The Difficulties Interfering With My Blog Interest

My camera got dropped on the floor about nine times too many during the move. Look at this ridiculousness.

It's a fuzzy version of OPI - Here Today Aragon Tomorrow.


















Here's a clearer one, but badly positioned. Hello, I posed my green-tipped hand in front of green bushes. Duh.

This is a super dark slime green. It's awesome.


















It looks like black, but when you really look there's no mistaking that it's green. I love it so much I wore it with a coral colored shirt and I didn't even care. It's one of the new Espana line. I wasn't very excited by anything else in that line, but this odd green came up out of nowhere and stole my heart.

My camera's batteries are being held in with duct tape and the camera has brain damage. Here's another color.

OPI - My Big Break.


















It's a greyish frosty berry. Almost a duochrome, almost metallic. I was surprised how flattering it was. I was afraid it was too pink and too metallic, but I was in the middle of a polish frenzy and I didn't even know what I was buying and when I applied it in my buyer's remorse phase I was most pleasantly assuaged of guilt.

These are both kind of "fall" colors, but fall is on the way.


















I always want to jump the gun on the next season anyway. (Season as in season of the year, not fashion seasons. In fashion seasons I think we're up to Spring of 2012.) I think this was part of the collection with Have You Seen My Limo, which I don't even know when came out, but which is awesome. I recommend this color!

I'm going to post more often but I'm still trying to unpack and the love of my life accused me of ignoring him in favor of the blog. (Which is TOTALLY UNTRUE YOU GUYS. He only said that because I was accusing HIM of ignoring ME. You would not believe the horrible communication skills that two therapists have.) So I kind of left my computer alone for a few days and put my clothes in the dresser and books on the shelf and stuff. I GUESS I could ENTERTAIN the concept of doing a little procrastinating and shutting out the world. I GUESS. (But he didn't really mean ignoring him, he meant ignoring the god-awful mess in the house. HE DOESN'T REALLY CARE ABOUT ME!!! And all that.... Can you imagine this ring of hell right now?)

Right now he's walking the dogs so ha ha. Here I am. I like you guys better. So there.

The Honeydew One

Here's my last of those new Sally Hanson Salons.

Honeydew.


















It's a frosty-looking greenish almost turquoise. A pretty color, kind of fun. You know what though?

Totally NOT the color of a honeydew melon.











How pretty would it have been in that light green? I'm really raking them over the coals for these names.

Here, look at it again.

It's on the greener side of turquoise.


















And look here.

These are called "old pawn" bracelets made by Zuni and Navajo silversmiths.











I would have named this polish Southwest Jewelry. (Since I'm not sure if you can name things after native american tribes.)

Okay nail polish companies....I'm offering my naming services.

I like this polish. The wear is excellent. I even messed it up after I finished and I kind of pushed it back into place and it wore just fine. The application was pretty awful, but three coats worked out in the end.

You can't even tell I messed up my index finger.













All in all with this line: it's a little bit too expensive, the application is difficult, but the wear is good and the colors are pretty and unique. They all have a bit of a cloudy, frosty feel and look pretty on your hand. I kind of want to try the other colors now. Uh oh.

A Good Solid Purple

And that's about all I have to say about it.

Sally Hanson Salon - Night Hydrangea.


















Can you dig the soft focus? That's how stinking humid it is today, my camera lens is fogged! I should take my portrait.

This is a hydrangea.

A flowering shrub. Blooms range from reddish purple to blue to violet. It blooms all summer.












People use these in fresh or dry flower arrangements. They get darker as fall gets closer. The reddish ones turn a pretty wine color. I used to have one of these in my yard where I moved from.

I thought the "night" part might be a certain kind of hydrangea, but no, I guess it's just the color of one at night.

This is about three or four coats.


















It has a bit of a grainy texture and some fine glitteriness in direct sun. Kind of nothing special, yet I wore it for three days. It's a very fine shade of purple.

Not What They Seem

First of all I have one I was lemming at hello.

The fabulously ugly Sally Hanson Salon - Forsythia.


















I must have one of the oddest skin tones on the planet because this matches mine. I love it! According to most women's magazines I have a cool skin tone yet I am sallow. Cool tone because the veins in my arm appear blue, not green, and sallow because I have a golden hue to my skin and I tan easily. Yet, I also burn, freckle and am blonde. Very odd. It's a massive dose of several types of Scandinavian with a possible dash of Cherokee Indian. If you have this skin tone, Forsythia is very flattering! Hard to describe, hard to match.

My biggest problem (besides the formula: tricky, but putting a little extra polish on the brush reduces the pull) is that the actual forsythia looks like this.

One of the first things to bloom in springtime here in the eastern part of the U.S.
















Like all early spring colors, it's cool-hued, like a daffodil, but has none of the mustardy, grayed-out, murky yellow of this polish.

In my opinion, I think the word that best describes Forsythia is ELEGANT.

















It reminds me of gowns from the 1800's when they were still using plant dyes.

We think of them in black and white, but they had some really funky colors back then!

















You might think it's retro-70's, but it's not. If it were a creme, possibly, (I'm thinking of Tupperware from my childhood) but this polish has a pretty pearlescent delicate texture to it's look.

I bet they couldn't have conceived of us wearing this color on our fingernails.











What's best, there are matching shoes!!

Have you ever? This color is fantastic!!











Even if it doesn't match you, I recommend it. It has a deep hue and is unique and retro to when retro had no retro.

My other swatch for today is a sad story. I've been looking for a nice tomato red and I thought I found one at Whole Foods.

No Miss - Boca Red.


















The nail doesn't match the bottle at all. I don't know how they managed that. What's worse is the formula applied like A DREAM. It was so easy to work with, I wanted to offer it a job.

If you look close up you can see the problems.












It dried so weird... it looks darker on my nail bed, looks like I dipped my nails in blood. An interesting effect, granted, but not what I was going for. I thought it would make a nice pedicure color, but what I got was a bad jelly red.

It could possibly build, but basically this is a fail.


















Does anyone have a really nice tomato red to recommend?

Pretty Jellies

I have two totally unrelated things here.

Orly - Sweet Tart. A light berry red jelly.


















This is four coats and I still have the VNL, but only if you look up close. This reminds me exactly of

that Sally Hanson Insta-Dri - Racy Rouge. Dupe!


















Look at Sweet Tart in the shade (cuz that was an overcast day for Racy Rouge).

The color is the same, but the formula, of course, is different.












I love Orly formula, and if I'd had time I would have let it dry nicely and then top-coatted it. Maybe a coat of insta-dri and then a coat of this Orly and it would be perfection. I needed so many coats that the Seche dried, but the coats underneath did not, so it got messed up as soon as I breathed. I really only bought it because the love of my life calls me Sweet Tart as a pet name (which is vaguely insulting, but I'm sure he doesn't mean it that way...). It doesn't look one iota like a Sweet Tart.

Right? Am I right? (Lol, when I googled sweet tart images I got lots of Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears)











Well, enough about that. It was a dumb reason to buy a polish, but I've bought polish for some dumb reasons!

Here's another of those Whole Foods earth friendly yuppie polishes.

Suncoast Water-Based Nail Polish - Number 22. I wish they would name these. I name this - Swimm.

















Although swimming pools are not so earth-friendly with all the chlorine and stuff, but swimming is very healthy.















It is super-sheer and would need a few more coats for bottle color and you need to apply it super-thin or it looks like pudding. It comes out like a sparkly jelly.

Like a swimming pool sparkling in the sun!












It has pretty depth of color, but needs many many coats. Dries nicely, doesn't wear very strongly at all, but I kind of like these. My earth goddess soul is soothed.

99 Cents Is Good

I found two little clearance bins at Image Beauty and they were full of 99 cent awesomeness. I also met a very nice mother and daughter (daughter had great taste and color sense!) and told them about nail polish blogs and how helpful they are when you want to buy.

Rainbow Nail Reflections by Brucci - Taupe Rainbow.


















I'm usually not crazy about Brucci polishes. They have a lot of variety, but the colors look shallow and unimaginative somehow. This was VERY NICE. Those rainbow people know what they're doing.

It's taupe!











It's goldish and greenish! (I love "ish" colors.)













It's mauvish!


















This is three coats with a ridge-filling basecoat (CND) and Seche Vite top coat. I wanted to build it up a lot for more protection for my nails while I continue unpacking.

My nails made it through pretty well, but I'm trying to be very nice to them.















My worst habit is picking at them, even when I'm grooming them. I realized that I used to pick at them and not groom them and now I pick at them using grooming tools. I need to be more gentle and just leave them alone after I push the cuticles back and trim any hangnails.

What you see (if you go close-up) is hangnails after pushing and before cuticle oil. See how tempting to grab those little pieces with tweezers?? Cuticle oil makes them pretty much disappear. I don't have a pic of my nails with the oil though...I forgot...and now my camera batteries died...moving....don't do it unless you really have to!!

Some New Stuff After The Move

New to me, that is. You may have seen these before...

It's the morning sun making this look blurry. It's actually the writing on the bottle reflecting on the polish.









These are Sally Hanson Salon: Honeydew, Forsythia and Night Hydrangea! I've been wanting these for a long time and I never saw them anywhere. I was in the CVS near my new home and they had the whole collection!! Full price, but I went ahead. Some things you gotta have.

I'll swatch these individually at some point, but here's my skittles to tide us over.

I love them all. They all have dimension and slightly unusual hue. Buy them! I command you!

















To continue my love of Orly, here is another of the unsung hero collection...those ring dealies. I reviewed Mandalay Ruby in a previous blog and I can't figure out how to link it, so if you're super curious it's called "Anthropomorphizing" and I did it some time in July.

This is Golden Maharaja. Three coats for evenness.


















This is not golden, really, except when you look up close.

Isn't that cool? The first coat comes out very reddish, then you get a rich brown, and with the last coat this shimmer comes out strong.










Here's the real Golden Maharaja.




















The Golden Maharaja is a 65.57 carat diamond!! Holy wow. It's not Indian, however, and has no cool historical tale. It's from South Africa, was shown at the Paris World Fair of 1937, spent some time in a museum and was sold in 1991 for $1.3 million. Snore. I was hoping for it being in the crown worn by some ancient ruler's elephant or something. Pretty though. I didn't know diamonds came in this color.

Looks great on me. Would have been cooler if they made it that teardrop shape though.

















That's it. I'm breaking down and buying the rest of these. Plus, I love the ring. It photographs really beautifully! You'd never guess it was the plastic gumball type. They're getting a little harder to find, especially with the ring intact, but I'm going to get them. I have a whole slew of new beauty supply stores to check out.

By the way, here's my new view:

This is out the back yard!! You would never guess that to the immediate right and left of this is MILLIONS OF OTHER PEOPLE. It's a townhouse development.










When I look out here though, I can pretend I'm the only one seeing this. I love it!

I Went And Got Them Did

Yep, I went and got 'em did by someone else and I realized something. I don't ever have to do that again in my life until I can't reach my feet or see.

He cut my middle finger cuticle and I bled.













I do much better application and the design is cute, but I could pull that off too.

This is a cute flower and I'm happy with the design and the colors. They're China Glaze and I don't have these, although I have something like them.














But look at my cuticles!

Look how dry and crusty they look.









Look at my thumbnail already.

This will save me time on Friday because I will literally have no time to do my nails between now and that wedding I'm going to.













The things I enjoyed about it were: not having to do it myself and just sitting there, I like the little designs, they did a little massagey action and I loooove getting massages, it was time for me to browse through a magazine and turn off my brain, the chair was also massagey and she gave me an extra 7 minutes.

I'm so glad I learned how to do them myself. I like my own work so much better. I'm disappointed, but I guess I'm also feeling confident about my abilities.

Ow, my cuticle hurts and I'm concerned about fungus.

NOT WORTH THE MONEY although the people were really sweet and I ended up giving them good tips because you know, I've been on the tip-receiving end in my life and you need all the help you can get. (I just won't go back)

Wow, These Claire's Layered Things Are Cool

I think the trick is to pour it out on a plate and swirl the colors around and then swirl them onto your nails, but until I have a minute to try that, I present to you

Claire's Cosmetics - Technopop. All I'm getting so far is the top layer, but I like it.

















It dries matte too! Trendy! For the shiny look, a top layer is necessary. Also, it doesn't dry very quickly and there is instant tip wear and the polish formula is thick and gloopy, but NO MATTER!

I like this purple just fine.


















And for your close up to see how pretty sparkle is in matte form:

Loving it. Like purple concrete. I should carve my initials in it.










I love this stuff! I love nail polish so much!

August Is Orange

For some reason I'm totally attracted to orange these days. I wanted something to make that Claire's - Crush look prettier.

This is N.Y.C. - Times Square Tangerine Creme by itself. It's a soft, milky medium orange.

















Here it is with the Crush bottle:

Not nearly a match.













Together they look okay though....

The Crush brightened up the tangerine a little and the glitter is cute. Not super-fantastic, but I wore it all day.

















When I got home I thought of a better match:

Crush with Color Club - Explosive.













Explosive is a neon butternut squash color. A very weird neon indeed.

Explosive by itself. No matter who you are I think it would make your skin look gray. Yet, I like it!!! It photos slightly yellower. Imagine a nuclear squash.
















And here is the layered love child:

Yeah, I know, right? Don't tell them they have an ugly baby.










Closer up cuz you can't really see that at all.

It makes me not care.












I went searching for a peaches-and-cream-type color, but I think I lent it to my friend. THAT ONE will be the perfect match, I just know it! THAT ONE will make MAGIC HAPPEN!!!!