Finger Paints Palette of Petals Collection Spring 2011

Hey guys... I'm really not up to writing right now, but I really need to work through my backlog of posts because it's out of control and I feel like I'll never catch up. Would you forgive me if I only post pictures this time?

This is Finger Paints' Palette of Petals Collection from this spring.

Aren't You Gladiolus?

Carnation Creation.

Chrysanthemum's The Word.

Dahlia My Number.

Did You Ast-her Out?

Heavenly Hydrangeas.

(This was sent to me for review.)

OPI Femme de Cirque Soft Shades Collection Spring 2011 Swatches and Review

OPI's annual Soft Shades collection is circus-themed this year. I have to say, I like the theme! No Soft Shades collection can rival my love for the old Princess Charming collection, but the names of the polishes in this set are fantastic.


In The Spotlight Pink. A soft, squishy-looking milky pink jelly. This pink is mostly neutral in the bottle, but it does border on warmer/peachy-toned against my skin.


So Many Clowns, So Little Time. This name seriously cracks me up... It's going on my list of all time favorite OPI names. The color is a creamy off white with a slight splash of pink and grey. Reminds me a bit of the whiter version of Bubble Bath.


Step Right Up. This one has a similar finish to So Many Clowns, but it has more pink and peach in it. Very pale, very white-based, slightly muted, like there's one drop of grey in it.


My favorite part of this collection is the glitter topcoat, I Juggle... Men. Well, it's not quite a glitter, but it's a sparkle. It's sort of like... maybe Orly Fifty-Four or CND Sapphire Sparkle, but it's even more like the duochrome shimmer in OPI Unripened / Nicole Blues In The Night. Funky irregular particles, like mini-flakes... Broken crushed flakes... Super duochrome gorgeous. It wouldn't show up on camera all by itself on my nails, but it's really intended for layering anyway, so I've layered it.

OPI I Juggle... Men sparkle topcoat over In The Spotlight Pink.

OPI I Juggle... Men sparkle topcoat over So Many Clowns, So Little Time.


OPI I Juggle... Men sparkle topcoat over Step Right Up.

As you can see, it's subtle over the sheers, but it adds a nice touch of blue/purple duochrome sparkle. It really shows up best over darker colors. It's especially nice over Color Club Total Mystery.

The formula on these was difficult. I found it to be somewhat watery but goopy at the same time, a texture similar to early Big 3 Free polishes. I did have a hard time applying these. They wanted to run into my cuticles. The Pro-Wide brush seemed smaller and flatter than usual and that added to the difficulty. These are meant to be worn as sheers, but my nails are way too stained to wear them that way, so I did five coats of all. When worn sheer, they are very subtle, providing only a slight milky wash of color.

The exception is the I Juggle... Men topcoat, which is a nice thin, even texture. It dries very, very fast and quite shiny, which leads me to believe it is actually a topcoat, quick-dry even, and not just for layering. It's fantastic.

These would probably make a nice, soft, natural looking french manicure. One that looks like clean natural nails with a touch of softness.

While the colors aren't really my thing, I do love that glitter topcoat and I love the names. They're very, very sheer so if you're someone who is only into subtle tints on your nails, these might interest you.

(These were sent to me for review.)

Nubar Spring Garden Collection Spring 2011 Swatches and Review

Here's Nubar's spring 2011 collection, "Spring Garden". A set of pastels that are a little different from all the ones we've seen lately. They're kinda dirty (in a good way) and each shade except Honeysuckle has a silvery hidden shimmer.


Baby Sprout. Not the mint green clone I was expecting! This is just barely green, like a creamy white with a bit of green cast to it. It's lighter than China Glaze Groovy Green. Really pretty color, though unfortunately it gives me mega lobster hands.



Blue Hydrangea. This is a pastel blue- it's like a dark baby blue or a pale sky blue. It is the only one that actually looks shimmery, the shimmer in the rest of the colors is more of a secret shimmer. The shimmer gives it a reflective pearl finish.



Earthen. A dirty, murky grey! I like. It has a little bit of a taupe tone to it, but it looks mainly grey on my skin. The very fine shimmer softens the color a little bit so it looks sort of... fuzzy? It's ever-so-slightly pearly, but only in certain lights.


Honeysuckle. Here's the obligatory Pantone 2011 Color of the Year honeysuckle shade. It's the only true creme in the collection and it adds a jarring pop of bright color amongst all these faded, dusty pastels. It's bright and clean and surprisingly nice; it has a subtle jelly look to it, though I wouldn't call it a true jelly finish (it's too opaque). Oddly, I never think of this color when I think of honeysuckle flowers. The honeysuckles I remember from my Grandma's garden were all white and yellow.


Pink Lily. Light, peachy pastel pink. Slight subtle pearl finish from all that fine silver shimmer in there.


Purple Aster. A light lavender pastel. Not quite as blue toned as it looks here, but still slightly blue toned in real life. I had about two seconds of sunlight to take this picture, I think it shows how subtle the shimmer is. Only a hint of silvery frost, you would never know if you didn't see it in direct light.


White Peony. This looks like a pure clean white in this picture, but in real life it has a bit of a dirty look to it. Not enough to call it off white or ivory, but it looks slightly faded and really creamy. I can't tell if this one has shimmer or not, actually... At some angles it looks like it, but my eyes hurt from staring at it!


Yellow Primrose. Very pale butter yellow. Lighter than Nubar Lemon Sorbet and Maybelline Banana Pudding. Very cute, very springy. The shimmer in this is almost invisible, but it softens the look of the color so it doesn't look chalky.

There's one more color in this collection- a coordinating glitter topcoat called Dewdrop. It doesn't really show up well alone, so I've only photographed it layered. It's a pastel opal glitter in a clear base, reminds me of something like Color Club Bishop's Weed or China Glaze Glacier.

I've done one coat over each color, no topcoat.

Dewdrop over Baby Sprout.

Dewdrop over Blue Hydrangea.


Dewdrop over Earthen.


Dewdrop over Honeysuckle.


Dewdrop over Pink Lily.


Dewdrop over Purple Aster.



Dewdrop over White Peony.


Dewdrop over Yellow Primrose.

The formula on all of these was good. It was thinner than usual but still nice and even, not runny. These weren't as opaque as previous Nubar cremes, I found that I needed three coats on all shades to get them completely even. Drying time is good. Bottles and brushes were all without defect.


These pastels are a little bit different from all the other pastels this year. I really like Earthen and Yellow Primrose, and White Peony is a nice white for wearing alone since it's not quite as chalky looking as other whites.

These will be available soon on ByNubar.com, though I don't know the exact date.

(These were sent to me for review.)

Nubar Spring Garden Collection

Have you seen this yet? If not, I'll post it here...

I can't help but think of this Chinese restaurant I used to go to when I see the name! Now I'm hungry!

Click to enlarge, of course...

The Spring Garden Collection

Take a leisurely stroll down the Earthen path through The Spring Garden, the scent of Pink Lily in the air. The fresh colors of early Spring abound, with the soft green of the Baby Sprout, gentle shade of Blue Hydrangea, delicate Yellow Primrose, silky Purple Aster, fresh White Peony, and the lively Honeysuckle, each enhanced with the elegant sparkle of Dewdrop.

Always free of formaldehyde, phthalate and toluene, the nail lacquers in nubar's The Spring Garden Collection are:

1. Pink Lily – vibrant pink creme

2. Earthen – subdued earthen grey creme

3. Baby Sprout – soft pastel green

4. Blue Hydrangea – muted pastel blue

5. White Peony – ivory creme

6. Yellow Primrose – delicate pale yellow

7. Purple Aster – dusty pastel purple

8. Honeysuckle – cheerful honeysuckle

9. Dewdrop – fine glitter top coat

nubar nail lacquers feature an ergonomically designed cap and a 299 bristle brush built for comfort and performance.

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Layering

A few of you suggested that I try layering the crackles over each other, and I was curious to see how it would turn out... So, I layered some more crackle glaze over my existing mani and I think it turned out pretty cool! Here's what I tried:

Broken Hearted over Crushed Candy over Essie French Affair. This one didn't seem to want to crackle as much over crackle, but it still looks pretty cool. The parts where the pink and blue layer over each other turned purple! I think I like it!

Cracked Concrete over Crushed Candy over Essie French Affair. I like this one better! It crackled more. I love the color combination. Know what it reminds me of? That weird 'abstract' 80's-90's corporate art with the weird geometric shapes and splatter paint patterns in teal and grey and peach... Know what I'm talking about? The type of generic art you find in offices and stuff? Sometimes there's a palm tree, but usually funky boomerang shapes and triangles...

Sorry about the blurry pictures. I can not hold my hands still today. They're shaking so bad I'm even having a hard time typing. Bleh!

China Glaze Crackle Glaze Collection for Spring 2011

I've been so bored/burned out with nail polish lately, but seeing these arrive on my doorstep totally perked me up! These are amazing. Definitely worth getting excited about. If you're into the crackle finish, you'll love these for sure. I personally love having more color options for layering. So excited to post these...

You can use them over any color or finish you want, I just used what I had nearby and I think the layering combinations turned out pretty nice!


Black Mesh (over China Glaze Happy Go Lucky). Standard black crackle finish. Crackles really quickly, absolutely flawless.


Broken Hearted (over Color Club Bizerk Turq). This is a new one to me- pink crackle! Beautiful candy pink crackle. I think it looks amazing over the neon turquoise, but I have so many ideas for layering this. I want to try it with yellow and orange next!


Cracked Concrete (over Essie Nice is Nice). Medium grey crackle. About the same color as China Glaze Recycle, just in a crackle finish! This one looks really good over pastel pink, too, but I wanted to try it over pastel purple to see how it looked. Looks good to me!


Crushed Candy (over Essie French Affair). This may be my favorite of all of them. It's a light turquoise blue, along the same lines as China Glaze For Audrey. Love this over the pastel pink. It reminds me of Saved By The Bell or something... 1940's-50's kitchens?


Fault Line (over China Glaze Midnight Kiss). This is a lovely royal purple shimmer color with a crackle finish. Also, note how it's not very crackled looking. This is why you have to wait for your polish to dry before you apply the crackle! But even doing that, this color still doesn't seem to crackle as much as any of the others:

This is it over completely dry polish and it didn't crackle like the rest. Maybe because this is the thickest of all of them, or because something about the shimmer in the color interferes with the crackling action?

Lightning Bolt (over... actually, I don't remember what color this was... Eep!). A white crackle! This one is more sheer so you will see some of the base color through it. Also:




Anyway...


The formula on these is good! They're not normal polish so you can't really compare it to a normal polish formula. They are thick and you have to apply them quickly because they dry even faster than mattes. They crackle quickly and perfectly and they remove easily, unlike the old-school crackle polishes. They dry matte, so you'll need a topcoat. I used topcoat in my pictures (except for the second picture of Fault Line).

I used a sort of random application technique on some of these to try to get a different shape happening. I like the vertical crackle lines, but I also like bigger random chunks of crackle too! These are really fun to play with. I adore crackle polishes and these make me so happy!

They're available now, online and at Sally!

(These were sent to me for review.)

My official Valentine's Day manicure

I had this idea in my head for a while, so I decided to finally try it as it was perfectly suited for Valentine's Day:


But it didn't turn out exactly as I had hoped! This is a base of Essie French Affair with the new Art Club Nail Glam full nail decal design Hearts of Gold on the ring finger. I originally wanted to put the designs on every finger, but I'm really glad I started with my ring finger. Now I know what you guys were saying about these. They're... not so great. They're extremely stiff and don't conform to the natural curve of the nail, so you end up with weird lumps and wrinkles like you see on mine. And they say to seal them with topcoat, but the decal covers the whole nail so it's really not sealing it to the nail, it's just coating it with topcoat, which means... it peels. Gah, what a disappointment. I loved the design so much, too. I wish I could have made it work.

The Essie polish was exactly the color I was thinking of for the base of the mani, so that worked out well!

But yeah, too bad about the Art Club Glam decals. I had really high hopes for them. *sigh*

So, how was your Valentine's day? So what if it's a Hallmark holiday! That does not negate the awesomeness of heart-shaped sugar cookies with pink frosting! And sprinkles! Any holiday that advocates the liberal use of sprinkles is a winner in my book.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Spring 2011 Iconic/Ironic Collection Swatches and Review

First off, here's the accompanying press release which explains the inspiration behind the collection:

"RESCUE BEAUTYʼS Spring/11 POLISHES SUIT FASHION SCHIZOPHRENTICS

The variety of moods and personas shown on this Spring//Summerʼs runways was a tribute to the fashion schizophrentic in all of us.

“Iʼve been told there are women who adopt a signature style that they stick to, season after season,” says Rescue Beauty founder Ji Baek, “frankly, Iʼve never met one.”

“Most women I know are like me—one day weʼre wearing “Mad Men”-inspired ladylike sheaths, the next weʼre channeling Patti Smith in black leather and spiky studs.

Itʼs one of the many joys of being a woman. We can be a little psychotic when we reach into our closets, especially this spring.”

Unlike previous seasons where one clear trend carried through collection after collection, this Spring, designers are all over the map. There was Betty Page starring in South Pacific at Dior, new wave meets neoclassical at Chanel, sexy Suzie Wongs at Louis Vuitton pared-down minimalism at Celine and Chloe, and a box of crayons at Prada and Jil Sander. Models appeared as 1920ʼs garden party ladies at Galliano, gauchos at Hermes and street-wise punks at the venerable houses of Balmain and Bottega Venetta.

“I love that our wardrobes can reflect our multi-faceted personalities. This season truly celebrates women—every woman—so Iʼve named my Spring polish collection Iconic/Ironic, hues to juxtaposition against every version of yourself.”

“The ʻironyʼ comes from mixing polishes in an unexpected way. Offset all those brights with a neutral cocoa or a grounding black hue. Make your punk looks more tongue-in-chic with lavender nails. Itʼs about adding that surprising detail that keeps you on your
(well-pedicured) toes.”

Decorous is a perfectly ladylike light cocoa, an unexpected neutral to offset bright tropical hues or to add a chic finish to an all-black ensemble.

Recherché is a purplish dark brown prune, an exotic accent that grounds oversize prints better than an expected summer pink or coral. Stunning with the homage to classic YSL designs shown by Stephen Pilati or the Proenza Schouler boysʼ loose-fitting ladylike tweeds and sheer tank dresses.

Insouciant is the toned-down gray lilac of a pressed corsage. Punked out rather than pastel, it is a counterpoint to Springʼs ladylike florals and Bardot-worthy uber-feminine dresses. Or wear it with Lanvinʼs muddied neutrals.

Finally, thereʼs Iconoclast. “Letʼs face it, black polish has been done to death. I had to reinvent it into something entirely new,” says Baek. This one is a richly pigmented ebony with layers of fine glitter, giving it depth and a metallic, mica-like finish.

Rescue polishes are available at www.rescuebeauty.com or Rescue Beauty Lounge on Gansevoort Street in New Yorkʼs Meatpacking District. The polishes sell for $18 a bottle.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Nail polishes are created with resin and high molecular polymers to improve flexibility, durability and high shine. They contain no harmful or drying Touluene, Formaldehyde, DBP, Formaldehyde Resin and no animal testing."


Now let's take a look at the colors!


Decorous. This is a soft light brown with a hint of iridescent shimmer. It reminds me of suede. It has a really nice milky element to it that makes the base color look super smooth, and then when the light hits it just right you get little glimmers of silver, purple, teal and a little bit of green. The flash photo shows the base color well and it also picks up some of the different colors in the shimmer.


Iconoclast. I think this might be my favorite of the collection. It's amazing. Iconoclast is a deep black base that's brightened by fine multicolored shimmer. Please enlarge the images- look at all the different shimmer colors! The main colors I see are green and purple. It's deep, dark, dramatic but has that subtle hint of color that makes it irresistible to me. How about a little bit of insider trivia? This is pretty similar to what some of the early prototypes of Scrangie by Rescue Beauty Lounge looked like. Black based with iridescent purple and green shimmer. We were going for that iridescent beetle look. Pretty neat, huh? The color transformed quite a bit during development! But now I have the gorgeous Iconoclast shade to remind me of that fun experience.


Insouciant. The first pictures show the purple element of this polish and the flash picks up on the pastel greyed qualities in the base color. This is a new take on the pastel and greyed-purple trends for spring. Instead of being a plain creme finish, it has a flash of blue shimmer. The shimmer is fine and subtle but at the right angles it looks luminous and electric. Look at the color of it in the corners of the bottle. It's a delicate color and the shimmer makes it look so magical.



Recherche. What a surprise for spring! A deep, dark smoky violet! It's not one of those dark purples that look black. This one is a little bit greyed and faded and it looks smoky on the nail. Very dramatic and mysterious. I love the soft vintage look it gives to the nails- makes me think of Film Noir or flapper girls. Elegant but still edgy.


The formula on these is the best polish formula you could ask for. It is absolutely flawless. The texture is smooth and even- not runny, not thick. It goes exactly where you want it with almost no effort. It practically applies itself. The drying time is a little longer, but they're so dense and opaque that you can get away with only one coat. Add a little quick-dry topcoat on top and you'll be good to go.


Love this set for spring. The black and the smoky purple are really the last colors that come to mind when I think of spring and I love that. But, I do usually crave light, faded cloudy type colors at this time of year and Ji satisfied my craving with Insouciant. I don't think that Decorous is the right type of brown for my skin tone, but the other three are definitely winners. Iconoclast and Recherche make me think of black orchids- I bet someone with awesome nail art skills could come up with a great black orchid inspired two-tone gradient.



The pre-order for this limited edition Rescue Beauty Lounge nail polish collection should be happening at the end of January, so make sure you're signed up for email alerts if you want to get in on the pre-order. I don't have an exact date or time, but as long as you're signed up for the newsletter you'll hear about it when it happens!

(These were sent to me for review.)