Mail Call!

Just popping in quick for a haul post, which I haven't done in a long time!

I know we all have the occasional beef with the postal service, and I'll admit my personal bias, as my mom is a postal worker, but I sometimes truly believe that the Postal Service delivers happiness. I love getting mail, even if it's just junk and flyers. Today was a happy day, as my postal working Momma sent along a package full of goodies I had sent to her house.

OPI I Eat Maine-ly Lobster, Holiday Glow, Uh Oh Roll Down the Window, Teenage Dream, Roadhouse Blues. (Flash is making everything way brighter than it is in reality here). These are all from Aveyou.

Essie Bonded, Splash of Grenadine (I was surprised at how pink this was IRL), Playa del Platinum, Power Clutch. These were also from Aveyou.

aaaaand, Chanel Graphite & Peridot from Neiman Marcus, Sally Hansen Purple Diamond & Golden Tourmaline from eBay! Question for those of you who are not Chanel noobs: The square cap. Is it supposed to not work as a functional cap? Is it supposed to just come off and you polish with the smaller cap underneath? 

So so so excited to try all these out. My first Chanels! It's like awesome overload. The only thing that didn't show up was my OPI Zom-body to Love, which my mom told me she had... maybe she ran out of room in the box?? Hope I can get it for Halloween though! Any thoughts on which one I should wear first? I'm thinking Peridot personally... :D

OPI Pros & Bronze

Today I have for you my newly shorn nubs and OPI Pros & Bronze, the other color to be featured with Love is a Racket for the US Open Serena Williams set. This polish is pretty cool. I thought it might be like Zoya Tiffany but it's not pink enough. It's a very foily bright bronze with gold and rose-gold-pink flecks. It's pretty complex, and thus, hard to capture. 

This is three coats (please excuse my Lemony Flutter-ed cuticles and crappy cleanup):

Trying so hard to capture some detail on this one! It's really nice, but not exactly a color I love. That bright bronze/yellow gold isn't my favorite with my skintone. My husband liked it. I didn't *not* like it, I think I'm just biased about these colors on me. A really great sparkly polish though, and quite unique. What did you think? Did you grab one of both colors from this duo?

FYI: A big, huge, retrospective post of the OPI Serena Williams duos to come tomorrow!

OPI Love is a Racket

I'm guilty. Of what, you might ask? Guilty of buying all of the Serena Williams duos that have been released. Yup, I bought them all. When I saw the promotional pictures for the US Open Grand Slam set, I was not impressed and secretly pleased that I wasn't interested. My wallet rejoiced. I bought a couple Chanels. Then... pictures started leaking and that panic set it. Crap. I needed these.

So the other day, out of boredom, I said to myself "Self, let's just go take a look-see at the mall." There are a couple Sally Beauty Supplys in Winnipeg, which is cool because I had a bunch at home in NY and I get most of my supplies there. In Winnipeg, however, there are also Chatters Beauty Supply stores as well. They carry China Glaze and OPI mainly, but at Canadian retail, nothing is ever cheap there. (I miss my NY beauty supply that had coupons!!). There are a couple smaller salons that sell OPI cheaper as well. Anyway, the duos here have run me anywhere from $17-22 depending on where you buy them. So I went to this particular mall, which has a good salon and a Chatters in it. I walked into Chatters and found the duo, on "sale" for $18.86 (originally $19.90). I frowned, but wanted it and didn't feel like driving around town to save a buck. So I bought it, and this weekend everything happened to be 20% off, so I ended up only paying $15+tax for it, which was a refreshing surprise. So far, I've learned that nothing in Canada is cheap, so I'm really relishing the bargains when I find them.

Sorry, this is getting verbose. This duo comes with Love is a Racket and Pros & Bronze. They're so pretty in person. Love is a Racket (which OPI calls a red), is really pretty corally (or pink, as my husband proclaimed). It's incredibly glowy, and the shimmer in it is very intense large glass flecks (and there are a lot of them, the polish is quite dense. When you apply it, it looks *amazing*. But the one caveat for me was that when it dried... it was somehow not as spectacular and ate topcoat and was kinda dull. I ended up having to slap a coat of Barielle Manicure Extender on top in the morning because it just had a strange finish. So pretty though, and impossible to capture digitally--you just cannot see the detail of the shimmer.

This is 3 coats, but you could probably get away with two:

You can actually see the size/shape of the shimmer in the bottle better than on the nail. It has a great formula, too. A nice summer color, I think I'll wear it as a pedicure next. Anyway--what do you all think of this one? Pros & Bronze is up next. Did you buy any (or if you're a nut like me--all) of the Serena duos? 

OPI Get in the Expresso Lane with Dare To Wear Strobe Lights

This manicure was actually kind of ugly in the end, but I wore it for two days (laziness). After the glitterbomb that was Date To Wear Social Butterfly, I went in a totally different direction with Get in the Expresso Lane from OPI's Touring America collection. I've found that this collection isn't getting a lot of love, but my love of OPI creme polishes and drab colors made me lust for a couple of them. I'm waiting on Roadhouse Blues, I Eat Maine-ly Lobster, and Uh-Oh Roll Down the Window (which makes me giggle), which are en route from the States (Aveyou shipping to Canada is too expensive so I send them to my Momma!). Anyway, I don't know much brown polish. I'm not even sure I own another brown that couldn't also be considered taupe. What I like about this color is that it's not a straight up choco-poop brown, it's very grey-ed. I think it if was warmer and more yellow-toned, it would be a no-go both for my sensibilities and skin tone. This, however, works. It had a great formula, and two coats was perfect glossy coverage.

Now, I didn't get a picture of Get in the Expresso Lane on its own, which is a shame. Because the devil in me needed glitter. So I put Dare To Wear's Strobe Lights on top... a super shiny holographic gold glitter with large & small hex and bar glitter. It's crazy nutso, except the base is also slightly gold-ish. Which yellow-ed up my brown polish, rendering it semi-choco-poop-like. And... I dunno. This is just one instance (and I don't often say this) where I feel like glitter just didn't work. Should've left it alone.

Here it is:

Yuck, right? Sorta fun but... yuck.

Dare To Wear Social Butterfly

Dare To Wear is not a brand I'm very familiar with but I've always coveted their polish. Recently, I took a chance and ordered 2 sets of theirs: Disco Tech and Dollhouse... glitterbombs, both of 'em. The Disco Tech glitters are blingier and more for layering, while the Dollhouse glitters tend to be more opaque and can be so in three coats. This is the first one I've worn from the Dollhouse set.

So I'm not sure if you know this about me, but I'm not a fan of pink. Occasionally a very deep, jewel-toned magenta or fuchsia... but generally no. Maybe once in a while, ironically. I wear a lot of black, I'm tattooed, I love rock'n'roll (especially 70's punk), I live in boots and an army jacket. My nail polish (and former makeup obsession) is pretty much the girliest thing about me (and I do embrace it), BUT pink is just stretching it a bit too far for me. Anyway. For some sick reason, Social Butterfly called to me today. And I answered.

These types of glitters: chock full of all shapes of hex & round & bar glitters, generally apply like oatmeal. The first two coats went OK, but the third was a bit of a chore. I'd definitely recommend keeping thinner on hand. Some of the glitter is holo and some is opalescent, but the pink base has a blue flash to it, and it gives the whole thing a pretty cool effect.

It's pulling a bit warm in these pics, and as usual, the glitter makes my camera go haywire. It reminds me of OPI Teenage Dream but more Barbie pink, and obviously with bar glitter. I kinda love it! It's totally against type, but maybe I need that every once in a while :)

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On a totally unrelated note, I just got the most hilarious phone call from the Bay, where I had called to inquire about the status of the fall Chanel polishes. I recently decided that I needed Peridot and Graphite. Never bought a Chanel before. I got put on a list to be notified, but my experience with these "lists" that stores create is that you've got about a 50-50 shot of them actually calling you. And for an LE item that may sell out, this fact is unsettling, so I did some other research. In the interim, I decided to buy the polishes from the States and have them shipped to my mom's (and saved myself $20), but I have to wait a little longer for them. Since I hate shelling out the $$ to begin with, I decided I could wait. But today the Bay called! But seriously, this woman... where the heck did they find her?? She had *the most ridiculous* and possibly (most likely) fake French accent! I just about died. She raved, "Sar-huh!" (that's how she pronounced my name)  "Zee collec-shun is ahh-mahh-zeeeng!!" I almost laughed at her. Oh, Canada. 

China Glaze Midtown Magic

Today I tried out the second polish that I purchased from China Glaze's recent Metro collection: Midtown Magic. I had no desire for this one until I saw it in person, and I knew it was coming home with me. I love polishes like this one: deep browny-plum with greeny-gold (and tiny flecks of red) shimmer. The formula on this one was also excellent. Two coats for perfect coverage. Very vampy and nice for fall, and I bet it would look really nice on shorter nails. The one caveat was that the wear on this one was not great (lots of tipwear very quickly), but it's super pretty.

So, I seem to have a penchant for these types of colors, so I dug the two most similar (in my mind) out of my stash, these being OPI DS Mystery and OPI Tease-y Does It (one of my favorite polishes).

So in this crappy comparison here, we have (from left to right) DS Mystery, Midtown Magic, and Tease-y Does It. Obviously, Tease-y Does It is not a dupe, it's much more plummy, and the shimmer is redder. They are closer in life than they appear in this shot though. As for DS Mystery, it's much closer to Midtown Magic, except (and this is not visible in any picture I could take) the base is *much* cooler and bluer (you can sorta see it in the fleck I got on my finger, whoops!), and the shimmer pieces are larger and lacks the red shimmer apparent in Midtown Magic. The closest of the three are DS Mystery and Midtown Magic, but they're not dupes. But if you have one, you may not really need the other (DS Mystery has better wear on me).

What are your picks from China Glaze Metro collection? Did I miss any good ones?

Nubar Reclaim

Let me start off by saying that, for me, Nubar is a relatively hard brand to come by. I've never seen it in the wild, and their site has very high shipping. Usually, I buy off eBay, but I have purchased off their site before. I don't own a lot of Nubar polishes for this exact reason. There are just so many other polishes out there that are less of a pain to get. The first Nubars I purchased were their Matte collection, which came out 2 or 3 years ago, when matte polishes were just hitting it off. I didn't end up wearing them much because shortly after Zoya knocked it out of the park with their Matte Velvet collection. Hands down the best matte polishes out there. Nubar's green collection, with Reclaim and Wildlife, finally did me in, and for the longest time these were the only Nubars that I owned. Originally, I didn't like Reclaim (what was I smoking?), and I was ambivalent about the formula of Wildlife. Then, the Sparkle collection. Until a recently casualty (RIP Petunia Sparkle, you are missed), I did end up buying all of these. They're amazing. Other than that, however, Nubar is just a brand I don't much take the time to track down. Maybe I should or shouldn't, but I'm getting to the point where something has to be pretty dang amazing for me to have to put a lot of effort into it.

But, as usual, I digress. Nubar Reclaim. I wore it when I got it, and I don't remember being all that impressed. It was being heralded as the perfect holo green, and I just felt it was too silvery and not green enough. Well, I take it back. It's pretty darn amazing, and for a holographic polish it has an amazing formula.

This is 2 coats:

Pretty gorgeous, right? It's super holo, too. Do you guys love Nubar? Are they worth the hassle to get? This one certainly is, in my opinion. Tell me your Nubar favorites :)