My First Sheswai

After the Grey Sloane Ranger, MDAMO wanted Badass. Badass is one of my first two colors from Sheswai. I've already filled you in on how great their service was and I've done as asked and passed on their two spares I received in duplicate. I know the other Fuckyeah, has inspired a couple of friends to get on Sheswai's website and that experience has encouraged more sales, I think. I have done my part!

Badass...did not photograph well. It looks beautiful but it does not look like itself! It came out looking plummy. Now...it does have plum in it, but it's brown. A rich dark brown with red shimmer in it and it's really beautiful.

See how it looks plum? It went on beautifully. I was a little worried, vegan polishes, in my experience, are often watery. This was not. Please don't mind the cuticles. I was laying on the floor watching TV and talking to MDAMO on the phone while I was doing this. In the dark. Well, in the light of the TV. It's kind of amazing, actually, that I managed to get any on my nails at all in those circumstances. This is right after I had painted them and is the only new polish shot I have. I'm trying to show you guys wear, here. I think in future I will try to have more balanced swatches, though.

You can see the true color in the bottle, it went on very true to that, but in the camera flash I get plum. Reddish plum. Fail.
It's gorgeous and this, lads, is EIGHT DAYS. Unprecedented. EIGHT. Eight days of filing, typing, dishes, sugar scrub in the shower, hand sanitizer at work! Unreal.

Incredibly pretty bottle and you get a nice little card with your order that explains that the caps come from a local tree farm and are of sustainable wood. Added plus, the wood grain make it a little grippy, though they are very smooth, and they're comfortable to hold. Nice bonus.

You can see I'm showing some tip wear and the thumb is wearing on the edge where my nail is weaker. I could have repaired that but I wanted to see what this would do. This is the back of the bottle, incidentally, and much more color true than my nails are showing it to be.

The label. Yeah, didn't make that name up. Love it!

The red shimmer int he polish is showing up here some. It's very dark, it's a great Winter shade, but you know I pay no attention to that.

Look at how pretty. So much depth here. The dark brown, the plum mixed in, the red shimmer...it's gorgeous. There is also some copper in it, which didn't photograph.

Yet another attempt to capture the brown of this rather than the plum and another epic fail on my part. You can kinda see it, can't you? The brown? I swear this is brown.

And this is the problem that wrecked the manicure. I had picked at that a bit and made it larger but I couldn't get any more off. It was on to stay. The upside is you can see it didn't stain at all.

Now...I kinda messed this up. You can see the cuticles are a nightmare and really I should have cleaned them up, but I was just going to work, a job I hate, and so I kinda wasn't inspired to do anything about it. Like I said, I did this in the dark. It really wasn't the polish's fault. This went on beautifully. Creamy and easy, not watery, easy to manipulate, highly pigmented. Gorgeous. It really didn't need two coats but I think the extra second coat just solidified the color and helped stabilize this. Average dry time, nice brush.

Here's the mechanics:

1 coat Poshe Base Coat (the blue bottle)
1 coat Nailtiques 2 Plus Nail Protein 
2 Coats Seche Rebuild
2 Coats Sheswai Badass
1 coat Poshe Base Coat (the clear bottle)
...
Yeah. I put Base Coat on again because it was dark in the room and I nabbed the wrong bottle and it wouldn't freaking dry. I couldn't figure out what the problem was. I love my Poshe top coat. It dries like a dream and doesn't seem to cause the brittleness that I find Seche Vite can. Yeah. So then...

1 coat Poshe Fast Dry Top Coat.

Maybe that's why this wore so well. BMWWU claims it's because my nails are so strong, a thing I'll be posting about next, and that's probably true. I think it's also just that it didn't dare chip after all that and also that it is a high quality polish. It's mid-range in price, available through their website, which is fun and informative: Sheswai
Another nice thing, they have a $4 flat rate shipping, in the US at least. Not sure that's worldwide.

I was very pleased with my whole Sheswai experience. Great service, great communication, gorgeous color and fantastic polish. What's not to love!? They have a new fan! After I bought these I got an email alerting me that a color was being marked down and discontinued so I picked that up plus another so expect to see those coming in the future. Maybe not the discontinued one.  You know I won't show you stuff you can't get. They arrived uberfast and in perfect condition. This is going to be a company to watch.

Happy Talons!

Rescue Beauty Lounge - Poppy

Poppy is from the GOMM collection. For more info on this, please see Ji's blog at http://blog.rescuebeauty.com/. I'm kinda disgusted by what went on there. No..not kinda. Completely. Regardless of the aftermath, the inspiration and it's resulting colors are amazing, beautiful and magical.

I took the whole GOMM collection with me to my manicure. MDAMO didn't really have any say in this one. I did what I have traditionally done since I started buying nail polish like a hobo in a free sandwich shop. I take a bag full. Not a shopping bag! Someone I used to work with gave me a cute OPI pedicure tote thing that I am pretty sure she lifted from a salon she cleaned at night. Someone used to have them...it's a really cute set if you can score it and you're not bothered by the whole animal testing thing.

Yeah, no. I can't find it out there.

Anyway, the moral of the story is, it's a cute bag that zips, it's in the style of a makeup kit, and has slots inside to stash your polish so it's not rattling around in there and possibly getting broken. It came with flip flops and toe separators and I think a polish and a top coat? It holds a ton of polish.

So I took in the whole collection plus some other stuff for BMWWU to take a look at and choose. She chose Poppy because she will always choose anything coral or poppy colored, which she freely admits. It IS gorgeous.

OOOO. Very red but with very definite orange undertones. This is probably as close to a real poppy as you're going to get. It has that lovely shimmer in it, just a subtle hint of pink and red flash that doesn't really translate on the nail but which does give the color such depth.

Yeah, I kinda had to alter the label in the picture edit because of the thing you can read on Ji's blog. I got one of the pre-letter orders. Unreal! But the color and the lacquer itself. That's the important thing. You can see hints of that shimmer/flash I was talking about on the ring and pinkie fingers here. you might see it clearly if you enlarge the picture, not sure. This is so beautiful.

Like I said, BMWWU put this on and she doesn't usually say a lot about the polishes I take her as far as application unless it's remarkable. She called this "Perfect". It went on beautifully and was so highly pigmented and amazing. This is two coats here.

The back of the bottle, just so you can see it. The camera flash is kind of whiting out the shimmer particles, but they're really a red. This polish manages to be red and orange all at once.

You can see there is a little prelim tip wear. My job is hard on the nails, to be sure. Also we did a Seche UV activated top coat just to see. Not that impressed. I don't think it really wore any better than a regular Seche would.

Wow. looks true red there. Still quite a bit of yellow in this that brings up the orange. It's amazing. I will wear this again to be sure.

Last one. Looks more orange here. Like blood orange. Yeah. That's it.

I did repair this tip wear and slapped some top coat on it and it curled! I Seche doesn't play well with other top coats, is the problem. I just got some nail polish thinner, not remover, thinner, and pressed it back into place. It only had to hold for a week. I also got bored later in the week and put glitter on it. I wasn't bored with the color, I was just bored in general. Wow, did that gaudy it up! Come back tomorrow to see that and to get a little review of Orly Sashay My Way.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Poppy. Gorge.

If you like it, pick it up. Given the ugliness, Ji has declared this collection will never return. I'd check into it now if you're wanting this. 

Happy Talons!

BB Couture - Sinfully Polished, the Women's Collection - Sloth

I have a confession to make. My parents used to call me "Sloth" when I was younger. I associate this word with this:

(Image stolen from www.picturesphoto.info)

Cute isn't he? He will also move at about the speed of...drunken snails. This is where my nickname came from, not from the sin. I was always reading and busy in my head, much like today, and when called I could take a small eternity to turn up.

THIS Sloth, however, is a gorgeous dark deep dirty brown with red micro shimmer. It's...very unslothlike unless you are one vampy sexy sloth.

Oooo. Don't you love it?

It's blending in to the background too much to show the red too well here. Plus, I got sloppy! Oops!

This is such a lovely complex color. It has a lot going on but it's not crazy. It's a wonderful Fall color, something about it suggests sweaters and cold, doesn't it?

Deep, dark brown, highly pigmented, lots of color, very opaque...

You can see hints of the red here. It's so dark but it's also sort of sedate. Sloth waits... ;)

Gorgeous! You can see here how the red micro shimmer adds to the color complexity without becoming distracting. I love that about these formulas. It's like wearing sexy lingerie. You might be the only one who knows it's there but it changes how you think of the world that day. That micro shimmer adds a splash, a hotness, but it's quiet about it. It's so pretty!

I really made a mess in this swatch. I think I was getting tired. However, this is a very wearable, beautiful brown with a lot of richness to the color and finish. I'm loving it and as you know, I'm not a great lover of browns.

Happy Talons!!