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Wednesday, August 31, 2011

Happy First Birthday, Polishology!

  To celebrate my blog-o-versary/ the first birthday of Polishology, I did a fun celebration manicure!  I had a lot of different ideas for celebration manicures, but in the end I really like what I came up with!


  For this manicure, I started off with two coats of Zoya Areej, a gorgeous medium pink creme.  I added white swirls using Konad Special White polish and plate m63.  I then added one coat of Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear Cherry Punch, a really pretty reddish pink with silver holographic round and bar glitter.  Finally, I added cupcakes using BM14 and Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Brisk Blue and Konad Special White.  For the finishing touch, I added a cherry on top using red rhinestones!

Fuzzy artificial light pic for holo glitter effect!
  I really love how these turned out.  A wonderful way to celebrate Polishology turning one!  I still can't believe it has been a whole year.  Come back Friday to see how things have changed in the past year - including never-before-seen first konadicures! :)

Monday, August 29, 2011

Polishology's 1st Blog-o-versary Giveaway!!

  I am so excited that this blog has been around for a whole year.  I wondered last year when I started this whether it would still be around - perhaps I would lose interest, or maybe nobody would read it and therefore I would stop writing.  But I am so thrilled to have so many wonderful followers - especially those of you who visit often and comment - and am happy to say I love nail polish more now than I did a year ago!  To celebrate, I want to give back to all of you wonderful readers who make this blog amazing!


  One lucky winner will receive the polishes above!  I tried to include a variety here, so hopefully there is something in it for everyone!  Here is a more detailed look at the prize.

Deborah Lippmann Prizes
  First up, the prize pack includes two Deborah Lippmann glitters, Ruby Red Slippers and Bad Romance, as well as a Lippmann topcoat, On A Clear Day.

China Glaze Prizes
  Next, I have included four of my favorites from the new China Glaze Metro collection, Midtown Magic, Skyscraper, CG In The City, and Trendsetter.

Pixel Polish Prizes
  Finally, there are 10 Pixel polishes included, each 5 mL.  Colors are Supernova, Oh Wee!, Oh Boy!, Spam a Lot, Oh Goly Gee!, Text Us, Cuddle Time, Show Me The $, Pixel Dust, and Turqouise the Noise.

  This giveaway is open internationally to all followers - you must be a GFC follower to enter!  This contest will run until September 23rd, and the winner will be announced the next week, most likely the 26th.  The winner will have 72 hours to get back to me or another winner will be chosen.  Winner will be chosen by random number generator.  As always, I reserve the right to add an extra entry or two for those who comment regularly on the blog. :)  Please fill out the form below to enter.  Good luck and thanks again for being such awesome readers!  Luck for my "Happy Birthday Polishology!" konadicure on Wednesday!

Giveaway Closed - Thanks for Participating!

Saturday, August 27, 2011

Dusty Purples - Comparison

  This is a comparison I did not because I thought the polishes were dupes, because they clearly are not, but simply to see on the nail exactly what the differences are.  This spring I squired three dusty purples and wanted to look at them all next to each other - I thought somebody else might find this interesting as well, so here you go.  :)


OPI Planks A Lot, OPI Parlez Vous OPI?, Cult Nails My Kind of Cool Aid
Outdoors, shade

  OPI Planks A Lot is clearly the brightest of the bunch, and compared to the other two hardly looks "dusty" at all, but compared to a more bright purple it definitely is.  OPI Parlez-Vous OPI? is the darkest of the three, and definitely has the more muted dusty look as compared to Planks a Lot.  Cult Nails My Kind of Cool Aid is the lightest, and also the most grayed out of all three purples (Grurple?).  It is also the only of these three with a subtle shimmer; the others are cremes.

Outdoors, sunlight
  These differences are the same yet more pronounced in sunlight.  I used two coats for each here, and application was very nice and smooth on all three of these polishes.  They are all very nice dusty purples, and each definitely has its own special place in my collection!








Friday, August 26, 2011

Del Sol Color Changing Nail Polish

   On the last day of our vacation in Hawaii, we went to the Dole Pineapple Plantation to get some ice cream.  As we were leaving through the shop, I spotted a rack of polish out of the corner of my eye, and of course had to reroute and check it out!  It was a rack of Del Sol color changing polish, which is a brand I had heard about before and thought sounded like a lot of fun, so I picked one up to give it a go!

Indoors
Outdoors
  This is Del Sol Girls Night Out, and the whole deal with this brand is that it changes color in the sunlight.  Above, you can see the color this polish was indoors - a bright medium pink.  However, in the sun, it changes into a deep dark berry!  This polish also has a touch of golden microshimmer, which makes it even more gorgeous.  I had no complaints with application or wear either.  I stamped the flowers with BM-205 and Konad Special White.  I did this mani the day after we got home - between this and my Hawaiian Pink Diamond manicure, it was a great way to bookend an awesome vacation!

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Hawaiian Pink Diamond

  I recently went on an absolutely fabulous vacation to Hawaii, and of course I did up my nails for the event!  While these nails only last a few days there (pool, snorkeling, sand castle building... it is all rough on manicures) they were a great start to the trip!

Outdoors, sunlight
  For these nails, I started off with three coats of Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Pink Diamond, an amazing medium pink linear holographic.  This is just such an amazing holo... I have a couple of pictures of it by itself later on.  I then added swirls using the design from Konad plate m65 and Color Club Worth the Risque.

Sunlight
  Holo was definitely the way to go for the start of the trip - sitting out on the beach or floating out in the ocean, I couldn't stop staring at these nails!  Holographic polishes mesmerize me.  I should not wear them to work, I tend to get less done...

Pink Diamond alone, sunlight
And some more
  Love this polish!  I only have one other SH Nail Prisms.. maybe it is time to make a visit to evilBay and get some more?

Tuesday, August 23, 2011

OPI Holiday 2011 Collection - The Muppets!

 EDIT: Swatches are here!



  I don't always share press releases that I receive because, let's face it, they end up on pretty much everyone's blog so chances are good you have seen this.  But I am so thrilled about this collection I just had to share! :D

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This holiday season, OPI pays homage to America’s favorite Muppet friends as they hit the big screen in Disney’s The Muppets.  With an all-star cast including Jason Segel, Amy Adams, Chris Cooper, Kermit, Miss Piggy and the entire Muppet crew, the family comedy opens in theaters nationwide on November 23, 2011. 
Inspired by the film’s namesake lively and colorful characters, OPI launches twelve limited-edition Nail Lacquers for Holiday 2011. “OPI is so excited to work with Disney to celebrate this long-awaited movie release,” said Suzi Weiss-Fischmann, OPI Executive VP & Artistic Director.  “Not only do The Muppets characters inspire fun, bright and joyful colors, the fashionable Miss Piggy lends her name to three high-shine pink-based hues, ranging from bold red flecked with silver to a multi-dimensional strawberry shade.”
This line features six shimmery reds and neutrals, as well as six glitter-packed shades, including:

Animal-istic
This wild bright red cannot be tamed!


Meep-Meep-Meep
Missing out on this fuchsia would make you weep, weep, weep!


Wocka Wocka!
The popular deep berry makes everything fun and merry!


Pepe’s Purple Passion
This deep, decadent shade is the best purple ever, okay!


Designer, de Better!
And this light metallic bronze is ready for the runway.


Warm & Fozzie
A feel-good shade of metallic copper.

Rainbow Connection
The rainbow glitter of your dreams.

Excuse Moi!
Ahem! This pink glitter has something to say!

Gone Gonzo!
The aqua-blue glitter is taking over the world!

Fresh Frog of Bel Air
A glitter that prefers the greener things in life.

Divine Swine
The finest, most fabulous magenta glitter ever.

Gettin’ Miss Piggy With It!
Red glittery fun for everyone!

Lacquer packed with micas and sparkle gives a 3-dimensional textured look that makes nails look like jewelry. With shades ranging from textured glitters in rainbow, red, green and blue to softer shimmers in copper and bronze metallic hues, these twelve colors provide the perfect accessory for the holiday season.
As with all OPI nail lacquers, these shades inspired by Disney’s The Muppets contain no DBP, Toluene, or Formaldehyde, and feature OPI’s exclusive ProWide Brush for the ultimate in application.
This limited edition promotion will be available beginning November 2011 at Professional Salons, including Beauty Brands, Beauty First, Chatters, Dillard’s, JCPenney, Pure Beauty, Regis, Trade Secret, and ULTA, for  $8.50 ($10.95 CAN) suggested retail for each Nail Lacquer.
For more information, please call 800-341-9999 or visit www.opi.com. Follow OPI on Twitter @OPI_PRODUCTS and become a Facebook fan!
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ABOUT OPI
As the world leader in the professional nail care industry, OPI is committed to providing high-quality products and services to both salons and their customers, along with a focus on industry safety and innovation. Known for its exceptional formula, fashionable colors and iconic names, OPI’s heavily-pigmented lacquers are super rich, long-lasting and chip-resistant – offering an affordable luxury to consumers. OPI nail lacquer is available in over 200 shades and contains no DBP, Toluene, or Formaldehyde. Each lacquer features OPI’s exclusive ProWide Brush for the ultimate in application. Currently, OPI is available in over 100 countries and retails a full line of professional items, including nail treatments, finishing products, lotions, manicure/pedicure products, files, tools, gels and acrylics.


ABOUT THE MOVIE
On vacation in Los Angeles, Walter, the world's biggest Muppet fan, and his friends Gary (Jason Segel) and Mary (Amy Adams) from Smalltown, USA, discover the nefarious plan of oilman Tex Richman (Chris Cooper) to raze the Muppet Theater and drill for the oil recently discovered beneath the Muppets' former stomping grounds. To stage The Greatest Muppet Telethon Ever and raise the $10 million needed to save the theater, Walter, Mary and Gary help Kermit reunite the Muppets, who have all gone their separate ways: Fozzie now performs with a Reno casino tribute band called the Moopets, Miss Piggy is a plus-size fashion editor at Vogue Paris, Animal is in a Santa Barbara clinic for anger management, and Gonzo is a high-powered plumbing magnate. With secret, signature, celebrity cameos, Disney’s “The Muppets” hits the big screen Nov. 23, 2011.  

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  Is this collection not just amazing?  I can hardly wait... those glitters look spectacular and I am loving the berries as well.  I might need just about everything from this collection... I hate to get too excited over promo pics but I really think I am going to love just about every single one of these.  Which polish(es) are you most looking forward to from this collection?

Monday, August 22, 2011

Nicole by OPI Something About Color Fall 2011 Target Exclusives - Swatches and Review

  Today I have finally gotten around to swatching for you all the Fall 2011 additions to Nicole for OPI's Target Exclusive line, Something About Color.  There are some seriously lovely sparkly shades in this little collection!  Everything is shown with no base coat, with top coat.

Green Up Your Act

Outdoors, shade
 A muted medium green creme.  This is a really pretty green, different than any of the other greens I currently have in my collection.  This is three coats, but I could have totally gotten away with two if I hadn't kind of messed up my ring finger.  Good application.

It's Not Me, It's Blue

Outdoors, shade
Outdoors, sunlight
 Totally gorgeous deep blue with a hint of purple, shimmery with a slightly foil finish.  I love this one.  It has such a gorgeous finish to it and the color is really fabulous.  It is so sparkly in the sun and in the shade it just looks really awesome as well.  This was three coats for full coverage.

Sounds Grape to Me

Outdoors, shade
Outdoors, sunlight
 Gorgeous burgundy foily shimmer with a hint of golden duochrome.  Also totally love this one - again, it is both beautiful in sun where is sparkles as well as in shade, where it smoulders.  It has just a hint of golden flash around the edges that really puts this one over the top for me.  This was two coats - also a plus!

I Love You Cherry Much

Outdoors, shade
Outdoors, sunlight
 Bright cherry red with a gorgeous shimmery finish.  Not normally my color, but for a bright red I do really like it.  I had a tough time getting this one to photograph well so the pictures don't quite do it justice.  Trust me, it's gorgeous!  Three coats.

Overall Review

I was really pleased with these polishes.  I found them all to be pretty unique, at least in my personal collection - admitedly smaller than a lot of yours, I'm sure!  My two favorite standouts here were It's Not Me, It's Blue and Sounds Grape to Me.  All polishes applied wonderfully and were between 2-3 coats for full opacity, which is always nice!  Definitely a wonderful little collection in my book.

DISCLOSURE: The polishes featured in this post  were provided to Polishology by OPI for review purposes.  This is an honest and independent review and was in no way influenced by the company.

Saturday, August 20, 2011

New Bundle Monster Plates Review

  By now you have seen me do several manicures with the "new" (okay a couple months old at this point) Bundle Monster set of 25 plates.  I wanted to do a quick little review for all of you out there that may be trying to decide whether or not you want to buy these... and trust me, the answer is yes, you do.  :)

  Recently Bundle Monster released a set of 25 new plates, with all new designs including full nail images, small images and tip images.

From bundlemonster.com

  There is quite a wide variety of designs, which I really love, including some holiday designs, abstracts, flowers, and more.  They work really well, and I have no complaints about ease of use or application of any of these stamp designs that I have tried so far.  But the real question is, how do these new plates stack up to Konad and the original BM set?  There were a few things I had issues with on the first plates (even though I still love them!) and I was thrilled to see they were fixed!

  The first issue I had was the size of the full nail images.  The original BM plate images were rather small, and the only nail I could ever reliably cover was my pinkie, leaving me to either try double stamping or just live with the space.  However, the new plates have bigger images.  Not only are they bigger than the original BM images, they are also (slightly) bigger than Konad images!

Full nail image size  comparison
   My other big complaint with the original plates was that there was no backing on the back of the plates and the edges were a little rough.  They have also solved that - there is now a paper backing (similar to Konad plates) and they edges are smooth and perfect.

Front of plates (From L-R: Old BM, New BM, Konad)



Back of Plates (from L-R, Old BM, New BM, Konad)
  All in all I was incredibly pleased with this new set and I highly recommend it!  Bundle monster plates can be purchased from Amazon or the Bundle Monster Website for $21.99.  If you enjoy nail stamping at all, I highly recommend getting yourself a set!


Friday, August 19, 2011

Nfu-Oh 51 - Flakie Goodness

  I wanted to share with you today one of my three treasured Nfu-Oh flakies.  These polishes are absolutely stunning to wear, and impossible to do justice to on camera!  Next time I wear this one I will definitely have to try for some better shots of it, since these are hardly fair.  Anyway, on to the pretties!

Outdoors, shade
  Nfu-Oh 51 is an amazing purple multi-chrome flakie bottle of pure awesome.  This has so many different colors depending on the lighting that hits it - sometimes a deep purple with a blue shimmer, sometimes golden-green, others a very bright reddish purple... it is hard to describe the many faces of this polish!  This was three coats on its own, I think it would also work very well for layering (I may have to try that next).  Sorry for the tipwear, this manicure was a couple of days old when I finally had time to take some pictures!

Outdoors, direct sunlight
  Another one of the many colors of this polish, in direct sunlight it takes on this rich purple color with what appears to be pink and gold shining through from the flakies.  It looks totally different than in the first picture!  Again sorry I could not do this baby justice here, you will just have to take my word on its incredible nature.  I will most likely be wearing it again soon and will do my best to get some even better pictures!

  Looking at it again makes me want to go buy more of these.... too bad I just used up my polish budget on some prizes for my "blogiversary" giveaway... ;)

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

Let Me Fly!

  Another gorgeous polish from Cult Nails, Let Me Fly is a dusty teal blue loaded with silver and pink shimmer. Application was wonderful at two coats, great dry time and wear.  Beautiful!


  I added a bit of a design using Zoya Trixie and BM-201.  Very fun little manicure with a really great polish! :)

Friday, August 12, 2011

Luna Nails

  Last October I did a manicure in honor of my sweet baby boy Leo.  I decided it was about time that I did one to honor his slightly diabolical but still very loving sister, Luna!


  For these nails, I started with two coats of Zoya Dove as the light gray base.  I followed this up with leopard print stamping from BM-221 for all but the ring finger, and the design from M57 for the ring finger, using Konad Special Black.  I then added darker gray dots to some of the leopard spots using Zoya Kelly, as well as adding the kitty image to the ring finger in Kelly as well, using BM04.  I topped it off with a coat of Seche Vite and was good to go!  I had a lot of fun with this one, especially with the accent finger.  I don't often do accent fingers but it was really fun, I may have to do more in the future!

Luna!
Kitties
  Gotta love them kitties.  :)

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Milani Cyberspace

  We recently went through an insanely hot few weeks.. it was so hot out Nova didn't want to go outside to do her business, heh.  Hot and sunny... and what is the best thing to do with sun?  Wear holo polish, of course! :)


  This is Milani Cyberspace, a gorgeous sky blue holographic polish, with scattered holo effect.  I love this one - light blue is one of my favorite colors, and of course holos are always fun.  Application was great, three coats for full opacity with super fast dry time.


  While it does lose that holo glow in the shade, it still has a very nice glittery look to it - and it is still that fabulous light blue color!  I got one more of these (the light green), but I may have to go back and get me a couple more.  I was very pleased with this one!

Saturday, August 6, 2011

OPI Touring America Part II - Swatches and Review

  Here is the second half of the OPI Touring America Fall 2011 collection!  This half includes six creme shades, in more neutral shades such as grays, browns, and greens.  All pictures are shown with no base coat, with top coat, in natural outdoor lighting.

French Quarter For Your Thoughts

Two coats

 Light smoky gray creme.  This had really great application - actually, all of the polishes in this half had wonderful application.  Might have to do a comparison between this and Zoya Dove.  I really like light grays like this.

Suzi Takes the Wheel

Two coats
Another light gray creme, but this time with a touch of green to it.  It almost looks like a really pale sage green?  Maybe it is a light green creme with a touch of gray, haha.

Uh-Oh, Roll Down the Window

Two coats
Hehehe... I am slightly amused by this name.  This is an army-green creme.  I find that on my skin tone these olive green colors are kind of hit or miss, but I like this one on me.

A-Taupe the Space Needle

Two coats
Dark taupe/light brown creme.  Clever name. :)

Get in the Expresso Lane

Two coats
Dark brown creme.  Very nice fall shade.

I Brake for Manicures

Two coats
This is an interesting color.  It's a dark, murky purple-gray.  It is kind of a hard color to capture on camera, but it's very pretty.

Review

This half the collection applied really wonderfully smooth in two coats for full opacity.  I had no problems with streaking like I did with some of the shimmers.  I also feel like all of these colors are definitely very fall.  While I love shimmery, sparkly polishes... sometimes a nice creme is just so refreshing!  Overall, I really like this entire collection.  I feel like it has a nice range of colors, so that everyone can find at least a few polishes that will suit them.  A great addition to fall polish!

DISCLOSURE: The polishes featured in this post  were provided to Polishology by OPI for review purposes.  This is an honest and independent review and was in no way influenced by the company.
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