L'Oreal Masked Affair

Sorry for the different locale, but the house is kind of crowded this week; granted, a grocery store parking lot isn't private either, but I'll take what I can get. 

I've intentionally saved Masked Affair for the Holiday Season, because it just has that kind of feel to it. It's a steely grey, lavender-tinged linear holo. Pretty much perfection. Formula was great, but I needed 3 coats for full-coverage-lately when I've been painting I've just done two (hooray for laziness!). I added top coat with misgivings, but I shouldn't have worried. 

The season is starting a little slowly for me. I've been sick as a dog the last couple weeks. It started out as a cold, developed into a wicked sinus infection, and then to top it off, one of the little nuggets that I tutor gave me some kind of viral eye infection. So I'm down, but not out. I'm planning on getting the tree out this weekend, and I may or may not have watched How The Grinch Stole Christmas 3 times already. And I've got a HUGE stash of Holiday polishes to get through. Last year I wore a lot but just never got around to photographing them. Hopefully this year will be different.

China Glaze Get Outta My Space

Get Outta My Space is a softly linear holographic warm lavender. A lot of people disliked the newer China Glaze holographics because they weren't as strong as the older ones. By now you should know I'm a fan of subtle holos, so it's no surprise that I like this one. I need to wear more purple. 

This was three coats over Nfu Oh's Aqua Base, and one thin layer of European Secrets Rock top coat. It dulled the holo effect at first, but once dry it returned. I am beyond in love with the Rock top coat. It's on the expensive side (around $7) for me, but worth every penny. It makes imperfections and more importantly, bubbling, disappear. I can't say enough good things about it. 

O.P.I. DS Coronation

Today is a day for a holo, and I've been sitting on a really pretty one since I bought it back in February. The Korean market I like to frequent also has a makeup and skincare section, and a big rack of random O.P.I. polishes. I snapped up Coronation, along with a red and the Liquid Sand from the Oz collection. 

I read that people weren't very happy with Coronation when it came out in 2011. I guess holo ingredients were short then, and people really wanted those IN-YO-FACE holos. However, I'm a fan. I like my holos to be a bit soft around the edges, not blindingly linear. Coronation has a steely silver base, and a very mellow linear holo effect. It's perfect. 

The overall effect is rougher than butter LONDON Dodgy Barnett, which is the only other silver holo I have (I don't count Nfu Oh's #61 since I got one of the bum bottles), and definitely rougher than the Sally Hansen Nail Prisms (my very favorite holos to date-I used up bottles and bottles of those). 

*EDIT* I forgot I have Urban Outfitter's Silver Holo. It is MUCH more linear than either Dodgy Barnett or DS Coronation. 

It is sheer, however. I used four thin coats over Nfu Oh's aqua base to eliminate all the little bald spots. The effort is worth it though, when you see it in sunlight. Just lovely.

A Study in Polish I Do Post-Mortems

One resolution I had for this year was to look more into indie polish brands. I've mentioned on several occasions that Hare polish is my favorite; each one I own is a work of art. I want more works of art by more brands!

Now in addition to having a pink fetish right now, I am a huge Sherlock fan. Like ridiculous. I grew up on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and I'm what I would consider a purist when it comes to my beloved childhood stories, but I'm not lying when I say I could wax idiotic about Sherlock. I think it's one of the best reinventions of Mr. Holmes there is.

Now I want to get into all the shows I'm loving at the moment. Gotta stay focused. 

I Do Post-Mortems is a homage to the beautiful and quiet, but powerful Molly Hooper. She's like this polish, very soft and unobtrusive, but when you look closer, you see a multitude of color (or baddass-ness). When I saw this little beauty on Accio Lacquer, I knew it had to be mine. 

I Do Post-Mortems is a delicate, beguiling shade of pink, very meek and understated. Suspended in it is gorgeous holographic and golden shimmer that catches the light beautifully. This is the sweetest polish I own. 

The formula was sheer (I'm wearing 4 coats, 3 would have been fine, but I couldn't sleep last night) and a bit thick, but it spreads beautifully and dries quickly. No bubbles, no streaking, no dragging. I wore it over a base of Barielle Nail Building Protein and a coat of Nfu Oh Aqua Base. One coat of Grand Central Station on top. 

I believe it is still in stock on their shop website.

Now, since it has been a very, very hard, and frankly upsetting day, I am off to obtain as much junk food as is possible and re-watch Once Upon a Time.

butter LONDON Dodgy Barnett

I am not the easiest person to watch sad/indie/uncomfortable movies with. I get VERY emotionally invested, I contradict the characters as if they can hear me, and if the movie doesn't go the way I want it to, I get angry. So when a movie is recommended to me, I have to tread very carefully. I have my tried and true favorites that I can watch over and over again (I basically wrote my thesis to Spirited Away) and they're safe because I know what emotions I'm going to feel and what's going to happen and there's nothing that can take me by surprise. Combine this with an ardent desire to watch new stuff, but being too afraid to watch the new stuff alone or when I'm in a certain mood because as I get older my movie/t.v. feels become more unhinged (i.e. I will cry. HARD.)...

Luckily, my best friend is resigned to this fact and recommends stuff to me and when I get around to it, I send her texts at three in the morning while sobbing uncontrollably about why this character had to die, etc. Also (and I have no idea how I got this lucky) my boyfriend, in addition to having excellent taste in movies/t.v./books, is not only tolerant of my odd movie-watching habits, but he doesn't make fun of me for being a tearful weepyface. And when I say tearful weepyface, I don't mean elegantly letting a couple teardrops out over something and blowing my nose discreetly in the bathroom. I mean burst-out-crying, snot-dripping, hiccuping, emotionally-distressed-for-up-to-twenty-four-hours kind of weepyface.

Long story short, he got me to watch Safety Not Guaranteed last night and I had the obligatory meltdown at the end. All he could get out of me for a good five or ten minutes afterward were sniffles, muffled sobs, and every so often, "MY FEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELS, OMG!". Then I told him it was the most beautiful movie ever. Then recanted it and put it in the top 20 because I was thinking more clearly and not crying as much. 

I have no idea how long it will take him to get me to watch The Comedy. Probably a couple years. 

So after my squeals of emotion had subsided and I had settled into occasional tears and snuffles, I needed to paint my nails. Bad. I'd picked off most of Cirque Coronation (see below post) during the movie and needed to do something that involved no emotion. So on went some Futurama (NOT the sad ones, I've just deleted them altogether), and out came Dodgy Barnett. 

Now Dodgy Barnett is a holo I can get behind. As eye-searing as Urban Outfitters Silver Holo is, I just find the softer, more scattered holos more aesthetically pleasing. They're more dreamy. And best of all, they don't look like dull car paint in lower lights. 

Dodgy Barnett is a soft, silvery-grey with scattered, holographic shimmer. It's ladylike, grown-up holo. And the finish is so...I don't even know the word. It dries smooth and velvety, almost like a matte, but it's shiny. I just keep stroking my finger tips because the texture is so soft and smooth. The only downside is it's a bit sheer. I could have gotten away with three coats, but I did four because I was still an emotionally raw insomniac. I erred on the safe side and decided to forgo top coat. 

What movies turn you into a tissue-buried, emotional wreck?

butter LONDON All Hail the Queen

It’s been a tough couple of days. My grandpa was in the hospital for the last two days and although nothing was seriously wrong, his age combined with my precarious mental state and the fact that I have no coping skills to deal with situations like that flung me into a sort of mini-freak out. I couldn’t do anything except hide in my room with the lights out, and cry. I felt horribly alone, yet I didn’t want anyone near me. He’s home now so I’m relieved, but my stomach keeps clenching. I thought polish would take my mind off things. It didn’t.

All Hail the Queen (or All Hail McQueen) is one of my favorite bL’s. It’s a lot of things: office appropriate, chic, toned down, and stylish. You could wear it for literally any occasion. It’s a gorgeous brownish-taupe that turns butterscotch in the sunlight. It has a bright pink shimmer cast that my camera was unable to capture (I think it’s more prominent in the bottle than it is on the nail), as well as a subtle holographic shimmer. The holo is definitely not linear, but rather speckled and flashes noticeably in the sun, and is much more toned down but visible in artificial light.

Formula was much better than Jaffa. It was smooth, thin, and went exactly where I put it. It was also surprisingly glossy on its own, I probably didn’t even need to apply top coat.

3 coats of All Hail the Queen, with Grand Central Station on top.

Urban Outfitters Silver Holo

Even though the holographic craze is still going strong, the scramble to get them is dying down, and I’m really happy about that. One reason I haven’t broken into the indie polish craze yet is because it’s so damn hard to get your hands on them; I’m really turned off by how they’re sold and how quickly they go. I just don’t want to have to fight a thousand other girls for a nail polish. Also, very few of them impress me. I think Hare has made a few that I would be interested in buying, but whenever I go to Llarowe, they’re gone. And I have to look up times for the next sale, and wait, and…just ugh.

Mass manufacturing has ruined me, I guess.

But holos are becoming more readily available, and that’s really wonderful, because everyone deserves to have a good holo in their arsenal. My first was a Sally Hansen Nail Prism (which I still have and love) way back when, and to date, those remain my favorite types of holos. But when I saw the Urban Outfitters one, I was willing to give it a try. For the amount you get, it’s a very reasonable price, I think ($10 for .5 oz).

Silver Holo is…well, a silver holo. I mostly love it, but there are aspects of it I don’t like. In the sun, it just explodes. My pictures are poor conveyors of how holographic it really is…think of the amount of rainbow you see and double it. Triple it, even.

The formula is thin, even, and streak-free. And the really cool thing is, when indoors, the flat silver will reflect yellow light and look almost pale gold. So you get almost a duochrome effect, but not quite.

What I do not like: unless you’re in the sun and you get the explosive rainbow effect, or in soft light where you can see the gold elements, this polish has the look and reflection of dull car paint. Which is of course to be expected, but it sill makes me sad. I want sparkle all the time! I also experienced a tiny bit of bubbling, but that was on my end-I didn’t wait for  the previous coats to dry before applying the next.

3 coats of Silver Holo over a coat of Nfu Oh’s Aqua base, and no top coat. I wasn’t sure if it would dull or not, so I erred on the safe side. So…gorgeous, yes? I’ll probably be wearing this a lot during the summer, and just hang out outside staring at my nails.

China Glaze Glistening Snow

I wanted to wait until my nails grew out a bit before doing another manicure, and while I was waiting I had a horrible, horrible week (and no, it was not because I couldn’t wear nail polish). Suffice to say life could be a lot worse…but it could be a lot better too. So I decided that I needed glitter in my life. Lots of it. Glitter has this way of cheering me up, despite it being a pain in the ass to remove. I don’t wear full-coverage glitters very often, but when I do, I really enjoy them.

This polish was released last winter, but it certainly can be worn year-round. Glistening Snow is a GORGEOUS, and surprisingly tame glitter-fine, pure silver glitter with holographic glitters interspersed in it. Inside it takes on a really soft grey-ish hue and the rainbow particles glitter when the light hits them, but once its in the sun it becomes a disco ball of sparkles. But the cool thing about it is that it’s a tame disco ball. I can’t think of another term to describe it! It’s not over-the-top blingy, but almost chic and grown up. Probably the most fun polish I’ve put on all year.

This was 2 1/2 to 3 coats. Dry time was reasonable, and two coats of top coat-one of Out the Door and one of an old Sally Hansen that I had lying around and want to get rid of. I really need to get that bottle of Gelous, because even after two coats it was sort of gritty. I actually liked it sans top coat (it’s kind of similar to the new texture polishes that are big now-matte and gritty but quite sparkly) but I thought it would chip faster if I didn’t seal it up.