Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Giveaway Winner!

Guys, I'm exhausted.

I started working a new job on Monday, and I haven't had a job in a while, so waking up and having to be somewhere other than class in the mornings is tough. And to top it off I worked a double shift today and then came home to bake 8 dozen cookies for a friend, only to realize 2 trays into the baking that I doubled the butter in the recipe by accident. And I'm out of chocolate chips and eggs so I can't make a new batch that doesn't taste like butt. And I broke a nail at work today (where, btw, I am only allowed to wear "non outrageous colors"... I think I have like 4 of those). And the 'z' key fell off my laptop and I can't find it. But I'm super excited that I got to make someone's day by declaring a winner for the Great Barrier Reef giveaway!

And the winner is... Hannah Bumble Bee!

Thanks so much to everyone who entered the contest, and an extra thanks to people who blogged about it!

Now, would anyone like a cookie? Anyone? No?... I'll just call Haz Mat to take them away...

Friday, April 23, 2010

NOTearthD

Happy Earth day! I hope everyone ignored the oil rig that could potentially leak millions of gallons of crude in to the ocean and did something awesome to help Earth yesterday! I celebrated with a green Jade is the New Black mani, but decided it was too boring so I topped it with Chanel Illusion D'or.

I'm really going back and forth on Illusion D'or. In some light I'm amazed by the little blue-y purple-y holo bits in it. But sadly in most light it just looks like I topped my green mani with a gold frost. And I hate frost finishes. They look so dated and unfashionable. And I really don't like associating Chanel with those two words. Since I took the plunge and splurged on it, I'm not going to give up on it after one try. I'm going to try it over a matte black next time, hopefully my opinion will change. If you're on the fence about dropping so much cash on this, IMO it's probably not worth it. Go for ChG Medallion, there's so much sparkle in there and you won't miss the differences between the holo bits!

2 coats Jade is the New Black, 1 coat Illusion D'or, click for super macro:

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Catching up on NOTD's

I know I've totally been slacking with posting the NOTD's, but I'm still (mostly) keeping up with them between homework. So here's what I was wearing this past week:

The Summer Days collection continues to impress me! I totally love Raspberry Festival. At first I thought it was too red, but it's a perfect raspberry color so I really can't complain. I loved the shimmer in it! This was with 2 coats though I probably should have done 3.



For my birthday last Wednesday I pulled out Essie Greenport, which I was saving in my untrieds for a special occasion. And it made me feel so awesome on by birthday! The color completely lived up to all the hype that surrounded it and totally lived up to how awesome I had built it up in my head. I'm really glad I was able to get the Essie, but I've heard L'oreal came out with a collection of 3 exact dupes for the North Fork collection. I'm still hunting them down to have back ups! This was with 3 curse-filled coats (how much do you hate that teeny tiny F^%@ing brush?!) to cover the initial streakiness. I didn't like the overall look of 3 coats, it always looks to thick on my nails.



And finally the NOTD that I'm on day #4 of, OPI Lunch at the Delhi. I adore this. On my super pale cool toned skin, depending on the light I see red to sometimes orange, but most of the day in normal light It's a perfect dusty warm toned coral. This was 2 coats but I probably should have done 3 here also. I hate how white my nail line is!


Also don't forget to enter my Great Barrier Reef giveaway! You can come back every day for an extra chance to win :D

Friday, April 16, 2010

Great Barrier Reef Giveaway

Sorry, it's not an underwater snorkeling adventure, but it's the next best thing!



It's giveaway time! Thanks to everyone who voted for a Coral themed giveaway, but the other choices in the poll I had got some love too, so I decided to combine them all. What's a more picturesque backdrop for Summer time than a coral reef? The aquatic life, the waves of the ocean, the mythical mermaids... I used all of these images as inspiration and put together a wardrobe of 11 awesome colors.

So here are the players! Flyin' High, My Chihuahua Bites, Happy Go Lucky

Japanese Koi, Atlantis, Love & Beauty Coral

Hot & Spicy, Caribbean Blue, High HopesCharla and Coral. Pictures taken from Google since these two are being slow in the mail!



How to enter:

1. You must be a follower of the blog to enter! New followers are welcome to join. Just leave a comment with your email address on this post to place an entry. You can enter once per day, so come back for extra chances to win!

2. Blog about it! Mention the Great Barrier Reef Giveaway on your blog and leave me a comment with a link to the post for an entry. You can do this up to 3 times for extra entries.

3. Tweet about it! Click the new Follow Me on Twitter link in the sidebar and retweet the "Barrier Reef Giveaway" tweet. This will count once per day as an extra entry.

4. If you follow me on Twitter, let me know in the comments for an extra entry. This one will only count once.

5. Entries will be accepted from now until the end of April 24. Contest is open to everyone, including international readers. I will pick a winner at random from all the entries!



*Pictures of the reef, Zoya Charla and RBL Coral were taken from Google, not my images!

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

RGB Haze

It's so rare to come across a Perfect 10 polish, but this is one of them! It applied flawlessly, the color is so loveably shroomy, and the shine on this is seriously epic. This took 2 coats, and the finish on it is somewhere between opaque and jelly, the only word I can think to describe it is "milky". I absolutely adore everything about Haze! RGB is still a new brand to me, this is my 2nd time ordering from them. I went for Haze and Steel and they arrived in 3 days. A big plus is the company always offers free shipping! I'm surprised they don't get more love, maybe it's because they have a limited color range, but several months ago they did come out with a color for the new mint trend. I'm hoping they come out with more colors soon (maybe a turquoise?), but until then I'm loving my small RGB collection!

Without flash:

With flash:

Thursday, April 8, 2010

What happened to that get nailed girl?

So I know I haven't been the most regular poster lately, but I have an excuse, I swear! I don't like to post without pictures of my latest NOTD and recently it's been harder and harder to work it in to my schedule. I only have 3.5 weeks of school left this semester and for the 1st time EVER I have a solid 4.0 in all my classes. I'm working my butt off to keep those grades! I'm working harder than ever so I have a great GPA to get in to doctorate school, so I hope that's a good enough excuse for y'all to forgive me!

Other than working on my grades, my 2 puppies (who are my babies) have been wanting to spend lots of time outside, which eats at my time because I don't let them stay outside on their own (I'm terrified of an eagle snatching them up because they are so tiny!). I'm also spending some time working on getting an awesome coral giveaway together for my awesome readers! I'm just about done with that, so look for it in the next week or two!

My birthday is next Wednesday, and I know I keep mentioning it like an attention ho, but I'm very excited about it! In my family, holiday schedules are busy but birthdays are a mandatory celebration, so I'm gonna party this one up! It's my big 2-2, and I thought I would order 22 polishes for the occasion but have already gone overboard with 23! Get ready to get spamed during my break between semesters, lol!

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

$OPI Special Request

This hasn't been in my untrieds very long, but I'm still sorry I waited! I really liked the color in the store, it's a super bright coral. It's actually really close to High Hopes except, to my excitement, applied jelly! Mmm, jelly goodness.... I'm loving it! It took 3 coats to get a nice jelly finish, which I've already massacred with a knife while cutting a bell pepper. Ugh!

Monday, April 5, 2010

Easter M&M's

So here's my totally non-unique pastel "skittles", but I call it an M&M's because I like them better! I think like half the nail board did something similar, so even though I'm not an original, I totally loved it. I also went shopping while wearing this and got so many compliments!

These are all from Up & Away, from thumb to pinky: Peachy Keen, Lemon Fizz, Something Sweet, Re-Freshmint, and Light as Air. Lemon Fizz is a complete PITA to apply. It's probably the worst polish I've ever worked with. There were so many bubbles, and even though I got them smoothed out, on my right hand I have a spot where a bubble burst so there's a huge pit mark! I've never seen that happen before! Despite that, I still like the color, but I don't think I'll get to doing a full mani with it anytime soon. Something Sweet was the best of the 5, it applied nicely for a pastel, and I'll probably wear this one a lot because it's so sweet and girly.


My birthday is a week from Wednesday and I ordered a few polishes today so they would be here in time. From RBL I got 360, Diddy Mow and Coral, which I'm SUPER excited about, and then I ordered about 8 polishes from a few other places, 5 of which are some shade of coral since that's what I'm totally in to right now! I'm still on the hunt for more awesome shades, so what are your fav corals?

Thursday, April 1, 2010

RBL Patrick Starfish

I was 11 when the cartoon phenomenon Spongebob Squarepants came out. I loved it so much, but my parents abhorred it! And since I didn't have cable in my bedroom, I would have to sneak in to the living room at odd hours to catch an episode, or set up a recording on a VHS tape. My ninja-stealth act worked perfectly for about a year, but the jig was up one day... when halfway through my dad's recording of a World Series games Spongebob had problems selling Krabby Patties. My dad was less than amused. After hitting my teen years and having REAL problems in my life (you know, boys, makeup, trying to buy the right jeans...) I pretty much forgot about the cartoon world. But when I started living in a dorm and doing "college things", it suddenly become pretty amusing again, lol.

Rescue Beauty Lounges 3 color tribute to Spongebob is so cute. I originally bought Bikini Bottom during the big sale, but kept waffling on wanting to wear it or not. I put it up for swap and got an offer for Patrick Starfish, which I took immediately and I'm so glad I did! I love this color so much! It is such a perfect peachy Spring color, I'm going to be wearing this a lot in the next few months. Application was absolutely flawless, and since this is a super-jelly it took 4 coats to be opaque, but happily I still have that jelly finish with no VNL. I think next time I try it I'm going to layer 2 coats over Something Sweet or Heli-yum to get a pinkish glow to it, since Patrick is actually more pink on the show.