Max Factor - Fantasy Fire AKA Amazeballs

Ah, I'm back! I took an impromptu break and didn't mean to stay away so long!

I've got something super fun and awesome to show you:

Max Factor Fantasy Fire.

This was released in the UK back in the spring, and in an instant a lemming was born. I was ridiculously upset that I wouldn't be able to buy this in the States, but I was determined to get my hands on it, so a few months ago I bought it off a very nice seller on ebay for a pretty reasonable price.

I die.

I've layered 2 coats of Fantasy Fire over Revlon Royal. The VNL is completely unnoticeable in real life, I don't know why my camera does that. And I did get some minor shrinkage because I think I waited too long to put on the top coat.

But wow. It is just so goddamn pretty.

Using my camera flash helped bring out some of the orange/purple shimmer:



Getting it at an angle to show you the color-shift was a little difficult, but it's there.  :3



Just awesome. I'm so so happy I grabbed this when I could. It's an instant mood-lifter.

e.l.f. Royal Purple

In my last post I told you that e.l.f. had included a nail polish in their Mystery Bag, and here it is!  Royal Purple  is a fuchsia/ red-violet shade with silver and purple micro-shimmer, but you can see a flash of blue every now and then. The formula was quite fantastic, and went on smoothly with two coats. 

While purple and pink aren't normally the first colors I go for, I think this is a pretty great polish. I'm more eager to put this on my toes, so I think that'll be the next place I try this. 

Can you believe it's August already!? I'm in shock that the summer has flown by so quickly. Soon it will be fall and I'll be even more surprised. I'm curious to learn what autumns are like in Texas, and my assumption? probably hot. bah. 

butter LONDON Marrow

I was super excited to get my hands on butter LONDON's Marrow. I've wanted it ever since it came out in their Fall 2010 collection, partially because I'm a physiology major and appreciated the inspiration for the color, the dried center of bone. I just want to say however, this looks nothing like actual marrow. 

It is such a gorgeous color. It has a very fine shimmer hidden in the color, but I couldn't get it to photograph properly. I love this shade of purple, a very plummy color. The formula wasn't as great as I expected, it got globby very quick, and my coats were unintentionally thick. 

It isn't quite the proper color for my skin though, and a lot of the time it looks a lot darker than it normally is. I've been having such a hard time finding colors that don't make my hands lobster-y. I have a fair-olive skin tone with a lot of yellow undertones, and nothing seems to look right! Does anyone have this problem? Or any polish suggestions?

What do you guys think of Marrow?

OPI Steady as She Rose

First post of the semester!

I realize that I was very scanty on posting over the holiday, and I want to work on that. So expect to see more frequent posting on my part!

I had bit of a struggle trying to decide which polish to try out for the first day of classes and after much deliberation I finally settled on OPI's Steady As She Rose, a light, dusty lavender/pink.  It doesn't look fabulous with my olive skin-tone, but this is such a gorgeous shade of purple/pink that I can overlook the color clash. 

sunlight

shade

sunlight

I apologize for my ravaged cuticles, they look much better in real life. Out comes the Burt's Bees Lemon Butter!


I was pretty miffed to find that the polish had chipped before I took photos (the chip is on my index finger), but its not terribly noticeable so I'm not going to fix it. The second photo makes the polish look a little lighter and bluer than it is in real life, and the sunlight photos are much more color accurate. I've heard this called a pink, but I see lavender MUCH more strongly than I do pink. You really have to be in the right light to see pink. Concerning the formula, it was smooth, pigmented and not terribly streaky (two coats to even out bald spots). Pretty typical for OPI. 


In other news, today is my last first day of my undergrad studies. I haven't decided yet if I want to grad school/med school yet, and I'm content to just figure my life out at this point than scramble and make a decision that I'm not one-hundred percent behind.  It's rather bittersweet; I'm more than ready to be done with school, but the real world seems pretty terrifying.


I remember last summer at a barbecue I said to my friends, "I'm so ready to be finished with school and in the real world!" Ho, ho, was that a lie. I don't know what got into past-me, because I most certainly do not feel that way now.

Milani Rad Purple

You know how I said in my last post that the weather in the Denver area was still warm? I lied. Today, we all woke up and were greeted by about 5 inches of wet, drippy, slushy snow, and it's still coming down. Tree branches are breaking everywhere, and the bus I took to work this morning got momentarily stuck in the parking lot.

Unfortunately I don't have a photo of the mess outside, it didn't even occur to me to take a picture this morning so I didn't have my camera.

I do however have photos of polish. This is Milani's Rad Purple; I finally caved and bought it online from Cherry Culture. And I have to say, this is one of my absolute favorite, top polishes of all time. Look at how squishy it looks!! SO AWESOME. I love it. I was a little heavy-handed on my ring finger during application, so that's why it looks so much darker than the othes. I don't even care that it's a pink toned purple, it looks fabulous on me and I get super excited every time I look down at my nails.

It even matches my african violet in the background!

I really have nothing more to say about this. except that it's so pretty :)  I don't even mind the opaque bottle, which I know bothered a lot of people.

I have a portfolio draft for a Poetry Analysis class due today later, and I'm really struggling with getting good, if any information down for it. I'm hoping that my "draft" will be allowed to be relatively rough, because I need way more time on it than I've had in the past few days.

Thoughts on Milani? Has anyone been able to find their products in the Denver/Colorado area?