Fantasy Fire

I never thought the day would come when I'd have my own bottle of Max Factor Fantasy Fire, but thanks to a conveniently-timed business trip requiring my dad to go to London a couple weeks ago, I now have this beauty on my nails!  

Choosing what to wear this over for the first time really was a no-brainer, I went with Nails Inc. Baker Street (any other Sherlock Holmes fans out there?) which is a beautiful bright royal blue.  Over that I layered two coats of Fantasy Fire, followed by one coat of Seche Vite. 

It was impossible to catch the beauty of this in pictures.  It turned my base a stunning glowing indigo, with the colour shift from red to gold to green.  I've said before with various manicures that I couldn't stop looking at my nails, but THIS?  This isn't even close to the same level. 

Believe it or not I got way more compliments on this one than I've had on any of my recent stamping manis (which from nuggles (nail muggles) usually elicits a response of "WHOAH how do you do that?!?!?")  This polish is positively glowing and is just so eye-catching!

Hooray for awkward sun pictures taken in the parking lot at the dance studio/my school.  I'm beginning to have problems with my pictures due to the fact that it is now dark when I leave the house in the morning and dark when I come home.  Grrr. 

I'd also like to mention that my dad is the best person in the entire world (alongside you, mom!) especially after hunting around every drugstore in London to find this for me!  Because he's super awesome, he actually got me three bottles, but I've yet to figure out what to do with the other two.  Keep an eye out just in case  ;)

Exotic Encounters of the Lacquered Kind

Now that we're past that awesome post title, I just got my first polish from the China Glaze on Safari Collection (I'm a little behind, I know.)  China Glaze isn't easily available to me, but occasionally I'll walk into Winners and find a ridiculous amount of China Glaze and OPI on sale for half-price, and they're usually the more recent collections!  

Of the China Glaze they had, Exotic Encounters was the only one that I knew I needed.  Had my mom not been watching my every move (she knows it's dangerous when I find nail polish on sale) I probably would have walked out with the entire collection plus a couple OPIs. 

I decided to stamp over two easy coats of Exotic Encounters with an animal print pattern from BM-313 and Essie Good As Gold.   The colour choices ended up looking slightly turtle-ish to me, but I really like it!

Also, I'd like to let you know that I entered one of my manicures in a contest to win the entire Zoya Gloss Collection at Fab Fatale.  Zoya isn't easily available to me where I live, and I'd really appreciate if you could help me.  It only takes a minute to go here and click the "Vote" button underneath the manicure you see at the end of the post. (Essie Merino Cool and BM-315)

All the help is much appreciated, and I promise if I win I'll have a ton of awesome jelly sandwiches to share with you!  Have a good day! 

After The Storm

Shut the front door!  It's finally here!  I've been waiting for this day for four months.  Four maddening, challenging, frustrating months.  If you're a fellow Caskett shipper, you'll understand my major freak-outs and random outbursts of excitement today.  Just in case (God forbid) you don't watch Castle, this is the premise of the show.  Seriously, if we thought the end of Season 4 exploded the internet, just wait until tonight.  I'm sure the entire fandom will be lying in pieces on the floor being all like "TOO MANY FEEEELS!"  

Yes, I'm crazy.  Anyways, down to business.  This manicure, in honor of the Castle Season 5 Premiere episode tonight, was inspired by this manicure by Colores de Carol.  I used Zoya Dove and BM-303 and BM-311 with Konad black polish.  Unofrtunately none of my limited amount of red polish worked well for stamping, so black lips will have to do. 

I saw the inspiration for this manicure when she originally did the post a while ago and had it filed away for this day.  It's so perfect for Castle and Beckett, especially considering where they are now.  ;)  

I'm considering doing a series of Monday Castle-inspired nail art posts for next few weeks, so keep an eye out for those because I've got a couple more ideas floating around in my head that'll hopefully make it to my nails. You can see my Castle Season 4 Finale mani here.  Feed the birds! 

I'm so glad that it's finally September 24th.  You seriously have no idea.  But if you do, please leave a comment so I know who you are and we can fangirl together.  

Dutch 'Ya Just Love OPI?

When the OPI Holland collection came out for Spring/Summer this year, Dutch 'Ya Just Love OPI? was the only polish that I immediately knew I needed.  However, it doesn't really scream spring or summer to me, and until now I'd only worn it once since I got it.  I'm amazed that all through the summer I was able to look right over this one in my polish drawer, it's so gorgeous! 

Application was perfect and barely required any cleanup; OPI's brush works really well with my nails.  This is two coats of Dutch 'Ya Just Love OPI? with two coats of Seche Vite and studs from a Color Club nail art set. 

You can see my previous (awful) swatches of this colour in one of my first blog posts here, though the sight of my then-beautiful nails may be too much for you.  Just kidding, I can't believe I actually posted those pictures.  Oh well, got to start somewhere, right?  :)

Even though purple is my favourite colour, I don't have many purple polishes because I'm really picky about which shades and finishes I like in purples.  I'm really glad I got this one though, it's really flattering on my skin tone and such a pretty colour with that hidden shimmer!  I'll definitely be reaching for this one quite a bit during the fall. 

Do you love this purple as much as I do?  I think the studs add a lot to the look of this mani, the purple and gold combination looks kind of royal, doesn't it?  I love using studs as a way to spice up a plain mani, have you ever tried it?  :)

(Also, did the pictures of my previous swatch burn your eyeballs out of your head?)

Mod Teddy Girl

The nicest thing happened the other day!  A lady at my mom's office brought in  bunch of nail polish and put it out in the break room for people to take, saying that she'd never use them again.  My mom took a couple bottles and emailed her to explain how much I'd appreciate them and thank her, to which she told my mom to just take all of them!  I arrived home to 4 bottles of OPI, 2 Revlons, one Essie, and a Butter London!  And all the bottles are practically brand new! 

The Butter London I received is a gorgeous light pink called Teddy Girl, it looks to be very close to a couple other light pinks I have, (OPI Mod About You, Essie Fiji, Essie French Affair.)  Let me know if you'd be interested in a comparison post!  

The formula on Teddy Girl was really easy to work with, though it did require three coats to be completely opaque.  I stamped over it with BM-322 and Konad black polish, and then added dots with Essie No Place Like Chrome. 

I know my stamping leaves a little to be desired in spots, but when it's not blown up to five times the size of my actual nail, it's very visually striking.  

This doesn't really fit in with my usual aesthetic, but I really like it!  I'll definitely have to wear Teddy Girl again by itself soon, it's such a soft pretty colour that's really flattering on my skin tone.  

How do you like what I did with Teddy Girl?  Would you like to see a comparison post with my other similar light pinks?  Leave a comment, they make me happy!  :)

Glequined Nite Owl

First off I'd like to mention that I forgot to include in my last post about WingDustCollections that Stephanie has generously offered a coupon code for my readers to get 15% off their order at her Etsy shop with the code GLOBE15.  You can visit her shop here.  :)

On to today's mani!  This is my second time playing with the glequins I got from the Born Pretty Store; you can see my Glequin Ruffian here.  This time I used the holographic glequins to make a pyramid at the base of my nails, and I really like the effect.  Take a look :)

Orly Nite Owl is a flattering taupe with silver glass-fleck-ish-shimmer.  I know, I'm really good at describing polishes :) Haha

This is two perfect coats of Nite Owl, with two coats of Seche Vite to seal in the glequins.  Nite Owl is a tad more brown than my pictures show.

You can use the code PPJ61 (shown below) to get 7% off at the Born Pretty Store.  What do you think of this mani?  Do you like using glequins as a way to spice up an ordinary polish job? 

Kudos to you if you spotted my awful photoshop job.  Didn't notice it was gone until I was editing the pictures. Oops. 

WingDustCollections: Zambia Missions 2012

Today I have some very special polishes made by the amazing Stephanie of WingDustCollections.  She has an entire collection of beautiful polishes inspired by her Missions trip to Zambia this summer, and I have three of them to show you.

First is HOPE, a soft white jelly base with white, pink, and holographic square glitters, and white and iridescent micro-glitters.  This one is very sheer, but I didn't want to layer it over a white base because I wanted to keep it looking soft.  This is four easy coats of HOPE with one coat of Seche Vite.

Mongu At Midnight is a mix of various sizes of silver and holographic hex glitters and blue bar glitters in a dark blue shimmer base.  This one gave me a lot of trouble at first; my bottle was super thick, goopy, streaky, and near-impossible to apply nicely.  After contacting Stephanie to ask if she knew about this, we compared bottles and the ones she had definitely looked like it applied much more nicely.  She was extremely apologetic about me getting what was probably just a fluke bad bottle, but I didn't want her to have to send me a new bottle so I added a couple of drops of thinner, let it sit overnight, and added a couple more drops before re-swatching. Ta-da! It was tons better than before.  What you see here is three thin coats with one coat of Seche Vite.

I've included a picture from the first time I swatched it with the super-goopy bottle.  The difference isn't as noticeable in the pictures, but was drastic in person!  Just know that it can be easily fixed with some thinner.  This is two thick coats with one coat of Seche Vite. 

I've saved my favourite of the bunch for last, this is Save A Life. It's a beautiful soft lilac jelly polish with light purple, dark purple, white, silver, and iridescent glitters sprinkled throughout.  This was significantly less opaque than the other two, so I put it over a base of Sally Hansen Lacey Lilac.  This one had the smoothest application of the them all.  This is three coats of Save A Life over Lacey Lilac with one coat of Seche Vite.  (Yes, I filed my nails down a lot before this swatch.  They were getting too long for my liking.) 

Without a doubt I love all of these polishes. Aside from the initial thickness of Mongu At Midnight, the application posed no problems.  A real big bonus with these is that the glitters only need one coat of top coat to be smooth!  If you love these polishes as much as I do, you'll for sure want to check out the rest of her collections!  :)

*EDIT* Stephanie had very generously offered 15% off at her Etsy shop for my readers with the coupon code GLOBE15.  You can find Wing Dust Collections on Facebook here, and her Etsy shop here. 

Disclaimer: The products in this post were sent to me for review and my honest opinion. 

Quidditch Nail Art

Mooorning.  (If you said that in George Weasley`s voice, you're awesome.  If not, you've lived a deprived life and need to go watch this right now!) 

In case you didn't know, I'm a huge Harry Potter fan.  Like read-all-the-books-multiple-times-know-all-the-lines-in-the-movies-can-ramble-off-every-obscure-fact-nobody-should-know kind of fan.  

Oddly enough, it's been almost a year since I did Harry Potter related nails (last Halloween.)  For my sister's birthday party last weekend, I made her a golden snitch birthday cake (yes, I decorate cakes too.)  Of course, I couldn't resist doing Quidditch nails to match :)

I just had to take a picture holding the wand that my super-mega-foxy-awesome-hot friend Michaela made for me, A.K.A. Queen Of All Things Crafty.  My sister has one too, and yes, we know all the spells and have wizard duels.  ("THAT'S ABSURD!")

Yea, yea, freehand nail art definitely isn't my strong point, but I think I did alright.  

I used a base of Orly Snowcone, sponged on a little OPI Don't Touch My Tutu for some depth (not that you can tell in my pictures) added details with acrylic paint, glitters that I pulled out of Pirouette My Whistle, and then sponged on some Essie Pure Pearlfection for a little added magic.  ;)

What do you think of my Quidditch nails?  Are you anywhere near as crazy of a fan as I am?  :D

Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Pink Rose Diamond

This was just one of those polishes that spent most of its days lying unused in the bottom of a bin full of polish, and I had no idea of its value until I started getting really interested in polish.  We have Pink Rose Diamond and Lavender Pearl from the Nail Prisms collection, both which I believe came in a Sally Hansen polish gift set that my sister got for Christmas years ago (she'll be mad if I don't mention they're technically hers.)

The first picture is how it looks outside in the shade, as well as most of the time indoors.  This is three coats of Pink Rose Diamond, with one coat of Seche Vite (yea, yea, dulling the holo...)  Since I own a whopping two bottles of holographic polish, you can tell they're my favourite finish. *end sarcasm* 

Being extremely inexperienced in photographing holos, I tried to do my best.  Since I couldn't get one photo that accurately captured how it looks in the sunlight, I've included 6.  So just mush them all together in your imagination and you should get an accurate portrayal of the colour.  This is getting a little crazy; I should stop typing now. 

nailXchange has a great compilation of all of the Nail Prisms, so if you're curious be sure to check it out, it's a great resource!

I'm not a fan of this shade of pink or holos, so wearing this polish kind of rubs me the wrong way a little bit... Even if I think it does look pretty in the pictures. 

Do you own any of the hard-to-find Nail Prisms? Do you like the holos or the duo/multichromes from this collection better? 

Orly Electronica Collection

Or, well, half of it.  I picked up two polishes from the Orly Electronica collection sometime in June when they were on BOGO sale at Sally's; I'm really glad I did because they'll definitely be some of my go-to colours for fall!

Decoded is a dark grey creme, which you saw a couple of days ago in my Grey-dient.  In the pictures it's leaning much more blue-toned than it is in real life, it really is a true grey.  Two coats, flawless formula, stunning colour.  LOVE.

Shockwave is a rich dark royal blue which you saw in my review of Tough As Nails Lacquer the other day.  Pictures were taken outside, and it appears quite a bit darker in indoor lighting.  It's one of those blues that looks navy at times but never looks black; love that!  The VNL you can see in the pictures wasn't visible at all in real life.  Same thing: two coats, flawless formula, amazeballs colour.  DOUBLE RAINBOW.

Gosh, how I love Orly.  Every polish I own is so freaking fantastic (despite the near-inevitable SV shrinkage!)  Luckily I've learned to mostly avoid it with very careful application, and it's sooo totally worth it! Orly FTW! :D  

Do you guys love a good fall-coloured creme as much as I do?  Do you own either of these polishes?  Which one is your favourite?  Comments make me happy :)  Thanks for reading!