For Audrey

Here is China Glaze For Audrey. I was pining after this baby for ages after I found out it existed, and was terribly worried I wouldn't ever get my hands on it. But I did! As you can see...

Anyways, this is a lovely robin's egg blue creme. My camera didn't like it at all though :( I think I am going to be in the market for a new camera soon, because mine just refuses to cooperate. It takes ages to focus and can't take a color accurate photo to save it's soul. If it had a soul. It definitely has personality though, I'll give it that. (stupid bugger)

This isn't my best application, I was swatching between classes, so this is super rushed. I've also been super mean to my hands lately, so please disregard their horrible state. The 3rd photo is the most color accurate. It's a lovely dusty Tiffany's blue, not baby blue or bright turquoise. Its really quite subtle in a chic sort of way. The formula was pretty on-par with China Glaze I've come to find, smooth and pigmented. Two coats = perfection.

At the moment though, my nails are totally naked. I'm letting them grow and do their own thing because they're getting super funky. As in, peeling like crazy and looking warped. Either I'm not resting them enough between polishes (do you even need to do that? probably not) not getting enough water, or not getting the right nutrition. My vote is for the last suggestions, as I've been eating crap food lately. My schedule has been thrown out of whack by my own procrastination, and this week it's my goal to get back on track.

For a update on the flooding issue, our house is pretty much back to normal. The gigantic fans are finally gone, and they've replaced the baseboards! The third floor is still chaos though, so maintenance still has a lot of work to do. They're troopers.

So what do you think of For Audrey? I wish my camera was better at capturing color. Anyone have any suggestions for good quality cameras that aren't extremely expensive?

Daisies

Sometimes you just need an attitude adjustment, and then the world doesn't seem so grey.

Superbowl? No thanks

Today is the Superbowl! and that....is feigned enthusiasm. I am not a football fan, which is probably why I've never been to a game at my university. :/

Last Thursday the pipes burst in my apartment on the third floor right above us (we're on the second floor). It was insanity. There are massive holes in the ceiling, lakes in the hallways, and insulation everywhere. Apparently we were right under the area where the pipe burst, but surprisingly our apartment wasn't terribly affected.

I came home from classes Thursday afternoon, and was shocked to hear the fire alarms going off, and to see water all over the first floor in the wing I live in. My first thought was someone's fire sprinklers went off, and all our possessions were soaked, which sent me into latent panic mode. I kept walking to my room, and on the way learned that it was a burst pipe instead. When I went into my apartment, I was kind of surprised to see that the main room was relatively dry, except that my bathroom was a lake. We had a good 2 inches of standing water that was soaking through into the carpet, and water coming out of the light fixtures. Not cool!

Maintenance has been in and out of our building all weekend, and we've been encouraged to go to the hotel nearby. The complex I live in is owned by my university, and they've secured the hotel rooms and dining meal cards for all of us until Tuesday morning, which is super nice. Basically maintenance pulled out almost all our baseboards, punched holes in the walls near the floor, and set up gigantic fans everywhere to get the moisture out. Hopefully they'll be able to, because right now the big fear is mold and if they can't get the wet under control, they might have to go in and replace all the dry wall.

I'm pretty sick of the situation right now and just want to get back on track, but getting burnt out is just really not an option right now. And frankly, there is NO time or place to replace my polish. So I leave you with one of my favorite photos of Óðinn, because it's so freaking cute.  When I took this, he was having one of his adorable crazy moments that translate to: FEED ME NOW!

Chinese New Year

So...apparently it's the start of the Chinese New Year today, which I didn't realize until around 11 last night. Year of the Rabbit!
Ironically enough I had already painted my nails red, which was a funny coincidence, since red symbolizes prosperity and luck in the Chinese culture (all my Chinese friends...you should correct me on this lol) and I had chosen red for luck, and didn't make the connection until later lol.

I haven't been to a real Chinese new year celebration for a very long time, and I always enjoyed them. I would have dinner at my good friend's house with her family, and it was always warm, happy, and inviting.

So, red. This is a deviation from the Christmas haul series...which I'm noticing had a lot of blues and greens and not a lot of red tones. I'm not really a red or pink person, but I'm a sucker for an absolute true red.


Sorry about my stained pink fingers,
cleanup was tough on this baby

This is ULTA Red Bows which I think was a Christmas color, like, 5 years ago. I picked it up with my mom once before I got obsessed with nail polish, and only realized it's amazing-ness recently.

This is a red creme, with some pink aftertones from cleanup, but it leans to the middle so well I would call it a true red. This is one of the best polishes I own, aside from Concrete Jungle from RBL. The brush was great and flexible, it levels beautifully, dries in a reasonably short amount of time, and dries to a glossy sheen. This is shown with a top coat, but trust me, there was little difference between the polish and my Seche Vite top coat. I would also consider it to be a one coat wonder.  No weird undertones of pink or orange, it was pigmented perfectly. I put on two coats here because it's habit, but I definitely could have gone with one and you wouldn't know the difference. 

I feel like I can't rave about this more, it's just AWESOME-SAUCE. In a bottle. Major love happening right now. If I were to name a red polish, I would call it Major Love*. And it would be fantastic, but it probably couldn't ever top this one. 

I'm in love. Good luck indeed!!

Happy Chinese New Year everyone :)

*If a red comes out anytime soon and it's named Major Love, I TOTALLY CALLED THAT.

What's With the Cattitude?

Continuing on with the review of the haul I got before Christmas, here is OPI's What's With the Cattitude? from their Shrek Forever After collection. 

 Isn't she lovely? I am completely smitten. This photo is a few days after application, so you can see some tip wear and my cuticles look horrible. They don't look like that in real life, seriously. Anyways, this color goes on like the Shrek green, it was smooth and with two coats the coverage is good. Not stellar, but definitely passable. I'm so much in love with this color that I'm tempted to buy a backup bottle, but I'm not sure where to find it since it's being phased out.

It turned into nail-night at my apartment, so I'm showing you my roommate's nails, with Sally Hansen's Blue Me Away.





















It's a great color, especially on her. It's bright and vibrant and totally matches her personality.

Not much else to say today, except for classes are eating my life.
Next up in the series, China Glaze!