A Lavender Compromise

Today I was in the mood for a lavender, but shockingly I had none in my ballooning stash that was the precise shade I wanted...so I decided to get creative. I love layering--it's an easy way to get a lot of different, unique nail looks out of your stash, and can sometimes bring out the best in a polish that may look blah by itself.

 

This is what I came up with: my franken "Sweetsleep" layered over ORLY Pixie Dust. Pixie dust is one of my favorite ORLYs--a gorgeous dusty, shimmery blue, part of the Once Upon a Time collection. Despite its name, what it really reminds me of is Cinderella's gown in the Disney movie. It has a great formula for a pastel--3 thin coats to opacity--and I love to wear it alone, but it made a gorgeous base for Sweetsleep!

CrowsToes Hell Hath No Fury

It's another Indie day! 3 coats Sinful Colors Daddy's Girl with 1 coat CrowsToes Hell Hath No Fury. Leave it to Crowstoes to make me like bar glitter and ORANGE in one polish (for the record, I really dislike bar glitter and orange, forget ORANGE bar glitter). Hell Hath No Fury has a very nice formula for such a chunky glitter--application was super easy, although you do have to nudge the bar glitter around a bit if it protrudes over the edge of your nail, as is the nature of bar glitter. And how much do I love those giant red hex glitters?? This one will definitely be a contender for "most epic holiday mani" over a red...for now I'm enjoying it over the luscious grape-y goodness of SC Daddy's Girl. I like how the iridescent purple glitters peep out from among the red and sets this one apart from other red-themed glitter topcoats.

Disclaimer: This bottle of Hell Hath No Fury was sent to me as a gift. My undying love for it is my own!
You can purchase your own bottle of CrowsToes Hell Hath No Fury for $10 from Llarowe!

Anemone

Today I have a review/rave for CoverGirl Natureluxe Gloss Balm in Anemone. This is one of my favorite lip colors. It gives my lips a pretty rosy, pigmented red color without the laser precision that red lipstick requires--very nice for a mirror-free application! Plus, it is super glossy. The wear time is a couple hours as long as I don't eat or drink anything. I actually bought this a year ago, but I recently rediscovered it in the pocket of my winter coat, and oh how I missed it!

As a little girl I remember watching Disney's The Little Mermaid and being fixated by the scene where Ursula plucks a mollusc from a shelf and uses it as lipstick, and naturally the name "Anemone" reminded me of that. Ursula may have been one bad bitch, but the lady was FANCY.

Prismatic

This is 3 thin coats of Wet 'n Wild Speak when Spoken To. I rarely purchase every polish in a collection, but the Be Jeweled collection was one of the exceptions. I love these so much that I actually kind of want the China Glaze series (of which the WnW collection is a dupe of) too.

All of the polishes in this collection follow the same basic idea: small multicolored glitter in a shimmering duochromatic base. Speak When Spoken To happens to have a blue-magenta shift. The entire series is pretty ethereal and magical looking, so much so that I'm surprised it hasn't garnered a unicorn-bodily-fluid name, like Unicorn Sweat or something.

Casual Sunday Brunch

Really simple one today, I am really tired and grumpy from a slow-healing burn and just not in the state of mind to think about it. I went out and got some really delicious fish and chips and lemon pie, which improved my mood significantly.

Geri C New York charcoal button down sweater
Truly Madly Deeply cobalt 3/4 sleeve fitted open-back tee
Blank NYC Big Melons pale pink jeans
ALDO black leather sneakers

Jeweled Lizards

Nail of the Day is OPI Just Spotted the Lizard from the Spiderman Collection, one of the many dupes of last year's very popular Chanel Peridot.

JStL is opaque at three thin coats and has pretty decent duochrome action going on, pale gold with turquoise-green flash. Just for fun, though, I stuck it underwater to bring out the full strength of the duochrome:

BAM. Underwater you can see the strong teal shift that appears in the corners of the bottle but never makes an appearance on the nail...under normal circumstances, at least.

Just Spotted the Lizard has a very thin, pleasant formula that is easy to work with, and that coupled with the OPI Pro Wide brush (which not everyone loves, but I do) makes applying this color a cinch. Since it is a metallic, it will have a tendency to show brushstrokes, but if you have good technique it shouldn't be difficult to get a smooth application.

Winterization

So basically nearly all my clothes year-round are more or less the same clothes. I just layer everything or shed layers as needed to suit the weather. Since NYC had its first snow day yesterday, I bundled up when I ran out to mail a package this morning.

J. Jill black drawstring cardigan
E&You ivory sweater
Forever21 sheer white high-low blouse
Forever21 pale pink shorts
Sock Dreams Long Cuffable Scrunchable Socks in grey
Wet Seal combat boots
Random Grey Ebay Scarf from China
Me&City white tote

Welcome to the Dark Parade

I have another awesome indie on my fingers today: Pahlish Dark Parades, a deep indigo jelly with green glassfleck and confetti glitter.Shown here is 3 thin coats of Dark Parades by itself, plus 3 more coats of topcoat to smooth everything out.

This one is really glitter packed, so naturally the formula is very thick. It was manageable for me, but if you don't have much experience applying glitterbombs you might want to add some thinner!

The colors of the glitter are a perfect compliment for the indigo jelly. Also, may I say that adding the green glassfleck to the indigo base was a stroke of genius? It makes me think of creepy carnival.

You can purchase Dark Parades for $9 from the creator Shannon on her Etsy store, Pahlish!

Champagne Glitter

The color I'm wearing today is called Mushroom Glitter by NYX. No idea where they got the name, as it's not mushroomy to me at all, but it's a gorgeous shade so I'm willing to overlook it. Mushroom Glitter is actually a very sheer microglitter; if you're really persistent and do 5 coats like me you can get this  foil effect, but at one coat it's for all intents and purposes a microglitter topcoat. Luckily, it has good drytime and an easy-to-work-with formula, so doing  coats isn't as terrible as it might be.

The color is unique from other silver foils in that it's more of a very pale "white gold" (i.e. slightly yellow-toned) rather than straight cool-toned silver, which makes it really flattering to my warm skin. It's also one of the rare non-gritty glitters, probably because the glitter particles are so fine--I'd run out of topcoat when I did this, but even without topcoat it's pretty smooth.

Lavender Dots

This is a mani from the vault today, because I've been testing out a new topcoat and as it turns out it has the constitution of a particularly moody teenager. Zoya Caitlin, Love & Beauty Lavender, Sally Hansen White Veil nail art. I've been playing around with my dotting tools lately, it's quite fun.

A note about Zoya Caitlin: this is one of those colors that seem to have a huge variation among swatches. Scrangie describes it as a "medium grey creme with purple tones" and notes that her photo is not color-accurate, but on me it's more of a dusty lavender than a grey; in many blogger's swatches it looks grey, but looking at my mani in person, it is definitely purple and looks more or less exactly like my photo here. It's also a shade darker and purpler on the nail than it is in the bottle...who knows why? q O - O p Must be a skintones thing. Ah, so mysterious...Either way though I'm a fan! This is my second-ever Caitlin mani, and given how large my stash has grown for a polish to be used more than once within the same year is quite an achievement.

I really ought to do a manicure more prominently featuring White Veil, though, it's one of the more unique drugstore glitters I've come across. In fact Sally Hansen has a pretty good track record of hitting it out of the the park with originality (Glass Slipper, anyone?)...a little recognition please? Sally may be one of the more underrated polish brands out there.