Illamasqua Viridian

I chose this polish from a need for a Christmassy manicure that wouldn't take any work. No nail art, no glitter removal, just something that felt appropriately holiday. And so it was that Illamasqua Viridian went onto my fingers.

In direct light, you can see how green and shimmery it is.

In indirect light, it's a little more teal and blackened on the edges, but it's still not a flat, boring polish by any stretch of the imagination.

This was just two coats of smooth, easy application. Unfortunately, I topped it with my current go-to quick dry polish, Essie Good to Go, and it does NOT play with with Illamasqua apparently! I had shrinkage like crazy, and it was the same when I used it over Glitterati a few weeks ago. Note to self: don't do that again.

And an out of focus shot so you can see how sparkly and gorgeous it is. :)


This is now one of my go-to Christmas polishes for when I want something really easy. What's your favorite easy Christmas manicure?

Misa Live Without Knowing

My husband got a raise last week, so we both decided to splurge; he bought a couple football video games and I placed a huge order at Transdesign. Have I sung their praises before? If not, I should have. I adore them. Cheap Essie and China Glaze, plus Misa and Sation and Orly and other brands I can't find anywhere around here. They even started carrying OPI again (here, as they haven't updated their polishes page to show it). I'll show you what my haul included later, but right now I'm too excited about the first pretty I put on!

Misa: Live Without Knowing. 

Two coats, no top coat. It has a lovely formula, just like every other Misa I've tried; I had minimal cleanup. At one coat it could have been fine, but I added a second to make sure there was no VNL.

Live Without Knowing is, at it's core, a taupe. It's just what I want this time of year. But it's so much more than that! Look at that RIDICULOUS SHIMMER, people. It's incredible. There's a fair amount of purple hidden in there, and a whole lot of gold, and I think I see a little pink, too.

Milani Sail Away

I have a serious love affair with shimmery blues. It's ridiculous. Someday I'll have to do a comparison of them all... But I'm about to move back to my parent's for a month while I play for a theatre this summer, so I probably won't have time for a couple months! Just don't let me forget. ;)

Today's shimmery blue is Milani Sail Away. It's freaking gorgeous. They released this and Beach Front in the same collection this spring, and I just died. 

It's a perfect cornflower shade of blue with the most incredible silver shimmer. And the shimmer is not at all shy!

I think this is probably very similar to Sinful Colors Neptune. Unless you're like me and need every shimmery blue ever invented, you'd probably be fine with just one or the other.

Pink Wednesday: OPI "If You Pink So..."

Here's a pink wednesday that I don't think anyone has seen before! Or at least, I haven't found any swatches of it...
I went to Beauty Brands to kill some time the other day, and they had a shelf full of this pretty pink. Here's the display...

It's called "If You Pink So..." and it looks like it's a brand new Beauty Brands exclusive. I usually look up swatches before I buy anything, but when I googled this one, absolutely nothing came up! So here you go.

This is a bottle shot I took in the car with my iPhone right after buying it. It's got a really pretty shimmer in it! Blue & pink. (PS, on my nails is one of the OPI sorbets; Guy Meets Galveston, I think?)

These are all 2 coats with no top coat.

This isn't color accurate, but you can see the shimmer a little better.

It's a medium pink with strong blue undertones. I'm currently wearing Essie's Bachelorette Bash on my toes, and they're exactly the same color. Seriously, insanely perfectly matched. So if you know what the Essie looks like, you know what color If You Pink So... is; just imagine it with a really subtle blue & pink shimmer.

What do you think of If You Pink So...? Have you heard of it before? Will you be getting it now?

Sinful Colors Zeus

Sinful Colors again! Zeus is from their Cast Away collection, as was Neptune. This is 2 coats, so hooray! The formula was weird... boo! It was runny, but it got goopy fast, and I had an impossible time trying to get the right amount on the brush. Harumph. Also, it has a really beautiful pink shimmer, but I don't see a lot of it. Some of that is probably due to the gross, cloudy day outside, but I don't think it's all the weather's fault...

What do you think about these pictures? I'm using a new lighting system for these pictures. Here's a comparison...

Pictures using window light aren't always that bad; as I said, today is really dreary & gray. But that's part of the wonderful thing of having a good light: it's reliable.
Do you prefer the new pictures? I'll do a few more entries with this lighting so you can let me know what you think!

Also! Before I took this off, I did some layering with a couple new Pure Ice polishes I picked up.
On my left hand, I tried out Busted. It's the perfect match for Zeus: they are both purple with pink shimmer. The shimmer in Busted in AMAZING, though.

I feel like putting Busted over top of Zeus just brings out what Zeus could be. My ring & pinky fingers have such a silly tiny shimmer compared to the two with Busted!

And from an extreme enough angle, Busted's shimmer turns slightly green! How awesome is that?

Next is Heartbreaker layered over my right hand. Here you will have to be a little lenient... of course I'm not as good at posing & taking pictures of my right hand, but I also have a nubby little middle finger. It broke last week and has been weak & peeling ever since. :(

Heartbreaker is really pretty, I'm excited to try layering it over other things!!

Zoya Danii

Danii was one of the 2 polishes I got back in the January Zoya promo... It takes me so dang long to get to polishes! She's a beautiful purple with seriously amazing gold shimmer. Compared to the letdown that was Your Hut or Mine, I am super excited about this one!

2 coats, no top coat.

That's it for today! Short & sweet.

China Glaze Stone Cold

I love the Hunger Games polishes. Have I said that enough yet? Because I do. They're amazing. Stone Cold is no exception!

Named for District 2, it definitely has a look of granite. And I love a good shimmery matte! Plus, 1 coat for opacity? I'm sold. The only tricky part of this polish is that it dries SO fast! I was rushing, so a couple fingers didn't level out correctly, and I got a little messy in a couple places. I left these with no clean up or photo editing so you can see what it actually looked like for me!

And then, top coat:

I liked it matte, but I loved it shiny!

As a matte polish, it read to me "gray & shimmery," but shiny it read to me "black with a crapton of shimmer." I'm not sure why it felt darker after the top coat, but it definitely did. And the shimmer is seriously gorgeous. This is definitely one of the HG polishes I highly suggest you pick up.

China Glaze Hunger Games Riveting

I know there have been a million swatches of all the Hunger Games polishes, but I have to share this one. I've shared several others of the shades I really liked, and this one shares their formula. So easy to control that these pictures have absolutely zero cleanup; so shiny that I don't feel the need for topcoat; opaque in a coat or two (depending on how heavy-handed you are). But somehow either I wasn't paying attention, or none of the swatches were quite accurate, because I was completely surprised by how orange this polish is. Orange. ORANGE. Orangey orange orange orange. It doesn't look bad on me, and it's beautifully pigmented, and the shimmer is gorgeous, but orange is my least favorite color. Period. Done. I own absolutely zero orange clothing, there isn't a single thing in my house that's orange. I am absurdly, irrationally against the color in any form.
Basically, my high school rivalry is the oldest on this side of the Mississippi, and we HATE each other, and their school color is orange. This hatred goes back generations of my blood. Orange and I will never be reconciled.
But this polish, I might be able to tolerate... for a little while.

Just like I told you: ORANGE, incredibly shiny, flawless application, amazing gold shimmer, and so, so, so orange.

Sinful Colors Neptune

Ah, Sinful Colors. I love you so much for being insanely affordable with amazing colors. I have a love/hate relationship with your formula because it's so hit or miss, but thank you thank you THANK YOU for making Neptune pretty much flawless.

These pictures are 2 coats of Neptune. Slight tip wear, because it's day 2 of wear, I am always too lazy for top coat, and I play piano. But it was chip-free on day 4 when I took it off, so it's definitely getting my approval.

The last picture is the most color accurate. It wants to photograph really BLUE, and it's not. It's a little more cornflower-y than most of these pictures show. I tried to correct the next-to-last photo, but I think it's a little too purple, though still fairly accurate. The last picture shows that it is darker and a little richer than that electric blue in the first picture.
The first coat was streaky & ugly, but the second evened it all out. And what a GOREOUS shimmer. It's like the big brother of Essie Coat Azure or Smooth Sailing. In fact, I bet the three of them would make a gorgeous ombre!

China Glaze Hunger Games: Foie Gras & Fast Track

Foie Gras was fine. A nice enough taupe. It has a lot of purple undertone, but I saw a whole lot of brown most of the time. Two coats, no top coat.

These aren't my best pictures ever. Forgive me. I only wore it for a couple days, and then I switched it up for Fast Track. I had a job interview on Thursday (which went well, but also made me not really want the job that much...) so I figured I should go with something a little more "normal."
Again, two coats, no top coat.

I ...think? I like this color? I still haven't quite decided. It's nice enough, but in some lights it looks really awful on me. And sometimes the gold shimmer pulls a little green? Maybe that's just me, but it weirds me out.

I promise a non-Hunger Games polish next!