Issues

I just wanted to alert any of my readers that I am having horrible and consistent issues with my photo website. It used to just be a little touchy but now it's downright argumentative. I need to work this out. I am spending hours every weekend fighting with it and it's getting to the point that I want to write the whole thing off.

If I didn't love writing this blog, even if no one reads it, I wouldn't bother because of the horrible behavior of a photo website that used to be great. I am not sure what I'm going to do to fix this but I need to do something.

Please be patient while I try to work this out.

Thanks and keep painting!

V-Day, What I wore

Yeah...I ultimately chose an almost sarcastically cheerful color. It's a matte, which is even better. It looks like dulled down Valentine's hearts. In a few days you can expect an update on this color, I'm sure, as I'll have to find out what it looks like with a top coat, but not until after Tuesday.

ManGlaze. I love them. They have such a sense of humor and are slightly rough around the edges, well, slightly is up for grabs there, and they make a great polish, which is even better. This polish has two names, revealing the sort of random nature of the humor over there, so while at work I can honestly tell people this color is "Blue". In reality, it's called "Fuck off and Dye". Now...how perfect is that for someone who is not enjoying 40 hours a week of her environment and is at her most hated day of the year? (Probably the label for this on the post will be F*** Off and Dye, just to keep from freaking anyone out.)

It's actually gorgeous.

Love the labels. OK, so as you can see, we have a hot pink matte with silver shimmer. These shots were taken in a rare bit of Winter sunshine through the window so they are very true. Love when that happens. I did all the swatches yesterday I could stand to do just because I had such great light. The shimmer in this is rather understated.

Look at me trying to be all PC and shite. Covering up the label name...Ha. OK. so...yeah, I had some breakages and didn't get to my regular manicure. Between BMWWU being really, really sick and my being really, really broke (more on that in posts to come)...it did not happen. I cannot shape my nails for crap, I think I've probably mentioned this. Please forgive the nubbin. When I break them I don't screw around. You should see my right hand.

I love the sheen of these mattes. ManGlaze isn't a dead sort of matte. It has a sheen to it, but it's still powdery in feel. My nails feel like they have a baby powder over them...almost like corn starch, really. I love it. I never thought I'd like mattes, but I really do. I also love that rubberized texture Illamasqua did for their last new collection.

The silver shimmer in there gives it a very soft look. And relatively tidy cuticles. This is an easy polish to apply but by this point I had probably swatched about 20 colors so I was getting tired. Also, mattes dry super fast, which can make them a tad tricky.

According to ManGlaze.com this was created in response to the uproar that wearing nail polish turns little boys into little girls, which is, of course, crap. However, that perception has been the foundation of rock star performance art for decades. It's incongruous, I admit, not in the least bit traditional but I don't think all the skater punks around where I work are going to develop drag queen careers any time soon, either. Everyone needs to just live and let live. Kind of the theme of these V-Day posts, if you think about it.

This went on thick and dried fast. Obviously, I didn't top coat it. I suspect I will just have to try it in a few days, though. That's me.

I wonder what butter LONDON Disco Biscuit would do to this? I'm still trying to find a way to save the train from wrecking on that.

I couldn't decide which was the better picture between this and the next so you get both. Sometimes it works like that.

Nice, huh?

OK, Mechanically:
1 coat Poshe Base Coat
1 coat Nailtiques 2
2 coats Fiberglass Network. I tried to go back to Rebuild and it wouldn't dry. I think that bottle is cooked.
2 coats ManGlaze Fuck off and Dye

I expect great wear from this, that has been my experience, but I'll update you as it happens!

Happy Talons!

Valentine's Day. How I hate it.

I do. For one thing, it's completely contrived. For another, if you're a single woman of a certain age it's torture. It needs to be one of those Second Sunday in February kinds of holidays so I don't have to go to work and play nicey nicey and instead can stay home and watch war movies. BUT I have to go out in public because I like getting a paycheck and so I traditionally wear all black, even my underwear. It's my own way of thumbing my nose at a day specifically designed to make me feel bad about my life choices. I debated and debated about what color to put on for the gruesome frivolities and here were some of my choices. They weren't chosen so much for color as name, though these kinds of colors would tend to be dark.

I'm not going to talk a lot about the colors because these aren't reviews. They're merely suggestions for you, if you happen to have to the same hatred of holidays designed to make you feel badly for being single and you share my rather sarcastic and dark sense of humor. Tomorrow I will share with you what I ultimately wore because that will be a full on review.

Deborah Lippmann Maneater. This is an older color but I did check and it's still out there to be had. Not on LippmannCollection.com, but it IS still out there. It's a jelly and didn't cover well, but this is a swatch and therefore doesn't have the underpinnings of a normal manicure. Chocolate brown, it makes me think of poo. I will wear this at some point and see if it still reminds me of poo when it's properly applied.

OK. Maybe I am going to babble about them.

BB Couture Nightmare. I have this on my toes currently. You're welcome. I didn't feel you should be subjected to my toes if I could help it. It's a deep dark red with red sparkly which works surprisingly well. Probably because the base is a jelly and doesn't overpower the glitter. Love this.

Manic Panic blood thirsty. Wow. And I mean...wow. Dark purple shimmer and slightly metallic sheen with a fuschia flash. For $4? I am constantly impressed with this brand. Good application and fantastic color. Plus, the cute little bottles with the witch hat caps, which are very easy to use. This almost replaced the one I wound up wearing. This was love at first sight. Ironically. Careful, though. This one is a stainer.

butter LONDON Marrow. I had to throw this in because of the name. This is such a special polish. I mean...look at it. Muted dusty lavender with silver micro shimmer? Sign. Me. Up. I love this and it looks good on my skin tone. And the name is definitely sort of creepy.

 Rescue Beauty Lounge - The Tudor Collection - Anne. What better for a despised holiday devoted to love and relationships than a polish inspired by a queen considered to be a witch who ended a contented marriage, divided Britain into decades of religious upheaval and revolution and was the first to be beheaded for allegedly committing adultery with her own brother? I mean, it's custom made! And...it's gorgeous. Complex and shimmery, it's almost impossible to describe. And old Anne wasn't all bad. She was independent, intelligent, educated and by some arguments a feminist. Her polish, however, is inspired, and was re-released recently as a BIB. Go now and get!

Rescue Beauty Lounge - The Tudor Collection - Catherine H. Another beheaded queen. Henry was hard on queens. I wouldn't have married the guy on a bet, but that's me. As you can see, this is another really special polish. It's a pale cornflower blue with silver and blue shimmer in it. It's as light and airy as Catherine Howard was reputed to be, basically being a pubescent child who bewitched Henry with her simple childlike innocent demeanor that was in reality anything but. The girl wasn't sporting a moral compass that pointed due North and things ended badly for her. And the rest of the Howards, frankly, as many were also executed for treason. Norfolks didn't do well. 
Interesting to me how different Catherine H and Marrow are. Same basic color family because you could say Catherine was a purple and make it stick, but so incredibly different. 

I stayed away from the blacks, though I was really really tempted to put Illamasqua Scorn in this mix. Black seemed too predictable. 

Stay tuned to see what the V-Day mani was!!

Happy Talons!

 

butterLONDON Dressing Table Collection - The Black Knight

This will be a very short post because, as it turns out, I only managed to get two pictures! The last post was over pictured, this one will be under. This is really spectacular and I don't know of anything else like it. It's sold out right now on butterLONDON.com, but it is still available out there and I'd snap it up if I could. It's a limited edition, though it is listed on butter's website almost like a regular polish. One can never really be sure what they will do!

OOOO, lord! Look at that thing. It's chunky, yes. You're going to want a top coat on this, but...don't you put one on anyways? It's hardly a sacrifice.

Look at all the colors in there! Blue, pink, purple, silver...whatever else you can find in there. I'd be afraid to wear this for long, I'd probably wreck my car looking at it.

This is two coats, too. This is very opaque, way more than you could ever expect it to be. I wish I had a couple more pictures or at least one really amazing one. I haven't done this justice. Definitely find this somewhere!!!


Happy Talons!

butterLONDON Tart with a Heart - Dressing Table Set

The first I'm going to show you from the Dressing Table set from butterLONDON is Tart with a Heart. It's a lovely and amazing pinky gold chunky glitter. It has an amazing amount of stuff going on in it.

Yeah, OK, it's sheer. I know, I don't like sheers, but really this should be over something else. I am not sure it really matters what for you won't be looking at it. Just in this swatch alone you can see pink, blue, purple, gold, green, teal...I bet if you keep looking at it, you'll see even more.
This is one coat. It would work very well as a top coat.

You can see here how dense the glitter is and that it's all different shapes and probably sizes, actually. It's hard to tell because there is so much of it.

This is a weird shot, I know but I wanted you to be able to see how dense the glitter is. It's blurry, which shows the sparkle, but you can see what I'm trying to show you. This is basically a bunch of really pretty tiny glitter held together with some clear pinkish lacquer.

OK, two coats. You could do this alone if you wanted. Probably three coats would get you a fairly opaque cover. I like this, though. Even though it's sheer. It's so pretty. It's like fireworks!

I think the camera was blinded by the bling.

Ehhhhh, I'd like a base coat under this, I think. I don't like nail lines. This is pretty and you could do it, but I think I'd prefer this as a top coat.

Lots of glitter!
This was easy to apply too, for a glitter. It's chunky, you have to pay attention, and this won't dry smooth. That would be almost too much to hope for. It needs a good top coat over it to make it smooth.

I'm so glad I got this shot. It is showing the crystal quality of this. It looks like I dipped my finger in some kind of decorator sugar. I love this. It's like a stained glass window or something.

OK, last one. This is just another shot at how gorgeous this is. You can't see much pink in this and there really isn't much to be had. Just a hint is all. That's really all you need. You wouldn't be looking at the pink anyways.

How can you not have Happy Talons with something like this in the world?

Intro to the butter LONDON Dressing Table set

After a week of Rescue Beauty's, we're changing gears utterly and looking now at butter LONDON glitters. I had initially meant to show you all this in one post, but it would have so many pictures you would be lucky to be able to open the thing. So first I will show you how cute the set was, it's now unavailable. I know. I have promised not to do this to you. No stuff you can't get any longer! I have a caveat, though! The polishes are still available, just not in this set. I just want you to be able to see what a great imagination and presentation, and what fun, butter LONDON is!

So...here are some sneak previews of the set:

This little dresser came in a large clear plastic box. It was cumbersome and I got rid of it, not something I would ordinarily do. Look at how cute this thing is! It's a little cardboard thing and it was not stable at all. I had to kind of piece it together to get the pictures I got. Without the base piece that the feet of the table sat in, it sort of fell apart, but it's still adorable.

This one shows the sparkle in the polish more. You can see a touch more of the mirror as well. The polishes sat in little slots to keep them standing up.

OMG. Can you believe these two colors?? Look at the sparkle!! On the left we have Tart with a Heart and on the right The Black Knight. You can see just in these pictures that there is a lot going on here. Different colors and sizes of glitters. So completely wonderful.

More on these to follow!

Happy Talons!

Rescue Beauty Lounge Mismas

Mismas....purple cream, but not just an ordinary purple cream. This is a rich tapestry velvety purple.

This is a strong bold grape soda kind of purple. It's very pretty, very bright and surprisingly wearable. Picture this with a pair of comfy jeans and some soft flats or boots...yummy color.

Purple is definitely my favorite color. Purple and red, but when it comes to polish...I think it's purple. You can see in the bottle that this wants to look lighter than it actually is. These pictures are pretty dead on, really.

OOOOO. This is a good swatch. See how creamy this polish is, how shiny the finish. This is two coats, nice neat cuticles showing you how easily this goes on, how easy it is to handle.

This is just...purple. It's the purple that was in your box of crayons when you were little and it still has a bit of that waxy feel to the color.

This has such great color. It's so highly pigmented and rich. Don't you love it?

This too, was part of the BIB2 collection. Go quick before they are all snatched up!

Happy Talons!

Rescue Beauty Lounge 360

360 is s o beautiful! It's a lovely grey sort of blue. I really love this color. It's a little more blue than I was able to successfully photograph, but you will get a pretty close idea.

It's not quite this green, but this is very close. It's a complex color, difficult to photograph. But so worth the effort!

This is quite good. It's a smokey, misty color. It makes me think of the ocean sky when it's overcast, which...it was supposedly inspired by the ocean, so I'd say it was a raging success in that case!

This is two coats as well as the last few posts. You can see just a hint of that nail repair on the middle finger, but because this is a thicker lacquer it's filling it in and covering it up. Nice if you have a problem nail like that.

It's such a relaxing and subdued color. There is something very restful about it, peaceful. I like it!

Nice shot of the back of the bottle. Color accurate and clear. You can see just what this is.

This is another of the BIB2 colors, but it's still available. I'd pick it up if this is your kind of thing. I think many different skin tones can pull off this color. It's so neutral but anything but dull.

Little different light here, you can see more of the blue here. I love these not really sure how to describe them colors. They make my job harder! But I like them. I like colors that make me ponder them.

Last one.
I love how in the swatches you can see you're not looking at a cadet blue. I think this color would be easily misconstrued as that. It's not that blue. It's just...indescribable. Though I AM trying!

I hope you like it! Pick this one up, it's great!

Happy Talons!

Rescue Beauty Lounge Orbis Non Sufficit

FINALLY. A Rescue Beauty from this haul that I liked.
Orbis, as it is commonly known, is one from a set that Rescue Beauty had some bloggers do awhile back. I managed to snag it, and you still can too, as a part of the BIB2 set.

Orbis is a dark dirty kind of green. It's moody, it's complicated and it's YAY highly pigmented.

This is a pretty accurate reading on this color, though, as I always try to do, I'm letting you know I had to dim the exposure on this after the fact. It came out almost light olive. Too much flash! But this is very close to color accurate.

It's good on me, I think!

Here is where you can see the complexity. And the moody muddiness. This is just a different angle. It's not a duo-chrome, by any stretch, but it is definitely a chameleon. It's a cream, goes on nicely and thickly and has a lot of color in it. THIS is opaque!

This is it exactly. It's nice, yes? I like this one a lot. It's edgy but it's not screaming at you, and it is eye catching. It's making a statement and that statement is The World is Not Enough! Which is what Orbis Non Sufficit means.

Unfortunately, these are all the swatches I have of it. I had others but they did not turn out at all and I canned them. I'm sure I will wear this as a full manicure so there will be another full post of this at some point.

I hope you like this too! This is a limited edition re-release so if you want it, rush over to RescueBeauty.com and pick it up!

Happy Talons!

Rescue Beauty Lounge Pink Shimmer. Good Lord.

OK. SO...if you read yesterday's post you know I hate sheers. I didn't hate this. I just don't love this one, either. It's sheer. I think maybe these two together...I don't know. I think I would use this as a top coat. Again, this is two coats, it is from before I started to realize that a one coat then a two coat swatch is probably something worth looking at.

It's not quite this ivory in real life, but it IS very pale. I think it's more opaque than Opaque Pink.

Did that sound bitter? I think I am a little bitter over that one.

You can see the shimmer particles in the polish in the bottle. Please click to make this larger if you want to see. This is really kind of pretty but I think it's a little like shimmery mannequin hands on me because I am so beyond pale.

These last two show the hint of pink in this. This is a pale elegant sort of pink. But as you can see, it has some issues - the application on this was a bit streaky and uneven. I may try this again on a full manicure - with base coat and everything and see if it performs better. I suppose both this and Opaque Pink deserve that chance. Once again here you can see the shimmer in the bottle. I encourage you to click and expand it. It's full of shimmery goodness.

I still don't think it's great on me, though. I think you need a darker complexion to really show this off. On my ghostly whiteness this is a bit stark.

Wow. This is showing off every flaw in my nails. Look at how ridgey they look! I don't have nail ridges. Base coat. This needs a really good base coat, or a pink to layer over.

Yeah. Bleah.
I don't hate it but I'm sure not grabbing this without a plan for it. I wonder what this would do over white.

Happy Talons!

Rescue Beauty Lounge - Opaque Pink

This quote from The Princess Bride keeps going through my head: "You keep using that word. I don't think it means what you think it means." Inigo Montoya. (No, I didn't kill his father, I'm not preparing to die.)

Opaque. I think it means not able to be seen through. Kinda close, right? Saturated to the point of not being sheer.

Opaque Pink is not that.

Opaque? Not so much.

Or...maybe I need to look it up!

Dictionary.com:

not transparent or translucent; impenetrable to light; not allowing light to pass through.

Yeah, no.  This is not at all Opaque. I swatched a bunch of stuff before the holidays and didn't get it all blogged so this is pre one coat swatches. This is two coats. 

I hate sheer. You know I hate sheer. 

This is really, really NOT opaque.  It's pretty, I guess. It's a nice pale pink and over an actually opaque base coat it might be fine. Note the line on my middle finger? That was where I had a nail repair there and some of the darker colors I had swatched had stained the glue there. You can see that. 

 Label shot...blurry, but here. Note the streaky thumbnail. I...am not a fan of this! I'm sorry! Normally Ji Baek and her group at Rescue Beauty do no wrong, but...Good lord. This is not working on me at all. 

Here's a closer shot and the back of the bottle so you can really see what it looks like in there. It's...pale dusty pink. It's kind of a streaky mess. I don't know if another couple coats would have helped this out, or good base coat or what. This is just a swatch so this is on bare nails. Maybe that's the problem. 

 Uhhhh...is it me or does it look slightly yellow on me in this shot? 

 OK, this one makes it look slightly doable...maybe. 

 A tighter bottle shot. It's pretty in the bottle...if it had actually been opaque I might have liked it better. 

Wow. A very rare fail from a very reliable manufacturer. I just didn't like this. 

The formula was predictably good, but streaky. I think it's just a product of whatever pigments they sprinkled over this to get some color in it. You can see it has plenty of shine. 

I'm kind of speechless and that's not a good thing for a blogger to be. 

Happy Talons.