Random China Glaze Swatches

So, I'm a fail blogger. It's been nine days since my last post and I didn't even get pics of my last mani. Since I haven't changed it yet (that's tomorrows project) and it's not remotely in photographic shape I figured I'd throw a few quick swatches at you instead.

I haven't posted many China Glaze polishes as I've been working my way through my untrieds. They are one of my favorite brands and I do miss having easy access to them. They never shy away from crazy or weird colors and the formula is generally great and they're affordable. As an ode to China Glaze here are a few from my stash.

The classic raspberry Heli-Yum from the spring 2010 Up & Away collection. I don't often do pink but this one I love. It's not truely pink, I can't decide if it's a red toned pink or a pink toned red lol. Either way, it's a 1-2 coater and super hot.

Unplugged, from the spring 2008 Ecollection. Such an insanely rich brown, I love how much this one glows :)

 Tempest. I think this is just part of the core collection. It's a very pretty blue with heavy purple flash. I think purple with blue flash is much more common but this is quite nice if a little sheer. Oh well, it still covers well enough with three coats :)

This is VII from the 2007 X collection, celebrating China Glaze's 10 year anniversary. This is an awesome eggplant purple. I don't wear it often but it is gorgeous. China Glaze does spectacular cremes, so smooth and buttery!

I hope you guys enjoyed my mini swatch fest, hopefully I'll have a real manicure to show you in the next day or two.

Thanks for stopping by!

Meeka :) 

Parijenne 467

Hello! Today I have for you a french polish I picked up in a 100Y store here. It's the only polish I've ever seen from this brand and in fact was the only bottle in the store where I found it. It seemed really strange to be the only bottle there but it was such an interesting color I couldn't pass it up :)

Parijenne 467 is a medium-dark blue toned grey packed with teal shimmer. The shimmer in this polish absolutely glows and there is a ton of it in there! What I'm showing you here is three coats plus top coat. It is thin but easy to apply and I could have gotten away with two coats easily, but as I said before I'm a habitual three coater lol. I think you may have to enlarge these to really see the shimmer, I assure you it's worth it, this is a gorgeous polish!

The downside to this one is that it's obviously not B3F, this is one smeeeeeeeelly polish lol. Otherwise, I'm in love, this is now one of my favorite greys!

Thanks for stopping by!

Meeka :)



Sweets NL41

Hello! Not quite a week this time lol. I've been slacking a bit lately on doing my nails (and posting my pics too it seems :P). Right now they're naked *gasp* as I can't decide what I want to put on next, I'll have to decide in the morning, I'm too tired now lol. Also, I'm super happy, my husband is home :D He was gone nearly 3 weeks so I'm very happy to have him back safe and sound!

Before I went nekkid last night I was sporting Sweets NL41. This polish is an exact dupe for Zoya Apple near as I can tell. I don't own it but they sent the color chips with my earth day order and it's spot on to that. Sweets had put out three polishes that were dupes for the Zoya Sunshine collection, I already showed you the Rica dupe and I have a Tanzy look-alike to post too at some point.

NL41 is a gorgeous apple green glass flecked polish packed with gold shimmer. It goes on really smoothly and I think this is three coats. I'm a habitual three coater so I assume it is haha. If I recall correctly it needed three to really become opaque. This also wore really well. Besides a little tip wear after 2-3 days it didn't chip until about day 5. Considering I usually change polish after 2-3 days regardless, I'm very ok with that lol.  

Thanks for stopping by!

Meeka :)

Electrick

Hello! I feel a little fail for not posting for a week lol. I'd like to give some good excuse like life got in the way or whatever but the reality is, I was being lazy :P Well, also the polish I have for you... I did not feel enthusiastic about posting at all. I hated it when I put it on, I didn't even want to take pictures of it which I had to wait till the next day to do, then I didn't feel like going through the pictures or writing a post about it. This is possibly the first polish that I have definitively said DO NOT WANT. Oddly enough it stayed on for almost 3 days. Please tell me I'm not the only crazy one who that happens to? I disliked it so much I didn't even want to deal with taking it off. Yeah, it makes no sense to me either lol!

So, the concept of the Del Sol polishes is cool. I picked up two of them on a cruise in December, however I bought them on the ship and they only had a few colors, otherwise I don't think I would have even bought this in the first place. Electrick is a sheer, frosty, brushstrokey mess. The blue base color is so unflattering on me and the seafoam green it turns to in sunlight is not much better. At least it wasn't difficult to apply, if you can ignore the brush strokes and the four coats it took to almost reach opacity. Which is probably the nicest thing I'll say about this lol. Anyways, I put the pictures side by side so you can see the shade color and the sun color together.

Does anyone else have any Del Sols that they like? Have any of you tried this one and liked it? I'm leary to try the other one I've got now though I'm sure I'll eventually suck it up and give it a go hahah :P

Thanks for looking!

Meeka :)



FuchsiaRama

Happy 4th of July everyone :) I'm not yet an American although my husband is so I should be celebrating it but as I mentioned he is not here this week so I am not lol. It's actually been a nice relaxing day, it's so incredibly gorgeous outside, I took my book out on the deck and read for a while this afternoon. I definitely need to hit up a beach this week!

On my nails right now is Wet n Wild's FuchsiaRama (I always want to spell it fuschia, I'm pretty good with spelling and I actually had to look it up to convince myself that I was wrong and not them lol). I saw this at the BX the other day and it just called to me. I have never been much of one for pinks but something about how insanely bright and obnoxious this is made me buy it. I think because I like unusual colors the only type of pink I really like has to be unusual, or at least not the nice normal sedate girly pink. I had to try to explain to a guy that I didn't want to buy something in pink because I don't like pink while I was wearing this, I'm not sure he believed me haha!

FuchsiaRama is a very loud pink neon jelly that dries to a matte satin finish. It reminds me of a cross between the OPI Texas sorbets and the Orly Plastix collection, like if Too Hot Pink To Hold 'Em and Retro Red got together :P. I used 3 easy to apply coats although it still seems slightly patchy when you look close. Maybe patchy isn't the right word, it's darker in some spots than others. I still love it. I also chopped my nails down to nubbins just for this polish lol. For some reason I feel like something this bright goes better with short nails on me.

My right hand making an appearance, I like this butterfly better. I did the left hand first and the blue butterfly went on too far off to the side but it stuck on there good so I couldn't take it off, hence the little yellow one in the bottom corner. Ironically I managed to get the one on my right hand centered better. I picked these decals up, along with a couple others, at the 100 yen store behind my house a few weeks back and decided a pink like this deserved some girly butterflies lol.

Thanks for taking a look!!

Meeka :)

Enchanting

Hello again! I hope everyone is doing well :) I'm feeling a little lonely as my husband is away for a little over a week. I actually like my alone time very much but I miss him too. I think partly I'm also feeling sorry for myself as he's not back till end of next week. That means that not only am I missing out on Canada Day celebrations (since no one else here cares about that lol) but I'm going to be alone for July 4th which all the Americans here will celebrate. Oh, and he's going to be in Las Vegas celebrating with his brother, yeesh lol. Oh well, I will survive :) I'll have to go explore and find some way to entertain myself :P

Anyways, enough complaining! This is the layered polish I promised you the other day. This is LA Girl Essentials in Enchanting. I think this is a very comparable color to Orly Fantasea though I don't have that so I can't say for sure. This is one extremely sheer polish however. I'd originally tried this on its own but after 4 coats and a still very apparent visible nail line I gave up and decided to layer. I initially tried it over black but rejected that idea as the polish completely changed to bronze. Even after trying it over a few other colors I found the same thing, it lost all the purple and just showed bronze. I tried it over a few purples (I really liked it over Buffy the Violet Slayer though that wasn't at all true to this polish color, I'll do that another time) and finally settled on the one I showed you in my last post.

  In the bottle you see the purple and a very strong bronzey-gold flash, which I'm not sure my bottle shot really captured sadly. I had thought this may be a duochrome when I bought it but on the nail this is not duochromey at all. Ironically, in my photos the purple is the stronger color whereas in real life it looks much more bronze. I don't know if I love this polish or not but it is very interesting.

When I look at this polish, especially in the sun, it makes me think of this:

Photo borrowed from here. If it is yours and I should take it down, just let me know.

And I think I like it for that :P

Thanks for stopping by!

Meeka :)