OPI and Katy Perry - Teenage Dream

I have a confession. I like Katy Perry's song Teenage Dream. Now I'm more of a grown-up alternabrat. I still have my Cure and the Smiths cassette tapes, my REM CDs, and I still get a twitch of excitement if I hear a Depeche Mode song on the radio. But I like the song.

The nail polish, on the other hand, the jury's still out on. I've discovered I'm not a light pink type of person. Pale and light colors tend to make my hands look short and stubby. I need darker colors on my hands. The color itself isn't bad. It's a very light pink jelly packed with silver glitter and larger holographic (!) hexagonal glitter pieces.

With flash - the holos really reflect well with a flash

No flash

I just didn't like it on my own hands. The polish itself was extremely thick. This manicure was two thick coats. It probably could have used another, but I didn't want to add another to it. It is also quite gritty, and needs a good topcoat of Seche Vite to attempt to even it out a bit.

Flash

No flash

I think I kept this on for slightly over 24 hours. I wanted it off. I've always had trouble getting off glitter polishes, so I wanted to try a new technique to take off the polish. Behold - the ingredients:

10 cotton balls, acetone and aluminum foil

I ripped the foil into 10 pieces, soaked each cotton ball in acetone, put them right on top of my nail and wrapped the whole thing in the foil. Then, I left this concoction on my nails for 10 minutes:

Oh, I looked silly indeed, the spitfire was laughing, but when I pulled those aluminum foil fingertips off, there wasn't a trace of glitter! It worked quite well. I highly suggest this technique for glitters.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Korres Raspberry Antioxidant Liquid Lipstick

Oh, I have a whole bunch of posts lined up. I had a gift certificate from Sephora - and boy did I spend it. First up from the lovely, lovely haul is the Korres Raspberry Antioxidant Liquid Lipstick Trio (that was a mouthful). I saw these in Sephora and they looked interesting. Having never bought a Korres product, I went home and did what I always do - look it up on Temptalia!

I am glad I bought these. They are smooth, shiny, glide on easily and are very opaque. The shine loses a bit of its intensity after about an hour, but the color stays for nearly four, with some snacking. Although, there was some migration into the fine lines on my lips.

The Korres site describes the lipsticks as:
Cooling, water-based liquid lipstick with the creamy texture of a lip gloss with the long-lasting, vibrant finish of a lipstick.
-Rich in line-smoothing, antioxidant Raspberry & Pomegranate extracts to protect against free-radical damage and smooth lip lines for softer, more youthful looking lips.
-Certified Organic Acai Palm Pulp Oil moisturizes and soothes the lips creating a long-lasting, creamy texture. 

L-R, #13-Soft Pink, #56-Vibrant Red, #28-Muted Raspberry

I'm not sure about all the claims on the site, but the lipstick is very moisturizing. The colors that come in the package are #13 - Soft Pink, #56 - Vibrant Red, #28 - Muted Raspberry.

At $32.50, these come out to just under $11 a lipstick. Alone, they sell for $22 so this is quite a deal. I'm very happy with my purchase and I would definitely recommend them.

Another Essie Sighting - CVS

I was needing some Neosporin for the spitfire (little boys are always sporting cuts and bruises, aren't they?) so I stopped at CVS. As I turned down the cosmetics aisle because, seriously, I totally can't resist, I came face-to-face with this:

An Essie display. So, it looks like they are hitting more mass-market outlets. I read that they will also be in Rite-Aids in the near future. However, look at the price - $8.29 - so far the most expensive that I have seen them. I know that Ulta has them for $7.99, but they always have either coupons or specials on them where you can get them cheaper. Walmart also has them for $7 and change. This is also a much smaller display than Walmart.

Like I've said before, I'm not a big fan of Essie. I have a few colors including one of the Walmart exclusives, but I think these will be easy to resist.

Happy Polishing!

Butter London Victoriana

I had this manicure last week.

Butter London Victoriana

Victoriana is from Butter London's Fall 2010 collection. I purchased mine at Ulta. This is a dusky, muted blue that is packed with dense silver shimmer. The polish itself is kind of thick, and nearly opaque in one coat. I did need a second coat to even it out. It looked great after two coats. It also wore like a champ. After 3 days I only saw some tipwear. That is, until I tried to remove a price tag from something and took a big old chip out of my thumb. At that point, I had to remove it.

Extreme closeup - shimmer shimmer shimmer

Even though it is packed with the glittery silver specks, it dries very smooth. I love Butter London's formula, and I even love their odd little rectangular bottles (they fit oh-so-nicely in my drawer, lined up like little soldiers).

Happy polishing!

The Great Purse Cleanup + a mini rant

I usually carry around a fairly large purse. Sometimes I make them myself, sometimes I buy them. I like to have a cloth one during the summer and a leather one during the winter. But, they are usually large, able to be slung across my body and usually stuffed to the gills.

Currently I'm carrying around a very lovely Coach purse that I got for a steal at the outlets. I tend to carry a lot in there, wallet, checkbook, antibacterial lotion, toys (oh yes, toys - can't be caught off-guard with a bored  5 year old in the middle of a store) and of course, makeup. Specifically - lipstick.

I can never decide what lipstick I want to keep in my purse, so I just threw so many in there. Once I realized I could barely zip shut my little purse makeup bag, I knew it was time for cleaning it out. I went through the bags and various pockets (oh how I love pockets inside a purse, when ever I make one for myself, I'm always sure to add tons of pockets), I came out with this scary picture.

Will you look at that picture! Ack. I counted 5 MAC lipstics, 3 dazzleglasses, 6 lipglasses, 8 Tarte lipglosses and a slew of other random lip products. Do I really need all of these? Absolutely not. So, in my quest to start decluttering my life, I thought I'd start with my purse. Now, I have to admit, I'm a packrat. I don't like getting rid of stuff, especially in my purse. I like having anything I want at arm's reach. But I buckled down and reduced it to this

Two lipsticks and 6 glosses. It's still quite a bit, but much better than before. I feel lighter, better. I know I'll build it up again, and there's always some type of lip product in my pocket as well. But, for now, I'll try to keep it under control.

On a side note, notice all of those little mini Tarte lipglosses? They're from the Good As Gold lipgloss set. I picked them up on impulse from Sephora one day. I should have waited and read the reviews. The glosses themselves are nice enough. They're actually nice colors, not too sticky, fairly opaque and have some decent lasting time. And at $29 for a set of 15, or just under $2 per mini lipgloss, it should be a good deal, right? Wrong.

After about 4-5 uses per bottle, the plastic collar that removes the excess gloss dislodges and permanently jams itself up in the cap. What you're left with is a sticky gloppy mess. Yes, you can use it without the collars, but you have to be careful to not get it all over. You can also use a brush, or your finger, but at that point, it's just plain annoying. If Tarte had better packaging on this one, this would be a rave instead of a rant. I haven't seen them in the stores in a while, but if you do see them, resist the "good deal" temptation and run away.

Happy Saturday!

Chanel Black Pearl

Yes, I know, Chanel Black Pearl has been reviewed within an inch of its life. Every blogger has gone over it, so now I'll add my 2 cents. I bought this right around Christmas, but I didn't want to use it right away as my nails were short, peeling and uneven and my cuticles were so ragged. Chanel deserved better than that. So, I've been taking my B vitamins, taking care of my nails, applying cuticle oil religiously and my hands are looking better. It's Chanel time.

Black Pearl is one of the slew of grays that are hitting the stores for the Spring 2011 collections. This one stands out in that it is not just grey. Suspended in the gunmetal grey base is a very dense green microshimmer. The green makes the whole nail color look a murky green, but not in an ugly way, but in more of a "Oh, let me look at that again" kind of way.

There was some minor brushstroke action going on, but you have to really look closely to see it. It's a very lovely color. So far it's had some lasting power. I'm on the end of day 2 and the manicure still looks nice.

I think this one can go into heavy rotation.

Happy polishing!

Flakey Love

I love fun topcoats. Holographic, shimmer, glitter - they just make a plain old creme polish fun. Now I can add flakey polishes to that list. I bought Barielle Elle's Spell recently, and didn't even realize it was flakey polish until I layered it over black. That's all it took. It took me all of three minutes to hop onto fabuloustreet.com (US distributor for Nfu-Oh polishes) and order a pair of them. I ordered Nfu-Oh 38 - red flakies suspended in a clear polish, and Nfu-Oh 39, blue-green flakies suspended in a clear polish. The second they came in I pulled out a blank color wheel and pulled out an assortment of creme colors, and painted two nails in each color. Then, for each creme I added a top coat of Nfu-Oh 38 on one and Nfu-Oh 39 on the other. At that point, just for the heck of it, I painted half of each nail with a matte topcoat.

It was very interesting to see each color change with the different flakey topcoat. Unfortunately, I don't remember the cremes I used. Bad blogger. I do remember the ones in the 7-8 o'clock position are black, and then it's just downhill from there. The matte topcoat is on the outer half of the nail. In general, bluish and greenish colors looked good with the blue-green flakies and reddish colors looked good with the red flakies. Colors like black or purple looked equally good in both the red or blue-green flakies.

While in Target recently, I grabbed the Revlon Top Speed polish in Royal. I've seen the color raved about around the blogs, and I have to agree. It's a bright, shiny jelly royal blue. It's actually a very flattering color. No problems with application, and the dry time was pretty quick. I took my picture not 5 minutes after doing the last nail and had no problems.

Revlon Top Speed in Royal

I knew I wanted to put a flakey topcoat on this. The color just screams for it. And Nfu-Oh 39 is just the right topcoat for the job. I put one layer of Nfu-Oh 39 on top of two coats of Royal.

Nfu-Oh 39 over Revlon Top Speed Royal

I loved this combo. It was so shiny, that I could barely get a picture without seeing my own reflection in my nail:

.

There I am - in the lower right hand corner of my nail! This was a great and flashy manicure. I would just stare at my nails randomly during the day. It was so flashy that the MAC sales associates ooohed and aaaahed over my nails when I went into the store later that night. In fact, she called the other SAs over to see. (I've said it before, many people have written how they don't care for the MAC associates in the stand-alone stores, but I LOVE the ones at my local suburban Philadelphia store).

I usually gravitate to shimmery, glittery nail polishes while passing over the cremes, these topcoats have now opened a whole new type of nail polishes that make me take a second look.

Happy polishing!