Thursday 30 September 2010

China Glaze - Wagon Trail

Hei hei! I never know how to start a post ... Today I have for you my NOTD, and it's not from Cosmic FX collection, because I really need a break from it. It's unbelievable bitchy to remove and my cuticles were already getting seriously grumpy from all the soaking in polish remover I put them through. And I was dying to try some more China Glaze polishes that  are hiding in that shoe box, full of goodies. :) And I went with beautiful Wagon Trail. 


 It's dark olive colour, but has tiny shimmer, so it's not creme.

 On direct sunlight it's olive colour ON FIRE! It's amazing, really wonderful.

I know this is super-blurry, but the sparkles on my ring and little finger came out on this photo and I just really wanted to show it to you. IRL it has more shimmer, and the subtle play of it is obvious even out of direct sunlight.

DUDE! Du-de! Check out this colour, ch-eck o-ut this co-lo-dude!! I love it, love it! I need this in buckets, in gallons, seriously! I'm totally in love with it. 


What do you think? Your type of colour or ney? :)

Wednesday 29 September 2010

Comparison: Orly Space Cadet vs. MAC Mean & Green

Here it is, the second comparison.

 I marked which polish is on which finger, this is taken on direct sunlight.

 In the shadow.

 Inside, in a bright room.

The pictures are clickable, but I think it's obvious they are 100% dupes from smaller ones too. I put 4 coats of both polishes and, honestly, I think I should use the fifth one, but was just too lazy to do that. I didn't use top coat, MAC dries up much faster than Orly, I smudged polish on my middle fingure, thinking it's all dried up, but Orly didn't think so!
Same as with Formidable! and Galaxy Girl, it's your choice. The brush and drying time are alot better with MAC, otherwise all the same. I love this colour, it's really awesome. 

Gotta go, running time! Gave a good evening! :)

Mini haul

And how have you been on this sunny day? I'm busy, but I'm gonna post the Space Cadet vs. Mean & Green comaprison today, because I can't stand Galaxy Girl/Formidable! on my nails. I was actually planning on posting the haul yesterday, but got so caught up in fixing the pictures in blogger I forgot about it.

My mini haul of the week:

Catrice - London Weather Forecast and It Blue My Mind. MNY is only a number: 761, and I has been on my WL for quite a while now, so yay! :) London one never seemed so awesome and I never got into all worshiping of the shade - i'm not a grey fan - but my nail-polish guru said I should try it, that it's a really cool colour. And basically she's never wrong about me liking a colour, so yeah, I have it now. 

MNY 761 reminds me greatly of CG Guissed Up Green, I need to do a comparison between them. 
And I'm only three Catrice colours away from owning all that I like in their collection. Until new ones come, at least. :)

Oh, and I changed the colour of the blog, what do you think? All the whiteness of it hurt my eyes yesterday, when I was staring at the monitor for an hour, I think this colour scheme is better. :) I left the leaves, because I'm hoping for Miss autumn to drop by as soon as possible, our forest still looks too green for an end of September. :)

Tuesday 28 September 2010

Comparison: Orly Galaxy girl vs. MAC Formidable!


Hey there. Finally I have enough time to write this down and show you some pictures. :) First comparison I did with Galaxy girl and Formidable, because I just wore Space Cadet and wanted some change. So here it is ...

This is taken outside, I marked the fingers, the order is the same on every photo. 

On direct sunlight (again L to R: MAC, Orly, MAC, Orly)
Play of colours in the finish. (MAC, Orly, MAC, Orly)

The blue shimmer. (MAC, Orly, MAC, Orly)

I have no idea why the pictures aren't clickable. I left them large so you can better see the comparison, but now the blogger won't let it change into original size in a new window. I'm really sorry about that, I'll try to fix it. o.o EDIT: did fix it. Man, it got personal!! They are klickable now. And huge. o.o

I did three coats of both polishes. I'm wearing it whole day long now and I think it's safe to say they are 100% dupes. The shimmer is the same, the finish, the base colour. Even first and second coat are the same - same amount of shimmer, same precentage of cover. Frankly, if I haven't wrote down on which finger is which polish, I'd have forgotten the order by now (luckily I did write it down, since I knew I won't be able to publish pictures right away).

I love MAC's brush! It was much easier to apply the polish. Otherwise all the same as Orly. I cannot judge the drying time, because I used top coat as I always do if I put more than two coats of polish. And the colour, well, I really really don't like it. I wasn't too crazy about Galaxy Girl's bottle (same goes for Formidable!), and I'm even less crazy about the colour on the nail. I'm thinking it's gonna go fast. I really don't like it on my nails. 

All in all it's basically a decision about a brand, since the colour is the same. Which one, if any one, will you be buying? To you prefer MAC or Orly and why, if may I be so curious. ;) :) 


Thanks for reading, have a good week!

Monday 27 September 2010

MAC Venomous Villains vs. Orly Cosmic FX comparison - the bottles



Well, look what new toys I've got today to play with! :D The famous Venomous Villains collection done by MAC! Frankly, MAC is one of the labels in nail-polish world that I always found overrated - never have I seen colour made by them that would catch my eye. Untill Venomous Villains pictures came out. I thought: whoa, finally something worth buying! And then of course the Cosmic FX collection came out by Orly and the dupes were quite obvious. 
I really wanted to do comparison on my nails today, but the lighting today is even more shitty than the lighting I had when I swached Space Cadet, so alas only the bottles, since I couldn't wait till tomorrow (when, hopefully, weather will be cured from the hangover it's having today, as it seems). 

Here they are, the bottles!

MAC Mean & Green vs. Orly Space Cadet - inside capture.

Orly Galaxy Girl vs. MAC Formidable! - inside capture.

Orly Galaxy Girl vs. MAC Formidable! - outside, on the rain -.-
Orly Space Cadet vs. MAC Mean & Green - outside, no rain, just dead weather. -.-

Group picture - with flash.

Group picture - without flash. 

It looks like a factory made the two polishes and went: "one spoon for Orly, one spoon for MAC, one spoon for Orly again and another one for MAC" etc. In the bottles polishes look identical. Can't wait to try them on my nails. I suspect it will be the same colour, but I'm wondering if the brushes by MAC are better, or the removing of the polish a minor PITA. Basically,  I'm looking for a reason for the fanatism around MAC polish, these are my first MACs. :) 

As for my mark on the pictures, I'm asking for a bit of patience, I'm trying to figure out "the" signature, but since I want some magic around it, I'll need to get someone to do it for me or something. We'll see. :)) Anyway, I'm really excited about this trio of MACs, can't wait to try them on, to see what's the big deal. :)) Huge thanks to my nail-polish guru, you're the best! *hugs*

Saturday 25 September 2010

Orly - Space Cadet

My third mani with Cosmic FX collection is the absolute winner of it, Space Cadet. Examing the bottles I don't think the last three can be more awesome than this one. The praise that Space Cadet is getting is totally justified in my opinion. It's soooo gorgeous! I imagine Nubar's Stardust to have similar finish and play with colours. I'm not saying they are dupes, because I only saw swatches of Stardust done by Scrangie, but I thought of it while taking pictures of Space Cadet. 
Pictures are the way they are because the weather in Ljubljana is oh so gray and dead and gloomy and not picture-friendly.  But I actually think this is great light for this collection. A proof that it actually is Fall collection! I mean, who stands on the sun whole day long? Not me. In this kind of light the effect is insanely good. But I also think that Space Cadet is far more intense than Out Of This World, so maybe it doesn't have to do much with the lighting. And for my cuticles - the rainy weather usually really dries them up, I'm soaking them in oil half of the day. :/

Inside

Outside

Totally awesome multichrome effect.

This is 4 coats. I found Space Cadet a bit more sheer than Halley's Comet and Out Of This World. But remember, 100% cover freak talking here. Oh, and FYI - Halley's Comet is a total PITA to remove! My nails were blue! Actually the entire collection is hard to remove, all the little glitter ... still, at least Space Cadet will totally be worth it. 

Friday 24 September 2010

My thoughts on ... BB Couture Infamous Lovers - The Men

Source: nailpolishforum.com


Nina asked me what about men in the entry about the Ladies part of collection. I didn't have time to search for Men untill now, and here they are:
Clyde ~ bright green
Adam ~ grown brown
Romeo ~ red pink
Anthony ~ blue green
Michael ~ purple blue
John Smith ~ tan

I adore Clyde (no surprise there, eh?), hate Adam, love Romeo, like Anthony, can't decide if i love or hate Michel and kinda like John Smith. 
I watched swatches here, thank ladybuglexus!

Hmmmm ... I think they did a better job with the Ladies. I can't really say I hate any of them, but Adam overhere makes me go eeeeeeeeeeww, really not my colour. I'm also curious if Clyde is dupe of RBL Recycle or Illamasqua's Rampage ... it's a gorgeous green creme, don't get me wrong, but I think that I need at least 10 other BB Couture greens before I get to this one. :D John Smith reminds me greatly of RBL Opaque Nude (on ladybug's picture colour seems almost white, but I've stumbled upon picture where it looks like Opaque Nude) and that's one of rare nude colours that I want. You know, for "must-have-discreet-nail-colour" situations. Anthony doesn't seem too original to me, but is a nice bluish colour. I love Romeo, it's a totally cute colour, I'd grab it in a second. And for Michael ... man, I don't know! It looks like that kind of colour that just looks a bit weird on pictures but is amazing on the nails! I totally want to try it on my nails. Because I have this feeling it's a freakshly awesome colour, but on swatches it looks just ... "promising". 

All  in all I loooooove the idea behind the collection, and I think both parts make one of the best collections this Fall has introduced. And what do you think? Which men and ladies will you be taking home? :)

Thursday 23 September 2010

My thoughts on ... BB Couture Infamous Lovers - The Ladies

nailpolsihforum.com
Just when I thought my WL will stand for at least a couple of days, this showed up. I haven't even known that this collection was coming out! Ugh! Scrangie already did the swatches and of course I fell in love with two of them. Bonnie (the green one) and Cleopatra (the bluish one), about Eve I'm not so sure. Scrangie says it's murky-olive green, but I just don't see it, it looks brown to me. And there are just few browns that I like. Pocahontas just might be one of them, it looks a bit purple toned and has speckles of glitter or shimmer or something. I can see tons of people just worshiping Juliet.

Frankly, BB Couture is in my opinion unbelievable brand. They have tons, and I mean tons of green nail-polish and all of them are unique. Not just that they don't duplicate themselves (sure, some look similar, but when you put them together, you see the differences - and yes, this is green nail-polish junkie talking, I can see two specks of glitter making a difference!) but they are also not duplicating other brands! For me that's a total success, BB Couture has climbed enormously high on my scale of brands.

This collection is no exception, awesome green, awesome blue - and I'm not a blue lover - and all the others seem really nice to. Again no disappointment form BB Couture. And no Charla look-a-likes, yay!

And what do you think about the collection? Like/dislike/omg-i-need-them-all-in-my-life-right-now? :) 

Wednesday 22 September 2010

The Wish List

Oh Lord of the Rings, why have I even started writing a wish list? And then I'm silly enough to put it in Excel to count them. With my numbers, that's just w-r-o-n-g! The thing is, I have a habit of writing the name of the polish that looks good on this list that I've started making first time I klicked on Scrangie's blog. I do suspect you're already seeing the numbers. Scrangie has ... well, alot of nail-polish there. ;) And then the list just started to get longer and longer and longer ... and longer and it's still not nearly finished. We get new collections by far too often for WL to be done. 

On my WL is a lot of nail-polish that I've already wore. That's why I know I really want them! ;) My nail polish guru (note to myself: write a blog about n-p gurus!) started lending me hers, to see which polishes will "be me" and which won't. It's a wonderful system, since some polish can really be a big no-no on your nails and some you wouldn't even think of buying but when you put it on your nails the WOW! effect is right there! So yeah, she's super cool. :)
The other thing that bugs me is also that I've ordered some n-p and am trying to empty WL, do I put them on or not? Well, I did, since I don't have them yet. :)

But the reason why I don't like making top *number* of 'must have nail polish' is, that I usually have a phase with a brand or colour, and so my top *number* changes quite often. Right now I have a total obsession with green and with brands Color Club and BB Couture. Talking about price difference, eh? Combine that with a constant Illamasqua obsession and you got it. I had Zoya and Nubar obsession months ago and although I know they have some kick-ass colours, they basically didn't make it on the list right now. But let's cut it short - I want them ALL.

I tried to make top 10, but failed miserably. I was thinking about top 42, you know, being Adams fan and all ... but that would be too easy. I think. So I made Top 20, it's the first 20 on my WL that is on  the right side of the blog. The big long long list? That's it! Top 20 may change every once in a while.

What's your top *number*? Or at least three, that you're dying to have. Ok, I'm not being fair if I don't write them myself first ... here, top three, if I really must:  BB Couture - Caterpillar,  Color Club - Revvvolution and Essie - Sew Psyched. Today! *phew*


And an old swatch of one of my favourite O.P.I.'s ever, Catherine The Grape, so it won't be just talk. 

Orly - Halley's Comet

I decided to go with Halley's Comet. I felt like wearing something greenish (as usual), although the main colour in Halley's Comet in the bottle seems to be blue. It's a fantastic colour, I absolutely adore it. It is my first of the kind, so I have the right to be over the Moon about it. ;)

Outside, on the sun it looks bright sparkly blue.

On the inside capture you can already see the finish that nail-polish in the bottle claims to have.

This is how the colour looks most of the time. Perhaps you'll need to enlarge the picture to see the pure awesomeness of it. It's more of a green colour than blue, thanks to the shimmer. And it's gorgeous!
 
Another one with finish, just because it's so effing nice. :) 

Now ... are you thinking what I'm thinking? Zoya Charla, O.P.I. Catch Me In Your Net, hell, even Essence is getting one like this out in the Fall collection. Scrangie already did the comparisons, saying that Orly is the greenest, so that's FTW in my book. But I think that one of this colour is quite enough, unless you'll get all fanatical on the colour and will want all the shades of it (which is totally understandable, I do it with green all the time). 
I generally really do not like when companies copy shades from each other, especially when it's done in such short period of time. So basically the only good thing that I see in this duplicating is, that you can really pick your favourite nail-polish company for this colour. Or the cheapest, Essence will cost you only around 2 euros, which is laughable in our neck of the woods, where OPI goes for 12€ and Zoya up to 13€. I love Orlys handle, and the bottle has like tone of nail-polish in it, freaking 18 ml. I also had absolutely no trouble applying Halley, it was so easy and smooth, much easier than Out Of This World. I did three coats, and it dried really fast, I did Seche Vite on top just to be sure that it would last. 

What do you think? Do you have Zoya or OPI to compare Halley with? Do you like the colour or does the fanatism around it baffle you? Do tell. :) Next on the list will probably be Space Cadet.

Tuesday 21 September 2010

Orly - Out of This World

My nail polish guru gave me the new Orly Cosmic FX collection to play with, how cool is that?? :) Since I've been offline for a couple of days, these pictures are few days old, but polish is still nice and shiny on my nails.

The pictures, since the finish deserves more than one:

On the sun it just looks like sparkly purple polish. Do i love? Yes! I didn't capture sparkles quite good, but I tried. Multiply what you see by 100. :D


Inside capture.


FYI - That's coconut oil on my index finger, not dry cuticle! ;)
And the finish that the polish gets when it's not on direct sunlight. It's one of  rare polishes that look tons better inside, the sun kills the effect. It's still very very nice sparkly purple on direct sunlight, but this finish is just amazing! Sadly, it's not as strong as it is in the bottle, bottle looks freakishly insane, don't you think? And since I can't look at my nails whole day long, searching for that light, that will bring the finish into life, that's a bit of a let-down. Nevertheless, I love it, since I love purple, I love sparkle and I love love love the finish when it's there. :) 

All in all this is my first Orly nail polish! I know, what the hell?! There are just too many labels out there that I adore. :) The brush and the bottle are nice,  I love the handle, it applied quite nice. Not the best I have ever tried, but good. I did 3 layers, since two didn't cover quite 100%, but that's just me, i'm a 100% cover freak, two layers will do more than fine. 

Next on the list? Hmmm ... I'm thinking Space Cadet or Halley's Comet. :) Any special wishes? :)

Sunday 19 September 2010

My thoughts on ... new Misa and Zoya collections

Let me start with Misa and Zoya. Everybody in nail polish world already know about the collections, so i won't lose to much words on the pictures and describing it. I was super excited when I say the bottles of Misa's Spark my Interest. They looked ... sparkly!
source: vampyvarnish.com
See?
When I saw the swatches bitter disappointment came. The colors are cute, yes. But nothing that we haven't seen already. And sparkle? Where? In swatches that I saw (Lacquerized) sparkles are down to a minimum and the whole collection looks kinda ... cheap. My favourite is Date Nights To Twilight, as it will be of many, but nothing that I don't already own or have on WL and that from cheaper labels. From the collection, that includes mainly my colours and it should be sparkly and, well "a must have" for me, there is nothing that I haven't already seen. In better version. With sparkles! And I hate that! I hate it when label goes safe and just follows trends instead creating new ones. Misa gave us Toxic Seduction, so I can't say I didn't have large expectations ... alas, no WOW! reactions from my side.


Zoya's Fire and Ice is, as it seems, on every nail blog. :) The spooning is used now also for teasers, and, my oh my, do those spoons look nice! And sparkly! :)


I'm seriously looking forward to Valerie (the purple one), but Gloria and Tiffany just may be the great surprise for me, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for these three colours. All in all I'm loving Zoya's nail polish. So many of them on my wish list, I don't even dare to count them anymore. It rarely disappoints and I'm looking forward to every new collection they make. 

Oh no, not another one!

Well, here it is, yet another nail-polish-fanatic claims a bit of internet for showing her nails and seeking understanding from other nail polish freaks that DO know what am i talking about when i say "You know, it looked exactly like OPI's Catherine the Grape," and stuff like that. :)

Nail-polish has been my obsession for a while now, the only thing keeping me from making a blog about it was, that here are so many of them already out there and that i'll hardly come up with something new. But today I could not resist. Here it is.

My weak spots are green, purple, red, holo effect, sometimes blue, sometimes glitter, but in general crazy, unique colours, that I don't get in every other store or in every other collection. And Illamasqua. And my thing is seeking dupes. I don't know why, but the first thing that crosses my mind when i see a bottle of polish is "wheeeeereee have i seen this before?!" If i don't come up with a possible dupe, the polish goes with me (or on my wish list ;)). Hence the pile of nail polish i have and it's still getting bigger and bigger and bigger ...

It's a fun obsession and i do hope you'll have fun reading about it. :)