**Shakes Fist at Illamasqua**

Curse you Illamasqua and your stupid release your wild child inner self mantra and your stupid "put this code in and get a free something" coupons! I love/hate you!!!

Yeah. I got nailed again. Actually, the RBL cursing should have been second but I had forgotten that I hadn't posted I had an Illamasqua haul coming. From England. Because I'm a make-up droolie. I also went on a quest for the perfect cobalt/royal blue eyeliner, but that's another fist shaking sequence to be directed at Estee Lauder...however, I digress, and also promise to spare you that one. Though you might get swatches of the eye liners just because. That needs it's own post.

Back to Illamasqua. Yes, those evil Brits sent me an lovely little email about how they had chosen their most faved cult colors and if you spent so many British Pound Sterling that you could get one free! I have no real idea of what the conversion rate is and when it comes to Illamasqua, I could barely care. The stuff is fab. I don't just mean the nail polish, though there are a few in that haul, I mean the make up. Wears all day, builds fantastically, great colors with great names (I amuse myself by creating named looks based on the color names? Because I am that big of a make-up geek. Today it's Sinful Fatal Soul because...those are the colors I'm wearing. Sin, Fatal, Soul. I am a genius. I am the Wile E. of the make-up junkies. You don't need to say it. I already know. **eye rolling**)
Are you still reading this? WHY??? You crazy.

Anyways. Yes. There will be an Illamasqua haul coming. I am trying their lipstick for the first time and adding to the shadow and blush I already have because...well, why the f not. I also hauled a couple off Sephora because Britain was sold out. Say What?? Tis true.

**Gives up fist shaking and just sinks to ground in abject defeat.**

Anyone else jumping on the yellow polish trend? I keep buying them but I've yet to wear any yet. I've been in the running for this promotion and while I wouldn't say Desperado is exactly what you want to wear in an interview, it does say "risk taker" and "confident" without saying "Total fucking loon". I hope. As I thought I would do only phone interviews from here on out only to go to work this morning to "Surprise! Interview in person today!". Oops. And she did note it. Either that or the fabulous citrine ring I was sporting to complement it.

At any rate, I picked up I think two yellow Illamasquas and a yellow RBL....I don't quite know why. I think I like the edginess of them. Hm. If anyone is still with me out there, let me know your thoughts on the yellow trend the Gaga gave us. If I can nail down the job thing I might be trying it soon. I DO have Load from Illamasqua, which I loved. It's a very pale yellowish white. Think of....well, it's aptly named, let me put it that way. **wink wink, nod nod**

Happy polishing!

**Shakes Fist at Rescue Beauty Lounge**

Curse you, Ji Baek and your gorgeous, amazing, gorgeous, fabulous...did I mention Gorgeous? Nail polishes!!! **Shakes fist**

Crapola, lads. She's brought back two of my long time lemmings: Chinoise and Plie. Supposedly the perfect red and the perfect ballet pink and...how the not very mighty have fallen. Yeah...because I just can't bear to pay for shipping. $108 later...(and what? FIVE polishes as well?) I have a problem. A big one. I'm an addict. I admit it. I love nail polish. I have too much...I could never wear it all...and yet, I acquired more. I did manage to talk myself OUT of hitting Cheeky Monkey and RGB. RGB is a brand I haven't tried yet, they're priced in the RBL league and I had waited to hear back from their customer service about the cruelty free. They are! So I may be purchasing a few of those, but I'd like to get some payments made before I start getting completely stupid. Do we think? Yeah. We do.

I do have a big post in mind for the latest color *teaser alert* Nars Desperado. It didn't survive much in the way of dishwashing so I have taken lots of swatches to show how to repair it. Though it didn't take a beating, it did repair beautifully. So I will have those posts coming up.

As well as pics of the latest shameful RBL haul. Chinoise...oh I have lemminged thee....but you will be mine. Oh yes. You will be mine!

Deborah Lippmann Naked, Zoya Uma and Priti Rabbit Tracks

Sorry for the delay. Life doesn't always belong to me. I've been through the ringer lately. No excuses!

Last week? I went for the Deborah Lippmann Naked. It's a new Spring Lippmann and I really loved it in the bottle. I'm still completely in love/hate with it on ME, however.

Take a look:

It's pretty...but I'm not sure it doesn't further wash out my translucence.

I had some trouble with it, too. I had some light chipping, which was annoying, and I fixed it. I slapped some Seche Vite over it and...yeah. All kinds of peeling at the cuticle end, and I was trying to be careful not to go over the polish line, I seriously was! And yeah. Check it out:

Look at that pinky!! Augh! **SHAKES FIST AT SECHE VITE** CURSE you! Also, note the chippage on the birdie..yep. This was a problematic mani for me. And I just wasn't sure on that color! It's gorgeous...but I am not convinced I like it on me. Any thoughts out there?

So after that, because I was trying to be so interview appropriate for a job I'm not going to get, what a joke, we chose for my actual professional mani Zoya Uma. This is truly pretty. Now...I don't have the best of luck with Zoya. I really don't. Great colors and inspirations...not so great wear, at least on me. My first Zoya lasted almost 24 hours and I gave it away I was so disgusted. This one did slightly better. It lasted about 5 days.

 Isn't that pretty? It's a little pinker and so I think looks better on me than Naked. Here's another which shows the pearliness of it better:

Wow is the lighting weird on that. I apologize. But you can see what I want you to see, at any rate. The slightly shimmery pearly niceness. It was really pretty. It just didn't have a chance against about 4 sink fulls of dishes plus cleaning my brother's bathroom which...really, sandblasting would have been a lot simpler and likely more effective, but anyways...


Interview being over, essentially, barring the two phone ones I keep getting threatened with that never happen, I went teal. I had just read somewhere that a good Summer change from all the neon-coral-red-bright-cornea burning colors is a nice classy teal. I had Priti Polish Rabbit Tracks burning a hole in my acetone bottle so I went away from the beiges for awhile. Lord. Am I sick of beige! I need color! So here we go:

Believe it or not...that's not black. It's teal. This is just a rubbish swatch and I did a crap paint job. I'm heading over to the picture leopard for a better one...hold please!

While we are waiting on those, some more shots of Naked, just because I can:

 Nice tip shrinkage, there. That's a Seche issue...And yeah, I know, that ring is fab. Please don't ask what it cost. I try not to think about it.

Yeah, see what happens on me? It looks slightly baby poopy....meh!

Look at that! Look at those cuticles. I could scream.

Don't even...I just did a crap job on this manicure, obviously. This is why I pay someone.



OK, We have Rabbit Tracks on board now:

Note the tips...this isn't wearing well. In it's defense, my Poshe top coat is cooked. You'll be getting reviews of China Glaze's fast dry top coat now. I'm not replacing the Poshe until I've burned through that. It stinks to high heaven so we'll see how well I hold out.

Yeah....looks black again. You can see a hint of color there in the bottle. I wonder why this is photographing so dark. Granted, I'm still using my phone here...but. Hm. At any rate, I would like to point out, after complaining that this isn't wearing well, that this polish did a load of dishes tonight so..all told, it's not really doing that badly. I just did note that it took about 2 hours at work to get tip wear. No real chipping yet, though. I have one small one on one finger...that's all. Nothing to get excited about, it's not very visible.

AH! There we go. This is pretty true to color. It's very true, actually. My desk...the best place for color shots. Please ignore that drunken space monkeys (aka me) did the paint job. Ack, those cuticles. **embarrassed** I usually do much better. This pic was the next morning, incidentally, not as recent as most of the other pics, which were while I was writing this post, so there is no wear yet.

OK. Now we know what color it is and how it's wearing, let's talk about application. It was good. A bit streaky, but it clears itself up after the second coat. It goes on rather thick and it's highly pigmented. I liked putting it on. It was an easy apply, if I'd been paying any real attention to what I was doing and not using only one lamp that was across the room. Oops. Applies well, no complaints there. I like the color. One friend called it "Vampy", and I suppose it is.

So here's what I did:

1. 1 coat Poshe base
2. 1 coat Nailtiques 2
3. 2 coats Seche Rebuild (still love it!)
4. 2 coats priti polish Rabbit Tracks
5. 1 very thick coat of Poshe quick dry top coat, which is cooked, peeps. It's just flat done. It's downright goopy. Some of the wear issues I am having may well be its fault.

And now you're all caught up! Sorry for the long post and random rantings. I'm a bit tired and stressed out so hopefully the next post will be better.

Happy painting!!

Ahh, children

I was too tired and beat to post this past weekend, but the thing causing my exhaustion and desire to bury my head in concrete is coming rapidly to an end so I am hoping that I will be posting both more frequently and more consistently. For in my mini hiatus...I've neglected to fill you in on the last couple of colors!! AUGH!

So, to finish up on the Lippmann...clearly I had a malfunction. I suck. It chipped, but not badly. What really happened was this:

OH NOES!!!
Note the thumb as well. That's the kind of chipping I was getting. Possibly my fault for over fixing...I get a little paint happy. Well, you know I can't have this. So...I took it off. Might I point out, if you read the last post, that this is particularly melony in this picture. Did I tell ya? I told ya. It's different yet again from the first picture of it in the last post. It's just a chameleon. It is truly pretty.

So...I took great delight in painting them this:

Meet Illamasqua Bacterium. This is a dazzlin' color. It's sedate enough for work, but it has an unnerving flash to it in a strange greenie sort of sickly way. I love it. Plus...I love the gasp of horror you get from people when you tell them the name. I roll like that. Illamasqua SO suits me. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get any really amazing pics. I need to tear the closet apart and find the black satin I really want to take pics against, it would have shown this much better. But here is another shot of it:

It really is lovely and I had many compliments on it. Until you got THIS face!
(image blatantly and shamelessly stolen from sodahead.com)


Really? Is the name that bad?

So...it didn't wear great. In it's defense, it did a lot of housekeeping like activities such as dishes and trying to clean up the dog. Plus...I strayed from my now favorite Seche Rebuild topcoat. I don't know why...momentary stupidity?

I had this issue:

Take a peep at those tips. Yeah. This is what I mean.

Here's how I did that mani, sos you know how not to do it:

1. 1 coat Poshe basecoat (The blue bottle. Have I mentioned that?)

2. 1 coat Nailtiques 2

3. 2 coats salon science Fiberglass Network (Which is probably not cruelty free. If I could find a website for them, I'd find out. I'm not endorsing it. I just happened to have it and need to get it used because I'm a dork who can't stand to waste anything.)

4. 2 coats Illamasqua Bacterium

5. 1 coat Poshe topcoat. I think. If I'm remembering correctly.

To be fair, this polish did wear about 6 days which isn't bad. And I enjoyed wearing it, and more so telling the name of it. I just get a perverse satisfaction from stupid stuff like that. And from friends subsequently saying "You WOULD wear a color called that." HEE HEE. Yes. I would.

When that got to me finally, I changed this past Sunday to Lippmann's Naked, which is one of her new Spring colors. I don't have the pics moved over yet, but man is it naked. It's...yep. It's pretty? But there is nothing earth moving about it...which is pretty earth moving. You'll see when I post the swatches. I am also going to go on a little Seche Vite rant because I had some Seche Vite issues. I also had some Poshe issues. But we are going to have to talk about those later because for some reason, this is saving every 2 seconds and I can't even get a whole sentence typed without having to wait which is very annoying. Plus, it's late.

Happy polish!