Okay, So I'm Extremely Tardy For the Party

           But whatever, I'm still gonna say it. Happy Thanksgiving!! ^_^
I know it's been pretty dead around here for the past week, but between fighting with bus coordinators, cloudy weather at home, forgetting my bottle of acetone at school, helping to cook dinner, spending quality time with the people I love and doing my damndest to avoid the ones I don't, there just wasn't much time for nails. However, I do have pictures of the mani that I've been wearing...here it is in all its raggedy four-day-old glory. 

To do this, I used:

1 coat of Rescue Beauty Lounge Under the Stars

1 coat of L.A. Colors Aqua Crystals

1 coat of Zoya Ivanka

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

      I wasn't really going for anything in particular when I put these together. I wore RBL Under the Stars home because I was planning on re-taking the pictures for it on the next day.But the next day was cloudy + I had to go to this party.You can't go to a party with no glitter on your nails, so I slapped on the first stuff I could grab...you can kind of see how rushed this was, because the coverage is so uneven. In any case, I don't really like it. I don't think it's ugly, but I'll still be glad to see it go.

   I hope you all had wonderful Thanksgiving and Black Friday weekends!

Hard Candy Lava

           For the past few days, I've been craving red. I hate red, but man...I just wanted to wear it! I tried a few days ago with Zoya Sarah, but that ended with bubbly nails and me in a rage, so I forgot about wearing red. But last night, the desire returned with a vengeance. To appease it, I put on Hard Candy Lava, from what I think is the core collection. 

Please excuse the little white fuzz. Totally didn't see that until editing time.

But anyway, Lava is composed of tons of small, flat, metallic, ruby pieces of shimmer in a sheer ruby red base. The overall effect is that glittery-foil finish that has been so popular lately. In the bottle and in this picture, there are also golden flecks, but looking at my nail, I don't see that at all. 

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

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My hand looks so ashy here, ew.

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Sunlight, no flash.

      Lava is a really beautiful red polish. And when I say beautiful, I mean back-up worthy beautiful. It has this crazy intensity to it, and in the sun, it looks like its actually on fire. But I like it best in natural and low light, because that's when it takes on this awesome inner luminescence that just kind of comes from nowhere. It's like it's creating its own light. I can't really put it into words, and the picture of it in natural light is not so good, but trust me...it's gorgeous. You can definitely see why they named it as they did.

    I really liked Lava's formula as well. It was smooth, easy to apply, and was fully opaque in two coats. For the pictures, I used two coats of polish and one layer of topcoat, and looking at my nails now, there's no VNL. However, if I orient my hands in a certain way, I can see through my tips... my index finger in the last picture is a good example of that. But that doesn't happen often, so it's whatever to me.

    My only real gripe about this polish is that the bottles are too small...you pay $5 for .34 oz. I don't understand that at all...for $5, the bottles should be bigger. Or the price should be lowered, if the bottles are gonna be so small. This is highway robbery for reals. :(

But that's all I've got for today. Have an awesome night, guys!!

Rescue Beauty Lounge Anne

           For today, I have Anne from Rescue Beauty Lounge's the Real Housewives of the Tudor Dynasty Collection. I actually wore this for a few days, and then took it off to try out Revlon Perplex. But since I had time and nowhere to go today, I put it back on and finally took pictures.

Anne is a murky, deep olive green base with multi-sized gold and fuchsia shimmer. 

The base color here is way too dark, but it was the only lighting where the shimmer accurately showed up. The other pictures are color accurate, but unfortunately, don't really do this polish justice.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

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       I don't know how many of you guys are fans of Showtime's The Tudors, but if you are, then you might remember a quote from a scene between Tom Boleyn and Anne. In it, he says, "There's something deep and dangerous in you, Anne. Those eyes of yours are like dark hooks for the soul." This polish immediately brought that quote to mind for me. It's dark and dangerous looking, but at the same time, it's so beautiful and complex that it immediately attracts you and doesn't let go. The base color is one of those confusing ones that can look green, brown, or grey depending on the way that the light hits it, and while subtle, the shimmer is wonderful. It mesmerizes in sunlight and in lower lighting, it gives the polish an incredible depth and sense of opulence that just makes me want to stare all day. I really love Anne the polish. Like...for real. Anne the person was my second favorite Tudor wife (which is what pushed me to purchase this color), and Ji did an absolutely killer job interpreting her. It's gorgeous, and I don't even care that it looks not so good on me.

      Anne also boasts a perfect formula. Some of the reviews on the site complained that their bottles were a little too thick, but that wasn't a problem for me at all. Anne was the perfect consistency and applied smoothly and easily...there was no dragging, bubbling, or other sorts of polish tomfoolery. And it was extremely well-pigmented, being perfectly opaque in two coats. In the pictures, there are two coats of polish and one layer of topcoat. Also, this is another one where you will want to break out your shiniest, glassiest topcoat, as it will really showcase the polish.

    I did buy Anne in the sale, but as many of you know, it wasn't actually on sale, which means it was listed at $18. I still feel like I got a bit of a discount, because if you divide the amount of polishes I got by my order total, it comes out to about $12 per polish. But even if that hadn't been the case, I wouldn't have regretted this purchase at all. $18 is a shitload of money for one polish, but to me,(and I can't believe I'm saying this) Anne is 100% worth it. If you've been lemming it and know that it would make you happy, I'd actually recommend grabbing it, maybe as an early Christmas present to yourself. Especially since according to Ji, Anne is almost gone. 

That's all I've got for today though. Have an awesome Sunday night, guys!

Illamasqua Phallic vs. Rescue Beauty Lounge Under the Stars

            Today, I didn't really want to wear any specific polish, plus I wasn't going anywhere, so I decided to re-swatch Illamasqua Phallic, because I was really dissatisfied with the pictures that were already there. I'd been curious about how it compared to RBL Under the Stars, plus the Varnish Vixen asked about them a little bit ago, so I grabbed my bottle and did a quick comparison. 

Fluorescent light, no flash.

 I don't get sun for very long (it's 5:30 and already pitch black outside), so I couldn't get proper bottle pictures. Sorry!

Sunlight, no flash.

L-R: Phallic, Under the Stars, Phallic, Under the Stars. 

Sunlight, no flash.

L-R: Phallic, Under the Stars, Phallic, Under the Stars

Sunlight, no flash.

L-R: Under the Stars, Phallic

Sunlight, no flash.

L-R: Under the Stars, Phallic

      When I was making up my RBL list, I was on the fence about Under the Stars. I already owned Phallic, and when I checked swatches side by side, they looked pretty much the same. But thankfully, that's definitely not the case, as these polishes look absolutely nothing alike. I think the pictures make them look a bit more similar, but in person, even Stevie Wonder would be able to tell them apart. Under the Stars' base color is dustier, greener, and much closer to teal than Phallic's vibrant, jewel-toned, navy. And Phallic's shimmer is larger, lighter, and far more visible than Under the Stars', especially under lower lighting conditions.
    So yes...someone would be justified in owning both. However, I prefer Phallic overall, and probably would not buy the RBL at full price if I owned Phallic already.
    1. Phallic is less expensive ($14 to RBL's $18). And Sephora is more likely to have sales than RBL, which means you may get it for even less.
    2. Phallic gives more product (.5 oz to RBL's .4 oz.)
    3. In my opinion, Phallic prettier than Under the Stars. It's deeper, more eye-catching, and way more arresting. 


    But Under the Stars has a more unique base shade, and the formula is better than Phallic's. I mean...Phallic's formula is no slouch, but Under the Stars is more controllable and better pigmented.
So which would you rather have? 

P.S. Has anyone else noticed blogger acting kind of funky? My formatting is all off...there are these random gaps and spaces. :(

Rescue Beauty Lounge Scrangie

For today, I've got Rescue Beauty Lounge Scrangie, from the Bloggers Collection. 

Scrangie is a mid-range blue-based violet creme base, with green shimmer and somewhat golden iridescent bits on top. You can't really see the golden iridescence..it's pretty subtle, and my camera didn't pick it up. Also, I only said green shimmer because that's what Scrangie said, and she made it, so she would know. Truthfully though, 98% of the time, the shimmer looks blue to me. I only see green when I get rigghttt up in there.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light no flash.

You can see some of the iridescence in the bottle here.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash. 

       It's difficult to photograph, but Scrangie is a good-looking polish. The base color is pretty and the shimmer is very visible in all lights. I could have done with more of that gold iridescent stuff though. And as far as I can tell, there's nothing else quite like it out there.
But with all that being said, Scrangie is overrated. And not just a little bit. It's hugely overrated. According to most reviews that I read, Scrangie was gonna give me magic and butterflies and shit. This polish was supposed to change my life, but none of that even remotely happened. I was so underwhelmed. And it's not like I didn't try either...I really truly tried to love it. I would look at my hands, open my eyes wide, and command myself, "LOVE IT IT'S BEAUTIFUL EVERYONE SAYS SO". But I can't help how I feel....I am just not moved.
      Application-wise, I wasn't particularly impressed either. The formula was a bit thin and needed three coats to reach opacity. In the pictures, I added one extra coat to see if I could get more out of Scrangie, but it was't necessary, nor did it make a difference. However, the formula was controllable, and it went on smoothly, without bubbling or dragging. And I do high-five it for endurance. I've been wearing it for only two full days, but yesterday, I filed down my nails with it on and it still looks really good.
Bottom line though? I am disappointed.

But that's enough for now.  Have an awesome night!!

           

Revlon Perplex

           My original plan for today was to show you guys Rescue Beauty Lounge Anne. I'd been wearing it since Monday, waiting for the weather to improve so I could get some decent pictures. But yesterday in CVS, I saw something that I imagined would be of greater interest to some of you (plus it intrigued me), so I scooped it up. Meet Revlon Perplex. 

Perplex is a smoky, greyed-out purple creme with a very subtle light violet shimmer. 

Sunlight, no flash.

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Sunlight, no flash.

     Okay, so clearly, this is supposed to be Revlon's take on Chanel's smash hit Paradoxal. Now, I understand that this is great for all us poor (or stingy) folks who can't (or won't) spend $23 on a polish. I also understand that it behooves Revlon to market Perplex as the second coming of Paradoxal. But at the same time, I have to shake my head a little when one polish company so blatantly mimics another. A similar shade, a similar sounding name with a similar meaning, and even a display that advertises "this season's "IT SHADE" for less" is just so...extra. It really didn't need to be all of that, Revlon. 

    But that aside, I do like Perplex. It's quite pretty and fall-appropriate, although I wish the shimmer was more apparent. And judging from swatches that I've seen, it does bear a striking resemblance to Paradoxal. I can't say if they're exactly the same, because I don't have Paradoxal to compare, but I can say that any lemming I may have had for Paradoxal is dead and gone. This is close enough for me, and the price is quite right.

     On the issue of formula and application, Perplex was actually pretty good.The formula is very well-pigmented, goes on smoothly, and is wearable in one thick coat. For illustrative purposes, this is one thick coat of Perplex, sans topcoat:

See? Nice and opaque. 

 I ended up going over this with another thin coat of color for security and out of habit, but it wasn't necessary. Dry time was also extremely good. On the other side of the coin, I had a tough time controlling the formula...it seemed runny, which wasn't much fun. But Revlon's brushes tend to be thin, which will help not to get it all over your cuticles and stuff. 

  

 So, what do you guys think? Will you be getting Perplex? 

Rescue Beauty Lounge Starfish Patrick

           After like...weeks of wearing nothing but glitters and shimmers, my eyes needed a break. The light reflecting off my tips was burning out my retinas. So for today, I wanted to wear something demure, but still pretty and interesting. I recently acquired a color that perfectly fit the bill and that I'd been wanting to try, so I slapped it on. Here's Rescue Beauty Lounge Starfish Patrick, from the Spongebob Squarepants Collection.

Starfish Patrick is tough to describe. RBL's website calls it as a "peachy coral", which isn't inaccurate. But looking at it on my hands, I think it pulls a bit orange. But not like...disgusting orange. More like a milky, warm, pinky-cantaloupe shade.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

    Okay, I adore Starfish Patrick.  It's very sophisticated and adult looking, but thanks to the slightly squishy-looking texture, it's still pretty fun and young. It also has this sandy feel to it that makes me think of the beach and the ocean. And best of all, it looks like Patrick! How can anyone hate something that looks like Patrick? He's so lovable and cute. Although it's ironic how arguably the dumbest character in the whole show would inspire what I think is the most refined-looking polish in the collection. 

   But as much as I love the shade, Starfish Patrick's application nearly made me weep. It was extra streaky, and even after three coats, there was still uneveness and bald spots. I ended up dabbing polish in the bald spots, letting that dry for a few minutes, and then going over the whole thing with one more coat to make it more even-looking. I think that worked pretty well, because from afar, it looks smooth. But close up, I can see uneven patches. And there are bubbles, which displeases me. On the upside, the dry time was quite good. And despite the thinness of the formula, it was very easy to control. In the pictures, I used one layer of Barielle Natural Nail Camouflage, four medium thickness coats of color, and one layer of topcoat.