Friday, April 30, 2010

BB Couture Ladybug Collection 2010

I apologize in advance because this is going to be a quick review. I'm feelin' pretty queasy and I probably shouldn't even be online, but I really want to post these before I get too far behind again. They are super pretty and I like them a whole lot.


Beetle Bailey. Soft slightly red-toned light purple creme. These shades usually look bluer to me, this one seems a little redder on my skin.



Daisy Dweller. Amazing delicate yellow with lots of little microglitter particles.


Love Bug. Light pink with microglitter. No large pieces of glitter in these, only tiny sparkles but still glitter! Total princess polish.


Man Bug. Excuse the two day old manicure. This picture seems more blue to me than it should be... this color is really more of an aqua or a light blue-green, not a straight blue. It's almost a jelly finish and it has lots of little microglitter sparkles flashing in a few different colors.


Ode To A Ladybug. Coral-red with microglitter and pink flash. I did not notice the pink flash at all in the bottle, it completely took my by surprise when I went outdoors to take this picture! Pretty sweet. Secret flash. That sounds naughty.


Signs of Spring. Soft light blue bordering on baby blue or periwinkle with iridescent shimmer. This is still a bit glittery like the others but the glitter seems smaller in this one... or my eyes are going bad.


Formula was good. Right on par with the rest of the BB Coutures I've used. Maybe a little on the thick side. Three coats of all. Drying time was slightly longer than I'd like but nothing major- I'd call it a half hour with Seche Vite.

Love the sparkles in these! BB does awesome sparkles. It's also nice to see these soft unoffensive traditional spring colors updated with iridescent glitter. As much as I loved them six months ago, I'm now starting to get a little bored with pastel cremes. I'm on to pastel glitters now, haha!

(These were sent to me for review.)

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure blah blah 2010



The funny thing is, I wasn't even looking for these when I found them. I had decided that I wasn't going to find them so I should just forget about them and I was looking for those scented Revlons when all of a sudden there's this Sally Hansen display in my face! Woot!

I don't know the name of this collection or if it even is a collection or anything. I only grabbed the ones that looked interesting to me. These are my first new Sally Hansen Salons since they changed the bottle (BOO!!!). I must say... these new bottles look kinda cheap.... I thought the square bottles with the nice full length labels looked much more 'salon' than these.

Anyway. Here's what I picked.


Hidden Treasure, of course. I'm crazy about flakies. This is what two coats looks like alone. Kinda interesting, actually. Looks like an opal on my nails! But the personality of the polish really comes out more layered (I just used black cause it was next to me):


Look at that green! Ahh, that's so cool. Love it.

Lagoon... Which does weird things to my camera in sunlight. This was the only spot on the display that was empty but the picture of this bottle on the back of the display looked SO amazing.... I needed it... Had to go to another store to find it... but now I'm not that crazy about it. It's pretty, of course, it's a duochromey metallic blue/green, of course I like it! But I swear I must have six other polishes just like this. In fact, that Revlon Ocean Breeze (the scented one) that I was looking for when I found these is practically identical to this. Except it smells nice. This one doesn't.




Ring My Shell. This one stole my heart. It look like mother of pearl. My pictures didn't really capture all the iridescent goodness of this one. The base is a pearly white with a slight lavender tint, then there's some pink flash, some blue-green flash and a tiny amount of what looks like orange flash right before the pink shows up. And to make it even better, it's flecked with little shimmery speckles that look like crushed shell. It's so light and airy looking... it's totally a fairy polish. I thought it would look good over black like OPI Pearl Of Wisdom does, but it doesn't:

It just turns green. Almost all of the duochrome gets lost over black.


Sea and Be Seen. This one was hard to photograph and of course I had to smudge it right before taking the picture. Ugh. Anyway. It's kinda half purple half cornflower blue. Mostly blue. Little bit purple. It's a shimmer and it's made of little chunky particles which show pretty well in the indoor picture. Some of them flash blue and green, pretty cool looking.

Silver Lining. Ooooh sparkly. I swear I have a Sephora by OPI polish that looks just like this but I can't remember what it's called or where I put it... *sigh* So, this one is also made of little shimmer particles and the base is a very pale blue. The particles are all very shiny and very iridescent, so you end up with this sparkling blue-silver-white-yellow-pink-pastel ball of sparkle on each nail. The only downside to this one is that it's pretty sheer and the big stiff brush makes it hard to apply evenly.


I liked the formula on these. It wasn't particularly bad or particularly amazing, nothing stood out to me. That's a good thing for the most part. It was just... regular? Not thick, not thin, not buttery smooth but not chunky garbage either. The brush was pretty huge, though. I like the large 'one stroke' style brushes usually, but this one was a little too stiff which results in streaky/patchy application if you're not careful. Since the brush is so stiff, it tends to wipe off the previous coat when applying a second coat, so I'd simply recommend letting the previous coat dry for a little while before applying another. Also, these were pretty sheer, I did three coats of all but probably could have used a fourth on Sea and Be Seen and Silver Lining.

Pretty sweet, Sally Hansen. Do more like this.

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Zoya Spam




I swear I've been living under an (internet) rock or something because I only just found out about the Zoya Exchange for 2010. In case you haven't seen all the details yet, the full scoop can be found here on Zoya's website.

Basically, you can trade in old bottles of polish instead of throwing them away (*clutches chest* *gasps for air*) and you'll get some brand new Zoyas at a discount in return.

So what better time to post some random Zoya swatches? Cause I've been getting eleventy bajillion hits on "zoya swatches" this week. Figured I'd make myself useful and swatch some stuff that doesn't seem to be swatched as often as the Zoya superstars like Yasmeen and whatnot.

Here goes...


Anne.

Brie.


Brizia (like a purple version of Pasha)

Buffy.


Calypso.


Clara.


Danielle. You might want to view this full size, it has great little glitter flecks.



Dea.


Diem

Divincia.

Dovey.

Fawne.


Felicity.


Gigi. Sunlight and indoor/shade. You may need to view these full size. It's a soft pink with lots of teeny tiny silver glitter!

Irene.

Jenine.


Jennifer.

Jolie.




Lexi. I have to say a little bit about this one. This is one freakin' cool polish. In my personal opinion, it's one of of Zoya's hidden gems. It looks like a metallic smoky rose or a mauve, but it has blue and green duochrome. You tilt your hand up and it's blue, down and it changes to green. Sadly, it didn't really show up in my pictures. The shimmer color shifts most in indoor light.

Lola. (It's neon)



Lyric.

Marilyn.

Meadow.

Melodie. Glitter!


Norra.


Persiphony.


Purity.



Raine. *refrains from making FFVIII reference*

Sally.

Sirena.

Skye.


Susanne.


Tobey. (neon)


Uli.


*passes out*