Rock the Red Pump - China Glaze Ruby Pumps

Today is National Women and Girls HIV/AIDS Awareness day and keeping with that theme today I wore my red patent leather peep toe pumps and a China Glaze Ruby Pumps mani. 

Ruby Pumps is one of my favorite polishes, it is a perfect color red for me, it has glitter, and it is a jelly.  I mean what more could a girl ask for?  Oh and it gives complete coverage in two coats without any of the lumpiness of a regular glitter.  Its nice and smooth like a foil.  This is one of those polishes that even non lacquerheads and people who like mom colors can appreciate...I mean its red nothing wrong with that and the glitter stands out but its not in your face (like the glitter in a polish like Dorthy Who?).

China Glaze Ruby Pumps (2 coats) with top

Mardi Gras and Valentine's Day/Chinese New Year Manicures

I am late posting these because my parents were in town this weekend (a major production since the airports were non functional part of the weekend).  They thought me photographing my nails was funny but I didn't want to push my luck by busting out the Photoshop and starting to Blog.

This is my manicure from Saturday the 13th.  I have been a belly dancer for the past 10 years and Saturday my troupe danced at a Mardi Gras fund raiser so I wanted to get in the spirit.

I started with a base of Fingerpaints Icy Iris, which I have had for a month but hadn't had an opportunity to use yet.  EVERYTHING you have heard about Icy Iris is true.  It applies smooth, with full coverage in 2 coats and it is freaking gorgeous.  For those of you that haven't seen it, this is a deep purple with lighter purple/raspberry foil particles.  The foil is very small so it looks like very small glitter but it is sooooo much smoother, it also dries really fast. It was slightly dull to my eye once it dried but nothing a layer of top didn't fix.

 

Fingerpaints Icy Iris 2 coats with top.  The foil is pinker in person.  Yes that is 12 inches of snow in Dallas in the background.

Once I had a nice purple base I grabbed Rimmel Camouflage and New York Summer Hot Metallic Gold and Konad plate M69.  I painted the bottom of the ribbon design (well they look like ribbons to me) green and the top half gold and as Emeril would say BAM!

 

   Mardi Gras konadicure with flash, yes I am that pale.  The light box comes tomorrow hopefully photos will improve.

By Sunday I was tired of all things Valentine's Day and was really looking forward to a nice Chinese New Year mani in red...thats enough Valentine's Day cheer right?  Last week on my snow day I grabbed a new Konad plate I have been wanting to experiment with, M66 the one that shows parts of an Asian landscape.

I borrowed this picture from http://www.thenailart.com/ but I have never used their site for anything but looking at Konad plates, they have HUGE pictures of each.

Anyway I had been wanting to use little bits and pieces of the whole plate on different nails so each nail was different.  Chinese New Year gave me a great excuse to buy the plate and try this out.

 

China Rouge (2 coats) with top

I began with 2 coats of my favorite red creme, China Glaze China Rouge and then stamped New York Summer Hot Metallic Gold (hey its my go to gold stamping polish).  The overall manicure ended up being very subtle as the lines on most of these designs are very thin.  Black or silver would have provided more contrast.  It looked nice but you didn't really notice the designs unless you were close to my hands.  Photographing this was a complete nightmare, I couldn't get pictures that showed the details at all.
This is the best one I was able to get:

 

pinky - chrysanthemum (I think thats what it is)

ring - bamboo

index - woman

pointer - lotus

thumb - cherry blossom (not in picture though) 

I almost didn't post this as the photo looks like poop but I like the idea, I just need to use colors with more contrast between them.

Diamond Cosmetics Naughty Intern and a Valentine's Konad

Ok I am going to try really hard to get into the whole Valentine's Day thing and do holiday themed manicures.  I am not sure that Valentine's Day counts as a holiday, I mean who determines holiday....Hallmark?  Regardless its an excuse for themed nails and trying out some of my unused polishes.

My first attempt at holiday cheer is a simple konadicure using Diamond Cosmetics Naughty Intern.  This is a beautiful wine colored polish.  It makes me want to go open a bottle from my wine closet now....that could be the long day at work too but any excuse that combines wine AND nailpolish can't be all bad.  Anyway, this is a really good color for me.  Truly epic on me, made all the better by the fact that it matches the maroon in a lot of the spirit wear for the high school I teach at.  The first coat was pretty streaky but a second coat seemed to even everything out.  In certain lights I may have had a bit of uneveness, next time I will do three coats.

Naughty Intern (2 coats) with topcoat in sunlight

I stamped the hearts french tip pattern on M73 with New York summer Hot Metallic gold.  I am really awful at stamping the French tip patterns on the tops of my nails...its pathetic, so instead I tried stamping across the bottom of the nail.  A couple of the nails looked nice but all in all it wasn't great.  I think the interlocking heart pattern is a bit to abstract for the base of the nail, you couldn't tell what it really was on smaller nails.  The color combination is a winner though...how can you go wrong with gold and red.  As a side note, Hot Metallic Gold is a pretty close dupe to Bling Dynasty I think.  I am going to test that out later.

 

Obviously yellow lighting, this is an awful picture but I had a really difficult time photographing this mani.

My First Essie - Love, Beverly Hills xx

This is a bit early for Valentines Day but since everyone is getting in the spirit early I felt the need for a red.  I was going to save it for later this week but I fail at patience and self control reguarly.

As unbelievable as this sounds until this weekend I had never owned an Essie polish, or even used an Essie polish.  I was lemming for some Color Club and thought I would see if there was any left at Ross (our Ross is dingy and disorganized, it was a possible just not likely).  There wasn't any but I did find a tiny box containing a bottle of Essie Love, Beverly Hills xx which according to the box contains 24K gold.  It definitely had a gold shimmer in the bottle.  It was on clearance for three bucks and red. I have a long standing love affair with red polish and frankly on any given day of the week my toes are red.  For three bucks, what the heck? 

 

Love, Beverly Hills (2 coats) with top coat with and without flash

I used non Essie base and top coat so this is just the polish.  It seemed to apply well, covering in 2 coats though it did seem to dry slow.  I was pretty underwhelmed by the polish the night I put it on.  The next day in fluorescent lighting the shimmer and the sheer redness grew on me.  I think I read a description of this polish somewhere as being opulent.  I disagreed initially but after wearing it it for a while "opulent" seemed to fit.  It is a luxurious red.   I don't know how often I will wear it but it seems like a good color for my toes and "conservative" events where I want something just shy of being over the top.

Sinful Colors Fall '09 Haul - Part 1

So my very first nail polish haul was 10 bottles of Sinful Colors from Walgreens.  I immediately used one to Franken.  I really don't like how these apply so I have been avoiding swatching them but am making a concerted effort to use everything I own at least once before buying more.

See You Soon is a black base with a teal microglitter.  In the bottle it looks almost like a dark teal shimmer but once you start painting you see the black polish and the shimmery glitter.   It applies fairly unevenly unless you use A LOT of polish on the brush.  I had bald spots and clear brush strokes after one coat.  A second coat and a layer of top coat takes care of these problems though.  In side it looks darker and more shimmery but in direct sunlight the glitter is really pretty.  I have worn this polish more than once despite the fact that it is a bit of a pain to apply and the fact that I have several polishes in the same color family.  I'm a Cowboys fan and while the color isn't quite right this has become my stand by for game day, though I admit that I typically Konad over it.

Sinful Colors See You Soon - 2 Coats and topcoat

I'm not really sure how to describe Mercury Rising.  Is it burgundy? Is it brown?  Is it bronze?  The answer is really yes to all of them.  There is definitely burgundy and dark red microglitter/shimmer in the base polish but that base is a bronze brown color.  It is beautiful when on though .  In doors it looks almost conservative but there is something that just keeps you looking at it.  When it catches the light though it just glows!  I keep looking at my nails and thinking how pretty it is.  I really want to put gold glitter on it or Konad an antique gold over it but I am refraining until I have had it on at least a day.  The Mercury Rising seemed to apply more opaque than a typical Sinful Color polish but once I was outside I notice VNL with only 2 coats so next time I wear this I will have to do three coats.

This shows two coats of Mercury Rising and a topcoat in sunlight. 
I didn't notice the VNL indoors but its pretty obvious here.

I am not in love with I Love You.  I don't know if it is even worthy of the "lets just be friends" status.  The first time I applied this polish I had such high hopes only to be utterly disappointed by the formula.  The polish itself is a purple jelly with purple glitter.  In the bottle it is a truly majestic purple, bright and glittery and holds a ton of promise.  Once you start painting though the problem becomes evident quickly...it is SOOOO thin.  The first time I tried this color I got 4 coats on and waited an hour, it never seemed to harden so I took it off.  I figured I had a bad combination of base/polish/top so I put it in a drawer to try later.

My second attempt It took me 4 coats to achieve bottle color and prevent VNL and by then it was really thick.  Combining that with the requisite Seche topcoat (I can't stand the bumpy texture of glitters) I looked like I had armored nails.  Ordinarily the thickness of a glitter polish doesn't bother me too much but there were other issues with I Love You.  Namely the color.  It was just too....bright?  It was almost garish.  I asked my nail polish buddy what she thought and her response described it perfectly.  It looked cheap...I mean it WAS cheap but I didn't want it to look cheap. On a positive side, it was possibly the shiniest glitter I have ever used and since it was 4 coats all the glitter blended together in the sun to look like a purple chrome. From arms length it looked like a purple chrome minx.  After swatching this I had to do something to tone the polish down a bit so I grabbed my WnW Black Creme and Konad plate M65 and subdued the violet glare a bit.

Sinful Colors I Love You 4 coats and top coat.  It is FAR brighter in person

Sinful Colors I Love You; WnW Black Creme M65

On a side note I had a disturbing amount of shrinkage after finishing this manicure.  Within three hours of this photo the tips of ALL ten nails had pulled back and exposed about 0.5mm of nail tips.  I am not sure if this was because I used Seche or the polish formula or just the thickness of the polish (6 coats total with base and topcoat). 

Fire Red is a typical red shimmer and was surprisingly easy to apply.  I have actually worn this polish a few times now and it goes on easy and wears about the same as a typical CG creme polish.  It is not fire red though, its a dark red, not vampy or anything just not true red and it has no orange undertones that I can see.  I really like to Konad black fishnet over this one.  Actually I did that immediately after taking this photo but then I forgot to take a picture of the final product.

Fire Red 3 coats and top coat