Sun Faded

I'm really not a fan of flip-flop stye shoes, I feel uncomfortable wearing any sort of loose shoe out of doors--I prefer something firmly attached to my foot. Pretty much the only time I ever do is if I'm just running out to pick up something from the drugstore or a forgotten dinner ingredient.

E&You ivory Sweater
Forever21 white racerback tank top
Forever21 pale pink shorts
Deena & Ozzy Multi-Strap Wedge Sandal

Opening Fall

My outfit for an IKEA run--breezy top and comfy flats.

Everyone in the world has IKEA furniture, but I don't think popularity always signifies a bad thing despite the trendy thing right now is small companies, local farms, and indie brands. I like IKEA's simple, sleek styles and some of their designs are actually pretty clever. Until I can afford my more expensive love, MUJI, I will be sticking with IKEA.

White tiered spaghetti-strap dress
Neue grey open back T-shirt with silver stars
Gomax Days 01 black suede pointy toe flats

St. Patrick's Day2

OPI Jade is the New Black + Sinful Colors Green Ocean

I see what people were saying when they said Green Ocean's mylar flakies are chunky...a few flakes decided to wrinkle up in horrible lumps on my nail, and it took FOUR coats of GCS to smooth it out! Yikes. On the plus side my nails have achieved a glassy perfection that they rarely do thanks to all the extra topcoat.

OPI Save Me

OPI Save Me, from the Nicki Minaj collection.

I originally bought this as a "secret santa" gift, only to check my giftee's spreadsheet to see she already had it! Drat.

It's super cloudy today so I couldn't capture how super-holo the bar glitter is, so you'll have to just take my word that it is SO HOLO-Y. Very fun to watch change colors.

That being said I've had this on for two days and it just hasn't grown on me...as hard as I try to love bar glitter I think she and I just weren't meant to be. Every time I look down on my nails it looks like there's hair on them. Rainbow prismatic unicorn hair, but hair nonetheless. And something about this doesn't satisfy me somehow--it needs a base color other than clear, perhaps, or some other color glitter to give it some depth. It's too dense to layer well, and the bar glitter just looks messy to me over another color. This one's probably going on the swap list...

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.

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.

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.

Hurricane manicure

I needed something shiny to distract me from the dreary rain outside courtesy of Hurricane Irene, so I put on some sparkles.



















This lovely is POPbeauty Lavender Glitz. 3 coater glitter, and VERY hungry--have your thick topcoats on hand to smooth out this sucker. Still, I love how it looks periwinkle-colored from far away, but bringing it closer you can see the lavender and blue particles. POPbeauty polish is available at Duane Reade for $9.99.

Mint + Apple = Delicious?

I'm not sure how people who name polishes come to their decisions, but the names of two polishes I've come across recently, Essie Mint Candy Apple and Sinful Colors Mint Apple polish. Since when have mint and apples ever gone together, culinarily or otherwise?

Regardless, Sinful's Mint Apple is a pretty unique color. Despite mint green polish being all the rage the past few years, this color manages to stand out. It's more of a tropical-feeling, green-blue aqua than pastel like the ones we've seen (Essie Mint Candy Apple, American Apparel Office, Milani Dressmaker, Chanel Jade). It also has a pale gold (most nail polish blogs cite it as silver, but to my eye at least when scrutinized closely it's definitely gold) shimmer, more noticeable than the barely-there shimmer of the infamous Chanel Jade. It adds a nice twinkly effect.

The formula in application is okay, requiring 3 thin coats to be opaque which is about average. Its durability though is great, surviving a week with only a tiny chip on my thumb which was casualty of opening a soda can.

pardon the purple tinge at the edges of my cuticles, I attempted to apply a grape jelly polish which stained my nails purple.


















Sinful Colors nail polish is carried at Walgreens and Duane Reade drugstores. I got mine at Duane Reade, being a New Yorker, but if you live anywhere else Walgreens is a good bet. At $1.99...sheesh if you like mint green polishes at all just get it. It'll make you happy. Trust me.

I am not a pirate.

I picked up a bottle of Essie Smooth Sailing from the Braziliant Summer 2011 collection at Kmart on whim. Can I just say how glad I am that I did? It is so pretty, both in the bottle and on the nail, that I couldn't stop staring at it.

Smooth Sailing is a color somewhere between cornflower blue and ceil, with microglitter that flashes pink and turquoise. The formula flows onto the nail well, and is very well pigmented and opaque at two coats, and it performed fantastically, lasting me well over a week without a single chip and virtually no tipwear.

















This is two coats of Smooth Sailing topped with N.Y.C. in a Minute Grand Central Station quick dry topcoat.

I like this polish so much I'd actually like to have a second backup bottle, but when I went back to the Kmart where I found it they'd completely sold out of this collection. Since then I've been checking drugstores to no avail...sigh. Essie polishes retail for $7.99, if you decide to get it may you have better luck finding a bottle than I did!