Rainboz lolz

NOTD Today is Nfu Oh 64


I'm really on the fence here. On one hand, I don't like the color. If you took the holo away, I wouldn't give it the time of day. The holo, however, is amazing. In sunlight, it's dazzling, bright, strong, and a little mesmerizing.

But the color T.T

I also happened to observe that two of my polishes, OPI DS Original and Sally Hansen Purple Diamond looked very similar...




Can you tell them apart? :P

My name is Zoki, and I am a Nail Junkie.

A long time ago i bought a Sinful Colors called Fiji. It was awful and sheer and not even that great of a color. I junked it, and wrote SC off as crap.

Well, the girls from MUA seemed to love them, and I didn't get it, so i checked into it more and found some pictures of manis using the glitters that SC put out.

I picked up Nail Junkie at Rite Aid and i loves it!

This is layered over MAC's Jade Dragon. It looks like some kind of cold sea mermaid tail... very pretty!

It was cloudy today, so the EV was set at +1.0 and the white balance on the cloudy setting... the rest of the picture looks very yellow, but the polish is closest to actual color.

Forgotten Loves Week - Day 3

Today is Rimmel Dazzle. I've had this bugger for years and never wore it until about April.



observe the sparklies!!!

its a very pale gold metallic with gold glitter. I like this on me a lot :)

Random Franken Fun

Decided to make two random frankens this week.

Lonesome Dove and WTF?

Lonsome Dove is a lavender grey cream, WTF? is a pink holo/foil/glitter mess. Kind of like my brain.

LD was just white Sephora polish with about 15 drops of Avon Warm Black (which is really a dark blue). WTF? is clear base, MUFE Star Powder in the bright, hot pink shade with too much Super Nail Shining Dawn glitter, and some SH Purple Diamond, SH Ruby Diamond, OP Glamour, Naturistics Chrome Crazy, and Milani 3D in HD mixed in. Its still a WIP, but I'm not sure where to take it.

Snow Angel Giveaway!

Lacquerish is giving away a bottle of Snow Angel.... *no words* D: except 'want!!!!!!!!!!'

you can enter here: http://www.lacquerish.com/2011/07/lynnderella-snow-angel-giveaway.html

good luck!

Forgotten Loves Week - Day 2

It took me a long time to decide what to do for today during theme week. After applying this polish, I wonder why I didn't just do it right away.



Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Purple Diamond!!!
I think i have about four bottles of this.

Purple Diamond is a beautiful medium purple with a holographic finish. Since I suck at photographing my nails anyway, this doesn't show it off to its best advantage. Unlike a lot of beautiful polishes (GOSH Holographic, Sally Hansen Magicals, China Glaze OMG), you can still see the rainbows in this rather well in low lighting such as indoors, fluorescent lighting, and cloudy skies. Those fancier holos fade horrifically when the lights go down, not to mention they are so difficult to keep on your nails, but purple diamond and its sisters (diamond, ruby diamond, blush diamond,etc) wear just like regular polish.

If you're in the market for one of these, ebay could be your bff. Some websites still have some, but they're usually those websites that you're just not sure about ordering from. I also saw one with a bottle of ruby diamond for sale once... for $300. yeah. no. You could get 25g of spectraflair for less and make an army of holos.

Forgotten Loves Week - Day 1

This week's theme is forgotten loves, something you love but haven't worn in 4+ months. Having passed the 300 bottles landmark recently, i'm sure you can imagine that it's a) impossible to wear a lot of the same colors repeatedly in 4 months when you have so many to choose from and b) hard to choose a color that i love and haven't worn in a while.
I had the girls from the NB choose for me by selecting numbers, and the winner was one I actually wanted to wear lol

China Glaze Blue Sparrow is from the summer 2008 Ink collection, most of which, if not all, is still available at Sally Beauty. Blue Sparrow is a bright, neon blue with cerulean glitter. Its jellyish finish wise, and needs a top coat because neons dry semi-matte, which is gross.

EV +2.0, iso auto, wb auto
(I put down my camera settings because if you've ever tried to photograph your nails, its such a pain to get crisp, color accurate pictures in less than perfect lighting. Even on sunny days my color accuracy is way off. Today is very grey, medium brightness, slight rain.)

Some theme week NOTD's

So, as I mentioned in my last post, this week was Mythical Creatures theme week!

Monday was Vampires:
Estee Lauder Ultra Violet - Got mine at CCS, but its still for sale in department stores if you're interested. Its a very dark plum with fuchsia glass fleck

Tuesday was Fairies:
OPI Significant Other Color over Rimmel Climax. I HATE SOC. Its a beautiful lavender with green duochrome flash, but its amazingly sheer and when you layer it, the green vanishes into the ether. Hate. You can still buy it anywhere that sells OPI's larger core line, but unless you like almost invisible polish, skip it like the 90s toy. Rimmel's climax is probably no longer available anywhere, since I've only seen displays of like, ten rimmels nowadays.

Wednesday was Dragons:
RARR. Milani 3D in 3D under Kleancolor Green Crackle, under Nfu Oh 51. Not what I had wanted at all, but I gave up trying to make it work. Milani is available in Rite Aid and CVS, Kleancolor was a swap extra, so i have no idea where you can get it, and Nfu Oh is available in the US from fabulousstreet.com (love!).

Thursday was Mermaids:


I gave up on trying to capture the photoshy SH HD DVD. She is beautiful, though....
Base color was Maybelline Turquoise Shimmer, Covered with 1 layer of SH HD Spectrum with a DVD 3 level gradient and a 3 level Kleancolor Chunky Holo glitter gradient in purple.
Sally Hansen's HD polishes are TO DIE FOR. I thought they had been discontinued, but they have been popping up in drugstores, grocery chains, and targets everywhere! Listen to me now. YOU NEED THESE. Also, YOU MUST LAYER THEM TO PRESERVE THEM. If you don't care about running out, you'll be using about 5 coats to reach optimum opacity, but if you're a polish hoarder like me, layer them for God's sake! They Maybelline is, I'm sure, long discontinued, but has many dupes (SH Teal Steel is pretty close), and the Kleancolor is available on Ebay, at least.

Friday (today) was Unicorns:
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalways, I wanna beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee with you and make belieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeve with you, and live in harmony harmony oh love!
Inspired by Robot Unicorn Attack: Milani 3D in HD layered over SH Celeb City, with a rainbow accent nail of Funky Fingers Riot, Color Club Pucci-Licious, Chelsea Girl, Get in Lime, Almost Famous, Wham! Pow!, and Warhol. I love my rainbow, I don't ever wanna remove it!!!! D:
Celeb City is available everywhere SH is sold, Milani is again, in drugstores, Funky fingers is at 5 Below stores, and CC was purchased at Ross.

Saturday will be Elves and Sunday Griffins.

Thanks for reading!

Contest at Nailxchange!

Nailxchange is hosting a contest to name her frankens!

There is a beautiful purple holo, a magenta flakey, black flakey, and a blue flakey, and if you give them names, they could be yours!

Show your creativity and give it a whirl :)

Link (along with pictures and rules) is here => : http://nailxchange.blogspot.com/2011/07/my-1st-contest.html

To attempt to fit in with a theme week proposed by Jadis4742 on MUA's nail board, my NOTD is Estee Lauder's Ultra Violet. Her theme is Mythical Creatures:
Monday - Vampire - EL UV (would have done a black with red moon mani if I hadn't just done my nails)
Tuesday - fairy - I'm thinking either China Glaze Fairy Dust or OPI DS Original
Wednesday - dragon - Either Nfu Oh 51 or Kleancolors green crack (looks like scales)
Thursday - mermaid - Oi... so many choices! Definitely something blue or turquoise
Friday - Unicorn - I'm thinking my franken called Unicorn
Saturday - elf - light green something or other
Sunday - griffin - gold for sure
I'll post pics when the sun comes up :)

Christmas in July (?)

Today I'm wearing MAC Originality. (pics later)

A bright, burnished gold foil. Closer to bronze than yellow gold, but not brown enough to be called bronze. If I compare this to OPI Rising Star and Brisbane Bronze, it seems solidly in between those two shades.
I picked it up even though it says "frost" on the bottom, and in my experience with MAC frosts, they are painfully sheer. This was a pleasant surprise in terms of opacity. Two coats and I'm satisfied. A teeny bit see-through on the tips, but its negligible.
The brush was a little weird and fluffy at the tips for a MAC brush, but i got along just fine.
I like it a lot, but i may wear it more often in the fall... Its beautiful, but it makes me think of falling leaves and even golden angel wings from Christmas, and its summer right now lol

Je Suis Retourné!

Hey ya'll! I'm back from vacation with a mini-haul!
MAC Jade Dragon - dark jade green glass fleck
MAC Originality - liquid gold semi-foil
Orly Bubbly Bombshell - Fuchsia micro and mini glitters
Estee Lauder Ultra Violet - dark plum glass fleck
Zoya Gabrielle - Sunset orange with gold glass fleck

Whee!

How did my Sally Hansen Salon Effects in Kitty Kitty hold up?
Not well.

Here they are on day 1 before i grew so sick of them I could vomit


Here they are this morning. CHIPPING. Chipping is bad for me because it rips layers of my nail off with it. Not. Cool. Would i try them again? They are very fussy to put on, but i think if i went on vacation again, i might. Too expensive for me for a normal week, i change my np daily, so all the effort + short span is too big of a waste for me.

Today, though, I'm wearing Colo Club Wicked Sweet. Its an awesome shade of blue with some shimmer. I believe it was Scrangie who likened it to Zoya Phoebe with a top coat and I totally agree!

The smell is.............................. not cool. Its like fruit roll ups and VERY intense. Three coats opacity, top coat a MUST to tame that smell!

Here she is! The blue is too intense for my sad camera, but i think this is pretty close.

I can ALMOST smell the ocean...

Leaving on vacation early friday morning!

Today i slapped some China Glaze Blue Iguana on my toes, and some Sally Hansen Purple Diamond on my tips.

I love these two polishes :)

Prismatic Pucci!

Today I'm wearing Color Cub Pucci-Licious (a dark, neon purple), topped with Catrice Prismatic Effects (a thick, white prism polish akin to Sally Hansen South Sea Pearl. The overall look is a less glittery version of Rescue Beauty Lounge's Scrangie. I know a lot of people have serious moral objections to RBL (I don't really know what they are, I've only heard rumblings).

I like the color of Pucci-Licious a lot, but Color Club neons chip pretty badly :-/. i already have some tip wear and chips and i did my nails only before i went to sleep last night and i only woke up two hours ago...

The Catrice is really pretty, but i think i would like it better over white or to make a french mani more interesting. Over such a dark color such as Pucci-Licious, it wound up looking streaky, which it really isn't.

My Sally Hansen Salon Effect strip is still looking good!

(pics to come)

Happy Independance Day if you care

So last night my best friend's boyfriend tried to kill us with fire... fireworks that is. He set one off sideways by accident and it exploded in all directions but up, causing me, my bff, his sister, and my fiance to all run screaming as a giant ball of fire came rocketing towards our "safe" location. Afterwards we all sat in the grass a good 30 feet away (except Ace since an injury was sustained from the fleeing).

In honor of this day, I did my nails in a very festive, albeit hideously messy way.

I went with a base of Sally Hansen Crystal Chrome in Pure Crystal, which is a shimmer, super-sheer white frost (not at all chrome-ish. Not even close.). Being so very very sheer, it needed about 5 coats to reach optimum whiteness. I layered about 50 coats of Love My Nails Glory over it. Glory is a red and blue string aka bar glitter with silver star glitter in a clear base, but the densely-packed in the bottle glitter is sparse on the nails, and gets stuck in the brush in the worst way. Another HUGE problem with bar glitter is that it, by nature, is not guaranteed to remain fully on your nails. I have bits of tinsel poking off my tips and past my cuticles, since trying to push it back onto my nail beds resulted in smearing. Awesome.

You may not be familiar with Love My Nails. Its a brand I have only ever seen at one Wal Mart ever, and I only have three bottles of it myself. Its cheap, comes in an ugly bottle akin to the very old Wet n Wild bottles (clear cylinder with long white cap), and advertises that it is polish for that "Deep Wet Look". WUT? First off, what the hell is a DEEP wet look???????? It sounds so pervy I can't even process it! secondly, it dries in a very non-glossy way, so it doesn't even look WET. Thirdly it STINKS to HIGH HELL. I may not be making any friends at Bari cosmetics for this, but that smell needs to be addressed.

Results are a bit streaky, smeary, and spiky. Not what I ever EVER want from a manicure, but alas, I am too tired to care and will probably be removing it at 6:45 tomorrow when I get home from work. Yeah, that's right. Work. On a national friggen holiday lol.

Update on the Sally Hansen Salon Effects Nail strip in Misbehaved: Day 4 showed some very minimal (microscopic) tip wear and a little bit of growth peeking around the bottom, but since the color is so light, its not at all noticeable. So far, I approve!

Just in case you were wondering, this WILL be a picture blog. My card reader is hiding from me at the moment, so please be patient, I will add pictures to these posts.:)

Bonjour et Bienvenue! (thus ends the french portion of our blog)

 i meant to say something clever, but then I remembered its 3 am and I'm damn tired.

Well, I had a nice introductory post written yesterday, but blogger killed it, so whatever.

Today I tried out one of the Sally Hansen Salon Effects nail strips in Misbehaved. Misbehaved is the champagne gold with black fishnet. I find the fishnet pattern particularly interesting because it is exactly like fishnet stockings: slightly rounded, fish scale shaped instead of perfect diamonds.

I was VERY against trying these. When Avon came out with the same kind of product back when I was in high school, it was a horrible product; difficult to work with, extremely sheer, ugly colors, and expensive as hell for a single-use piece of crap. After reading many many positive reviews on this product (MUA, I love you!) I decided to forgo the Minx mani I was going to treat myself to for my vacation and give these a go.

The kit comes with 16 individual nail strips of varying sizes from "too small for my pinkie" to "too wide for my thumb". I only tried one strip on my accent nail so far, and there were no strips quite close enough to my nail size. My nails flare ever so slightly (I have a sad, flattish C Curve) so there are two very small bare strips along the edges of my nail.

The kit provides you with a tiny orange stick and a teeny tiny little 3 function nail file (so cute!). The instructions are pretty good, too. Remove all traces of dirt, polish, oil, etc. File free edge with hot pink side of file, buff with white side of file, and push your cuticles back with the orange stick.

After selecting a strip that is the best size for your nail, you're supposed to be able to figure which end would look best with your cuticle shape. To the best of my knowledge, both ends looked identical (at least on the one i picked). Whatevs. Peel the plastic off and then peel the white backing off (I had trouble with this). Carefully line the chosen end up with your cuticle and place it on your prepared nail (you can try again if you mess up and are careful).

Then it tells you to fold the end over, make a crease, and file the free edge of your nail gently with the light pink bit of the file. I had a problem here. Folding caused puckering and wrinkling on the tips. It took forever to smooth out to where i was satisfied, and I mean it took about ten minutes of carefully smoothing with my finger or the orange stick, and trying to keep it from lifting or bunching.

As far as the "look" of it, i love it. It really does look like an expensive salon job, and since its made with real polish, there's no "printing" involved, meaning no tiny little dots, fuzzy edges, or fake-looking results. While its not as ultra-chrome-y as a Minx nail, its a very nice, affordable substitute that doesn't involve painting or konading to achieve the desired effect, and is bunches cheaper.

One issue I have come up against so far is that there is a tiny little bubble in the strip that wasn't there before, and i CANNOT flatten it. Do. Not. Want.

Well, I'm going to leave this strip on my nail for a week and see what comes of it.
The other nails are wearing Essence Metal Battle (sent to me from Ireland ♥ ) since i refuse to have naked nails. ew.

that is all.