Some NOTDs: Konad, Muppets OPIs, etc

1 coat of OPI Going Gonzo! over 3 coats OPI Road House Blues

OPI Warm and Fozzie. 3 coats, very interesting multicolored foil.

1 coat of OPI Rainbow Connection over 3 coats of Orly Le Chateau. Rainbow connection takes some dabbing to get the amount of glitter you want. Orly Le Chateau is a very deep blue jellyish creme. It basically looks black after a couple of coats. It's opaque in 2 coats, but I usually use 3 coats for everything.
m57 over Ulta Acid Wash. Acid wash is a light blue with gold duochrome. The gold is prevalent on my nails irl and the result is a color that isn't quite gold or silver.

OPI Skull and Glossbones alone. I forget if this is 3 or 4 coats. It was a bit goopy to apply, but the color is beautiful.
With Konad and Out the Door Northern Lights
Orly Roccoco A-go-go. 3 coats, opaque in 2. Excellent formula, but it's not as cool on the nails as it is in the bottle. Still very lovely
OPI Wocka Wocka! 3 coats, but it's opaque in 2. It's a nice red, but nothing special.
Wocka Wocka! with Orly Prisma Gloss Gold on top.
Orly Androgynie. I used 3 coats. Very pretty black jelly with silver and gold glitter and multicolored hexes. I like it, but the bottle has to be closed and shaken up throughout the application.

Orly Androgynie close-up



Orly Fowl Play. 4 coats. It looks identical to OPI Merry Midnight, in the bottle, but for some reason I prefer the OPI.

OPI Shrek Forever After Collection

I started taking Kendo on Tuesday and unfortunately, quickly realized that long nails were not going to work out with the sport (and it suddenly made sense to me as to why I spent many years in high school and college not polishing my nails...long nails didn't make sense...and I preferred painting them when they were longer). So last night, I cut them down to nubbins..but not before swatching up a bunch of colors. (I ended up skipping Kendo tonight due to illness anyways..so now I'm wishing I had waited until the weekend) I actually swatched the OPI Shrek Collection the same day as the Milani Liquid Metals though...so the coloring's not too perfect on a couple of these as I'm still figuring out the best way to get pictures under the OTTlite. All of these were fairly easy to apply and had a nice self leveling bit to them, so unevenness was not an issue. I may not have let the polish dry enough between layers, which may have resulted in more coats than necessary on a few of these, but I found these fairly easy to work with.

Funky Dunkey; a rich purple cream that's not quite as blue as it appears on my monitor screen. This one was 3 thin coats, no topcoat.

Ogre the Top Blue; This one should be a bit bluer, more vibrant than what shows up here. It was also an easy 3 coats. It doesn't strike me as a particularly unique color, but it's still cute.
What's With The Cattitude? Pastel Blue Cream...nothing too exciting. This one took 4 thin coats. I'm not sure pastel blue goes with this name, but whatever.
Rumple's Wiggin'. Pastel purple cream..there's been a lot of of these popping up this season. This was also 4 thin coats, with topcoat
Fiercely Fiona. I've been really into yellows this year and I'm glad OPI came out with a unique one like this. It's got a slight green tinge to it. This is also 4 coats with topcoat.
Who The Shrek Are You? is a bright light green color similar to that of Shrek's skintone.
This was also 4 thin coats.

Overall, the collection's okay, though not stellar. I'm just a bit bored with creams, since there's been so many released this year. I'm ready for something more fun now. I will give OPI a thumbs up for not adding a pink or red to this collection though.

Here Come the Rainbows

The sun has been kind enough to come out the last few days, so I've been enjoying my last couple of days of freedom wearing some holo polishes. Between staring in abject horror at my cat walking across the top of my TV and browsing through my folder, I also realized that I had a few pictures I had also never sorted/uploaded..so here they are.

This is China Glaze DV8..to give you an idea of just how lazy I am, this picture's from December...there was cake involved though so I'm not entirely sure I can be blamed for this.
I believe that this was 3 coats...no particular application problems stick out in my head..though I do remember being pissed off because a couple of nails chipped on me on the first day. I also think that this was the last mani I did before my daily changes started.
Here is Dimond Cosmetics Chainmail Charm. It was my first black holo polish and will certainly not be my last (I've since obtained My Private Jet and Revvvolution) This is 3 coats, and in indoor lighting.
You'll have to excuse this next pic of Milani Hi-Res...it's from a couple of months back..and not only was there no sun, but it was one of those days where I ran around like a chicken with its head cut off. I snapped a quick picture in indoor lighting without oiling up my cuticles before I removed it and chopped down my nails. Interestingly enough, this was the most rainbow action I'd gotten from the polish all day. The milani holo polishes are more holographic indoors, and way better on the nails than in the bottle (it looks kind of like bits of glitter in the bottle, with very little holo effect) If you compare it with the other holos I'm posting today, you can see that the finish of the polish is very different from the others...it's still cool though. I did 3 coats of this..no application problems whatsoever.
OPI DS Glamour was my mani of choice on Thursday. It photographs less impressively on short nails than on longer ones I guess, but the holo effect is still there. It was the usual easy to apply OPI and I did 3 coats. I can definitely see the love for this polish...it's a great deep blurple/indigo colored holo polish...very unique.
Here's the polish I've had on for the last couple of days...China Glaze LOL. I actually think I love this polish..it's a beautiful vibrant purple holo. This is one of those rare times where I only did 2 coats. One thing to note about the application of this one is that it's best to work as quickly and with as few strokes as possible on the first coat of this. It's okay to leave the first coat uneven since once it dries down a bit it will self-level out. If you go over parts of the polish again, you're likely to end up dragging the polish off and causing trouble.

That's all from me today...with any luck though my Nubar order will come decently early tomorrow and I can go about swatching the Fortress Collection.

NOTD: OPI Purple with a Purpose

Today's NOTD is Purple with a Purpose. It's opaque in 2 coats, but this is 3. It's a nice blue based purple with pink shimmer, making the overall result warm. The pink shimmer doesn't show up as strongly in pictures though, and the polish pulls bluer in pictures.

Sun:

Indoor lighting, the pink shimmer shows better here, but the color is less vibrant.

Nail Polish Stash Part 3- OPI and Sephora by OPI

Not pictured is Got the Blues for Red...because I bought it after taking all these pics and am too lazy to photograph just one polish on its own right now..as stated before, I'll be happy to take swatch requests

Alice in Wonderland semi-inspired NOTD

"`Would you tell me,' said Alice, a little timidly, `why you are painting those roses?'

Five and Seven said nothing, but looked at Two. Two began in a low voice, `Why the fact is, you see, Miss, this here ought to have been a red rose-tree, and we put a white one in by mistake; and if the Queen was to find it out, we should all have our heads cut off, you know. So you see, Miss, we're doing our best, afore she comes, to--' At this moment Five, who had been anxiously looking across the garden, called out `The Queen! The Queen!' and the three gardeners instantly threw themselves flat upon their faces. There was a sound of many footsteps, and Alice looked round, eager to see the Queen. "

--Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

I was originally not planning on doing a themed mani, but my excitement to go see the movie got the better of me. (Unfortunately, my last two attempts to go see this movie have been thwarted, but I'll see it eventually) My original plan was to do a manicure with the 4 playing card suites on my fingers and then a white/red rose on my thumbs, but apparently no such Konad plate exists with spades, clubs, and diamonds..so I ended up doing red roses over white polish. I used the Wine Red Konad Special polish and the large rose pattern from plate m13 over OPI Fit For a Queensland to create this manicure.

Fit For a Queensland was semi-difficult to work with, but not terrible due the the pro-wide brush. It took me 4 coats to smooth out the patchiness and streakiness of the polish, but I feel like I'm fairly happy with the results. (I say 4 coats, but I've found that I tend to use more coats than I've heard other people say they use on other polishes, so it's possible that individual results would vary) It's a nice white/ivory color with fairly subtle pink glowiness in it. Then again I got my particular bottle at Ulta on Clearance in a 2 pack with My Big Break for $5 a while back, so my love for this polish may be slightly biased.

Some lilac polish comparisons (OPI Done Out in Deco, China Glaze Light As Air, OPI Do you Lilac it and Essie Lilacism)

Earlier today, someone was asking for a comparison between OPI Do you Lilac it against Essie Lilacism, and China Glaze Light As Air, so I decided to swatch them for her. Since I had done so and labeled them already, I've decided to post my comparisons of these 4 polishes. All of these were done with 3 coats, except Essie Lilacism, which was 4 coats (It might be opaque in 3, but I forgot to shake the bottle before I started applying it so the first coat was very runny) Light as Air, you can probably get away with 2 coats of..I was being kind of quick and sloppy with it, so I ended up having to do 3. The formula's pretty decent on this one..too bad China Glaze's brush sucks. I'll also apologize for the lack of cleanup..I got lazy.
The first comparison is between OPI Do You Lilac it, China Glaze Light As Air, and Essie Lilacism. Light as Air is the lightest of the 3, with a dusty quality to it that I'm fairly fond of (Dusty cremes are my favorite cremes) I did a full mani of it after these swatches..and sadly I'm not entirely sure it's a color that works well on me...my face is neutral..but my hands are fairly warm...I love it in some lightings..and in others not so much. It's closest to Essie Lilacism, though Light as air is definitely lighter and dustier than Lilacism. Personally, I like Lilacism's color more. The difference is most apparent in the picture below, but there's definitely a stronger difference in person. OPI's Do You Lilac it is not very similar at all to either of these two.. it's more vibrant and less cool toned, and much less of a pastel.
I then compared OPI's Done Out in Deco with the the two, since it's lighter and cooler colored than Do You Lilac It..it's closer to these colors than Do You Lilac It, but is still not a dupe of either color. It is again more vibrant than these two and possibly a bit bluer, though it does carry a nice dusty quality to it.

This ends my comparisons of these colors. Unfortunately I do not own Lucky Lucky Lavender from the Hong Kong collection, so I cannot compare it to Light As Air and Lilacism. I hope this satisfied somebody's curiosity.

Happy Chinese/ Lunar New Year! New Year's Konad and OPI Alice in Wonderand

Happy New Year Ladies! Here is my New Year's NOTD: China Glaze 2030 over Essie Love, Beverly Hills XX. There was no tiger plate, but I tried...lol. I'll apologize in advance for the flipped pictures..blogspot is freaking out on me..and refuses to upload them properly.

Today I have for you the other 2 polishes I bought from OPI's Alice in Wonderland Collection. First up is Mad as a Hatter. This took 4 coats to be fully opaque and was still bumpy after 2 coats of Poshe. I don't like this polish at all..it looks like a New Year's Eve party threw up on my nails...and not in a good way. Despite being a glitter polish, this one just doesn't shine.

2nd is Absolutely Alice. It's not so sparkly here, but really only because my camera couldn't handle the glare from this in sunlight. It's a beautiful polish, way shinier than China Glaze Dorothy Who? and although they're similar in that they're both blue glitter polishes, Absolutely Alice is much nicer to me. It's a vibrant blue glitter with a lot of gold sprinkled throughout vs the silver in Dorothy Who? and just gorgeous. It looks totally bah until you topcoat it though...as you'll see below. This is 3 coats, 2 coats of Poshe..and still kinda bumpy after it, but not too bad.

Despite the bad lighting in the following pictures, these are here to show you the quirks. This is what it looked like freshly Topcoated...nice and shiny
This is what it looks like before the topcoat. Note that it's dull and boring and kind of ugly...
I'm not sure if this had to do with my topcoat or not, but I've heard this happen to a few people with both Absolutely Alice and Mad as a Hatter..but they have the tendency to pop off in full pieces...Anyways..that's all for now..I did finish taking stash pics of my polishes, but I did also just order some Elizabeth Ardens, so I'll wait to post those after I get them...I will not be posting polish stash with my makeup stash however as the polish stash alone was over 100 pictures.