Happy Chinese New Year!

Today is the first day of Chinese New Year, year of the Dragon! I wanted to make my nails special for today so I tried my hand at making a variation of a french manicure.

This is my first attempt at nail art so it's pretty basic. I did this free-hand and afterwards I realized I could have used tape to keep the lines straight. As it is though, I think I did a satisfactory job. I used Sinful Colors Gogo Girl for the red, which is just your basic, almost tomato based red. I was expecting to need more coats since Sinful Colors is notorious for being sheer, but I only needed two. 

sunlight

For the gold strip, I used CoverGirl Bronze Beauty. This is much more of an "old gold" shade, with tiny sprinkles of bronze micro-glitter. I don't own a true gold  so I made do with this. Formula-wise, this isn't fabulous. It's very runny and tends to pool along the top of the brush, so you need to pay attention or you may get some accidental drips. It also dries really quickly so you have to be careful to apply the right amount the first time. 

CoverGirl Bronze Beauty

For tonight's festivities I am making a big dinner for my roommates/friends which is going to include dumplings and rice, along with curry chicken. Yummy! Is anyone doing anything special to celebrate the New Year? Even though I'm not Chinese and didn't grow up with Chinese customs I still really enjoy keeping this holiday. I'm really bad at remembering to do special things for other holidays (like Christmas, Halloween, etc) so I feel a little weird putting emphasis on this one, but that doesn't lessen my excitement!

Check back later for other reviews, I have a Butter London polish to show you (which I am pretty excited about) and a mascara review coming up!

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.

Revlon Carbonite

The fall semester is officially over, yet some of my grades still aren't available. I just got my final back in the class I was most worried about and most thankfully I scraped by with a passing grade! I'm back home with my family which is really nice and relaxing. I sleep in super late most days which is a nice break from my constant schedule of early mornings and late nights during the semester.

I found this little cool puppy in Rite Aid last month, but hadn't tried it out until last week. Carbonite is supposed to be the Revlon equivalent to Chanel's Graphite. It's a silver foil with a grungy, gritty feel to it. (but it dries relatively smooth). Looking at photos of the Chanel online, it's clear that this isn't as great of a copy as Perplex was for Chanel's Paradoxal, but I think it's a good attempt. (By the way, could Revlon get any more obvious with the names?? Doubt it)

I was pretty pleased with this. I tend to avoid Revlon because I dislike the bottle design, but they've been coming out with some great colors lately (Blue Lagoon anyone?) and the formula seems to have improved. This is two coats and Seche Vite top coat. I did have problems with chipping about 5 hours after I did my nails, but it was easy to fix with a touch up and another coat of SV. 

I've become obsessed with Chanel's Morning Rose. I don't think it's available now though, which makes me super depressed. Here's hoping a good substitute comes out some time in the future. I'm usually not a pink person and Morning Rose is the epitome of girly pink to me. It's not too bright, has little gold flecks of glitter, just girly! But I think I'm in love. There's a great photo from Michelle at All Lacquered Up.

It's just gorgeous and I really wish I could get it without spending ridiculous amounts of money.

Are you excited for the holidays, or do you have special plans? I plan on curling up on the couch most days with my family and drinking eggnog until I'm sick :D

Sinful Colors San Francisco

I'm in a very foggy headspace today due to the all-nighter I pulled last night. I'm completely smothered under a pile of work and despite all the effort I put into getting things done, I still haven't made a significant dent on my to-do list, which mostly has to do with all the extra assignments that have been added at the last minute. Bah.

On a higher note, I found a few spare minutes to do my nails! Sinful Colors San Francisco. 

My camera has issues with bright colors like this. It makes the green look much more blue toned than it is, and it actually has more of a yellow base. It was extremely sheer and took about 3-4 coats. Super pretty in the sun, but in normal indoor light it fell flat.
I also had issues with shrinkage at the tips. You can see where the polish started pulling away at the edge of my nail, leaving a green stained tip in its wake. And it stained my nails horribly.  I did like this polish, but I just didn't find it super special. This will be a perfect polish to wear for St. Patrick's Day though!

Essie Midnight Tango

There are only 4 weeks left in the semester (not including the week of Thanksgiving) at my University. I think it's fair to say I am freaking out!

This is Essie's Midnight Tango from the "Morticia's Nails" collection released in 2010 (I think) for the Addams Family Musical. It's a very deep navy with blue shimmer, but it's not really apparent until you get into full sunlight. Normally it just looks like a really dark navy.

Isn't this so super gorgeous?! I die.

I'm a big fan of Essie's polish, and Midnight Tango is no exception. This polish is extremely pigmented and smooth. I'm anticipating having smurf fingers once I take this off. I've worn this polish for a exactly 7 days and no chipping! Only minor tipwear, and the combination I used is ULTA's Professional Base Coat and Seche Vite. 

Now, the bottle says Midnight Tango but I am 100% certain this is a rebottled Midnight Cami. Lauren over at Dizzy Nails has a great comparison here, along with a thorough look at the entire collection. I bought the collection as well and didn't have time to do a full post on it, but it's in the works ;)

I don't know if many people heard much about this collection? They only produced about 5,000 sets to benefit The Actors Fund. I'm not sure if every color in the set is a rebottled formula, but I wouldn't doubt it, merely because of the small production.

I'll post the rest of the collection later, once I've swatched the rest of the polishes :) What do you guys think of this one?