OttLite question, upcoming giveaway, and Royal Navy!

Question and pictures later!  The most important thing first!

I have ninety-six wonderful followers!  I would like to thank you all so very much for taking the time to read my little blog.  I hadn't ever expected that people might be interested in my simple life and little nubs. :)  Thank you all again, so very much!

I'd like to announce that once I reach one hundred followers, I'll be posting a new giveaway!  It's not a lot, but I will say that it's a new, hard to find polish that has dozens of bloggers on a wild goose chase. ;)  I can't wait to get it started!

I was looking through the weekly ads and noticed that JoAnn Fabrics (is it still called that?) has OttLite lamps on sale for 50% off this week!  I live in the Midwest, and during winter months, proper light is reduced to, y'know, zero. :)  I wore Color Club's Wild at Heart all weekend, hoping to see a glimpse of sunlight, but no luck.  How great would a proper lamp be?

So my question is, which light is most advised for the pictures that we take?  I don't need a floor light, so a desk lamp is most appropriate.  But which one?  Do you use a particular model?  Do you like it?


Onto Orly Royal Navy.  I love when you can see the ripple effect that a polish has through the blogging community.  As far as I know, Royal Navy has been in Orly's core line for a while, but a few months ago, it gained a popularity with bloggers.  First there would be one post.  Then three.  And they kept coming. :)

Look at how jelly sheer it is!  This is three coats.  I didn't notice the VNL until I took pictures of it in the light.  It was a great color, though!  Blues are usually not my cup of tea, and I'm still not entirely sure that I'm going to add this one to my permanent collection.  But for a blue?  It was pretty great. :)

 My nails go from long to short all the time.  This is long for me, haha!  Perhaps the color would look best on me if I wasn't wrestling with the VNL issue.

 Do I even need to mention the light blue glitter mixed into this polish?  Gorgeous!

And since I was eating at Culver's at the time that I took the picture, I snapped a quick one with the cup.  Cute!  Also, ignore my pinky.  I believe this is when I had a run in with a straight razor. :(


I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions on OttLites.  I'd love to get this giveaway up on its feet.  If you have any nail buddies that you think might like my blog, I'd love it very much if you'd pass my name along! :)

As always, thank you for reading!

China Glaze - Zombie Zest

I love Autumn.  Everything about the season is wonderful to me.  The weather is changing, the days are getting shorter.  I think that everyone that gets to experience Fall to the fullest looks forward to the beautiful transformation in the leaves of the trees, and savors the crisp bite in the morning air.

Of course, Fall also means that Halloween is coming.  I'll confess to not being in love with Halloween, but it always brings fun along with it.  And it really wasn't until getting into polish that I realized that I'd been missing out.

The title of this polish alone had me completely hooked before I even knew what color it was.  Zombies have always been a favorite of mine.  Groaning, mindless hoards with a single purpose.  Braaaaaaaaaiiiiiinnnsssssss.....!!!

Wonderful boyfriend just bought us a game called Zombie Fluxx.  It's a great game with endlessly changing rules and gameplay.

It's a really good time!  There's even a card in the deck that demands you moan like a zombie whenever you draw one from the deck.  If someone else catches you not doing it, you have to draw another card! :)

The title of this polish had me thinking a little too in depth, though.  I mean, really...

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Did anyone else think about it this way?  Haha!  On to the polish pictures~!!

 This is three coats of Zombie Zest with a top coat of Seche Vite.  I LOVE this color!!  Look at all that shimmer!  Just look at it!
 

Poooooooliiiiissshhhhh....!!!

Without a doubt, this color is being worn again.  And again, and again.  I love this ugly-pretty green shade.

 

Just out of curiosity, I decided to paint up my right hand with both Zombie Zest and Orly's new It's Not Rocket Science.

As you can see in the bottle picture above, it looks like Zombie Zest would be less shimmery.  But can you tell the difference?  I hardly can.  I can't tell at all in person.  In the picture, there's a very subtle difference.  Index and ring fingers were painted with Zombie Zest and middle and pinkie were painted with It's Not Rocket Science.  I really like both, but gosh.  The Orly cost twice as much!  So if you've been thinking about buying It's Not Rocket Science, you should just grab a bottle of Zombie Zest instead. :)


Did you get your ghoulish hands on Zombie Zest?  How much do you love it?

Thanks for reading!

Nudies + Grab Bag

You read right.  Nudie nails.  It doesn't really ever happen anymore, so I thought I'd take a picture to commemorate the day.

They're short and kind of stained, but they're mine, and I like them. :)  There's not a lot that I can do about the length.  I'm always wearing strengthening base coats, but my nails always split and peel at the edges.  Especially my pointer and middle fingers.  When they peel, they're weakened, and when they're weak like that, they grow very oddly.  It's much easier to keep them short than be bothered by their awkward growth.  As for the stains, well...  All I have to say for myself is that my love for Four Leaf Clover (the only polish I've known to stain me) is greater than my love of perfect nails.

I actually went with nothing but a clear coat for almost eight hours.  And I'm proud to say that I wasn't sleeping ANY of that time!  Haha!  It was pretty distracting to let them go bare like this.  I found myself looking at my nails so much.  Awkward...

While I was cleaning out my old photo folder before The Wipe, I deleted a lot of old nail pictures.  I found a few pictures of random that I did save, though. :)  I don't think that it would hurt to post them.

These hands are clearly not mine, but I did the nail polish. :)  My mum's best friend's daughter (pretty much my adopted little sister) asked me to do her nails for prom this year, and this is what we came up with.  I was pretty proud of it, considering I'd never done a French manicure before.  The color we used for the tips was Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in (I believe it's called) The Real Teal.

This was two coats of China Glaze's Turned Up Turquoise and one coat of China Glaze's Medallion.  I usually don't like gold, but I liked these two colors together.  If I did this again, though, I'd go with a base color that leans more blue than green.

I did this one while I was working long, ridiculous hours between the two jobs.  Two coats of China Glaze's Re-Fresh Mint and two coats of China Glaze's Dollhouse.  I've had Dollhouse for quite a while, and just wanted to use it on something.  Ehhhhh... :)  And the green got all bubbly on me.  My coats were too thick, I guess.

I did this one quite a long while ago, but it was really pretty!  Two coats of Orly's Enchanted Forest and one coat (ONE COAT!) of Cover Girl's City Lights.  So stunning out in the sunshine!


What fun combinations have you found?  I love contrasting colors, and I'm open to suggestions! :)

Ready for a triple play?

Instead of beating myself up over not posting every single day, I'd rather be happy that I can post two nails every other day.  I originally wanted to paint and post in a way that would let my pictures be posted a day after I wore the polish.  In the case that I royally mess up my polish at work (which is not at all unheard of), I wanted to have a slight cushion of time to put up my next pictures, instead of feeling pressured to repaint my nails to make my daily post.

And part of even wanting to post daily is to show that I can stick with something and be consistent.

Would you like to laugh with me? :D  HA HA HA HA!!

Well, I feel much better now. :)  Onto the polish?  Today has some good ones!!

Parlez-vous OPI? by OPI

Don't mind the little bubbles.  I'm still working out the tiff I've been having with top coats.

This was two coats to opaque.

Looking at it in the bottle, I expected a boring taupe.  It was rather un-boring, though.  Though it was still somewhat taupe-y, it leaned more toward a lavender greige.  If it were slightly more taupe and slightly less lavender, it would remind me of the frilly underside of a mushroom cap.

Parlez-vous OPI? is ultimately rather pretty.  Very workplace friendly as well.  It's not my personal cup of tea, but a) lots of bloggers rave about it, and b) it was on sale.  And let's not forget c), everyone needs a "grown up" color or two in their collection.  This is one of mine.

I still have some problems with OPI's wide brush.  Not all of my nails are wide, so it does pose a problem sometimes.  The polish's formula is pristine, though, which completely makes up for the big ol' brush.

Next up is Orly's Wild Wisteria!  Honestly, sometimes I just buy a polish because I love the name.  Once I put on Wild Wisteria, I adored the color.  I originally bought it, though, because I spent a lot of time writing for an online group with a character I created that I named (any guesses?) Wisteria.  Even though I don't have the opportunity to write with her in that forum setting anymore, I still can't help it that I really enjoy a persona I created.

This is the most recent picture I would have used for her. :)

(I do not own the pictured character.  Don't sue me. :P  She just looks so much like the Wisteria in my head for me to pass her by.)

So, without further ado, Orly Wild Wisteria

Hardest time ever capturing the deep, beautiful purple as anything other than blue.  The pictures I'm posting are the best I did. :(

This one would have been perfect in one coat, but I did two to ease my mind. :)

Also, I'm not wearing topcoat in these pictures!  Look how shiny it is!! <3

The polish in the bottle isn't far from the actual color.  My nails are just being stubborn.

I really liked this polish.  I have yet to try an Orly that I don't like, but for some reason, it's rarely my first polish brand choice.  Maybe it's because most of the colors I see are safe?  Not sure.  The ones I have are lovely, though, and the application is perfect.

Collectively with my now!:  "Oooooooooooo...!!"

I couldn't stop staring at them!

This is a Cosmo polish called "Lords of the Bling."  The name is ridiculous, I know.

BUT JUST LOOK AT IT!!! :D

You can see several of the different flashes in this picture.  Brilliant greens, teal, royal blue, shimmery purple.

Even when it's not shimmering other colors, it's pretty!

The only visual thing I didn't like about this combination was that it turned Wild Wisteria's deep purple into a navy blue color.  It was still lovely.  Just much less purple.

Orly Wild Wisteria and Cosmo Lords of the Bling

Until I started hitting up salons, I'd never seen Cosmo polishes.  I've only bought two so far (Lord of the Blings and I Found Nemo), which are both shimmery topcoat polishes, so I'm curious to see how the rest of the polishes look when applied.  I had some issues with this one, though.  First off, it smells like chemical death.  Secondly, the dry time on this is very, very long.  If I remember right, I got impatient and just put a speed dry top coat on it.  This didn't keep me from having to wait for the first coat to dry, though.  (This is two coats of Lords of the Bling, by the way.)

Critical application flaws aside, I really adored this look.  I kept them like this for at least two days (which is forever for nail polish, in my world) and was still flicking them around in the sun to see that glimmer.

What do you guys think?  Any Parlez-vous OPI? fans out there?  Any ladies ready to stalk their salons for Cosmo polishes?

-E