Random Post-Thanksgiving Spam

Hope you all had a great Thanksgiving! Mine was pretty good.

I'm still working on a ton of stuff, but I'm not 100% finished with any of it... So how about some completely random spam until I have time to sit down and do a 'real' post? :)

Sally Hansen Endless Night

Revlon Ornate Ore

Orly Close Your Eyes

OPI I Only Drink Champagne

MAC Beyond Jealous

Essie Cocktail Party

Color Club Too Violet

CND Dark Secret

China Glaze Barefoot In The Park

Claire's Slime

One of my favorites: Pure Ice Strapless

You know what I love? Drugstore polish. I do. A lot. Especially Pure Ice, because it makes me all nostalgic and stuff. Here's one of my top favorites:


Pure Ice Strapless. This is a very fine blue glitter in a clear base. Sometimes the most simple things are the most beautiful. I mean.... just look at it! It's amazing! It sparkles like crazy, even in low light like indoors. The color is rich and beautiful. There's not much for me to say about it because I think the picture speaks for itself.

For such a fine textured glitter, it's also pretty dense and easily buildable. I'm pretty sure this is four coats? Might have been three. Since it's only glitter in a clear base, it dries very fast and doing multiple coats doesn't give you trouble with drying or getting lumpy. It does dry gritty, so a coat or two of thick topcoat are a must.

And for under $3! Might even be under $2, I can't remember if these are $1.97 or $2.97. It also seems like it would be a good glitter to mix with other polishes, too.

The only downside is that it's only sold at Wal-Mart. I go there two or three times a year just to stock up on Pure Ice and Petites polish, and they're really worth the trip. Petites... that reminds me.... I have a whole ton of those I want to post. Cheap polish rocks!

Essie Winter / Holiday 2009

I know, I'm late to the party on these.... But... here goes!

Lolipop. Bright candy red creme. This has a very jelly-like quality to it. I'm going to call it a jelly. It has a really candy-like translucent squishy look to it that makes it different. It's a bright red with a bit of coral, not as deep or as blue-toned as a lot of the other holiday reds we've seen so far this year. I've been wearing this on my toes for about a week and I have grown very, very fond of it.


Mint Candy Apple. Pastel aqua creme. Green! Well, a little green at least. It's a very blue-y green if it's green at all. Maybe light turquoise? Aqua perhaps. Has a very vintage feel to it, like a lot of the bakeware and acrylic jewelry I've been seeing while out antique shopping lately. This isn't a duplicate of any of the other light pastel green/blues I have in my collection- it's pretty unique. Also: Am I the only one who thinks that a mint candy apple doesn't sound particularly appetizing?


Rock Candy. Sheer nude pink. Ah, this is embarrassing. Look how bad my stained nails look through this sheer polish. Eeeeek. So gross. Anyway! I do kinda like the squishy look of this... it looks like it would be soft if you touched it. Reminds me a little of the other Essie sheer I found myself liking recently- Luscious Lips from the summer collection. At one coat, this is a very natural, streak-free gloss, not much of a tint at all. This is four coats.


The formula on these was excellent. I had no problems at all. I've heard some people experienced streaking problems with Mint Candy Apple, but I didn't have any streaking problems with any of the shades. Drying time was fast and they all dried to a glossy finish without topcoat. The brushes in these are also back to their normal size- the brushes in the fall collection were incredibly skinny and I was afraid they switched permanently!

These have been out for a while now, and I also saw these in mini form at Ulta, in case you like minis!

OPI Holiday 2009 Ulta Exclusives

OPI's holiday Ulta exclusives did not disappoint me this year... In fact... I think these are the best so far!


Dazzled By Gold. Super-sparkly gold glitter. This is a mixture of yellowy-gold, medium gold and champagne metallic fine glitter flakes. Not traditional round glitter particles. Little broken metal flecks. It's very opaque so it can be worn alone easily. In fact, the glitter is so dense it even has a foil-finish effect at three coats like pictured here. I think it's too dense to make a good topcoat, though. It looks a little warmer in real life than my picture shows. It is incredibly sparkly. Might be my new favorite gold glitter!

Dreaming of Red. Glowy metallic red. This is a really gorgeous red. It's rich and deep and glowing. It kinda has that velvety 'dark around the edges' look. It's a shimmer finish, bordering on frost, but it has kind of a metallic effect. The one word that keeps coming to mind is "glowy" and it really is super glowy. Reminds me a little of that one OPI Valentine's Day red that was so glowy it looked radioactive. Can't think of the name. May have been Red Like Roses? This would also make a really great Valentine's day color, by the way.


Visions of Sugarplum. Shimmery blackened purple with iridescent flecks. Since I couldn't hold my hands still enough to get a clear picture, how about two kinda crappy pictures instead? This first one shows the depth and darkness of the color. The second one shows the base color and all the sparkly iridescent pearls. This polish is insane. I love it. It sparkles like crazy and it's purple, with little glints of other colors flashing at you. This seems really similar to the new Finger Paints Icy Iris, but I haven't done a side by side comparison to be sure.

The formula was perfect. Zero problems. Smooth, even, very fast drying. Nothing really worth noting. I did do three coats of each color, but they really only needed two. They're very opaque and pigmented.

Overall, I'm completely crazy in love with these. Even the red. OPI didn't wuss out and do plain red creme! I'm so proud of them!! I love the purple sparkles, I love the gold insane glitter and I love the glowy electric red. The only way I could have been happier is if they did a Christmas tree green- either glitter, creme or shimmer.... But you knew I was going to say that, didn't you?

China Glaze Wizard of Ooh Ahz Returns!

China Glaze has heard our pleas to bring back a classic collection... The Wizard of Ooh Ahz is back!

According to China Glaze, the original collection was released in 2001, so it's been quite a while. They've planned the (re)release to coincide with the 70th anniversary of the Wizard of Oz movie... A movie that scared the crap out of me as a child... And still does, actually. >.>;;

Anyway... on to the important part. The pictures! They're a little blurry, so enlarge them to view as much detail as possible.

C-C-Courage. A frosty blue-purple shimmer base with pinkish-purple and silvery-purple microglitter. My picture isn't accurate- it's not as blue as this in real life. That whole 'cameras hate purple' thing. But it's not entirely off, either. This new version seems a lot more dense, glittery and opaque than the original, but the color is the same. This is one of the two originals I have, so I did a comparison:

The original C-C-Courage in sunlight and indoors.

Index and ring finger: C-C-Courage 2009
Middle and pinkie: C-C-Courage 2001

The original is more sheer and has a little bit of pink frost to it. The new version is much more dense compared to the original.


Cowardly Lyin'. A soft yellowy gold frost with tiny gold microglitter. Really soft looking- the combination of light, airy gold with tiny, tiny gold glitter gives it a delicate look. I also have the original Cowardly Lyin' and they're pretty close:


Cowardly Lyin' in the sunlight. Sun pulls all the warm tones out and makes it look kind of orangey, but indoors it looks less warm and a little more yellow.
Index and ring finger: Cowardly Lyin' 2009
Middle and pinkie: Cowardly Lyin' 2001.

The shades aren't entirely 100% exact matches, one is lighter than the other, but close enough that I wouldn't notice unless I knew they were different editions.

Dorothy Who? Medium blue jelly base with blue and silver glitter. Whoa. That's all I can say. Speechless. Too beautiful for words.

Good Witch? Soft, light pink frost with tiny light pink microglitter. Very girly, very soft. Not really my thing, but I can appreciate a pretty polish when I see one.

Ruby Pumps. Red jelly with sparkly red glitter. I've covered this one a few times before, but it's as lovely as ever. A classic.

The Ten Man. Light white-silver frost with silver microglitter. I'm not sure I get the name... Ten man... It's silver... is it dimes? Dimes are silver and they're ten cents? Ten fingers? Ten toes? No idea. This actually reminds me of the new Zoya Astra ultraglitter... or should I say Astra reminds me of this? The glitter in The Ten Man is smaller and there's less of it, though.
(Edit: Yes, I know that the Tin Man is one of the characters, I'm not that lame! Hahaha! But that's why I don't get the name! Ten Man? Some sort of play on words I'm not understanding?)


The formula was a little tricky- runny but thick. It takes a little care to apply these nicely. Since they're sort of frosty, you have to be careful with your brush strokes as well. I'd recommend letting them dry at least a minute or two in between coats so they'll apply more smoothly. Also, the glitter in the frosty base can look kinda bumpy, so these really benefit from a thick glossy topcoat.

I think it's awesome that China Glaze listened to all the polish fans and brought back this collection. I love Dorothy Who and I'm so happy that I can actually own what was once an unattainable wish... But I do have to say that while the polishes are very pretty, I'm not totally head over heels in love with them. I don't care for frost-finish polishes, though the glitter in these does make them wearable. I only wish that these were all jelly bases like Dorothy Who and Ruby Pumps instead of frosts.

Really, though... it's crazy awesome that China Glaze brought back a discontinued collection just because we told them we wanted it. That's an exciting thought. Companies who listen to their fans! Old polish being re-released! So cool!!

Finger Paints Winter/Holiday Collection 2009

I don't think I've posted much about Finger Paints before... That's not because I don't like it! I do like Finger Paints, a lot. Especially this newest collection released for the Holiday season. It's just that you can only get them at Sally Beauty... and I have to really be in the mood to be frustrated to go there. *ahem* I won't turn this into a rant about how I'm treated when I visit Sally, so on to the pics!


I wish I was able to get better pictures of these, but the sun seems to be hibernating.

Candy Cane Shimmer. A light pink-toned red with tons of shimmer. I am not usually a red person, but I had to have this. Look at the shimmer. The shimmer! It's big, chunky iridescent shimmer. Kind of like glass fleck.

Decked With Dazzle. Light mauve-pink with big multicolored shimmer particles. This amazing shimmer even made me want pink. There's gold, silvery-white, pink, violet, iridescent... All kinds of different flecks of shimmer combined to make a soft sparkly sugar plum pink.


Evergreen Dream. This is such a ridiculously perfect color. I can't believe how awesome this is. The second picture was taken with flash to show the base color and the shimmer particles. It has enough yellow to it to make me happy and so much shimmer that it sparkles even indoors. There might be a little glitter mixed in, but it's mostly really dense large particle shimmer. Great job, Finger Paints!! A total masterpiece.

Icy Iris. I really wish my pictures of this turned out. I just couldn't hold my hands still! This is a rich, dark, deep purple with different colors of shimmer. Eggplant and amethyst. Some of the shimmer is more red-toned purple and some is more blue-toned. The base is very dark and the shimmer looks positively electric when the light catches it. This doesn't look black indoors to me. It has too much amazing color-shifting shimmer to look too dark or flat. Again, amazing, a total work of art!

Snowman's Scarf. This is a terrible picture. It doesn't really show what the polish looks like, so I'll do my best to describe it. It's the same shade of bright medium red, but it has a lot of really fine bright gold shimmer. It's not the large glass-flecky iridescent shimmer that's in the other polishes. This shimmer is like fine gold dust, very very smooth but very bright and reflective. Red and gold look really good together.


Sparkling Snow. A light snowy silver made of different colored flecks of shimmer. Some of the shimmer in this is white, some is silver, a little bit even looks iridescent. This is a lot more delicate and icy than Easel Come, Easel Go. It's light and soft looking. I'd even call it a feminine silver. Very sparkly.


The formula on these was good. I didn't really have a problem with them. They were a little three-freeish -thick but runny- but not severe. The brushes are good but the tapered handle is slightly awkward feeling in my hand. All minor issues. These are pretty solid polishes- good colors, good formula, good bottles and brushes. I did three coats of each color. Only Decked With Dazzle and and Sparkling Snow really needed the third coat, you could really get away with two on the rest of the shades. Drying time was average.

Overall, I am really in love with this collection. The colors are perfect! Lots and lots of iridescent shimmer. Purple, green! Even the reds are great. This is a lot better than the past few collections I've seen Finger Paints do. I think last year's winter/holiday collection was kind of like this too, with all the glass fleck-esque shimmer and fun colors, but my Sally never got them! Boo!

Can't wait to see what they do next, but I don't think anything can top Evergreen Dream.

Chi Hot Ring Illusion Around Saturn

I'm back! Did you miss me?

I had an awesome vacation. There was birdwatching and antique shopping and all kinds of fun stuff. I think I'll take more vacations. It was really nice.

I haven't gotten a chance to go through all of my messages yet, but a few people have asked about that Inp green glitter in the last post... I honestly don't know where you can buy this- I got it at the bottom of a filthy, dusty, hair and dirt covered 99 cent clearance bin. I'd never heard of the brand before I bought it. It was in with some Tropical Manicure brand polishes and a few others I've never seen before. Sorry I'm not more help!

Anyway, I'm getting settled back in, so I'll post a picture of a cool polish I picked up at Ulta a while back.

Chi Hot Ring Illusion Around Saturn. One of the most bizarre polish names I've ever seen. The color is like a teal, deep blue and greenish duochrome. It has a little purple flash to it in the bottle but it's barely visible on the nail. It's a shimmer finish, borderline frosty. Not gross frosty, but really really fine shimmer. Gorgeous.

I don't know if I have any other CHI polishes... I vaguely remember looking at some a few years ago when Ulta was getting rid of them... Then I wanted last year's holiday collection but could never find it... I'll have to go through my stash and look, because I really liked this one! The formula was nice and smooth, the handle is rubberized and the brush was really nice.

I think I need some more Chi polish!

Random Glitter Spam

Naturistics Crystal Blue Pearl

Maybelline Express Finish Glitter Pink Stars

Maybelline Wet Shine Diamonds Clear Cut Diamond

BYS Blue Buzz

OPI Silver Snowflakes

Nubar Green Silver Glitter

China Glaze Starfish Wish

China Glaze Golden Enchantment

China Glaze Fairy Dust

Loud! Music Glitter Enamel Scoop

Sally Hansen Hard As Nails Xtreme Wear Strobe Light

Maybelline Express Finish Planet Pluto

Inp Nail Lacquer 99 Green Glitter

Sally Hansen Hard as Nails 14 Karat