Some Like It Hot

Hello all! I'm actually on a plane to Orlando, Florida right now but I just needed to keep the posting momentum going =) Which is why I love that Blogger lets you make posts but actually post them in the future.

Now, some people aren't very adventurous with their polish but for those who are, I've got a great yellow polish for you. Even though I'm not wearing yellow for this trip (my nails and toes are China Glaze For Audrey), there's going to be lots of sunshine in Florida! My issue with yellow polish is that it tends to draw out the yellow in my skin and sometimes makes me look jaundiced. But this yellow is bright but also soft at the same time, so my fingers don't look entirely sickly.

L.A. Flare can be found at Forever 21 and Walmart.

Early Morning Hotness: Essie Neons

I apologize for the delay in getting these pictures to you guys, it's been a very hectic week. I rarely get chips in my polish but I actually did get two while moving on Saturday. I felt like I had crossed an important milestone in my life, hehe. I haven't even caught up with my daily readings of the nail board at MUA and CNN/BBC in the past four days. It's been quite a week.

Anyway, onto the neons! I normally swatch without a base or top coat but since neons dry so matte due to the pigmentation in them, I added a topcoat to truly represent the color. Here they are all together:

L-R: Bermuda Shorts, Shorty Pants, Mini Shorts, Short Shorts

First, although I'm not a purple girl I must say that I really liked Bermuda Shorts. It had one of the best applications of the four, and it made my skin look very pale (always a plus in my look, I hate that I tan so easily). It's a great vibrant neon purple.
Now, I love yellow polish, but it does make my fingers look extremely tan. The contrast is nice but it doesn't photograph well. Anyway, Shorty Pants is a gorgeous neon yellow creme that is a true yellow, it doesn't turn out mustard-y like Icing Smooth Like Butta does. However, I must say that the application on this one wasn't the best. Maybe it was finicky because it wanted to have a name ending in 'shorts' too? It might be a yellow thing (NYX Carnation was also very streaky, NYC Taxi Cab Yellow was too watery/streaky until I let it dry out), but this one does require a lot of patience.

Ahhh it makes my hand look so dark! But honestly the contrast is awesome. I gave a sneak peek of Mini Shorts earlier, but with topcoat it definitely gives it that extra kick of neon. This one also had a good application

And finally, Short Shorts. I didn't think it was very neon until I looked at it on my computer screen (disadvantages of having a crappy digital camera and being colorblind). Just....wow. Definitely a pink that makes a statement. The application on this was ok, not perfect but workable like most other polishes.

Neons are hard to photograph but hopefully I did ok. I had to slap Orly Live Wire over Shorty Pants though to make it even more gorgeous (I love shimmer)...hopefully everyone can see the glorious golden shimmer...if not, click to enlarge.


And yes, I've graduated from tagging my pics with my MUA name to the blog URL. Does it look ok?

My nails are actually bare now, one because it's easier to swatch on whim whenever I please but also because my nails are recovering from using a SH basecoat (more on that later) which completely dried out my nails and stripped them completely of their natural oils and made them peel a bit. Ugh. More on that later, I'll have a complete product review. I've also been really good on not spending too much on polish lately but I did haul quite a bit today. I got my first Nubar polish (Cotton Candy), my second Zoya polish (Akyra), my first SH Salon line polish (You-Gurt Style) and my first Borghese polish (Capri Coral). But those are not the only polishes I got, which is quite terrible!

Anyway, even though I had some application issues, these neons are still really hot and perfect for summer!

What a Tease!

After a long and exhausting week, I'm ready to relax.....by studying for finals next week. I've given into the fact that the first half of June has/is going to be a lose-lose situation. But look what beauties decided to drop in today:

L-R: Bermuda Shorts, Shorty Pants, Mini Shorts, Short Shorts

Yep, the new Essie Neon collection. They released a LE neon collection last year too, but those were much sheerer. From the pics I've seen on MUA and 15 Min. Beauty Fanatic, these are highly pigmented. I'm eager to try these, but I will have to wait...but instead of just being a tease, I present you with pics of another polish.....Pure Ice Tease. It's a perfect summery color, a bright fuchsia with a hefty dose of blurple shimmer. I'm not sure how to classify the shimmer in this but it's so nice!


Pure Ice polishes can be found at Walmart for fairly cheap, I've forgotten the exact price. But they are good quality polishes for the money. Everyone over at the nail board has gone crazy over Pure Ice Heartbreaker, which is a great polish for layering over cremes because of the gorgeous shimmer in it. Also, occasionally these polishes will be out of stock...don't resort to the internet! Eventually they will be restocked, sometimes in a matter of days. Patience, patience.

With Essie's new neon collection as a direct competition with MAC and Chanel's neon collections, what do you guys think? It's definitely the cheapest alternative compared to the rest, but they are all different enough to justify (in my world at least), having them all. MAC's Phosphor, for instance, is a bit more frosty than Chanel's LA Sunrise or Essie's Shorty Pants. LA Sunrise is also lighter, and Shorty Pants is the only out of the three to be a straight creme.

Also, given Essie's surprising hit with their summer collection, and now a collection of neons, do you sense that they're branching out from their usual conservatism? Granted, the neon collection is limited edition but the pigmentation is a departure from the demure Essie polishes of the past. This could be the evolution of something great....perhaps a collection of sheer holo's? Something that incorporates their signature soft, workplace-safe colors with an infusion of holographic glitter for a bit of edge. I could easily see a nice nude holographic version of Congo Bongo, a pretty soft pink holo version of Charmeuse or My Place or Yours, or a pretty white holo with Intimate. China Glaze and OPI have all released holo collections, what do you guys think? I'm always in favor of progression while not completing leaving behind the basics. I think it's possible that Essie's color selection could become more daring without alienating their original fan base. After all, their tag line is that Essie is a color-holic. It's nice to see that becoming more of a reality now.

Early Morning Hotness: Chanel LE Robertson Blvd. collection

Get ready you guys, this one's a doozy. From the pics of Chanel's Robertson Blvd. collection, it's obvious that everyone's hopes that it would be exactly dupish to Essie's Neon Shorts collection were wrong. These colors are all gorgeous, not TOO neon but not too blah either. After seeing these pics, I really wish Chanel would add them to the permanent collection. And also because that would mean that we wouldn't have to pay $6 more for these stinking beauties.

Special thanks to the amazing Eve from MUA's nailboard for these pics! Please do not steal these pics (which is why I've watermarked them to death), she worked very hard on taking these. If you want to use these pics, please either link back to this blog or PM Love8Brain over at MUA for permission. I know there are Ebay scalpers out there already hawking these polishes for crazy high prices. I have to stress that unless you are from outside the US, usually buying these types of polishes off Ebay are a rip-off. However, especially for the girls in the UK, sometimes you can find really great deals on these things when you factor in the currency exchange. Just use some common sense before falling over backwards to bid! And as always, click on a pic for an enlarged and more detailed version.

Box pictures, just to be a tease...you would think that the numbers would be sequential since they're from the same collection, but they're not....maybe that's how they do it in high fashion:

Bottle pics:


Rodeo Dr, an actual likable purple for me (and I usually hate purple!):



Melrose...I'm actually not a fan of this one, looks too Pepto-Bismol for me. Eve however swears that it's not too bright/ostentatious in real life, and I guess she could be right. Bonus: it has a bit of a jelly finish.




L.A. Sunrise, looks like a paler version of NYC Taxi Yellow. I love it already:




And finally, L.A. Sunset, a gorgeous orange-coral:





Thoughts? Well LA Sunset and Rodeo Dr. definitely exceeded my expections, and I'm glad my fanaticism over LA Sunrise has been totally justified. I think I'd have to see Melrose in person before passing on it. All in all, these colors are pretty, yes, but with the $25 price tag in mind I would probably only get the LA's. Although, from these pics I like LA Sunset's bottle color more so than the color it is on nails. But like I said, I'd have to see them in person first.

Unfortunately, according to my friend Jen who went earlier today, LA Sunrise is SOLD OUT at the Robertson Boutique. So if that's the only one you were going to get, save your gas mileage. Word is that these LE polishes will be available for order online at chanel.com late June/early July. Hopefully by then there will be more LA Sunrise's to go around. Also, because finals week is next week and I'm actually running a slight fever right now, expect very few, if any posts until June 13th. I will at least finish writing my opinion piece on Chanel polishes and why people are willing to pay for them.

Again, thanks to Love8Brain over at MUA for letting me use her fabulous pics!

Good Morning Sunshine!

Here are pics of Orly Live Wire & Icing Smooth Like Butta for MUAer psychoswim....I think Michy will love these as well.

Orly Live Wire is everything I thought it would be and more. It's a nice soft yellow, not too neon but not too pastel either. It has gorgeous shimmer and maybe on the sheerer side but still very opaque. This is three coats, and with flash...the color is a bit brighter IRL. It's really gorgeous and worth the instant gratification:

Icing Smooth Like Butta definitely did not apply as smoothly as butter, unless you're talking about cold butter over cold, raw tilapia. And since I experienced that earlier, it's neither fun nor easy to do. SLB applied pretty streaky and uneven so I slapped some Out the Door over it which evened it out. I don't use basecoats or topcoats when I'm swatching, so this color turned out more mustard-yellow than neon yellow like in the bottle. Since I messed up my index finger anyway, I decided to try layering SLB over one coat of Pure Ice- Super Star, which is an opaque (albeit kind of streaky) white. The result? From the pic below you can see that layering it over an opaque basecoat (like a ridgefiller) or a soft white (even though I used like a white-out white) really brings out the glorious neon of it.
See you can hardly tell it was streaky, can you? OTD is good stuff, though any good topcoat will do.

Of course, I had to get in the best of both worlds:
Definitely makes Smooth Like Butta less mustard-y, don't you think? The index finger is 1 coat of Pure Ice Super Star, 2 coats Smooth Like Butta, 1 Coat Live Wire.

Live Wire is one of the newer Orly's so it may take a while for it to show up at Sally's. If you can't wait (like I couldn't), you can get them at CVS (though mine didn't have them) or Ulta for $5.99 and $7 respectively. Smooth Like Butta is available only at Icing stores for $3.50.

Definitely time for me to sleep now! Though trying on these yellow polishes made me feel happy for sure. I really hope that more opaque yellows will be available (though I passed on Essie's neon set and MAC's latest one because they both looked too frosty), Michy's really passed on the yellow fever to me! Though recently I've developed orange and coral fever as well. Which is strange because I don't really know what coral is. Colorblindness is the bane of my existence! Well that and my credit card, as evidenced by today (yesterday's?) shameful haul.

Early Morning Hotness: Hello, Hello...You Say Goodbye, I Say Yellow

I can't believe I'm still pining over Chanel's LA Sunrise when a) it could very possibly be a dupe for Essie Shorty Pants from the current Essie Neon Shorts collection and b) it's freaking $25 for a nail polish! Even though polish lasts for quite a long time, I'm still very reluctant to pay so much for such little product.

But if I ultimately decide to not get LA Sunrise, I can fall back on my two true yellow polishes, NYC Taxi Yellow Creme and NYX Carnation. The NYX is harder to find, but the NYC is not only easier to find, the price of it is as cheap as nail polish gets: 99 cents.

The thing about the NYC one is that it can be difficult to apply. Cheaper polishes do commonly have this flaw of being too fluid and liquidy because they don't have ballzz, thus being a streaky mess to apply. When I mentioned streaky to my roommate earlier today, she sounded perplexed so here's what streaky means- the polish doesn't go on evenly, leaving some areas of your nail well coated and others not coated opaquely at all. Streaky polishes can be either too thick or too liquidy.

I had this issue with the NYC at first, but then after seeing how fluid it was, decided to leave it open next to my open window for 4 hours. This completely took care of the streakiness issue and applied MUCH better:
It's got a gorgeous gold shimmer to it too (despite the fact that it's a 'creme'). I love the way this yellow looks on me.

NYX Carnation is another nice yellow but for some reason photographed horribly:
It definitely draws out the yellow in my skin, but this photo was also taken during sunset so the lighting is a bit off. No matter how it looks on me, I still love the color. Carnation is a bit more yellow than Taxi Yellow Creme, and I should try this swatch again in full sunlight. Sorry about that!

Yellow can be a difficult color to pull off but it's personally my favorite color because it's so happy and fun. I should wear more yellow on my tips while I'm still young though! If I can pull off certain shades.

If you're going to leave a polish out to thicken it, be sure to check it every hour to every one-and-a-half hour, polish doesn't thicken quickly but you still want to have a good balance of consistency. If you have over-thickened though, that's where thinner comes in handy. It's hard to get a polish just right but patiences begets fruition, right?

First Look at Chanel's L.A. Sunrise!

Earlier I had expressed my excitement over Chanel's Limited Edition Robertson Blvd polishes. In this month's issue of InStyle magazine, with the adorable Cameron Diaz on the cover, they tantalize us with a look at the yellow polish, LA Sunrise. Selma Blair models this color, and even though the nails are like airbrushed to death, hopefully the color is accurate. It looks FABULOUS on Ms. Blair though, which leads me to hope that this shade is like the Risky Business of yellows- beautiful but wearable for all skin tones. Hey, a girl can dream right? It's like a true lemon yellow, paler than NYC Taxi Cab Creme and NYX Carnation, I believe. When I get this polish (curse you, Chanel!), I'll be able to do comparisons.

I apologize for the crazy watermarking....as alway, click on the pictures for a larger version

I wish I had her skin! But doesn't the yellow pop beautifully?

I was so excited when I saw that this color was LA Sunrise

Close-up of the bottle.....and the price. I really hope this $25 price tag isn't permanent, it's a seriously hefty price to pay. I just hope the other colors suck! (It's a terrible thing to wish for in retrospect but come on, my poor wallet!)

Close-up of the gorgeous color. I adore it.

More posts are coming up! But this has definitely brightened up my day =).