Swatch: Rainbow Honey Lunairetic

This colour looks amazing in the bottle. I should have realized it was a glitterbomb packed in there, but alas, I thought I would get some scattering like I usually do with Rainbow Honey. Anyway, I put two coats over Sally Hansen Salon's Cruel Heart and here is my first glimpse of my work...

 ... Not so impressed.

And then God said, "Let there be LIGHT!" (hehe)

Zomg it literally stopped me in my tracks. It looks like treasure. And with that red it looks like treasure on a plush velvet red pillow! I know, you love my imagery.

On the down side, it dried pretty bumpy, though I'm not having picking problems about the diamond glitter. I believe I used 3 layers of Ulta X-dry here. Boo. But anyway, gorgeous! It matches my pirate costume today because it looks like treasure on my fingertips =D

This was from the Chrono Cross collection by the way and I believe I've now swatched all of them. What was your favourite? One more Rainbow Honey left for me!

Swatch: Sally Hansen Salon Cruel Heart

Here's another old polish for you guys, and this one really stood the test of time. I've had it for 5+ years and the formula acts just like the day I bought it! When it's sitting in the shade/dark/out of direct light, it looks almost like Julep Trina in the bottle... but when you put it on...

 BLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOD~~~

I love this colour! It's a dark shimmery red. It's just a classy, sophisticated red and it makes me feel glamorous =P

This is the best picture!

What do you think? Do you have any reds (or other colours!) that make you feel like a vixen?

Swatch: Essie Shine of the Times

Everybody and their cat have swatched this polish but I decided to take the plunge and spend my money only recently. I was worried I wouldn't be able to find it because it was discontinued but, lo and behold, I walked into Superstore and got the last bottle. For $5. I think I scored pretty well, especially on my first Essie =D

Here is one coat over Revlon Blackest Black.

And then I matted it with WarPaint Mattify. I'd seen this a lot and I LOVE Mattifying e'rr-thang.

I love it. I could wear this ALL the time!

Are any of you guys lemming this? London Drugs has bottles and bottles of it for $10. Is it worth me hoarding some for a giveaway? TELL ME THINGS =D

Halloween Pirate, with nails to match of course!

So on the Friday I went to a Halloween party with my boy-toy, and the only way for us to match was basically a pirate. It was a late party so I had plenty of time to do them =D I started with Julep Caroline and decided to do accents.

 On my ring finger, I used tape (badly) to stripe on grey. I don't know why, but it seemed right. I used Golden Rose 187 and then with my second largest dotting tool, I made a skull and crossbones with KleanColor Silver!

I used my LA Colors strper for the dotted eyes

 When I was done it was still missing something. The only thing I could think to represent pirates was an anchor, which I did with KleanColor Bright Gold and a paintbrush. I dotted the end with the large end of my tool, then dotted inside it with Caroline again to create the hole.

I really like it! It gives off a rich successful pirate vibe ;)

Oh! And here's our costumes!

Branden always blinks!!!

Better pictures will surface and I will add them here <3 I love being a pirate, it's so simple for me to do. That's Branden's too-big-even-for-him shirt, with a corset, leggings and knee high boots. I wrapped a scarf/bandana around my head and put on some eyeliner and lipstick with the feather hair extensions and voila! Easy pirate. Y'know, if you've got a waist-cincher corset hanging around =P

What did you dress up as for Halloween? Show me your fantabulous nails!

Swatch: Julep Caroline

Hey, who else got that super awesome October box? I went to a Halloween party as a pirate, and dark Caroline with its burgundy shimmer caught me eye, yarrr ;)

The shimmer looks very brown in these photos, but it does have more of a reddish tinge. I tried to get a picture with flash to see if that would help....

But it didn't really. Sigh!

Did you guys get this Julep box? What did you think of the colours? Remember you can sign up here and get your first box for a penny with the code PENNY at checkout =)

Swatch: Revlon Blackest Black

Well, after that wildly popular poutine post yesterday I'm not sure I want to go back to nails... Though to be fair, lots of pageviews doesn't mean lots of feedback. =P

This is another polish I got AGES ago (like, eight years...) and I'm really surprised how well it held up. It's actually a very nice black, with some dark blue glitter scattered in there to give it a hidden shimmer. It transfers onto the nail as much as you can see in the bottle (which isn't very much). Like I said, it's subtle.

Anyway, blah blah blah, pictures.

You can see the blue in the bottle here

Opaque in two coats, but I used three because I miss in stupid places. Sorry about the weird fuzzy pictures, I don't know what was wrong with my camera.

Do you guys have any interesting black polishes?

Poutine: SFU Mackenzie Cafe

Today we're talking poutine. I wasn't going to review this but that was before I tasted it. Recently, Simon Fraser University invested a lot of money into renovating their Mackenzie Cafe, making it more consumer friendly, and more delicious (apparently!)!

When you go in there, the only thing on the menu that resembles this is "Breakfast Poutine" which actually worked out because they use hashed browns as fries. Normally, this also has a fried egg on top, but I requested not to.

I was pleasantly, amazingly surprised at how delicious this was. I think the lady liked me too, because she loaded on the gravy and fries.

What do you think guys? I'm going to give it an honourary spot on the Poutine Review page. Do you think it deserves its own ranking?

Here are the rest, check them out!

1. Dunn's Famous
2. Preston's
3. Mean Poutine
4. Frenchies
5. La Poutinerie
6. Fritz
7. La Belle Patate

Check out the updated list here <3

Swatch: Peel-Off Base - Elmer's Glue

It's my two hundredth post! I talk a lot apparently and I want to thank you all for sticking around through it <3 For this special occasion, I wanted to talk about something that you may have seen floating around the nail-blogosphere: Elmer's school glue as a base coat!

I'm sure you guys must have heard of this right now, but I thought I'd just give you my two cents on it. I've used this underneath a couple of my manicures including Boogie Wonderland/Sabrina, Riveting/God of Destiny and Thunder/Siren Song.

If you hadn't heard, what you do is use Elmer's (PVA - school) glue as a base coat. When you're done with it, it peels right off in chunks or whole pieces! I found if you do really thin coats, it lasts quite a long time. Boogie Wonderland wore for a week before I forcibly peeled it off. However, I did thicker coats for my Riveting manicure, and it lasted only a couple of hours. It does apply gloopy since it dries quite quickly, but usually it evens out if you can get it to lay flat without bubbles (not too difficult to do).

Just for your information, here's a couple pictures of my nails with glue on top =D

Thicker coats in the process of drying

Thin coat, perfect!

 And here is a photo after these nails. They came off in one piece and you can see zero residue left on my nails.

The other thing is, you have to let it dry COMPLETELY. If you don't and you just polish over top, it could wrinkle as if you weren't careful with your stick-ons...

The day after I wrote this post

And how they came off =]

It also seems to bubble just like nail polish can... On the bright side though, when it starts getting thick and dry, you can use a bit of nail polish thinner, just like real polish! That was a pretty exciting revelation =D

One more thing... I think I wouldn't use it if you're not putting glitter down. It worked really well with Boogie Wonderland but obviously less well for Rainbow Honey Siren Song. It was even worse for my Del Sols. I think any nail polish that doesn't dry "stiff" is going to wrinkle when the glue underneath dries/shrinks/whatever it does the next day.

Have you tried the glue base? What do you think? Any more tips and cautions?

FiA#8 Halloween!

This is a double-whammy nail art post (and therefore pic-heavy... sorry). It's taking care of my Halloween challenge item and also being entered into a nail art contest! I may do another Halloween manicure though, so keep your eyes open.

So I started with Del Sol Superhero on my right hand and Del Sol Chicky on my left, I did a gradient with the opposite colour on each hand. Because these are both really sheer, I brushed it on in layers instead, putting a coat down from 3/4s of the way from the tip to the tip, then from 1/2 way, then just glooping a bit on the tips themselves to get an opaque colour. Take a look.

Outside!

 I only got a picture of one hand outside because I couldn't get the other to change. Dunno what's up with today, isn't there supposed to be MORE UV light when it's cloudy?

You can see the colour comparison of fingers vs thumb

 It kinda pinked...

Anyway, the next step is to add a glow in the dark polish (WarPaint Glow-Turq) of course! You can't see much on the nails but it's kinda sparkly. My cell phone couldn't capture it in the dark, but that's coming, don't worry!

And now for the ART part of this post.

On my thumb, I used my LA Colors black striper. For the rest of my fingers, I used my trusty Sharpie.

Cemeteryyyy (What's on the pinkie??)

 Omg ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE AAHHH~~~

That's a hand coming out of the ground on the middle finger... Also, this was with my non-dominant hand

I sat on this post for DAYS waiting for the sun to come out and give me a decent colour change but alas =( And of course the day after I took it off, the sun poked out gloriously bright for almost the whole day. SIGH.

Good thing I could get some glow pics!

What do you thiiinkkk??? =D It's not as terrible as it could have been lol! And yes, that totally is a zombie pulling himself out of his grave on the pinkie!

Check all the others! Halloween is so much fun!
Hannah from Polished Prisms
Stephanie from A Little Polish
Suer from Creative Nail Design By Sue
Katee from A Girl And Her Polish
Ashley from One Nail to Another
Karine Assemien from Karine's Vernis Club
Kayono Lan (aka Johanna) from Neues vom Kellerkind
Charlotte-Louise from Charlotte's Nails
Alyson Epstein from Beads. Nails. Food.
Maribeth from Obsessive Cosmetic Hoarders Unite
Becky from Glam Fiend
Angie from Our Painted World
Alethia from Never-Ending Nail Art
Sarah from Dakila's
Amanda from Mandy's Polish
Lisa from Lisa's Nail Obsession
Kelly from Nails for the Sake of Sanity
Stephanie from All Things Beautiful
Martina from From Head to Foot