Orly High on Hope

Hi Ninjas!

Hope you all had a great weekend out there in the world. This week is graduation week at work so it's cram time getting everything perfect for those students getting promoted to the next rank. On top of that, Hubby and I are going to the house we're hoping to buy for an inspection tomorrow so that will be fun!

Tonight's manicure is two coats of Orly High on Hope. HoH is from their Hope and Freedom Collection for Spring 2013. High on Hope is a dark navy cream base with a duichrome red/orange shimmer throughout. The shimmer is large enough to almost be considered a fleck type finish but it's not so large it effects the texture of the polish. I do wish the red side of the flecks had come out more prominently in these pictures!

What do you think? I really like this polish and think it was a uniquely dark shade for a spring collection. If you're a fan of this color, keep an eye out for my upcoming giveaway!

Orly Nite Owl

Hello Ninjas!

It's been cloudy, rainy, and chilly here this week! Today is the first day we've had proper sunlight since Saturday! I enjoy fall weather but I'm not really a fan of the rain that comes with it in the south. Ah well, at least it's not melt-your-face hot anymore.

Today's manicure is two coats of Orly Nite Owl from their super popular Birds of a Feather collection that brought us Fowl Play. While Fowl Play was busy being hailed as a fantastic dupe for the much sought OPI Merry Midnight, most of the other colors were forgotten, especially this nude shimmer. Since the collection has left stores, I've been wishing I'd picked up Nite Owl and I finally got in a swap with a lovely lady. Now that I have it, I love it! Minus the holographic particles, this is actually a dupe for butter LONDON All Hail (Mc)Queen which is on my lemming list still. This is a wonderful neutral color that isn't plain or blah; love it!

Orly Preamp

Hello Ninjas!

I'm not feeling well again. I think that my body deals with a large amount of stress by getting since once I'm NOT stressed any more. Which of course makes no sense but I sort of get it. I mean, if you're in a heightened state of stress for weeks at a time,  your body is working super hard to keep you well enough to deal with all of the obstacles coming at you. Once the stress has passed, your body needs to take time to recoup all the resources it used up keeping you going. Anyways, I've got a sinus infection and the raging sinus pressure headache to go with it. I've been working my way through the Fall 2012 Zoya collection but I want to be able to do entire halves in a post so give me a little more time please!

Today's polish is Preamp from Orly's new Electronica collection. By my guess this was the most unique of the four colors released and also the prettiest. I'm not much of a pink polish girl but I'll try almost anything if it has a pronounced golden shimmer in it. Preamp is a blue toned bubblegum pink with loads of course gold shimmer. This was a very easy to apply polish despite being so light and so packed with shimmer. Two coats did the trick and it also dried very shiny on its own. I've got to applaud Orly, it's not often that I find a pink I'd like to wear more than once!

Essence High Spirits

Hello lovely Ninjas!

This week is weapons week in Ninjutsu. Since I'm graduation to the water element next week, I'm technically allowed to use the blue-belt weapon in class this week! Water uses a hanbo which is a 3 foot wooden staff. I'm excited because it's a change from the rubber throwing stars (Shuriken) I've had the chance to use the last 9 months! Anyways, on to the polish!

I picked up High Spirits one of my trips to Ulta about two months ago. I love green nail polish and I didn't have anything that was olive drab with silver shimmer. This is a pretty pretty polish that reminds me of the base color in RBL's Halcyon. Inspired by Halcyon and not able to fork out the money for it, I wore High Spirits with two different shimmer coats by Orly over it. I did two coats of High Spirits with one coat each of Orly Fifty-Four and Love Each Other. I wish the shimmer had turned out better in these pictures, this was a very pretty combination :)

Crackle Rage

Hi Ninjas!

This weekend was fun! The weather was a little dreary but I enjoyed going wedding dress shopping with a friend from work and the sun came out afterwards. I had so much fun shopping for my own dress, I had no idea how fun it was to sit on the other side of the dressing room door :)

Today I've got a combination I wore a while back to extend to life of my manicure when I didn't have time to do a whole re-paint one night. I added a black crackle over my two coats of Orly Rage for a nifty cream on metallic manicure.These pictures were taken on a stormy day so I apologize for their quality!

Orly Rage

Hello Ninjas!

Today I've got a pretty rose-gold foil for you: Orly Rage. I picked up Rage after I fell in love with OPI Designer De Better but couldn't find a full size bottle in stores. I looked around and saw that Rage was similar in finish and color plus it was part of the permanent Orly line so it's easily accessible. I picked up the bottle at Ulta and tried it on the very next day because I was so excited to have it! This is a great color, I'm really beginning to fall in love with foil finishes. The darker flecks that make this look like rose-gold are more densely packed in that in DDB so the color looks more solidly like rose-gold than a silver with gold tint. This is two easy coats in a couple of different lights/angles to show how it glows in the sun.

Orly Emberstone

Hello darling ninjas!


Tonight I've got Orly Emberstone for you. This is the manicure I wore after camping in below freezing temperatures. I was just too cold the whole night and I slept horribly so when I went home, I went right back to sleep. When I got up, I wanted something warming for my new manicure and I figured Emberstone was a pretty warm name! Emberstone is a very interesting polish, it seems to be comprised of many different fleck colors that combine to make one incredibly glowy orange polish that sometimes flashes pink. I think the main fleck colors are orange, golden yellow, pink, and the occasional blue. All the colors you'd see in a camp fire :) This polish did take three coats to reach an opacity that I could tolerate but it was absolutely worth it.

There are a lot of pictures of this polish. Sorry! It just had so many different looks depending on the lighting. The last one was taken in the shade. The very first picture is a little blurry but I like how it shows the flecks that make up the whole polish.

Essie School of Hard Rocks Gradient

Hello darling ninjas!

Today I've got my first attempt at a gradient nail design. This is a bas of two coats of Essie School of Hard Rocks from their Cocktail Bling collection for Winter 2011. I was expecting SoHR to come out much lighter but it ended up drying to a nice muted medium teal instead of the more khaki green I was expecting. This was still a very pretty color and an easy formula to work with. If you have a steady hand, you could probably make this color into a one coat wonder but I just didn't want to risk the bubbling.

After the coats of Essie, I did one layer of Orly Twilight on about 3/4 of my nails. My original intention had been to do the gradient entirely with the Orly color but it was just too subtle to produce the effect I wanted. I ended up adding a layer of Sally Hansen Glass Slipper to the tips of my nails to finish off the gradient. The overall effect looks like I dipped my nails in water and let them freeze. I love the frosty look!

I don't think I did too bad for my first try at a gradient, what do you think? Oh yes, I did chop my nails down after a bad break on my right hand. Sorry for the shortness!

Orly Androgynie

Hello Darling Readers!

I've been feeling less than stellar today but thanks to my lovely husband, I have homemade chili to make me feel better. Tonight I've got one of the new colors from Orly's Winter 2011 collection, Androgynie. This color is a black base with scattered holo glitter, various colored hex glitter, and a ton of gold fleck glitter. While this looks amazing in the bottle, it doesn't exactly translate on the nail. What you mostly get is black polish with a lot of gold fleck and maybe one or two hexes if you carefully place them. What also doesn't help is that the base is not a very good suspension base for the holographic particles so they are very sparse on the nail. Add to that a black base that doesn't show hex glitter through it unless it's on the very top coat and you have a basically black manicure. This is two coats with Seche QD on top.

Gift Haul :)

Hello darling readers.

Sorry I missed Saturday's post, Hubby and I went camping and froze! Man was it cold, below freezing and our tent was covered in frost when we woke up. Anyways, to make it up to you I'll post a haul polst today then another swatch tomorrow instead of my usual every other day posting.

The first set of polishes are those I was given by my MIL (or picked up for someone other than myself) while I visited her in NY for Thanksgiving. The Lemon Fizz and second Ruby Pumps mini are gifts for other people while the rest were gifts to me. The two Cult Nails colors are gifts from my husband from her Black Friday sale.

Top L-R: ChG Ruby Pumps, Essie School of Hard Rocks, Orly Twilight, Orly Emberstone, Orly Androgynie, Essie Bobbing for Baubles, ChG Ruby Pumps.
Bottom L-R: Cult Nails Iconic, ChG Glittering Garland, ChG City siren, ChG Lemon Fizz, Cult Nails Time Traveler.

This second set is a prize package I won from The Polished Panda's Holiday Giveaway. She's such a love and a fellow North Carolinean to boot :)

The polishes are Finger Paints Comet's Collar, Santa Kisses, and Frosty Night. I love the peppermint hand sanitizer and lotion, my favorite Christmas scent (even though I can't smell very well) is peppermint so they make me happy. My purse now jingles wherever I go! I haven't tried out these chrome pens by Sally Hansen before so I'll have to let you know how they work out. The black and white floral pattern is actually a super cute clutch that is my new wallet :)

There you have my lovely gifts! However, I broke down after three weeks of looking for Shine of the Times in stores and just broke my no buy last week. I ended up with 7 polishes that I'm sure I'll post later. I'm sorry I failed! Alas, I still don't have my lovely Essie flakies :(

Essence Just Rock It!

Hello darling readers,

As I drink my coffee and fight off a massive headache, I have a very pretty navy blue polish to show you. This is ONE amazingly easy coat of Essence Just Rock It! which is a navy blue that looks like one of those in-between cream and jelly polishes. The wonky tip fading is because my Seche pulled this badly away from my tips as it dried *grr* I added a hard to see coat of Orly Love Each Other on top of it for some pretty subtle sparkle and I loooved this combination.

Zoya Ibiza and Orly Fifty-Four

Hello lovelies!!

Today I've got a neat combination of a very dark blue with a copper/gold shimmer. I put these two together in an attempt to recreate RBL's Piu Mosso without spending nearly $20 on one bottle. The bottle of Ibiza that I used belongs to my friend, and new polish addict, Elizabeth. Ibiza is a gorgeous dark blue with a shimmer finish that isn't very shimmery. To add a little contrast and shimmer, I put a coat of Orly Fifty-Four which is a very nice light pink and copper shimmer layering polish. These pictures aren't great, I took them after four days of wear, sorry!

Nub Alert: Essie Ballet Slippers

Hi hi!

So, after three nails broken all the way down to the nail line, I decided it was time to nubbinize the whole lot! This is a color I've been wanting to wear but didn't want to deal with the issue of VNL: Essie Ballet Slippers. This is a sheer polish so I had to do something like 3 or 4 coats to get the color even. I still love the color and it was a nice look with my tiny nub nails.

After two days plain, I did a neat candy manicure with it. This is two coats on NYC Starry Silver Glitter topped with three coats of Orly Beverly Hills Plum. This color is more of a tint than a polish so it let the pretty holo show through while still making the overall effect more jelly-ish.
 

Jesse's Girl Mermaid's Lagoon

Aloha!

Today I've got pictures of my Jesse's Girl Manicure. When I first saw swatches of Mermaid's Lagoon I was super excited about the copper shimmer in it. However, once I got it on my nails I could barely see the shimmer even in strong sunlight. I remedied this by adding Orly Fifty Four over the top for a pretty copper shimmer. Two coats of color with one coat of Orly on top and Orly topcoat.

Sorry about the lobster hands! I don't know what happened with the lighting here but the polish color is pretty close.

Orly: Fowl Play

So, I searched all of Ulta for the ORly fall collection and was sad I couldn't find it at all. I picked up Essence Just Rock It! and OPI Ink courtesy of my MIL and right as we were checking out I saw the collection behind the counter! I then also acquired Fowl play in all it's glittery flakie goodness!

I layered two coats of Fowl Play over Just Rock It because I wasn't sure how opaque it would be by itself. This is an amazing color. Dark purple that leans a little red with blue glitter and red/iridescent flakies that changed color in the right light.

Then I matted it out with Essie Matte About You for a neat look. I think I need a new bottle, mine is a little thick now and seems to alter the color rather than just matte-ing the manicure.

Annnnd who wants to guess what this lovely color is?