Harley

Hello! I feel like I talk about the weather a lot here but it does seem to affect my pictures so I will use that as an excuse :P We had some very interesting weather over the weekend, the island was hit by Typhoon Songda on saturday night. We ended up with a roughly 18 hour power outage at our house but thankfully no major damage. A lot of trees and debris all over the place though. The winds here hit probably over 100mph for a few hours, it was howling pretty good, the house was shaking, windows and doors rattling. Honestly, back home we would get storms that were very similar, we just didn't call them typhoons lol.

Anyways, I've been wearing Zoya's Harley for the last few days, a gorgeous light dove grey. It's a bit of a palette cleanser for me, I don't often wear neutrals though I do like them. I decided I had to have this one when I saw pictures of it specifically because of the hidden shimmer. It looks an awful lot like a creme unless you look close but the shimmer adds dimension to the polish and I like it a lot.

Now, in a weird twist of irony, I took pictures of this yesterday but when I put them on my comp I realized that it was too sunny and the color had been washed out. Yes, you heard me... it was too sunny. *sigh* There is something seriously wrong with that. At any rate, it resulted in me redoing my pictures today.

I had to throw this last picture in for a reason, I recommend you enlarge it. I realized today that apparently there is brown shimmer in this polish. I had thought it was a grey polish with silver shimmer when I saw pictures and that's why I ordered it. I had to redo my nails to swatch it for pictures (there were some nail mishaps previously) and what I thought was patchiness at two coats turned out to be... bits. It's not really shimmery because that implies shine or sparkle, but it's interesting. I think I like it :)

Thanks for looking!

Meeka

Franken Time! Rainforest Mist Holo

I was inspired by the sun the other day to put on a holo. Sadly we didn't have any sun for a few days after that, but I can't be too mad because it's BEAUTIFUL out there today! That's 2 gorgeous sunny days in 1 week! *sigh* Yes I'm easy to please. I'm also super happy because my hockey team is in the finals! First time in 17 years (I always say you have to be a true fan to love the Canucks), but they look amazing this year and I'm really hoping it's our year. Go Canucks!!

Anyways, this is a franken I made a few weeks ago. It's a dusty forest green. Maybe a little lighter than a forest green? I made a dusty purple at the same time and I love these both. I don't entirely remember what I used, I know I used a 100 yen store holo in either light or dark grey as the base. I think I added a couple drops of black then used a little Nubar Reclaim. I can't remember what other green I used though, maybe Orly's Enchanted Forest? Seems to me that's what it was.

I love how it turned out, I think I'd had something darker in mind when I started but I think this is really pretty so I left it like this. It makes me think of walks in Goldstream Park back home on a rainy day. The woods gets a rainy mist and it's incredibly beautiful. Vancouver Island has some of the most incredible old growth forests and it's something I do miss.

Anyways, on to the pictures! I hope you like this as much as I did :)

I love my camera (well, technically my husbands camera :P) because it does take great shots and despite how big it is I don't have problems stabilizing it so I don't often get blurry shots. However, it has a tendancy to wash out holos so I like to bust out the little camera too. I have a hard time not taking blurry shots with this one and the colors come out a bit off I think, but it definitely picks up the holo better.

Thanks for looking!

Meeka

Crystal

All right! Here's the first of the Zoya's I got in the Earth Day Exchange. I had a hard time deciding which to use first (although Mimi went on my toes asap :P that shade of purple is a favorite of mine for feet) so my husband piped up and voted for Crystal, he's a big fan of blue :) 

Zoya Crystal is an icy blue filled with gold glitter. I know it's a popular shade for Zoya but for me it fell a little flat. I love the combination of blue with gold glitter but I think I prefer OPI's version better in Absolutely Alice. It is still a pretty color though so I'm not sure if I'll keep it or put it up for swap.

I am a fan of Zoya's application and this one went on very nicely. The odd thing about this one is that it goes on gritty and stays that way for about a day and then goes really smooth. Sadly, once it smooths out it also loses any punch the blue has.

Oh! Today we had sun!! Beautiful, bright, gorgeous sun! We packed up the towels and headed to the beach for the afternoon but I did take pictures of Crystal first :)

Thanks for looking!

Meeka

Sweets NL39

First off, a warning, this will be picture heavy :)

Sweets is a Japanese brand that I usually see at drugstores (or at least the Japanese equivalent of). I think the bottles are adorable but I haven't seen too many colors that have called out to me. However, when I was out the other day I saw three new colors that definitely caught my eye!

Of course, as none of the brands over here seem to have names this one is called NL39. It's a rosy peach base (peachy rose? pinkish peachy coral?) packed with gold flakes. Personally I'd call it a foil although it is more commonly called glass-flecked I think. This is actually an exact dupe for Zoya Rica when I compare it to the color plate I received in the Earth Day Exchange. (Side note, I see some Zoyas in our future :P) The other two in the Sweets display were look alikes for Apple (which I bought) and Tanzy (which I have to go back for).

These first pics are all outdoor natural lighting, due to the complete lack of sun in three weeks they aren't showing the insane sparkle/shine of this polish *sigh*

I decided to experiment with some indoor photos, for some reason I very much dislike a white background for my photos. I like it well enough on other blogs but it makes my hands look... dirty o.o Probably has to do with lighting and camera settings that I just don't get lol.

I keep saying there's been no sun and I figured I'd show you what I mean. This has literally been what the sky has looked like for about three weeks. Interesting fact, my husbands little Kodak EasyShare M381 takes THE BEST sky photos. His Canon DSLR (which I use for my nail photos) can't even compare, so weird lol. This is the view from my balcony.

Literally the closest thing I've seen to sun in weeks.

And a bonus pic of my hubby's cat Demanti, she has to come hang out every time I'm on the blacony. She's camera shy though, she turns away every time I try to snap a pic :P My baby girl is never as interested in what the heck I'm doing out there, and unlike Demanti she's too old/scared/lazy to jump up on the ledge lol!

So, if you've managed to make it this far, thanks for looking! Hope you all are having a great week :)

Meeka

Avocado Sparkle

Hi again! I am way late posting this one but in my defense blogger ended up being down for a couple days it seemed as soon as I went to post. I don't know what that was about, my blogger talks to me in Japanese which I unfortunately do not read. Actually almost everything on the internet tries to talk to me in Japanese now that I'm over here, which is slightly frustrating at times. Oh well, no big deal :P

Anyways, Avocado Sparkle is an L.A Girls color I picked up a couple weeks ago which I kind of love. The name is very appropriate, it's definitely an avocado green with a subtle gold sparkle. Application was great, it's a little on the thin side so definitely needs 2 coats but it's very easy to work with. 

For some reason though I keep thinking this needs black glitter. I blame BB Couture, it seems to me that one of their many greens is like that. Maybe Kelly's Green? In swatch pics I've seen it doesn't look the same in color (think more BBC Caterpillar maybe) but every time I look at Avocado Sparkle I think it needs those black flecks.

One last thing, still no sun to be seen so these pics are either flash or no sun. We had a "tropical depression" near the end of the week which was building up for a few days and it's still grey and cloudy and rainy. At least it's a little cooler than it was before, though I really don't mind the heat so much :)

This is actually fairly color accurate if a little dark due to lack of sun.

With Flash

With Flash

Normal Light

With Flash

Normal Light

Thanks for looking!

Atlantis

Today I have an older, classic China Glaze, Atlantis. This is a seriously blingy polish which these pictures just don't show sadly, my eyeballs were freaking out when I put it on lol. Unfortunately, we still haven't had much sun though it's been humid as heck and I feel like I'm swimming when I walk outside, which makes this polish all the more appropriate right now :)

Atlantis is a gorgeous teal green jelly packed with silver and holo glitter. It is on the gritty side and is a bit of a top coat eater but in my opinion it's worth it! I did two coats over Milani's Neon Fresh Teal as the base is very sheer.

Thanks for taking a look!

Meeka

Revlon Not So Blueberry

Another day, another Revlon. Another smelly Revlon even. I must admit, this one smells like candy and I was maybe sniffing my nails a bit for the first day. Unfortunately for me the smell didn't last too long. Also unfortunately for me we haven't had sun in days so it was grey sky pictures or nothing. One of these days I may get around to building a light box for weeks like this.

Not So Blueberry is a fantastic icy blurple foil. Yes, shoot me now, I said blurple. Really though, it's both blue and purple so I can't pick just one to call it lol. And I call it a foil but it may just classify as metallic, I'm not sure. It looks foily to me so it's a foil :P

One last note before pictures, no this is not ridiculous tip wear, this is shrinkage courtesy of Poshe. Different top and base coats will react differently to people and this one does not like me. I've never experienced as much shrinkage with as many polishes as I have using Poshe so it's back to Seche Vite for me when this runs out. If I can get it anyways, otherwise I'll be hunting down something else lol.

I love how this picture makes this look duochrome, I promise it's not.

I must say, I'm once again unimpressed with the formula. I want to like Revlon polishes as they're easy for me to get, and they do have some nice colors lately, but the difficulty I've had with application on every one I've used is making me rethink purchasing more.

Thanks for looking!

Meeka