NOTD and Giveaway update!

So, the most wonderful of wonderful things happened today, the lovely Rach from Stuff I Swatched
 stopped by as I was getting off work today! We frolicked off to Sally's and bought a few polishes from the Hunger Games collection. I picked up one of the polishes I was a little iffy about, Smoke and Mirrors. It's a suuuuper dark blue/black with a very complex glass fleck shimmer of green, blue, and gold. Very subtle but very lovely. Pretty much a one coater because the formula was a little thick, but a little thinner made it a lot easier to handle.

And because I needed some bling, I added China Glaze Luxe and Lush, which you can win in the giveaway at the end of this post!

Mmmm. Flakie. Here's the giveaway!

I am raffling off two flakie polishes: China Glaze Luxe and Lush, and FingerPaints Twisted. I know it's not the BIGGEST giveaway in the world, but we all have to start somewhere!

And because I love a challenge, I'll also be raffling off a custom franken polish created by myself. For that franken you can choose from a holographic, duochrome, glitter, jelly, or any combination of these!
These are two separate prizes so there will be a total of two winners.

How to enter:
All you have to do is be a follower of my blog, or join with Google Friend Connect, or Google +.
Get an extra entry if you post a link to the giveaway on your facebook page.
Get another entry for reblogging this contest on your website.



a Rafflecopter giveaway

Having a Flakie and Franken polish GIVEAWAY!

Well, I always told myself I'd do a giveaway one day when I got close to 50 followers. That day has come! It makes me sad when I see people on MakeupAlley that can never find flakie nail polishes in their town.

So starting today I am raffling off two flakie polishes: China Glaze Luxe and Lush, and FingerPaints Twisted. I know it's not the BIGGEST giveaway in the world, but we all have to start somewhere!

And because I love a challenge, I'll also be raffling off a custom franken polish created by myself. For that franken you can choose from a holographic, duochrome, glitter, jelly, or any combination of these!
These are two separate prizes so there will be a total of two winners.

How to enter:
All you have to do is be a follower of my blog, or join with Google Friend Connect, or Google +.
Get an extra entry if you post a link to the giveaway on your facebook page.
Get another entry for reblogging this contest on your website.

This contest is limited to the USA, Canada, UK, and Australia.

China Glaze Hunger Games 2012 Luxe and Lush

Happy Hunger Games! And may the odds be ever in your favor!

The Hunger Games books are some pretty awesome reads, so if you haven't yet, please read them ASAP! There was a lot of drama surrounding the original announcement of this collection. Apparently the Hunger Games fans took a moral opposition to there being a line of nail polish based on characters who would be morally opposed to such petty adornments as nail polish. Being a fan of the books myself, I wish they would have let it be! Instead of having names pertinent to the characters in the story, now the polishes are all based on "Colors of the Capitol" and loosely related to the different districts in the books. But live and let live, I'm just happy they released the colors!

 Today I have for you the polish that I was the most anxious to get my hands on from this collection: the flakie polish! As far as I know, China Glaze has never done a flakie, so Luxe and Lush is a first! It's also a new spin on the flakie, thicker than the normal flakes seen in polishes such as Essie Shine of the Times or Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure. They're more like shards than flakes, it makes me feel like my nails have gold leaf on them.

This is two coats of Ulta For Bitten with one coat of China Glaze Luxe and Lush. L&L was an interesting formula, I ended up dabbing on the flakes so they didn't stick all in one place. Also used three coats of topcoat.

I present to you, The Mani That Was On Fire:

 

 The flakes in this flash from copper to gold to green with hints of blue. 

Here's a picture of Ulta For Bitten on its own. It's a dark black brown base with fuchsia to gold shifting sparkles.

 

Woo! Like a super vampy Bad Fairy.

Thanks for reading!

Max Factor Fantasy Fire vs Clarins 230 (magiiiic)

Unless you've been living under a rock (or just not familiar with the Nail Board on MUA), you should know that they have fiiiinally come out with a near dupe to the infamous Clarins 230 / Unicorn Pee / magic color shifting magic AWESOME nail polish. The original 230 had a natural mica that shifted from red to orange to yellow to green to blue and it was suspended in a super sheer purple base. Max Factor Fantasy Fire appears to have a synthetic mica that shifts from red all the way to green, in a little bit more blue/purple tinted base, but doesn't seem to have the blue flash the 230 has. Also, the intensity of color in 230 is just way better and way richer.

Here's a bottle picture to compare, FF on the left and 230 on the right.

And here are probably waaaay too many pictures of Fantasy Fire (two coats over two coat of OPI Dutch Ya Love OPI?).

Soooo pretty.

Here's a picture of the same manicure but with 230 on my middle finger to show the difference in pigmentation: 230 on the left, FF on the right.

Second one from the right is 230, rest are Fantasy Fire.

And here are some pictures of the original Clarins 230 over Revlon Royal taken in June of 2011.

Grrr! I can't find my picture that showed the blue flash. >:(. Trust me, it's there.

NerdLacquer The Quantum Blueniverse

Here's my last NerdLacquer swatch I have for you until my Holy Grail bottle comes in the mail. The Quantum Blueniverse is a veeerrry complex polish. It's a Tardis blue jelly (oh yeah, I went there), with fine light green shimmer, gold glitter and hexes in different sizes, and pretty little blue squares. It was pretty much opaque in two coats, but I did three just in case. Formula was awesome, not hard to work with at all, and I had minimal cleanup! Especially after my coat of Seche Vite topcoat shrank it up a bit, heh. To me, it mostly appears to be greenish, because of the flakie like shimmer, but it's still gorgeous! But without a doubt, Warrior Ethos is my favorite of the three.

It's very cool because it's almost like it's own gradient or an easily applied "galaxy nail" manicure.

And here's my favorite Warrior Ethos again (three coats, amazing formula).
 

And my least favorite, Cyance Friction

Didn't even bother clean up with this one because I don't like green polish, but the depth of it is still gorgeous. Love the copper glitters.

You can pick some of these up for yourself at NerdLacquer's shop on Etsy.

Right now the shop is on hiatus while she catches up with the crazy amount of orders us polish crazies put in, but these beauties are definitely worth waiting for. Beautiful!

My First Nerd Lacquers

Well, I would consider myself a pretty nerdy nerd. So when I saw swatches of polishes from this brand Nerd Lacquer on Makeup Alley, I got super excited! They have polishes themed from all your favorite sci fi movies and shows: Doctor Who?, Star Wars, Firefly, Monty Python, all kinds of awesomeness! Right now, it seems like they're so popular they had to temporarily shut down the site, but here are my first swatches.


Warrior Ethos is a gorgeous red jelly with small black glitter, black hexes, red glitter, red hexes large and small, and then every here and there these peeps of iridescent blue/purple hexes wink at me. For some reason this polish reminds me of blood and dirt on the battlefield, and the iridescent bits remind me of the spirits of fallen warriors. Like the ghost creatures in Final Fantasy Spirits Within or the warrior spirits in Final Fantasy 7. Basically this polish reminds me of Final Fantasy apparently. Looove. And I'll just throw this out there: Red XIII. The only thing I didn't like about this polish is that it didn't seem to have enough suspension base to keep the glitter floating. Had to shake it up a few times to get the bigger hexes.

Love.

Next up Cyance Friction, not my favorite. On the Nerd Lacquer site, swatches of this appeared more blue or aqua, but when I got it, it was totally green, like acid green. The glitter in it is really pretty, copper glitter and hexes, blue squares, and a purple color shifty micro glitter, but the base color is not my cup of tea. I put two coats of this polish over my previous Claire's mani, so excuse the lack of cleanup.

Meh, much happier with my current Warrior Ethos mani.

Happy Mardi Gras! (and day off for me!)

After a ridiculously stressful couple of weeks, I finally have a couple days off! I wanted to do something fun, so I kind of just grabbed a couple polishes at random. The first I applied was Claire's Cotton Candy scented nail polish. In the bottle it looks like a neon turquoise with a blue flash, with holographic glitter. Unfortunately, the pigmented base of the polish compleeetely covers the holo glitter. So what did I do? I ADDED a holo glitter gradient using, Nicole by  OPI Make a Comet ment. And then for Mardi Gras bling I added Wet n Wild Correction Tape from last year's On the Prowl collection. And a thick coat of Seche Vite.

I really like this, the turquoise doesn't go too green on me (which I hate) and the blue flash really brightens it up. Kinda love it!

Glitterrrr on mah naaaiiiils makes me happyyyyy.

Catherine Arley 805 - Black holo!

Things are getting pretty stressful at work, so I felt like I needed a palette cleansing vampy mani. I chose Catherine Arley 805 because its a gorgeous black with a little holo surprise. I hauled Catherine Arleys last year as one of my first big internet nail polish purchases. They are relatively hard to find because you have to order them from a European website that's very tricky to maneuver. But I regret nothing! Their brushes are a little wonky, and the formula is a liiiittle thick, but the colors... Yum. And they dry quickly and with a glossy finish, even without topcoat. The CA polishes tend to be less linear holographic and more scattered or a sparse almost-linear formation.

I added a rose painted on with acrylic paint and a dotting tool. I have a Lancome executive type visit today at work, so hopefully my rosy nail art will woo them.

Blurry to show the rainbowy-ness.

Rose nail art over Essie Armed and Ready

When I saw swatches of Essie's Armed and Ready, I was skeptical of its greatness. It appeared in swatches to be a dark dusty green with tinges of blue-grey with a lovely golden flash. But I have been letdown so many times by polishes with hidden shimmer. Luckily this polish's shimmer isn't too hidden. The formula was gorgeous, non-streaky, full coverage, almost a one-coater. I had no bubbles and no issues with application, it practically applied itself. In the first picture I'm holding Essie Playdate, which was another polish from this collection.

And I painted these roses using a dotting tool, dots of acrylic paint, and then swirled them together.