First Day at Work: Essie Lady Like

After some deliberation, I figured out which nail colour to wear to my first day of my new job! (Tomorrow!) I'm going to go with Essie Lady Like...

Lady Like is a really special shade. In the soft light of morning (which is when I took these pictures), it looks rather lilac. In the afternoon sun, it becomes more of a warmer nude-mauve. I first posted about it here when it was first released in 2011 (so much time has passed!! eek!) and at the time I wasn't sure about it. Right now, I'm loving it. It's neutral enough for colour-phobic me, but has enough of a hue to make me feel like I'm actually participating in spring! (Look, I'm even wearing a floral ring - who am I!? This one is from Henri Bendel. I love them for accessories and you can find the ring in various colours here.) 

I'm a bit nervous about my first day. I think it's a good nervous though - I feel like the next part of my life is starting, and I've waited and worked for so long to make it happen! Fingers crossed that I don't majorly screw up though!

What are some of your favourite polishes to wear to work? 

k2k

Job Interview Candidates

I (FINALLY) graduated with my PhD in December. I haven't discussed my experience here much here. It is still a raw, open wound, and I am just relieved to be done. Sadly the "real world" requires that I do things like "pay bills", "buy food", etc. so I am job hunting even though my confidence is at an all-time low.

There is GOOD NEWS though! I have a job interview next week! (The bad news is that I'm super nervous, even though many of my friends work at the company already.)

I need your help!

When I feel pulled-together, I act more pulled-together. Outfit, makeup, hair and accessories might seem like frivolous things to be thinking about ahead of the interview, but I need all the confidence boosters I can get. Will you help me pick out the right interview nail polish?

The candidates are (L-R):

Essie Brides to Be
OPI Don't Bossa Nova Me Around
Essie Brooch the Subject (post here)
YSL Beige Leger (post here)

Which do you like best? Being a sheer, Essie Brides to Be is the most conservative. Where I am interviewing is a more casual workplace, so I could definitely go with something more opaque. OPI Don't Bossa Nova Me Around has a more springtime feel with its white base and lilac tone. Essie Don't Brooch the Subject blends in more with my skin, and I think the almond colour has a nice chicness to it. YSL Beige Leger is one of my newest favourites, but I'm worried that it will be noticed as "odd".

Any other suggestions would be welcome as well - what would you wear to an interview???

k2k

My Own Skin - Essie Spin the Bottle

Essie Spin the Bottle has appeared on the nails of so many bloggers and YouTubers lately, and every single time I've seen it flash on the screen I've eyed it jealously. I gave in and purchased it a few days ago, and thanks to the magic of the internet, it showed up at my house yesterday. I couldn't wait to try it out!

Nudes are sometimes difficult. Many pull too pink on me, and if I'm being honest, I feel super awkward wearing light to medium pinks. Like I'm trying to masquerade as someone younger or cutesier or something. I just don't feel like me.

The good news is, this feels like me. So much like me in fact, that I had to think about where I'd seen it before. Turns out it is the more saturated sister of my favourite (until now?) nude Essie polish - Topless & Barefoot. Both have this fleshy peachiness to them that makes them much more wearable for my skin tone - which is quite yellow. Spin the Bottle is simply richer, and a tad bit warmer than Topless & Barefoot. Spin the Bottle is VERY close to my skin tone, which is a look that sometimes creeps my out, but I think it has just enough peach in it to hold its own.

Small disclaimer - the formula on Spin the Bottle is not the most excellent I've ever used. It took 3 thin coats - which is what I do for most things - but application was a little worrying and streaky until I got to that final coat.

L-R: Essie Spin the Bottle; Essie Topless & Barefoot

As you might be able to see from the bottle shot, I've used about a third of Topless & Barefoot already. I see Spin the Bottle being an equal staple in my collection, despite the sub-par formula. Sometimes it's hard to find a nude that makes you comfortable in your own skin - I found this, and I'm sticking with it!

What's your favourite nude right now?

k2k

Sidling into Spring - Essie Stones & Roses

Although it's a balmy 75F here in North Carolina today, I'm not *completely* ready for spring yet. I think my years in Chicago taught me to be wary of sunshine in February. Though I might not be wholly in the right mindset yet, this colour was too beautiful not to share! This is Essie Stones & Roses from the Resort 2015 Collection.

Essie usually knocks it out of the park with their resort collections, and I think this one is no exception. Although this was the only shade I picked up for the moment, I adore the colour story this collection tells. Stones & Roses is not quite pastel, not quite bright and not quite neon. This makes it supremely wearable, but so cheerful. You can bet I'll be wearing this on my nails frequently come spring and into summer.

A little comparison with some Essie classics:

L-R: Essie Cantaloupe, Essie Stones & Roses, Essie Carousel Coral

Cantaloupe is decidedly more orange than Stones & Roses, but around the same shade level, whereas Carousel Coral has a similar pinkness, but is deeper.

Stones & Roses may not be the most unique colour in the world, but it is a wonderfully balanced addition to my collection. I think it flatters my skin tone as well. (Which is approximately NC15 for those of you who speak MAC!) Have you picked up any of the Essie Resort 2015 polishes? Let me know if you have - I could be tempted to get another! I hope you are all having a fabulous weekend.

k2k

Tickling My Fancy - YSL Beige Leger

After trying out YSL Gris Deco and falling in love, it really was only a matter of time (days) before I purchased my next YSL polish. Unfortunately, none of the stores near me sell YSL polishes in the flesh, so I have to rely on online swatches to choose my colours. I was a little dubious about this one - YSL Beige Leger.

Many people have likened this to OPI Tickle My France-y, which I hated on me. I think I called in "vomit-inducing" in this post. It was just too mauve/purple/cool for my skin tone and really did make me feel a little sick to look at. But I loved the IDEA of the colour. (Yes, I see a therapist.) Luckily, I found a comparison of the two in this particular blog post. Beige Leger looked exactly how I had hoped Tickle My France-y would have looked on me! She even compared them, and the OPI was more mauve, while the extra touch of warmth in Beige Leger made it harmonious with the skin.

TL;DR - I bought the polish.

Turns out a hint of added warmth can make a HUGE difference. I don't feel revulsion when I look at my hands! Depending on the lighting, Beige Leger can look more fleshy pink, more cafe au lait nude, more skin-like peach - but in my opinion, it always looks polished (ha!) and a lot more modern than the standard white-based neutral pale colour.

Count this as added to my all-time favourites.

k2k

Pastel hearts and glitter rain!

This was my sweet Valentine's Day mani which I posted on my own blog, but before I took it off I added a glitter gradient with Hello Darling 24K, because I could.

I've developed a repulsion to the whole "buy things to prove your love"/"if your man really loved you he'd spring to get flowers" aspect of Valentine's Day, and I thought the boyfriend and I were happy not doing anything together for it (especially since we celebrated our anniversary the week before), but at the last minute he decided he felt neglected, so we ended up with the added guilt of trying to make rushed plans and failing. I guess that's what I get for dating an attention whore! I did make and demolish some kickass cauliflower soup though, so if nothing else, Valentine's Day really rekindled my love of the Brassica family.

PInk and brown high coffee mani

Sorry for my semi-absence! I've almost finished my thesis (eeee!) so I've been keeping myself busy. Here's a mani I did a couple weeks ago for high coffee with some Sydney beauty bloggers. I used the new Liquid Sand polish, OPI What Wizardry Is This?:(swatched here). The pink accent nails are 365 Days of Color Make Me Laugh-y Taffy over a pink creme. I like how the brown tones down the pink, but I don't think the pink is very me. One for the swap pile!

Valentine's Day! F4 Polish: Bubble Yum over Maybelline Chiffon Chic

And here comes the end of the busy themed manicure week! Valentine's Day. Pink is probably my least favorable color -- usually gives me what has been termed "lobster hands." For this reason alone I don't own many pink polishes. Oddly enough, though, the last two or three times that I've worn pink, the "lobster hands" effect has not happened. So maybe something changed skin tone wise? I can only hope. I am very lacking in pink polish!

This is two coats of Bubble Yum, a matte glitter top coat, over 2 coats of Maybelline Chiffon Chic. Chiffon Chic had a great formula and I like the brush a lot, I didn't have to do any cleanup! Added bonus of the color looking pretty okay on my hands.

Bubble Yum is varying sizes of matte pink, hot pink and white glitter in a clear base. The formula was good, I didn't have to do any placing around of the different glitter.

I hope everyone has an excellent Valentine's Day! I'm looking more forward to 50% off candy on February 15th :D

F4 Polish can be found on their Facebook here and their Etsy here!

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Summer neon gradient with black and white glitter

One of my long-time lemmings was Lynnderella's Connect the Dots, so I was overjoyed when I found out that one of the many black and white glitters that followed in its wake was available in Australia. I layered Peita's Polish Zebration over a gradient of Darling Teenage Dream (pink) and Endota Spa Ephraim Island (soon to be renamed Paradise Point - neon yellow/green):

Teenage Dream is the first neon I've tried which is properly neon without white creme underwear - it only takes 2-3 coats as well, which is very impressive. Ephraim Island/Paradise Point is an interesting polish - one coat over white is neon yellow (the most neon yellow I've ever seen by the way - in person it sears your retinas!), but 4 coats on the bare nail is definitely neon green.

I'm so glad a similar polish has successfully killed off my HTF lemming - HTF lemmings are the worst!

Models Own Utopia

I wanted this for ages. It applies nicely (this was three coats, but it was mostly fine with two) and looks nice. It's kind of a berry yoghurt colour. I was kind of hoping it might be a bit less...pink? I had in mind a slightly more grey/white shade. Like a baby elephant colour.

Dunno whether to franken this or swap it.

On another note, I love slanting Autumn light for nail pics - better make the most of it before the Winter fug descends in earnest!

Spring pastel tape manicure with gold accents

This is a mani I did, inspired by the range of polishes Darling sent me. Darling are a new-ish Australian nail polish company, and their formulas are very impressive! They do that self-levelling thing that good polishes do, hiding fudgy application. As well as a range of gorgeous lacquers, Darling also carry mixtures of beads for caviar manicure (the Rock Candy range), and they've got some super exciting things in the works (super cute nail decals which I got to try out at the Beauty Bloggers Utopia conference, and something metallic for Christmas which I'm not going to leak too much about!

This is actually the NOTD I wore to the first day of BBU, which was a blast - chocolate for breakfast, learning exactly what Bioderma's "micellar water" is, hauling at IMATS, manicures in the media breakout room, going backstage at Legally Blonde The Musical with the founder of awesome sample subscription box Lust Have It! And of course, one of the greatest things in a beauty blogger's life has to be when other beauty bloggers gasp over your nails in real life! No complaints here :)

The polishes used are Darling's The First Corsage (lilac), Butter Wouldn't Melt (yellow), Hopelessly Devoted (pink) and likeomg (gold). And here's what the cremes looked like before the tape bonanza:

 

I think the gold really helps tie the skittles together!

Kiko 277 Blueberry Glitter

I don't normally like pink. But I picked this one up on a whim in Spain and HOLY WOW IT IS AMAZING. It's a raspberry pink glass fleck with a slight red-pink colour shift in bright light. Very easy application, I think this was two coats and I quite like the brush for a cheapie nail polish - it's kind of the lovechild of Essie and OPI brushes.

Squeezing out the last few drops of summer - Essie Super Bossa Nova

It's been a little rainy and gloomy where I live for the past couple days - a slap-in-the-face reminder that summer is coming to a close. I wanted to squeeze in a few more summery manis while I could. I did Essie Geranium for a few days (posted a long time ago here) and then Essie Super Bossa Nova.

OK, I'll be straight with y'all. This polish isn't really for me. It is pretty, application was great, but I'm just not feeling it. I think it's just got too much going on for me. I'm a creme girl, and when I do a bit of shimmer or something special, I usually prefer it to take center stage as part of a more neutral polish. The bright colour + texture combo is a little OTT for me in this particular case. However, I do think it would look really really fab on toes!

What is your final summer mani going to be? Any last minute recs for me?

kittytokaren

The Girliest Glitter - Essie A Cut Above & OPI You Callin' Me a Lyre?

This manicure is dedicated to my brand new little god-daughter who was born on August 1! The most beautiful baby I have ever seen - she is absolutely perfect. I wanted to do something very girly in honour of the little one, so I layered OPI You Callin' Me A Lyre? with Essie A Cut Above.

I'm not the biggest glitter fan on the planet but I LOVE this one! For some reason I find the pink colour very appealing. I like that it can be quite subtle over a sheer, and can take on a whole different vibe over a dark colours. A Cut Above is a modern woman - she can go from sweet and demure to tough and chic in a minute!

I hope my god-daughter will love all things girly when she gets older - I'd love to do manis with her!

kittytokaren

The Best Medicine - Essie Off the Shoulder

I've been feeling kind of glum lately - I couldn't go to my high school reunion and I'm stuck at home, etc etc. While polish isn't going to turn my spirits completely around, a bright pink polish the colour of Pepto Bismol might be one step in the right direction!

Essie Off the Shoulder...

Bright, shiny, and PINK! It's fun and silly and makes me giggle a bit looking at it. After all, laughter is the best medicine - right?

What polish cheers YOU up??

kittytokaren

OPI and Rainbow Honey layering: grey and pink

I must say, this has been my most favorite recent manicure. Of course, my favorites change often, but recently, this one. THIS ONE. It was beautiful and full of depth and glitter.

While I personally love jellies in theory, a lot of the time I don't like it on myself. But the hype of the OPI Ballet collection got to me and I got the full set and I love them! My first full manicure with the sheers is OPI: My Pointe Exactly + OPI: Pirouette My Whistle.

I think this is about 4 layers of My Pointe Exactly and 2 of Pirouette My Whistle. The glitter is so delicate and sparkles lightly, if that makes sense. I kept this manicure for about 3 days before messing with it, haha.

Rainbow Honey is another indie that makes amazing glitters. When she offered a pre-order a while ago I jumped on it and got four. I layered one of them, Hanami, on top of this mani, and it was instant love! I feel grey and pink are one of those pretty color combinations, too :)

I did two layers of Hanami and a whole bunch of top coat -- it was a hungry glitter! But so worth it. Pink hexes along with more translucent shards, translucent hex glitters and iridescent smaller glitters jam packed in a pink shimmery base. There's so much in this polish! It garnered a lot of compliments, too :D

You could still tell it was layered of a sheer/jelly base, and it all worked beautifully together.

Chanel Comparisons - Diwali, Frenzy, Suspicious

I recently got some fabulous nail mail - a bunch of new Chanel polishes!! I ordered all three of the Fall 2012 Les Essentiells de Chanel polishes - Vertigo, Frenzy, and Suspicious. I also received Diwali from the Bombay Express de Chanel collection as a gift from an incredible friend! (She knows I'm a sucker for golds...)

I don't have any mani pics for you yet, but I wanted to share some nail wheel comparisons for you. I know Chanel polishes are pricey, and I found some alternatives that are not so close, semi close and super close!

Chanel Diwali

Diwali is a gorgeous neutral gold. Of all my golds, only OPI Glitzerland was similar in colour - and it really is quite similar. Where they differ is the finish - Diwali is smoother and somehow more refined, whereas Glitzerland is well...glitzier. If you're not gold-obsessed, I'd say Glitzerland is a great alternative to Diwali! (And that's a little sneak peek of Vertigo to the right of the gold swatches there...)

L - OPI Glitzerland; R - Chanel Diwali

Chanel Frenzy

So I'm rather in love with Frenzy, as it is in the same neighbourhood as my beloved Essie Jazz - my favourite nude of all time. Not dupes at all, but they are definitely good friends. Frenzy (Sorry for the nick in it! I got overly excited...) is cooler/greyer than Jazz, and also has a little more pink/lavender to it. This might have looked terrible on me, a la OPI Tickle My France-y, but when I tried it on one of my nails quickly, it was perfect. It's more grey and less pink than it appears the photos in reality. Really nice formula too.

L - Chanel Frenzy; R - Essie Jazz

Chanel Suspicious

Not that long ago, I declared Essie Plumberry to be my new signature polish. Looks like Unkle Karl and I had a similar brainwave or something, because Plumberry IS Suspicious. Love. I have seriously looked in all the kinds of light I can, and I really can't see a difference. Unfortunately in the first photo they may look a little different because the light is catching the right swatch more. But they really are dupes, which the second photo (taken with flash - really shows undertones well) demonstrates nicely. To see a more colour-accurate picture, check out my Plumberry post. If you like the looks of Suspicious, get thee to Target and pick up Plumberry. (Unless you simply *MUST* have the Chanel - far be it from me to judge!)

L - Chanel Suspicious; R - Essie Plumberry

Whew! I hope this was helpful to someone, or at least mildly interesting! I had a lot of fun unboxing my new pretties. Suspicious is going back, but everything else is going to live here with me. You will definitely be seeing manicures with all of these, as well as Vertigo, in the not-too-distant future!

Have you received/bought any new polishes lately?

kittytokaren

OPI Dim Sum Plum

This one was my mother's choice. I do like it, but I rarely reach for pinks, so it was a nice surprise to have this selected for me. My mum was recently staying with me to fetch and carry while I recovered from some minor surgery - I'm fine, but being stuck on the sofa with lingering anaesthetic in my system drives me BONKERS so it's a good job I had her around. <3 my mum!

After I'd worked my way through an entire Flight of the Conchords boxset I was feeling rather fidgety so she picked this out of my polish case and instructed me to paint my nails ('and SIT DOWN!') since I'd had to go bare nailed for my hospital trip. She chose this because it made her feel bright and cheery. I concur - it is rather nice!

It's a very easy two coater and it dries quickly. I'd describe it as a plummy fuchsia (it's also a very close cousin of Illamasqua Grab). This is also a good 'un because it features seche vite. I invested in a gigantic bottle of seche restore and went to work combining three dried up bottles, one of which was *so* dried up that it had congealed vertically up the side of the bottle. Lovely, I know. Anyway, the seche restore fixed them all right up! Hurray!

New Signature - Essie Plumberry

I usually plot out my polish purchases very carefully. Wind of new collections comes *months* prior to release, and I have all the time in the world to plot, search for swatches, and stalk my prey. Every once in a while though, I pick up a polish at random - it is usually a massive disappointment. (Or I realize I've already tried it...oi...) I'm happy to say that this impulse purchase is a total exception!

I was in Target (with a chaperone...not allowed back there without one) and saw Essie Plumberry in the display - a colour I've never given a second look. BUT I have into pink/berry colours lately to match some bright lip looks I've been doing, and this juicy red raspberry hit the sweet spot.

Essie Plumberry is a luscious dark berry pink. Application was absolute perfection, and it was shiny and squishy without any top coat at all - but I did top it with Seche Vite.

It's not often that a polish comes along that I know I will wear over and over and over again. Essie Smokin' Hot was probably the most recent one for me. I'm happy to say that Plumberry is now added to my "signature polish" arsenal!

Do you have a signature polish(es)?

kittytokaren

THEME WEEK - My Favourite Neon!

As the weather gets warmer and warmer (in the Northern Hemisphere), we thought it was only fitting for the final Polish or Perish THEME WEEK to be showcase neons! Each day a PoP blogger will show you their fav retina-searing polish. Get your sunglasses out, kids!

FAVOURITE NEON WEEK

This is polish I usually reserve for my toes (in fact, it's on my tootsies right now!) but in the summer if I'm feeling frisky, I will bust this one out for a mani! In fact, it's the ONLY neon in my collection, and I'm quite attached to it! Essie Perky Purple...

Why yes, I do suck at photographing neons! I had to colour adjust a bit (*cough*somuchit'sridiculous*cough*) to try to get it to show up as it looks in real life, but trust me, it's a screamer! This may not be the only neon I own very soon, because I may be picking up one or two of the new Essie Poppy Razzi neon collection....

Do you wear neons? Just in summer or do you brave it in winter as well?

kittytokaren