Monday, September 26, 2011

Refresher













After the storm of glitters I've been wearing recently, I felt in the mood for a nice palate cleanser...but not without a bit of a kick! Barielle Buddah-ful fits the bill perfectly. I love the iridescent flakies in this nude jelly. I'm glad I bought two bottles! This is definitely I color I will be wearing often. I picked this up for a scant $3 during Barielle's recent HUGE sale, but it is typically $8 a bottle.

This is three coats of Buddah-ful topped with two coats of New York Color Grand Central Station. It applied well, a little tricky at first because the flakies kept sticking up and peeking over the free tip of my nail, but after the second coat all was good.

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

For the Empire State











China Glaze Skyscraper. This polish shares two traits with one of the most infamous of polishes in the nail world, Essie Starry Starry Night--a deep blue jelly base and silver glitter. Except Skyscraper looks like the infinitely wise China Glaze team just said "yeah, that's *okay*...but you know what it needs? MOAR GLITTAR." And it was done. This, people, is Starry Starry Night on mega steroids.

This is three coats of Skyscraper over Milani Smoothe Base, topped with one coat of New York Color Grand Central Station. Some people reported issues with Skyscraper's formula being too thick and gloppy; while my bottle was a little thick, it wasn't the kind of thickness that makes it difficult to apply for me, and I kind of prefer it when it comes to jellies like this because it doesn't take five coats for the color to reach its true potential.

Skyscraper is part of China Glaze's Fall '11 Metro collection, and I snagged my bottle from 8ty8Beauty.com for $3.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Glamorous Vampire for fall



















Three coats of Revlon Facets of Fuchsia over one coat of Milani Black Magic, topped off with two coats of New York Color Grand Central Station. I love talking up Grand Central Station--it's a great clear topcoat, thicker than your average drugstore topcoats and perfect for smoothing out those lumpy glitters. And the best part, it only costs $2!

Revlon Facets of Fuchsia is Revlon's attempt at Deborah Lippmann's Bad Romance, purple large and small hex glitter in a black jelly base. It cost me $6.99 at my local Duane Reade, but I believe it is $5.99 or even $4.99 at retailers outside of NYC...curse you markup!

At first, using AllLaqueredUp's swatch as comparison, I thought Revlon had gotten the color of the glitter wrong...Bad Romance seemed to be more purple and less...well, fuchsia. But after looking at multiple photos of both Bad Romance and Facets of Fuchsia, I've decided they are perfect dupes after all--there are photos of Bad Romance which look more fuchsia, and there are photos of Facets of Fuchsia looking more purple, so I guess it's just a lighting difference! Either way, is it not gorgeous? I love this "new" style of different-sized glitters, it adds great interest to single-color glitters.