China Glaze Awakening Collection for Halloween 2010

Halloween is one of my favorite things ever so I'm always super excited when Halloween-themed things come out... I have Halloween socks, Halloween nail art decals, Halloween lipstick, Halloween t-shirts, Halloween washcloths, sheets and shower curtains, Halloween dishes, Halloween candles.... you get the idea, right? Of course Halloween nail polish gets me giddy.

These brand new China Glaze Halloween polishes that just arrived on my doorstep totally brightened my day... take a look at the Halloween awesomeness:


Ick-A-Bod-Y. Not sure I quite get the name. I get Ichabod, like Ichabod Crane, but Ick-A-Bod-Y? Like... gross, ick, body? Zombie/corpse reference? Just being cute? Doesn't matter, this polish could be named Poop-On-A-Stick and I'd still love it. It's bright shiny orange glitter suspended in a dark smoky yellowy-green jelly base. The glitter is very dense so you don't need to layer this. The green base is a really nice surprise, too. It's not noticeable from a distance, but up close you can see the deep murky green peeking out from in between glitter particles. Very awesome. A+, China Glaze! As soon as I'm done with this post, this is becoming my new mani.


Mummy May I? Cute name!! Maybe OPI should take a hint from China Glaze... Mummy May I is a much cuter and less groan-inducing name than "Tattoo You Want Candy?" ... so... anyway... the polish... It's a bright pink/purple/fuchsia glitter in a dark purple jelly base. When you apply the first coat you can definitely see that the base is a deep, dark purple but on the second coat it just looks black. Maybe black with a hint of purple tint. Softer looking than straight black. And... a little Bad Romance-y, no?


Zombie Zest. YES!!! A zombie-themed polish!! I think this is my first... my first zombie themed polish. I have a bit of an obsession with zombies... so... pretty awesome. This is a murky, swampy, decayed-looking green jelly with lots of iridescent glittery reflective flecks of shimmer/glitter. It's yellow-based but has flickers of blue, moss, olive, gold and a little bit of orange at the right angle. Perfect Halloween color if you ask me... Is it a "rotten kind of cute"?


I was wearing SpaRitual Optical Illusion when these arrived and it immediately struck me that Zombie Zest and Optical Illusion seemed really, really similar, so I did a side-by-side to compare:


Now... honestly... can you tell which is which? Cause I can't. Take a guess! Give up? It's:

Index and ring finger are China Glaze Zombie Zest.
Middle and pinkie finger are SpaRitual Optical Illusion.

Three coats of each. I'm going to go ahead and declare these 'dupes'. Identical. They don't look the same in the bottle to me but they sure look the same on the nail. Which should be good news for a lot of people since China Glaze is a lot less expensive, much easier to find and has a way better formula.

The formula on these was decent. A little bit runny, but not unmanageable. I did three coats of each but only Zombie Zest needed a third coat. The glitter in Mummy May I and Ick-A-Bod-Y are a little bumpy so you will want a nice thick topcoat. I have not tested the dry time, but I'm about to do a manicure with Ick-A-Bod-Y so I'll edit this when I find out what it's like.

Super awesome set of polishes. I'm a happy Scrangie right now.

China Glaze also sent along their Breast Cancer Awareness October collection of pinks which I have swatched, I'll post them later this week if anyone is interested!

(These were sent to me for review.)

Two looks using the Kat Von D Adora Palette

I got a chance to play around with the Sephora Kat Von D Adora palette a little and tried out two different looks. First, a grey look:


Without flash and with flash. I think the flash makes the plum color on the bottom show up better.

For this I used:
Urban Decay Primer Potion
Glock on lid
Holy Bible on inner third of lid
Oddfellow in crease
Ace of Spades on lower lashline
Urban Decay 24/7 in Zero for liner
Cover Girl Lash Blast

I was hoping that the multicolored glitter in Oddfellow would show up, but it really didn't. There were a few stray sparkles on the lid, surprisingly no glitter fallout, but the rest of it just somehow disappeared!

To test out the purple I did this look:


Without flash and with. Basically the same look as the previous grey one I did... was hoping it would come out looking a little different!

For this I used:
Urban Decay Primer Potion
Glock on the lid
Holy Bible in inner corner and lower lashline
Ace of Spades in crease
Albino in center of lid, applied very lightly to add sparkle
Crucifix cream shadow as liner
Urban Decay Lash Primer
Cover Girl Lash Blast

In the pan Ace of Spades looks like a vibrant red-purple but on the eye it's a black matte with slight red pearl which combines to make a soft plum smoke color. Not really what I was hoping for. None of the glitter shows up on the eye at all.

I was wrong about the pigmentation. The pigmentation on these is excellent and up to par with the previous palettes. The only one that gives me trouble is Albino because it's very flaky, like MAC frost pigments. The blendability of these is excellent- they blend flawlessly without washing out. They're very buttery and silky.

I am extremely disappointed that they chose to include three cream shadows in this palette. I do not like cream shadows and these are no exception. I haven't tried using these particular shades as shadow yet, but the black cream (Crucifix) works very well as a cream eyeliner. At least that's useful. I'm sure Bloodletting would make an awesome lipstick, but I'm not much of a wine lipstick wearer.

I'm also disappointed in Ace of Spades and Oddfellow. The colors look fine on the eye, quite beautiful actually, the pigmentation is good and they blend perfectly, but... The glitter doesn't show up. In the pan they look super glittery and sparkly but none of it seems to transfer to the eye at all. A little like those supremely deceptive NARS "night" series shadows. Maybe I just need to play around with them a little more. I want glittery goodness. Wah.

One more disappointment is that they never seem to include a light neutral highlight shade. I don't want to wear frosty silver, frosty white or frosty yellow on my browbone. It just doesn't look that great. I want a light color with a little shimmer for highlighting and blending. Not all this crazy shiny frosty stuff, which is good on the lid but not so good on my browbone.

But, the texture of the shadows is nice, the packaging is convenient (even though they still put in those completely useless brushes for some reason) and the colors are perfect for doing a super fast no-effort smoky eye. I like it enough not to return it, enough to use it regularly, but not enough to rave about it or call it my favorite. If it didn't have the cream shadows I'd be raving for sure. But it does, and I feel like they're just wasting space that could have been more shadows.

Maybe the next one will be better. No more smudgy, clumpy, creasing, streaking, quick to dry out cream shadows in the next palette, please!

Sephora Kat Von D Adora Palette Fall 2010

Super quick swatches, luckily the sun was still up this time!


The whole palette. Click to enlarge!

The best part of the palette. Glitter. Ace of Spades and Oddfellow. Not color accurate on Ace of Spades- it's too washed out in this photo. It is a rich red-based purple with lots of shimmer. Like Nars Purple Rain in eyeshadow form.

Swatches:
Left half of the palette. Albino, which is a bright white silver. Holy Bible which is a slightly darker blue-toned silver, Slayer which is a metallic silver cream shadow (and sorry for the chunk, didn't realize how melted it was and accidentally took out half the shadow!) and Glock, a metallic grey (with an awesome name.) If I recall correctly, Slayer and Glock are both in previous palettes.

Right half. Crucifix, a black cream shadow, might make a good eyeliner. Bloodletting, a burgundy-red shimmer cream shadow which would probably make a better lipstick than an eyeshadow, Ace of Spades, a red-based purple with lots of glittery shimmer and Oddfellow, a black matte base with tons of blue-teal-green-silver glitter.

I haven't used this yet, but so far the pigmentation doesn't seem as good as previous palettes. Will report back with pictures when I've done a full test run!

Best thing ever: Orly Royal Navy

Orly Royal Navy. I don't know if I've ever felt this strongly about a blue polish before. I've always loved blue, I find that blue polish really flatters my skintone and I wear it quite often. I have a rather obscene amount of blue polish. But this blue.... I've never seen anything like it. It blows all my other blues out of the water. First of all, it looks like a creme but if you look closely it is accented with tiny little iridescent green glitter flecks a la Pure Ice Heartbreaker. They are not a stand-out feature of the polish- this does not look like your usual jelly plus glitter combination. It mostly strikes me as a creme polish with subtle glitter accent. The glitter is so small it's almost more just fine shimmer, but you can see definite pieces and particles.

Second, this is insanely vibrant. It's dark but bright at the same time. It must have some neon pigment to it because it dries semi-matte. It is the brightest bluest richest blue I've ever worn. It's so blue that it even looks like there's a hint of rich violet added to it.

It was truly love at first sight. It was much different than I anticipated- from the promos I thought it would be like a blue Ruby Pumps, but it's so much better. I saw the bottle and I think I got heart palpitations. I can't even describe how much I love this. And, just when I thought it couldn't get any better than this, my friend commented on it. He said, "Holy crap, that's crazy! That's so vibrant, it's insane."

I wore it for a few days in a row and decided to try to spice it up a little more and ended up with this:


...Which I think looked okay, but I don't know how much I like the speckled silver stamp. I think I want something more crisp looking next time. Or perhaps a stamp in bronze or gold would look cool against the blue too.


But now I'm obsessed with this polish. I keep reaching for it. I'm wearing it on my toes right now and it makes me want to wear sandals just so I can keep looking at my feet.

Chanel Paradoxal

Chanel Paradoxal. This is the first Chanel polish since Kaleidoscope that I haven't regretted. It's a chameleon color- it's brown... no, wait, it's... purple? But maybe it's grey! It's definitely taupe. Actually, it's all of the above. Indoors it looks like a dark taupe and outdoors it looks like purple-grey with a little hint of purple shimmer. The shimmer in this is not prominent, it's more of a 'secret shimmer', it only comes out if the light hits it just right.

It is worth mentioning that BB Couture Incognito and Jessica Venus Was Her Name are slightly similar to this polish. The BB Couture is lighter and has more noticeable purple pearl but still has the same grey-with-hidden-purple-shimmer look. The Jessica seems a little darker and doesn't have the brown tones that Paradoxal has. Both the BB and the Jessica have significantly better wear time and cost half as much.

I really like this color on me. I think the color of this polish is just fantastic. If only the formula wasn't so ridiculous. One of the reasons I'm not a Chanel fan is that no matter what I do, every Chanel polish I've ever worn has chipped in a matter of hours. I don't normally mind my polish chipping as long as it at least lasts a whole day, but paying $23 for a polish, you'd expect them to wear at least as well as an $8.50 salon brand or even a $4 drugstore brand ... but no... it doesn't. At least not for me. This manicure chipped significantly on three nails within six hours of application and chipped completely off two more by the end of the day. I don't understand how every other polish I've worn- dozens of brands- has not behaved this way but this particular brand does it every time on me.

I've been told that if you use Chanel's basecoat that the polishes wear better. But frankly, I'm not about to go out and buy another $23 product just to make the original $23 product work.

I suppose if the polish didn't carry such a hefty price tag I wouldn't really care at all. If this polish cost $5, or hell, even $10 I wouldn't upset. But it doesn't. I just feel that if I'm paying a luxury price to buy a luxury item that the quality of the item should justify the cost. That's all. Sometimes Chanel does interesting colors, but I can't help but feel like I'm paying more for a logo rather than what's in the bottle.

Other than the almost comical amount of chipping, the formula was okay. Application was good, no major texture or opacity issues with the polish. Dry time was on the long side and I find Chanel's brush to be a little hard to control.


I do really love this color... so next time I wear it I guess I'm going to have to carry the bottle with me for touch-ups. I hope one of the salon brands does a knock-off of this one soon!

Quick skittle preview of OPI Fall 2010 (Swiss collection and new Designer Series)

I'll have 'real' swatches an a full review when I can, but for now.... super super quick sloppy skittles pictures!

Pinkie-to-index (or left to right): Glitzerland, Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous, Cuckoo For This Color, Yodel Me On My Cell

Index-to-pinkie (or left-to-right): Diva of Geneva, The Color To Watch, Ski Teal We Drop, William Tell Me About OPI

Pinkie-to-index (left-to-right): From A to Zurich, I'm Suzi & I'm A Chocoholic, Color So Hot It Berns, Just A Little Rosti At This


And the new Desiner Series shades:
Pinkie and ring: DS Radiance
Middle and index: DS Magic

Magic seems like a less-sheer version of Sally Hansen HD Laser!

And now I have to run because I swatched instead of starting dinner... ooops! The things we do for polish! XD

Lippmann Collection / Deborah Lippmann Fall 2010: Across the Universe and Bad Romance

Hmm... This is odd... somehow when I wasn't looking Lippmann Collection changed their name to Deborah Lippmann? Sneaky.

It's also my first Lippmann review in about a year... And these polishes deserve the attention!

Ever since we got those little teaser pictures of the new sequin polishes several months ago, I've been dreaming of these. Deborah Lippmann has apparently seen just how much we all love glitter because there will be three more glitter polishes from her this fall. In fact, I was just reading in the newsletter that Happy Birthday is their top selling polish. That's kind of awesome. I would not have expected that- I'd think it would be Bitches Brew or something like that... But no... Happy Birthday is number one!

According to the press release, Bad Romance is supposed to be a new take on Ruby Red Slippers and Across The Universe is supposed to be all of time and space in a bottle. Have a gander:



Across The Universe. A couple different angles and lights to show the depth and glitter. It's a dark navy sheer base with small aqua-blue glitter and larger aqua-blue and green hexagon sequin glitter pieces. A little bit duochromey looking if you tilt the glitter just right. This polish is seriously gorgeous. The glitter doesn't get eaten by the dark base, and it's really prominent in the polish. The texture of the sequins looks fantastic showing through the sheer jelly-like quality of the blue base. I'd say this is pretty unique, I can't readily think of another polish that looks like this straight out of the bottle.



Bad Romance. Unfortunately, my lighting hasn't been ideal this week so I have to settle for some indoor flash pictures to show the glitter. This is a sheer black base with bright shiny purple-fuchsia glitter. There are mostly small particles and a splash of hexagonal sequins. It does remind me of Ruby Red Slippers but there seems to be less glitter in Bad Romance comparatively. The sheer base does help the glitter to show through instead of looking lumpy and it's not so sheer that you need a million coats. It bears a resemblance to Petites Black Amethyst or Wet n Wild Night Prowl, but Bad Romance has sequin-style glitter added.


The formula was good. I had no problems controlling the polish; it was thin but not runny. The only application issue is trying to get the sequins distributed evenly, so I used a few more strokes in application than I normally would. These are somewhat sheer so I did three coats of both and that looks just about perfect to me. The texture of these isn't lumpy or bumpy or gritty, which is a huge bonus, but I still used a very thick topcoat when I wore Bad Romance this weekend. Drying time was average. Removal is not as difficult as I anticipated, either- the big sequins come off pretty easily and the glitter is not very dense.

I think the sheer base of these really helps give these polishes that deep layered look. Sometimes the bases of glitter polishes can be so opaque that it just covers all the glitter and makes a lumpy look instead of letting the glitter show through the layers. So yes, you'll need an extra coat if you hate visible nail line, but I feel the end result is worth that. Three coats isn't bad at all.

I'm sure that some of you franken-geniuses could duplicate these with ease if you had the right shades of glitter, but other than that observation, I'm extremely happy with these. I favor Across The Universe the most of the two shades and I would pay $18 for it. I love big chunky glitter and especially big chunky glitter in dark vampy bases. Hell, I love any kind of glitter... so... naturally a good fit with me.

And just for fun, here's how I was wearing Bad Romance yesterday:





(These were sent to me for review.)

Yesterday's Drugstore Haul: HIP and Physician's Formula

Since I was pretty bummed out about missing out on Stereo Rose again, I decided to check out what sort of cheap thrills may await me in the health and beauty department while out grocery shopping.... And came home with a couple things for less than the price of the damn MAC frosty blush that I know I would probably never wear but for some reason can't stop thinking about! Ugh!

Here's what I got:

HIP by L'Oreal eyeshadow duo in Electrified. It's my first HiP item, actually. I was never really interested in the line until Eve gave me a massive lemming for this yesterday afternoon... Lucky for me it was under $7 unlike most of my lemmings.


Here it is swatched on the back of my hand indoors (indirect/ambient light) and outside in full sunlight. The left half is a very shimmery/metallic champagne gold with a touch of taupe and the right half is a shimmery deep smoky red-toned plum purple. I'm actually rather impressed with the texture and pigmentation of these. Maybe I should try something else from this line to see if everything is the same quality.

And here's a super fast look I did with it, just playing around and trying it out. Flash and indoor/ambient light. I used MAC Painterly as a base, both the shadows, a little black eyeliner and some mascara, no other products. I am really rather impressed with the gold color. It's very luminous... I've been looking for metallic/shiny looking shadows lately... I can't seem to find exactly what I'm looking for, but this one is really nice and totally worth the cost of admission.

The other thing I picked up was this Physician's Formula shimmer palette. I wanted to get a ton of their stuff, but I hesitated... I remember how much I used to dislike their eyeshadows about ten or so years ago... I remember them being really frosty and chalky. I did used to love their Virtual Eyes duochrome eyeliners, wish I could still find those somewhere. But yeah, I was wary so I only got this... but now that I've used it I might have to try out the rest of the stuff I was drooling over. There was this set of gel eyeliners that Phyrra reviewed and I *almost* got them... A green, a purple and a black. Anyway... what was I talking about?

Oh yeah, the palette. This is supposed to enhance Hazel eyes, which I do not have, I have boring dark brown-black eyes.... but it still seems to enhance them anyway...


Here's the goofy package it comes in. It's a box with a wing/flap/extra side... so it forms a corner shape... very unusual... Interesting, but so much extra cardboard!


The palette itself. They all seem to be part of one long eyeshadow, the lines in between the shadows are really shallow and don't seem to really separate the colors all too well. Reminds me of a Shimmerbrick.


Swatched on my arm indoors and outside in full sunlight. They're a little frosty and the pigmentation isn't that great, but it's nowhere near as bad as I remember.

And another quick look, just testing them out:


I used Painterly as a base, the fifth and sixth shadows (from top to bottom with the silver on the top) and a little of the silver on the inner corner, black eyeliner and mascara. Very subdued but still pretty.

The thing about these types of palettes and colors is that they're really quick to use. You don't have to think about them at all, just slap it on and go. Both of these looks took me less than five minutes to do. And I mean an actual five minutes, not the "five minutes" that someone says to get you to wait for them while they're getting ready but always turns out to be like, half an hour...

I have a bunch of makeup stuff I want to post but I never feel like my makeup pictures/swatches turn out very good... Maybe Karla can teach a makeup swatching class for the swatch-challenged people like me!

Cause, yeah.... I love makeup... a whole lot... Which is why I started blogging in the first place... I'm obsessed...

4th of July Mani/EOTD

I'm a few days late on this... just got done uploading the pictures from my camera!

You know I'm all about the cheesy, tacky overdone holiday-themed everything, so I had to do a special Independence Day look!

Here were my nails:

The flash seems to show the little holo sparkles pretty well!

This was: One coat Nubar Night Sparkle with one coat of Art Club Red Glitter striper polish on the tips and the stars from a random drugstore no-name (possibly Blue Cross) glitter polish from Halloween, topped with a coat of just-barely shaken Orly Prisma Gloss Silver. Pictures taken immediately after applying a super thick coat of Lippmann Addicted to Speed topcoat which is why they look like they're a mile thick. And also why it peeled off the next day!

And my look wouldn't have been complete without a holiday-themed eye of the day:



This was: Ben Nye Ice topped with MAC Gesso (didn't think the white was going to turn out as frosty as it did so I tried to cover it), Aromaleigh Tainted Love and Ben Nye Cosmic Blue with MAC Blacktrack as liner (Urban Decay Zero for tightlining though) and Cover Girl Lash Blast. Urban Decay Primer Potion was the base.

I'm really in love with Aromaleigh Tainted Love. It's a shame I can't get it anymore now :(

Orly Sweet Collection Spring 2010

You can have a lollipop, a candy bar, a jellybean, I'll buy you a rainbow to hang above your door... It's pudding time....

Cotton Candy

Gumdrop

Lemonade


Lolipop


Snowcone

Pixy Stix

(These were sent to me for review.)