China Glaze Awakening Collection

Happy Freaky-Friday, Darlings!

I'm just going to jump right to it since I cannot contain myself.

Ick-A-Bod-Y - Natural Light

 Ick-A-Bod-Y is an orange glitter polish with an olive green jelly base.  I used 4 coats in these pictures to get as much coverage as possible.  You might need to play with gently pushing the glitter around for even coverage.

Some suggestions for different looks might be to try a creme olive green base under Ick-A-Bod-Y for a more sparse green/orange glitter look.  I will try this closer to Halloween and show you.  I think you have correctly guessed that this is my favourite of the collection.  ;)

 

 Zombie Zest - Natural Light

Flash

As a lot of you may know, Zombie Zest is very similar to a couple other polishes recently released.  It is a delightful dark green jelly base with micro glitter that looks gold or green depending on the light or angle that you hold your hand at.  The only down part of this polish for me is that it is a very sheer formula.  This required 4 coats.  (I find that it is completely worth the trouble)

...the name is awesome too.

 Mummy May I - Natural (overcast) Light  Ahhhh nubbins!!

 With Flash

Mummy May I is a dark purple base with purple chunky glitter.  It is probably my least favourite of the collection, but still an excellent Halloween polish.

Did my nubbins frighten you?  Good.  This is a Halloween collection, you know.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o!!

Thank you China Glaze for another lovely collection!  

[This collection was provided to me by the PR company for an honest review... my opinions are always honest.  kkthxbai]

Orly Bloom Collection Review

Hello Ladies!
Writing this blog Sunday night so you can see it tomorrow morning.  (good morning!)
I wanted to try this collection out last weekend, but it was raining and overcast with clouds.
Anyways, this collection was released in the Spring 2010 so chances are you may have already seen it. :P

 

I started out with pink because I am rarely a fan of the colour.  Reminds me of Pepto and Barbie dolls. Unfortunately this pink wasn't doing me any favours.  Sorry pink lovers!

This is Blushing Bud.  It's a hot-pink creme with decent application.  This was 3 coats.

Pure Petunia is a pinky-purple creme.  The application was good, I still needed three coats though.  But It's not unusual for me to use three coats on a manicure.

 

Now this is an interesting colour.  In the bottle it looks like rust with a pink shimmer, and the only shimmer in this collection.  Strange, no?   On the nail Ginger Lily's pink shimmer isn't as obvious and the rich colour of the rusty red comes to life.  This is very unique.  Three coats.

 

I wore Thorned Rose for 5 days straight during the workweek.  In the bottle it looked like a dark berry colour, but on my skin it looked more like a dark red.  Only in some lights did it take on it's berry self.  I love this one.  Orly describes it as a Red Wine Creme, I agree... somewhat.  I thought this one was more like a jelly.  It didn't apply or even look like creme on the brush, and it took 3 coats.  The fact that I wore this colour for 5 days straight with minimal tip-wear is pretty amazing.

 

Oh, well hello there, green polish. Don't you look charming! Wandering Vine looked more subdued in the bottle, but on my nails it became a rich forest green. Two coats!!

 

Wild Wisteria is so wild it made my camera go bonkers.  It's not a navy, rather it is a royal purple creme. This applied like butter and required only two coats.  Below is a block of what I consider the "true" colour for reference since my photos didn't work out too well.

So what are your favourite colours in this collection?  Mine are Thorned Rose, Wandering Vine, and Wild Wisteria.

Essence - In the Jungle

Please ignore the dry skin!  :o  My bad.

This was actually a manicure from over a month ago.  I lost the photos in my "to do" file.

Natural Light.

Flash.

This polish was such a pleasure to apply!  Two coats and it was perfect.  Thanks girls!!

I LOVE ME SOME GREEN!!  :D

Orly - Sweet Collection [Picture Heavy]

Hello everyone!  I hope everyone had a great weekend.  It was the perfect weather to try out these babies, the Sweet Collection by Orly.  It was released in April of 2010 but was sent to me to review recently.  As always my opinions are my own.

Lemonade - pastel yellow creme.  3 coats.

Lollipop - Light purple creme.  3 coats.

Cotton Candy - Pink creme.  It looks to me like there is a slight orange tone to it, but not enough to be noticeable.  I used 3 coats.

Pixy Stix - Medium pink creme.  This one had some orange tone to it too.  I'd say it was just shy of a coral.  It reminded me of the pink a flamingo can get with plenty of shrimp in it's diet.  But I'm weird.  2 coats.

Gumdrop - Light turquoise creme.  It had enough blue in it to not be a mint green, but it was close.  Great application, 2 perfect coats.

Snowcone - Light blue creme.  Orly describes it as a baby blue, but I feel like it is richer that a baby blue.  2 coats.

My favourites in this collection were Pixy Stix, Gumdrop, and Snowcone.  They weren't your typical pastel colours that we have all seen a million times and they applied wonderfully.  The others were your staple pastels and had some minor streaks that were remedied by applying the polish with the brush as parallel to the nail as possible.

The free lip gloss that came with each bottle.

Lemonade, Lollipop, Cotton Candy, Pixy Stix, Gumdrop, and Snowcone.

The lip gloss had the fuzzy brush that reminds me of a pussy willow.

RIP little fly that got stuck in my polish outside.  A rare casualty of swatching outdoors.  I tried to save it, but I won't go into details about it... :(

[These polishes were sent to me by the PR company to review.]

Miss Sporty - 60

Today I will be showing you Miss Sporty #60.

The lovely Anček and Kvacka from Rainbows and Blues sent me this beauty along with quite a few others from Slovenia.  I'll show the entire bundle soon!

Natural Light

Flash

Direct Sun. (clicky for close-up)

LOOK AT THE CUTE BOTTLE!!

I'm still wearing this polish.  It's a beautiful blue-turquoise with a green shimmer.  It even had a wide brush in the little bottle for better application. *glee*  It was a little sheer but 4 thin coats later it's magic.  So worth it!  I love this polish and the cute little gumball bottle is comes in!

Now for a little whine session.

I trimmed my nails down (as you can see) because my index and thumb nails tend to warp when they get longer.  I'm not sure why, maybe I clench my fists in my sleep and it shapes them weird... but anyways.  I trimmed and filed them down.  It wouldn't be so bad if I didn't do such a poor job on my right hand.  I cut my index finger and thumb too short.  :(   Guess I'm all whiny because I loved the length I had going for me and now it will take longer to grow my nails out because of my blunder.  I wish I was ambidextrous.

 

world's smallest violin

I think I'm going to put silk wraps on my problem fingers to see if that reinforcement prevents them from warping.  Anyone have trouble with this?

China Glaze - Atlantis

Hey everyone!

This is the manicure I wore on Mister and Misses Skulda had their first wedding anniversary!

We were married June 26th, Frigga's Day 2009.

Atlantis was a lemming of mine for a while and I finally broke down and bought it last month.

Natural Light

Even in natural light is it so full of win!

Direct Sun

Pardon the "lobster hand" and slight blurriness, but look at the chunky holo glitter!!

Bottle Butt!

Ahhhh... more blingy goodness.  Sooooo worth the money.

The hubby and I went out for delicious sushi and I tried hot sake for the first time.  Yeow!  It's good stuff!  When we got married I wore China Glaze DV8 on my toes.  I wore the same pedi with Atlanis for our anniversary and they matched pretty good.  My Mom bought the DV8 never hearing of China Glaze before to match my wedding dress.  I had never heard of China Glaze either, it it remained my first China Glaze for a long time until I finally came across all you lovely bloggers.

Random Awesome song:

I love Agalloch.  They are easily one of my favourite bands.
The name of the song is kind of related to the polish.  ;P

HAPPY CANADA DAY!

HAPPY CANADA DAY!!!

Well.... the mani looked better in my head... but not bad for painting with a cuticle stick!

I used China Glaze - Paint The Town Red for the flag, and Sally Hansen - White On for the white parts.  

I threw Klean Kolors - Firework on my pinkie and thumb for fun.  You need fireworks on your country's birthday!  :D

Flash                                   Natural Light

Some close-ups of Firework.

SpaRitual - Optical Illusion

Prepare yourself for .....

SpaRitual's Optical Illusion!  This is one of my favourite polishes already. And yeah, it's green.  No kidding.

Direct Sun

o0oo0o0o0o!  Ahhhhhh!  Dark olive green base with olive green and gold micro glitter!

Showing off the glitter in the sun.

Ahhh!  Blurry! Natural Light.

Sorry about the blurry.  I didn't realise how much my hands were shaking.  I hate it when that happens. 
Also- your eyes aren't fooling you, the cap is a little on the red side.  Weird.