Still disappointed

It's been a few months since I placed my disastrous order with Yves Rocher.  I was so disappointed with my order that I hadn't tried out any of the polishes until now.  I finally decided to give Mauve Captivant a try.  Here's what it looked like on the website when I ordered it:

It was listed as a 'sparkling' polish and it looks like a duochrome in that photo, or at the very least packed with sparkly glitter right?  And here's what it actually looks like:

This was 4 coats!  Oh and the 3ml bottle is now half empty after one manicure.  But I'm fine with that anyways because I'm not all that impressed with the colour and I despise 4 coaters.  It was pretty much a given that I wasn't going to order from Yves Rocher again anyways so I'm not sure if an amazing polish would have been enough to change my mind.

And just like I do with all the colours I'm not very impressed with, I stamp them with a full nail image.  This is BM19 in Sally Hansen Chrome Moonstone.  The stamping is looking a little green in this photo but it's not at all.  This one came off right away.

Oh and something I thought was absolutely hilarious - I checked out my blog search keywords the other day and one of the them was horny unicorn.  WTF?!  How the heck did my blog come up under that?  I really don't think I want to know why someone was searching for a horny unicorn anyways.  Anyone else have strange or funny search words come up for them?

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Lazy day

This is 2 coats of Sally Hansen Insta Dri in Blue Streak.  I love the Insta Dri polishes and I wish there was better variety.  The brushes are great and they really do dry fast.  This colour is slightly more green than the photo.

I had no clue what I was going to do for this mani so while I was browsing my stash I found the perfect matching glitter and decided to do an accent nail.  I added a coat of LA Colors in Treasure Island on the ring finger.  It really is a perfect match.  I love glitter but really hate the removal so I think this is the best solution for me.  I was too lazy to flip through all my plates so I just reused the plate from my previous mani - BM03 and stamped a little heart on each nail with Sally Hansen White On.  Probably not the best colour choice but like I said, I was feeling lazy that day.  And as it turns out I really didn't mind this mani at all.

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Amazing green

This is Sinful Colors San Francisco in 3 coats.  This was the one polish I wanted so badly when I first discovered Sinful Colors and I couldn't find it until recently.  And when I did finally find it, it was a lonely bottle with spillage but I bought it anyways.  The colour is awesome, the sheerness is not.  I hate doing more than 2 coats of polish.

So I stamped it with Pure Ice Silver Mercedes and plate BM03 and oddly enough the stamping came out slightly golden.  So I added a gold gem to each.  I think it's a little bit too much but I did get a lot of compliments on this.

And a bonus shot of my Zoya Ivanka ring I wore with it.  Which also shows how bad my stamping alignment is...oh well.  I haven't made any new rings in awhile but I did pick up a new box of casting resin and I've got a ton of new polishes which will make fabulous rings so you may see some new ones here shortly.

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Who'da thunk?

Can I just say I love my nails right now?  I've been able to keep them healthy for a good month now with no chips or peels at all.  This length really works well for me.

This is 2 coats of Gosh in Wild Lilac.  I picked this up in the clearance section at Shoppers for $3.  I also picked up Gasoline along with it and when I got to the cash register I noticed some dried polish around the cap so I twisted the lid off to see if it was ok and it literally shattered in my hands....wahhhhhh!  Here I thought I'd scored Gasoline for cheap!  I'm glad it happened in the store though and not at home but man, that poor cashier...

I was surprised how much I love this colour and the formula was not as bad and as streaky as my previous experiences with Gosh.  So I stamped it with the old standard Wet and Wild Black Creme and plate BM223.

And damn, post #99?  Who would of thought this blog would actually hold my interest for that long?  I suppose it's thanks to all you ladies out there who give me the inspiration.  Thanks!

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Good Mourning/Black Friday

Sorry just a bit of Megadeth humor that I couldn't resist.  It seemed the most appropriate title post for this:

Sally Hansen 10 Day No Chip in Black Berry.  1 coat and it's my favourite black creme of all time.  I will mourn it when it's empty.

I sponged a little Revlon Belle on the tips and then a little bit of China Glaze Dorothy Who on top of that?  I didn't realize at the time that the double effort would be a waste.  This was all just a base in order to showcase:

Blue Eyed Girl by Kleancolor - 1 coat.  I kept second guessing whether or not to use a second coat but I think because I did the tips in blue, a second coat may have been overkill.  So this mani got me more compliments than any other polish I've worn!  A complete stranger came up to me in a coffee shop and said 'omg let me see your nails!'  That was pretty awesome.

I wore this when I was at the salon last week and the girls were fawning over it too.  The salon owner cuts my hair and we usually talk a bit about nail polish and sometimes I'm the one schooling her lol.  She always tells me about all the new products coming out and I was super excited when she told me that she's getting the LCN magnetic polishes in shortly.  So she's going to call me as soon as they're in and I can't wait to try them out! 

Have a great weekemd!

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Subtle stamping

This is 2 coats of Elf's Mod Mauve.  The photo looks kinda brown for some reason but it's definitely a dusty purple/rose.  When Elf had their Black Friday sale on last year I bought every single nail polish that wasn't pink LOL.  It was insanely cheap!

I stamped it with Kleancolor Metallic Red and plate BM212.  It's subtle and extremely hard to photograph but I like it.  The Kleancolor metallics are so amazing for stamping and you can't go wrong at $1.75!  I wish I'd tried to matte this one before I took it off because I think it would have been awesome.

I'm stumped for my next mani, I need some inspiration!

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Happy Monday!

This is one coat of Sally Hansen Insta Dri in Lively Lilac.  I picked up several of these a few weeks ago on sale.  This photo looks like a straight creme but it's not, it's got a shimmery finish to it.  I thought I would love this and I really do like the formula, love the brush too, but the colour leans far too pink for my taste.  So I had to mess with it.

I added a coat of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms in White Turquoise.  I liked it much better but it's still not 'me'.

It looked pretty awesome under my kitchen lights.  Too bad this wasn't how it looked all the time because then I would have left it alone rather than destroying it further:

I figured the best thing was to use a full coverage stamp to hide the fact my nails were pink.  I used Pure Ice in Silver Mercedes and plate BM208.  I do like the design a lot though so I will definitely use this one again.

So I'm in an unusually happy mood for a Monday but I'm gonna bitch anyways because look at this:

This is One Less Lonely Glitter on the left and Tru Passion on the right.  These are (WERE) dupes!  I have never seen a polish change colour like that and it's not even very old!  On one hand I'm happy that I don't own two of the same colour anymore but on the other hand I'm going to think twice about buying Studio M polishes from now on!

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I'm a whore for holo

Above is Milani Cyberspace - 3 coats.  This is the only Milani I own and it probably has the worst brush of any polish I've tried.  It's extremely thin and makes it impossible to get even coverage in less than 3 coats.

Random crap: Girly shit sucks.  My younger sister loved kittens and unicorns and rainbows and pink shit.  I fuckin hated it and I made fun of her for it when we were kids.  She also loved NKOTB but we won't go there right now.  I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to the Duchess of Doo because I fucking love rainbows!  I could wear holo nail polish every day for the rest of my life!  Kittens, unicorns and pink still suck ass though.

So I ruined the awesome rainbow with Kleancolor Metallic Aqua and plate BM212.  I also had some stamping issues here, but not from the polish.

I'm in a weird mood today.  Having a bad day but posting about nail polish makes me happy.  I may even go home and slap some more holo polish on ;)

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My downfall is the bargain basket

Ugh.  I keep bitching about curbing my polish spending and then I pass another 50% off OPI basket.  I just can't stop myself!

I picked up 3 last weekend and here's the first - William Tell Me About It in 2 coats.  I love it!

No nail art today but I did top it with a coat of Nfu Oh #40 which looks green/teal in most lights but turns an amazing blue/indigo which you can slightly see in the photo.  I tried really hard to capture it.

Then I painted the Princess of Poo with 2 coats of my other bargain basket find: Ski Teal We Drop and added a layer of Kleancolor Chunky Copper to it.  I wish I'd taken a better photo because this looked amazing!

The last OPI I found in the basket was Jade Is The New Black which I later regretted because it's too similar to Don't Mess With OPI which is the only one I bought from the Texas collection.  I do love the colour, I just don't need 2.

Now that I've got all these great layering flakies and glitters I feel like I don't want to do nail art or konad.  I need to get back into doing more stamping again.

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Bloody nails

I've had this idea forever but I could never find the right polishes for it.  I wanted to create nails that looked like they were dripping blood.  I recently bought L'Oreal Stroke of Midnight and decided it was perfect for this mani.

So to start with I just grabbed a random red, which happened to be Sally Hansen Maximum Growth in Cherry Charisma - 1 coat.

Then I sponged on L'Oreal Stroke of Midnight but I did a shitty job of it so I added a coat of Kleancolor in Red-hot to try and blend it a bit.  It wasn't too hard to pick out the hex glitter in Red-Hot.

And then I did two more coats of the same - sponged Stroke of Midnight and one coat of Red-Hot.  I also sponged a bit of black on the tips.  With top coat this was one of the thickest mani's I've ever worn!

My execution wasn't great, once again, but I liked it enough that I'll definitely give it a try again.  I just need to blend it a bit more, use a darker base and find a lighter red jelly polish without glitter to replace Red-hot.  Maybe I'll try it out again closer to Halloween or when the new season of Dexter starts :)

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Another franken and yet another haul

I was going for a navy blue holo here which looked perfect in the bottle but when I put it on my nails it was more like a medium blue-grey.  I'm afraid if I add any more polish to darken it then the holo effect will disappear completely.  Anyways this is 3 coats of my franken.

Then I stamped it with Pure Ice Silver Mercedes and BM20.

Now for an awesome glittery haul:

Kleancolors from L-R:
Starry Blue
Black Out
Blue-eyed Girl
Chunky Copper
Born to the Purple
Green With Envy - seriously sick and tired of this polish name!

L-R:
Chunky Holo Purple
Metallic Green
Midnight Queen - looks promising for layering
Metallic Aqua
Metallic Red

The chunky holos don't quite thrill me but I bought one since everyone seems to be going gaga over them.  The metallics I bought for stamping.  These were about $29 shipped to Canada in total, so a little more than $2.50/bottle and no tax.  Pretty decent.  I don't want to post where I ordered them from because I'm having a minor customer service issue that hasn't been resolved yet but I'm sure most of you can take an educated guess ;)

Ahhh and now my polish count is well over 400!  Think it's time to slow down.

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Franken fun

There is a surplus store near me that has a giant bin of Essie ridge-filling basecoat for $.25 each!  I bought 10 of them just so I could use the bottles for frankening and I'm down to about 3 bottles left.  So here is my fave so far:

I don't name my frankens nor do I write down what I'm adding as I go.  I basically have an idea what I want and try to execute it.  Sometimes it doesn't work and sometimes it does, like this one.  I was going for a lavender with blue shimmer and this is 3 coats.  It was a bit thinner than I'd like but it's worth it.

I first sponged a bit of Sinful Colors Verbena and then Pure Ice Busted over it.

Then I stamped it with Kleancolor Metallic Purple and BM208.  I should have just left it alone :p

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