Polished Casual

Monday, January 30, 2012

A-England Week! The Legends Part 2

Alright! Get Ready!!!!! Cause here comes Part 2!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

First up we have Dragon, a beautiful green holo. This one is somewhere between a scattered and linear holo. It pulls the teeniest bit gold, but a lot of that holo reflects blue to balance it out. This was a surprise love for me! I only needed 1 coat! One coat! Can you believe? Just wait until you see the next 1 coater :). My only complain about Dragon is it came with a messy brush that needs to be trimmed. Oh well!

A-England Dragon

Wonky sideways pictures of A-England Dragon

Next up is my favorite of the entire collection: St. George. Words can not express how beautiful this 1 coater is. An amazing scattered teal holo. Swoon!

A-England St. George

A-England St. George under regular lighting

A-England St. George under regular lighting (lower lighting)

If you aren't immediately nuts over St. George, I may have to take your nail polish lovers card from you :) and kick you out of the club. This color is vampy, sexy, and sophisticated all in one. The formula on it is the best of the bunch. Just perfect. :) Get this one, you won't regret it.

Both of these are currently sold out on Llarowe's website but you can still get them straight from England with free shipping if you email A-England! These run about $12 each and are WELL worth it. Happy Shopping!!!!

Sunday, January 29, 2012

A-England Week! The Legends Part 1

Yeah, so in a moment of monetary weakness, I hauled A-England. And I mean hauled. I ordered the entire Legends collection plus some more of the Mythicals. So I'll have to take the polish purchasing very easy for quite sometime. At least until the OPI Holland collection comes out :).

So today I'm going to show you the first 3 Legends: Princess Tears, Princess Sabra, and Ascalon. These are the lightest of the group so I thought they'd make a good post together. Fashion Polish has a wonderful post telling the story of The Legends and how they all fit together!

Princess Tears is up first, and is a really lovely lavender holographic polish. It's pretty much always lavender, but if you catch it in the right light it looks silver because it's so pale. The holo is really pretty and delicate in this one. You can always see it, but it's not super strong. This is actually a perfect holo for work! I am wearing it to work tomorrow!!! Here are a million pictures of Princess Tears (2 coats).

A-England Princess Tears

A-England Princess Tears, outside, low indirect light with flash

A-England Princess Tears, outside, low indirect light

A-England Princess Tears

Next up is Princess Sabra, which is a polish I wouldn't have normally gotten. But you can't very well get 6 out of 7 on this collection. I do like it more than I thought, but not sure how often I will reach for this one. Princess Sabra is a gold holo that leans a little on the yellow-green side. I needed 2 coats on this one. She's an interesting one and the holo is really strong. Check her out, what do you think?

A-England Princess Sabra

Finally we have Ascalon, a steel grey. This one is more of a scattered holo than a linear, but not less gorgeous. This is 2 coats, but if I had been more careful I could have done one. The color on this one is so rich and sophisticated. In the pictures I feel like it pulls a little purple, but it's just to holo particles playing tricks :). A lot of other bloggers think this is a duo or multi chrome. I just didn't see that in real life, but I had limited lighting sources when swatching this one. Once I wear this as a full mani in the future I'll take more pictures.

A-England Ascalon

The A-England Legends collection was literally just released and can be bought from Llarowe's website for $12 each. They aren't up on the A-England website yet, but you can email them to order with free shipping to the US. You do pay 9 GBP for each one though. So far I highly recommend this collection and I know it's only going to get better. The formula is great (as long as you don't use it with Barielle's treatment system) and the colors are unique and beautiful! If you haven't jumped on the A-England band wagon yet I suggest you do today :).

Saturday, January 28, 2012

OPI Super Bass Shatter

Dude - I read SUCH good reviews of OPI's Super Bass, their newest shatter that's a gorgeous purple jelly with shimmer in it. It's a pretty pinkish purple though, leaning on fuchsia. Anyway, seeing everyone's pictures, it cracked really really well. Mine didn't! I'm not willing to give up on it yet. I'm thinking that either the thickness of my coat is off or maybe because by base (OPI's Metallic 4 Life) wasn't flat and smooth. The color and the shimmer is just awesome though, I really love this shatter. Reminds me a lot of the Turquoise Shatter I loved so much. I also LOVE that it is a jelly. Especially over Metallic 4 Life, you cant still see the glitter underneath and makes for a really interesting texture rich manicure. One thing to note is that Super Bass dries VERY matte and kind of white-ish (at least over my current mani). Once you put on top coat it goes back to shiny goodness.

OPI Super Bass Shatter over Metallic 4 Life

In my opinion, Super Bass is a must have, even if you are over the whole Shatter movement :). You can get it at Ulta or online e-tailers for $8.50.

Friday, January 27, 2012

OPI Metallic 4 Life

So the last time I was at my salon the had the Nicki Minaj OPI collection polishes. I new I wanted the two glitters and the shatter, but I was pretty undecided about the cremes. I had Fly in my hands and kept putting it back, picking it up, putting it back. I'm glad I passed now that I have Slapper.

For my first polish from the ones I picked, I decided on Metallic 4 Life. This reminds me a lot of Deborah Lippmann's Bad Romance, except with silver glitter instead of fuchsia. Metallic 4 Life is a black jelly base with lots of silver glitter, in a variety of shapes and sizes. It is mostly small glitter, but there are some larger hexagons in there. This went on pretty easy for a jelly glitter, but I did need 3 coats. And I still have bald spots! I didn't care because I plan to top this with the Super Bass Shatter tomorrow. I think this one just needs undies!

OPI Metallic 4 Life

This would be a fantastic polish for a night out! It just screams martinis and dancing to me. These pictures again, aren't great. I think I'm going to give up on the SLR for glitters! OPI's Metallic 4 Life can be bought at Ulta or online for $8.50. Do you have to have this one? No, but I like it anyhow. I'd say pick it up if you don't have anything like it.

Stash Swap, Part II: Orly La Playa

Yup, you read that right! The time was right for Rach from stuff i (s)watched and I to do another stash swap! Man, time flies! Can't believe it's already been almost six months since the last one! (If you missed the last go-around, you can check out my posts on OPI Conquistadorable Color, American Apparel Butter, and BB Couture Moon Over Manhattan and her posts on Butter London Wallis, OPI Russian Navy, and China Glaze VII.) Rach and I figured out that this was a great way for us to try out some polishes we've had our eyes on or that may be out of our usual comfort zone, without having to dump the cash on them. The last stash swap was so fun, and I was super excited for Part II!

The first polish of Rach's that I decided to try out was Orly La Playa, a navy blue creme. If you've been with us for a while, you may remember the debacle that was Rescue Beauty Lounge Dead Calm. I wanted to love that polish, but it just wasn't for me. I still needed a good navy creme in my stash, but I've been a little frightened to try any new ones. Thankfully, La Playa applied (and cleaned up) much easier than Dead Calm, so we were moving in the right direction already. I seem to have a hard time applying Orly polishes sometimes. It's like I can't really get the polish to MOVE on my nail. That being said, it wasn't too hard to work with, and two easy coats later I was set. So, is La Playa my perfect navy creme?

(click to enlarge)

YES, YES, YES, and no. The color is to die for. It's a bit brighter than Dead Calm, but I liked that. It's vibrant, but definitely still dark enough to be a navy blue in all lighting. Never black, though. I was DYING to add a copper glitter or shimmer, but alas, I don't own one. D'oh! I was SO ready to chalk this one up as a total win. But then...it chipped. And chipped. And chipped. It chipped so much in less than 24 hours. Rach, I loved me some La Playa, but boy, it did not love me. HUGE sad.

I did recently change my base coat/top coat combination, but as I mentioned in my last post, I've used it before and since this manicure with no problems. Maybe it just doesn't jive with Orly polishes? I have no idea, but I'm not quite ready to give up on La Playa just yet. I think I'll have to snag a bottle for myself, and find a combo that will work for it. Yeah, I loved it that much.

I'm not sure if La Playa is in the core collection or not (anyone know for sure?), but it is available for a mere $4.25 on www.nailsupplies.us, if you're interested in it for yourself! It really is gorgeous!

Also! Be sure to check out Rach's stash swap posts on Butter London Victoriana and China Glaze Swing, Baby (both of which look completely amazing on her!). :-D

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Speciallità Hits no Olimpo Dionisio

Holo Love Number 2!!!!!!! (See number 1 here) I have to admit, Apolo is really the best, but Dionisio is pretty amazing. It's a beautiful grape holo. The formula is a little thick, but still easy enough to work with. Apolo is better formula wise. It's definitely worth the small amount of extra effort needed. And I do mean small. I ended up using 3 coats here, but I probably only needed 2. They were all very thin coats and they dried pretty fast. Top it all of with OPI DS Top Coat and you get this holo-goodness. I tried really hard to capture this when it wasn't shining in all it's glory so you could see the base color but the holo just didn't want to hide. I kind of went crazy with the pictures....

Speciallità Hits no Olimpo Dionisio

If you haven't gotten any of these Hits yet, you really need to. They are small but mighty! Get them for $10 from L larowe or you can order these direct from Brazil for pretty cheap, around $5 each (not including shipping though).

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Another Look: Lynnderella Love Potion No. 99

So I'm sitting in the airport writing this post. Courtney showed us Love Potion No. 99 by Lynnderella not that long ago and I had not intended on wearing it or showing it to you so soon. However I got a new purple polish that I had so many issues with I had to cover it up! It was such a warm purple and it apparently didn't agree with my new favorite base/top coat combo. So it refused to dry and was getting smugged and dented hours later. So what better way to cover up any issues than top is with an amazing purple, violet, fuschia and holographic glitter!!! Soooooo much better. So this is two coats of the lovely and sparkly Love Potion No. 99 over 2 coats of "mystery purple". :)

Love Potion No. 99

Love Potion No. 00

Can you stand how awesome this is? You can get Lynnderella's polished for $15 from Llarowe's website. Also can anyone guess what my mystery base polish is?

Tuesday, January 24, 2012

Julep Maven November Box #2

You guys!!!! :( I missed a freaking day!!!!!!!! UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! I was actually pretty disappointed when I woke up this morning realizing it. I found out pretty late last week that work needed me to travel for a conference and trade show and demo one of my products at the exhibitors hall M-W. So late Sunday night I uploaded pictures for the week so I could write my blog posts remotely. Then Monday morning at 6am Chris took me to the airport and I spent the day traveling, checking in (to the hotel and conference), setting up, demoing for hours, and then going to a networking dinner. By the time I got home it was after 10pm and I literally passed out.

So let's just pretend this blog post went up yesterday :) for my sanity :).

So my second Julep Maven Box in November was awesome. I got another makeup bag which I gave to a friend, another plumping lip gloss, and Maggie!!!!! They even included a cute note to let me know that they messed up.

Julep Maven November Box - Bombshell

Here is the lip gloss, an amazing shade called Ulta-Violet which is gorgeous and I'm also allergic to. I has a sad :(.

Julep Ultra Violet

And then there is Maggie. I LOVE her. A deep blackened purple with beautiful silver shimmer. This is the perfect Raven's game day polish. LOVE LOVE LOVE. This is 2 coats and it's super shiny on it's own. The shimmer isn't as prominent on the nail as it is in the bottle, but it's certainly there.

Julep Maggie

Julep Maggie is available from Julep.com for $14! If you don't have her and have some Julep credits saved up, this would be a great way to spend it.