Pretty Serious Naughty Night Shift Nurse

You may have heard that Aussie indie brand Pretty Serious recently released a limited edition polish, Naughty Night Shift Nurse, that sold out in 10 minutes. Luckily, my friend and fellow blogger Rose (Every Little Polish) ninjaed me one, and I arrived just in time for my birthday! I used it as the base for my birthday nail art (click to see the DIY nail decal tutorial I made).

Here it is in its full glory, over multichrome-boosting black:

It's a stunning purple-to-red multichrome with red-green multichrome flakies thrown in (I believe they're the same ones as those in Essie Shine of the Times, Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure, Nubar 2010 et al.).

Naughty Night Shift Nurse was originally a custom created for Aussie nail blogger Kristy (The Polish Haven) who, you guessed it, is a nurse. She was generous enough to share her creation with us, but unfortunately due to ingredient supply issues, NNSN is a limited edition. There will be a second batch released later this year, along with Emma Louise, another PS limited edition.
Here's my birthday mani:

The DIY nail decal technique I used is now my favourite nail art trick - it lets you split up your nail painting into multiple sessions, which is great if you're time-poor or a bit ADD!

Gloss 'n Sparkle Above Deck and Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure

Like a lot of other people, I tend to gravitate towards the same colours - for polish, it's purple, red and green. But for some reason, the real stunners in my collection that I often unexpectedly fall in love with are blues. Gloss 'n Sparkle Above Deck is the latest blue I've been blown away by. Two coats:

One of the non-glitterbombs in the Gloss 'n Sparkle range, this is a rich teal shimmer with tiny blue and holo glitter. On the nail, the holo glitter is largely tinted teal by the base, but the occasional holo sparkle comes out in the light. It's perfectly named - it really reminds me of the sparkling surface of a Mediterranean sea as seen from the deck of a boat. If you can't tell, I'm just a bit in love with this shade!

I had to fiddle around with it, of course, so I layered my new (after a long period of lemming) Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure, a red/green multichrome flakie on top:

I quite liked this combo - it looked like land masses in the ocean!

I have good news for non-Aussie Gloss 'n Sparkle fans - Shoppe Eclecticco now stock them, and ship worldwide! So you overseas girls can finally get your hands on some of these beauties :)

What unexpected polishes have you fallen in love with?

OPI The Man With The Golden Gun

I've been drooling over this since the promo pics came out. Happily I can report that I'm still drooling. I mean...look at that bottle!! 18K gold flakes! And I am *such* a sucker for anything gold. It's as if OPI trespassed into my dreams. As soon as this delicious bottle arrived in the mail, I slapped it on over the mani I was rocking at the time - Essie Bahama Mama....

The formula on this is really easy to work with and smooth. This was two "coats". I say "coats" because its easier to get the flakes of gold off if you kind of dab at the nail as opposed to paint. It all levels out nicely. Unfortunately it does not dry as shiny as I'd like, so I did add another topcoat after all was said and done to bring back the intense shine. I think it also helped the golden flakes to pop more!

I think I'd like this *even better* over a darker colour - like OPI Lincoln Park After Dark or a really deep green. I also think I preferred the look with fewer gold flakes, but I did want to show it off to you guys so perhaps I went a little overboard. :P

So, this thing is expensive. But in my opinion, worth it. It's utterly fabulous. Will you be investing in a bottle?

kittytokaren

Revlon Grape Fizz

Revlon Grape Fizz is part of the limited collection of fruit scented polishes released last year. The particles in this are somewhere in between glass flecks and flakies in size... I'd classify them as flakies. Most of the shades require quite a few layers, but applying them over a creme works well. I layered Grape Fizz over a black creme - the black really brings out the different flakie colours. It's mainly medium purple and blueish-purple flakies, with a bit of red in there.

The polish starts to smell like artificial grape bubble gum almost as soon as it hits the nail - it's a nice change from butyl acetate! The scent hangs around for a few days too. I personally love the smell (it's kind of nostalgic), but if you don't, this polish is really not for you!

Nfu-Oh 51: Purpley flakie rainbow goodness

Back when I first started getting into nail polish, I remember reading this nail blog post by Scrangie about Nfu-Oh flakies. I felt this intense yearning -- back then, Nfu-Ohs were not readily accessible. When Scrangie had gotten them, she ordered them from New Zealand!

And then Fabulous Street came about. I <3 Fabulous Street. Decently priced, fast shipping... I remember she had a sale and I snatched up as many Nfu-Ohs I could get. They were all so beautiful...

The one that had the most hype was Nfu-Oh 51 because it had the same sort of magic effect as the even more rare Clarins 230. Purple base and a rainbow color shift.

Fast forward to now... lots of 230s on Ebay, Fabulous Street having steady stock of Nfu-Ohs... nail polish world is a lot more accessible now and it's awesome!



This is the lovely and wonderful Nfu-Oh 51 on its own, 4 coats. Delicious. It may have the same sort of rainbow as Clarins 230 but it's definitely not the same.

Nfu-Oh polishes are available at Fabulous Street for $12.50, free shipping over $25.

What was your first yearning for a polish that was hard to get, because of lack of distribution *looks at Wet 'n Wild*, it being an international polish or just HTF?

Flake craze - Essie Shine of the Times

Let me preface this by saying I don't like "flakies". I even hate the word "flakies". Why don't we just call them flakes? At least that is a legitimate word in the dictionary. Ugh. /end rant

I didn't like Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure, and this is the same type of flake, so there is no reason why I should like this one. I was having a crap day, and I thought this pretty Essie would perk me up - I have to admit, it's super pretty in the bottle!! The problem I have with these is that this particular kind of flake turns very orange over any dark base. (I know there are different kinds of flakes that are different colours, just not this particular breed.) Some people like that, but it's not for me. So I wanted to try it over something light to see if I could get it to look less orange, and here is the result!

Essie Shine of the Times over OPI Matched Luggage (my previous mani).

Still leaning orange, but I like the effect of the flake over a light colour better than I do over dark! It looks much more complex and nicely opal-like. Not sure if I like it on ME though. I am just not used to this kind of thing I guess! Maybe I'll try it on something a bit warmer next time?

What do you think? Flakes over dark or light colours for you?

kittytokaren

An actual NOTD that I am wearing right now: Orly Fowl Play

Just put this on about an hour ago. I know it's a dupe of OPI Merry Midnight (which I have as well) but I still like it.

Orly Fowl Play

Plummy purple jelly with copper flakies, blue microglitter and subtle silver shimmer. It actually is good to go with two coats but the above shows three. 

Closeup of Fowl Play

A ton of students have come down with pneumonia and my own bout of flu is still killing me after 20 days. I'm constantly dizzy and coughing uncontrollably. Two days ago, health services gave me a corticosteroid nasal spray, an inhaler and some over-the-counter motion sickness pills (an anti-emetic). Took doses of all three. Then six hours later, I took a second anti-emetic pill and I start having an allergic reaction. I went to the emergency room when my throat started to constrict. I suspected it wasn't anything major but it was my first medication allergy, so I figured better safe than sorry, right?  

Over the next three hours, I spoke to seven different people (one receptionist, one triage nurse, one billing department person, three different nurses, and one physician's assistant). It took 2.5 hours for a nurse to get me Benadryl. Ten minutes later, the PA came in and told me to discontinue the anti-emetic AND the corticosteroids, even though 1. I've been treated with corticosteroids before and haven't had an allergic reaction and 2. when people come into the ER with allergic reactions to things, they are often treated with a corticosteroid. He gave me a prescription for a cough suppressant syrup, so I could at least sleep. Five minutes later, a second nurse came in and told me that I should discontinue the anti-emetic but to keep taking the corticosteroids. My SO -- who was seriously agitated by the inefficiency of the ER -- pointed out that her advice contradicted the PA's advice. "Haha, oh, oops. Yeah, discontinue the steroids." 

Then a billing department person charged me $100 for the visit. 

The next day, I found out that the prescribed cough syrup had been discontinued years ago. Brilliant! So, I paid $100 for two Benadryl and for seven people to talk to me for a total of maybe fifteen minutes in the course of three hours. Fun, huh?

Nails Inc The Wyndham Collection

There are some swatches I wish I could have done better... but I didn't sufficiently like the polish(es) enough to redo them. So I'm just going to post these and pretend like they never happened, OK?

Nails Inc The Wyndham Collection

Teal Black Kensington

The Wyndham topcoat over Teal Black Kensington

I loved The Donmar Collection but The Wyndham Collection pair was a huge disappointment. First of all, the Teal Black Kensington was just sad: it's a dark teal jelly but it does not apply evenly and needs at least three coats to be opaque (which is not desirable for a polish that you want to use as a base layer). Then The Wyndham, though a flakie, is kind of a plain flakie: it goes between dark green and lighter green and that's it. And it takes at least two coats to get any significant amount of flakies onto the nail. So at the end of it, if you want the nicest application, you need six coats of polish. (And that's not including basecoat and topcoat.) Not at all a fan of this duo.

I'm trying to decide if I want to buy any of the OPI Muppets collection. I'm kind of intrigued by Designer the Better and Warm and Fozzie. I kind of want Rainbow Connection, because I love the billions of Happy Birthday-clones. And I'm on the fence on Meep Meep Meep. It's possible I may only want it for its name. Though I have no desire for Wocka Wocka. 

Nails Inc The Donmar Collection

I approached the new Nails Inc flakey duos with some hesitation. On one hand, FLAKIES. On the same hand, Sephora VIB status (time runnin' out to qualify for the next year). And on the other hand, however: the cost. And besides, I already have plenty of flakies and I have plenty of vampy colors. So I picked up two of the three sets and turned out really liking one of them (and feeling extremely meh about the other one). This one is the one I liked. Or rather, LOVED.

Nails Inc The Donmar Collection (Donmar over Chelsea)

It took four coats of Donmar but lookit all the flakies! Bronze, green, blue, gold... all at once, one at a time, all over the place. So damn good. I'm pretty sure I have an NFU.oh that's very similar but the execution of this one is just gorgeous. 

Closeup of gorgeousness (i.e. Donmar over Chelsea)

 Nails Inc Chelsea on its own

It's a bit of a dime a dozen color (and this one costs considerably more dimes than I generally like spending on polishes that I have dupes for). But this is such a lovely deep purple-tinted-brown jelly. Two coats. Marvelous application. Nails Inc seriously knows how to do polishes and I'm so glad they're much easier to get ahold of now that Sephora carries them!

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

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.

Oodles o' purple: Butter London HRH & Nfu.Oh 51

OK, long pic-heavy post - so I'll try and keep it light on the text.

Butter London HRH. Nice standard royal purple, red-toned base. I did two coats but it could probably have done with three since the base is a little jelly-ish. Me being me and compelled to fiddle with things that ought not be fiddled with, I put Nfu.Oh 51 over the top and the result really wasn't pretty:



Urgh. Sooo, that lasted all of twelve hours before I took it off. But I wanted to try 51 over something else because the real draw is the amazing blurple jelly base colour, which was totally lost over HRH. So I swatched it over (L-R) Orly gogo, illamasqua wink, illamasqua force, and OPI dim sum plum. And the result was much prettier:



Orly Gogo is just a total PITA to apply and not worth the 7 coats of polish (4 orly, 3 of the flakies) but 51 looked lovely over any of the other three. Two coats on force and dim sum plum, three on wink. I will definitely give this a full outing soon, because I really like the duochrome pinky colours in the flakies (just not over HRH...dear God not over HRH). Do click to enlarge this one, it's a doozy.



As Borat would say: 'naaaaaaice. Vairry naice.'


Edit - the UK Nfu Oh retail site has now launched. It's at Nfuoh.co.uk. Enjoy!

Illamasqua Boosh and Nfu.Oh 56

Illamasqua Boosh is a pretty standard black creme. I have 'issues' with black cremes. I spent my teenage years sporting Boots No.7 black nail polish (or occasionally 'black cherry' for variety, which was...well black, basically) which I applied on a weekly basis in front of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So, perhaps unsurprisingly, it's been years since I've been willing to go near black creme. I'm not sure if I'm looking back on my younger days with rose tinted glasses (unlikely, to be frank) but I didn't think the application on Boosh was that great. It was a little sticky and required a bit of work to get it to level. Then again, that's black cremes for you. Man am I glad I don't wear this stuff all the time anymore.


Fortunately, I can't say the same for the lovely green flakies I put over the top, which are much more my to my twenty-something taste. This is the infamous Nfu.oh 56, which is every bit as good as I'd hoped. Bright green flakies with shimmer and a blue duochrome, these really pop layered over a dark colour. I had a hell of a time trying to pick up the duochrome (it drifts between grass, emerald, teal and blue, with the blue showing up best indoors in low light - I am sure those of you who are into lenses will know why this created such problems!) but here's a couple of badly focused macro shots which kind of show it. Click to embiggen.





Yummy, no? The only problem with Nfu.Oh is that I keep wanting to type it 'NFU', which is the national farmers' union. I wrote a couple of my Masters essays on path dependency and regional governance in EU agriculture. I can't see the national famers' union producing nail polish somehow. Anyway...

The Nfu.oh was sent to me for review by Affiniti, the Illamasqua was purchased by my own fair hand. Although technically it came free in the Art of Darkness four polish set, so I'm feeling like a big cheap-o today. No-buy status: 6/35.


Edit - the UK Nfu Oh retail site has now launched. It's at Nfuoh.co.uk. Enjoy!

Illamasqua raindrops: does what it says on the tin

Piff asked me if I had this in my stash. I do, and shamefully, I hadn't even tried it. Which is odd, because I normally gravitate to greys - it's one of my favourite neutrals, and a colour I wear often. I picked up this colour mostly because I loved the name and idea - here's the inspiration - so I was pleasantly surprised that the polish lived up to my rather inflated expectations.

This is definitely different from the plentiful other greys I've tried. Firstly it's sheer. Not something I'd usually be overjoyed about, but in this case, I think it works, especially since it allows the little silver flakies suspended in the polish to peek through. (You can see them better in the bottle than on the nail, but they are visible when worn, and it's an unusual touch). Secondly it's a blue-based grey. I tend to prefer the taupe-y side of the spectrum (Essie playa del platinum being the one I pick up most often) and I'm not sure if ths works all that well with my skintone. In this I think the almost baby blue undertones add to the delicacy of the polish - it really does make me think of summer rain drip-dropping on my windowsill. Spot on nomenclature!

This is three coats. Four would probably get rid of the VNL, but it didn't really bother me and it takes a bit of a while to dry, so I went without. Especially since I did coat three on the train to work and I think a forth might have resulted in me smearing the stuff all over my colleagues.

Purple Jelly Comparison

Hi guys!  I have a small comparison for you today.  A reader asked how these two polishes compare when I posted my swatch picture of Deborah Lippmann Call Me Irresponsible so I figured I do a formal comparison.  I don't have a bottle comparison picture since the Milani is in an opaque bottle.  First up, I'll repost the swatch pictures of each.

I think this is four coats of Milani Rad Purple.

And here's a picture of four coats of Deborah Lippmann Call Me Irresponsible.

Now on to the comparison.  I've got Call Me Irresponsible on my index and ring nails.   Rad Purple is on my middle and pinkie finger nails.  I used four coats of each and this picture was taken in the sun.

This picture was taken inside by a window.  This one is the most color accurate of all my photos.  I think it's funny how the Deborah Lippmann comes closer to the Milani bottle than the Milani does.

And this picture was taken with the flash.  It's not very color accurate, but that's how it sometimes goes with purples.

Rad Purple is brighter and redder than Call Me Irresponsible (which is bluer). Rad Purple also dries to a satin finish so I put top coat on it. Call Me Irresponsible dries shiny.  Formula-wise, the Milani behaved better for me.  I had a heck of a time trying to get the Deborah Lippmann even, but the Milani wasn't so bad.  They are both jelly finishes.

It seemed like such a shame to just wipe these off after taking pictures so I tried out some layering.  I pulled out Pure Ice Heart Breaker and Nfu-Oh #51 and added on coat of Heart Breaker to my index and middle nails.  Then I put one coat of the Nfu-Oh on my ring and pinkie fingers.  Gah!  This was so gorgeous.  I'll have to do a full manicure of Call Me Irresponsible with the Nfu-Oh on top very soon.

I hope you enjoyed!