Zoya Blaze - My Dilemma

Now you guys know all about my love/hate relationship with Zoya.  They make awesome colours, they apply well, but they don't tend to wear well on me.  I end up with tip wear or chipping SO MUCH FASTER than with most other brands.

But the pretty colours....

So Blaze, from their 2012 holiday collection, wasn't really on my radar.  It was pretty, but nothing I was going to pay $10 for.  In fact, I felt that way about the whole collection.  And then I found a few of them in a hair salon's bargain bin(Seriously, this salon sometimes has the BEST STUFF in that bin!), priced at $2 a polish.  And being that I have no self-control... They came home with me.

So Blaze is a raspberry polish(some say red, some say pink.. I say it's in between the two) with a scattered holo effect that makes it look really beautiful and deep in the right lights.  It was really flattering on my skin tone and really pretty without being over-the-top.

I have on three coats, though you could get away with two.  This picture was taken about.. 8 hours into wearing it? And there's already tip wear happening.  I'm not so nuts about that.  That shouldn't be a thing.  Come on, Zoya.

Did you guys pick up any of the Zoya Holiday 2012 polishes?

Literary Lacquers - Bionic Mmmm-Detector & My Secret Garden: Time to dust off those teal and erotic fiction tags.

So Amy the lovely lady, and brains behind Literary Lacquers was kind enough to send some bottles for me to review.  Before I get started let's just talk about what Literary Lacquers is(just in case the name itself didn't clue you in :P).  All of her polishes are based on books!  Which I think is an brilliant idea.  She will never run out of collections.  Also let's be honest it's a great way to make your fingers look pretty and at the same time maybe you find a book to read that you otherwise might not have found!

Today I'm starting out with 2 colours from Literary Lacquers collection inspired by erotic fiction.

First off is Bionic Mmmm-Detector.  Inspired by Nicholson Bakers novella Vox.  Which is written completely as one one phone sex conversation between strangers.  The polish is a black jelly base filled with tiny blue, aqua and teal glitter.  And it's also laced with fine silver shimmer which gives it an extra pop.  Now as someone who does not wear teal(at all), I feel found myself liking it a lot! I used 3 coats on every finger MINUS my ring finger.  I used one coat of Bionic over a single coat of of L'oreal After hours(a dark blue almost black crelly.)  There wasn't a huge difference but it tended to bring out a BIT more of the blue and it did take away slightly from the overall effect.  But nothing to cry over.

 Two coats of topcoat used.  Although one coat would be fine.

The next one My Secret Garden is inspired by Nancy Fridays book of the same name.  Which is "Hundreds of real women responded to Nancy Friday's call for details of their own most private fantasies. My Secret Garden is the daring compilation of those fantasies."  The polish is a glitter top coat filled with pink, blue, green, and light purple matte glitter and filled with smaller iridescent glitter.  I layered it over Essence Oh My Glitter! and OPI My Boyfriend Scales Walls.  I used one thick coat on each.  I loved how they looked on both the lighter and darker colours.  My suggestion would be if you want the iridescent glitter to be more visible layer it over something darker.  More subtle(but just as pretty) layer it over something lighter.  This polish is like spring in a bottle :)  I suggest everyone buy it and then wear it to church for Easter.

And yes this is actually different from the 3 previous photos.  The white is China Glaze White Ice and the pink is CG Free fall.  In person they both looked horrific.  They are old polishes that would not dry and made application hard.  And since I actually wanted to wear this after a couple photos I removed it.

 Now I don't read any enough erotic fiction although I'm pretty sure I know a thing or two about the types of thing that go on in some of the stories ;).  So I personally can't say if I like any of these book or the other books in her collection.  But I do know after this I probably will go out a grab a couple from this list.

You can find these polishes and more over at Literary Lacquers Etsy shop here.   The polishes(15ml bottles) retail for $10USD.  And follow Literary Lacquers on facebook.  Oh also once the page hits 1000 followers(Currently at around 950) there will be a big giveaway! Anyways, stay tuned for more Literary Lacquers!

*Products were sent for honest review.

Why yes, my nails do have a healthy uranium glow!: Introducing my Wiki Series.

First don't forget our giveaway!  Only a few hours left!!!

So the past couple of weeks I have been busy so I haven't really had time to make my nails pretty for you guys.  Not only that but as far as nail art goes I've just been feeling a tad uninspired.  I do have some manicures planned but I'm saving them for specific days.

While looking for inspiration, I remembered something.  A friend who I do sketch with said that he always carry's an encyclopedia around.  If he doesn't know what to write about he just turns to a random page and writes about whatever he sees first.  Now I didn't have a encyclopedia(The children's one I have does not count).  But I have Wikipedia.  So I decided to see if Wikipedia could help me get inspired.  And it's easy because they have an option where you can choose a random article!

Now I made up a few rules/cheats:
1) If I don't like the first article or I just want to see if I can find something that inspired me more I can select a max of 3 articles.  Once 3 are chosen I must choose one.
2) Things that are inappropriate I can disregard and they are not counted as one of my possible 3 articles. (War, murder etc.)
3) I can disregard things that aren't articles. (If the word has different meaning or it's people with the same name it will sometimes send you to a page that gives you options for different articles that have the same title).  Not counted in possible 3 choices.
4) Vague articles can be disregarded.  I had an article pop up that was a sentence saying it was a patch of land somewhere.  Depending on article I can choose to disregard it.

So what was my first random article? *Drumroll*

92!

Yup the number 92.  I looked over the article and saw that it was the atomic number of uranium.  Huzzah inspiration!  I have Sally Hansen's Ivy League and it reminded me so much of glowing uranium, I knew I had to use it somehow.  So I ended up doing these toxic nails!  I used that, BK polish in number 19 from the Born Pretty store and acrylic paint and OPI's black shatter(didn't think I would be using that anytime soon).

I can't want do another wiki article inspired manicure!

Two more Halo Hues for you!

Kas already got the ball rolling with these polishes, so I figured I'd share a couple more with you today!

Now you all know I like a nice, crazy holo.  The more obnoxious, the better.  There's just something about waving my fingers around and seeing pretty, pretty rainbows that makes me a very happy lady, so the Halo Hues collections have been absolutely impossible for me to resist.

I have all of the first Halo Hues polishes and four of the six newest ones(THANK YOU WINNERS GIFT CARD!) and I am so pleased with them.  I can't wait to wear these all summer long!

First up: Here's Cherubic, a tan holo that covered in two coats.  Great formula, no complaints at all.  Since holos have a reputation for being dulled by topcoat, I decided to swatch these with topcoat only on my ring finger.  I noticed absolutely no dulling, so I will be wearing these with topcoat.

These photos are in normal outdoor sunlight, last photo is just plain indoors.

Next is Angel Kiss, a seafoam blue-green holo that also covered in two coats.  As before, no formula issues and no holo dullness from the topcoat! This was probably my favourite of the first Halo Hues collection, just really fun and bright.

Are you guys loving the Halo Hues too?

St. Patrick's Day Mani: Brought to you by Power Nap

Well I had an interesting night last night.  It consisted of drink tickets.  Lots and lots of drink tickets.  Followed by stumbling to the boys place at 2am and spent the next half hour apologizing for my drunkness, and asking that the lights in the room be left on(I felt less like dying when the lights were on.  The room spun less.)  It was a pretty fun night! But never again...

Anyways this mani is quite simple but before I went out last night I decided to take a power nap.  Long story short I slept too long and didn't have time to do anything crazy.  But I still really like how this turned out.

I used Orly's Lucky Duck and A England Dragon on all my fingers but my ring finger.  On my ring finger I used OPI's Dating a Royal and A Englands Tristam.  And to complete this french I added a strip of gold striping tape.  I really loved the somewhat subtle differences.  And just an FYI the ring finger is blue because blue was the colour that was originally associated with St. Patrick's Day.

 

And just for fun here is my mani from last year.  Used a real Guinness can for the letters!

 

 So did you celebrate already?  What did you do?  If not do you have any plans for tonight?

Color Club - Harp On It: Because I don't want to be too flashy.

Again sorry I haven't been posting as I have been super busy!  As I'm writing this it's just past 2am.  I did a show tonight and it went well.  And for the FIRST time ever I forgot a line.  Like not forgot it as in I reworded it slightly, I forgot it.  I had a moment of my mind was blank.  Nothing.  And I had a moment of "Shhhhiiitttttt".   Luckily I managed to cover it up so it's all good!

Anyways I wore this polish for the show tonight because I though up close it looks all fun and flashy but from far away it just looks silver.

Color Clubs Harp on is it your classic silver linear holo.  I used 3 coats even thought I really only needed 2.  Application was fantastic(I used base coat) and it dried fast as ever.  Finished it up with Seche and it still looked great.  This is actually the first time I've worn a linear holo so that's pretty neat eh?

While at this time it's nothing new it is a very affordable, good, strong linear holo polish.  If you don't already have a classic silver holo this is a great place to start!

 Sunlight

  Sunlight

  Sunlight

  Sunlight

  Sunlight

 Natural light

 This last photo for some reason reminded me of a book cover.  So I had to do this.  You're welcome :)

Would you read my book?

And remember our giveaway closes in less then a week!

Awful Old Photos for Your Enjoyment

I haven't been feeling very inspired lately. While going through some photos today, I thought I would show you guys some past nail arts.  Let us get in our wibbley-wobbley timey-wimey machine for old crappy webcam photos!

Valentine's nails from last year. I used a scrapbooking punch to make the heart. The ring finger is holo, but, webcam. 

 My nails for The Avengers. This is actually the worst picture ever. Left to right: arrow for Hawkeye, Black Widow's belt, stripes for Captain America, Thor's Hammer, Hulk thumbs, Cap again, Iron Man's arc reactor, green and black triangle thing to imitate Loki's costume, and a rainbow holo mess for the bifrost.

 Star Trek nails with insignia, rank stripes and galaxy thumbs! I loved these and want to do them again. Who else is sh*tting themselves over the Into Darkness teasers?

I cut and pasted words from a newspaper to reflect my feelings.

  A standard evening of debauchery with my friend Trish.