OPI: Peel Me a Gobi Grape Swatch

What a seriously perfect fall day in NEO. I'm pretty bummed that I have neither car nor stroller to be able to take advantage of it with the wee one. We explored the yard for a little while, but he's not so good about not running towards the street and all that. So it goes.

This'll be my first time wearing PMAGG (do people abbreviate this? It's kind of hilarious... pmagg...) since I bought it when I first started dusty hunting all those (What? Like 4?) months ago. The first bottle I had was BN but I ended up trading it and a BN bottle of China Glaze DV8 for some pretty righteous polishes. It was my first swap, as a matter of fact, and to Canada to boot! After swapping I bought the bottle the salon had on the shelf and it was still 3/4 full, so I pretty much lucked out there.

ANYWAY, here are some swatches. Of Pee-mag. In the sunlight. 2 coats. With SV.

Plum/bronze is my JAM, yo. Isn't it just delicious? And this came out in 1998 when pretty much everything was horrible.

Okay two things:
1. It took me a solid month to realize that DV8 was deviate. I kind of h8 myself.
2. The first time I went to that salon (it was the 3rd salon I had been to and the first that was willing to sell polish off the display shelves) I almost peed when I saw a big chunk of the CG OMG collection. I only bought DV8 that day. I went back like 3 days later and gathered the courage to start going through every single polish (because I was, and still pretty much am, completely ignorant when it comes to be able to spot HTF polishes) and when I picked up Peem-ahg I almost fist-pumped right there, with all the judge-y nail techs eying me. Man. I wish I didn't move an hour away from that place. There're still some polishes I want to pick up. I really need to check out the salons around here. But I get so derrrrvusssss. :(

Okay bye!

Leaf NOTD (China Glaze: Budding Romance & Striping Tape)

Firstsies, this is the best picture I have ever taken of my nails, or possibly anything:

"I'm Leafnails and I approve this picture."

Secondsies, it took me 948293841983749 tries before actually coming up with something leaf-inspired that didn't suuuuck. And it was the least, like, doing-things idea that I had the whole time.

Totally real pine cone.

I wasn't smart enough to do a toot-torial, but I can explain things super good so here you go.

How-to-do Leafs! <3
Step 1: Put striping tape on your bare nails in a leaf way.
Step 2: Paint your nails a leaf color.
(Optional Step 2.5: Keep going over the polish until you accidentally start dragging it to the edge of the nail but by some stroke of luck it totally works for what you're doing. Make sure you cannot successfully duplicate that happy accident on any other nail.)
Step 3: Don't let the polish dry all the way because it's getting late and you're tired and have already tried 948293841983749 things.
Step 4: Remove striping tape.
Step 5: Use acetone to fix all of the wonky parts from the goopy polish gooping all over the place.
Step 6: TOP COAT TIMMMMMEEEEE.

My nails are so stained. It's pretty horrendous. But!, that kind of worked out for this. Plus Budding Romance is, like, the perfect shade for leaves-just-about-to-turn for Autumn. I love that it's more yellow-toned the less layers of it there are. I don't like green polish usually, but this is my jam.

Speciallitá Hits No Olimpo: Ares Swatch & Review

Back when I used to have the shortest nails in human history, I always used to paint them red. I didn't care for red cremes as much as red crellies (although I didn't know what a crelly even was) and I preferred the red to be toned more tomato than magenta if I couldn't find a true red-red.

Anyway, if I would have had this polish back then I seriously doubt I would have worn anything else, and I would have grown my nails out much sooner.

When rainbows get into knife fights, this is what's left.

Ares is the color of straight-up blood. Blood red. Like, seriously. With holo, obvs, but man it is the perfect red. Did I mention that it's, um, like, super red? RED!

Okay, and it applies like angel kisses. Not a 1-coater, probably a 2-coater if you're not me. I applied 3 coats just to be, I don't know, ridiculous. Thin coats, by the way. And a coat of Seche Vite because that's what I doooooo.

Direct Sunlight, FINALLY.

Less-direct Sunlight. REEEED.

I. Need. To. Get my paws on the rest of the Hits no Olimpo collection because, duh. I have a soft spot in my heart for holos to begin with, but holo in a super-pigmented sheer base? For-GET it. This and the Jade Holografico collection. GAH. Too many polishes, not enough funding. Amirite?

LynBDesigns: All Holo's Eve Swatch & Review

I WON A THING YOU GUYS!
I don't win things, like, ever. And I didn't even -know- this was going to be a winning-things-thing when I left the comment!

Storytime:
LynBDesigns came up with a polish color, but not the polish's name. She wanted the polish to have a Halloween-themed name to celebrate the upcoming holiday, so she asked her Facebook fans for suggestions. I couldn't think of a clever Halloween+Blue name (because Spell on Blue is pretty stupit), and the other in-your-face detail about this polish is its lovely linear holo, so I suggested "All Holos Eve". She liked it enough to pick it as the name for her polish, much to my absolute delight. Even absolute-er to my delight was her sending me a bottle of the new polish before it was even released!!

So, All Holo's Eve is a legitimately ballin' shade of blurple-far-leaning-blue thanks to the impossible-to-photograph bright pink shimmer, with a medium-strong linear holo.

This is 3 coats with SV. Of course it's been dreary since I received it in the mail 3 days ago, but I couldn't wait any longer to swatch!

Cloudlight

Artifical Light. <3 Holo <3

Artifical Light... different room.

The pink shimmer is much more apparent in real life. It literally would not show up on my camera. Application was a little patchy with the first coat but filled in nicely by coat 3.

All Holo's Eve is being released October 11th. There are only 30 bottles being made (AND I ALREADY GOTS ONE OF THEM, SUCKAS!) so jump on it if you want one! LynBDesigns' Etsy shop can be found here.


*Note: I am in no way being compensated for reviewing this polish by LynBDesigns or, like, her biggest fans, or anything like that. I did receive it for free, but because I won it fair and square. Bam! Winning things rules, especially when you don't even know you're going to win things. I feel like "win" is a weird word to use for this situation. I was graciously sent this polish as a righteous token for my name suggestion. That's better, I think.

Maybelline Color Show Nail Stickers: Divine Crocodile Review

Fun Fact: I got 22 polishes in the mail today from 3 different sources and it was AWESOME. Did I take pictures? Nope!

I was at Big Lots the other day and saw some Maybelline nail stickers for $1 per pack, so I was like, yep! I bought this one and one called Metal Prisms, but I haven't read great things about the metallic kind so we'll see how those go.

Awkward Hand Alert!

Divine Crocodile, however, has been awesome for the last 48 hours. I've washed dishes and showered twice, changed countless diapers, picked price stickers off of polish bottles and lots of other, you know, hand-things whilst wearing these and they're still stuck fast with the most minimal of tip wear, which is even less noticeable thanks to the pattern.

I did, however, put a coat of Seche Vite on over top of these, making sure to focus on coating the tips to prevent peeling. None of the edges are currently peeling.

This is my first experience with full-color nail decals, and I'm really happy with them. I looooove the color and that bare nail is peaking through the decal. They really were super easy to apply (directions say to pull the decal over the edge of the nail and file off excess but I have suuuper thin, bendy nails so I used cuticle clippers to get rid of excess) and the result is awesome. I was able to get good results on both the longer-length nails on my swatch hand -and- on the short, nubby bummer-stumps on my right hand, so I think that these nail stickers are a pretty good product for whatever length of nail you have. As a bonus for shorter nails, since the sticker itself is so long (even though one end is more rounded and one end is more squared) you might be able to get 2 uses from one set of sizes that fit you. Plus there are 9 different sizes per pack, so you should be able to find a good fit, whatever your nail length/width.

I definitely plan on picking up some back-ups of this pattern.

Adventures in Nail Stamping: My First Success!

I bought a Konad double-sided stamper and a brand-unknown stamping plate (it's octagonal and is labeled KD28... I googled it and found nothing, and when I googled "Russian Doll stamping plate" a round version of what I had by a company called Nail Craze came up. So I don't know) with the cutest little triplet of Russian Dolls, this winter sweater pattern and a pretty floral pattern (and a mouse? And a flower "sprig," if you will). I wanted to do a fall-themed mani, so this is what I came up with.

I used Hard Candy - Crush on Lava (which is this really neat sort of burgundy-rust to gold duochrome... sort of like Orly - Space Cadet without the blue base) and stamped with Essie - As Good As Gold, then lightly brushed on some Zoya - Maria-Luisa.

It doesn't shift to quite as green of a hue the pictures are showing you in real life. The macro is really the most accurate in terms of color. As Good As Gold was awesome to stamp with. I haven't done a lot of experimenting with stamping yet, so it was nice to actually have something work out pretty early on.

Well, all right. I'm going to go play some GTA5 while the kids are asleep.

Parlez-vous OPI? NOTD

Dear Blog,

This NOTD didn't turn out like I had wanted it to. I intended on using striping tape but when I sat down to do my nails I realized I had left the striping tape in my room which is also the room the (teething) baby was napping in at the moment, so I free-handed it.
Also, It wasn't just s'posed to be a standard triangle-tip manicure but that's what it looks like. I needed to make the second stripe further down on the nail, etc etc blah blah etc.

I USED THESE COLORS:
1. Parlez-vous OPI?
2. Layla: Softouch 11
3. OPI - Wooden Shoe Like to Know? (Tee-hee, cute named polish alert!)

I like the subtle orange sparkle/shimmer in Wooden Shoe.
Layla dries to a semi-matte finish (hence Softouch!).
Parlez-vous is kind of runny, IMO. Ee-moe.

Aaand that's what I have for you.

Love,

Your Friend Brandy

PS The last 4 blog posts I, you know, post... they show up +1'd. Like, immediately. And I'm certain that someone isn't just refreshing their browser waiting for my next post to +1 it. And I'm not trying to actively advertise every single post I make. I guess I'm just this about it: ?