Happy Birthday, Pretty Serious!

Pretty Serious is officially 1 year old, and what a year it's been!  So many gorgeous colors have been bestowed upon the world thanks to Kaz.  To celebrate this birthday, Pretty Serious released a glitter bomb of color called Daphne's Birthday Party.  I layered it over Rescue Beauty Lounge Cuprum since that was the mani I was rocking.  It turned out great, I really like the combination! 

I loves me some rainbow glitter.  This is 2 coats of Daphne's Birthday Party, so it has decent coverage.  I'm really happy with the Pretty Serious brand - there are a variety of fantastic colors and the formula isn't troublesome at all.  Thank you Kaz for unleashing one of the best brands of nail polish for us polish addicts, and congratulations on your first successful year!

Polish Props: China Glaze Reggae To Riches

Here's another Polish Props post!  The purpose of these posts is to feature colors that don't get nearly enough of the attention that they deserve.  Today's Polish Props shade is China Glaze Reggae To Riches.

This polish blew my socks off.  I mean that literally - behold my dumb feet!

Indoors with flash.

Indoors without flash.  You can really see the blue flicker on my big toe in this picture.  I can't believe it remains stunning even in dim lighting.

I never intended to feature my dumb feet in any of my swatches when I created this blog.  However, this was the first time I tried Reggae To Riches and I loved it so much that I just had to share it with you.  This color is really unique.  I guess I would describe it as a bright fuchsia with a blurple duochrome.  It's so awesome - I mean a purpley-pink that flickers blue???  YES PLEASE.

I'm ashamed that I didn't stumble upon this beautiful color sooner.  We could've had so many good times together!  Seriously, if you like purples, pinks, and blue duochromes individually, you NEED to have this polish in your life.  There's nothing like it in the polish world!

OPI DS Ruby

Hello lovelies!  I come bearing another dose of the miscellaneous for you all to enjoy.

Let's talk OPI DS Ruby.  It's part of OPI's earlier Designer Series releases that were actually holographic.  You don’t see a lot of linear red holos out there (at least I don’t, except for Nubar Prize, but that is more of a scattered holo), so it’s refreshing to have a holo that’s not purple, blue or silver for once.  All of my pics have 2 coats of DS Ruby with Seche Vite top coat.

As with most holos, the rainbow really appears in the sun.  You'll see in the next picture that the rainbow doesn't show up in the shade at all.  Under indoor artificial lights, the holo is more visible than in the shade, but not as brilliant as it is in the sun.  I think I just told you what you already know - you're welcome from Captain Obvious.  :)

Sorry for the slight blurriness of this picture.

Just for kicks I took a picture in the sun WITH a flash in the hopes of blinding myself permanently.  It's an interesting image at least.

Indoors, the holoness is more noticeable in the bottle than it is on the nail, even before I applied the top coat.  I think I've said in my DS Sapphire post that I don't think Seche Vite really lessens or dampens OPI holos, and I still find this to be true. 

Have you girls noticed that the Designer Series polishes don't last as long as OPI's normal line?  It seems like every time I wear a DS shade it ends up chipping a lot sooner.  I don't know if that's just for me or not.  Even so, it won't prevent me from sporting them!

Random Swatches Continued

Next up is OPI Be A Dahlia Won’t You?  This bright fuchsia shade is part of their Summer 2011 Nice Stems collection.  It flashes a shimmery light blue and purple under some lights!

I don’t recall having any problems with the application.  I believe this is all 2 coats, which was all I needed to reach opacity.  I really like this polish!  Of course, I love all shiny pink polishes in general, so I suppose I’m a bit biased.

Even in the shade it still appears bright and doesn’t lose any of it’s brilliance!

OPI Ogre-The-Top Blue

There are a lot of shimmers, metallics, foils, and glitters in my collection, but not a lot of crèmes.  I’m not a huge fan of crèmes for 2 reasons:

1. My eye is more attracted to shiny, sparkling colors in general – just my preference.

2. My application of crèmes is never perfect and sometimes it can be downright bad.

When I had the opportunity to purchase OPI’s Ogre-The-Top Blue from the Shrek collection, it was such a stunning color that I couldn’t pass it up, crème or not.  

The formula on this was pretty opaque after 2 coats and it didn’t really turn out too streaky like other cremes.  I’m a sucker for blue polishes and this one didn’t disappoint.  I love how bright but sort of soft it is at the same time, if that makes any sense.  Before I tried it I thought about swapping it.  I’m glad I decided to wear it at least once because there’s no way I’m letting go of it now! 

Zoya Yara

Zoya releases some great colors in the fall.  I’m rarely dissatisfied with their selection of colors in any of their collections.  Yara is from their Fall 2011 Smoke & Mirrors collection.  Of course I purchased only polishes from the Mirrors range, due to my previously mentioned apathy toward cremes.  Yara is a pretty olive green with tiny gold shimmer particles.  I tend to gravitate toward colors with golden shimmers or glows.  I have a lot of those types of shades, like OPI Love Me Tender and Oh So Glam, Zoya Neeka and Zara, etc.  Take a gander at this gorgeous sucker:

Yara is a great color to sport during autumn!  I love how olive greens look on me – I’m guessing it’s the Italian heritage.  I think Zoya’s formula is one of the best and easiest to apply.  This shade was almost opaque in just one coat!  I applied 2 just to even if out though.  I rarely have difficulty with streaking or bald spots when I use Zoya.  And their polish remover is really good too! 

That's the end of the swatches I have for now.  Hopefully it won't take me more than a few days to bring you another post, especially because there were 2 reader requests that I need to get to!

Deborah Lippmann Forget You

Wow, I am a horrible nail polish blogger.  It’s been like a week and a half since I’ve posted anything.  I’ve been lacking the time and energy to write.  I also haven’t gotten a chance to swatch OPI Uh Oh, Roll Down The Window or OPI & Apple Pie because I’m lame.  But I have been taking pictures when I change my polish, so I have a few random swatches for you.

The first one is Deborah Lippmann Forget You.  I don’t really understand why they named it Forget You.  It makes me giggle because I think of Cee-Lo’s song every time.  It has a sheer black jelly base with tons of multi-colored glitter in various sizes.  As far as I know, this polish is only available in the limited edition Get This Party Started Set that also includes Happy Birthday and another new shade, Candy Shop.  Forget You and Candy Shop both have the same Happy Birthday glitter in them, but one base is a black jelly and one is bubble gum-pink.  I haven’t tried Candy Shop yet, so I don’t know if it’s also a jelly or not.

Once again, my pictures suck.  I told you I'm a terrible blogger.  You can click on them to enlarge.

This is 3 coats of Forget You.  You’d think after wearing nail polish every single day for the past 2 years I would have mastered the art of application.  But alas, I’m still learning.  I had to use 3 coats to evenly disperse the glitter particles and I still ended up with clusters of glitter in certain places and bald spots in others, mostly on the sides.

Like other glitter polishes, this one was a (pardon my French) bitch to remove.  But to me it seemed a lot more difficult to get it completely off compared to other glitters I’ve worn.  I had glitter all over my hands and also on my legs and clothes!  It was worth it though.  If you like glitters, the entire Get This Party Set is made especially for you.  

I didn’t realize I had so much to say about this swatch!  I think I’ll separate this post from the other 3 polishes I wanted to show you.  In the words of Ghost Hunters: onto the next!

Birthday Giveaway Winner!

The winner of my birthday giveaway has been chosen!  Congratulations to Jen B.!!!!  She is the lucky recipient of this awesome package:

Thanks to everyone who entered the contest and to everyone who takes the time to read my measly little blog.  I appreciate all of my followers and readers more than you know!  I'm sorry it took longer than I expected to announce the winner.  I hope to be giving away more goodies again in the future, so keep your eyes peeled!  :)

Polish Props: Zoya Jules

I'm baaaaccckkkkkk!! 

Once again, THANK YOU!! for all of the birthday wishes and kind words!  Turning 30 wasn't so bad, it was just...strange?  It's a whole new decade to get used to.  I had a fantabulous birthday though and enjoyed the time with my family and friends.  Unfortunately they left today so I'm a little sad and lonely.  As a distraction, I'm going to "bury my head" in nail polish.  :)

This post is the first in a new series I like to call "Polish Props!"  You hear so much about the special limited edition colors like OPI's Catch Me In Your Net or Merry Midnight, but how often do the shades that also deserve attention ever receive it??  The point of these posts is to bring to light the colors that get overlooked and that no one talks about.  Today's Polish Props features Zoya Jules!

Jules is a sparkling, metallic champagne with a golden shimmer - a perfect color for autumn in my opinion, even though it's not fall yet.  It's not your traditional gold because it has more silver and taupe undertones in addition to the gold shimmer.  The formula wasn't streaky per se, but imperfections are slightly noticeable where I know I fowled up.  I like working with Zoya's formula.  It applies smoothly and fairly evenly as most Zoya polishes do, and opacity was reached in two coats.   

The last picture is kind of crappy, but I thought I'd include it anyway to show what Jules looks like under dull light.  I'm not great with my camera, but I hope to get better at taking polish photos.

As most of you know, my birthday giveaway has ended!  Thank you to all who entered - I had over 60 entries!  I'm busy right now going through all of the comments and then I'm going to pick the grand prize winner!  I should know shortly who won and I will be contacting the winner tonight.  It was really fun for me and I'm so glad it was successful.  There will be plenty of giveaways in the future, so stay tuned!