Nubar Purple Rain

           Today is looking like a good day...the sun is shining, it's not too hot outside, and I finally got off my butt and did my nails. I'm currently wearing Nubar Purple Rain, which was a color that I was fiending over for a really long time. And then I got it, and it took me about...three months to wear it. lol!

Purple Rain is a deep, mid-range purple jelly base full of round violet (or silver, I really can't tell)  and holographic glitter. My thumb nail (and only my thumb nail o_O) was plagued with bubbles, so this picture kind of sucks. Sorry!

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

     I really love Purple Rain!! It's my favorite kind of purple (dark and rich) and the glitter really sparkles and shines. At the same time, the sparkle is on the subtle side, which adds to Purple Rain's beauty. This is not a glitter polish that will blind your friends, but it'll probably distract you on a sunny day. It's like..glitter polish for adults. If it were dark blue, or if the sky was purple, I'd probably liken this to a night sky full of stars.

    But even though I love Purple Rain as a color, I hated the application of it. The first coat was really streaky, draggy, and all around, just horrible to put on. By the third coat, the polish went on pretty smoothly and easily, but those first two were nothing short of war. That won't deter me from wearing this, because it's just too sexy. But I will not smile or enjoy myself while I'm putting it on. >:o

   I kind of want to Konad over this, but I have to go. Maybe I'll do it when I come back.  I hope everyone is having a great day!

Zoya Bebe

            So I totally did not change my nails....I just kind of forgot. But that's okay, because today is kind of cloudy and lame and not really good weather for taking pictures. So I'll be posting my final Zoya...I had this post written and done like two weeks ago, but I just never pressed the publish button.  

Bebe is a pale pearly pink base with tons of multi-colored microshimmer. The shimmer is mostly silver, but it does flash the occasional pink, green, and blue. The color in this picture is all wrong, but it was the only one that showed the shimmer clearly.

Sunlight, no flash. This picture is much truer to color.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

    Bebe is a really pretty, ladylike color. The pale pink in combination with the shimmer gives it a girly, airy look. It makes me think of Glinda, the Good Witch of the North.  I miss my old nails. :(

   Formula-wise, Bebe is pretty good. Like the other Zoyas I have, it applied really smoothly and easily. My only complaint is that Bebe is really sheer, and I ended up struggling with it a bit, because I wanted it opaque. On the Zoya site, they give it a three in the intensity department, but I think that they were being a bit generous...two would be more accurate. After trying it in various ways, I ended up with what I have in the pictures, which is five coats of Bebe over one coat of Seche Ridge Filler. Five coats is alot of work....Bebe is cute, but she's not that cute. So going forward, I guess I'll just be using it as it was intended (as a sheer) or over a similarly colored base.

Orly Lola

            Today's post is going to be really fast. It's Get Your Ish Together Day at Chez Butterfly, and that means lots of cleaning and organizing. As a result, I haven't had time to change my nails and probably won't have any until this evening. So I'm gonna bust out a polish from my backlog, Orly Lola. 

Lola is a bright and saturated pink creme. The color here is a little too dark though. The others are more correct.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

      My bottle of Lola is only a baby, and I must say that I'm a little glad of that. It's a fun, basic and pretty summer shade, but not terribly exciting, unique or interesting. I can't see myself wearing this too often, and I'll probably wear it on my toes more than on my fingers, so I don't need a full size bottle of it. Like if I see a full size bottle on sale for a couple of dollars, I'd pick it up. But I wouldn't pay more than that for Lola. Let me be clear, there's nothing really wrong with the color. It just doesn't warm the little cockles of my heart.

    Lola's application was really nice though. There were no problems with dragging or streaking, and the polish was nicely pigmented. The pictures are with two coats of color and one layer of topcoat, and it was nice and smooth and showed no VNL. 

     And I meant to mention this at my last post, but I was a little in a rush and forgot. I have 51 followers!! Yayyy!!!!! *blows one of those horn thingies that people blow at birthday parties* lol, I know to some people that's nothing, but to me, that's really big news! It's like...100 more people than I expected to be interested in my blog. So thanks to all of you!! ^_^

 I'd love to have a nice little giveaway, but I don't trust myself to shop for nail polish. However, I've been stockpiling polish, and will have one pretty soon. Probably this fall, when I'm back in DC and can get to the stores in the area.

  Hokay back to cleaning. Someone needs to kindly inform my mother that slavery was supposed to be over like...200 years ago. And that children are not for free labor. =___=

Orly Star of Bombay + Fauxnad

           Yay, it's Friday!!
           .....is what I should be saying. Unfortunately, I am saying no such thing because in my quest for summer employment, I lazily went through the city-run agency that places students with employers. Today, they're making me come in (for the third time in as many days) and get "counseling" about how to conduct myself in a professional environment and how to manage my credit. So I get to go to spend my Friday afternoon in a sweltering, noisy, and messy office being lectured about things that I already know about. I kind of want to just not work with them, but a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush and all that jazz. Since I woke up in a bad mood thanks to these people, I wanted to wear something dark on my nails and chose Orly Star of Bombay, from the Gems Collection.

Star of Bombay is a deep, jewel-toned, shimmery, navy blue. Like, if you've ever seen one of those borderline black sapphires, it looks like those.

Like this. 

Sunlight, no flash. The picture is washed out, but the color is accurate. 

Natural light, no flash.

Natural light, flash.

     I really like Star of Bombay. It's all deep, dark and mysterious, and bright sunlight really catches the shimmer and makes it glow from the inside. I admit that indoors, it could be mistaken for black, but if you look closely, you can still see that it's blue. Looking at it makes me think of the ocean at night.

    The application and formula were really nice too. The pictures are with two coats of color and one layer of topcoat. The coats applied really smoothly and easily, and full opacity could actually be achieved in one thick coat. I only used two because I wanted something to do besides think of this afternoon. 

After painting my nails and a few episodes of Reno911!, I felt a little better. It really doesn't take much to improve my mood. Since I was happier, I didn't feel like wearing a funeral on my nails anymore. But I didn't want to take Star of Bombay off, because that would be such a waste. So I fauxnaded over it. I wanted to use Orly Snowcone...I love the look of konads with dark and light shades from the same color family. But I don't have Orly Snowcone, so that wasn't going to be possible. I ended up using Color Club Revvvolution instead, and I think that turned out pretty well. 

I used the floral pattern from BM20. Because it's skinny and small, and my thumb nail plate is wide, I had to like...quadruple stamp it to get all the corners and edges.

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash. Sorry for the dry cuticle corners.

    I like this look. It's really simple, but the holo makes it more interesting. And it reminds me of one of those old couches that you always find in nursing homes. And best of all, they're Ravenclaw colors!! When I was in the Harry Potter club in high school, I got placed in Ravenclaw and we had so much fun. We did nerdy things, like spending Friday night eating and watching the whole DVD set of Planet Earth , but we surely had fun. I'm not into Harry Potter anymore...I didn't even read the last book and am not remotely interested in watching the latest movies. But I will always look back on my Ravenclaw days with fondness.

   Okay, I'm off to my awesome counseling sesh. I hope everyone else enjoys their Friday afternoons more than I will!  :)

Color Club Swatches

           I was looking through past posts, checking for typos (I hate typos), when I realized that I do not have any Color Club pictures on this thingy. That's really sad, because I love all my Color Clubs. I've worn some of them too. I guess I just neglected to take pictures. But today, that all ends. And in the interests of space, I omitted the whole hand pictures. 


First up is Tru Passion, from the Glitter Vixen Collection. 

Tru Passion is a lavender round glitter in a clear base. There are also a few holo glitter pieces sprinkled around in there, although they're not visible in the pictures. In real life, you can see it. Actually..if you look at the top of the nail, you can see a couple. It's showing blue. 

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

  I only have one thing to say about Tru Passion: *_*

  Okay, that's not it. But from the first second I saw Tru Passion, it touched my soul, son. So freaking sparkleh!! And even though I tend to prefer deeper purples, I actually do like the pale purple of Tru Passion. Getting it to be this opaque was kind of hard though. This is with four thick coats. And I dabbed the polish, swirled the brush and did everythang...it still took a long time to be opaque. But I don't care. Finally, it dried nice and smooth, so I only needed one layer of topcoat to enhance the shine. 

More goodies after the jump!

Funky Fingers Moonwalk + A Giveaway!!

            Today, I got a chance to swatch my very last Funky Fingers polish, Moonwalk. I was planning on wearing it later, but then I was like...what the hey man. 

Moonwalk is a black creme with silver and holographic microglitter. I don't know what's been going on with these close up pictures...they all seem so washed out. Maybe something's wrong with my camera's aperture. 

Sunlight, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

     Moonwalk is what I wanted China Glaze Cosmic to be. There's a ton of glitter in this, but since it's so small, the glitter doesn't get sucked into the base and the overall look works far better, in my opinion. Its really quite sparkly and fun.

    The formula was nice too. Moonwalk was opaque in one coat, and wasn't gloopy or gross at all. However, it does need topcoat to really shine. The pictures are with one coat of Moonwalk and two layers of topcoat.       

    But incidentally, I think there are at least two versions of Moonwalk running around in the world. I call the one that I swatched today the new version because I bought it second. But I really don't know which one came first. Anywho, onto comparison pitchas!

The one on the left is the "new" version, and the other on is the "old" version. In the bottle, it doesn't look too different. When I saw the new one in Five Below, I was staring at it for like ten minutes, trying to decide if it was different from the Moonwalk I already had.

Label shot. 

From L-R: Old, New, Old, New.

Both versions share the fact that they are black polishes with silver and holo glitter, but the older version has larger, sparser glitter. I think the base is blacker too, although it may just appear so because more of it shows through. I actually prefer the older version too. I'm going to compare it to Cosmic at some point in my life, because they're definitely close looking, but for some reason, Old Moonwalk looks like twenty times better. Both of these are one coat of polish and two layers of topcoat.

 And finally, Susie at Susie's Home and Hobbies is having a nice giveaway! All of this good stuff can be yours:

Just go here to enter! 

Length Check!

           Happy Memorial Day to everyone! I haven't been blogging this weekend because one of my best friends (we call each other twin) graduated from my old high school, and I had to head to Connecticut to be there for her. I had a good time, except for that I busted ANOTHER nail and wasn't at home, so I couldn't save it. This time, it was the middle finger of my left hand. I'm thinking about if I want to put a fake nail on it, or just leave it alone.
            But that's not the point of this post. The point is that I finally finished my bottle of Barielle Growth Activator for Natural Nails, and I have opinions and comparison pictures. The pictures are from Friday, so they don't reflect my newly nubbinated nail. Haa, try saying that five times fast. ^_~

This was my right hand on March 15th.

This is my right hand on May 28th.

This is my left hand on March 15th.

This is my left hand on May 28th.

    lol, overall...I am less than impressed. My nails are longer, but they are also ridiculously weak and bend way too easily. So even assuming that my growth has been due to the wonders of Barielle, I haven't seen any added strength, and without the strength, the growth is a waste. Because it breaks off anyway. Additionally, this is a crummy base coat. My nails are all stained and yellow. Bleh. And finally, I kind of feel like my nails have grown a perfectly normal amount for two months, so I'm not even sure if the Barielle even did what it said it was gonna do.
    But looking forward, tonight, I plan on trimming down my nails a little, and then I'm starting them on Duri.  And I need to stop being so clumsy. My right hand is the one that I use to do stuff, and it's also the one that's all broke down and busted up due to my own foolishness. lol, it's worse than when I started. The left hand is busted too, but that's not my fault. u_u