Happy 2008!

Hope everyone had a fun and safe holiday season

I’m swamped with all kinds of stuff and have a chippy red nail polish on, so here’s a couple pics of my favourite Creatives, instead. Hee hee! Unfortunately, these two are from a discontinued Gotham collection that CND released a few years ago. The only survivors from that collection are Adrenaline and Spike, which are still available and very worth checking out.

Raven is a very unique slate teal-blue-grey shimmer. It’s super well-pigmented and a brilliant polish to get your hands on, if you can find it. Rating: 4/5.

Caffeine is a cool, deep brown frost with a mauvey-purple tone to it. Not a good colour on me, but it’s kind of a nifty shade. Rating: 3/5.

A Few Festive Zoyas

These are a few of the more festive of my recently swatched Zoyas. I probably won’t be posting again until the new year, so happy holidays to all!

Akyra is a medium-deep teal shimmer from Zoya’s latest Utopia collection (winter 2007). I like the colour very much, but I’m not in love with the formula. Most of the other Zoyas I have seem to have a thickened consistency, which is a bit odd at first, but the polish does apply beautifully and is very well-pigmented with just two coats. Akyra, on the other hand, has a thin consistency, kind of like a semi-opaque polish. It also retains the slight “sticky” quality of the thicker formula Zoyas, which makes it a little tricky to apply. You can definitely get away with two generous coats of Akyra, but I really prefer it with three. Colour-wise, it’s a pretty standard teal, except it’s darker than the usual brights. It is a fairly neutral colour and I think it’d be wearable for most skintones. Rating: 3.5/5.

 

Uh-oh, Irene has the same consistency as Akyra. Both are from the Utopia collection. I like Irene better, though, simply because of the colour, which is a medium grassy green with strong hints of olive and moss. It’s a very warm-toned green, so beware if your skin is cool-toned. Irene is like a brighter, more vibrant and wearable version of an old OPI, Greenwich Green. Like Akyra, Irene is best with three coats. Rating: 4/5.

 

OK, so it’s just the Utopia collection, then! Suvi’s formula is the same as that of Akyra and Irene. Suvi is a deep, pine green with plenty of fine shimmer. It has he slightest teal tone on it, at least when I wear it. For those who’ve been waiting for a great deep—yet unblackened—green shimmer that isn’t very hard to find, this is it! Rating: 4.5/5.

 

Christinna (why the extra “n”, Zoya?) is an older colour, and its consistency is the thicker one that I’m used to. I was surprised to note that Christinna is not as sheer as I thought it would be. It’s actually opaque with two coats, but I really prefer it with just one semi-opaque coat to avoid it looking too Liquid Paper-y. Christinna’s a great pearly white with a hint of antiqued oyster grey and lavender. I don’t have anything similar in my collection, so I’m pretty happy with this one! My only gripe is that the brush my bottle came with is excessively long (longer than the brushes from my other Zoyas), which made the polish a little harder to apply. Rating: 4/5.

 

Roxy, also from an older collection, is a fantastic deep magenta glitter. It is semi-opaque with just one coat, and has a bit of a jelly finish. Two to three coats makes it quite opaque, but that semi-opaque first coat means it will layer quite nicely, too. I’d been lemming this one for a long while, and am very glad to say it has lived up to the hype! Rating: 4.5/5.

 

Finally, I give you Delilah, which I am wearing as my NOTD now. It’s a perfect, Christmas-y red version of Roxy! That’s right, glitter in a nearly opaque jelly finish. Delilah’s glitter might be just a tad finer than Roxy’s. I am all ready for the holidays, now! Rating: 4.5/5.

 

Cheers, everybody

NOTD: Maybelline – Salon Expert – Bitten Plum

I wore this one over the last few days, and it held up reasonably well with Poshé top coat over it. However, my gripe with this polish is that it applies very streakily and it is so easy to make a big mess with it! I didn’t like the brush and formula of the first Salon Expert polish I tried (Midnight Red), and Bitten Plum doesn’t change things.

I picked this one up in the US, where the Salon Expert bottles are squarish. The Canadian bottles are slimmer and kind of “eye” shaped from an aerial view.

Bitten Plum caught my eye because it’s a deep, vampy red but with a plum tone, and no brown. However, after getting it as even as I could with 3-4 coats, it was just like any other blackened red. Kind of boring, actually. It’s really not worth the trouble, especially since there are better colours like this to be found at the drugstore, Revlon’s Vixen in particular. Rating: 2/5.

Rimmel – LycraWear 10 – Electric

Here’s a super fun sparkly dark blue for you guys! Rimmel LycraWear 10 +Minerals (yes, that’s the full name of this line) in Electric. Gorgeous, with a hint of pinky-purple in the sparkles, too. Two coats is nice and opaque. I’m very tempted to wear this for Christmas, but I think I’m really going to have to go with a red… Rating: 4.5/5.

Fantasy Football: Gameweek 17

Awful, awful week for my Fantasy Football team. David James curse? Check. (Note to self: bring the peroxided one into goal this week.) Captain Notfantastic? Check. (1 pt x 2 = 2 pts!) Benched top-scoring player? Check.

That would be the mighty lucky, yet unlucky, Roque Santa Cruz for Blackburn. Scored a hat trick against Wigan on Saturday, then a brace yesterday against ten Arsenal infants, and somehow managed to be on the losing side in both games! Here’s the poor duckling (left), alongside Morten Gamst Pedersen:

Now, where’s that can of Red Bull…?

Liverpool play Chelsea today in a Carling Cup quarterfinal. Last time I said good luck, they smooshed Marseille, so good luck!!!!!!!! Gah.

Sally Hansen – Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear – Groovy Green

As promised, here’s a swatch of the new SH holiday green I picked up yesterday, Groovy Green. It’s semi-sheer, which makes it fun for layering but also means that if you want full opacity, you will need 3 coats (or 2 generous ones). This is a sparkly, neutral green that is perfect for a fun holiday mani/pedi. (It’d be great for Halloween and St. Paddy’s Day, too!) Rating: 4/5.

Holiday polishes at the drugstore

I was at the drugstore today and saw these holiday collections…I just wanted to get these written down before I forgot them all!

Nicole by OPI. In November, I posted my photo and review of Merry Merlot!, which is from this collection. I’ve now had a better look and here are some of the others.

There’s a semi-sheer-looking sparkly white called On Nicole’s Wish List, which is like the white version of Merry Merlot! It’s lovely and very snow-ish, and I nearly picked it up today. The $10 price tag turned me off, though. There is also a gorgeous shimmery gold with bits of microglitter in it. The gold looks very neutral, neither too pale not too deep, and I had to tell myself “gold looks bad on you!” over and over again to prevent this polish from falling into my shopping basket. There’s a shimmery cherry red, very pretty but nothing new, and a cherry red creme…ditto on that one. Finally, there’s one called “Warmest Wishes” or something to that effect, but it’s a cool-toned pinked purple shimmer.

On to Rimmel, who appear to have two polishes out as a holiday LE. They are both in the new LycraWear 10 +Minerals line, in the small cylindrical bottles. One is a deep shimmery purple called Fantasy (purple lovers are gonna fall for this one!) and the other is a blackened sparkly blue called Electric. I picked this one up (on sale for CAD$3.29) and hope to have a photo of it posted by the weekend. Nice to see that Rimmel is following the trend for deep blues this season. I’m betting that Fantasy and Electric would look pretty cool layered over one another, too!

Sally Hansen, of course, could not be outdone. I saw a pretty fun looking display of the lower-end SH polish line, Hard as Nails Xtreme Wear, in plenty of cute colours. Even though this is the cheaper of the SH lines, I personally think it is the best in terms of formula. I really like the application of the Xtreme Wears. The packaging’s a little cheap, but hey, it’s a drugstore polish! Anyway, there were reds, pinks, a shimmery silver that leans to gunmetal, a white pearly shimmer that looks nearly opaque, a dark blue shimmer, and an awesome sparkly Christmas-green that I picked up. It’s called Groovy Green, and I also hope to have pics of it up soon. It cost me CAD$2.99, retail.

Finally, I almost ran into a large display for Revlon’s holiday colours. I didn’t see anything too exciting, and quite a few of them were just core colours being re-pimped (Cherries in the Snow was one, and it’s a huge fave of mine). However, I did notice one called Blackest Black. Curiously, this one looks like a plain black creme, but when I looked carefully, I saw blue sparklies! They’re kind of sparse, though, so I don’t know how noticeable they would be on the nail. It’s cool to see that Revlon tried to do something a little different from the standard black creme.

Orly: Miniatures, part 1

This year (or perhaps at the end of last year), Orly released an adorable collection of bright nail colours in miniature bottles, complete with mini rubberized cap. The mini bottles contain 5.4 mL, so they are quite a bit larger than OPI minis (3+ mL), but compared with the standard Orly bottle (18 mL), they are definitely mini.

Cha Cha Cha is a bright, shimmery orange. It’s not terribly original, but it certainly is fun and hard to say no to, if you’re an orange-lover like me! It applied beautifully with two smooth coats. Rating: 4/5.

It’s Up to Blue is definitely one of the best aqua/blue shimmers out there, and believe me, I’ve tried many! It glows, I tell you. Glows. The shimmer is absolutely stunning in this one. Ack. It’s gorgeous. Get it. The photo does not do it any justice whatsoever. Rating: 5/5.

Razzmatazz is a medium, pinked red shimmer. Very, very pretty, but like Cha Cha Cha, not very unique. Rating: 4/5.

Last Dance is one of the many glittery polishes in this Orly collection. Last Dance is a sheerish red with red glitter. It looks quite stuffed with glitter in the bottle, but to get the same look on the nails, at least three coats are needed. Nevertheless, this is not bad for layering. For this and the next polish, my photos show layering over different shades of red (from light to dark: Orly Ava, OPI St. Petersburgundy, and Orly Naughty). Rating: 3.5/5.

Entourage is also a glitter. It’s a sheerish pink-purple with pink-purple and silver glitter. Apart from the colour, it’s pretty much the same as Last Dance. Rating: 3.5/5.

Fantasy Football: Gameweek 16

Yeesh, what a bad week. My team’s chock-full-o’ Liverpool, Arsenal and Aston Villa players, and of course all three teams lost their matches this weekend. The L’pool players actually scored reasonably well despite their 1-3 loss at Reading (naturally, I ditched Stephen Hunt this week!), but I certainly had the wrong Arsenal and Villa players on my team. Top scorer of the week: Steven Gerrard, with 6 (x2 for captaincy) = 12 points. Even at just 6 pts he still scored better than anyone else. SAD.

Oh, and the curse of David James has returned. I will never learn.

Here’s a pic of Reading kicking Liverpool’s collective butt. (Ibrahima Sonko slips while doing the do-see-do with Peter Crouch.)

At least Arsenal screwed up this week, too.

Good luck in Marseille, guys.

NOTD: CND – Rich Ruby

Rich Ruby is the token red shimmer from Creative Nail Design’s 2007 holiday collection, and what a fabulous, eye-popping red it is! It’s a medium true red with very fine red shimmer and subtle swirls of silver which give it a very slightly cool tone. On the nail, it’s amazingly opaque with just one coat, although I did two, anyway. The satin finish really glows. I cannot recommend this enough as a classic red nail polish, and of course, it is also perfect for holiday parties! Rating: 5/5.

And a shot of the bottle: