Nfu-Oh 61 + Giveaway Winners

First order of business, I finally got through the entries and have selected winners for my giveaway! The winner of Prize 1 is Tropical Chrome, and Prize 2 goes to Peripatetic 33. Congratulations to these lovely ladies, and a big thank you goes to everyone who participated! Blogging would definitely not be as fun without ya'll. ^_^


  Second order of business is to show the polish I wore all of last week. Recently, I've been craving holo polish, and after wearing a few that were on the disappointing side, I decided that it was time to bust out the big guns. So I dug into my pile of polishes that I'm saving for something special (LOL) and came up with Nfu-Oh 61. Behold! (But please excuse the chips. These were taken after a week of wear). 

Nfu-Oh 61 is a clean silver polish with a strong linear holographic effect. 

Ottlite, no flash.

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       I know people are not strangers to Nfu-Oh 61, so I'm just gonna say that it's glorious, and if you love holos and are looking for a relative affordable and strong linear one, this would be it. It looks amazing all the time, even indoors, and I got a million compliments on it. This is the only one I have from their line of holos, and I think I'm going to go back and get a couple of more. Maybe the blue one. 
     I applied Nfu-Oh over Jessica Cosmetic's Aqua Base, so I didn't struggle too much with application. It was a bit tough getting it smooth, because it dries so fast and is prone to dragging. But putting a little more on the brush than you need, working quickly and lightly, and letting the polish dry fully between coats should take care of that. Incidentally, I would also recommend investing in an aqua base for this though...it really makes the holo pop and eases application. 

This is Nfu-Oh 61 without the aqua base, and even though the holo is still present and nice, it's not comparable to what showed up in the previous pictures. And it took four coats of polish to get this level of smoothness in the polish, compared to two with aqua base. So get yourself some aqua base! 

And for topcoat in the pictures, I am using Sally Hansen Hard as Nails. The holo still looks good, and for a week's time, I thought the wear was pretty good. 

And that's all from me today!! I hope everyone is having a nice Saturday, and thanks for reading!!

The Hungry Asian Who Gave You This Black Eye?

        First off, bit thanks goes to everyone who entered my giveaway! I need a couple of days to validate the entries and then I should be ready to announce the winners! Yay!

 For today, I've got another franken from The Hungry Asian. This one is Who Gave You This Black Eye?, which I got a while ago. And no, I am not seething at the question mark, because the title is a question and should be punctuated as such. It's not a random sentence that is punctuated for fun. Seeee how that works, Suzi? 

Black Eye (as it shall be known henceforth) is a black creme base with tons of gold microshimmer and some larger blue glitter pieces. 

Sunlight, no flash.

Natural light, no flash.

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I just like the little face on the label. 

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      Black Eye is fabulous. It's very cool and is also quite unique in my collection. The shimmer makes the base look more...olive green or brown than black, and the small blue glitter pops and sparkles so beautifully against the black base. I also really like how none of the elements get swallowed up...black-based colors are notorious for that, but with Black Eye, everything is nicely showcased, which is a testament to Kae's frankening power.
     Formula-wise, Black Eye was okay. It was thinner than I expected, so three coats were necessary. But they went on very smoothly and gave me no trouble at all. 


And that's all from me today! Thanks for reading!

Black History Month Nails!

    With February drawing to a close, I wanted to do a nail look to commemorate Black History Month. I always plan to do a really pretty and complicated look for this, because BHM is near and dear to my heart, but then I'm always too busy and end up rushing it at the end. This year was no exception unfortunately, but I did like what I ended up with.

It was as easy as it looks LOL.

I started with two layers of China Glaze Go Crazy Red and let that dry for about twenty minutes.  Then I put a thick layer of Gelous on my ring finger, let it get tacky, put in the green and black gems, and finished off all my nails with a layer of Barielle's quick drying topcoat. 

Easy peasy. 

Ottlite, no flash.

Sunlight, no flash.

Close up of accent nail.

I hate how I always get bubbling with jewels. -__-

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    After finishing it and thinking about it, I do wish that I had done some things differently, because it did come out kind of overly simple, and doesn't really read Black History Month. Like, I feel like you would have to think about the colors to get the connection, which isn't good. The one I did last year was more obvious, so I think I liked it better. But besides that, I think this came out pretty well and enjoyed wearing it. I also got some good wear out of it...I've had it on since Monday, and it still looks pretty presentable, so I am satisfied. 

And that's all from me today! Thanks for reading, and have an awesome Friday!

I'm going to go watch Coral Reef Adventure in IMAX at the Smithsonian, so I'm really excited. ^_^

Zoya Kissy

   Umm...Happy Valentine's Day guys!! LOL I know I am late as hell with this, but I actually did paint my nails for Valentine's Day. I'm forever alone, so to counteract the inevitable Valentine's Day depression, I wanted to wear something happy. So I chose Kissy (such a good name for a V-Day polish, no?) from Zoya's Gems and Jewels Collection. I meant to put some lovey-dovey decals on there too, but I forgot. My bad.

Kissy is made mostly of small red hex glitter, with lots of pink and holographic bar glitter scattered throughout. There's much more pink bar glitter than holo though.

Bottle shot. 

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       Kissy is pretty and actually made for a fun Valentine's Day color. All the glitter is really sparkly, and although I generally don't like pink, Kissy's shade wasn't vomit inducing. I also think it looked pretty good on me. My only gripe is again, the fact that the holo bar glitter isn't as visible as I would have liked. You can see it straight on, but not that well. To really see it, I had to do finger Cirque du Soleil or look at it in lower lighting conditions. However, it does show up more in Kissy than in Rina or Twila (I'm planning to post that soon), so there's that. 

    Putting Kissy on was kind of tough though. The glitter isn't too sparse, and covered in three coats, which was nice. But I had a hard time getting it to stay put and it was pretty messy...little bits of glitter hanging off my nails and such. In the future, I'll probably just layer it over a similar color. 

   And a note on Kissy's wear, I had several fingers where the polish just popped off in a big nail-shaped chunk. The same happened with Twila and Rina. I didn't use Zoya's Anchor base with any of them, so maybe that would help, but I just thought I would mention it.

And I wanted to quickly put it out there that my giveaway is closing in one week, so don't forget to get your entries in if you want to play!

And that's all from me today! (Haha that rhymed.)

But anyway, thanks for reading and have a happy hump day! (HA I RHYMED AGAIN. I'm a poet and didn't know it. ^___^)

Diamond Cosmetics Chainmail Charm

    I've been having serious holo cravings lately. I don't even know why, but I want to see rainbows goddamnit. But anyway, I decided to take Diamond Cosmetics Chainmail Charm out for a drive and see if it would satisfy my desire.

Spoiler alert: It didn't. 

Chainmail Charm is a charcoal black - brown with a mild holographic effect. 

Sunlight, no flash.

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This was the most holo I could get it. 

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Look at them lies. 

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      Oh Chainmail Charm. I bought it a while back from a blog sale, and it was one of those things that I wanted to save for a special occasion.  Thank God I didn't go through with that plan, because this polish is such a dud. You get some holo at random times, but most of the time, there wasn't really much of anything. There was some, which my camera removed mostly (you can get a glimpse of it on some fingers), but it wasn't much. It's really painful too, because it looks great in the bottle. And then the brownish-black color is kind of weird. Ugh...my desire is so not sated right now. 

    Formula was really agreeable though. It was opaque in two coats and dried pretty quickly, so I was pleased about that. I'll probably get rid of it though...can't have a holo that won't work for its keep.

If you have Chainmail Charm, do you like it? Or is it lame for you too? 

And that's all from me today!

Thanks for reading, and I hope everyone is having a great weekend!

Catherine Arley 673

   Hi guys! I'm sure many of you remember the Catherine Arley craze that hit the nail world last year, and although I generally try to stay out of the flow of those kinds of things, this time, I broke down and ordered some Catherine Arleys. Like five thousand years later, they arrived, but I was really over their shit at that point, so they sat in my room for another five thousand years, unloved and untouched. That all came to an end recently, because I finally decided to take 673 for a test drive. 

673 is a mid-toned red-based purple with a mostly scattered, but still vaguely linear holographic effect. 

Sunlight, no flash.

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I left it a little out of focus to bring out more of the holo. 

Natural light, no flash. 

Ottlite, no flash.

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     I am kind of underwhelmed by 673.The holo effect is kind of mediocre, and the base color isn't particularly pretty or special on its own either, although it is flattering on the hands. And then there's the whole having a number for a name thing, which sucks, because now I have to come up with a new name for it. If I could do it again, I don't think I would include it in my order. 673 is adequately pretty, but I'm just not sure that it's worth the wait or the hassle, unless you actually like the more subtle scattered holo look. 

    Formula-wise, it was pretty good though. I used some aqua base under there (the stuff that Jessica sells with their silver holo polish) and it slid onto that really nicely and effortlessly. I used three layers for full opacity and depth of color and put some topcoat on top. It dried quickly and without incident, so that was nice. 

And that's all from me today! Thanks for reading!