Tuesday, June 28, 2011

PU 100

Hello! I've got another Japanese polish today, I bought this specifically for the bottle lol. I love the little heart shape :) Sadly they didn't have any colors that really stood out so I picked this one because it's purple lol. I hate that all these brands only use numbers instead of names. Sadly this one doesn't even have any type of brand name on the bottle and I can't remember what the display said as I bought it a couple months back. So it's PU 100 and that's all :P

This is a nice red leaning grape (or maybe plum?) purple with a subtle shimmer in it. I wasn't really planning to wear this one to be honest but I needed a base for another polish and this one matched well so I went with it. I'll be showing you the layered polish in the next day or two I think :) For this purple I used two coats and as you'll see it's kind of patchy. It really needs a third coat which I would have done if I was planning to wear it as a full mani.

Isn't this such a cute bottle?

 Sadly it's a really small bottle as you can see by the fact that my hand barely fit on it lol. I'm not sure but I'd guess it's about 5-7mls.



As I said I'll have my layered pics in the next couple days, it's a really pretty combo I think :)

Thanks for stopping by!
Meeka


Friday, June 24, 2011

Ikei Island

So this is a non polish related post, but I wanted to share some pictures with you. If you aren't interested turn back now hehe. This is going to be pretty picture heavy too, I had a hard time only picking a few photos to post out of the almost 500 taken between my husband and I. (Most of those are his fault :P)

Anyways, on the weekend my husband and I went exploring a bit, we went out to some of the outlying islands, in particular Ikei Island. It was a beautiful day and I felt like I was in a little piece of paradise, I'm truly lucky to be where I am! We ended up at Ikei Beach around 5pm or so, the beach was empty except for 3 other swimmers, my guess is they were actually closed for the day but the owners let us go check it out anyways. We wandered the beach and took pictures for a while, I have to go back and spend a day there soon. I thought I'd share some of the pictures with you :)

Now, the island I live on, Okinawa, is a very small island itself. It's roughly 70 miles long and 7 miles wide. We're about 950 miles south of Tokyo and the climate is considered subtropical, which means even in winter it's pretty darn nice out :) If Okinawa is small, Ikei is teeny tiny. You drive there over a long land bridge and two other islands connected by bridges. Once you hit that first land bridge it feels like you just left reality and hit paradise, it's so incredibly beautiful and seemingly isolated. Anyways, on with the pictures :P

This is an Okinawan family tomb. You see these all over the island in some of the most random places. They'll be in the middle of a bunch of houses, scattered through the parks, up on uninhabited hills, or tucked into secluded spots overlooking the ocean. They're almost as abundant as the vending machines :P 

I love this picture, it reminds me of playing Gran Turismo on the Playstation lol! 

 A photo my husband took, the rock looks like a lizard :P

 The dock on Ikei Beach.

 Ikei Beach.

 Ikei Beach.

 My husband snapping photos on the beach :P

 This is all coral. It was almost magical, as the waves came in it pushed coral up onto the beach and as they went out you could hear the coral tinkling. It sounded like chimes :)

 The sand is so soft that as soon as you step into the water you sink lol. Pretty much any step in the water has you in sand up to your ankles :P

 The beach. If you look really hard you can see me standing at the dock :P

 Oh. There I am lol.

 This is across the road from the beach, there was a boat launch there so we had to take a couple pictures there too.

 A mushroom rock. You see these a lot along the coast of Okinawa. I don't know if there's a proper name for them but they're really cool.

 A funky tropical plant. No clue what it is.

 Nakabaru Vestige. This is remains from a village approximately 2500-2000 years old. There's lots of little sets of ruins like this around these islands. All those little bunches of rocks were actually houses. They're about the size of a small closet lol.

 A really cool evening sky line. I loved how dense the clouds were back there, they almost looked like a second tree line :)

 One of a pair of Shisa dogs guarding the bridge to Ikei. Actually this is on the Ikei side so I guess they're guarding the bridge to Miyagi island :P 

And his mate on the other side of the road.

So, if anyone managed to make it through all these I hope you enjoyed them :) I absolutely love living in such a beautiful part of the world and I like to share that once in a while. Sometimes I do miss living somewhere that speaks english. The people here are so incredibly nice but I don't speak much Japanese and it's a difficult language to learn so I do a lot of pointing and pantomime lol. However, I wouldn't trade this experience for anything!!

Thanks for looking :)
Meeka

Thursday, June 23, 2011

Teal of Fortune

Hello! I hope everyone is doing well today :) It's been an uneventful week for me but it's been so warm out I can deal with it lol. I'm a total heat pig, I love it! Anyways, to go with the beautiful weather I decided to pull this gorgeous color out of my untrieds.

Teal of Fortune is a beautiful glass flecked teal from Wet n Wild. This is such a rich color, I'm really loving it. Of course the first polish that comes to mind when looking at it is Zoya Charla but I wouldn't call them dupes looking at the bottles. I think Charla has more green to it, maybe brighter and sparklier. I might have to pull that one out and do a comparison, may as well add my own to the many that are out there :P

I've got extra pictures too, I love the bright sparkle of the sun pictures but I think the shade pictures are more realistic as far as color. So since I couldn't decide, you get both lol! This is three coats which all went on fairly smoothly. I don't notice the vnl in real life that you see in the pictures so I think 3 coats is all you need.

Shade. Pretty darn color accurate to me.

Sun.

 Shade.

 Sun.

Shade. 

Sun.

I really do love this color, it's very bright but in a good way. I might have to put this one on my toes soon :) And really, for a polish that's less than $2 I can't complain at all!

I think I'm going to do a second post today. I was going to add a couple of pictures that I took this weekend but it's hard to narrow down which ones I want to post :P I figure I'll do it seperately and if anyone is interested in seeing a bit of where I live then you can look and if not then you can skip it :)

Thanks for stopping by!
Meeka 

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Reclaim aka The Most Beautiful Polish In The World

Since I started this blog I've been working through my untrieds. I have so many that I feel like I need to lol. All the sun we've had lately though (Yay!) has made me crave a holo, and I felt like this beauty needed a little attention.

*sigh* This polish makes me happy. So so very happy. I can't say too much other than if you don't own this slice of polish heaven... what's wrong with you?? Go buy it now, I'll wait :P This is, without doubt, my favorite polish in my collection.

I only own two Nubar polishes though I'd like many many more, this formula is perfection. This is two buttery smooth coats with a coat of Orly Bonder in between, no topcoat. This is the most perfect grass green holo. I'm not sure if I've ever seen a green holo even begin to compare to this.

As usual with holos I've got pictures from both my cameras. However, the force is strong with this one... er holo I mean haha, so it shows up well even on my good camera. Still nowhere near as much as it shows in real life but at least you get a good idea. If my battery hadn't died I'd have tried for some indoor pictures too, I might still do that later.

One thing to note, the bad pictures are more color accurate, the better quality photos have washed it out a touch. Anyways, enough blabbing, on with the pictures :)



 This is almost perfectly color accurate, except picture it maybe a tiny bit brighter.



Feel free to enlarge these photos and stare at the gorgeousness. I know that's what I'm going to be doing for the next few days lol. I think I've already driven my husband nuts stuffing it in his face saying "Look honey, it's so pretty!" and I only put it on last night :P

Thanks for stopping by!
Meeka

Top 10 Award

So how cool is this?? A Polished Touch nominated me for an award :) That's really awesome and very appreciated, it's nice to know some people other than me are enjoying my blog haha!

Top 10 Award
1. Thank the person who tagged you and link to their blog.
2. Put the Top 10 Award logo on your blog.
3. List your top 10 cosmetics.
4. Choose 10 bloggers to tag, link to their blogs, and let them know.
So, I don't actually wear much makeup lol. It's pretty rare I wear anything these days and often if I do it's just mascara. It's part laziness and partly I can't stand wearing it in this humidity. I'm going to list just things I love and use all the time, whether it's cosmetics or not :P (And a couple polishes I love!)
Top Ten Cosmetics (In no particular order)
1. Shiseido Tsubaki Water (this is a mist for hair and OMG it's amazing, I'm in love!!) 
2. MoroccanOil Intense Curl Cream
3. Garnier Pure Daily Cleansing Gel
4. Urban Decay 24/7 Liner Zero
5. Annabelle Smudgeliner Ohmygoth!
6. MAC Paint Pot Painterly
7. NYX Single Shadow Red Bean Pie
8. Annabelle Mono Eyeshadows (I have a couple but no names ; ;)
9. Nubar Reclaim
10. SOPI 212-Sephora

10 Blogs (Alphabetical)

I tried to do the same as A Polished Touch and pick blogs that don't have thousands of readers, most likely you all follow them already lol. I think all of these blogs deserve some recognition as they're all great!
Thanks again to A Polished Touch for thinking of my blog and thanks to you for stopping by!
Meeka

Thursday, June 16, 2011

Crayon Manicure 1014

Well, I'm a sad sad panda today. I'm a huuuuge hockey fan and an even huuuuuuuger Canucks fan and we just lost to Boston in game 7 of the finals. I'm happy for Boston I suppose, they did earn it and Tim Thomas is a beast, very deserving of the Conn Smythe trophy. Still, obviously not the outcome I wanted *sigh*

Aaanyways, on to polish, because that does make me happy :P This is one I picked up at the 100 yen store recently. They had a new display with these ones, however I only picked up two of them as all the other colors were variations on pink.

1014 is a light bronze packed with gold glitter, I think I like the color better in the bottle than on me, it seems a little too light against my skin. The formula on this was really weird, very goopy. It felt like I was painting my nails with glue lol. I also noticed while I was taking pictures of this that the glitter looked prismatic or holo. I swear in normal lighting it's very definitely just gold, but when the sun hits it it lights up. I'm not sure how well that shows in these pictures, I think if you enlarge them you'll see what I mean.





This is not my typical color but there's something I like about it. I do wish it was a deeper bronze but I like that the glitter makes it more interesting. I don't think I'll be going back for more of these as the colors just weren't right for me and the formula is just weird to work with.

Anyways, I'm off to go mourn the end of the hockey season and the death of my Stanley Cup hopes :P

Thanks for taking a look!
Meeka

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Edyta

Hello! I know I said I was hoping to get this one up the other day but, well, I got busy lol. I was going to get this done on friday but my husband and I went to an Iaido seminar, we actually won the trip from the rec center on base :) Iaido is the Japanese art of sword fighting, or more accurately "the smooth, controlled movements of drawing the sword from its scabbard, striking or cutting an opponent, removing blood from the blade, and then replacing the sword in the scabbard." (sourced from wiki here). We learned a few katas from an 8th generation Iaido master using bokken (wooden swords) then got to actually cut some rolled up tatami mats using real samurai swords. It was extremely interesting and hella fun! Although my arms are a little sore now lol, those swords are heavy!

Anyways, here's Zoya's Edyta. She's a lovely blackened green with that gold foil Zoya is famous for. I'm not usually a big fan of blackened colors, I prefer my colors to have color :P This one is quite gorgeous however, it's also probably the first polish I've ever had on both fingers and toes at the same time haha! I never match but I knew I wanted this on my toes but I also wanted to show you on my nails :)



I know this picture is mostly out of focus but I loved the colors it shows, I think most of the photos come out too dark.


I hope you all are having a great weekend, we're having some gorgeous weather here which I'm definitely enjoying! Thanks for stopping by :)
Meeka



Friday, June 10, 2011

A Giveaway at Gilded Nails

Carina over at Gilded Nails is having an AMAZING giveaway! I have to post this one because the prizes are insane! I highly recommend you go check out her blog, she's got great nails and great pictures :)

Meeka

Thursday, June 9, 2011

Another Franken! Intergalactic.

Hello! I wanted to say thank you to all my followers, I have a few more now which makes me very happy. I know I don't have very many but I appreciate every one of you. Every time I see a new one I get a little giddy lol. Kind of silly but it's nice to have people to share my interest with. And today I can use that, my hockey team has just completely failed the last couple games *sigh*. Darn Canucks need to get their crap together!

On to the polish, this wasn't what I planned to show you but I have to redo my nails still. I'd intended to do that yesterday but I was sidetracked so hopefully I may have that up later today.

Here is Intergalactic.





I made this franken the same time I made Cherry Pie, it's a mix of black and clear (to allow the glitter to show through) with a chunky blue/teal glitter from Winmax, a little bit of China Glaze Fairy Dust and a little fine blue glitter.

I love how the glitter shows through in the black, these jelly glitters are really cool I think. The glitter seems to distribute fairly evenly too. The mix of the fine blue and large blue/teal glitters combined with a little bit of holo sparkle from Fairy Dust makes this look like a clear night sky.

I hope you like this franken too, I'd love to hear what you think! And hopefully I'll have something else for you later :)

Meeka

Saturday, June 4, 2011

Franken Time! Cherry Pie and Vote For Me!!

For my second post of the day I wanted to plug myself as well as share what I think is an awesome franken! I entered a frankening contest over at More Nail Polish and voting is now open. I really enjoy frankening and I like the idea of having to be a bit creative to win a contest instead of just entering a giveaway, so this was super fun. There's some really amazing frankens so I highly recommend you check it out :)

I do have a franken I have yet to post but I wanted to make something new for this contest. (I actually made two polishes and I'll show you the other one sometime but this is the one I decided to enter) I am not a big red wearer, I always like it on other people but it's another one of those colors I'm not so fond of on myself. When I was thinking of ideas for this contest I got it in my head that I wanted a red jelly, but of course a plain red jelly would be too boring so I had to spice it up with some glitter. I am absolutely in love with how this turned out. I just reswatched it to get some sun pics intending to take it off and put on Zoya Edyta but honestly, I think I'll finish the manicure, it's awesome!



The jelly squishiness of this is amazing, it looks so juicy!


This is the picture I submitted for the contest, no sun and yes my nails were longer, but you can see the jelly and the glitter nicely :)

The ingredients for this are approximately 1/4 clear, 1/4 AC-NED-78 (a sheer peachy orange chunky prismatic glitter), 1/4 China Glaze Ravishing Dahling (vampy red), 1/8 AC-NED-09 (yellow jelly creme), 1/8 Cover Girl Boundless Color Crystal Mist (duo/multichrome glitter top coat) and 1/3 tsp fine blue glitter.

Let me know what you think and if you like it please head over to More Nail Polish and vote for me!
Thanks for stopping by!
Meeka :)