Say Hello to my Little Friends

China Glaze Awakening Collection, the fall/hallowen set of 3. Mummy May I, Ick a Body and Zombie Zest.

 

I only swatched Mummy May I and Ick a Body for this post because Zombie Zest is so similar to the Orly cosmics "It's not rocket science" I am going to dedicate a whole post to comparing them.

So first off let me say I LOVE HALLOWEEN!! Fall is my fave season and Halloween is by far my fave holiday so when they start putting out the Halloween collections I go gaga.

First up is, Mummy may I.. I had a really hard time getting good shots of this one. It was so amazing in person but capturing that was hard so here are two shots I got that give a pretty good idea.

This is 3 coats but 2 would have worked fine too.

This color did not disappoint Black base with deep purple glitters, it as well as Ick a body dries rough due to the glitters, top coats deff needed.

Next up is Ick a body, an amped up version of Last halloween's mega hit Fortune Teller also from China Glaze.
Here you can see it and Mummy May I.

 

Its very densely packed Orange glitters, with a sheer black/green base, this was a 3 coater to cover any baldness.

 

 I really loved this one, it just screams Halloween to me and I love the fact its so high impact unlike last years Fortune Teller that was sparse glitters.

 

I only have one complaint from this collection, the fact that it's only 3 I would have loved a few more gems like these three, like maybe a dark brown with red shimmers.. But hey there is always next year.

Here's an upclose of Ick a Body to get your Halloween blood pumping.

 

I have a bunch of great stuff to post in the coming weeks, but I promise to show you guys Zombie zest soon side by side with "It's not Rocket Science" but I can tell you now that they are NOT dupes. 

I also broke two nails after swatching MAC's Jade Dragon for you guys so I had to cut all my nails to nubbins :( it sucked so Next post is Jade Dragon and after that you guys gets to enjoy nub nails for awhile.

That's all for this post, Thanks for reading

-ilectra

NOTD Orly's It's not rocket science

You guys have prolly seen the Orly Cosmix's on every blog you follow but never to much of a good thing I always say ha :)
So out of the full Cosmix Collection I got 3 of them, Space Cadet, Galaxy Girl and It's not Rocket Science. I am a sucker for the color green and green nail polish is my obsession so as you can imagine It's not rocket science sttod out to me the most in this collection and is my fave of them all.. Below with flash:

When light hits this color it hits back, it has a strong gold flash that really sparkles.
The above pic is in mid day low light and is the truest rep of how this color looks in most lighting.
The above is with no flash and is two coats with poshe topcoat
Here's this beauty up close, in low day light with no flash, so sparkly and you can really see the yellow/gold flash.

Ok now to the good and the bad news:

The Good : This polish dries pretty quickly and even though its sparkly it dries smooth. It applied well and was perfect in 2 coats. Also i seriously love the Orly bottles because of the rubber tops, its so easy to grip.

The Bad: Because of the process it took to make the cosmix polishes they cost almost double a normal Orly polish. Each one of these are selling for $10 most places and that would be ok if it weren't for the next bit of bad. The tip wear you see in those pics is only after 12 hours of wear and in less then 24 hours I had bad tip wear and 3 chips.. that BTW never happens to me.. I can normally go up to 6 days without a chip.. So being chiptastic is not cool for a $10 polish.

But overall I love this one for simply being beautiful,I had 3 people comment on this color in about 2 hours while i was out today so it is indeed eye catching.

Thats all for today
Thanks for reading
-ilectra

Storms at Midnight, Franken Magic

Franken: The mixing of polishes,finishes and glitters to create a new color and unique polish.

Today I have a franken I made lastnight while I was bored and watchin tv.
I just started adding and mixing til it began to take shape, It started Green and then went into heavy Blue but I wanted it to be a very very Blue based Purple so I added some red and shazam..It's Storms at Midnight, I named it that cause it reminded me of the night sky but sometime with a heat storm the sky gets those lovely purple hues.

Here's it in shade

Here's outside as it was getting dark with no flash
and here's 3 of it outside near dark with flash
These pics really really capture the blue in this franken, but indoors its a lovely dusty purple, and oh so shimmery. All of the above is just 2 coats, it dried quickly and went on wonderfully. I never imagined when I started making this that it would be so multi dimensional and so beautiful. This color in person is dark without being to dark and the plum tomes give it a lovely Autumn feel, so I made this beauty just in time for the season.

This has to be in my top 10 polishes ever, Not to shabby for a girl who owns over 200. (I know 200 is a light weight in nail blogger land) But Im wearing it now and have no desire to ever take it off..lol

So tell me what do ya think of Storms at Midnight? Would you like me to feature other frankens Ive made??
Well thats all for this post
Thanks for reading
-ilectra

I get by with a lil help from my friends

Just a quick post today, Im so busy workin on my wedding stuff, my soon to be and I are getting married on Oct 10th this year and thats only a month and a half away ahhhhhhhh so much to do..lol

But my maid of honer ,D came by last week to get her nails done again, she went to canada and brought me back Gosh polish so that makes her the coolest..lol Anyway I used one of the polishes she brought me as her main color it's called purple heart and it's got more duo chromes then a Christmas store.. I swear in diff light it looks like any one of like 8 colors. But true to its Purple name it photographed mostly purple.

I stamped her nails with one of my BM(Bundle Monster) plates with China Glaze GR8 polish, a pretty yellow holo.I have GOT to figure out why Im not able to do my friends nails as well as I do my own, im thinking its about angles but D has alot of patience with me and has agreed to let me perfect my on others painting skills on her. :)



She's a hard workin hands on girl so her cuticles and fingers are pretty tore up as you can see but im gonna keep treating um til I bring them back to a soft splendor. We have been growing her nails for my wedding and she started with nano nubs so I think shes coming along really well.
It was seriously hard to capture this mani in pics.. Overall not original but I still really dug it.
Ok this short post is turning long.. so that's all for today
thanks for reading
-ilectra

Dusty my Darling

The things we will do for nail polish, isn't limited to digging in old dusty bins and shelves for a hidden gem. So today I bring you a lovely Dusty (Old dusty bottle of polish) that I found for 50 cents in a dusty old bin at my local beauty supply shop.
Ruby Kisses-Blue Denim
Its a lovely dark blue that manages to not look black indoors.
It's Dark and Vampy but has a hit on classic without being red. The formula is sadly not big 3 free but it went on like heaven and was opaque in one coat, the above is 2 coats.
I added another dusty find on top of that.
LA Colors - Rainbow Glitter


Look at all that close up sparkly goodness <3
I love the Rainbow Glitter over the top, The last 3 pics were taken in my new light box photo studio that The hubby and I made to take pics of my nails and my polishes, I love it so much.
What do you think? Like the nails/hands in the mini studio we made?
Well that was all the dusty love I have to show for now.
Thanks for reading
-ilectra

and then there was Maryland Crabcake

I have been a lifelong anti pink kinda girl and as ive gotten older ive mellowed out and come to understand that pick has its charms but never have I loved pink... until OPI Maryland Crabcake.
This is bar none my fave pink polish, its got a lil hint of orange in it and its well it's the bee's knees..lol
I did this nail look with it the other day and it was my first time using it, I got it in a big haul from the flea market and umm yeah I love it.
This one is super old/old school as you can see on the bottom label, but even with its age it applied like a dream.
On my thumbs I used China Glaze Skin Tight for the polka dots,and some random ebay nail art gems/bow etc.

I also added a glittery top coat, so the glitz you see isnt from Maryland Crabcake, its from a China Glaze called Starfish Wish and its also super old school.. but I thought it looked nice over the OPI.The camera really picked up the orange tones to this, its quite the beauty in person. I do believe its been discontinued but its worth hunting down.
I'll still say that im not a huge fan of pink but this pretty pink will always have a spot in my heart heh.

Thats all for today
Thanks for reading guys
-ilectra

You've seen it all before.. one more time!

Many of you like myself have seen Nubar 2010 and Sally Hanson Hidden Treasure in almost every nailblog Ive seen in the last 4 months. But I was curious to see if you savvy nail gals could tell the diff between the two if not marked..
So here's another comparison of these two beautiful flakie polishes, over the top of Diva of Geneva.
These really are a great way to spruce up a old mani that ya dont have time to remove.
As you see in the first pic above they look similar in the bottle but hardly exact.


In all of these pics I have SH HT on 2 fingers and Nubar 2010 on two.
But can you tell which is which? The two above are in sun and Below are two in shade..
So now that you are at the bottom, I bet you are wondering which is which, well if you cant tell then I'm not telling :D Needless to say, they really are pretty much the same.. DONT spend $30 on ebay for HT if you cant find it or get your hands on it, you can get the Nubar 2010 for under 10 and thats with shipping..

Dupe's are fun, I might have to try and do more of them. I picked up a Ulta purple polish with my reward points on sunday that looks like an exact dupe to OPI Rumple wiggins , I think its called..
Ok so there you have it, my comparison blog post to join it's twins out in blogland.
Thanks for reading
-ilectra

And if you're a Diva

Just a quickie to show the new OPI Diva from Geneva from the Swiss Collection as promised. This polish is a lil like magic.
I did my nails at night and in my room light i was a lil sad to see it on cause it just looked like a million other burgundy polishes I had seen, nothing special.. I captured that color below.


But to my joy and surprise when I went out, it turned a beautiful plum color, that has a mild almost duo chrome effect.. Below without flash.

This was 2 coats, its super opaque and has a lovely shimmer/sheen as you can see below.
After taking these pics I also noticed that this polish also from the right angle picks up an amber tone, in my bathroom it looked like a beautiful warm amber.. so to sum up, This is NOT my normal fair as far as polish goes, Im not huge into reds or burgundies but I do love purple soo this is a total must have. you have to see it on in person to really see just how wonderful this color is.

Time on my hands and polish on my nails

Hey hey guys its been a bit since my last post so this will be a nice fat blog post.
So on the 29th I went into surgery and they make you remove all your polish from hands and feet booooo naked nails.. But before I went into surgery I had a week long haul.. check it out.


Sally's had a huge clearance bin...heh
So since out of surgery ive had alot of time on my hands trying to recover so what do I do with the extra time? 3 things, Paint my nails, Work on my polish spreadsheet (a new thing for me) and look at more polish online (stalk polish on ebay and then not buy it lol)
So here are 2 of the polishes from the pre surgery haul, and sadly I ended up disappointed in them both, so so pretty in the bottle .. oh here here goes..
First up: CQ Silver Taupe
Im not a fan of Taupe polishes on me but the silver was so sparkly I figured it'd make it wearable hmmmm maybe not what do you think??
This is 3 coats and I feel like it really could have used another but uugghh 4 coats is hell.
It took forever to dry, forever and a half but once it did it was on there to stay.
I guess im on the fence about this one, on a plus for me this polish didn't chip at all..

Last up: L'oreal Party Hop

Im really loving purple polishes right now. But this somehow came off looking tacky.
But still in bottle its so pretty. See


This was also 3 coater that could have used another coat, something about the sparkly ones.
But on a negative note for me this polish just would not dry.. hours and hours later it was still wet and when i went to bed still wet thus on wake up it was a wreck.
Should have titled this post bling bling ha ha.
So there ya have it on those two.. Right now I have on OPI Diva from Geneva from the new swiss collection so I'm about to go take some pics of that for you guys but before I go,
I got in my TD order and would like to know which of those you would like to see next..They are:
Orly Cosmix Space Cadet
Orly Cosmix It's not Rocket Science
Opi Here today Aragon tomorrow suede
Opi Ski teal we drop (also from the swiss collection)
China Glaze Side Saddle
China Glaze C C Courage

Let me know, also my friends went to Canada and brought me back GOSH polishes sooo i'm excited to show you guys those as well.
Thanks for reading TGIF
Enjoy the weekend
-ilectra