Barielle Elle's Spell

    For today, I have Elle's Spell from last year's Holiday Hustle Collection.

Elle's Spell is a wine red jelly base with tons of multi-sized and duochrome flakes in it. The flakes are the same kind as the ones in say, Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure. 

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

      Elle's Spell is beautiful and totally reminds me of the holiday season. Thanks to the rich color and jelly finish, my nails look like little radioactive cherries, and I just want to nibble them off. My only gripe is that the flakies don't change color on the nail as well as they do in the bottle, but maybe layered over a darker color, one could get more colors out of them. I don't know yet, but if I do that, I'll update with pictures and stuff. 

     In terms of formula, Elle's Spell was fine but for one terrible flaw. It was really really really sheer. This was like four coats over one layer of Essie Limo-Scene (five coats on my index and middle fingers), and I'm still not quite satisfied with the depth of the color on the four coat fingers. So this is one definitely best saved for layering.

And that's all from me today! Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone is enjoying their Saturday! ^_^

Nfu-Oh 40

        For today, I have Nfu-Oh 40 to show you guys. This one is a do-over, because I've posted on it before, but those pictures really sucked butt.

Nfu-Oh 40 is a clear base, full of duochrome multi-sized flakes. The flakes show mostly shades of green and blue, although at extreme angles, I've also gotten purple out of them. And I layered Nfu-Oh 40 over Orly Star of Bombay.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

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Natural light, no flash.

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     I don't have too much to say about Nfu-Oh 40, except for it's awesome. The way that the greens and blues shift and dance across my nails at the slightest movement is mesmerizing, and I love that the color change is obvious at all times. Looking at my nails, I'm reminded of sea turtles. Sea turtles that have been eating radioactive waste or something, which of course is not a good thing, but if it made them glow or gave them superpowers, would be kind of cool. 

    Nfu-Oh 40 also had a really nice formula. The flake payoff was good without my needing to swirl the brush, and the base was thick enough where the flakes don't fall out of suspension, but not so thick that it was tough to apply. My only complaint is that for a layering polish, Nfu-Oh 40 dries kinda slowly, but that was remedied by a good quick-drying topcoat. And the pictures are with two layers of Nfu-Oh 40 over one coat of Star of Bombay. 

And that's all from me today! Thanks for reading, and have a great Sunday! Ahh I can't believe the weekend is over already though.  -____-

Lazy Person Nail Art (n_n)

        So today's post is going to be really short, since I was too lazy to remove Sally Hansen Grape Going! last night. I didn't want to leave it the same either though, so I used some of this mountain of nail art stuff and made a little spring-y nail look for myself.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

    So this was really easy to do and took all of like three minutes. I just used some decals from God knows where...maybe Rite Aid, and a fimo butterfly. I wish I had done some sort of stamping on the background and it's a bit late for spring nails, but overall, I like it! 

Oh yeah, unrelated to this polish, but I wanted to let you guys know that I'm going to be extending my Lady of the Lake Giveaway for an additional three days. I won't be able to get to the post office over the weekend anyway, so I figured why not. The new end date will be June 20, 2011, so if you'd like to enter that, you have a little more time. 

And that's all I've got for today! Thanks for reading!

Sally Hansen Grape Going!

         For today, I've got another Sally Hansen polish. This time, it's Grape Going! (damn unnecessary punctuation) from their Insta-Dri Line.

Grape Going! is kind of hard to put into words. I guess it's a violet purple, metallic-ish looking base, with bright blue, iridescent shimmer floating on top of it. The shimmer also has a duochrome shift to it, where it goes from blue to purple. 

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

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Sunlight, no flash.

    I think Grape Going! doesn't get as much attention as it deserves, because it's truly a lovely polish. And I know I'm gonna get beat up for this, but it's really what I hoped RBL Scrangie would be. In sunlight, the blue shimmer catches the light and stands out so beautifully from the base, but it's in regular light where Grape Going! really shines. With every movement of my fingers, the shades of blue and purple in the polish shift and flow smoothly over my nails, and the shimmer floating above it all gives Grape Going! this dreamy, fairytale-like quality that I just love. It's just so pretty, and especially if you can catch a sale, the price is really quite good.

   Formula-wise, Grape Going! was okay. It was a bit thin, but the Insta-Dri brush actually helped me with controlling it. It took three coats for full opacity and depth, which was fine, but unfortunately didn't dry as quickly as the bottle would have you believe.

And that's all from me today! Thanks for reading, and have a happy hump day! n_n

Nubar Purple Beach

         Firstly, I'd like to take a quick minute to say hello to all the new followers! There are now over 300 of you, which is like...flabbergasting, man. So thanks for coming to my little corner of the interwebz! n_n 

Okey doke, now down to business, which today is Nubar Purple Beach.

Purple Beach is a wildly multichromatic purple polish. It shows a smokey shade of purple mostly, but you'll also get gold, silver, bronze, a hint of blue, and a couple of shades of green. Yeah, this is serious business. 

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

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       I'm not going to say much about Purple Beach. Although the pictures don't really do the polish justice, hopefully, they give you a good idea about what a fabulous color this is. The duochrome shift is so obvious without the need for finger cirque du soleil or magical lighting, and even the base purple color has this lovely hazy, nebulous quality to it. Nubar did a fantastic job here. 

     Purple Beach's formula was a bit thin but not uncontrollable and the pigmentation was okay. I used three coats of color and a layer of topcoat for full opacity and some shine. 

And that's all for today! Thank you for reading and have a most beautiful day! ^_^

OPI Wing It!

      For today, I've got Wing It! (ahh I hate unnecessary punctuation) from OPI's Summer Flutter Collection. 

Wing It! is a sheer reddish-pinky-coralish base packed with flat, color-shifting pink and blue shimmer pieces.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

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    I found Wing It! to be really funny. The base color just kind of hangs out in this really ambiguous area, and the shimmer is the same. It's kind of iridescent, kind of blue, kind of pink, kind of violet, kind of duochrome, kind of metallic...but it doesn't fit firmly into any of those groups. Wing It! is like...the epitome of a noncommittal polish and even though I don't like noncommittal things (and people), I think I'm going to keep it. 

   I still have to think about it though, because I didn't like Wing It!'s formula at all. It went on smoothly enough, but was rather thin and hard to control. It also took five coats to eliminate all VNL in person, which is of course no bueno. So I guess we'll have to see on this one.

    

 But that's all for today! Thanks for reading! 

Nubar Going Green Collection

          So, as many of you know, a few days from now is St. Patrick's Day. I love St. Patrick's Day, not because I'm Irish or know any really cool Irish people, but because it is the one day where I can wear all green everything and not be looked at as a complete freak. And I sure do love green. So I thought it would be fun to bombard you guys with lots of green polishes in the following days. To start the party off, I battled clouds and other such weather-related tomfoolery to re-swatch the polishes that I own from Nubar's Going Green Collection. I think it's the only all green collection in nail polishdom, and it celebrates our lovely planet to boot, which makes it so very near and dear to my heart.


So we'll start off with my least favorite, Conserve. 

Conserve is a slightly light emerald green polish, with green shimmer.

Sunlight, no flash. 

Natural light, no flash.

      Even though Conserve is my least favorite in the collection, it's still pretty. I think it's just a little bit plain...the color itself isn't very arresting, and although the shimmer is nice to look at and adds depth, since the color of it is not dramatically different from the base, it's not particularly interesting. 

Next up is Earth.

Earth is a blue-leaning green base with green and turquoise shimmer.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

     I like Earth much much more than I like Conserve. It has a more interesting and unique base color, and I love how the shimmer is more contrasting, even though it doesn't really come across in the photos. For me, Earth evokes images of the ocean and frolicking sea mammals, and it's so glowy! Nubar did a nice job with this one. 

Third is Greener.

Greener is a deep foresty green with lighter green shimmer.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

     I can't resist a good dark and dangerous green, and Greener is a great one. It's just so sexy, and the shimmer with the base gives some really lovely depth and plenty of glow. Ahh it's so hot. 

Next is Forest.

Forest is a slightly dark blue-based green creme. Those gold thingies are not part of the polish....they're reflections of something. Sorry. 

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

        Forest is a great green. I really can't explain why I like it so much, but I do. I just like to look at it on my hands. ^_^

And finally, I have my favorite, Wildlife.

Wildlife is a duochrome with a khaki green base and that flashes different shades of copper and green. There's also a rose pink/gold shimmer in there. 

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

     Wildlife is such a beautifully unique polish. The duochrome is really strong, and although it looks best in lower light, you can see the color shift all the time. I also really love the color combination...watching the greens and browns dance across my nails, lions and cheetahs running across a yellow Kenyan plain comes to mind. I love this one so much....definitely one of my favorite greens ever. 

   So pretty much, the whole collection is awesome. Every color is lovely to behold, and I appreciate that it covered a range of shades and finishes. The real must haves for me would be Greener and Wildlife, although buying the whole shebang is perfectly justifiable, and if you are an ardent green-lover, advisable. I myself wish that I had just bought the whole set, because I got them separately across several hauls, and it ended up costing more. Plus, I still don't have Reclaim. And I didn't get no Diamont.  -___-

   The formula on all of these were quite good...I used three coats or color and one layer of topcoat for all the polishes, although three was only necessary in Wildlife's case. For the others, two sufficed. They all went on smoothly and easily, and dried quickly as well. 

And that's all for today!! Thanks for reading and have a good night! ^_^