Glitter gradient with Savvy Irish Coffee and OPI The Living Daylights

If you haven't already seen, I recently had the opportunity to swatch 3 of the shades from the upcoming OPI James Bond 007 Skyfall collection here. I was probably most excited about the multi-coloured glitterbomb The Living Daylights - I guess it's a kind of counterpart to Rainbow Connection from last year's holiday collection.

Unlike RC though, there's only one size of glitter - hexes the same size as the large hexes in RC. And there are only 4 muted shades of glitter (salmon, teal, silver and gold).

It sounds like a very simple glitterbomb, but I have to admit I'm kind of in love with it. It's RC's sophisticated older sister. I'm not one for wearing metallic glitter on its own (c.f. my laments here) but this is gorgeous for layering!

I originally tried it over Live and Let Die, a very dark vampy, so for my second try I layered it over Savvy Irish Coffee, a new budget offering by Australian evil time and money black hole of beauty everything chain store Priceline. This is a mushroom taupe kind of colour - light brown creme with a hint of purple in there. Unlike my usual glitter gradients, this time I went heavy at the cuticle, fading towards the free edge.

And here it is mattified with Rimmel Mattifying Topcoat - love! Somehow matte topcoat over glitter always gets my vote.

Are you a Rainbow Connection or a Living Daylights lover? What else should I do with The Living Daylights?

Gold and purple all-over-the-place nail art explosion

Alanna of Pretty Purple Polish recently celebrated her first blogiversary by holding a nail art competition with a purple theme. She was one of my first followers and co-created Artsy Wednesday with me, and has really nice swatches and is generally all-round lovely.

For my entry, I decided to showcase a bunch of my favourite purples. I have a lot of purple polishes! I also had some big iridescent hex glitters, so I decided to explore a number of different nail art techniques on my nails. I only had 3 nail designs in total, because... I'm lazy :(

Thumb and ring finger: China Glaze LOL (Alanna grabbed this HTF for me from the mythical Bankstown nail supply shop - told you she's lovely! :D), glitter gradient with Essence Make It Golden, applied with a Q-tip

Index and pinky: These nails were the first I came up with. I wanted it to look like mermaid scales. The base is ulta3 Berry sponged over Rimmel Lively Lilac, then stamped with Mash-39 in ulta3 Gold Rush Fever and mattified with Rimmel Lycra Pro Mattifying Topcoat. I then stuck on hexes with clear polish.

Middle finger: one of my favourite but time-consuming and hard-to-get-right techniques - drag/needle marbling. I painted the entire nail with a thick coat of ulta3 Orchid, spotted some Gold Rush Fever on top, then dragged loops in the polish with the needle of a compass. Finished with Rimmel Mattifying.

For everyday wearing this felt over-the-top, but I think each of these would make good manis on their own, and I'll probably revisit them. What do you think?

Matte charcoal, yes please! China Glaze Stone Cold

China Glaze Stone Cold was part of the Hunger Games collection - I haven't watched the movie or read the book, but this is the most beautiful matte charcoal polish with silvery shimmer particles. It looks like dark lead pencil, and dries super quick. I wasn't expecting to love it so much, but I do!

Annoyingly, the black matte base rubs off over a few days, and by the third day my nails were noticeably more silvery than I would've liked (if you look closely near the cuticles, you can see where cleanup has gotten rid of the darker base and left the silver shimmer behind). But a quick 10 minute touchup fixed that and it was back to gorgeous graphite glory. Definitely my favourite matte polish so far!

What's your favourite matte polish?

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...

Zoya Mitzi

If anyone ever needs the concept of a related-samples t-test explained -- or needs a related-samples t-test computed -- I am SO your gal. Just gave a boring lecture on it in stats yesterday. The PowerPoint took me over ten hours to create (though only thirty minutes to deliver). Maybe I shouldn't explicitly do every little calculation next time...?

Zoya Mitzi

Such a fun color, no? Grass green creme, with a satin finish. It's not quite matte-matte but still not quite shiny. It was a hard polish to put on. I needed three thick coats to get it to the smoothness you see in this photo (i.e. not smooth). BUT it lasted forever, which is totally contrary to my experience with mattes: I put it on one day thinking that it'd chip the next day and then I'd change my polish. But no... it clung to my nails for four days without a single chip. I only took it off because I was sick of the color. And the non-smoothness.

I had the most aggravating exchange with a student in section the other day. Sometimes, it's really hard to maintain a helpful attitude.

The scene: a classroom full of students bent studiously over a worksheet on using z- and t-tests. Everyone hard at work... except for one student who is doing nothing and looking bored. I ask him what exactly he doesn't get -- thinking that he's probably unclear about when to use a t-test and when to use a z-test -- and he asks in return, "What's a z-score?"

This is not a stupid question. Most people don't know what a z-score is. HOWEVER, it's something we started learning and using in early April. Since then, z-scores have been front and center in every lecture, homework and worksheet until about a week ago when we started talking exclusively about t-statistics. And it's not that this student has been absent... he's been in lecture, section and turns in work.

I explain z-scores to him briefly. He nods. I add that it's nothing to freak out about; we've been using it for weeks. Same ol' z. If you have the value of an area under the normal curve, you can find the corresponding z score in the same ol' z table.

Student: What's a z-table?

flinty: The table we've been using for the past three weeks. [I try to explain what the table looks like, thinking it'll jog his memory.]

Student: Where do I find that?

flinty: It's in the textbook.

Student: Oh.

flinty: [waits for student to open the textbook]

Student: [not opening the textbook]

flinty: Do you want to go to the z-table and I can walk you through the process of finding the z-score?

Student: OK. [still doesn't open the textbook]

flinty: Why don't you open your text to the z-table so we can get started?

Student: Where in the book is it?

flinty: It's in the back.

Student: [flips through a few pages in the front of the book] I can't find it.

flinty: Just flip through the last twenty pages or so. It's there.

Student: [opens the last page of the textbook and stops]

flinty: [waits]

Student: Can you find it for me?

flinty: Uh... sure. [finds the table and puts the book down on his desk]

Student: So what do I do now?

flinty: [walks him through the whole problem and eventually points out the answer]

Student: OK. So what do I do now?

flinty: The next problem. [pause] It's similar to the one we just did so don't close the book.

Student: [doesn't even look at the problem] I don't get it.

He had to have been pulling my leg, right? RIGHT?

Zoya Phoebe (Mod Mattes, Summer 2011)

Back from Taipei. Too tired, too harried, too stressed out... sigh.

Zoya Phoebe

I am so bad at applying mattes! This was a goopy mess for me. I love the color: this almost wispy, ethereal shimmering blue satin... and then there are the clumps. Two coats. Because a third would've been even worse.

Zoya Phoebe with topcoat

Better, much better. Such pretty blue shimmer with topcoat, no?

Time to prepare for section...

Oh dreary winter...

It has been a very dreary winter here in the north east. Since the new year, it has snowed every week so far :( I am very very tired of digging my car out of the snow. Last week I actually had to use the shovel ON my car, that's how much snow we got!! To cheer myself up, I decided to do a bright and summery mani instead of reaching for the winter/fall colors that I still haven't tried. I found this random LA Girl polish in my untried pile. It's really bright in your face for this time of year and definitely fit the bill :)


Not sure what the name is, because it didn't have one! I do remember buying it from Forever21 over a year ago. eek so sad! I have nail polishes that I haven't used from a year ago. Pretty ridiculous. I am sure there are polishes that I have only used once from over a year ago. I guess that tells you something about my nail polish habits................. but I'm still in denial over that haha!

And because I didn't want to remove it after a few days, I decided to make it matte with China Glaze's Matte Magic:



I love how using a matte top coat can give nail polish a whole different personality!

What is your go to nail polish when you need a bit of cheering up?

Revlon Powder Puff

Revlon Powder Puff

This was released sometime in late summer but I think it's a perfect winter polish: reminds me of snow! Soft, sheer white with a gorgeous blue shimmer. REALLY sheer. I think this is five coats... and it's still not opaque. Luckily, the formula applies nicely so five coats wasn't as painful as it sounds. This was part of Revlon's Suede line, which means it dries satiny rather than glossy.

Franken - Meteorite

I've been at it again, ladies. I just can't stop mixing! Here's a little lovely that I have named "meteorite" -



I started with a Maybelline Express Finish in Matte Grape and basically just dumped a bunch of gold and pink microglitter as well as some square gold glitter that I purchased in the craft section at Walmart. It was extremely bumpy, but I love the look! Here's a hand shot -


Here's the kicker, though - you know how every once in a while someone will mention an old polish smelling rather chemical-ly? Weeeeeeeell, let me just tell you, I couldn't even put my hands near my FACE, I felt like I had just mixed a chemistry experiment and added a little dab on my wrists for the evening. Seriously, did we really live with this stench for decades?

Two thumbs up for glitter... two thumbs down for chemical burns on this inside of my nose.

Have a great day, all!

OPI Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow Suede and a Comparison

I love matte polishes and the OPI Suedes are no exception.  So when I found out that OPI was releasing a suede version of Here Today...Aragon Tomorrow, I knew I had to have it.

I went with two coats of it over a completely dry base coat for this swatch.

 And because I was curious, I topped it with a thick coat of Seche Vite for these two pictures.

With top coat, this one's super sparkly in the sun.

Since I love to do comparisons, I got out my bottle of Zoya Verushka.  From left to right, this is two coats of the OPI with top coat, two coats of Verushka with top coat, two coats of the OPI, and two coats of Verushka.  I took this picture in the shade.

I took this picture in the sun.

And I took this picture with the flash.

While matte, these polishes are really close.  Verushka is a little darker and bluer than the OPI.  The differences really come out with top coat.  With top coat, Verushka really outshines the OPI, in my opinion.  It's more sparkly and seems to have a depth to it whereas the OPI seems flat.  Don't get me wrong - I like both polishes, but I like the Zoya a whole lot more.

Zoya Savita

Hello, matte gorgeousness, it's nice to see you today!

Zoya Savita

Zoya Savita, you are lovelier than lovely. With a deep violet color, a heavy pigment and a quick-drying nature, this polish wormed its way into my heart in no time. I mean seriously, look at the velvety purple smoothness of this puppy!

The downside? The wear. Ugh-a-rino, the wear, the wear, the wear. Four hours in and chip-o was my name-o, if you know what I mean. It was more tip wear that complete chips, but when you're wearing a color as bold as this one, every little imperfection shows.


The solution? I'd use this one as a last-minute-night-on-the-town polish, or possibly under another polish... but then again, I've been into layering a little lately... (hint, hint, my next post, hint hint)


Happy day, all!

Layering Love with WnW Blueberry Fizz

So, how does Wet n Wild Blueberry Fizz hold up under some of our favorite layering polishes? Well, let's have a looky-looky.

Blueberry Fizz under NfuOh 54

I believe that the answer would be... ahhhhmazing. (I might be a bit biased, however; I'm sort of under the impression that Nfu Ohs could make even the most heinous polish acceptable.) I think Blueberry Fizz works as a great base color for this flakie goodness - the color pops and even brings out the purple undertones in the flakes in sunlight.

So how about matte-ified?

... with Essie Matte About You

Lovely as well, although I did myself a huge disservice with this one. I tried to do a gradient with the Nfu Oh (didn't work) and went a little polish crazy before finally adding the Essie on top which led to a bit of a drying mess, hence only the two exposed nails. The ring finger was... let's just say, irregular. It's a lovely effect, though, don't you think? I really enjoy the matte look over these flakies.

I hope you enjoy the layered looks!

Happy day, all!

QuikPic: Color Club Chelsea Girl

I haven't done my nails in months. Months!

When I get busy with school all else goes by the wayside until I look like a defeated sasquatch. Slowly my makeup use starts to decline... and I'm no longer making sure my brows look good... Eventually, it's a good day if I brush my hair. :P (I am only partially kidding.)

Anyway, I have to admire the other girls for keeping up with their manis no matter how busy they are. I have never been in the practice of doing a daily NoTD (something that might change with my discovery of Seche Vite), in part because I typically like to take a while to do nail art, and I don't often wear a plain nail color. But after a month of bare hands and being bored... I figured something was better than nothing. And oh what a something I picked!

This is a really quick shot (with my phone's camera) of Color Club's Chelsea Girl, my first "full" Color Club polish and, I think, the first polish I want a backup of. There's something incredibly sophisticated about cremes, in my opinion, even bright (neon) blue cremes such as this. I cannot even explain how happy this color makes me...but my fingers and toes now feel divine. Perhaps it will inspire some work out of me. :P

In reality I think this color leans a bit more cerulean than is seen in the picture. But it was a quick shot without me changing any settings on my phone so I'll live with it. Application was streak free in three coats, but I did a fourth for extra measure. As with many neons it dries a bit matte but looks gorgeous with a topcoat (I chose Seche Vite) and sort of exhibits what I consider to be jelly-like qualities.

Anyway... I'm in love. Chelsea Girl and I are running away together. With a couple of fimo decals along for the ride. :)

P.S. My nails haven't been this short in forever. But I had a few really bad breaks (geocaching+logs+long nails=bloody hands) so... yeah. Rocking the short nails for a bit. Liking it though. :)

NOTD: ManGlaze The Death Tar

I'm in a fairly frustrated mood right now. First of all, I'm sure I've mentioned this before, my graduate school program is heavily influenced by postmodern philosophical thinking. Unfortunately, the faculty did not feel it was necessary to share this with me before I agreed to accept my offer to join the program (and I would have declined had I known). Even more unfortunate is that I have had zero experience whatsoever in philosophy, let alone postmodernism (which mostly reads like rambling gibberish to me). So I am thrilled (not) that I have to do a 20 minute presentation this Wednesday on Anne Anlin Cheng's The Melancholy of Race: Psychoanalysis, Assimilation, and Hidden Grief, a book that is very interesting yet I do not understand it very well by any means, let alone well enough to create some kind of critique or analysis. How do you create a presentation on something that does not make very much sense to you? Where do you even begin? ARG.

Thanks for letting me vent. Back to nail polish....

Way back in the day when mattes weren't everywhere like they are now, I ordered from ManGlaze. I resisted for a long time because of some offensive misogynistic (IMO) pictures on their site that have since been taken down. I received great customer service and everything arrived safely. However, I didn't actually use my bottles (I ordered the black and grey) until yesterday! On Saturday afternoon, I was laying around doing homework and feeling angry and nervous about my looming presentation, when I decided to do my nails as a way to calm down. I was about to work out (we have an elliptical in our apt - it's a very cheap Schwinn (this one except ours is black) but it does the job very well) and I got dressed and ready in my workout clothes and sat down to do my mani. I went for the "sweatpants for nails look" and chose ManGlaze The Death Tar, which has now been discontinued and replaced with Matte is Murder. This was, hands down, the BEST experience I've had with a matte polish. I tend to apply very slowly, since I like to have minimal cleanup, and mattes simply cannot be applied slowly typically. This one, however, could be applied like any normal polish. The slight problem is that it was very easy to smudge - I accidentally lightly brushed my pinky against a nearby bottle and it totally smudged off. It was fixable though. It bubbled a tiny bit on my index finger but it's no big deal to me.

I put it on around 4:40PM, worked out until 6:00, and took a shower around 6:45. It was completely dry by the time I took my shower. While I worked out I was careful not to touch my nails, so I'm not sure at what point they were totally dry.

This is 2 coats with Barielle Camouflage as a basecoat and no topcoat. It's already starting to chip since it is a matte (mattes chip quickly) and I had to do laundry and dishes today. But that's ok. I only meant to wear it for the day anyway.

Indoors:


Outdoors, sunlight:


Outdoors, shade:


ManGlaze polish can be purchased here. I have to admit that I'm tempted to order Matte is Murder, Matte-Astrophe Topcoat, and Hot Mess Topcoat. Do any of you own ManGlaze? What do you think?

Thanks for reading and thanks for listening to me vent!

[Edit]: I forgot to add, if you feel like following me on Twitter to listen to my random rants and complaints about life, I'm @aclockstopped. :)

Better late than never: Orly Metal Chic NOTDs

I bought these awhile back from TransDesign -- and wore them over a month ago (they were all NOTDs) -- but kept on forgetting to post them! I liked these in terms of wear and application but I'm not sure they looked fantastic on me.

Orly Iron Butterfly

Matte black with silver shimmer. The shimmer looks silver here but it's actually looks more multi-hued than just straight up silver. This applied very smoothly, did not dry immediately (which makes for a more forgiving application when it comes to mattes) and did not chip at all for about two days with Dermalect basecoat and ridgefiller and no topcoat.

Orly Iron Butterfly with "David" Topcoat

I glossed it up with Supply Source "David" topcoat two days into wearing this mani (notice slight tipwear -- that's pretty good for me). It's actually a little dull glossy; I think I prefer the matte version.

Orly Solid Gold

Burnished gold matte with silver shimmer. This one dried quicker than Iron Butterfly and played a little less nicely with my nails, even though I used the same ridgefiller and basecoat that I did for the previous one. I really loved the effect on my nails but I thought this was a bit clashy-clashy with my skin.

Orly Solid Gold with David Topcoat

One day later, I glossed it up with David. (As you can see, no tipwear or chips.) The topcoat really brings out the warmth in this gold and the sparkle of the silver shimmer. This one I preferred with topcoat.

Orly Glam Rock

Saved my favorite for last. :) Reddish bronze matte with what looks like silver and gold shimmer. This just glowed with warmth and fire. Super pretty and also quick-drying but not annoyingly so.

Orly Glam Rock with David Topcoat

Doesn't it almost look like it's a duochrome? It's just such a changeable golden-bronze with red highlights when glossy topcoat is applied. This was one day into the manicure. Again, no tipwear, no chips.

Claire's Mood color-changing polishes!

About every two weeks on NB, there's a must-have product of some kind that sends people in mad search for it. I didn't have time for the mad search for Claire's Mood color-changing nail polishes. So I sent my SO for them.

A week ago, my SO was complaining that he had a huge three-hour lunch break and nothing to do. My solution: I gave him a bag of Claire's polishes with a receipt and told him to go return these at the local mall he often has lunch at.

Yes, I sent my man to Claire's.

Anyway, he asked if I wanted him to pick up anything new and I told him to stay on the lookout for the Mood polishes. Several hours later, I get a call from him from Claire's, asking, "There are five different ones. Do you just want one of each?"

Hells yeah!

I haven't had much time for swatching these days but I wanted to play with these. They turned out to be kind of bad polishes but INCREDIBLY awesome with the best temperature-based color-changing effect I've seen in polishes. Apparently, they have two names each: one for each color!

Claire's Happy/Earthy

Isn't that awesome? I know daydream222 already showed it off during the weekend but I think the awesomeness deserves to be repeated! :D Neon yellow when warm, grass green when cool! This one had a slightly weaker effect than the next one I'm showing you but still, it's pretty strong! The neon yellow usually is a bit more clearly yellow but I was using my lightbox and the lights had already been on for about half an hour (thus raising the temperature). I had to wait a little longer for this one to change while putting it on though. These things dry satiny and take many coats to get non-streaky; I think I used only three coats here.

Claire's Daring/Innocent

This one was amazing. (Ugly but amazing.) As soon as I brushed a coat on my nail, the color changed. It was hard to actually see how well I was polishing the base of my nail because the color immediately became this peachy-beige that wasn't so different from my skintone. Dries satiny and was the biggest PITA to get non-streaky: five coats! I'm hoping the other ones won't be as bad...

I have three more of these that I hope to post by the month's end. :)

In the meanwhile, I have some promising preliminary results on one of... three studies I have in the air right now. Now all I have to do is do some actual work on it so I can tell the good-esque news to my lab tomorrow morning.

Sweatpants for your nails.

Before I continue, the term in the title was the enlightened creation of someone on nail board. I do not remember who, so if you are reading this, please show your brilliant self!

Because she was so right....the OPI Suedes are exactly like sweatpants for your nails. They go on easy when you're in a hurry, they're lo-maintenance and you kind of forget they're there.

Unlike sweatpants though, they're pretty damn sexy.

Check out We'll Always Have Paris Suede:

I really needed to throw something on last night - I damaged my Jade is the New Black mani from all the luggage handling, and then baking until 11:30pm, and really wanted to sleep because I only got two hours the night before. (Don't ask...) This was the perfect solution! The colour is somewhere between a pink and a purple (a tyrian purple?) without being too bright or gaudy. (I tried to get the colour accurate in the pic with various lighting conditions...) In fact it's the exact same colour and level of shiny as my phone (Sidekick LX 09 in Orchid) and nothing like the original OPI We'll Always Have Paris. It is loaded down with tons of shimmer, that since the polish is matte-ified, it just looks like a really awesome speckled finish and doesn't look super 'flat' like a true matte does. Honestly having true mattes on my nails reminds me of the feeling of nails on a chalkboard so I tend to avoid them.

My English is awful today. "Level of shiny"...right...

Two easy coats done fairly quickly seems to be the way that these work best for me. The OPI Suedes dry so unbelievably fast its like you never even did a manicure in the first place! (Ah ha! One more step towards polish colour you can change with the push of a button!!)

I'm not sure how this is going to last, as mattes and suedes don't last as long as normal polishes, but I will probably be doing a 'real' mani after work anyways. :) Just needed to look presentable for today in a hurry, so I pulled on my nail-sweatpants!

Do you guys have any of the OPI Suedes? Do you moisturize with them? How long do they wear for you?

kittytokaren

PS Like flinty, I'm trying to de-stash a little. Culling my herd of Essies is so hard...