The Muppets Collection by OPI! Swatches inside!

The Blogoswatchathon continues! The Muppets Collection by OPI was much anticipated by myself and many other polish addicts and they did not disappoint. In this blog, these are what I thought were the nicest and the best value for the bunch. Now, you must know I pay for all my polishes and OPI polishes are not cheap, so I bought a mini-4pack and 2 individual full size colors in order to get the most bang for my buck. I was really happy with all of them and a couple that I didn’t think were going to be that great (Designer…DeBetter and Wocka! Wocka!) turned out to be quite stunning.
I used my typical 3 coat application with a top coat of SV on all. This is especially important for the glitters like Rainbow Connection and Excuse Moi!. Most of my swatches are done after 1 day of wear, so you will see on a couple of them there is slight wear in the tips, like in the Warm and Fozzy swatches.
Here we go!

Wocka! Wocka! - This was, like I said, a pleasant surprise. It is a beautiful pinkish red that was worked so well with my skin tone. It’s simple, but beautiful and the application was smoooooth.

Excuse Moi is more of a jelly polish with multi colored “party” glitter floating in a vibrant pink base. This was lovely, playful and fun to wear.  Excuse the thumb chip.  :(

Designer…De Better. I thought this was going to be bo-ring! But I was really quite surprised at what a pretty delicate color this is. It is so shimmer and has the smallest micro specks of a peachy-copperish color. Love it.

Warm and Fozzie - what a stunner. Obviously, I liked it so much I couldn’t narrow down my swatches because I felt like each captures a little more of it’s beauty. While the base is Fozzie fur brown, there is also flecks of gold, green and even some pink! Preeetty!

Rainbow Connection - How fun is this? I layered Rainbow Connection over China Glaze Millenium, which I think worked out very well. I do have to say it is very much like all the other rainbow glitters I’ve seen that have come out in the past year or too by various companies from the frugal to the expensive, but I was happy to add it to my collection because….because… I do not own Deborah Lippman’s Happy Birthday! Sniffle, Sniffle. L

Meep Meep Meep is another one of those tough to shoot colors. The camera can’t figure it out, but I sure as hell tried to capture it as best as I could. I think the nicest thing about this one is the flakies that are floating around. It makes this one more interesting than you would expect when you really take a good look at it. Is is flakie shimmery goodness in a bottle. This one also went very nicely with my skin tone.

Thank you, OPI!

Until next time...
 

Wet N Wild Behind Closed Doors - Swatched!

Here’s a little bit of Wet N’ Wild for you. I love Wet N’ Wild because, they are constantly putting out new and exciting polishes and are always very inexpensive in comparison to other brands - usually @ around as little as $1.99 a pop to, on the high side, $3.99-$4.99 each. Not bad on the wallet, eh?
This precious polish, called Behind Closed Doors, I picked up after searching many, many, MANY Walgreen’s for it. And now, it is MINE! :::Maniacal Laugh, Maniacal Laugh, Maniacal Laugh:::
This polish can be built up on it’s own and has more of a jelly-like consistency. It has a smoky blackish base with hexagonal red glitter and teeny tiny round red glitter. Application wasn’t too bad, usually these kind of polishes require finessing and arranging of the glitter as you layer. I used several coats for this manicure with a SV top coat, as usual. I think Behind Closed Doors works better as a layering polish over red or black, although I admit I didn‘t try it on its own. In these swatches, I layered Behind Closed Doors over Butter London’s Knees Up. All in all, I think the manicure turned out quite nice. What do you think?

American Apparel Goodness! Cameo Blue, Lopez Canyon, African Violet Swatches

So, I had promised myself I would get finish uploading all my Fall 2011 swatches to my blog and I sorely disappointed myself.  In a mad dash, last ditch effort, I’m going to make up for lost time and churn out the blogs with the speed of Superman. They may not be wordy, but it will happen.
On this edition of speed blogging, we have American Apparel polishes that were new for Fall 2011 - Cameo Blue, Lopez Canyon and African Violet. Most folks don’t think of nail polish when they think of American Apparel, but hopefully this will make a few folks check out their collection next time their in an America Apparel store and also hopefully, those folks will be as pleasantly surprised as I was when I first tried them out last year with Mouse, Factory Grey and Peacock (which are some really sweet colors too).
Here is Cameo Blue. Blues and red and greens are hard to photo, but I think these pics are as close to how it appears in person as I could get it.  Same goes for Lopez Canyon as it is a burnt orange color.  All of these swatches were 3 coats with a top coat of SV and all 3 are shiny as all hell, as you will see, aaaa-and application was “like buttah” with these guys.  Thank you, American Apparel, for putting out such nice economical polishes.  Right now these bad boys are 3/$15 on their website and they have added some glitters and metallics that I need to peruse for possible future purchasing.  American Apparel



Please excuse the index finger dent :(



Butter London Fall 2011 Wallis, Bluey and Knees Up!

Wow, it's been awhile.  I feel like it was just Halloween and now November is almost over! 
Well, I'm going to try to play blog catch up over the next few days with a backlog of swatches I have and let me tell, you I have TONS to share.  Plus, I'm SUPER excited about my one and only Black Friday purchase of the Cult Nails "Super Powers" collection, featuring the much coveted Unicorn Puke which has been released as Clairvoyant to the masses.  This lemming was snatched up just in time as it's now sold out and who knows when it'll be available again (Thank you facebook for the heads up).   Here's a link for your previewing pleasure: Cult Nails Super Powers Collection.  I'll swatch them just as soon as I get them. 
In the meantime, I have 6 colors of the Muppets Collection to share, Color Club Foiled Collection, part 2 of the Color Club Back to Boho Collection, some new American Apparel colors and Wet N Wild's Behind Closed Doors, which is a red and black masterpiece. Yup, tons of back log.  I'm also thinking of doing a "my favorites" blog, with my favorite general beauty products- not just the products I like for nails.
Now on to the swatches!  I have to say that I love love LOVE butter London polishes.  They are a 3 Free polish company (aka non-toxic) that can be found at your local Ulta store. Aside from the 3 colors that I will be showing you, I have about 5 others that are absolutely stunning as well including No More Waity, Katie, All Hail McQueen, West End Wonderland, Lady Muck and Victoriana.  On my current lemming list is the Black Knight - hopefully I'll get him on my next Ulta run.  I recommend you check out their adorable website for the full collection of colors @ Feast your eyes on butter London! Anywho, first we have Bluey, which is shim-mer-y blue madness!  We'll just the swatch speak for itself.






(This picture is more true to Bluey color-wise.) 



 Next up is Knees Up, which I think has to be one of the most stunning reds I have ever laid my eyes upon.  It is the perfect red satin and I think is a must for a nail polish lovers collection.  Check it out..

Let me just add that the above photo doesn't do this color justice, but as I have learned some colors such as red, are just harder to capture than others.  Application for both Bluey and Knees Up was only slightly tricky, as it can leave streaks if you are not careful and if you are not using even strokes while applying it.  I used 3 coats for each with a top coat of SV. 

Lastly, the Queen of all butter London colors, is Wallis, which is named after Wallis Simpson.  If you don't know who Wallis Simpson is, she plays a big part in British Royal history and a small part in the King's Speech.  This color is almost indescribable, it's so unique and eye catching.  It's like an antique bronzey gold with a greenish hue and speckles of black and is super shimmery.  If I had to play favorites between Chanel's Peridot and Wallis, I think Wallis wins hand down.  Wallis a must more interesting color and is much more affordable, at half the price.  Here she is...

(excuse the tip wear, please)

What did I tell you?  I told you she is GORGEOUS.  Now you will just have to run out an buy yourself some butter London, won't you?  butter London polishes run a little higher than your typical OPI, Orly and China Glaze brands at $14.00 a pop, but I really feel they are worth the price.  Definitely, nail polish investments, as I like to call them.

FYI: butter London also has some really cute nail skins that I am dying to try out, but I have to spread out my nail shopping budget so that I don't end up nail poor.  Maybe for X-mas. 

Until next time...

Candy Corn Mani for Halloween

So I'm a day late, but I say better late than never.  I wore this manicure Sunday and Monday for Halloween.  I must say it's one of those manicures that you want to look at in a Monet-like fashion...which is from far away.  Because up close, it's kind of messy looking, but it was my first try, so I think I get a pass.  Here we go!

You will need a white polish, yellow and an orange polish.  The more saturated and more opaque the polish, the better. 

The first step is to cover the nail with the white polish and let dry thoroughly.

Then, you paint the nail with the yellow polish starting from about 1/4 of the way up or so from the cuticle, covering the white completely.  You may need two coats and it doesn't have to be perfect.  Again, let dry.

Finally, paint a stripe of the orange polish starting at the lower edge of the yellow- where the white and orange meet, taking up the center third of the nail, more or less.  I had to paint perpendicularly against the nail with a super steady hand in order to the get the stripe to be as even as possible and I didn't sweat it when it got on my skin.  On my mani, I had to use several coats of the orange in order to even things out and in order to reach maximum opacity on top of that yellow. 

After all coats are nice and dry, top it off with some SV for super shiny results and then clean up those edges and cuticles and you're done. 

Here are the polishes I used for this manicure.  Sinful Colors are usually available at Walgreens and Target.  I found mine at Walgreen's for $1.99 a piece and the Sally Hansen orange was also purchased at Walgreen's for not much more. 

I can't wait to try something new next year.  :)