Deborah Lippmann - Careless Whisper

I wasn't that excited about Careless Whisper. I bought it because it's a Lippmann, it's the new collection...I'm a collector. An OCD one. Another neutral. **yawn**

I'm not so arrogant I am incapable of admitting when I was wrong.

When these arrived, I beelined for Moon Rendezvous because that was what I really wanted out of the three. Unlike most of the Christmas collections that underwhelmed me, these three were each unique and beautiful. The pink I have some issues with but I will share when I get to that one next. It's not the polish. (Wait for it!)

Careless Whisper is a perfect (for my skin tone, anyway) pinky beige neutral that surprisingly had a silvery shimmer to it. I expected blah and instead received a lovely versatile polish with depth and character.

Let's take a look!

If you read this blog at all, you know that I don't like sheers. However, if you're going for sheer, this is a good one. It adds a little shimmer, a hint of color and then it's done. It's simple and elegant and lovely.
But I don't want that. So I put on another coat.

Ehhhh...brings out the shimmer and the color but the VNL looks non-committal...I want more opacity. So this is a three coater if you're not going for a sheer look.

There we are. This is still a little thin, you can see some VNL, but I think all told, with a good covering nail strengthener or base coat such as Seche Rebuild or Orly Nail Armour...butterLondon Nail Foundation...something in that line, three will do ya. I don't typically wear these dustier colors well, but this one is pink enough to work on me. The shimmer adds depth and interest without overwhelming or being distracting. This is a perfect conservative office kind of color. This can easily do an interview. I've kind of faked this color with layering, I think I've talked about it before.

Finally a label shot. This is pretty washed out and I didn't attempt to correct it. The other pictures are more color accurate. If you're caught in a police interrogation under one of those bright lights it would look like this...

You know that when I paint my nails it can look like drunken monkeys have been partying on my fingertips, but this, as thin as it was, was so easy to control. I don't expect less, but it's always nice when I can prove it.

Isn't this lovely? **sigh**

A nice successful close-up swatch. I think I'm improving! This really shows the shimmer off. I love how it's so understated. Chunky glitters are fun and they have their place, but I really prefer this subtle stuff. And you don't look like a Vegas stripper when you take it off.

The last one. I think this will work on many different complections, it is neutral enough, but there will be some it won't. If you can see it in person if you doubt it, just do the bottle test. You know, hold the bottle on the back of your hand. If it makes you go ICK then it's not for you, but I think those will be few and far between.

So to sum up!
*Makes a beautiful sheer in one coat
*Fully Opaque in three (With a good base coat, which you do every time anyways. Right?)
*Understated shimmer in a beautiful pink neutral base
*Perfect office or interview color

What's not to love. Just order this one at the same time you order Moon Rendezvous if you haven't already. If you haven't then why are you waiting??

Happy Talons! And how can they be anything else in a color like this?

Interrupting the Lippmann porn for some ManGlaze

ManGlaze Mink Mitten. It's a gorgeous shimmery lilac. Not what you come to expect from ManGlaze. Dark MANLY colors, yes. Pretty lilacs? Not so much. Here's what we have:

This has a top coat on it, but the tips are the regular matte finish with nothing. I had a couple small chips that I wanted to cover up, so I tried to do a matte tip French? That didn't really work out. The finish on this has a really nice sheen so a top coat isn't really necessary. Which is also odd for a ManGlaze. Typically these are just matte finishes but this is almost satiny. It's really pretty.
Plus, the bottle is just cool, of course.

One side of the label.

You can see this has a ton of shimmer. I wore this about 4 days and in that time everyone who noticed it told me they had to have it. BMWWU took down all the information so she could pick this up.

Labels are on the lids, I love that. You can kind of see the line here, where I tried matte tips. It barely showed, but that's OK. I would have had a lot more wear but you can see the crack in my thumbnail. That turned out to be just a huge peel, which isn't good, but it's better than a vertical split, which is what I was afraid I had done.

This is the only picture that really showed the difference in the tips. It just looks a little lighter.

As you can see, this is super saturated, tons of shimmer. It's really incredibly remarkably pretty. It's very wearable.

The parting shot. I only took four pictures of this, even though I really love it. I think they kind of say it all. It's very smooth, too. The shimmer particles are so teeny that it dries nicely and quickly. This is also a bit thick going on, which is OK. It is really easy to control and manipulate and the two coats was ample.

Completely Gorgeous. I definitely recommend picking this one up. I bought mine from Amazon, but I believe ManGlaze is back to selling their polishes on their site again.

Happy Talons!

butterLondon - Why didn't I know about these?

I was carousing around the butterLondon website a couple weeks ago and low and behold...new colors. I don't think they were advertised, I didn't get an email and yet...there they were. I felt oddly betrayed! I have loved and supported this brand since I discovered it and they can't even tell me when there is new fabulousness to be had? Plus, I've found where other bloggers already have their claws in the new collection! Not this one, the Fall one! Granted, this is a little small-time blog compared to theirs, I mean...7 whole followers and MDAMO isn't exactly a crowd of readership, but one of my posts did get over 9000 hits. That's not so small, is it? And yet...they can't even shoot me an email? BASTARDS.
So of course I ordered them straight away.
I swatched them because I didn't want you to feel likewise betrayed. I mean...we need to know about this stuff, right?

These are just swatches, they aren't real manicures with base coat and all that. Just the colors themselves.

I present to you, Scouse, Swinger and Sloane Ranger.

Yes, they are this fabulous in real life, the only thing I can say is honestly different from the picture is that they are more sparkly. Except Sloane Ranger. It just has a lovely sheen to it with what appears to be on close inspection the teensiest hint of silver. 

In reverse order. Why I didn't make this easier on myself by painting the first three nails instead of the last three, I don't know. I am sometimes a dingbat.
Scouse has definite pink sparkle in it. It's really stunning. It's very sheer, though. This is three coats. It's three coats for all of them, though Sloane Ranger didn't actually need it.

Sloane Ranger showing off it's silver microshimmer. You can see a hint of this on the nail. Nice!

The shimmer again is a little visible. It adds depth but this is so neutral...it's really kind of elegant and understated. I like it. It also has a hint of kind of dirty about it, which is also nice. It keeps it edgy. It's not a clean grey and I like that about it. There are a lot of greys out there, they were really the hot color a couple years ago and they've never completely gone away, for which I'm grateful. I happen to love grey. I even love Earl Grey of the tea fame. Particularly yums with some milk and sugar. :D

This is Swinger. It's a true grass green glitter. It's a green jelly sparkle base with larger green glitter suspended in it. Its really sheer, this is three coats. So I tried it over Union Jack Black and it was nice but really less spectacular than on it's own, I felt. If you're serious about wearing this as it's own color, I would find something that works for you as a nude and layer over that. It's really verrrrry pretty.

You can see the Union Jack Black experiment here, and it does help. I still think a nude would be better unless you want to darken this down for some reason. Aside from eliminating nail line, I'm not sure this does this much for it.

Scouse. The star of the show, IMHO. Nice glare. But you can see on the nail that this is a wonderland of sparkle. What is not translating in the picture is that the sparkle in this is blue and PINK. Yes, pink. Hot pink, but still pink. And it works. It makes a really nice contrast but doesn't conjure up images of a co-ed nursery. This is a super sparkly micro-glitter in a blue jelly base and it's seriously lovely. I fell in love. It was one of those **gasp** moments when I took it out of it's bubble pack.

Very sheer, you can see the nail line clearly here. This is also three coats so you want something under this. Either a similar blue, which would lend depth, or a black, or nude...but I wouldn't be afraid to experiment. I am betting that a deep purple, a bluish one rather than red, would give this depth and bring out the pink. Pretty special, this one. Why are they hiding it? I scope out the butters at Ulta every time I go in and they didn't have it, either. I don't typically buy there, I order them online because you often get better deals and you know that some 14 year old hasn't opened it and painted her toes with it in the store or something equally nasty. I don't know about your Ulta but mine is rampant with little teeners playing in the big girl toys. That's fine and all, but I don't trust what they do with stuff. Know what I mean?

So that is the latest haul from butterLondon. With these I got a free Powder Room polish remover. I had a couple of them from a sale I hit when they first came to this Ulta and I'd never tried it. So I finally did and I am impressed. For being acetone free, it's really really good. And smells nicer than the normal stuff as well. I'd try to hit one of those specials if you're interested though. $8 for that teeny bottle is a shock. I think you don't use as much, but still. You should be warned. I thought they were sample bottles but nope.

Are you ordering these right now? I did, almost as soon as I saw them. Gorge!

Happy Talons!

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!