500 funding to cover travel and lodging (which is JUST enough, given the really high prices of plane tickets to Europe from the US lately). Let's hope that they'll allow me to carry on my poster tube because I do NOT want to lose this thing.

OPI La Paz-itively Hot Matte

It's flat on the nail at a distance but it's gorgeous up close. The multicolored shimmer is lovely. Applied really nicely for a matte; the above is two coats. One coat is ideal because with more than one, you run the risk of clumping. This was taken on day 3; it's pretty tenacious!

La Paz-itively Hot Matte closeup

No, I am not wearing this to the conference...

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Essie Smooth Sailing and OPI Navy Shatter

I never thought that eBay would be my preferred outlet for buying any nail polish but gotta say, it does me well for Essie. (The trick is to, um, buy a lot and order from a seller who has a great combined shipping deal.)

Essie Smooth Sailing

Photos just don't do this justice. It's actually a kind of chunky iridescent shimmer that sparkles blue and pink and purple and is so very, very, very pretty. Great application, two coats. This is the third day of wear.

Closeup of Smooth Sailing

You can sort of see the great shimmer in this photo. Just imagine it all over the nail...

Essie Smooth Sailing and OPI Navy Shatter

Am loving the jelly crackles. Some people might be annoyed that there's such a difference between one and two coats of the polish -- the discrepancy is most obvious on my middle finger -- but I kind of like the variation it gives to the polish. At one coat, it's obviously a blue jelly; at two, it turns more into dark navy (almost black but not quite).

Closeup of Smooth Sailing and Navy Shatter

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Nubar Baby Sprout and Essie Kisses and Bises

Despite its imperfections (umm, I don't know why my Poshe has developed black lint... wtf??) I loved both of these NOTDs.

Nubar Baby Sprout

A little bit on the stark side, Baby Sprout is a light pastel green with very fine pearly shimmer. It does appear creme in lower lights but as soon as the sun hits it, the pearly finish comes out. This was three coats (on the second day of wear, I believe).

Nubar Baby Sprout and Essie Kisses and Bises

And I was just OBSESSED with this manicure. I had read that Kisses and Bises was really a very neat layering polish but I didn't think that this pink/purple shimmer in a mostly clear base would wow me as much as it did. It added such depth and interest to Baby Sprout! It's subtle and playful at the same time. Love it. I used one coat of Baby Sprout.

Closeup of Baby Sprout and Kisses and Bises

See! The fabulous! shimmer. :) Ignore the freakin' lint. :(

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