Thursday, January 27, 2011

A pedi and some recent manis

This is two coats of OPI Sparkle-icious over one coat of OPI Plum Full of Cheer. I LOVE THIS! It wasn't too hard to take off, either.
Some of the amazing sparkle!

This is two coats of Orly Rock-On Red. A very classy, dusty red. One of my favorites. Not color accurate, but almost.
Zoya Ali. This is a very, very bright neon pink in real life. My camera can obviously not handle the greatness.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Sally Hansen VitaSurge Strength Gel TAKE 2

So. I failed at the last one. I forgot my camera when I left for the weekend, and the pictures I did have had no way to tell when I took them, so I decided to start over.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Sally Hansen VitaSurge Strength Gel

I'm testing this stuff out. I showed it to you in a haul post a while ago, but I started using it today so I want to do a review as I use it. I'll update daily. Here's a blurry picture:

Day 0: Before application.
Yesterday I cut/filed my nails into "nubbins" but I don't mind. They look much better in my opinion.
Day 1: (which is incidentally five minutes after "day 0"): I applied it. Seems like a glorified, non-greasy cuticle oil...but for your nails...It didn't make my nails red...it was just the terrible lighting.

Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Essie Berry Hard

Sorry about the inferior picture. The lighting in my dorm room is pretty awful. This was three coats of Essie Berry Hard, which I got at Ulta on clearance. I like the color, but I was disappointed in the brush. The bristles were a little clumpy, like polish had dried on it. This made the polish apply unevenly. I have Essie Lollipop, which I liked a lot better. The brush on that was normal and the color applied much more evenly. It really is too bad about the brush, but I'll probably use this one again and see if a little polish thinner will thin unclump the brush.
Concerning wear, it chipped pretty quickly on my right hand, but I don't wrap my tips so that might be part of it. It's such a pretty color and I really like the jelly-ness. I am looking forward to getting more polishes from Essie, although if the brush keeps being lame like that, I'll have to let it go.

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Neon Nails

I did my nails Wednesday night, but neglected to take a picture of them until Friday night after they had been through two days at work.

There is quite a bit of tip wear, but my work is really hard on my nails, especially since I ended up moving a lot of 35 pound boxes from one room to another. This was three coats of Color Club What a Shock! that I got at Ross. I used OPI base coat and one coat of Seche Vite on top. I was really impressed with the opacity of this polish, as well as the drying time. This didn't stain at all, either, which is great because green polish tends to leave gross looking stains that I have to cover up with dark polish in order to have normal looking hands.

Going Back to School Haul

I went on an about-to-leave-for-college shopping rush and ended up spending way too much money. I did, however, get lots of stuff to blog about.

First off, I was at Rite Aid and saw a really cool display from Physician's Formula. All the packages were pink and the makeup itself rosy and heart-shaped, so I had to get something from the collection. I only have two blushes, a medium pink shimmer from Ulta (I forgot the exact name, and I don't have it in my dorm with me) and Physcian's Formula Shimmer Strips in Healthy Glow, both of which I like but may be a little too shimmery for some occasions in my future. I do love shimmery everything, but it isn't really professional to have your entire face sparkling. I use shimmering primer, shimmering liquid makeup and shimmering setting powder...plus shimmery eyeshadow and slightly sparkling mascara. I need to cut down. Anyhoo, I decided blush was the one thing I didn't already have too much of, so I picked Happy Booster Glow & Mood Boosting Blush in 7322 Rose.

As you can see, it is slightly shimmery, but no where near as shimmery as the other two blushes I already had in my collection. Plus, I wanted to try this new mood booster aspect. According to the back of the package, the blush is "infused with our Happy Boost Blend, featuring Happy Skin and Euphoryl, natural plant extracts whcih have been shown to promote a feeling of happiness by mimicing the effect of Endorphins and helping prevent the skin from environmental stress." Yes, mimicking is spelled incorrectly. The "happy boost blend" almost makes me think this is a badly translated product from another country. Obviously, however, it is not. The package also mentions the blush being scented like lavender, which "provides a feeling of joy" when you apply the makeup. The scent doesn't linger, but it does smell quite pleasant when you open the little case. I'm not in love with the packaging, only because I hate those stupid brushes they include. If I liked the brush, I would be completely satisfied with the packaging because I like when I can store my brushes with the product itself, but those brushes do nothing for me so the package is just unnecessarily bulky. I love the colors they use for this though, which is obviously playing on Valentine's Day. The blush itself it pretty nice and applies easily with the ELF blush brush I got for a dollar at Target. This is just so darn cute!
a close up of the blush itself. SO CUTE!
On the other side of the shelf, I found those Sally Hansen Party Packs. They were half price, so I bought one. Then came back and bought four more. I disgust myself. Anyways, four of them had the same polishes in them, so I plan on giving those away as birthday gifts.
All five of the packages included this paper. It was a little tip sheet, which I thought was cute. On the back it had step-by-step instructions for the perfect manicure and the perfect pedicure. The only part I didn't like was the that they suggested the use of cuticle scissors. NO. NO. NO! Cuticle scissors are not good!
All five packages also included a nail file (which I'm pretty sure was just hardware store sand paper glued on a piece of cardboard), a pretty pink cuticle pusher, smiley toe separators, hand scrub, nail growth treatment and nail clipper I would NEVER use on anyone's fingers or toes. My favorite were the little toe separators that smile :)
The first box I got had these polishes in it. These were also in three of the four I bought on my second trip. Left to Right: Sally Hansen Nail Color Pen in Midnight (I think. I don't have this in my dorm, either), SH Salon in It's a Sheer Thing, Insta-Dri in Orange You Fast!, No Chip in Infinite Natural, Lacquer Shine in Glow.  I like all of the colors, but the application on the nail pen was pretty terrible. Otherwise, it was pretty good.
One box had these in it. Left to right: Salon in Berried Treasure, Mangoes Loco, Pat on the Black, Dawn to Earth, Insta-Dri in Pink Breeze.
Mangoes Loco is definately more of an orangey coral in real life, whereas Berried Treasure is more of a deep pink. Pat on the Black is not black, but a very deep plummy puple. Dawn to Earth is a sandy, frosty nude that I'm pretty sure is the only polish I have ever tried that clashes terribly with my skin tone. Pink Breeze is just blah.The box was only five dollars for these five polishes plus the five tools/treatments, so it wasn't a complete waste of money, but man I hate Pink Breeze.

In my obsession with hair products that probably has to with me attempting to grow my hair out, I walked down the hair products aisle, and was very pleased to see the got2b products buy one, get one free. So, you know, I had to get two.
I chose the Smooth Operator smoothing lustre lotion, which I used today and am very pleased with. It does almost as good a job as my Samy conditioning serum, which I think is the only product I have ever bought three times because I used the entire bottle. Also, I got the smooth operator smoothing hair spray a while ago at WalMart and it does a wonderful job of controlling flyaway hairs. For my "free" product, I chose the Heat Protect 'n Blow Out blow dry lotion + gloss finish. I had been looking something designed to protect my hair from the heat when I blow dry my hair, which is quite rarely. I haven't used this yet because I had left my blow dryer at school and couldn't come back to get it during the break.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Sally Beauty mini-haul and NOTD

So. I printed out my New Year's 15% off coupon and went into Sally Beauty. I  have a gift card, so thankfully I am not spending "real" money.
China Glaze Atlantis
Beauty Secrets Nail Polish Thinner
Mini Orly Nailtrition
Seche Vite w/ free nail decals

I have been lemming Atlantis since I first saw it a few weeks ago. It is everything I love: Blue, green, glitter and holographic. I almost had a heart attack when I saw it on the Treasures (I think, I'm not exactly sure) display. THEN, I saw a mini Nailtrition, which I've been dying to try but could not bear to fork over ten dollars for something I may be able to live without. It was next to a super cute Orly Valentine's Day-themed display with four different (but not new) pinks. As I mosied over to the Seche Vite, which I needed to buy anyway, there was a little pad of tear-off coupons that were good for a FREE CHINA GLAZE POLISH WITH PURCHASE OF SECHE VITE! Best coupon ever, right? I wanted/needed both and there was a coupon for them! So I picked the Seche Vite with the free nail decals because I love free stuff and I really like nail decals, no matter how tacky they look.
Seche Vite package and decals
Close up of nail decals. Sorry about the flash reflection. I was trying to get rid of the shadows, but it didn't work out too well, haha

Needless to say, I was VERY happy on my way home because I got the PERFECT polish FOR FREE. Plus free decals. I seriously love Sally Beauty. *sigh*

Anyhoo, I did my nails a couple of days ago (maybe Sunday night? I'm not quite sure) and procrastinated taking pictures until this afternoon. There are a few chips/bits of tip wear, but I've worked eight hour days yesterday and today, and the job I have while I am at home usually completely destroys my nails within ten minutes of clocking in. I think this manicure has proven to be stronger than most.
This is two (perhaps three) coats of China Glaze Shower Together, a beautiful greenish-blue creme with an even better name. I then put on a coat or two, depending on the glitter distribution, of China Glaze Fairy Dust. I topped it off with a coat of For Rhinestones Only top coat. I think I was trying to channel the goodness of ChG Atlantis when I was doing this manicure, and I like the result a lot, but I have Atlantis now, so I don't think I'll be repeating this one. I am very impressed with the wear on this, though. I'm not sure if it was the top coat or the glue-like quality of glitters, such as ChG Fairy Dust, but this mani was lucky to survive two minutes at work, let alone 16 hours.