Dark & Stormy

Hello! This is my 50th post and I feel a bit like I should have worn something a bit more special for it but I didn't actually realize it until just now lol. That's ok, I have a really good one for my next post :) I also feel like I should have done this one a couple weeks ago when the typhoon hit, the name would have been really apt for that haha!

Dark & Stormy is an Icing polish I picked up sometime last year, this is my first time wearing it though. I do love blue polishes but for some reason I don't think they look right on me. They give me corpse hands so I rarely wear them. This is a gorgeous deep blue/green (green/blue?) that makes me think of the ocean. It almost has duochrome tendencies though I wouldn't actually call it one. Application was great, I used three coats as is usual for me.

I think part of the reason I hadn't worn this till now was because I found China Glaze Rodeo Fanatic shortly after I bought this and they are quite similar. They aren't dead on dupes though, at least in the bottle (I haven't done a comparison swatch). Dark & Stormy has a much heavier green flash than Rodeo Fanatic though I think it would be a decent substitute if you can't find the China Glaze.

I may actually come back to this and post a comparison of Dark & Stormy vs Rodeo Fanatic, partially to satisfy my own curiousity. If I do I'll probably do a new post and put a link in here.

Also, I've actually compressed my photos this time which I don't normally do, though I have posted them large. My blog loads quite slowly and while I'm mostly clueless on things like this I assume it's due to picture size. I'm undecided if I should go back through previous posts and compress them or not. I'll have to think about it.

Thanks for stopping by!

Meeka :)



Random China Glaze Swatches

So, I'm a fail blogger. It's been nine days since my last post and I didn't even get pics of my last mani. Since I haven't changed it yet (that's tomorrows project) and it's not remotely in photographic shape I figured I'd throw a few quick swatches at you instead.

I haven't posted many China Glaze polishes as I've been working my way through my untrieds. They are one of my favorite brands and I do miss having easy access to them. They never shy away from crazy or weird colors and the formula is generally great and they're affordable. As an ode to China Glaze here are a few from my stash.

The classic raspberry Heli-Yum from the spring 2010 Up & Away collection. I don't often do pink but this one I love. It's not truely pink, I can't decide if it's a red toned pink or a pink toned red lol. Either way, it's a 1-2 coater and super hot.

Unplugged, from the spring 2008 Ecollection. Such an insanely rich brown, I love how much this one glows :)

 Tempest. I think this is just part of the core collection. It's a very pretty blue with heavy purple flash. I think purple with blue flash is much more common but this is quite nice if a little sheer. Oh well, it still covers well enough with three coats :)

This is VII from the 2007 X collection, celebrating China Glaze's 10 year anniversary. This is an awesome eggplant purple. I don't wear it often but it is gorgeous. China Glaze does spectacular cremes, so smooth and buttery!

I hope you guys enjoyed my mini swatch fest, hopefully I'll have a real manicure to show you in the next day or two.

Thanks for stopping by!

Meeka :) 

Electrick

Hello! I feel a little fail for not posting for a week lol. I'd like to give some good excuse like life got in the way or whatever but the reality is, I was being lazy :P Well, also the polish I have for you... I did not feel enthusiastic about posting at all. I hated it when I put it on, I didn't even want to take pictures of it which I had to wait till the next day to do, then I didn't feel like going through the pictures or writing a post about it. This is possibly the first polish that I have definitively said DO NOT WANT. Oddly enough it stayed on for almost 3 days. Please tell me I'm not the only crazy one who that happens to? I disliked it so much I didn't even want to deal with taking it off. Yeah, it makes no sense to me either lol!

So, the concept of the Del Sol polishes is cool. I picked up two of them on a cruise in December, however I bought them on the ship and they only had a few colors, otherwise I don't think I would have even bought this in the first place. Electrick is a sheer, frosty, brushstrokey mess. The blue base color is so unflattering on me and the seafoam green it turns to in sunlight is not much better. At least it wasn't difficult to apply, if you can ignore the brush strokes and the four coats it took to almost reach opacity. Which is probably the nicest thing I'll say about this lol. Anyways, I put the pictures side by side so you can see the shade color and the sun color together.

Does anyone else have any Del Sols that they like? Have any of you tried this one and liked it? I'm leary to try the other one I've got now though I'm sure I'll eventually suck it up and give it a go hahah :P

Thanks for looking!

Meeka :)



Majolica Majorca BL501

Good afternoon ladies! (afternoon for me anyways, good night or good morning to you!) I've actually got two posts today and I've decided to start with this one :)

Majolica Majorco is a Japanese makeup brand by Shiseido. I swear everything over here is by Shiseido lol. Not that I mind, I've found some awesome stuff from them :) The MM polishes come in super teeny bottles which makes them fairly expensive per ml. The bottles are ridiculously cute however, and some of the polishes are very interesting and worthwhile.

I picked up BL501 as it really stood out, it glowed under the flourescent lights of the store! It's a royal jelly blue with green shimmer and really quite pretty. The majority of the asian nail polish brands I've tried, whether expensive or not, have all had excellent application. Besides the tiny bottle and tiny brush this was no different, super easy to work with. I used 3 coats to reach opacity, I think you can see some vnl in these shots but I assure you it's not noticable to the naked eye.

Of course I'm sure you're wondering if it's a dupe to Orly's Royal Navy and since I do own that I figured I'd do a comparison for you. I think for most people these would be considered dupes, however for polish lovers there is a definite difference. Royal Navy has a slightly lighter blue base and slightly finer green shimmer. I think it's actually difficult to tell in my pictures so you can take my word for it :P

In these pictures I've got BL501 on index and ring, Royal Navy on middle and pinky. Also an appearance from my right hand. Btw, holding the camera steady while trying to take pics with my left hand is hard! Haha :P

Please excuse the big ding in my middle finger, we had an accident...

Funny enough I wasn't much of a fan of Royal Navy when I bought it, I love it in the bottle but the shimmer never showed up on my nails and for some reason I'm not sure about that shade of blue on me. I've been storing it upside down as someone had recommended and I can definitely say that makes a difference in the amount of shimmer that shows on the nails. If I had to pick between the two here I think I lean towards RN, if only for the finer shimmer.

Thanks for looking!

Meeka



Crystal

All right! Here's the first of the Zoya's I got in the Earth Day Exchange. I had a hard time deciding which to use first (although Mimi went on my toes asap :P that shade of purple is a favorite of mine for feet) so my husband piped up and voted for Crystal, he's a big fan of blue :) 

Zoya Crystal is an icy blue filled with gold glitter. I know it's a popular shade for Zoya but for me it fell a little flat. I love the combination of blue with gold glitter but I think I prefer OPI's version better in Absolutely Alice. It is still a pretty color though so I'm not sure if I'll keep it or put it up for swap.

I am a fan of Zoya's application and this one went on very nicely. The odd thing about this one is that it goes on gritty and stays that way for about a day and then goes really smooth. Sadly, once it smooths out it also loses any punch the blue has.

Oh! Today we had sun!! Beautiful, bright, gorgeous sun! We packed up the towels and headed to the beach for the afternoon but I did take pictures of Crystal first :)

Thanks for looking!

Meeka

Revlon Not So Blueberry

Another day, another Revlon. Another smelly Revlon even. I must admit, this one smells like candy and I was maybe sniffing my nails a bit for the first day. Unfortunately for me the smell didn't last too long. Also unfortunately for me we haven't had sun in days so it was grey sky pictures or nothing. One of these days I may get around to building a light box for weeks like this.

Not So Blueberry is a fantastic icy blurple foil. Yes, shoot me now, I said blurple. Really though, it's both blue and purple so I can't pick just one to call it lol. And I call it a foil but it may just classify as metallic, I'm not sure. It looks foily to me so it's a foil :P

One last note before pictures, no this is not ridiculous tip wear, this is shrinkage courtesy of Poshe. Different top and base coats will react differently to people and this one does not like me. I've never experienced as much shrinkage with as many polishes as I have using Poshe so it's back to Seche Vite for me when this runs out. If I can get it anyways, otherwise I'll be hunting down something else lol.

I love how this picture makes this look duochrome, I promise it's not.

I must say, I'm once again unimpressed with the formula. I want to like Revlon polishes as they're easy for me to get, and they do have some nice colors lately, but the difficulty I've had with application on every one I've used is making me rethink purchasing more.

Thanks for looking!

Meeka

A-Rainbow 9

First of all, forgive me if I don't make sense, it's really late here right now and I should be in bed but I wanted to get this up tonight. I try to post at least every 3-4 days and it's been almost a week I think. I'd like to post at least every 2-3 days but I guess I can be a little lazy about getting things up. I have two more sets of photos ready to go right now so I don't even know what the problem is. Oh well, this blog is still newish to me so I guess I'm still figuring out my habits.

Anyways, on to the polish. This was one of the 100 Yen store holos I found. It's actually what I used as the base for my franken too. Being as these holos (I think I have eight colors) are all fairly sheer I figured I'd layer it over Orly Snowcone which is a beautiful light blue. On its own #9 comes out a little silvery but over Snowcone it was very blue and very pretty.

It just occured to me now looking at this that this wasn't the bottle pic I meant to post *sigh*

Okay so, my good camera hates holo. When I took all these I was thinking "Wow, that's so pretty! It's so sparkly! Oooooh!" Then I uploaded them to my comp and went "What the...?" For some reason it seems to completely wash it out. So of course I had to grab my point and shoot to see if there was a difference and wow is there ever! I think the actual color is closer to the first set of pics, the paler blue, but the holo I saw on my nails was more like this second set. So of course I had to share :P

I liked this so much I actually went and bought a backup of it lol. The bottles are so damn tiny that I feel like I'll run out in about 3-4 manicures! Oh well, it's definitely worth it in my opinion :)

Thanks for looking!

Meeka

Deviously Frankened

Confession time, I'm a holo hoor. I'm obssessed with holos and I know I'm not alone! One of my biggest holo lemmings is China Glaze's DV8, I am in love with the gorgeous bright blue of it. So of course when I decide to try frankening for the first time what do I do? I try to recreate DV8!

In my opinion she ended up a little too green but she's still rather pretty I think!

All the pictures are clickable and you may have to do so to see the holo in this. It's not nearly as strong as DV8 but it's definitely there! I really enjoyed wearing this polish, partly because it's beautiful and partly because I'm pretty proud of it :)

I did however want to see it a little more blue so the next day I added a couple more drops of royal blue, I think it's almost perfect now. I still wish I could get the strong linear effect that the OMG's have but this will definitely keep me happy until I can get my paws on the original!

And of course, the cast!

I used the A-Rainbow silver/blue holo as the base (far right), China Glaze Shower Together gave it the majority of it's blue/teal look, followed by a touch of NYC Empire State Blue. To deepen the color I used a few drops of the Sweets royal blue on the far left, then to pull out more of the green/teal and amp up the holo I added a little bit of Nubar Reclaim.

I hope you enjoyed my first attempt at frankening, I plan to be doing more as soon as I get ballz! Apparently ball bearings and/or bb's are impossible to get on this island so I have to order them :(

Thanks for looking!

Meeka

Nail Sparks Royal Blue Jelly

I picked this polish up the same time as the one in my last post. I actually grabbed about five or six of these ones, they're really nice! So far I've been impressed with all the Winmax polishes I've picked up and there's quite a few of them. They have a number of different lines including these Nail Sparks, the Pedicure line from my last post and A-Rainbow which is a line of gorgeous holos! What I love the most is that these are a 100Y shop brand, with exchange I pay about $1.25 for them. Score!

Anyways, Nail Sparks #81 is a gorgeous royal blue jelly with shimmer. It has some distinct purple shimmer in the bottle but on the nail it only shows as a silverish color.

So all my bottle pictures were coming out almost black due to a lack of sun. I haven't seen that fireball for about a week now unfortunately. This was the only one I snapped that showed really any color and it happened to be super close up :P

This is fairly color accurate. Just look at that jelly squishyness!

I had to include this picture, look at that incredible purple shimmer! It barely looks like the same polish :P

And of course a few more angles of this beauty.

Now, being a jelly this is a minimum three coater. I ended up with four coats on my ring and index finger of my left hand as I had to fix a couple dings and I found the purple shows more on those fingers. I wasn't expecting this to be a jelly when I bought it but I'm kind of glad it is and I hope the rest them are too :)

Thanks for looking!

Meeka

Smell of the Ocean Breeze

I picked up a few of the Revlon scented polishes recently. I have mixed feelings on these, I dislike gimmicks and some scents have the tendancy to give me major headaches but on the other hand there's some cute colors. My husband picked Ocean Breeze out at the store and from my untrieds pile when I needed a mani change. Since it is a little sheer I layered two coats over WnW black creme.

The color is what I would describe as a bright metallic teal with a blue duochrome. It's not a super flashy duochrome but it's definitely there in certain lights. As for the smell, when I was younger I had a perfume from the Body Shop that had a similar name (and bottle color if I recall correctly) and this smelled almost exactly like I remember that smelling. It was quite strong the first night but had faded to tolerable levels the next morning and now three days later I can only smell it faintly if I sniff my nails.

You can see a hint of the blue duochrome around the edges of the bottle.

Sunny and teal.

This polish definitely seems to photograph more blue than it is, in real life it's much greener.

Trying to show the duochrome, I don't think it's working.

This is closer to color accurate and shows a hint of duochrome.

This polish is ridiculously shiny in the sun.

Overall, I really love this color, it's very bright and perfect for summer. I'm glad the smell isn't so overwhelming, I'd hate for this to be unusable due to that.

Thanks for looking!