Pink Wednesday - Orly Flirty

I decided I needed a little break from the Miss Universe Collection.  I don't usually participate in Pink Wednesday, and anyone that's read my blog for any amount of time knows that  pink just isn't my color so I don't wear it that often.  This however is an exception and is so very, very pink that I thought it warranted it's own day. 

This is Orly Flirty from the Happy Go Lucky collection and holy cow is this pink. Yes, I know, statement of the obvious...  I have to admit that when I first got it, I put it on my toes first.  After wearing it a couple of days it had really grown on me, it was so fab on my toes that I decided to give it a whirl on my fingers.  I like it better as a toe color, but it is seriously fun either way.

I haven't seen a lot of Orly polishes in the blogs that I follow and I don't know why, I love most of their colors, they're very affordable and the formula is great.  Flirty could easily be a one coat wonder.  It's very thick but not goopy and it flows from brush to nail amazingly well considering how thick the polish is.

I did do two coats just to make sure there weren't any thin spots but in a time crunch could have gotten away with one. It dried to a soft but not quite satin finish that has a rather interesting feel to it, and perhaps because it's so thick, it took longer than I'm used to to dry so I recommend a quick dry topcoat like Seche Vite which will add the trademark shine like you see here and eliminate the texture that I can't quite describe.

One of the reasons I think I like this pink so much, is the barely there shimmer that keeps it from being just another bright pink creme but doesn't take it as far as "Oh hi, I'm wearing an outrageously bright and shimmery pink, just call me Barbie."

 

As far as pink polishes go, this one has my vote and I recommend it for being fun and unique.  

Blue Glitter

As part of my birthday pressy to me I got the rest of the glitters from the Burlesque collection so now I have the complete shimmer and glitter collection! AAAAwesome!
Oh how I love me a bit of blingy bling! Check this awesomeness out. This is OPI Simmer and Shimmer over Orly Viridian Vinyl and truth be told my opinion is that the VV if much improved with all the glitterfullness (I love making up words)
Simmer and Shimmer is a silver and blue glitter in a clear base, it's a little heavier on the silver I think but there is also trace amounts of pinkish/purpley glitter and an even tinier amount of yellow glitter in there as well. I've tried to capture the effect but it's been gray as all get out here so I'm taking pics at night by Ott light.

Here you can see the pinkish/purpleish glitter

I got this coverage in two coats and it dried amazingly quickly. Like really dry, not the I can touch the surface but it will dent like mad if I bump it dry.
It's also fairly smooth. There's not a lot of texture to it and a top coat like Seche would take care of that really easily.

In other blue glitter news, I also got China Glaze Dorothy Who? I used that to bling my toes. I lost count of how many coats it took to get this glitter saturation after the fourth coat. Yeah... Still a bit of VNL too, love-ah love it though.


I'm amazed at how smooth this is, really no need for a top coat at all.

Yeah I know my toes are a bit rough...but ask me if I care at the moment...Mmmm, not so much.


So there's my blue glitter run down, I hope you enjoyed. In other news... Joy! 95 followers. This means that I should start thinking about my 100 follower give away huh? Thank you so much for following and commenting. I think I have the hang of this reply thing so please keep the comments coming !

Viridian Vinyl

So this is what Wikipedia has to say about Viridian.

Viridian is a blue-green pigment, a hydrated chromium(III) oxide, of medium saturation and relatively dark in value. It is composed more of green than blue. Specifically, it is a dark shade of spring green, the color between green and cyan on the color wheel. Viridian takes its name from the Latin viridis, meaning "green".

Consider yourself edumicated . :D
I picked this up on clearance at Sally's. I hadn't been terribly interested in the vinyls when they came out but for $1.99 I thought what the hey.

This is two coats and those two coats went on really nicely but it seemed to take a lot longer than my regular polish to dry even for a surface dry. I didn't want to use a quick dry top coat and ruin the vinyl finish so I got a few instant dings.

I'm not quite sure about this vinyl finish although it wears well, this is day four I believe (lost track of time) and I've done a ton of cooking/cleaning. The "vinyl is pretty satin-y to begin with but gradually "shines up" with wear so you're not getting the full effect in these pics...sorry.
It's a pretty green...uh blue...mmm, viridian creme though and worth what I spent on it. I think I'll use a top coat on it though.

Mostly Pictures Monday

Orly Winter Wonderland 2 coats.

I think it's prettier than the snow. What do you think?

Snowball fight anyone?

Nothin' but Nail Guides Mani & Tutorial

How bad is it that as you're putting on one color of polish you're thinking of the different things you can do to it? I sometimes wonder if having so many polishes keeps me from truly appreciating the individual polishes. Umm...Ok, done philosophizing, lets move onto the polish. :)

As I was putting on OPI's Rising Star I was contemplating how I could turn it into another more glamorous Halloween look, I wanted to fit just one more in. Ug, can you believe this month is over!??

Anyway, here's what I came up with, and since my last tutorial was a hit, and this look is really simple and can be used with a variety of color combos, I figured I'd do another one.

Without embellishment

With embellishment

I must admit that I wish I'd left the jewels off, they just don't go with the look like I'd hoped.

Moving onto the tutorial!

Step 1: Apply your base coat and base color, (OPI Rising Star.) Make sure it's completely dry and apply french nail guides as shown.
Step 2: Apply a darker color (Orly Out of This World) to the area above the guides. Carefully remove the guides and apply a quicky drying top coat (Seche Vite) and let dry completely.
Step 3: Your nails will look like this, now you're going to take a fresh set of guides and using the diagram shown place them on your nails. The guide edge placement is important to achieve the crescent shape.
Step 3 cont.: Once your guides are in place, take your final color (OPI Take the Stage) and paint the area below the guides.
Step 4: Remove the guides, your nails will look like the pic above. Apply another top coat to smooth things out, you can also add embellishments if you like. Now sit back and enjoy.

Orly Witches Blue from this witch to you

With a name like Witches Blue how could I not post this color? What's more, I'm completely infatuated. This is one of those colors that suits me to a "T". It makes my finger look long, slender and as lovely and pale as a White Court vampire (Jim Butcher Dresden Files reference, HIGHLY recommend if you're into fantasy novels) I just love it!
I've been wearing this for about three days now and I'm not sick of it. I think this needs to go into my top ten favorite polishes list.
Application was amazing, I used my OPI Ridge Filler as the base and while I wouldn't say this is a one coat wonder, it is wonderfully opaque, smooth applying, none streaky and beautiful at two coats. This is topped it with China Glaze Fast Forward top coat and I love the glassy finish.

Prince Charming

It's taking me a bit to get back in the groove of posting so I went back through some of my pics and dug up a polish that I hadn't posted yet.
Here is Orly's Prince Charming, I wore this on one of my military days because it's a very neutral color. It reminds me of chocolate milk with maybe just the tiniest amount of strawberry mixed in.

I actually had a hard time with the application, the formula was super thick and if I tried to get a thin coat it was really streaky but otherwise it laid down way to much. Drying time seemed to take longer than most of my other Orly polishes as well. It's not a problem I usually run into so I'm thinking it may be a bottle or batch issue for this color.
Once is was down and dry though, I thought it was lovely, especially if you like the neutral sort of none-colors.
I thought it would make a nice base for some faux-nading so I thought I'd give it a try. I used American Apparel Factory Gray and a faux-nad plate.
Now nail stamping is something I've done just a handful of times so I'm not very good at all. I really need to practice more. It didn't turn out horribly horrid but it could certainly use work. Maybe I should set a personal challenge for myself to use my stamps more often.
What do you think? Needs work huh.
Hey, if you haven't already done so, enter my giveaway, I'll be announcing the winner this coming Monday.

Orly's Halley's Comet

I picked up the rest of Orly's Cosmic FX Collection last week and you know what? Space Cadet is not even in the top three favorites. Perhaps that's because it seems to be a much bling-ier version of OPI's Amethyst Abyss that I'm not as impressed by the multi chrome purple/green/gold.

With It's not Rocket Science in first place on my chart Halley's Comet takes a close second. I think that if mermaids used nail polish they'd give a few scales for this beauty!

This is two coats over OPI Ridge Filler and application was a breeze, cleanup...not so much. This seems to be hyper pigmented and it actually caused some staining on my skin.

Even in the shade it's beautiful.

Random Bits

Berlioz says hi!










First, here is the current mani I'm sporting. I actually got several comments on them today so I'm pretty pleased.

I used Sally Hansen Xtreme Blue Me Away as my base color with a faux-nad plate (courtesy of ebay) and Orly White Tips for the French and Stripe Rite for the yellow stripe.

Then, here is the pedi I'm sporting, I know it looks like I've got a bad shadow, but I actually did a vertical gradient on the big toes.
I used Savvy 'Totally Teal' and LA Girls Disco Brites 'Hustle' as well as a cute little aqua stars that arrived from Dollar Nail Art last night.
Kinda funny, I discovered a con to having a nice pedicure. My naughty puppies decided to dig under the fence and explore the neighborhood, a neighbor brought one of them home but that left one on the run so without even thinking I went out in search. I didn't think about the effect of heat on asphalt/concrete until it was too late, No calluses on your feet means burned feet. I actually have blisters. But what's really important is that the toes look fabulous as I hobble along.

Speaking of Dollar Nail Art, these were also in the package and are making it very difficult for me to keep my polka dot french on. I am dying to try some foils!
I'm going to try and be strong though. I have military duty for the weekend and all of next week so I'm going to keep the current mani until I have to go with the boring.
I dunno though, maybe I can get away with a neutral with the opal swirl over the top.

And finally, I went to Ulta to get the Goth Glam polish set but they were all out. The lady sounded like my daughter as she tried to get me to buy some of the other dark singles instead. "They're the same but different." Ok so I did buy some singles but really, if I'm there to buy something in particular don't give me the but this is practically the same schpiel.
I was actually pretty pleased to buy Ulta products because if you spent $17 and change you got a free makup bag that was an $88 dollar value. Look at all the goodies that were inside!
My thoughts on this deal. "SCORE!!" I don't know how long this is running but it's in my opinion it's well worth the $18 .
Here is a shot from the website, it's the cool colors, I got the warm in the green bag.

The Cali Mani

So, I can't tell you how much I agonized over this mani. Not because it's all that, but because it's for my trip to L.A. and has to be simple yet awesome and last until Sunday.
Well I think I managed the simple yet awesome part, but we'll have to wait and see on the lasting until Sunday part. My last few mani's I've tried Orly Bonder for my base coat with fairly good success. I say fairly good because I am beyond wicked to my nails. Cruel and unusual treatment comes to mind and that is why all of them now have a nice thick layer of acrylic over them. If I didn't I would have nothing but sad little nubbs...but back to 'Bonder'.
As said it seems to really be helping the staying power of my polish, I just don't have a long enough attention span to let a polish go long enough to see how far it will take me. At the moment I think four days is my record and I came out with barely there tip wear and part of that was because I did a pedi and held the cotton ball with my finger tips... Someday I'll learn right?

So back on track, this polish is Finger Paints Artistic Azure which I'm sure you can see is a gorgeous blue. It reminds me of the ocean and the sky so I figured it would be perfect for Cali.
The first coat went on a little streaky but the second coat fixed that and because I can't leave well enough alone, a third coat went on topped by Sally Hansen's quick dry (in the red bottle which isn't in front of me at the moment to see what it's actual name is).
It was lovely but I wanted to bump it up just a wee bit more, so I took Stripe Rite's blue glitter and added the diagonal streak. I need to put the top coat over that (these pictures are sans top coat over glitter) to beef up the shine a bit but other than that I'm really please with how this mani turned out.
What do you think, is it suitable for Cali?

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Red White and Blue Cont.

I decided to take my red white and blue theme down to my toes too. I decided to use different shades than what I used on my fingers though.

Used: Savvy 'Blush' for a base coat (it's a lovely clear red that does wonders for a bare nail), China Glaze 'Blue Sparrow (neon)', Orly 'Glam', and Stripe Rite 'White' & 'Silver'.

Hooray for the Red White and Blue!

This year is screaming by! Can you believe that it will be the Fourth of July in just a few short days? Me neither.

In the spirit of fun I suggested having a Fourth of July nail challenge to the Painted Ladies group on Ravelry. Ashley of I Enjoy Being a Girl graciously agreed to sponsor the event complete with a winner takes all prize. Fun Fun!!

Honestly, I can't count how many times I removed and reapplied polish to settle on the look I have now. I actually started going for something a lot more difficult. (Epic fail there for a beginner) then finally pared it down to the basics.

The challenge allows you to submit as many different looks as you like but I don't know if I'll have the fortitude to try another look on myself...maybe the daughter. But here it is.

Used: Orly 'Platinum' (white), Pure Ice 'Celestial' topped with 'Strapless' (blue), Sinful Colors 'Merlot' (red) and Stripe Rite Silver.