Deborah Lippmann Dancing in the Sheets/ Let's Hear it for the Boy Duo

Recently, I showed you the first duo from Deborah Lippmann's Footloose HSN collection.  Today, I have for you the second duo, the blue duo...

Dancing in the Sheets - deep, inky purple-blue shimmer.  The base color on this one is gorgeous, but my favorite part of this polish is the green and blue shimmer (as you can see in the bottle).  It does translate to the nail quite nicely, though it's a little hard to see it in my picture.  You can see it the best on my pinky.  This one had a great formula and was opaque in 2 coats.

Let's Hear it for the Boy - light blue creme.  This one really reminds me of Julep Jessica, and is now tied with Jessica as my favorite pale blue creme.  I love this shade of pale blue.  It's soft and yet, it doesn't fade away.  I did have a bit of streaking with the formula, but it evened out on the last coat (pretty typical for a pale polish).  3 coats.

I purchased this set, along with the other duo, at HSN.com for $9.95.  Unfortunately, this set is no longer available on their website.  I almost didn't post these polishes, but for continuity's sake, I figured I'd go on and review them.  The Almost Paradise/Footloose duo is still available, however.

I purchased these polishes myself at HSN.com.  The above links link to previous posts on this blog, as well as to products at HSN.com and are not affiliate links.

30 Days of Blues for Autism Awareness - I love "blue" "cherry" much!

Today is Day 16 in my "30 Days of Blues" for Autism Awareness.  Sorry for the completely corny title of this one.  LOL.

Anyway, for today, I decided I wanted to do another deep blue, but this time, I wanted to punch it up with some lighter and brighter color.  I chose a base of Nina Ultra Pro Sailor and then threw the kitchen sink at it...

I used 2 coats of Nina Ultra Pro Sailor (a rich, navy creme) and then applied a cherry stamp design using the all-over cherry design from BundleMonster plate BM21 and the single cherry design from BundleMonster plate B70 using Konad White Special Polish.  I then used my largest dotting tool and applied Zoya Shelby on a few of the cherries.  Last, but not least, I then added a coat of Deborah Lippmann Bring on the Bling.  

I think this one is so much fun.  Unfortunately, Sailor has been d/c'd, but to my naked eye, it looks to be relatively dupey to RBL Dead Calm and China Glaze First Mate (though I didn't do a direct comparison to First Mate and I blog-sold Dead Calm).  All the other polishes I used are easily obtainable.

Again, I want to thank you all so much for reading my posts during my month of blues for Autism Awareness.  It means so much to me.  As always, if you have questions, comments, or requests, please shoot me an email to megan@apolishproblem.com.

NOTD: Zoya Indigo w/ ChG Fairy Dust

Since I got Zoya Sloane to play nice with me, I figured I'd give another Zoya a try.  I grabbed Indigo, although in hindsight, I probably should have tried another one as I've used Indigo with success before.  :P 

Anyway, awhile back, I'd frankened my Indigo.  I didn't like the way the shimmer seemed to disappear on the nail, so I added a ton of holo, blue, and silver glitter to it.  I loved the way it looked in the bottle, but it still didn't translate well to the nail.  Maybe Indigo is just too dense, so any sparkle just has to fight to shine through.  So I decided to top it with a coat of ChG Fairy Dust.  I liked it, but I didn't love it.  I wanted the holo glitter to be suspended in the navy polish rather than sitting on top of it.  Sigh. 

As for application, it was fine.  Indigo was opaque enough in one coat.  Since I knew ahead of time I was going to put Fairy Dust over top, I didn't worry too much about it being fully opaque.  Both the original polish and my frankened version are gorgeous in the bottle (midnight navy with holo shimmer).  I just wish they looked like that one the nail. 

You can get Indigo through Zoya's website or on eBay and Fairy Dust is available at Sally's, eBay, and various etailers

NOTD: OPI Russian Navy Matte/ OPI Merry Midnight

Unlike the rest of the NP-loving community, I'd yet to try flakies. I had looked at a couple Nfu-Ohs, and then decided against them. I felt the price was just too much. Plus, 51 is always OOS.

So, when OPI released 2 flakies in this year's holiday collection, I immediately took notice. Unfortunately, one of the 2 they released, Shim-merry Chic (the golden one) had this vomit-ty look to it, so I decided against it. I waffled on Merry Midnight because I'd read a iffy review on it, though for the life of me, I can't remember where. I decided to go for it, however, because it just looked so unique. Whenever Suzi decides to go out of her norm (read reds), the color is usually fab. Usually. Sometimes, it can go very, very wrong.

Thankfully, Merry Midnight was not one of those times. It's a deep purple base, loaded with duochrome magenta flakies and what looks like blue, purple, and green (maybe? I can't tell if the green is really green or just the light hitting the blue) fine glitter.

Gasp. This is absolutely amazing. What I like about this polish is that the flakies are much, much smaller than the flakies I've seen in the Nfu-Ohs, Sinful, and NYX flakies; though it all fairness, I don't have those to compare. They don't look like big chunks on your nails, which is a BIG plus for me.

As for application, I had read that MM can be a bit thin, and I was afraid it would be lighter on the nail than in the bottle, so I decided to layer it over a coat of OPI Russian Navy Matte, to get a deep purple color and to help with the multiple coats issue.

I'd mentioned the other day that I yet to use my RN-M. I'd bought it on a whim about a month after the first wave of OPI Mattes came out. I think I'd seen Scrangie's pic of it, fell in love with her swatches, and pulled the trigger on it, before thinking it through. Honestly, I don't really like the full-on matte look. I love the satin finish my Orly Matte Top gives me, and I really love the OPI Suedes, but I don't like my nails looking like chalkboards, which is what happens with the OPI Mattes.

So, my RN-M, and my LaPH-M have just been sadly gathering dust in their drawer. I had no plans on using either of them. Then I had the bright idea, that they would be perfect for layering. They dry super quick and the color is very saturated. Perfect, IMO, as a base. I could have gone with a regular navy (i.e. CC Naughty-cal Navy or ChG Calypso Blue), but again, I didn't want to have to deal with the drying time on the bottom coat.

For those that are interested, I did take a pic of RN-M on it's own, just so you could see it.

It's a pretty, if boring, navy, but I don't really like the finish. It's also very unforgiving. I use glue-ons, so thankfully, I don't have to deal with ridges in my nails, but you can see every time where I didn't put the polish on perfectly straight or it got a little lumpy. There was no fixing those mistakes, either, as it dries in 1-2 minutes. I just can't see me using this on it's own in the future. Maybe, I'll use it with a konad and then top it with a coat of Matte Top, but it just doesn't ring any bells for me. I'm planning on layering it with the original RN, as I wasn't a fan of the O-RN due to the green base. In swatching, it looks like using the RN-M neutralizes the green.

But to get off my tangent, I then used 2 coats of Merry Midnight and a coat of my current quick-dry TC, Beauty Secrets Top Coat. Like I said earlier, I adore this color. It's different which is something most nail polish companies are lacking. Granted, it's not brand new territory, but it is new for OPI (US), and that's something I can appreciate. Let's hope it's a trend that continues into Spring 2010. Not just for OPI, but for Essie and Orly as well (ChG, CC, and Misa seem like the are on the forefront of interesting and different colors).

RN-M and MM are both available at e-tailers and on eBay. I'm not sure of the availability of RN-M in beauty supply stores as it came out in the summer, though they still should have it, but MM should definitely be there as it's a brand new release.

Hope you guys love this one as much as I do. It's a fab color for the holidays. I can't wait to try it layered over other colors as well. I've heard it looks great over a red creme.

Maybelline Twinkle Twinkle Pictures

As promised, here are pictures of Maybelline Twinkle Twinkle. Isn't it gorgeous? Now that it's daylight, I can see a lot more detail in this color. It has, not only silver glitter, but blue glitter as well. I think that, along with the base being creme, not jelly, is the big difference between SSN and TT. I still love it, though. Yay Dollar Tree!

Konadding is addictive! And other randomness

As my camera is dead and I can't show you my new mani, I figured I'd just post about the addictiveness of Konad. Gone are the days where I could just slap on 2-3 coats of polish and be done with it. Oh no. Now I have to make sure every mani has a konad design. I'm no longer satisfied with plain nails. I have to be all decked out. Once I had (mostly) mastered the technique, I wanted to konad every time and all the time. It's a sickness.


There are still things I need to improve upon, like design placement, but I just love thinking about my next "konad kreation". cringe Trust me, that was so painful to type, but I just had to do it. LOL. I love konadding so much that I bought an entire collection of polishes, ChG Romantique, with the express purpose to konad w/ them. Now that I have them and I see just how pretty they are, I do plan on using them as base colors as well, but they are fab for konadding. I have yet to have a problem with getting one of the Romantique colors to behave with the konad system. I used ChG Awaken to konad over Maybelline Twinkle Twinkle and it is so, so pretty. I do plan on sticking my camera battery in the charger right after I finish this post, so I can be sure to show it off.

Speaking of konad, I keep reading about people konadding over the new mattes that are all the rage, and while I like the idea of it, I also don't know how it would work. I can't imagine a konad without a topcoat. Wouldn't the design peel off? In the sake of research, I ordered 3 mattes from another favorite eBay seller, maiaandjays. I got OPI La Paz-itively Hot Matte, Russian Navy Matte and Zoya Posh. Of all the mattes I've seen, these were the 3 that appealed to me the most. I admit that up until all these matte collections broke, the thought of flat, matte, shineless nails just didn't ring my bell at all. But after seeing swatches, Posh and La Paz look almost satin rather than matte and, well, RN Matte? It just looks damn cool.

Above, I mentioned Maybelline Twinkle, Twinkle and I would be remiss if I didn't, in this mess of randomness, give it a little shout out. As it's totally rockin', I promise to take pictures and I will have them up Monday. If you are like me and Essie Starry, Starry Night is your #1, saw off a limb, slap yo mama, give up chocolate, lemming, then Twinkle Twinkle, while not perfectly dupey is a very, very good substitute. Given that I don't own SSN, I can't compare first hand, but from what I gather, SSN is silver glitter in a jelly base. TT is silver glitter in a deep, though true, navy creme base. The cool thing about SSN is the fact that the glitter seems to be layered and I was worried that this would not be the case with TT. All my worrying was for naught, it seems, as my nails do look like little night skies. Fair warning, this polish does suck up the topcoat, so I'm wearing 2 coats now and I will probably apply a third tomorrow. It doesn't totally kill my lemming for SSN, but it certainly maims it. :P Unfortunately, TT itself is also HTF, but not impossible. It's d/c'd, but I got mine at the Dollar Tree. I knew it was a close dupe for SSN and HTF in it's own right, so once I saw it at the DT, I snatched it up. I think I also looked around to make sure no one was encroaching on my territory. Like a psycho, np obsessed, mama lion, I was. ;)

Well, I think that's all the ramblin' for now. Tomorrow, I will have pics of TT. Scout's honor.