RGB Crimson

And here today we have the rarely seen dominant hand NOTD picture... shhh, don't make any sudden movements, you might scare her back to her natural habitat behind the camera...

I majorly broke a nail on my left hand so we're going to try this for a while. It's hard. I have never, not even once, done a full and proper clean up on my right hand, so I'm taking on the challenge until I perfect it. I think the clean up turned out okay on this one, but taking pictures with my left hand did not go well. Holding the bottle in my right hand was weird too.

I picked up this polish in hopes of satisfying my intense lemming for OPI Vampire State Building, and I think I lulled the LemBeast into submission! I compared my nails to many pictures online and the color is close enough for me to be happy. And the slightly jelly finish makes me beyond happy with this color. The mani wasn't without trouble though; I got a defective brush from RGB. There were some odd bristles sticking up and having to landscape and trim the bristles on a brush seriously pisses me off. That's a mistake that I feel should NEVER happen with ANY company, especially not from a more high end polish like this. I don't even let it slide with Maybelline. Bad brushes shouldn't happen to good people! Now I have 6 other bottles of RGB that have been problem free, so I'm not condemning the brand by any means, but it does make me question their quality control a little.

OPI Keys to my Karma

What's more perfect for 4th of July then a bright red? I've had a ban on almost all reds from entering my collection for a long time... such a big ban that I only owned 1 red (Ruby Pumps of course!) for the last 2 years. I refused to buy them thinking they were so cliche. But recently something in my snapped and I've gone red crazy. I ordered 8 reds I was curious about, and I have to say, I'm quite happy about them. OPI Keys to my Karma was the one I was most excited about and it did not disappoint. It's a perfect maraschino cherry red with a yummy squishy jelly finish. I swear, I wanted to dip my finger in a glass of 7-Up to see if it could sweeten the drink a bit, that's how good this polish looks! Application took 3 coats like most jellies do and it applied perfectly.

$OPI Special Request

This hasn't been in my untrieds very long, but I'm still sorry I waited! I really liked the color in the store, it's a super bright coral. It's actually really close to High Hopes except, to my excitement, applied jelly! Mmm, jelly goodness.... I'm loving it! It took 3 coats to get a nice jelly finish, which I've already massacred with a knife while cutting a bell pepper. Ugh!

RBL Patrick Starfish

I was 11 when the cartoon phenomenon Spongebob Squarepants came out. I loved it so much, but my parents abhorred it! And since I didn't have cable in my bedroom, I would have to sneak in to the living room at odd hours to catch an episode, or set up a recording on a VHS tape. My ninja-stealth act worked perfectly for about a year, but the jig was up one day... when halfway through my dad's recording of a World Series games Spongebob had problems selling Krabby Patties. My dad was less than amused. After hitting my teen years and having REAL problems in my life (you know, boys, makeup, trying to buy the right jeans...) I pretty much forgot about the cartoon world. But when I started living in a dorm and doing "college things", it suddenly become pretty amusing again, lol.

Rescue Beauty Lounges 3 color tribute to Spongebob is so cute. I originally bought Bikini Bottom during the big sale, but kept waffling on wanting to wear it or not. I put it up for swap and got an offer for Patrick Starfish, which I took immediately and I'm so glad I did! I love this color so much! It is such a perfect peachy Spring color, I'm going to be wearing this a lot in the next few months. Application was absolutely flawless, and since this is a super-jelly it took 4 coats to be opaque, but happily I still have that jelly finish with no VNL. I think next time I try it I'm going to layer 2 coats over Something Sweet or Heli-yum to get a pinkish glow to it, since Patrick is actually more pink on the show.

NYS Amaranth

I had to switch back to greens for today! One of the bars downtown hosts a St. Patty's day parade and they have green beer today, so I most definitely had to be festive. I debated between sparkles or jelly and jelly won. NYS Amaranth was a big lemming for me for while, partly because of the color and finish, and partly because of the amazing Zulu franken that Dr. Frankenpolish did. Of course shortly after buying Amaranth, Nars announced the fall return of Zulu, so no need to make my own. Works out perfectly since I love this color all on it's own! It's a bit richer in real life, it's a very true kelly green. Application was a little finicky, I got a little cuticle drag because it took longer to dry between coats than I expected, so give it some time when applying. Top coat is a must, there was almost no shine and it took a very long time to dry. Even an hour after SV I got some dents when I was putting on some lotion. This was surprisingly opaque, I could have gotten away with 2 coats but did a 3rd just got get that yummy depth that jellys give.

I know you caught me cheatin'...

Dear Seche Vite,

I know that you know about last night. And I know that you know it was terrible. It was a moment of weakness, I thought there might be something better out there, but I was wrong... so wrong. China Glaze Fast Forward and I are done. Plus their brush was much smaller, and you know size matters... Please accept my apology, because I will never leave you again.

Last night I tried out New York Summer Hot Sky Blue. And it is HOT, much like the others with the same name. It's everything I wanted Dating a Royal to be, a true blue jelly. 3 coats and it was squishy-jelly-love. But look at what Fast Forward did! Weird bubble looking things, hardly any shine, still dentable HOURS later and I woke up with sheet marks, which I've NEVER had before! Ick.


Here's some awesome pictures to balance out the bad top coat! I picked up Sinful Green Ocean today, my Walgreen's had appx 1 million on display. It's my first flaky and so pretty! This quick swatch picture does not do it justice, I see everything from green to purple in the flakes.




And the rest of my new NYS polishes. I need to order more soon!

Worst picture ever of an AWESOME purple

This picture sucks. It's not true to what I'm wearing at all. Not even close. I tried out my new NYS Hot Purple today, and it is LOVE. So. Much. LOVE. It's the most perfect jelly purple ever. With 4 coats, in any normal light, I got perfect coverage with a squishy-looking jelly finish. But in the brightest sunshine ever that's bouncing off fresh snow with the flash of my camera, it shows VNL. No idea why, since I don't see it just looking at my nails. And the color looks kind of blurple-y here, but it's pure purple in person. It's bright and it has a neon-quality to it but it's not a neon.

I've never tried NYS before but it applied really well, and it's a friggin' bargain of a polish! Only $1.60 on TD! I paid a little more since I ordered from a website that still had Amaranth* in stock, but the 5 polishes I got are amazing. While I only have one Nfu Oh, I think the colors and finishes are on par with them on the awesome scale.


*O.M.G. If you even slightly want Amaranth, order it. It's hot. I'm going to rock it for St. Patty's day! I got mine from spabeautysupply.com

Also this is the last day to enter my Who Loves Purple? giveway! As you can see, I love it today :D

Essence Groovy

I love Essence's polishes. Their colors are so wonderfully deceitful! In the bottle, Groovy looks pretty blue, but you put it on and you get these hints of teal... so it's a super blue teal, right? Then you get near something blue, say, your jeans, and that blue makes Groovy look like a slightly-greened blue. It can't make up it's mind, and I don't want it to. And this one is a delicious jelly. I love everything about it!


For fun, I pulled out 2 other polishes that I'm constantly moving from my drawer of blues to my drawer of greens and back again. I can't decide where to put them! On the left we have the lighter China Glaze Flyin' High. This was my first time swatching this color and I am SO excited to do a full mani with it, it is wonderful! And on the right is American Apparel Peacock. I typically keep this one with my teals, but every once in a while I see it in another light and it goes with my blues.

The Definition of "Whelmed"

"I know you can be overwhelmed, and you can be underwhelmed, but can you ever just be whelmed?"

Name that movie!

This quote stuck with me while I was applying my nail polish last night. I've been lemming OPI's Dating a Royal for a long while, and when I read reports saying that it was very jelly, I quickly tracked it down and worked out a swap. And the bottle came, and the color was great. Not as great as I was expecting, but still great. Not to be deterred, I started to apply. And the first coat was magic... jelly blue that flowed over the nail, the perfect watery blue. But then the second coat went on, and I can't believe I'm saying this, but it was sadly buttery and opaque. And that was that. A perfectly opaque lovely shade of blue. Maybe I had put this up on a pedestal for too long, but it's not what I was expecting. Do I like it? Definitely! Do I love it and want to wear it for days on end? Nope. It's already been covered up with Absolutely Alice.


I think my clean up is getting better! I managed to get a clean margin without taking off half my nail polish this time lol!

Is there a bottle of nail polish in your stash that didn't live up to your expectations? I'd love to hear about it, I feel a little bad that I'm putting down Dating a Royal like this...

Essence Meet You in Budapest

I didn't know anything about this brand when I first saw this color, but I new I had to have Meet You in Budapest. It's a perfect, so perfect, teal with a super-jelly finish. I managed to track down someone who wanted to swap, and I was so excited! Essence is a drugstore brand from Europe, and I didn't know what to expect in terms of application, but I was completely blown away. It applied flawlessly, and was perfectly opaque in two coats, which for a jelly is amazing! And do you see the shine on this? There is no topcoat. That's right. No Seche Vite, no Poshe, this is all Essence's natural finish. I actually picked this dulled down picture because the rest of them reflected me in my nails! This was a limited edition color, but if you have any super nice European friends, ask them to track it down!


I haven't done any swatch comparisons with this, I'm waiting to get the new China Glaze collection to see if it's close at all to Flyin' High, though the more swatches of that I see, the less similar they look. Possibly similar to RBL Teal? I'll need to compare next time I bring it out!