Zoya Ivanka

Today's NOTD is waiting to be posted as a guest blog on Inga's blog, The Original Swedish Blonde (who you should go read now), and I'm going to be spending the rest of my nail efforts for the day trying to work out what to do for Polish Hoarder Disorder's weekly challenge. Thus, today you get a swatch from sometime last week - I hope you don't mind too much! I used two coats and no top coat in these pictures.

indoors, artificial light

outdoors, shade

outdoors, sun

The colors in these pictures are actually very accurate, although my skin is definitely not as yellow as it looks in that first picture - if I started turning that color, I think I would visit the doctor. :) However, my pictures fail to capture the amazing depth, beauty and sparkle of Ivanka. I definitely think this is a must-have for any green lover or, in fact, just about anybody. 

L.A. Colors Antique Rose

I went shopping for some L.A. Colors polishes for my friend's birthday the other day, and of course I had to get some for myself! I ended up buying an extra bottle of Vintage Rose, which I tried today.

indoors, artificial light

outdoors, sunlight

outdoors, shade

The two outdoor pictures are very accurate, and the indoor picture is rather too orangey. I really like this color - it's grandma-friendly, but I don't think it's a "grandma" color. It looks more taupe than rose in most lights, though it is certainly a pinky taupe, and there is a very subtle gold shimmer that is not easy to see, but is definitely there. The color is fairly opaque - I used three medium coats. While it's light enough to be worn in spring and summer, it will be one polish that I will be pulling out more often in fall. I don't have China Glaze Ingrid yet (come ON, Sally Beauty Supply, stock Vintage Vixen!!), but I imagine Vintage Rose as being a light, pinky second cousin of Ingrid. Definitely a pretty color, and one I'm glad to have bought - and Kayla, if you're reading this, I hope you like it too! :)

Revlon Runway Collection Mystic Nails

Before I get to the nails, I made a spreadsheet yesterday that lists all the nail polishes I own and some information about them. If you're interested, check it out - and if there's a specific polish you'd like to see here, let me know through email or in the comments.

Today, I decided to try fake nails for the first time since a youth theatre play in which I played a wolf and, accordingly, wore bronze fake nails (which were intended to be worn for one day) for my "claws." I used the Revlon nails I received in my Revlon/Nailene package the other day and applied them using the nail glue that came in the package. It quickly became evident to me that there was a certain learning curve to the process - I managed to get nail glue on my fingers as well as my nails, and there are bubbles in the glue under most of my nails. However, I think the end result looks quite nice:

My nails have never grown this long, so it's quite nice to see what my hands look like with nails of a greater length. I really like the design, though I do wonder about one claim made on the label - "compares to $50 salon style." Really? I've never had a salon manicure, so I have absolutely no idea how much they typically cost, but $50 seems like a lot to me. If you could enlighten me, I'd really appreciate it.

All in all, I like this product - while I had some difficulty, I thought the nails were fairly easy to apply. While I definitely wouldn't want to wear these all the time (I would get bored), I will keep them back for special occasions or when I feel like having fancy nails without the work of painting them myself.

*This product was provided to me by the manufacturer for review. However, this has not influenced and will never influence my review(s) - I will always say what I truly think about a product.

Revlon Fantasy Length Defining False Lashes

This was my second adventure into the land of false eyelashes...and it was not successful. These lashes are not glue-on, like yesterday's - rather, they have little strips of adhesive at the base of the lashes. For me, this made it way harder to apply them straight. Additionally, I found that the adhesive (which is black) made it look like I was wearing poorly-applied liquid eyeliner. Not an attractive look. These would probably look better if I applied lots of eyeliner prior to sticking them on, but I just don't want to do that. They would also probably look better if I was better at applying them, but I'm not. Since I posted pictures of myself without falsies yesterday, I will just give you an "after" picture today:

Sorry for the crappy picture. I will probably try these again sometime, but maybe not...I am tempted to just throw them away.

*This product was provided to me by the manufacturer for review. However, this has not influenced and will never influence my review(s) - I will always say what I truly think about a product.

Rimmel Rapid Ruby + Nailene Bedazzle Stickers

Rapid Ruby is an old, OLD polish from Rimmel's 60 Second polishes. I've had it for nearly ten years, so I did have to add several drops of nail polish thinner, and I think I may add a bit more. I added crown stickers from my Nailene Bedazzle* pack to my thumbnails and rhinestones from the same pack to my ring fingers, and I'm loving the combination! In these pictures I'm wearing base coat, two coats of Rapid Ruby, the stickers and rhinestones, and top coat.

my left hand, shade

my left hand, sun

my right hand, shade

my right hand, sun

All these pictures are pretty color-accurate. While Rapid Ruby doesn't look quite that bright in sunlight, it's close, and the pictures taken in shade are nearly spot-on. I love the combination of a classic red and a bit of royal bling - I may start asking people to address me as Your Highness (but not really). :)

The stickers were very easy to apply. I placed the stickers with the end of a toothpick and pressed them down with my fingers. I think I got them fairly well placed, though the one on my right thumb is slightly wonky. The stickers look really perfect - I can't see the edges of the stickers, there aren't any bubbles, and it looks like I actually painted the designs on my nails (excepting the fact that my designs wouldn't be that neat). The rhinestones are fairly bumpy, but they and the stickers have lasted through my morning hair-washing, so I'm pretty confident that they will last. I can't wait to use some of my other nail stickers! Here's what's in the rest of the pack:

clockwise from top left: rhinestones; butterflies and stars; flowers and butterflies; crowns, stars and royal-looking designs

*This product was provided to me by the manufacturer for review. However, this has not influenced and will never influence my review(s) - I will always say what I truly think about a product.

Revlon Fantasy Lengths Intensifying Glue On Eyelashes

Whew! What a long title. :) I'd never tried false eyelashes before, so I decided to try these first because they had a sticker on the box that said they were the "Temptalia Editor's Choice Winner: Best False Eyelashes 2009" - also, they seemed to be a reasonable length and thickness. I thought applying stick-on eyelashes was going to be incredibly difficult, but, surprisingly, it was not. I consulted the directions on the box and a very helpful WikiHow article, and found the process to be pretty easy. I took pictures throughout the process:

my eye without mascara, eyeliner, or falsies

my eye with mascara

my eye without mascara, with falsies

 my eye with mascara and falsies  

my eyes with mascara, eyeliner, eyeshadow and falsies

Sorry for the poor-quality pictures - I obviously am not used to taking pictures of my own eyes. In my one-eye pictures where I'm wearing the falsies, you can see that they are lifting up a bit on the end. I think I must have missed some glue on that edge. I noticed this before I took the last picture and fixed it, but was too lazy to take even more pictures. I was pleasantly surprised with these glue-on eyelashes. I thought they might make me look like a freak since my eyelashes are already really long (though you can't tell in my pictures), but they just made my eyes look even bigger in a flattering way. While I wouldn't use these every day, I would definitely use and recommend them for special occasions.

*This product was provided to me by the manufacturer for review. However, this has not influenced and will never influence my review(s) - I will always say what I truly think about a product.

Nail Mail!

Recently I received an email from Melissa Sakamoto from the marketing department at Pacific World Corporation, which owns the Nailene and Revlon companies. Ms. Sakamoto offered to send me nail and false eyelash products from Revlon and Nailene for me to review, and I accepted. The package came in the mail today just as I was leaving for a movie, so I didn't get to open it until I got back...at which point I pretty much tore the box apart in excitement. ;) Here's what I got:

The Revlon products: Revlon Runway Collection Medium Length nails, Revlon Intensifying Fantasy Lengths eyelashes, Revlon Defining Fantasy Lengths eyelashes, Revlon Long Volumizing Beyond Natural eyelashes, Revlon Precision Adhesive nail glue:

The Nailene products: Nailene Couture Runway Designs nails, Nailene So Natural nails, Nailene French Manicure with tip guides and polishes, Nailene Bedazzle Nail Art Super Star stickers, Nailene miscellaneous fourth-of-July themed nail stickers, Nailene Perfect Tips & Toes French Polish Guides:

I am super excited to try all of these! Fake eyelashes and fake nails are not really products that I buy - I feel like fake nails are, well, fake and I already have astronomically long eyelashes - so it'll be interesting to see how I like them. I already use and love Nailene's French tip guides (they're what I used for my matte tips with Orly Luxe) and I was about to run out, so I'm happy to have more of those, and I can't wait to go sticker-crazy! :)

Orly Luxe

Luxe is another polish from the Orly Foil FX 2010 collection consisting of Rage, Luxe, and Shine (I won't be showing Shine, because my local Sally Beauty Supply didn't have it for some reason). Luxe is an incredibly shiny, cool-toned gold with bits of silver shimmer running through it. While the silver isn't as evident as in Rage, it is still obviously there.

Instead of wearing Luxe on its own and then with a matte top coat, I did matte French tips using Essie Matte About You.

indoors, artificial light

outdoors, shade

outdoors, sunlight

I love Luxe! It's glitzy and shiny and gorgeous, and while it doesn't complement my skin tone as well as most of my other golds, I still love wearing it, and I can't stop staring at my nails. My pictures are actually fairly color accurate for once, and the picture taken in sunlight is spot-on. The matte tips are slightly more evident in real life, but they are subtle.

The next couple weeks are going to be pretty exciting - I've got several nail polish and nail-related packages coming in the mail fairly soon, so be prepared! :)

Orly Rage

Sorry my post was so late today - while I had my camera, I was away from my computer all day. On to the polish!

Orly Rage is one of the three colors from Orly's Foil FX Spring 2010 collection (the other two are Shine and Luxe). The collection was pitched as giving nails a Minx-like finish without the high price, and in my opinion they certainly deliver! Rage was very, very, VERY shiny - I can't quite see myself in my nails, but it's definitely more reflective than most polishes. Rage is a rose gold with bits of silver in it, and while I absolutely love the color, I think it would look better on darker skin - darn pinky-pale skin tone! Here's Rage without top coat:

indoors, artificial light - way too gold; it's rosier in real life

 outdoors, sunlight - look at that shine!

 outside in half sun, half shade

 outside in shade

I took a ton of pictures, and in none of them did I manage to capture the beauty that is Rage (though I did capture my somewhat messy cleanup and horrible cuticles - sorry about that). Think indoor pic color, but rosy instead of straight gold. There are silver, rosy, and gold particles in the polish, so that may be what contributed to this polish being impossible (for me) to photograph properly. At any rate, Vampy Varnish has a way better, more-accurate photograph that you can check out if you like.

I loved Rage, but I wanted to try it with a matte top coat to see what would happen. I used Essie Matte About You, and here are the results:

indoors, artificial light

outdoors, sun

outdoors, shade

Beautiful! For some reason, I actually prefer Rage with a matte finish. I think taking away the shine makes the polish look less silvery (though it still does in my photos). The matte top coat also allows you to see the disparate rose, gold, and silver particles, which I love - it gives the polish a new depth. I wish I could stop it from looking either silver or gold in my photos, but alas...I suppose I'll just blame it on a combination of my dinosaur camera and bad lighting.

On a somewhat related note...who else can't wait for the Orly Foil FX Fall 2010 collection coming out in September? They are going to be actual color-colors (i.e. not just silver and gold), and at the moment it's looking like I'll be buying them all!

My Stash

I worked hard enough on my nails yesterday (and liked them well enough) that I didn't want to take them off quite yet, and unfortunately I don't have any old pictures left. But while you won't be seeing my nails today, you will be seeing some polish - I decided to finally count the number of nail polishes that I have. Here are my boxes, which, as you can see, I organize by color:

 base/top coats, treatments, reds, oranges, yellows, greens, teals

 blues, purples, pinks

 whites, blacks, pearlescents, silvers, golds, bronzes, browns, greys, taupes

 untried polishes

And the total comes to...90! I'm sure it'll be 100 by the time I am actually able to get my hands on the fall collections - I am SO annoyed that China Glaze Vintage Vixen won't be available at Sally Beauty Supply until September. Anyway, I know my mom thinks that's way too many, but I just like to remind her that I actually don't have that many bottles of nail polish compared to a lot of bloggers...I don't think she believes me though. :)

What do you think - is 90 bottles of nail polish more than any normal person would ever need, or is it a drop in the ocean? About how much nail polish do you have?