Recent NOTD: OPI Zom-body To Love + Splatter

I layered OPI's Zom-body To Love over OPI Gargantuan Green Grape, which I don't think was really necessary at the end of the day because Zombody seems to have turned out pretty opaque after a few coats. Did I mention it's glow-in-the-dark? WIN.
To make it more Halloweeny I threw some black splatters over it with the method I used in this tutorial using Wet n Wild Black Creme.

My glow in the dark photo capturing skills are definitely sub par, but for once I actually managed to get something to appear so that's good enough for me. However, I didn't get a chance to take any pictures of the manicure during the day but the flash actually did the colour justice.

Left hand

Right hand

GLOWING

Not too shabby, huh?

Past NOTD: OPI My Private (Original Holo Version)

This was the result of a swap through Makeup Alley with a lovely lady named Ashley. My Private Jet is an infamous polish known for having two released versions: a FABULOUS holographic one which is really hard to find, and a really boring dud version that doesn't have the rainbow-y goodness of the first. Luckily for me, Ashley sent me pictures of the polish beforehand to ensure that I was indeed getting the real deal.

So MPJ is a brownish greyish polish absolutely riddled with linear holographic sparkles.

Look at all the rainbows! YAY! Best swap ever. Sorry for all the pics I just got so so excited :)

Past NOTD: Revlon Valentine

I love when nail polish has a story. This colour is one of the only ones I own that actually comes with a tale to tell so I'm happy to be able to share it with you.

One morning last November, I left the house to go to my student placement for school with naked nails. This wouldn't have really mattered if halfway through the day I hadn't made plans to meet a cute boy I liked (currently my dear boyfriend) for coffee. Again, why did it matter? Well my nails were rather stained from the polish I'd worn previously, and if you've never been for coffee before let me tell you: hands tend to be instrumental in the act of holding a cup, sometimes even a focal point when bashfully avoiding eye contact. By the the time we'd planned the date I was already at placement, so on my break I scurried out to the drug store to buy myself some polish. After making sure it was okay with everyone's noses, I proceeded to paint my nails while completing my work and as a result (directly or indirectly... though I'm going to go ahead and say directly, just for the fun of it) the night went off without a hitch.

DBF always laughs at me when I tell this story, because I'm fairly certain he didn't notice my nails at all, but I'm also fairly certain that had they been stained and gross - he would have.

So here it is! Revlon Valentine - a juicy red jelly. Sorry for the crappy car pics!

Direct sunlight

Shade

Hooray for red polish and happy stories!

Past NOTD: China Glaze Fairy Dust

Right off the bat, I'm going to admit that I thought I would hate this more than anything I've ever worn. Fairy Dust is a clear polish with teeny, tiny holographic glitter. I don't really like it as a layering polish, which is what it's intended to be, so I thought I'd give it a shot on naked nails and thought to myself "who would want to wear a sheer polish like this? I mean, what's the point?"

It was stunning. The subtle hint of little sparkles frequently caught my eye and I found myself totally enamoured with this look. It was elegant but youthful and not "in-your-face" by any means.

Click me!

The only downside to this polish is the obvious fact that, being sheer, any staining or dirt under the nails is visible. Other than that I absolutely LOVED this! Thoughts?

Apologies and past NOTD - Hard Candy Beetle

First off, allow me to state that I should be renaming this blog to "Lisa's Blog of Neglect" because, if you hadn't noticed, I haven't actually posted since September. To all my followers: Thank you for sticking around, I promise I will keep up to date as much as I can from here on end.

That being said, it's not as though I haven't been photographing my nails to show you (eventually), so tonight is the night where I'm going to flood the internet with past NOTDs. Expect about five posts (including this one) to trickle through as the hours pass. I would put them all in one post but I feel that separating them will not only make cataloging them a lot easier, but also finding them again will be too.

This polish comes to me with a wonderful story. I frequent a nail polish board and a lovely lady named Tyra had posted a photo of her nails sporting Beetle by Hard Candy. I love, love, love that polish and was unable to get it in Canada (ridiculous) and it was driving me batty. She messaged me saying that she was willing to go to Walmart and buy it for me, free of charge and  no expectations of me sending her something in return! Of course I absolutely had to send her something for her generosity and kindness, but if that's not good karma I don't know what is.

What a sweet lady! I didn't get the chance to photograph it at the start of wearing it, but I managed to take some pictures a few days in. Very noticeable tipwear, but I hope you'll at least get an idea of why I wanted it so badly.

This is such a spectacular multi-chrome! You've got purple, you've got gold, you've got copper, sometimes you've got some green, sometimes you've got some pink, and sometimes you've got brown. Brilliant! Absolutely brilliant. 

The world never ceases to amaze me, and on occasion it's in a good way. Thank you Tyra! 

NOTD: Rusty Pumpkin

Last night I got a little layer happy, and I'm now currently wearing probably the most coats of polish I've probably every worn. Ever.

So it started with the Joe Fresh Pumpkin that I had on in my last post, then I applied 3 coats of Sally Hansen's Pumpkin Spice (still going with the fall theme, if you didn't notice) and then I topped it off with a layer of Love & Beauty Rust. Love & Beauty is Forever 21's make up and nail polish line, and since the store opened in Ottawa these past few weeks I was really excited to get out there. Rust is acting as sort of a surrogate until I get a polish I really want. I've been lemming Sephora by OPI's Traffic Stopper Copper for some time now, but considering it's $12 and Rust was only $3.80 I went for it. My biggest problem with this one is the density of the glitter, and the amount of the small glitter vs the larger hex glitter. There's way too much little glitter, it looked messy and overrun the first time I swatched it.

So let's see - American Classics Bridge the Ridge, 2 coats of JF Pumpkin, SH Mega Shine, 3 coats of SH Pumpkin Spice, Gelous, SH Mega Shine, 1 coat of L&B Rust, Gelous, SH Mega Shine.

Did I just count 13 layers of polish?

>_>


<_<


Good luck to me taking this off. At least it was worth it, I'm in love with this. I have a really hard time capturing
glitters in all their glory so bear with me. Trust me when I say it's beautiful.

As you can obviously tell, I experienced a great deal of shrinkage due to all the layering and the thickness of the Gelous/glitter. In regular lighting (ie: not direct sunlight) the base colour looks like a darker brown giving it a more Halloween-y kind of feel, and boy is it ever shiny. I can't help but grin when I look down at my nails!

NOTD: Joe Fresh Pumpkin

I love Joe Fresh polish. It's inexpensive (only $4 a bottle or 3 for $10) and the formula is great, this polish only needed 2 coats! It works phenomenally well with the season too, all I want to do is eat squash and pumpkins when I look at my nails.

There's not much else to say about this other than it's a fabulous polish, and definitely worth picking up for the price.

What's your favourite thing about fall?

NOTD: OPI Designer Series Amethyst

EDITED :

Here's a more recent picture of OPI Designer Series (OPI DS) Amethyst. I can't help but want to photograph this beautiful polish when I wear it. The holo is so magnificent in the sun, but at work under the fluorescent lights it's very blah and greyish.

This is naturally lit, indoors. See below for older pictures~!

June 11 2013 

______________________________________________________________________

This is one of the two holographic polishes that I own, the other one being OPI DS Glamour. I got them at the same dusty (nail salon where you can find old or hard to find polishes for sale) but since pink is definitely not my favourite colour it took a lot longer to give this puppy a try.

After yesterday's fiasco I wanted to wear a vampy red, but seeing everyone's swatches on the (new) nail board of their holographic polish and it being a beautiful sunny day here in Ottawa I figured it was time to finally give dear ol' Amethyst a shot.

I'm so happy I did. Holographic polish is a bottle full of rainbows and happiness. I need more, stat.

Enlarge these photos to get an even better view!

Ooohhh

Ahhhhh...

Look at that bottle!

Still pretty, even in the shade

Enlarge this one. Seriously.

Isn't it wonderful?!

This was three coats with a regular base coat (not Aquabase, which is supposedly good for making holos even more holo-y) and no top coat. It was a surprisingly liquid formula so watch out for cuticle flooding!

NOTD: OPI I'm Suzi & I'm A Chocoholic

This polish was one of the first OPIs I ever bought (along with Ski Teal We Drop and Yodel Me On My Cell), it's from the Swiss Collection that was released in 2010 for fall. This shade is a reddish brown (or brownish red), which is appealing very much to the autumn-fiend in me at the moment. It went on fairly opaque, this is only two coats, it was just a b!tch to clean up. I hate cleaning up reds, I don't know why they give me such a hard time - but they do.

Every. Single. Time.

I was inspired to use this polish because I'm kind of lemming China Glaze's new Brownstone polish from the Metro collection. Can anyone tell me if these two are similar? I think Brownstone is more ... well, brown. Anyway!

Going on kind of the same thread, this is my favourite fall-time tea. It's called Market Spice from Teaopia and it's a black tea with Orange peel, cloves, marigold, black pepper. It's actually spicier than Chai which is its biggest selling point in my book. Umm, delicious!?

Absolutely, yes.

NOTD: OPI The "It" Color

My friend Sarah came by my store the other day and gifted me this polish. I couldn't think of a better shade for right now: It's a rich, golden yellow creme that reminds me of changing leaves, HB pencils and school buses. My only complaint about it was the formula (which is kind of a big deal). It applied very patchy, I actually needed 4 coats to get it even. Not desirable.

Regardless, it's here now and I'm happy with the way it looks. I was a little nervous on how it would blend with my skin tone, but it seems to have worked out okay. It might look better when my tan has faded more.

NOTD: Mattified Flaky Goodness

Being a pretty avid MUA NBer makes me want to change my polish rather frequently. And I mean like, all the time. I'm usually planning 3 manicures ahead, and when I land on a new polish there's usually no stopping me. Nothing about this changed when a friend brought me two OPI's yesterday. However right now I am out of acetone, which is definitely required for removing my current manicure (try taking flakies off without it ... not pleasant).

So I had to improvise. What could I do to my mani before being able to buy more acetone on Thursday? I've been seeing a lot of really nice dark matte colours lately and felt inspired. Essie's Matte About You it is! I love the effect it created. It brings out the duochrome quality of the polish quite a bit more than with a shiny top coat, which almost distracts from the colours playing within the flakies.

Green

Blue/Green duochrome

So much blue now!

Close up. Please excuse the shoddy clean up job.

The flakies almost seem more defined now that they're matte. I like it! 

NOTD: Nfu Oh 56 over WnW Black Creme

I can't believe I've waited so long to use this polish. I bought it back in July along with Nfu Oh 45 but never ended up wearing it, poor thing. As per a conversation with Ali I had this weekend, I decided to give it a go over black. Wet n Wild makes the best black creme around in my opinion. It's almost perfectly opaque in one coat without being thick or sticky, dries quickly, and is inexpensive. That right there is a huge win in my books. It can be found in almost any drug store that sells polish too, making it very accessible on top of it all.

I love this mani, it reminds me of dragon scales or something equally mystical and fun. I used one coat of the Nfu Oh over 1 coat of the WnW. The flakies in this polish make for a really pretty green duochrome that flashes blue. The base of the polish isn't clear though, it's made up of tiny little green shimmers which I wasn't actually expecting when I ordered it.

What do you think? I did something else with this mani that I've only done once before. The top coat I used is called Gelous by a brand called Amercian Classics. It's a thick top (or base) coat that doesn't get gobbled up into glitter/flakies the same way normal stuff does. It leaves a really smooth, even coat on top which is not something I often get from top coats and glitters. That being said, it takes forever to dry, so i recommend throwing a quick dry on top of it once it's started to dry a bit.

I get mine at Sally Beauty, and I'm not sure if there's anywhere else around town that sells it, I haven't looked into it at all.
Phew, long post. Hope you enjoyed! Happy back-to-school season everyone.

OPI Catch Me In Your Net over Rimmel Star Trek

So I tried taking pictures of my polish glowing in the dark last night and it didn't work. My camera didn't pick up the glow at all, it was really quite frustrating. I was bored today before work and this magnificent polish was sitting on my desk looking at me, just begging to be worn. I didn't have the time to redo my mani altogether but what goes better with turquoise than navy blue? Not much, let me tell you that. Don't believe me? Give 'er a scroll.

Ali gifted me this polish, I nearly died. Here I thought I was getting to swatch it for one mani but alas - she said I could keep it. It's from OPI's Summer Flutter collection in 2010, I *just* missed grabbing it. It's a dead center dupe for Zoya Charla, but I don't have access to the full Zoya line here so that doesn't make much difference to me. The polish itself is a turquoise glittery foil. Beautiful <3

 

 

I couldn't stop staring at my nails while I was driving today! Bad Lisa, bad.

NOTD: Pride Nails with Black Shatter

Yesterday was Ottawa's Pride parade! I didn't get a chance to actually go, but I did help a local organization prep beforehand by... body painting the parade participants! How much fun is that?
I did this mani the night before (Saturday night) and I've gotta tell you, it's a lot more difficult when you're downing something stronger than your average grape juice ;)

I accomplished this look by applying a base coat of white as undies, then layering the neons into a rainbow so they just slightly overlap and blend. I'm a little disappointed that the pink turned more red/orange, but I've gotten a bazillion compliments on them so I guess it's no harm done.

I originally wanted to do an animal print on top instead of the shatter but the rainbow didn't blend as nicely as I'd hoped and the shatter covered more imperfections. Forgive the quality of the clean-up in this photo, intoxication leads to sloppiness. My lesson has been learned. :P

Kinda neat huh? Reminds me a lot of this mani I did a few months ago.

The colours I used were China Glaze Rose Among Thorns, China Glaze Sun Worshipper, China Glaze  Celtic Sun, Claire's Lime Yours, Claire's Marine Blue and OPI Black Shatter.

NOTD: Dorky Cow Print!

I'm going to start trying my hand at nail art more and more often, since apparently practice makes perfect? After this mani Lord knows I need it. I used Sally Hansen's White On, Rimmel's Black Satin and American Apparel Raccoon to make this cow print. I don't really like using polish to make my designs, I find it's really hard to work with, so from here on end I think I'm going to go back to using acrylic paint (like I used to do in high school).

..... MOOOOOO!