Archive for October 2012

Nail Pattern Boldness Halloween 2012: Witch Pit

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Hi folks!

Halloween is fast approaching, and I can practically taste the forbidden chocolate in my mouth already (unfortunately, I need to have a low sugar diet year round, but I know I'll steal a piece or two!). Want to see one of my new favorite Halloween polishes?

Witch Pit by Nail Pattern Boldness! Teal and black micro bar glitter (the thinnest, hairy kind) in a clear base. I know. Hair glitter is split down the line; usually you love it or you hate it. I love it EXTRA hard.

I wore it here over a black creme. Hairy bar glitter can be really tricky to apply out of all the different kinds of glitter, I find that where other glitters lay flat on the nail, this sort of glitter sort of wants to go in all directions (similar to a bad hair day). For me, I find that adding couple of drops of polish thinner to any bar glitter right before I use it to ensures that it is very fluid and easy to apply.

I used one coat of Nail Pattern Boldness Glitter Food on top, followed by a quick dry top coat.

You can buy Nail Pattern Boldness polishes on Llarowe or on the Nail Pattern Boldness Etsy page.

Bar glitter- how do you feel about it?

Product featured was given to me by the owner. For additional information please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

Zoya Holiday 2012: Ornate Collection

Monday, October 29, 2012

Good evening!
I'm a little behind, I had hoped to have this post up a while ago but unfortunately ran into delays. I suspect you will have seen this collection by now already... but a few more pictures can't hurt! There's holo, glitter, gorgeous golden flecks. What more could you want?

Blaze. One of my favorites from this collection. A deep cranberry jelly with holographic particles, making for a scattered holographic polish. Two coats.

Ziv. A champagne gold foil- not too yellow-gold with large bronze flakes. It reminds me of specks of nutmeg floating on eggnog. Super reflective. Two coats.

Storm. A black base with chunky silver holo bits. I have quite a few black with holo polishes but this one is just so nice! The holo doesn't drown nor does it cause the polish to dry bumpy. Holo is more prominent than my pictures would suggest. 3 coats.

Logan. A blue-green jelly base packed full of golden flecks so that it appears green. Absolutely stunning, it screams "holiday!" to me. 3 coats.

Aurora. A purple large particle, chunky holo. More holo sparkle than Blaze. Reminds me of Glitter Gal High Voltage. 3 coats.

Electra. Ooh! Silver holographic bar glitter, very fine. I tried wearing it by itself and there were still bald spots after four coats, so I suggest layering it instead. It's so beautiful, perfect for a New Year's Eve manicure.

I really like this collection a lot. Though many of the polishes may not be completely unique, they are still really well done. There's something for everyone- you have light catching glitter and rich jewel toned holos (though scattered), this set is a real crowd pleaser. I definitely will be sporting these shades in the weeks to come!

Zoya nail polish is $8 each, 4 free and can be found on the Zoya website.

Products were sent to me for review. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

Chanel Notorious Ombre Contraste

As soon as I heard about this new Chanel product on MakeupAlley last month, I knew I would really want it. When I found a counter that carried it, I didn't hesitate to order it.

Notorious is a cool, ash taupe 'blush'. Perfect contouring product.

The texture is similar to the baked Joues Contrastes. Pigmentation is on the lighter end, which I appreciate because contouring can go so wrong so quickly- it keeps me from being heavy handed. The color is not actually completely matte, there's a hint of shimmer. Though I traditionally shy away from shimmer in my contour colors (sparkly bits reflect light, drawing the eye which is undesired when trying to create a shadow), on the skin Notorious does not particularly look shimmery. It ends up being rather satin.

Here's a comparison between some other similar shades, even though some of them are eye shadows not intended as all over contour shades. It is much more cooler than NYX Taupe, which is what I was using previously.

I'm very happy that I snagged this product. Now I can have those cheekbones I was never born with. Or maybe they're there, but they are under a few layers of stuff, if you catch my drift!

What do you use to contour?

Products featured were purchased by me, for my own use. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

butter London Two Fingered Salute

Friday, October 26, 2012

Do you ever save a polish or new makeup for some unspecified special occasion? No? *shifty eyes* Me neither.
Actually, a lot of my untrieds fall into that category. I may acquire something that I know is absolutely gorgeous but I won't use it until that that "right" moment. Slightly crazy I know! I'm not saving it for marriage or anything just a day like today. What happened today, might you ask?

A portion of my desk literally collapsed from the weight of my nail polish. I was tempted to take a picture, but the result was that my desk was in such a disarray, I found it rather embarrassing. It looked like a tornado hit a polish factory. Well, that's good enough reason for me to pull out a cool untried polish!

Enter butter London Two Fingered Salute. A Nordstrom exclusive, as far as I know - $14. A gorgeous muted sage green with lots of specks of copper that flash magenta. Breath taking. This has greatly subdued my longing for Rescue Beauty Lounge Halcyon.

I did three thin coats. Not too bad of a formula but nothing to write home about.

So 'fess up: ever save any beauty goodie for a later date?

Products featured were purchased by me, for my own use. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

Braiiiins!

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

The design smeared a little after I applied topcoat :(

I used: American Apparel Army Jacket, Wet'n'Wild Black Creme, Sinful Colors Snow Me White, American Apparel Palm Springs, American Apparel Rouge.

Also, my hands look like crap. I need a total hand treatment, stat.

Products featured were purchased by me for my own use. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

FOTD & a Change of Hair Color

Monday, October 22, 2012

I recently colored my hair color! I like it, though it is a tad bit more red than I would have liked. I think I may go a bit darker in the future, but I'm leaving it alone for now since lightening hair tends to be stressful for my locks.

I had finally found a brow shade that I think matches my hair pretty well without leaning too warm. I mixed LORAC Suede and Cappuccino, not too bad!

Brows: LORAC Suede & Cappuccino shadows
Face: G2Organics Hickey Stick*, Giorgio Armani Luminous Silk + MUFE HD, Guerlain Meteorites (Emilio Pucci edition), Chanel Notorious
Lips: Revlow Rosy Nude
Eyes: NYX HD Eyeshadow Base, Fyrinnae Polar Bear, LORAC Multi Platinum Palette (black & ivory shades), MAC Concrete

What sort of treatments do you like to do for just colored hair? My favorite is Design Essentials Express Moisturizing Treatment. It makes my hair feel so amazing! (If you're curious I blogged about it HERE)

*Indicates a product that was sent to me for review. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

The First of Many Halloween Manicures

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Hi folks,
I want to start out by thanking each and every one of you who left me a comment on my last post or took the time to to send me an email, tweet, chatted with me on Kik. I haven't finished replying to all of them yet, but I wanted to let you know how grateful I am to have such a wonderful community reach out to me during a time in life that was really difficult. Truly. You guys are the best, I felt so uplifted as I read each and every message. :')

I've been sort of methodically doing my nails (for the sake of doing something) and this was one manicure that I came up with. I used Orly Glam Rock for the base which is this gorgeous orange ("suede") matte shade and stamped it with BM13, Konad Black.

Actually, here's the thing. I found a dead spider in one of my boxes of China Glaze polishes the other day and freaked out. I uh... am deeply terrified of spiders. I know, it's dead! Still, I'll admit that throwing that whole box away may have crossed my mind. It took me a while to work up the courage to flush it down the toilet.

Mom: What are you going to do when you have kids and they find a spider? What if they're scared too? What if they want you to deal with it?
Me: Move. Start over. I'm sure we can just buy new things and move on with our lives.

Yeah. I'm scurred.

Products featured were purchased by me, for my own use. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

Not a Real Hiatus

Monday, October 15, 2012

Hi folks,

I haven't been posting a lot lately and I just wanted to check in really quickly. I experienced a loss that has left me really devastated- my beloved dog Kuma. To be honest, I don't really want to get into it too much. The searing heartache has finally dulled to an ache that I can bear and I don't particularly wish to dive head first into waves of sorrow and despair, because I don't know if I can pull myself out again.

Every single time I get home and open the door, I brace myself for the sound of you running to the door. The sound of claws as you get up, the muffled thumping as your heavy paws pad towards the door.

It doesn't come.

And it feels terrible.

Mostly, I've been trying to stay busy. I'm prone to bouts of depression in the winter months as it is and I'm trying everything I can to ... I don't know. Be ok, I guess. Trying to stay active has kept me out and about, away from my computer and blogging.

I'll be back soon though, I love blogging far too much to stop.

Hot Mess Lacquers- Across the Trailer Park

Thursday, October 11, 2012

I had some Copious credits a while back, so I used them to buy the first polish with a hilarious name that caught my eye. Behold, Hot Mess Lacquers Across The Trailer Park. Ok, to be fair I had been looking for a Deborah Lippmann Across The Universe type polish for a while now, and this fit the bill nicely.

I used two coats here on top of Revlon Royal. I love it. I REALLY really love it. I can't wait to wear it by itself, I bet it will have a lot of depth. Green and blue hex glitter with small micro glitter pieces in a blue jelly base.

You can buy Hot Mess Lacquers on Etsy here or on Copious here.

Do you have Deborah Lippmann's Across the Universe, Essence Blue Addicted or any glitter that is in this family of polishes?

Products featured were purchased by me for my own use. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

Review: Lens Village - Dueba Puffy 3 Tone Grey

Tuesday, October 9, 2012

Hey folks, I have a review today that is a bit different than my usual reviews of makeup or polish. The folks at Lens Village were really awesome and sent me a pair of lenses to review- the Dueba Puffy 3 Tone Grey. I was really excited to try out these lenses because I love playing with different eye colors with different makeup, even though in the past I had bought circle lenses that I didn't particularly like.

The Dueba Puffy 3 Tone Grey lens is beautiful. Just look at it! A cool grey color rimmed with just a hint of dark charcoal, with a soft honey color that helps transition the color of the lens to the color of your iris. In the pictures, you can see a lot of my brown peeking through but I feel like that is because my pupil was highly contracted since I was using flash directly in my eye (derp!). The three toned look really makes it look more natural (as natural as grey eyes on an Asian woman can look, any how).

I found that the lenses were pretty comfortable. Since I do usually wear contacts and I'm used to the feel of my prescription brand, the first few times I wore the Puffy 3 Tone Grey it felt a little weird to me. However, after wearing it a few more times, I've gotten used to it. I would definitely recommend that you keep eye drops for contact wearers handy though, especially if you're going to wear them for five or more hours in one stretch.

Some quick info:

Price: $13 right now on sale, regularly $19.50 (Uhm, what a steal!)
Size: 14.5mm in diameter
Lifespan: 1 year

I also really liked the packaging. The bottles that the lenses came with were very nicely sealed with really cute drawings on them. Also, look at the cute case! An elephant! I've also seen their hippo lens case and that is, if possible- even cuter.

In short, if you're looking for colored lenses with, I highly recommend Lens Village. In fact, I'm probably going to buy my sister a pair of lenses very shortly because I was so impressed by the huge selection of lenses that they have, the prices and their customer service. Their website and blog have SO much information! Anything you could possibly want to know about these lenses, it's there. My experience with Lens Village and this set of Dueba Puffy 3 Tone Greys have changed how I feel about circle lenses and I'm definitely interested in wearing them more often.

Check out the Lens Village Facebook page and the blog for more reviews and pictures.

Have you tried colored contact lenses or any sort of circle lenses? Where did you get them? Did you like them?

Product featured was sent to me for review. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.

Swatch Stick Organization

Friday, October 5, 2012

Hey folks! Just wanted to do a quick post about how I organize my swatch sticks. This has actually been a five month long process, I just FINALLY finished painting and sorting the sticks.

Why did it take me five months? Well, I'm a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to menial (yet daunting) tasks like swatching all of my polishes and labeling them. Er, well the other reason it took me so long is because I kept severely under estimating how many polishes I had, so I kept having to order more and more sticks.

Where to buy it: Swatch sticks are on eBay for about $3.60 for 50 sticks. It comes with a straight threaded long screw but I wanted to put them on rings. Search for "Nail art display sticks" or something like that.

I have two sizes of rings. One are 2" book rings I bought from Staples. a 12 pack for... gosh, $4? I needed about 3 of those packs. Then I bought 3" rings from eBay, it was like $12 for something crazy, like 80 rings. The problem is that the swatch sticks don't fit on the 3" rings (the ring is too thick to pass through the holes) but the 2" rings barely hold any sticks. So I group them together and put similar rings on a super ring. For example, 25 of my layering glitters might be on a 2" ring, then that and other 2" full of glitters on on the mega 3" glitter ring. I'm hardcore.

Before you ask, how many polishes do I actually have? Er, I'm still in denial about it. I won't count them. Also every time I do start to count, I lose track. I think like 550-600ish.

It feels so good to finally have them all sorted out! Have you swatched all your polishes yet? What did you use and how do you organize them?

CLOSEDZoya Toni & Natty Giveaway Sponsored by Verve 360 Pittsburgh Salon

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

Hi folks! I'm very pleased to bring you guys a giveaway today. I was contacted by the great folks over at Verve 360 Pittsburgh salon to give away two bottles of fantastic Zoya polishes- Toni and Natty. How nice of them, right?

For swatches, check out my earlier post here.

All you have to do to enter is to be follower (GFC, Feeder, email etc. Doesn't matter to me how you follow, I'm not picky!) leave a comment below about your favorite Zoya polishes. Does Zoya have a polish named after you? Is there a shade you wish was named after you? etc, in the Disqus box and your email in the slot so that I can contact you for your address should you win.

One winner will be picked at random. Giveaway ends Friday, October 10th at 10pm Central time. Winner MUST live in the contiguous United States and be 18 years or older.

Good luck!

Prizes provided by Verve 360 salons in Pittsburgh. Polishes will be sent to the winner from them once contest ends. For additional information, please don't hesitate to contact me or read my Disclosure Policy.

Klout Perk: Essie Miss Fancy Pants Dotticure

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Hey folks! Just wanted to show you a few quick pictures of the Essie polish that I was sent as my free Klout Perk. Miss Fancy Pants is from the fall Essie Stylenomics Collection. Originally none of the shades from this collection particularly caught my attention, but now that I have it in my grubby little hands I like this shade quite a lot.

A thinner, fluid formula, I preferred three coats. A dusty greige creme, perhaps Essie's response to Chanel Frenzy this season? Work appropriate, I like that too. I used Orly Dayglow to create the dots.

Thanks for checking it out!

Product featured was sent to me as a part of a Klout promotion. For additional information, please refer to my Disclosure Policy.