The Geek In the Pink

The title of today's post is a line from "Geek In the Pink" by Bruno Mars. I kept hearing it in American Eagle last weekend and ended up listening to it when I got home. It's a pretty catchy tune, and it fits with the color polish choice of today's post: pink! 

So Fiona and I ended up going to our town's Rite Aid on Monday. I had forgotten to buy eggs while I was at Walmart this past weekend and I needed some in order to bake brownies tonight, so we went to Rite Aid to get some. Of course while we were there we checked to see if they might have finally put out some more nail polishes. And for once, they did! The had a display of the new Sally Hansen Inta-Dri nail polishes that are in pastel colors for spring. They had a mint green that Fiona bought (she's already swatched it and compared it to the two other mint green colors that we have between the two of us) and I bought the last bottle of a pretty light blue and a very light, soft pink.

This is Pink Blink. It's a very light pink colored polish. It's just the perfect shade of light pink that makes it absolutely the perfect shade of girlie light pink that it made me want to cry. Like other pastels, it did streak a bit (a layer of top coat fixed that problem right up thought), and since I sometimes can't control the brush on the insta-dri nail polishes, I had a couple bald spots down near my cuticles. This was two coats with top coat (except for my thumb which was three). It does dry fast so that's a good thing.

I then got a little bored with it after a few hours, so I decided to do a diagonal French with Sinful Colors Boom Boom which is a bright fuchsia pink. It went on smoothly and turned out like the above photo.

And then because I couldn't leave it alone, I ended up putting Sinful Colors Pinky Glitter on top as well which is pretty much Nail Junkie's pink twin sister. At this point, my manicure was screaming "GIRLIE!" at me and the world. I really liked it, but I wasn't sure if it was a little too Barbie doll looking or not. I wore this manicure to Biological Science II lab and it lasted the whole time until my left pinkie finger chipped and then peeled the rest off in a fit of rage. But it did look really cool while it lasted!

-Amanda

I'm Tickled Pink!!

Hello!

Today I have another super cheap but wicked nice polish- Tickled Pink by Wet n' Wild Wet Shine that was 99 cents at Rite Aid. Pretty much all my nail polish are drugstore brands that are $5 or less because I currently am a broke ass college student with no job and no credit card to order stuff online and Amanda and I have yet to venture up to Maine to the Ulta up there. There is a Sally's in my hometown but I don't go there nearly as much as I'd like to and I don't have that kind of money any way. So I want to apologize if it annoys anyone that I don't show any high end poilshes on here. I ordered 5 China Glazes a few months ago and I have yet to swatch all of those and I've already swatched my 2 OPIs and my 1 Essie and thats all I have for more "expensive" nail polish. I don't have Konad yet but my birthday is in May and I'm asking for that as well as Bundle Monster plates (they're cheap on Amazon) and some Zoya, OPI, and Misa sets as well as Seche Vite!! DUH! And then hopefully I will be getting a job... definitely this summer so I'll have some more money to spend but for now, I do what I can!!

Anyway, mini rant over. This color really surprised me. I got it because A) It was 99 cents B) It was a cute spring color that I thought I could use for Easter/spring designs and C) It was 99 freakin cents!! I didn't expect to LOVE this color on me as much as I did!! But I do, and I now understand why pale pinks like this are so popular: they're flattering!! This one made the ugly ridges on my nails almost disappear and made my nails look so well taken care of, clean and perfect!! I love, love, love this color!! I just wish this had a better formula. :(

Tickled Pink needed 3 coats for opacity... it was pretty opaque at 2 but I had so much cuticle drag and streaks it needed 4 coats in total to smooth it all out. The formula was thick and runny at the same time as well as slow drying after the first coat. The second issue was that this color would not photograph accurately... it kept coming out as white or a lilac-y pink which its neither. I took about 60 pictures but only have a few to share because of the color issue. Plus it wouldn't color-correct in iPhoto as well as some other colors do...

First, this is Tickled Pink with one coat of Sinful Pinkie Glitter, which is the pink version of Nail Junkie, IMO, a gorgeous pink hex (?) glitter in a clear pink jelly base with little silver glitter pieces. These two made a great combo but after a few hours, I took it off partly because of my nail polish ADD and partly because it started to look like Barbie had thrown up on my nails...

Blurred to show sparkle... fail!

Very color accurate! This was sooooo girly... too girly for me I think in the end.

 Close (ish) up of glitter (click to see detail...)

Now here is Tickled Pink all by itself... lots of angles to try get the color right. Its actually brighter than all of these show!!

Natural light... cotton fuzz fail!

Its showing too light here...

Still too light...

This is probably the most accurate... its still too light though! My camera hates this color!

Natural light again... TOO DAMN LIGHT!!

Sorry about the failed pictures. :( What do you think of pink like this? Do you know of a dupe?

Hope you have a great day/night and thanks for looking!

Fiona

Sapphire In the Ocean

So, ever since I've gotten my hands on Sinful Colors Green Ocean, I've been meaning to layer this over a polish that I have. I had tried to do it over Nicole by OPI My Lifesaver, but it just didn't look right so I ended up taking it off. Fiona had told me that Green Ocean is supposed to look amazing over black nail polish, and I've seen pictures of this that proved that point. I also seen her put it over OPI A Grape Fit! and it looked pretty cool also. So I thought 'what about putting it over a blue or a dark purple/blue polish?'. That's when I though of using OPI Sapphire In the Snow.

This is two coats of OPI Sapphire In the Snow with two coats of Sinful Colors Green Ocean and a layer of top coat on top. I love how this came out. While Green Ocean looks amazing on top of black polish, I like it better over this ultramarine colored polish better. The way the flakies change colors from green to teal to aqua to blue to indigo to violet is just absolutely beautiful. It really does remind me of precious gemstones under a shallow amount of water with the sun beating down on them. Just the way the light plays and interacts with the flakies on my nails makes me keep looking at them because I like them so much!

And this is just the nails themselves close up. This is just soo pretty. This will be one of those manicures that I just can't bring myself to take off because I love it so much.

So if you're wondering if it's a good idea to put Green Ocean over dark purple/blue polish, I'd say hell yeah! It looks so amazing and it's a switch up from the traditional black polish base. I hope you all like this as much as I do!

-Amanda

Green Wed. #3- Comparison

Hello!

Today's Green Wednesday, I have a comparison of a new Sally Hansen Insta-Dry shade that I snatched up at Rite Aid, for you. I found this with a new (?) display of spring-y looking pastels (!!!! Love!!) Amanda got 2 and I got this one, Jade Jump. The name is funny to me because its obviously recycled from their older shade called Jumpin' Jade which I also have. Jumpin' Jade is a deep emerald shimmer while Jade Jump is a pale almost minty green, more of what I think of when I think of jade. Are they really that lacking in creativity down at the Sally Hansen factory that they need to recycle a name from a completely different shade? Its sad to me.

Anyway, this is a very nice polish with quite a pigmented formula for a pastel. It has the usual pastel streakiness issues but this one levels itself out pretty well. I used 2 or 3 coats of this, 3 on some nails that had some bald spots. 

After I got this on, I thought it looked familiar so I did a comparison (the first comparison on this blog so far!!) with two similar colors.

SH ID Jade Jump, Essie Turquoise and Caicos and Nicole by OPI My Lifesaver

They looked pretty similar to me, maybe not so much in the bottles but on they did. Here you can see without flash how different the other 2 are from Jade Jump.

I thought I'd compare them anyway. :)

With the flash on, they look pretty similar to me! L-R is JJ, T&C, ML, and JJ. Pictured is 2 coats of JJ, 4 coats of T&C and 2 coats of ML.

Here you can see that with the flash off and in indoor lighting, they are pretty different.

And then in desk lamp lighting, the differences and similarities are apparent.

Sorry for the grainy photos but these are the most accurate.

Here's T&C and My Lifesaver:

So what have we learned? No dupes here! Neither are even that close to Jade Jump; they're different shades of aqua while JJ is clearly green. T&C and ML are very similar but My Lifesaver not only has the better formula but its starker and cleaner looking than T&C. The finishes are also different. T&C is more of a jelly while ML is clearly a creme. So, if you own My Lifesaver, I don't think you need T&C and vice versa. These two are different enough from Jade Jump to justify getting it as well IMO.

I hope this was helpful to some of you. What do you think of Jade Jump? How did I do on my first comparison?

Hope you have a great day/night and thanks for looking!

Fiona

French Kissed Strapless

Hello!

Kinda dirty title, right? Today I have for you two Pure Ice nail polishes. Pure Ice can be found at Walmart for $2 each, so whenever I'm there (which is often) I always check out the Pure Ice display because I've found some awesome layering polishes there.

First is Pure Ice French Kiss, a medium cobalt blue creme. This is nice and opaque in 2 coats and has a very pigmented formula that dries very shiny. A perfect creme formula and a beautiful color. 

This didn't photograph properly so I color corrected a few shots to give you an idea of what this looks like. If you've been looking for a blue creme this color, I recommend you pick this up, its a very nice polish!!

2 coats with top coat, indoor lighting with flash, color edited. I tried not to mess with my skin but it ended up looking blue so excuse the skin color, the nail color and in the bottle are accurate.

This is how is kept photograhing: too dusty looking and not dark enough. This is a vibrant cobalt blue!!

And now here is French Kiss with 2 coats of Pure Ice Strapless layered on top. Strapless is a medium blue, dense glitter that's super sparkly and not super gritty either! Love!

These pictures are as close to accurate as I could get before my camera died... I didn't bother to edit them since they're close. The only downside to this combo was that it had all chipped off on my right hand at the tips in less than 24 hours so these pictures are of my left hand. Ignore my ring nub, its growing!!

Too much flash! But pretty shiny glitter!! This also removes like glitter: you'll need the foil method to get this off.

Elaine over at Lacquer Laine has a good post showing Strapless along with some other infamous blue glitters such as OPI Absolutely Alice and CG Dorothy Who?

Have you ever tried Pure Ice? If so, what is your favorite Pure Ice color?

Hope you have a great day/night and thanks for looking!

Fiona

Lively Lilac gets Busted

Hello!

I'm on a roll! 3 posts in 3 days! Wooooh! I'll keep this short on words (for real this time). These are pictures I took today in the bright sunlight of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry Lively Lilac. I don't remember buying this color or why I did because its very boring and safe to me, a pink toned lilac with a subtle light shimmer. But if you like the color you'll be happy to hear that this has an excellent formula and is opaque in one coat! I did 2 coats because I had some bald spots (it was 2 AM, I was tired). It dries instantly, undentable in at least 20 minutes or more without a TC and when I removed it tonight it came off so easily! So if you're into colors like this I recommend it, its just not my color.

Please ignore the lumps and fuzz... and my disgusting skin and cuticles!

And then I went to Walmart today and saw that they had replenished the Pure Ice display so I snatched up Busted and Strapless(!!!!). Busted is a very sheer but gorgeous lilac, gold and pink (?) duochrome and shimmer! It looks mainly lilac and gold. I layered this over Lively Lilac immediately and this is what I got: Gorgeousness!!

Unfortunately this didn't photograph well on my nails but the color in the bottle is really what you see on your nails!!

Bonus pictures: Me with my newly dyed burgundy hair. Edited, its not that bright.

Annnnd, my stash! I got a new box to put in my polish drawer that fits all of them. *Edit* 68 in total. I just got 2... I'm getting there!

Hope you have a great day/night and thanks for looking!

Fiona

Bows, Meh Polish, and Glitter Bomb (Kind of Pic Heavy)

So my plans for today fell through, but it wasn't a complete loss, I ended up buying this today...

http://www.outdoorbunker.com/PSE-Razorback-Junior-Recurve-Bow-p/(pse-41574r5420-25-).htm

Yep, I bought a brand new bow. I needed a new bow anyway since my old one was starting to become a bit dangerous in the way it let my arrows go. The limbs would wobble a lot when I drew back and let go of the string, resulting in my arrow fishtailing it's way down to the targets. In other words, a very bad thing. The photo that I found on Google is the junior version and is a right handed bow, I bought the adult version at 25lbs that's left handed. I am right handed, but I'm left eye dominant so I shoot left handed in archery.

So anyway, I have two polish swatches to show you today: Sinful Colors Mint Apple and Nicole by OPI One Less Lonely Glitter.

This is Sinful Colors Mint Apple. It's a mint green color that has gold and mint green shimmer to it. This is three coats of polish with Insta-Dri top coat. I could still kind of see VNL after the third coat, but I didn't want to add a fourth coat. The first coat dried fast, but the second and third coats took a longer time to dry. It was a bit annoying really since I needed to do stuff at the time. I myself like this color, but my mom took a look at it and told me "it's okay... nothing special". Fiona even told me that this color was meh. I like it, but I should have tried some funky French tips with this instead. It would have made the polish more likable all around I feel. Maybe I'll try it with a water marble sometime in the future. It kind of is a meh polish when you wear it alone.

This is One Less Lonely Glitter in the Justin Bieber collection for Nicole by OPI. The photos above show four coats of polish plus top coat. I could have done just three, but I wanted to make sure it was very glittery. I had seen a lot of swatches of this polish on various blogs, and I knew that I needed to buy this polish. And oh, what a polish it is! This polish is a light purple/amethyst/lilac colored glitter polish depending on what light you're in. It has small fine purple glitter and larger round pieces of purple glitter in the polish. It went on really nicely, and each coat dried very quickly. I only had to wait 3-4 minutes for each coat to dry. It was a little bit gritty with the first two coats, but the last two made it not as gritty. A coat of top coat took away the rest of the grittiness. And when I went outside today, this polish became blinding because it was shining like crazy. It becomes an awesome glitter bomb! I kept getting compliments from people today on my polish, they liked it that much! Why Bieber, why are you making such ha bisky nail polish when I can't stand your guts!?

Also today after I bought my new bow, my dad took me to the shooting range to shoot my new bow. Below are a couple of pics he took while I was drawing my bow back.

If you look really close in the top pic, you can see that I have on One Less Lonely Glitter on the hand that is gripping the riser (the technical term for the handle of the bow). Cool thing is is that my polish matched the color of my arrows which are purple!

-Amanda