Archive for March, 2011

Ahoy!

Thursday, March 31st, 2011

This is the last one of the four polishes I have from the Anchors Away collection, Ahoy! I’ve really been missing some more color on my nails! Ahoy is a dark cool pink jelly with golden glass flecks in it, and it’s absolutely gorgeous! It’s a little darker and cooler than I thought it would be, but that’s not a bad thing at all. I had a really hard time trying to capture the color, but I did some Photoshop magic to try and correct the color a little. This is my usual three coats + top coat (Seche Vite):

Outside in indirect light.

Direct sunlight.

In the shade I think.

This is a shot of the bottle where you can see the gold a little better, ont he nail it kind of sinks in. Click the photo to see a bigger version. Ahoy! is probably my favorite from this collection, but that wasn’t much of a surprise as I love shiny things and cool pinks!

Sunset Sail

Saturday, March 26th, 2011

Here’s another polish from the Anchors Away collection, the pale peachy Sunset Sail with silver shimmer in it. I didn’t plan to get this one at first, but I was curious about what it would look like on me. I first tried it out on my toenails and asked my fiance what he thought: “It looks discolored”. That didn’t sound very encouraging… To be honest I wasn’t sure about it myself. But then I tried it on “for real” and I think I actually like it. My fiance still thought it looked ugly, but he doesn’t care much for polishes anyway so it doesn’t really count =) This is three coats plus one coat of Seche Vite:

Full sunlight. I feel that Spring is slowly approaching! The polish looks a little more saturated on the nails than what it looks like in the bottle.

I like the subtle shimmer that some of the polishes from this collection have. It makes it so much more interesting than just a plain creme.

This photo is taken with flash.

What do you think of this one? Gorgeous or ugly?

Tip wear and some layering ideas

Monday, March 21st, 2011

Before I took Pelican Gray off I wanted to try it as a base for some layering, as I thought a light grey would be perfect to try some different things on. This was actually after 13 days of wear, with three coats of Pelican Gray and one coat of Seche Vite. I had a lot to do recently and I just didn’t have time for my nails. Not too bad huh?

I guess this proves how little I do… =)

Anyway, I picked a few random polishes from my stash to try out:

Left to right: Max Factor Dazzling Blue, OPI Not Like The Movies, China Glaze Frosty, Nfu Oh #50.

I see now that the Nfu Oh bottle is facing the wrong way, but at least you can admire the pretty lacing on the back =)

And here they are layered in the same order on my nails, one coat each:

Not Like The Movies would probably need another coat to look good. Dazzling Blue is looking a bit uneven and would probably have needed an extra coat as well. The flakies looked okay, but it wasn’t the best pairing I’ve seen. My favorite combination of these is probably Pelican Gray + Frosty, as it turned out a beautiful light silver.

Pelican Gray

Wednesday, March 16th, 2011

The next polish that I’ve tried from China Glaze’s Anchors Away collection is Pelican Gray. It’s a soft light grey with a subtle shimmer in it. It was quite easy to apply and get even, I think I applied three coats as I usually do (and top coat).

Please excuse the dry cuticles and papercut..

Photo taken in direct sunlight.  I see a hint of blue in the shimmer, especially on the index nail.

A close-up to show the shimmer, I see some blue and pink/magenta in there if I’m not totally color blind.

I like this polish even more than I thought I would. It’s a very wearable color, and the shimmer makes it a little more interesting than a plain creme.

Shiro Cosmetics Haul

Saturday, March 12th, 2011

I’m trying to post some makeup related things from time to time, and now I want to show you my first haul from Shiro Cosmetics, which I got a couple of weeks ago. I first read about Shiro on Anastasia’s blog Lipsticks & Lightsabers, and when the Intertubes were released I just had to place my first order. Here’s what arrived in the package:

By looking at the Business Card you can see that there is a geeky theme going on. I do consider myself a geek so I love the idea! Although most of the eyeshadows are Pokémon and Zelda-related, and I’ve never had much contact with neither of those.. Shame on me! If you look at the rest of my site you can probably discover that I’m a little old school when it comes to games.. =)

I ordered two mini jars of the eyeshadows Shaymin and Meowth, and the following Intertubes: Leeroy Jenkins, Yo Dawg, Over 9000, and Sad Keanu. I also got samples of the shadows Zelda and Epona, and one of the lip color Three Wolf Moon. And if that wasn’t enough, those two hearts up there are chocolates!

Kitty inspects the goodies.

Here are some quick swatches of the eyeshadows on my hairy hand:

Top row L-R: Zelda, Shaymin
Bottom row L-R: Meowth, Epona

I seriously need to get better at swatching, so I suggest you check out the superb work by Anastasia here. All in all I’m very happy with the eyeshadows, they are very smooth and pigmented, and the colors are lovely. Another thing that I like is that all the ingredients are listed on the bottom of the jar, and also whether it’s lip safe or not.

So, on to the next thing which was the main reason for my order; the Intertubes. And what are those? I guess the best description is that they’re a combination of lip balm/lipstick/lip stain. The names of these are all taken from different Internet memes. I didn’t recognize all of them, but a quick search on Google or Youtube enlightened me.

Shades L-R: Leeroy Jenkins, Over 9000, Yo Dawg, Sad Keanu.

I’ve never seen this oval shape on a lip product before, but it works very well when applying, you can use the broad side for a wider application, or the narrow one when you need to be more precise. All of these shades tend to stain a bit, but I consider that a good thing. I like when lip products fade “gracefully”.

I swatched these quickly on my lips. I hope it will give you some idea of what they look like applied. You can click on all of the photos below to get a larger version.

First my bare lips for comparison:

And on to the tubes of win. I’ve included two photos of each color, the first is taken in daylight with flash, and the second is taken on another day with flash and not much light at all. I think the real color is somewhere in between the the photos. It looks a little flaky in places but that’s probably because my lips got dry from wiping off the previous colors.

Over 9000: This is a beautiful and very wearable pink, with grapefruit flavor. It’s easy to apply evenly.

Yo Dawg: The shade is cooler and darker than Over 9000, and I also find it to be more sheer in application. But it’s still beautiful! This one is raspberry flavored.

Three Wolf Moon: A gorgeous dark red shade. Since I got this as a sample I’ve applied it with a lip brush. This one has a cinnamon flavor.

Sad Keanu: This one is a little difficult in application, but that’s mostly due to the fact that it’s a dark purple. Formula-wise I find it similar to Yo Dawg. I had to use a lip brush to even out the application a bit. Sad Keanu is blackberry flavored.

Leeroy Jenkins: This one has the most noticable scent, spearmint, and I find it quite refreshing. I was afraid that this color would look ridiculous on me since it’s quite bright in the tube, but it looks really nice on the lips! The shade is described as a pale pinky-lavender. It’s got a subtle shimmer in it as well which I really like.

My favorites are probably Over 9000 and Leeroy Jenkins.

I was very happy with everything in my order, and I will definetely get some more stuff in the future!

Below Deck and my first official Konad

Saturday, March 5th, 2011

Here’s Below Deck from China Glaze’s spring collection Anchors Away, it’s some kind of taupe/mauve creme. I’m not a creme person but I really like this one, it’s a nice neutral color with just a hint of a purple tone to make it more interesting. The application was nice and smooth, I went for three coats as usual and a coat of Seche Vite.

Generally I get bored easily by cremes if it’s not a super fantastic color, so after wearing it for six days I thought I’d try out some Konad stamping. I have to warn you though, this is my second attempt at doing Konad and I’m far from good at it. I seem to have a problem with picking everything up on the stamp, but I hope to get the hang of it someday.

First a photo of what I’ve used:

The standard pink stamper and plastic scrape, the M3 plate and the Konad special polish in white.

I guess it looks OK at a distance, but if you look more closely at the next photo you can probably see a few of the bald spots. At least I didn’t have any problems with smearing when applying my top coat.

Close-up of my index finger.

Have you tried stamping with Konad? Do you find it easy or hard to do? Is there any hope for me? =)