LLPT's Best Nails of 2014!!

*contains press sample(s)

LLPT's Best Nails of 2014

  Ahhhh!!  I finally feel like I'm emerging from the tornado of activity and subsequent mini hibernation that has composed the last five days.  C and I are fortunate to have the next few days off so we slept in until 11ish yesterday and 10ish today (and I'm sure a nap is in order, again).  Hosting Christmas dinner is a LOT of work, especially when both of us have full time jobs and especially when I'm stubborn and insist on doing it all myself... Thankful for a mom who understands the work and brought over one of my favorite desserts and appetizers to supplement (as well as a Christmas chicken... thanks, Dad).  Anyhoo, time marches on, New Year's is imminent, and my nails are roached.  Sounds like a perfect opportunity to list my favorite nail polishes of 2014, no?

Merry Christmas Swatch Spam

*contains press sample(s)

  Merry Christmas Eve, all!!  I'm pretty stoked-- I finally get to host a holiday dinner, something I've wanted to do since C and I got married nine and a half years ago.  This evening we're headed down to his folks' house to spend the night, and then tomorrow we're back at our place for showtime!  Today is full of as much food prep as I can get away with 24 hours beforehand, but first, I've got to eat breakfast and this is basically the calm before the storm.  To all my fellow revelers-- have an awesome holiday, wherever you are, whatever you're doing ♥♥ Please enjoy a little swatch spam from the past few months.

Zoya Dream

Zoya Dream

Sinful Shine Prosecco

  So I bought myself a new outfit for Thanksgiving and I was pondering last night what shoes and nail polish to wear with it.  In my not inconsiderable collections of each, there is no reason on earth I wouldn't be able to find something that'll go.  I still haven't worked the shoe thing out (which bugs me because I'm usually pretty instinctual about such things) but the polish problem is faring much better... I don't know if this'll be it, but it will be something along these lines, at the very least.

  Sinful Shine Prosecco will go down as one of the biggest polishes of 2014 on account of its sudden disappearance from Sinful Colors displays the US over, and it's funny because it's a neutral.  It was wild getting on my facebook and watching so many gals go completely crazy over something that would have otherwise been written off as nice, safe, work appropriate... all fine qualities for a polish to have, but not ones that tend to take a large community by storm.  Ah, the power of discontinuation and shimmer!

Sinful Shine Prosecco

Sinful Colors Face the Facets

  Hi all!!  Ever on the lookout for a good yellow am I, and while it's usually cremes I'm after, I couldn't resist the shimmery prettiness of Sinful Colors' Face the Facets (or the 99¢ deal Walgreens recently had on their SCs).

  Face the Facets is a bright daffodil yellow texture polish, a rerelease for summer 2014.   It's a jelly base packed with monochromatic shimmer that flash a subtle (so subtle that I couldn't capture it on camera) yellow gold and spring green.

Sinful Colors Face the Facets

Sinful Colors Mint Tropics

  Hi friends!!  Some of you might be aware of the buzz in the nail polish community surrounding the rerelease of collaboration OPI Damone Roberts 1968, a wildly popular and hard to find polish that goes for exorbitant amounts if you are lucky enough to catch one.  Well, the folks behind OPI and Damone Roberts are milking this one for all it's worth and graciously lowering the price of the rerelease to $20.

  So what's the big deal about the color?  Damone Roberts 1968 is touted as "a different green with undertones of a soft grey, and a warm brown that works well on every skin tone" (damoneroberts.com), a pistachio rather than mint shade.  A google search will tell you that it's a hard one to photograph (and I've never seen one in real life, so I'm not even going to pretend to know what it really looks like).  The official description and bloggers describing what their pictures look like are decidedly at odds.  All this is really a moot point because this little Sinful Colors polish I picked up may or may not be remotely similar.

  A new summer 2014 release for Sinful Colors' Turn Up the Heat collection, Mint Tropics isn't really mint at all, but for a slight hint of blue tone keeping it from becoming a grass green.  It's light but not pale and has the brown undertones reported in the OPI.  (Mint Tropics doesn't photograph easily, either.)  

Sinful Colors Mint Tropics

Sinful Colors Hot Chili-- Summer 2014

  Good morning, guys and gals!!  I've got another one of Sinful Colors' summer offerings on my nails today, this one from the Simmer Down collection.  I said a couple days ago that the new SC summer lineup feels like anything goes, running the gamut from early spring to fall shades, and after a (very) small amount of research, I learned that the second color I chose, a texture called Hot Chili, was indeed a new release in the Spice It Up! collection last fall.  So I wonder if the rack o' polishes on display at my local Walgreens is even SC's summer collection at all, or just a marketing tool displaying various color families and calling them all perfect for summer.  I love my SCs but that leaves me (very) mildly irritated.  I like to know what's new, you know?  I'm not in stores that sell SC often enough to know what each little collection is so I can never really tell what the hekk it is that I'm looking at when I venture beyond the core lineup.  Whatever.  Moving on.

  If I told you I had no idea Hot Chili was a texture when I bought it, would you believe me?  There's nothing on the bottle designating it as such.  I thought the formula looked a little suspect, lol, but I didn't even know SC had done any textures until the subject came up in one of my facebook groups.  Anyhoo, Hot Chili is a brick red/mauve metallic finish with a small amount of tiny textured bits and a lot of tiny holographic hex glitters.  It's super pretty and actually less textured than many glitter polishes.  You could topcoat this to smoothness easily, or, if you're still not sure about textures, get your feet wet with a tame one.

Sinful Colors Hot Chili

Sinful Colors Blue La La-- Summer 2014

  Hi all!!  Sinful Colors' summer collections have landed, and, as usual, I can't really make heads or tails of the whole thing.  They've got some new, some reissues, and one that looks suspiciously like Cinderella (even as Cinderella is still in the core line).  Also, as far as these sets are concerned, anything goes, color wise.  They run the gamut from spring through fall, which is fun and edifying, but not overly cohesive.  It also makes choosing one or two polishes somewhat difficult, lol.  One of the colors I chose is a little bit spring, but it's so pretty, and I've felt this shade conspicuously absent from my stash recently.

  This is Blue La La, a periwinkle creme from the Chill Out set.  The formula is thin but super saturated.  Wipe the excess polish off the brush and use a bit of care and pressure in applying and you'll be fine.  It's perfect in two coats.

Sinful Colors Blue La La

LVX Comparison Post! Taupe and Blue

*press samples

Happy Caturday, guys and gals :) I had a couple requests for comparisons of a couple LVX colors from yesterday's post, so I thought I'd just get on it, lol.  The last time I did a post like this was two weeks after I started this thing so fortunately, I've learned a thing or two about presentation but this is still highly experimental.

Okay, first up, as the request of Lacqueerisa, is a comparison of taupes.

I tried to do some staging, lol, so I strategically placed some lapis earrings in with the bottle shot.  I don't think it works but I'm too lazy to go take another photo without.  So left to right we've got Sinful Colors Graine de Poivre, LVX Relique, and OPI You Don't Know Jacques.  They all look pretty different in the bottle.

Sinful Colors Citrine

Hi friends, happy Halloween!!

I mentioned yesterday that I picked up two new Sinfuls during Walgreens' recent 2 for $3 sale.  This one is Citrine, a rerelease for this Halloween and a bright red-orange creme.  The gemstone citrine is actually a deep golden with amber hued facets (which would also make a pretty fantastic polish, if you ask me), but this polish is gorgeous just the same, and that is not a word I regularly use when describing orange shades.

Citrine's another spot-on perfection creme from Sinful, amazing formula and elementary application.  I feel there is no excuse for any high end company's formula to be lacking when this humbly priced brand has absolutely nailed it.  I used two coats of polish and one layer of topcoat. 

Citrine speaks so much to me is because it's so bright and lively, but with an elegant feel to it, made so by the touch of red.  It's also another reason why I love creme finishes so much-- the finish is classic and decidedly grown up, so those of us whose tastes lean conservative can feel a little more uninhibited with our color choices.  Citrine is equally at home paired with a little black dress as with jeans and a cute pair of boots.  It's a brilliantly fun, yet decorous, pop of color.

And that's all, folks!  Anyone dressing up today?  I've got some wild pink eye makeup I recently received as a gift that I think I'll trot out today, but beyond that, I'll be rocking the slacks and work smock, lol.  Thank you for reading and be safe tonight ♥♥

Sinful Colors Inkwell

Good morning!!  The end of the month really crept up on me and I'm going to be a little open hearted with you all for a minute.  I feel like I've been posting at a relatively leisurely pace this month and it's felt good.  It's been fun dedicating one post to one polish at a time again.  This leetle blog has grown to the point where that's not exactly feasible a lot of the time any more, which is time consuming but very cool.  I love, am extremely appreciative of, and embrace the growth.  I still need to be able to run this thing how I want, though, and that includes sprinkling in makeup and beauty posts and also writing about polishes I went out and bought myself.  As tiring as swatchfests can be, I do get a rush when I do one, and the finished product makes me feel all accomplished and professional, lool, but it's been nice to have a month where I sort of returned to my roots, I guess.  All this to say that I purchased a couple Halloweenish Sinful Colors a couple weeks ago with the intention of posting about them before the day was actually upon us, but here we are, the day before, and here's one of the two, lol.

I've been after Sinful Colors Inkwell since I saw it on Rhonda's gorgeous nails back in April.  Inkwell is a limited edition color from this past spring's Haute Rebel collection and the LEs tend to run out quickly around these parts and not come back.  SC seems to like to do rereleases, though, so I was pleased to find this in a Halloween display in my local Walgreens.

Inkwell is a cooool color.  It's actually quite appropriately named-- you know how some black ballpoint pens aren't really a true black?  They're this very color.  It's an extremely dark sort of brownish, purplish, molasses-y, raisin-y jelly that *almost* reads black but doesn't quite.  It's also super glossy and my camera doesn't quite know how to handle the double threat.

I seriously do not know how to label this-- maybe black (sort of), lol.  Inkwell's formula is amazing.  Because it's a jelly, it is perfectly self leveling, and, as I said, very high shine.  But unlike most jellies, it's completely opaque in two coats, with no visible nail line.  This is two coats, with a topcoat.    

 You all know by now that I've become quite enamored with Sinfuls and Inkwell is one of the most unique colors I've seen this year from anyone. It's worth stalking your drugstores for.  I picked mine (and my second choice, coming up tomorrow) up during a Walgreens sale for 2 for $3.

As always, thank you for reading and have a remarkable day ♥♥

Sinful Colors SinfulShine Mirror Mirror

Morning, friends!!  I've been kind of excited to try Sinful Colors' new "luxury" collection, SinfulShine, a line that costs a whole dollar more than regular line Sinful Colors (ringing in at a whopping $2.99) and boasts a gel manicure-like shine in a traditional polish, a look achieved without topcoat.  I chose a classic and on trend for fall burgundy creme called Mirror Mirror.  I can tell you unequivocally that the claims are true (isn't it nice when claims are true?).  I've got photos both with and without topcoat featured here.  See if you can tell the difference.

So apparently vampy wine shades are suddenly in for this fall, for both lips and nails.  It always kills me when the fashion powers that be take the classics and decide they're "in" for a season.  Anyhoo, if you're not really a slave to makeup trends and, like me, tend towards the classics anyway, guess what!  We get to be cutting edge for a couple months.  

So maybe needless to say at this point, I adore this rich bordeaux and Mirror Mirror might even be my favorite polish of the year.  The formula is impeccable.  Two coats are opaque, easy to apply, and self leveling.  Even without topcoat, Mirror Mirror dries very quickly.

 

I know I'm going a little overboard on my photos of a simple creme but I just adore this polish-- the color, that ridiculous gloss... everything about it is perfection.

 

Okay, I'm done ♥ You need this polish, whether you've been on the hunt for a great vampy shade or if you're looking to be classically on trend for this season, believe me when I say you need Mirror Mirror in your life.  

Sinful Colors SinfulShine polishes are available at Walgreens.

Thank you for reading and putting up with my true polish love picture spam, lol.  Here's one more-- we carved pumpkins last night and C thought it'd be fun to turn an old pattypan squash into a flying saucer. :)

Sinful Colors Fall Picks!

Hi everyone!  There are so many amazing fall collections out right now, from Butter London to Zoya to Seche Vite's first color line (which I'm kind of stoked to try) but the truth is, you needn't look any further than your local drugstore for some knock-your-socks-off beautiful fall cremes.  

Sinful Colors hasn't been one of my favorite brands, (for one thing, the name kinda bugs me... why Sinful?  What did these polishes do that's so baaaad?  lol) a lot in part because of my conceptions about inconsistent formulas.  But these three, from the fall 2013 Diva collections, have totally changed my mind.  The formulas on all three of these compete with and even beat many higher end brands.

A couple weeks ago, Mommy Does Her Nails and I were out and about chatting about life, and nail polish world and picking up a few pretties in the mean time.  Skylark wasn't one of them.  I had to go back and pick this one up because I couldn't get it out of my head and now I see why my friend's got such an affinity for peachy cremes.  This one's pale and the color of the crayon.  I almost got away with two coats on this one but in the end decided to go with three.  The formula's very slightly streaky but really quite remarkable, especially for a pastel.  It's fun to see another brand bucking tradition and doing soft and light for fall. 

Graine de Poivre is gorgeous (and another I had to go back for).  After I brought it home, though, I thought I had myself a dupe for OPI You Don't Know Jacques, but the latter is darker, cooler, and less red.  Graine de Poivre is a warm, almost mauve-y taupe creme, neutral and elegant as all get-out.  I used two coats.

Mesmerize is the color I initially picked up.  I love inky indigo blue shimmers and I was excited to find the shade in creme form.  Sinfuls do kind of confound me... I was doing some research, lool, and discovered that this one had actually been introduced last year, so apparently, it's back, and good thing.  It's rich and edgy and reminiscent of a late October sky.  I used two coats.

Note to self: master the art of photographing cremes in 2014.

I purchased my Sinfuls at Rite Aid but they're also available at Walgreens for $1.99 each.  Their seasonal collections seem to go quickly so if any of these appeal to you, run, don't walk, lol.

Thank you for reading and have a lovely day! ♥♥

Sinful Colors Folly

Hi guys and gals!  Today's notd is Sinful Colors Folly.  I don't remember why I picked this polish up.  It was sometime in late spring, I think, and I must've been hot on the trail of something else.  It's no wonder this one jumped out at me, though, it's a lovely color and reminiscent of, if not a dupe for, one of my favorite Butter London colors, Snog.

Folly a quinacridone red creme.  The color reads a little bit red and a little bit pink.  It reminds me, somehow, of lipstick and the lightly perfumed, waxy floral scent that accompanies some of my favorites.  I love that this is bold but not bright.  It's another one of those shades that has a surprising amount of decorum once you have it on.

 I've used a small smattering of Sinful Colors polishes and this one's been the best, formula and opacity-wise.  The brand's a little hit and miss, but at this price point ($1.99 a pop) it's kind of to be expected.  I've gotten some seriously wonky brushes, too, but that's more chance than anything and this one happened to be lovely.  The formula is of a nice consistency and is opaque in two coats.

Today is World Cat Day so go love up on a diddy or three.  

Have a lovely day and thank you for reading! ♥

Sunday Skittlette (by accident, sort of)

Good morning!!  This mani was originally planned to be the base for some sort of freehand art.  I won't get into the specs of why I was doing such a thing, since I can't even do straight french tips at this point, lol, but just know that both C and I have serious respect for the Heathers, Lucys, and Victorias of the world.  Also know that each and every nail on my left hand had to be either redone or painted over at least once.  Let's call it a lesson learned in being true to yourself, your style, and not biting off more than you can chew.  I was so frustrated by the end of it all that I nearly wiped the slate clean and went nekkid today.  I really like these colors together, though, so I decided to do what I do best, which is stick to one color per nail.

I used two of my favorites from the spring collections, OPI Eurso Euro and Zoya Jacqueline, plus a newly discovered love from Sinful Colors, Folly.

From left, OPI Eurso Euro, Zoya Jacqueline, Sinful Colors Folly.

So there you have it :) I'm happy, my nails are happy, and I will happily leave art in the capable hands of you artists.  Keep doing what you do, and I will continue to admire it purely as a spectator.  You gals are truly amazing. ♥

BadAss Polish Copper Waters (photo heavy)

*product sent for review

Hi friends!!  Today I get to show you all an as yet unreleased BadAss Polish.  It's an absolutely smokin' gorgeous glitter that is akin to Dusk and Chocolate Covered Cherry but totally its own twinkling, beautiful entity, too.  

This is Copper Waters. It's a clear base filled with tiny royal blue and copper glitters interspersed with tiny holographic glitters that flash bright violet, neon green, and teal.  Here is one coat of Copper Waters over Orly Rage.

I noticed the holo bits in this one are more pronounced in dimmer light, so I had a little fun with photoshop, lol.  Observe.

Isn't that cool?!  How awesome would it be if it glowed like this in real life?  Red?!  Seriously?  Where'd that come from?!  And the green!  That ridiculous blue!!  Okay, moving on.

Here's one coat of Copper Waters over Zoya Song.

This duo is mesmerizing in real life.  It's so hard to capture the depth of Copper Waters and the amazing things it does.

If you're wondering if Copper Waters is buildable, it is :) Here it is over my clear base coat, in three coats.

It's pretty close to the look over Rage; the holo bits are a little more pronounced on its own, though.  It's so fascinatingly multidimensional!  I love how those green sparks just sort of show up out of nowhere.  It is hard to get full tip coverage with this one and it's definitely more noticeable when there's no base color underneath.

I owe this last duo to Candice at Mommy Does Her Nails.  We were playing around with Copper Waters a week and a half or so ago and she remarked that it would look awesome over a berry creme.  She was right (it's so cool to have an artist who sees color in such remarkable ways in my corner ♥).  My base is more of a quinacridone, brighter and more fuschia, a little more spring/summery and equally stunning.  This is one coat of Copper Waters over Sinful Colors Folly.

Indie glitters tend to be topcoat hungry, and this beauty is no exception.  I used one coat of Out The Door for each manicure, mostly because I'm a little bit lazy, lol; two will smooth things out considerably.

As stated above, Copper Waters has not yet been released.  Like BadAss Polish on facebook to keep current on release dates and surprise flash giveaways.  It will be available for purchase at BadAss Polish's etsy shop.  Check out the other gorgeous glitters Amy's got for sale there in the meantime.

Thanks for reading and have a lovely day! ♥

*product sent for review

Labor Day Neons

Happy Labor Day!!  I'm trying sooo hard to hold off on wearing my fall colors until fall officially arrives.  This week's going to be a hot one, so that ought to keep me motivated to not start trotting out all my rich, delectable cremes and dark duochromes quite yet.  Today I'm going full-on bright with a couple neons, Sinful Colors Summer Peach (pinkie and ring) and Sinful Colors Dream On (middle and index).  Remember coloring your nails with your highlighters in grade school?  That's what neons will forever remind me of.  

Most of us know how neons dry matte.  I wanted to take a couple pictures of that because it does look kind of cool, and I've never seen a photo of neons without topcoat (at least, not that I'm aware of).  However, I prefer my nails slick and glossy. :)

Can I just say how maddeningly inaccurate these pictures are?!  I had some serious reservations about posting this one at all.  The last photo is the closest to accurate of the orange, Summer Peach, but it's really much brighter and not as yellow.  Dream On, the purple, is darker and more bluey.   

These Sinfuls have a nice little formula and good brushes, which is not always the case with this brand.  But for under $2 a pop, it's a great way to try out a trend, even if you wait till the end of the season to do so. ;)

So, Labor Day.  The last "official" day to wear white.  I've got my nephew's fourth birthday party to attend this afternoon, and I'm contemplating if it's a good idea to wear white capris to the occasion.  My nails would look totally sweet with a white outfit, but I'm leaning towards no.  I can just see grass stains and colored frosting wreaking havoc on them. lol.  

Have an awesome day and thanks for reading! <3

Needle Marble #1

Good morning!!  It's a new week in Gosia's ABC challenge, and not only am I knocking out all of this week's letters in one mani, but... brace yourselves... I'm doing art.  If you've been reading for a while, you know that I'm not a fan of it on myself but that I've made a couple weak attempts.  As in life, I appreciate the abstract forms.  Some of my favorite techniques are those that create marble effects.  Water marbling is gorgeous but requires more time, materials, and effort than I'm interested in putting in at this point.  Needle marbling, however, is something I've felt early on I could get on board with.  This tutorial at Liquid Jelly helped make my first go at it fun and simple.  Here's what I did.

I'm pretty stoked at the turnout.  I used Milani White On The Spot as my base, Sinful Colors Dream On for the purple, and SC Summer Peach for the orange.  Per the tutorial, I used two coats of white, let them dry fully, then added a third coat and a generous drop of the accent color, and went to work with the needle.  You need to do one finger at a time and work quickly.  The results are pretty neat looking, and I will be using this method again (hence the #1 in today's title, lol).  

So how does this fit in with the challenge?  The letters o' the week are MNOP, so I've got a Needle Marble in Neon Orange and Purple. :)

Thanks for reading!! :)