Chanel Provocation & A Recipe for Chip-Free Chanel!

I very rarely repeat polishes within the same month, but this is an exception. Chanel Provocation is an excellent vampy colour that straddles the boundaries of cool and warm, making it work beautifully with almost any outfit - camel, grey, cranberry, navy, black, etc.

(OK, so maybe I don't wear much colour...but the point remains. It's neutral. And delicious.)

Chanel polishes are notorious for chipping extremely easily. Which is atrocious considering the price-point, and was certainly true for me. Until recently, when I discovered this cocktail of base coat and top coat. Now, my Chanel polishes last a week with zero chipping! A WEEK. I obviously do get tip-wear, but no chipping or peeling. Which is madness.

The base coat in question is Essie All in One. As you can see, it is well-loved by me. I find that it works well with many different polish brands. Surprisingly, the top coat that locks everything in place is Seche Vite. While a classic, it is laden with non-B3F chemicals that typically make it play not-so-nicely with B3F polishes. What can I say though, it works like a charm!

Disclaimer: Yes, I know. Body chemistry is individual, and this might not work for everyone! I just thought I'd share because I know that so many people share the same problem with Chanel polishes, so I thought maybe this might be the solution for at least a few of them.

These little gems are readily available and I'm willing to bet that quite a few of you have them hanging around. If you have a Chanel chipping problem, I say give it a shot! (And report back, I would love to know if this works for anyone else!)

k2k

Lab Muffin's Top 13 Polishes of 2013 Part 2: Indies

A few days ago I posted my favourite mainstream and boutique polishes that I discovered last year. I'm back now with my favourite indies! The indie market grew exponentially in 2013, especially in Australia. In 2012, I'd only heard of about 4 Aussie indie brands - now, according to the Lacquerheads of Oz Indie Directory there are almost 30! So it's no surprise that the indies crowded the mainstream polishes out of my top 13, and I had to split hairs and move the boutique polishes to the mainstream section because it looked too lonely.

Now, I realise most of the Polish or Perish audience aren't Australian, and you therefore thought your wallet would be safe - think again! International stockists now have a metric shitton of Australian indie brands (I know, I've seen photos of some of the makers' shipments). For specifics of where to get what you can look at the Lacquerheads of Oz Indie Directory, but some of the stockists that ship overseas and have a few brands include Femme Fatale Cosmetics, Color4Nails, Harlow & Co, Norway Nails, Llarowe, Mei Mei's Signatures and Ninja Polish.


So here are my top 8 indies of 2013...

Gloss 'n Sparkle The Huntress is a new find of mine - I've always been a sucker for deep, complex jellies, and this is in one of my favourite polish colours, green. It's also included in my 2nd anniversary giveaway.

Alanna Renee Reptar is an incredibly cool, unique shade. I love these out-of-left-field shades - they're so satisfyingly interesting even without nail art.

Celestial Highgarden was my favourite from the Game of Thrones-themed collaboration between Color4Nails and Celestial. I love a special effects shade, and this has both holo and thermal colour change effects! This shade inspired me to write this sciencey article on how thermochromic colour change pigments work.

Brown and green is such a pretty colour combination in my books, but so few polishes contain this colour combination. Sayuri Mori has this rare foresty look, and is lovely over a golden base.

Arcane Lacquer Erudite Dreams is a pretty blurple creme with pinkish gold shimmer. I really love Arcane's elegant but pretty polishes - very work-safe and wearable for all occasions, without being plain.

Powder Perfect Decorate a Palm Tree is a very shimmery dense microglitter in a fetching shade of grass green. I especially love how the green jelly base means that the glitter in the lower layers are a deeper colour.

I posted Loki's Lacquer Omicron Persei 8 here in April, but it deserves revisiting! It's the most amazingly unexpected smorgasbord of sparkles, and jaw-droppingly stunning in the sun.

This one's a bit of a copout - I'm nominating the entire Mckfresh Sunnydale Collection as my #13! The Buffy-inspired vampy collection just looks so good together. But if I had to pick one polish, it would probably be Xander (top right hand corner) - the blue-green duochrome is so pretty, even though Xander is a bloody irritating character.

There you have it - the best indies I tried this year! I'm sure there are some glaring omissions I'll kick myself for a bit later, but I've agonised over this list long enough that I really just needed to hit the "post" button and walk the hell away. 

I realise that this list is ridiculously biased towards Australian indies, and that's simply because I had enough to try within Australia that I didn't feel the need to pay premium shipping prices for overseas polishes! I will endeavour to try out more overseas brands in 2014, but to be honest, given how the Australian indie market is growing, I think I already have my nails full.

Traditional Fall - OPI Mrs O'Leary's BBQ

Almost every fall season in my memory, burgundy has popped up as an "on-trend" colour. Which to me makes it a classic, as opposed to trendy, but who am I to argue with the fashion magazine gods? OPI Mrs. O'Leary's BBQ is one of the most traditional incarnations of burgundy that I know of, and every fall it always seems just right...

Creamy, rich, and dark without being black - if you want to add a burgundy to your fall nail wardrobe, this is a really solid choice. Plus, it really does remind me of barbecue sauce!

What is a classic "fall" colour to you?

kittytokaren

Another EL winner - Estee Lauder Molten Lava

Another Estee Lauder polish for you today...I've been really enjoying the brand as of late. This one is Molten Lava. A gorgeous dirgy plum with subtle coppery shimmer. (Subtle as in apparent but fine and not overly abundant...not subtle as in Chanel's not-at-all-visible version of subtle.)



Molten Lava is right up my alley! It's dark but not ultra dark. It's unique, but neutral. Color me happy! I actually love how this pairs with one of my favourite eye makeup looks - both have plummy/gold tones that I love, especially for fall. (If you want to see the eye look, check out my little makeup blog here.)

Is there a brand you've recently changed your mind about? I used to think EL was an "old lady" brand, but I can feel my mindset being altered...

kittytokaren

Ciate Paparazzi

Ciate Paparazzi is one of the English polishes ilexica sent me. It's a vampy the exact red-brown colour of blood, somewhere between a creme and a jelly. Perfect in 3 coats, very shiny finish. This is with Seche Vite on top:

I really wasn't expecting to like this one so much - in the bottle it looks murky and boring, but on the nail it's clearly dark red and not black. One of my pet hates is when a dark polish needs so many coats to destreak that it just looks black on the nail... what was the point of that?? Huh??

This really does look the colour of a blood bag. The only real complaint I have is that if you get it on the cuticle and don't clean up properly, it makes your nails look inflamed. My left hand looks ok, but... my poor, poor right hand. >.<

I really love the Ciate bottles - it's the perfect shape and size to grip between my knees, which is my preferred polishing position! Sitting on ground in front of my computer (which is on a coffee table), knees up, bottle between knees, fingers on knee. Which brings me to something I've always been curious about - how do you polish? Where do you place your hands and polish bottle?

Two Shimmering Vamps - OPI Germany

(This post has nothing to do with Twilight.) You've probably seen so many swatches of these polishes that you're ready to claw your eyes out, but these are the two from the OPI Germany collection that I ordered *immediately*. My dark shimmery vampy stash is shockingly anemic and these fill that void...fill it with AMAZINGNESS!

OPI German-icure by OPI

Warm shimmery red vampy - deep, but not too deep that you never see the fantastic colour and shimmer.

OPI Every Month is Oktoberfest

A VERY interesting polish. Goes on purple/blue with red shimmer at the first coat, then builds up to the magnificent deep plum that you see here. I'd be curious to do one coat over black to see how that looks.

I'm thrilled with the purchase of both of these. Come winter, these will be in heavy rotation! Thanks to responses to my Essie Stylenomics post, I've picked up two more from the OPI Germany collection which you will see soon! I'll be posting comps with the Essie polishes.

What have you picked up from OPI Germany? Any more shimmery vampy recs for me?? (Seriously I have 3 now total. Including these. Can you hear that? Piff just died a little.)

kittytokaren

OPI Lincoln Park After Dark

OK, so everyone has this polish. Everyone except me. I suddenly decided that I HAD TO HAVE IT (which may or may not have come as a result of me accidentally hacking half my index fingernail off with a bread knife, and deciding to embrace it with nubbins and vampy polishes).

I do love the colour - dark raisin. Really gorgeous. But this chipped like a mofo on me, which I think may be my own fault - in my impatience I ordered a bottle off a private seller on ebay (OPI over here is like £10-12 from the etailers, and I couldn't be bothered to wait for a bottle to arrive from the US) and I think it may be a fake. Lesson learned, but I love the colour so much I'll probably order a second bottle from a legit seller in future.

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!

Vamps for October: Essie Lacy not Racy

I think Kitty2Karen's getting to me. I am becoming an Essie convert.

I've had this and Rock the Croc in my storage for a year or so, and have reached for the latter as a pedi a few times. (Love it!). But I think this might be taking over in the preference stakes, it's gorgeous. Super dark red, that doesn't lean burgundy. It's like a bloody good Shiraz.

Aside from the fact that it's seriously hot, the application was amazing. Three coats, and the Essie brush is so little and perfect that I was able to get away with hardly any clean up. It's so shiny, even before seche vite (but with the magic top coat, I went from bare nails to dry mani in less than half an hour). I still had it on to teach my classes a full week later with barely any tip wear. It's fantastic.

So, as a new Essie fangirl, what else must I have? I just cheated on my no-buy (which has been going really well, thanks to the fact that I'm broke anyway) by ordering Geranium.

I got a lovely parcel in the post...

...Thank you, Illamasqua! :)

Well, I've always said good things about their customer service. I once returned a lipstick because I accidentally ordered two of them in one of their 30% off sales. I sent them a cheeky email asking if I could return or preferably exchange it (even though 'being a doofus' isn't one of their grounds for return) thinking they'd maybe grudgingly refund me since it was by then out of sale period, and it's a bit naughty me asking for a product at 30% off when there's no sale on.

But to my surprise, they shipped a replacement colour out via courier at their expense. And sent me an email to ask me which colour I wanted most, and to let me know their stock levels, since I put a random bunch down on the return form. (I felt I was probably taking advantage enough already to start getting picky). They are a really, really nice company.

Which is why it made my day to find that they read Polish or Perish. Hayley, their marketing manager, got in touch to chat about nail polish and take some contact details. And a couple of weeks ago a lovely parcel turned up with two of their new polishes for review, plus a lipgloss in Belladonna. (I mentioned I was really interested in the glosses from the new collection, so I was really touched that they popped one in - it's lovely, by the way!). Yeah, I am a total fangirl.

So these are the two polishes, Kink and Vice:

I wanted to wait a little while before giving a review, because for me the most significant thing about the A/W polishes is their 'rubber' finish, rather than the shades. So I've had Vice on for the last week, and here it is. This colour is lovely, a kind of purplish wine/berry shade, but it's the finish that makes it stand out from other similar polishes. I'd describe it as kind of satin-y. It's not quite as matte as I was expecting, but not fully glossy, either.

I've tended to stay away from matte finish polishes because they chip on me something rotten, so I wore Vice for a full 8 days before writing this (the pictures are from day 3). I have tremendously limited patience so I managed to scracth the finish a little even before it was fully dry (I am spoilt by seche vite). However, that cock up aside, it wore really well. Looking at them a week later, there is one chip (my right middle), a couple of teeny nicks on my thumbs, and a little tip wear. And I've been intentionally bloody hard on my hards this week - I've been washing up, I did gardening, and I've relaid the tiles on my hall floor, all without gloves. My hands feel like catcher's mitts, but the polish still looks very respectable.

(The only odd thing is that black line on my ring finger - I think it's a shed bristle? I've never had one of their brushes shed on me before, so it took me a while to work out what it was!).

Vamps for October: OPI tease-y does it

God, I LOVE October. I can finally wear my (extensive) collection of coats and boots! I'm pulling in teaching money! My supervisor isn't abroad! Life is good. And after ruining my nails decorating I've been taking the opportunity to file them down and pull out the vamps. I don't like wearing dark colours when my nails are long because it makes me feel like a try-hard. But I love them on shorties, and October is the perfect season to start wearing them!

So first up, OPI tease-y does it from Burlesque. I was never really sold on this colour, but everyone went so cuckoo over it that I had to see what all the fuss was about it. I can understand it but I don't fully share it. This is two easy coats, with a finished result that looks like a dark blackberry colour with fuchsia flaky glitter. But I kind of hoped that it would all be a little more...va-va voom than it is. It's pretty, very work appropriate, and subtle. What can I say, I'm bad at subtle! It chipped the next day though, so as much as I liked the respectability of it, chipped dark polish isn't so great.

Ulta For Bitten

Ulta, we need to talk. I think I might be falling in love with you.

I know, I know; you're young, you don't want to get involved, you need your space. I respect that. I think you need to know, though - my feelings are strong.

For Bitten from Ulta's Glam Goth collection is one of the many reasons why I think I can't continue to live apart so much.



I mean LOOK AT YOU. You're a dark, vampy polish with lovely shimmer that changes from burgundy to gold.


You're seriously an amazing polish; two coats and I couldn't look away.

Don't ignore your feelings, Ulta.

Happy day, all!

Vamp Jelly - Essie Material Girl

OK so I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm really not into the whole vampire thing, but suffice to say, I think that Queen Sophie-Anne from True Blood would love to wear this colour!

Super vampy and delicious, Essie Material Girl is really very close to Essie Wicked (see it here on me, and a much better picture here on Piff) - it's just a *touch* more plummy whereas Wicked is definitely a cranberry. Does one need both? Probably not. Do *I* need both? Yes. Because I just can't resist a good jelly vampy. And I don't mean like Talbot-in-a-jar.

I've been loving dark vampy colours recently - have you gone to the dark side lately?

kittytokaren

Chanel Strong

I do admit being suckered into the Chanel hype. I hate myself for it but ever since missing out on Jade because of my somewhat superior attitude about the brand and price ("I could get five polishes of the same quality for the same price, all people see is the brand name!"), I've decided that paying $23 upfront is better than regretting for months afterward. Also, Paradoxal and Jade Rose have really turned me around on Chanel's formula and wearability. (That and it's not like I can't rid myself of Chanel via swap or sale.) So "buy now, think later" has become my attitude towards Chanel LEs.

At least I'm not giving my money to eBay scalpers. Just to Chanel, who plays their customer base so well.

Chanel Strong

The formula is LOVELY on this, just flawless and exactly the sort of application I like best. Pleasantly thick and very pigmented, goes on smoothly and is extremely easy to control. Two coats. See, some people are magical with nail polish and can seemingly apply the worst formula as if it's the best -- I am NOT one of those people. When a formula (or brush) is a bit off, I'm not great at making it work for me. So I value polishes whose formula and brushes are perfectly to my liking. ...this color, however, is just sort of ordinary to me. It looks like a reddish shimmering brown indoors and outdoors, it takes on this purplish burgundy glow that is pretty but not outstandingly so. I don't think it's worth the money I spent on it... but I don't regret it, which is actually a hard place to be because now I don't know if I want to keep it or not!

September 11th (15m cardio), September 12th (30m cardio), September 15th (60m cardio + very light strength training). Yep, took two days off. I was doing a lot of cardio but not enough stretching and my legs were like rubber bands pulled to their max... so I decided to lay off for a day. And then the next day, there was a guy who seemed kind of sketch in the workout room so I decided to skip out on working out that night...

Essie Fall 2010, Part II of II: Little Brown Dress, Velvet Voyeur, and Limited Addiction

Cuticles are still travel ravaged. And I tried using the Nfu.Oh cuticle remover (like, for real, not on fairly neat cuticles while wearing nail polish) and gotta say, I find it pretty useless! No removing powers as far as I could see. So I went back to my trusty old Blue Cross Cuticle Remover and voila! a good job done quickly for far cheaper.

Anyway, here are the rest of the Essie Fall 2010 samples that their PR folks sent me. Predictably, I was less excited by these than the first three I showed but they are actually very nice polishes nonetheless. All three are very glossy without topcoat, which is always a plus (even though I never fail to put on topcoat unless it's a matte finish).

Essie Little Brown Dress

Dark and delicious. Applied very easily and neatly in two thin coats. It's such a warm, fall/winter color. It definitely can appear near black in some lights (as in the second picture) but in other lights, it's more obviously brown (as in the first).

Essie Limited Addiction

I just don't like the way reds look on me. This one was not particularly stunning to me one way or another besides that it's super glossy (almost jelly-like). Nice that it was opaque in two coats though! I did find this one harder to apply for some reason: a little gloopier than the others, perhaps? Or maybe I just have an unconscious bias against reds. :P

Essie Velvet Voyeur

Great little vampy shade, so glossy that it almost looks jelly. Nothing particularly new but a pretty good execution of a staple shade. Two coats, good application. It does mostly look like it's a very dark purple but it can look close to black at times.

I feel so gross to have not exercised at all right before I left for Chicago until the day after I arrived home. I ate sooo much crap -- and, let's face it, drank toooo much -- at the conference. I guess I'll be not getting 31 polishes in September. :( Aug 20th (40m cardio), Aug 21st (20m cardio), Aug 22nd (45m cardio+strength).