OPI Pink Shatter

OPI's Pink Shatter is being released in conjunction (if not a little early) with October being Breast Cancer Awareness month. As per the tag, it's the "Pink of Hearts 2011" color, as they release a pink every year for the cause. The shatter idea is fun (if not overdone at this point), but this pink is kinda lackluster. I ended up seeing it at a random salon, and grabbed it for the heck of it. While OPI Shatter polishes are my favorite of the lot so far, this pink suffers from being way too ordinary. It's a medium pink, not terribly bright, shimmery (but the type of shimmer we'd consider frost if it weren't a shatter polish), and not very eye catching. It shattered just fine over dry polish.

This picture makes it look brighter than it actually is. This is one coat over 3 coats of Borghese Almondine, which was my job interview polish (someone even complimented me on it). I took this under a desk lamp (sorry), so I apologize in advance for the glare.

If this pink had been a bit brighter, perhaps even neon, I might have liked it better. I have to say that this is my least favorite OPI Shatter so far, but there's nothing *wrong* with it per se, it's just not that remarkable. Will you pick up Pink Shatter if you find it? For those of you that have found it--what do you think?

The return & 16 manicures!

Hello readers, if there are any of you still out there!

I disappeared for a few months here, and with good reason: I was writing my Master's thesis. I thought I might be able to keep up with my blogging, but with two jobs and various life-craziness-health-related things going on, it just wasn't possible. But: on Friday, I turned in my thesis, and now I'm trying to remember how to resume a normal life! I just turned 25 in October, and finishing my Master's degree is a big deal for me. I finished my Bachelor's in 3 years (I was already a year ahead in high school, too), and after that I sort of lost my way. I turned down a full scholarship to do grad work at Emory University (after driving all the way down there with my stuff, no less). I took some time off and went back to the University where I got my Bachelor's. I did 3 semesters of grad coursework and then... never wrote my thesis. The university gave me a lot of trouble, they kept "forgetting" to notify me about course sign up and advisement.... and I inadvertently took a (calender) year off. This made it harder to get the project going, as to do your thesis it's good to have a current relationship with a professor, so they can serve as your advisor. I seriously considered abandoning my grad work. I was 23, burnt out on school, and feeling drunk on freedom. But... in the end, I opted to go back and finish, and I'm so glad that I did. It was a huge accomplishment, and I graduate on December 5th (finally!). I've considered going back to do Ph.d work, but that will be for another time in my life, I think. My Master's is in English, my focus being American literature, specifically Nathaniel Hawthorne.

Over the months, I did manage to take a few pictures... My nails have been of varying length over this time, tending towards the nubbin side of things... they're still kind of finicky. I hauled a lot too: Burlesque, NARS vintage, RBL sale, ChG holiday, and lots of Old OPI's that I've been acquiring... But anyway... what I have to show you isn't representative of everything, to say the least, but it's something.

Random spam for the last few months:

OPI Wing It!

Barielle June Bug (wore this for 4th of July... that's how old this is!!)

OPI Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous

Sephora OPI Midnight Mambo

China Glaze Foxy

OPI Diva of Geneva

China Glaze Midnight Mission

China Glaze GR8

Streetwear FX Flash (green) (awful pic, sorry... hard to capture)

Borghese Nero Magico (seriously gorgeous... underrated)

MAC Bad Fairy

OPI Show Bring on the Bling

NARS Midnight Express (I think this was day 2 or 3, looking a bit worn)

Color Club Pucci-licious

Orly Galaxy Girl

My Current Nails: China Glaze Zombie Zest (a bit late, I missed Halloween!)

The varying lengths are kind of amusing. Hopefully I can get back into the swing of things here! Not sure I'm up to posting every day or anything, but I'd like to keep it up :-)

Thanks for looking!!

New Stuff: Borghese Tutti Gelati & Milani Liquid Metal Collection & A Gadget!

OK so while I'm stocking up a few nail looks to post, I thought I'd show a few things I picked up at the drugstore tonight, one of which I think is pretty gosh-darn nifty. I'll warn you ahead of time this post is wordy!

The first things I picked up are these two new Borgheses from the Tutti Gelati collection. Menta and Pistacchio (is this spelled wrong on purpose? Italian spelling? Not sure...). These look a bit on the sheer side (especially Menta), but they're super cool looking... Borghese is really amping it up. These were $8 but I had a $3 coupon I earned watching some videos on Rite Aid's website. You can sign up and print the coupon once you've watched the video (which is like, 2 minutes). Also, if you watch 20 credits worth of videos (they all have a varying point value) you get $5 off $20 coupon. Anyway, here's Menta and Pistacchio.

Menta, Pistacchio.

Menta.

Pistacchio.

Second, I went to CVS and saw this new Milani display/collection, Liquid Metal. Excuse the picture, I took it with my iPhone and the lighting was CRAP. But these looked so cool, and I haven't heard anything about them anywhere yet, so I took a picture:

These are the new Milanis, clockwise from top left: My Network, Just Browsing, PC Girl, I'm Online, 2.0, and Dot Com. (The one Dot Com missing is the one I took!). Not sure why there's three each of My Network, Just Browsing & PC Girl and two each of I'm Online, 2.0 & Dot Com.

I didn't have time to take detailed pictures of all of them, because I only bought one. So, here is my written description of the collection: Three of these, My Network (gold), PC Girl (silver) and I'm Online (bronze-ish) are basically dupes of the Orly Foil FX collection---or, rather, I immediately thought that there was a dupe (or close dupe) of each color. Even the finish looks very similar. I didn't buy these for comparison, but if you missed the Orlys, these look like they might be a good bet. There was also a sheer looking white gold shimmer, Just Browsing, as well as Dot Com--a shimmery purpley bronzey pinky awesomeness, and 2.0, a crazy shimmery silvery black. I only bought Dot Com because it looks fabulously, seriously, unique. I almost bought 2.0 but it looked a little too close to BB Couture's Dark Knight for me to need both. We'll see. I may break down and go get it.

Here's Dot Com:

I can't WAIT to wear this! I'm sure it'll be featured again very soon. These pictures just do not capture the awesome, irregular shimmer and the duochorome-yness of the whole thing. Gorgeous.

And lastly, but certainly not leastly, I found this weird little contraption in a huge clearance bin at the Rite Aid I went to. It was origially $9.99, marked down to $2.49, and I figured I'd pick it up because it piqued my interest.

It's called Calieo Soak-Off Antibacterial Artificial Nail Remover System, and it's for removing artificial nails.

It's supposed to come with five little orbs that look sort of like those plastic balls you get in quarter machines that have toys in them. One end is rubber though, and you stick your finger into it after you fill it went acetone (or the enclosed remover, which was way evaporated, as you can see).

This is how you put your finger in, and apparently there's some sort of scrubber mechanism on the inside.

A shot of all my fingers in it. Not sure if it's water-tight, so I'll have to experiment and find out if you should hold your hands like this.

Here are the directions:

My first thought was that this reminded me of the "foil method" that people talk about for glitter removal on the MUA nail board. Also, I thought, it'd be great for removing Orly Nail Rescue, because I use that frequently and remove and reapply it every other week or so (I have one really damaged nail on my left hand that I'm trying to grow out).

For some reason, my box came with 6 little orbs, not five as it states on the box. Haha. I'm gonna experiment with this really soon because if it works, I actually think it's kind of ingenious and will really be helpful to me for glitter/nail glue removal. So, if this piques your interest too, head to your Rite Aid ASAP! I've never seen or heard of this before, so I'm not even sure where else you might get them. Like I said, they originally retailed for $9.99, and I'm not sure I would've paid that much for it, but at $2.49, it went in my basket very quickly.

I was a super bargain shopper at Rite Aid tonight too--I had so many coupons (from the Video Values thing and others that I'd saved) that I got over $40 worth of stuff for $18! Not too shabby. I'm only 24 and I am living at home again during grad school (fiance and I are long distance still), so I haven't really gotten the finesse of coupons. But I've recently gotten into blogs like Noveau Cheap and the like that are inspiring me to get good deals on stuff that I'd buy anyway. I like to think I'll be very awesomely thrifty when I'm on my own again. I think That's all the babble I've got for tonight! Thanks for reading :-)

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PS: Not pictured above, because I don't have it yet, my fiance also picked me up American Apparel's Passport Blue today, which I passed on while I was there and regretted it. So I now have 14/18 of the American Apparel polishes. They're awesome!! Kudos to AA for good leggings, awesome deep V-neck t's, and wicked polish!

Borghese Almondine

I don't even know how to categorize this polish. I'll call it shimmer but that's almost a lie. It is, in fact, the palest beige with a weird black/grayish speckle effect to it (impossible to describe with words), on top of all this, it has a very secret pink opalescent shimmer. Sound weird? It's actually AWESOME. It's so... strange and lovely, something soft with a serious edge happening. From a distance, this will look like a nude creme, and as it gets closer the speckle gives it a deeper cast. Then that shimmer! Wow, Borghese, you win this one. I love complex polish, and this shade along with Stellare Notte, are just beautiful complexity bottled. I'm not sure how available these were, because they came out in small displays a few months ago. If you know where to get them and passed on them because they were $8 (especially for only 4 oz.!), I strongly urge you to go back and see if they're still there. I sort of can't believe I paid that much for a drugstore polish, but I'm not in love with any Borgheses from their core line, so I knew I wasn't in any further danger. If there are more LE polishes as good as these though... they may come home with me.

The Borghese brush is a bit on the stumpy side, like a slimmer OPI Pro-Wide in shape. The formula on this one was just OK--it was a bit goopy and it needed 3 coats. Not a deal breaker for me though, not at all. It dried well and smooth and just looks super cool. Unfortunately, my photos don't do this one ANy justice. You'll see the nude and a tiny bit of the speckle but I basically failed, despite TONS of photos, to capture the essence of this polish whatsoever. Don't even ASK about that pinky shimmer, it was nowhere to be found in my photos. I'm just not that adept. Here are my best efforts nonetheless:

No good? My sincerest apologies. I did get a number of compliments when I wore this, because it's just so freaking cool. If you do run across a super-cool Borghese like this one, be kind and give it a home! I actually hate the bottle, I have to say, especially the cap! Yucky, who designed this crap? Looks all... tacky. The stuff inside is decidedly not tacky though, so give it a go.

Thanks for looking!

China Glaze Flyin' High

Ah, the polish that will just not photograph. Another offering from the Up & Away collection that was lovely--easy to apply, opaque in 2 coats, and I got a number of compliments on it. It was fun to wear. These photos.... it's almost like they're not even of the same polish. I mean... it's just so much more green in real life and so much less bright turquoise... this literally looks like it could just be China Glaze Shower Together or Aqua Baby... but no. It's Flyin' High. I swear. These are so inaccurate that I even included the last one, which isn't a good photo, to attempt to try to depict the color. I fail. But it's a great polish, wonderful. You'll love it. It just doesn't really look like what's picture below.

Sorry these are so weird and kinda disappointing!

On another note.....

Some recent drugstore finds! You'll see Stellare Notte & Blackmail in there, as well as Borghese Almondine (what a bizarre/cool polish--an oddly speckled beige with a pink flash) Wet 'N Wild's Disturbia, Night Prowl, and that wacky orange creme, Sunny Side up. On the far end is Sinful Colors Mint Apple. I may have to hit up a few drugstores, but I guess I've gotten pretty lucky with finding things. I also got a few of the new Milani polishes (not pictured), the green & purple holos, but the rest looked so identical to a couple of China Glaze Kaleidoscope color that I already had that I passed on them. Plus, they appear to be part of the permanent display so I'll hold off. There is a great CVS in my town that always has the new collections. Anyway, just a preview of things you'll probably be seeing on my nails in the near future....

Borghese Stellare Notte

Warning: this pictures suck because there is no way I could pick up the awesomeness that is this weird little polish. There are also way too many of them. So I listened to the buzz in the blogging world about this little Borghese collection called Fashionista, that had a couple of crazy cool, unique polishes in it. The buzz centered largely, on Stellare Notte, though I heard some inklings of a shade called Almondine as well. Rite Aid isn't in my usual circuit around town, but there is an excellently good one that I sometimes frequent looking for the current cheap thrills. It never disappoints. I'd gone there previously looking for the Borghese holiday sets (apparently Stellare Notte was part of one of these, in unnamed, mini form) and I passed. Not sure why. Saw 'em and shrugged. So, my interest piqued when I walked into Rite Aid a couple weeks ago and saw the display. It was full. I picked up Stellare Notte and stared at it: icy navy with a vaguely oil-spill-ish look to it, it was truly unique. But it was $8 (!!!! at the drugstore! what?!). But it was unique. But it was $8. And on and on this went in my head, until I realized that now that I'd touched it with my hands, I wasn't gonna get over it if I just left it. So home with me it came. Two weeks later, I went back and bought Almondine, too. (That one is forthcoming).

Unfortunately, my camera isn't good with the details that make this polish so spectacular. All you'll see below is an icy, navy shimmer. What you're missing is the ultra-cool ultra-subtle rainbow effect this baby has. God bless the subtleties of the human eye.

Below are various shots of this polish, 2 coats, in all sorts of light: flash, indoor, window, etc. Nothing gets it.

Anyway, I hope those of you looking for this awesome, albeit overpriced, little polish, I wish you all luck in finding it. It's truly a gem.

Thanks for looking!