Wednesday, November 23, 2011

Duri Icicles

 

Duri Icicles

This is part of the new Duri Girl with the Dragon Tattoo collection (for which I am currently working on the review).  I was going to wait to post this one until I am finished with the post, but I have had it on my nails for 2 days now, I love it to pieces, and I just had to share it with you.  I will give a more detailed review when I review the collection.

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving.  Smile

Monday, November 21, 2011

Deborah Lippmann Glamorous Life

Every so often, I get a wild hair and decide to order a Lippmann polish.  As I’ve been out of the loop for awhile, I really wasn’t sure what was out there in terms of new Lippmanns.  As it’s almost Christmas, I expected total glitterbombs (which there are) and some awesome-looking cremes (which there are).  So, I completely shocked myself when the one I chose to order was Glamorous Life.

It looked interesting in bottle pics and the few swatches I’d seen of it looked really nice.  Aaaaand, as soon as I read that Deborah Lippmann described this as the perfect rose gold, I knew I had to get it.  I’m a complete sucker for any thing rose gold.

The only thing that made me nervous was the finish.  It looked brush-strokey.  However, I didn’t even give it much though.  I loved the idea of it that much.

Well, it came yesterday…

Lippmann Glamous Life

Truth be told, I’m a little torn.  On one hand, Deborah was right… this is an amazing rose gold.  Unfortunately, OTOH, it’s not the satin finish I was expected based on it in the bottle.  It seemed very frosty to me.  On the first coat, in fact, I was ready to immediate add it to my “donate” pile. 

But, I gave it 2 more coats, and I must say that while I’m not in love with the finish, or the fact that I had so many issues with drag and strokes, I think the color of this is perfect.  It almost reminds me of a pink/gold version of Lippmann Purple Rain (which was another beautiful color with a nightmare application/finish).

That said, I just don’t know if the beautiful color is enough to offset all of the negatives or not-positives on this one.  I think I’m going to try it as a full manicure and definitely use a sticky base coat, as I feel that would really help with the brush-strokes.  It would also allow me to use 2 coats, rather than 3.

All-in-all, if you are a sucker for rose gold that’s not a foil or a bright metallic, then the color on this one may tempt you.  Just know that it’s frosty.  And while, it doesn’t give me old-lady-hands, but it does show strokes and drag.

Lippmann polishes are available through Deborah Lippmann’s website (www.deborahlippmann.com).  I usually get mine from What She Buys.  They ship super fast and change nothing for shipping. 

Lippmanns can retail up-to $20, though this polish like most other non-glitters is $16.

 

This polish was purchased by me.

Thanksgiving Skittles

 

Hi everyone, it’s so hard to believe that Thanksgiving is a matter of days away.  I swear, the older I get, the shorter the years become and this time around, it feels like we should be somewhere in May. 

As I was sitting here contemplating the upcoming holiday, I suddenly had the idea to create a Thanksgiving-inspired skittles.  My desire was to do more of an “ombre” effect, but it wasn’t quite there. 

Thanksgiving skittles

This is L-R, Zoya Tamsen, NARS Dovima, OPI A Good Man-Darin is Hard to Find, and Barielle Angora Aura.

I swear, it looked better on.  Smile with tongue out  My flashed washed out the oranges, and yet when I managed to get one that was true to color, it made my skin look odd.  Oh well.  I still think it was a cool concept.  While I was doing it, it really reminded me of the colors of the fall leaves, though at this stage, they are almost all gone. 

Anyway, just in case, I don’t post, I hope you all have an amazing Thanksgiving to my US readers, and to my international folks, I hope you have a great Thursday. 

I do plan on posting soon, however, as I do have Duri’s new Girl with the Dragon Tattoo collection begging me to swatch them.  I also have to play catch-up with holiday collections from OPI and Zoya.

Friday, November 11, 2011

Curtsy & Bow

A couple of months ago, I was asked by Curtsy & Bow's PR to review their products. Given my love of new brands, I was all over it.

I received 2 colors from their debut collection, "The Yacht Club" collection. The inspiration behind this collection was the creator's, Melissa Huynh's, travels throughout the caribbean.

Here's a list of all of the colors in the collection:
Intimate Sand is a powder pink solid lacquer
Shell We Dance is a peach/coral pink solid lacquer
Wasap-bi? is a Khaki/Green Solid lacquer
St. Thomas Blue me Away is a powder blue solid lacquer
Shiraz with tha Stahz is a deep wine with silver speckles lacquer
Supernova Girl is a silver glitter top coat
Jetset In My SunSet is a gold glitter top coat

I received Intimate Sand and Shell We Dance...













Intimate Sand - soft pink. This one is a pale pink, but it's not sheer. The color was extremely pigmented. I always find that I love the color of pale pinks, especially in early spring, but I hate the fact that it takes a gazillion coats to reach opacity. And if you do get one that is opaque in just a few coats, it looks chalky. This one only took 2 coats to reach opacity and isn't chalky.


 












Shell We Dance - creamsicle orange. I know Curtsy & Bow describes this as coral/pink, but on me, it definitely looked like the color of orange push pops. It's a pretty color, but with my pink skin, it seemed a little off. I think this would look fantastic on someone with darker skin.  Two coats.

I liked these colors. I felt that the formula was a bit thick and I thought the brush was a bit hard to handle, but I got the hang of it after a few tries (the handle is very short).   I really liked that they were opaque in just a few coats.  My favorite was definitely Intimate Sand.

These retail for $15 (I think) and for more information, you can view their blog.

These were sent to me for review

Hi again :)

Hi girls (and boys).  Hope everyone is well.  I can't believe it's been 2.5 months since I've blogged.  When I started this blog almost 3 years ago, I swore to myself that I would never be one of those bloggers that allowed their blog to fall by the wayside.  Unfortunately, this year has been incredibly rough for me, both of our older dogs passed away, my son was diagnosed with autism, and my grandmother died on Labor Day.  I also got a new job which is eating up all of my free time.  So it just happened.  For those of you that have stuck with me, I greatly appreciate it. 

I am desperately trying to get back in to blogging, not only because I enjoy it greatly, but because I do feel a responsibility not only to my followers and readers, but also to the polish companies that ask me to review their products.  I am currently working on posts.  However, I have such a backlog, that you may see posts from collections that have been out for awhile.  I am going to try and get to the holiday collections first, though. 

Thank you so much for reading,
Megan