Silver Cap Sunday: China Glaze Jolly Holly and Mistletoe Kisses

Good morning everyone! ...Okay, so it's not exactly "morning", but I just woke up, so whatever :P This Silver Cap Sunday is a twofer!

China Glaze Jolly Holly and Mistletoe Kisses

Both of these polishes are from China Glaze's 2010 Holiday collections. Jolly Holly is an emerald green that leans olive, giving it a more earthy tone. In the sun, it glows a true emerald with golden undertones. It's definitely not a polish I'd usually grab for, but I have a feeling I'll be wearing this more often come fall and winter. Mistletoe Kisses is a minty sort of green loaded with glitter, I love this polish.

Just a reminder that there's only two weeks left to enter my giveaway! Mosey on over here to check out what you could win and enter to snag it!

Essie Midnight Cami and Sally Hansen Twinkle, Twinkle

There have been a couple of comments regarding my clean up routine (or lack there of some days) here recently, and I just wanted to note that I've taken these well intentioned critiques in mind and made an effort to work on the problem. I think you'll agree that I definitely did a better job of cleaning up excess polish today!

lol, jk! :D

Man, you have no idea how hard it was for me to slop that much nail polish on my fingers! But I digress... I've never worn Midnight Cami before. I swatched it when I bought it and was very disappointed. In the bottle, it looks like magic. The way Essie embosses their bottles causes light trickery. While looking at Midnight Cami in the bottle, you'd expect there would be some kind of red/purple duochrome, on the nail, however, Midnight Cami is a bit of an underwhelming blackened blue with micro fine blue shimmer. Unless you're looking at it in full sun, it looks like a dark navy blue, almost black. Bummer.

this photo is a little blown out, sorry!

Another issue I have with Midnight Cami involves how it cleans up... which is poorly. This shit stains! I tried to attack it with a brush, q-tips and finally cotton pads, none of which were very effective at getting this crap off my fingers in a satisfactory manner. No matter which empliment I used to try to remove it, it would drag, feather and otherwise be a pain in the ass. I will not be wearing Midnight Cami again without applying a protective barrier of liquid latex first, that's for damn sure. Going forward, I'd ask you to just completely ignore the fact that I have an index finger... because it's a hot mess!

Due to the fact that Midnight Cami bores me, I had to cover it in glitter to make it suck less, here's what I used:

Essie Midnight Cami, Love & Beauty Blue (ring finger only), Sally Hansen Twinkle, Twinkle

And here's the end result:

Love & Beauty Blue is the same thing as LA Girl Glitter Addict Jostle. It's a clear polish with blue glitter of the small square and large hex varieties. Sally Hansen Twinkle, Twinkle is a clear polish with large silver holo hex glitter and small square glitter in silver and what I can only describe as royal blurple. It has a lot of dimension to it when layered. The next three photos were taken in full sun, the last two taken in shade.

I saw this Friday Poll going around and decided I'd play along too!

Silver Cap Sunday: OPI DS Extravagance

Hey all! Sorry for the delay in my first Silver Cap Sunday, hopefully it was worth the wait! Today I'd like to share with you OPI DS Extravagance.

DS Extravagance is a delicious magenta polish with scattered holo. Unlike the other holo Designer Series polishes I've tried, Extravagance is a little tricky to apply. To say it's too thick isn't accurate, but it's a little... gloopy? Normally I'd blame it on old polish, but this bottle is brand new. It went a little lumpy in areas and I had some noticeable brush strokes. I believe adding some thinner will probably help, but I haven't experimented yet. I also noticed that adding a topcoat to Extravagance dulled the holo a bit, so I opted to not wear one for these photos. I reached bottle opacity in two even coats.

Would you like to be involved in deciding what I'll share next for Silver Cap Sundays? Or would you prefer to be surprised? I've been toying with the idea of adding a poll, but I wanted to get your opinion on the matter :)

One of the best layering experiments ever :O

I picked up Ruby Kisses Bold and the Beautiful a while ago hoping it might satisfy my lemming for OPI Sapphire in the Snow.

It's not quiet the same color, Bold and the Beautiful is a bit more red based than Sapphire in the Snow, but it's still a gorgeous purple cream. It also has an amazing shine to it, I didn't use a top coat in any of these photos so you could see for yourself. Please excuse the messy (lack of) clean up, I was in a rush to get ready for work.

Because, as you know, I suck at wearing just one nail polish, I decided to layer a Love & Beauty polish I hadn't tried yet which is just labelled as blue/multi.

Blue/multi is a sheer cornflower blue polish with a pink/copper duochrome. In the bottle it reminds me a bit of China Glaze Blue w/o You, but it's not nearly as awesome. This is a polish that really comes alive when layered over something else. Well, see for yourself:

What my photos don't show is the way this flashes red, which looks a lot like a deeper, vampier version of China Glaze Cowboy Up. Drool worthy brain image right there, huh?

Ruh roh...

Okay, I have some bad news... I wasn't able to get home in time to have some daylight to take photos for my first Silver Cap Sunday (boo-urns!), so you'll have to make do with a Silver Cap Monday this week :\

But! I do have good news too! I was able to upgrade the Lemony Flutter sample in my giveaway to a full sized pot of the gooey goodness! Hooray for you, Billy! I'm sure that will more than make up for my late SSC and general lack of posting lately, yeah? Yeah!

If you haven't entered my giveaway yet, please do! You can enter and read all about what you can win right here. Keep the jokes and haikus coming, they've been great!

And so this isn't a text only post, here's a picture of me in my underwear:

you're welcome.

That giveaway I keep talking about... and other things

First things first, I am once again without a laptop, but per usual I'm doing my best to still update my blog. I've been wrangling kittens on my days off, so I haven't had much time to paint my nails (gasp!) or photograph them when I do. With that said, I am starting a new feature to give me a bit of a nudge to update at least once a week. Starting this Sunday, I will begin Silver Cap Sundays, a personal challenge to myself to wear and share (as in, share photos, don't get too excited!) all of my silver cap polishes such as OPI Designer Series polishes and some coveted China Glaze polishes as well as holiday goodies. I think it'll be fun :)

Anyways! What you're really here for... my 100 follower giveaway! I'm not fortunate enough to be able to hold giveaways a lot, and that's exactly why it took me so long to get this one going. I had a strict budget to work with and wasn't able to get everything I wanted to, but I'm pretty happy with what I have up for grabs :) Here's what you could win:

From left to right: Ruby Kisses HD Midnight Stars, Ruby Kisses HD Mediterranean Night Sky, Cherimoya 2012 cracked nail polish in Judgement Day, Cherimoya 2012 cracked nail polish in Sungod, Kleancolor Melon Green, Kleancolor Blue Satin and a sample of LUSH Lemony Flutter!

All of the polishes are brand new and gorgeous! I wish I could enter my own giveaway, lol! I don't have swatches to share with you because I don't own any of these polishes (...yet), but they're pretty easy to find! Hit the jump to enter and see close up bottle pics of the goodies!

Layering with OPI Ink

Hey everyone! I have a problem... I can't seem to wear just one polish at a time!

Now, OPI Ink is the actual name of the shade, so technically this is OPI OPI Ink, but for the sake of not looking redundant, I'll omit the first OPI ;) OPI Ink is a beautiful dark royal purple polish with blue and purple glass fleck-ish shimmer. It has a slight duochrome quality to it. Since I painted my nails with this the night before, I don't have pictures of OPI Ink on it's own, but they're easy to find :)

For this manicure, I layered two coats of OPI Ink, one coat of Ruby Kisses All Purpled Out and two coats of OPI I Juggle... Men.

lol, accidental cat hair