Petites Color Fever Candy Green and Black Diamond

There's an unadvertised clearance happening on certain Petites and CQ polishes at Rite-Aid. They aren't marked in any way, but they are ringing up at 99 cents instead of the usual 3.99. Both Candy Green and Black Diamond are part of the clearance. I picked up a couple others, which I can't remember the names ... I'm sure I'll be showing them off here in the near future. :) To find out what other polishes are included, you can head over to this post on Nouveau Cheap!


Candy Green








These pictures were taken after 3 or 4 days of wear! I was skeptical of this brand initially ... it seemed kind of pricy for a no name type of brand and only .25 oz, ya know? But I'll do just about anything for a dollar, LOL! So, at only 99 cents, I was all about it. Since I've been having a hell of a time with staining, I used 1 coat Instant Artificials, 1 coat Barielle Camo, and 1 coat of a really pale pink creme by Sinful Colors that I can't remember the name of under 2 coats of Candy Green, topped with Seche Vite. It dried really thin and fast considering there were 6 layers. You know how polish stays squishy underneath even though it's dry on top for hours and hours? Well this didn't do that. And talk about staying power ... I wore it for another couple of days after these pics were taken. My only complaint is that under low light, Candy Green looks a tad frosty. Overall though, this one is a total WIN for the money.


Black Diamond

Overcast daylight

Ott Bulb

Ott Bulb

Lamp Light

Lamp Light

Lamp Light

It sure is hard to coax the holo out of this one! And of course, I had to file my nails waaaay down due to FOUR breaks at the quick. >:( *grumble grumble* Oh well. I prefer dark polish on shorter nails anyway. This is 2 coats of Black Diamond over 1 coat Nail Tek Foundation II. No top coat, and I was being impatient so I decided not to use an underwear coat (holos don't usually stain in my experience either, so I wasn't as worried). In most light, Black Diamond looks like the first picture, a charcoal polish with silver shimmer. However, when the light hits it just right, it's just a charmer! I like a *wham! pow!* polish as much as anyone else, but sometimes I just want subtlety. Black Diamond really delivers in this department. It applied smooth and even, opaque in 2 thin coats and dried really fast. I do prefer a little more shine, but top coats have a habit of killing the holographic effect, so I left it off this time. Another total WIN. This is by far my favorite "black with a little sumfin sumfin" so far (and I have several!). Go buy this!! I'll be hunting down a back up for sure.

Recently ... (pic heavy)

Once again, I have neglected this space. So here are some of the things I've been playing with lately. :)

Nails:

Crackle! Maybelline Firefly from the 2011 spring collex with the white China Glaze crackle over top. I loved this.



I won the OPI FB giveaway!



And tried Cheyenne Pepper



Tried out a new Jesse's Girl polish, Glee. It's beautiful but stained the CRAP out of my nails and skin. :(




Thought I found a HTF Hard Candy polish, but it ended up just being mislabeled. :( It's not actually Zombie.




Tried out one of my 3 free Zoyas. Miley is seriously beautiful.




Made a fun franken for an awesome friend. It's called My Sour Valentine.





Quilting:

I have FINISHED my very first quilt thanks to the That Girl ... That Quilt Along!!

My dog always gets in the way when I try to take pictures of it, LOL!




I joined the 3x6 mini quilting bee block swap and completed the blocks for my hive. So fun! Here are the blocks I made:














Crafty: I've been working on test products for my upcoming etsy store grand opening! No pics of this stuff at this time ... ;)


The Jr. production of God Spell at the Landis Theater wrapped in February. Here's a pic of Miss M that is just so unbelievably fantastic in my humble opinion. :D



She wasn't cast in the current production, which is Wizard of Oz, however she will be part of the stage crew with her brothers. Fun fun! Mommy (me, lol) is auditioning for a role in Cabaret tonight. Here's to breaking legs!!



And that's about it I guess! Have a great day!

Old NOTD Essie Pretty Edgy

The picture pretty much says it all. It's a really fun color, but I didn't love it on me. It probably had more to do with the weather than the polish. It just seemed ... wrong. I dunno. Anyway, can I just say how much I love Essie? I have NEVER been disappointed with this brand. It goes on super smooth regardless of the skinny brush, and dries super smooth and thin. Essie always wears like iron on me too. I wish I had more Essies!!

The rest of the Blush minis, skittle style.

I REALLY ought to work on my cuticle care and overall hand care ... I'm increasingly embarrassed over the shape of my hands. Blah. :(

Anyway ... here are the other 5 colors in the jelly Blush set I posted about a few days ago. From thumb to pinky they are: Stayin' Alive, Can U Dig It?, Pychadelic [sic], Hustle, and Boogie.

Indoors, natural light

Outside, bright sun

OK, so, overall? I guess I got my money's worth ($3.99) ... Blah. The red is nice, the green is just ok, the rest pretty much suck. The formula on these was just as bad as the first one I swatched. Got super glumpy and thick right away, streaky, etc. The purple was the most disappointing polish of the bunch. Look how boring!! It was more sheer than the yellow and green too! I used 4 coats for the purple and 3 for the rest.


These are definitely going into Miss M's collection ... DNW for myself.

Some Claire's bargains = NIGHTMARE!!! (pic heavy)

Sooooo, Miss M and I got the head's up that Claire's would be having their 10 for 10 clearance sale over the last weekend. Since she had a birthday giftcard burning a hole in my wallet (not a mistake, lol. Her gc, my wallet), we were in there bright and early Thursday morning when the sale was set to start. We hit the proverbial "jack-pop." She got about a gabuhjazillion pairs of earrings to play with once her ears heal from piercing, a neon orange "pearl" necklace (she insists it's her birthstone, just orange. Don't ask me! LOL), tons of crap with "Awwwww, kitties!!!" on it, lots of "lickstick" and of course mommy made a bee line for the polish ...


So, I thought I had scored BIG when I saw this set:



Cute, right?!? A set of 7 mini creme brights for a dollar?!? Weeeeelll ... maybe not such a hot deal ... When I applied the first one, I noticed an odd smell. Is that Elmer's Glue?!? But I stayed the course and continued with my skittles ... As the first coats dried, I noticed that even though they applied opaque and creamy, they dried sheer and had sparse glitter. OK. Whatever. It could be interesting. So I carried on. Three coats later, and still smelling glue, I wondered if maybe these are peel off polishes.

Here's the red, blue, orange, purple and pink.

Inside, low artificial light

Outside, full sun

The next pics have the yellow and green on index and middle, but thumb, ring and pinkie have my other finds; Emerald City, Fire and Magic. I'll comment on those three later.

Inside, low artificial light

Outside, full sun

OK, speaking JUST about the 7 polish set, they *are* cute, but definitely weird. They would never have built full opacity. I was relatively certain by the feel of the finish that they were peel off paints. Sooo, I started peeling!

OMG!!!! WTF?!?!?! That shit STAINED!!! BAD!!!

Thank goodness, the stains have since faded (remover and acetone didn't touch it, but each time I applied another polish and removed, they got a little lighter. You know when you get gum stuck to your face after blowing a big bubble, and the only thing that can get it off is a larger wad of chewed gum, the bond between the bits of gum is stronger than the bond between skin and gum? I think it was like that concept), and I'm now just a little bit yellowed, but DAMN! That was the worst dollar I ever spent!!! I'm not passing these on, I'm throwing them OUT! BOOOO Hiiissssssss ...

Onto the other 3 ...

OK, this will be short and sweet because I don't have a lot to say about any of them, lol. Let's see the full sun picture again.




Emerald City (thumb): Foil/metallic style with bits of silver and green. Similar in concept to the Orly Foil FX line, but no comparison formula-wise. Thick, goopy application. Good coverage though (pictured is one coat) and it evened out fine. It's a nice color, just not my type. For a buck though, it's a win.

Fire (ring): Neon pinkish orangish red. Pretty sheer. 3 coats shown. Nice smooth application. My pic is no where NEAR coloraccurate, it's a neon. It's just not possible for a $50 camera to do, LOL!!! If you're used to looking at pictures of nail polish though, I'm sure you can see that one stripe of neony goodness on my ring finger and imagine this one stopping traffic. I want to wear this one as a full mani soon.

Magic (pinkie): Sigh. I don't really have anything *bad* to say about this polish, but I don't have anything *good* to say either. I know a lot of people really like this one, and some people even have it on their lemming list, so I feel bad for not loving it, but ... It's a darkish blurple jelly with golden shimmer. It's a fine color, but it's just ... not my thing, I guess. Here's a pointless close up indoors:







The end!

March: In like a leprechaun, out like a lamb.

I have 2 full plastic shoeboxes of untried polish in my stash, so I have decided that my March polish activity will be "In like a leprechaun, and out like a lamb." All manis up to St. Patty's Day will be green (I have 14 untried greens!), and all after will be light, baby, soft, lamby colors (not exclusively white though).


I have already done my first green mani, and will get that up tomorrow night. I can't get the pics uploaded and posted tonight. It's already after 12, and I'm taking a big risk typing this up with still squishy nails, lol.


*yawn* Ok, nights.

Random NOTD: OPI At Your Quebec and Call

I had this saved as a draft from forever ago. I have since given this away to a close friend and transplant in the US from Canada. :) I figured if I took the pics, I may as well show them off, right?

I never did care for this color. I snagged it as a 75% off deal a couple years ago, and tried to like it. I wore it probably 5 times and could never convince myself that I liked it. It's got a much better home now. Can't give it much of a review, this notd is from February if I recall correctly. I'm pretty sure I remember it being thin/pretty sheer and needing 3 coats.

All of these pictures were taken under a white bulb (The package said daylight bulb, but it's super white and bright! I dunno ... it gives pretty good pictures). Hope you like.

Claire's Claire's Claire's!!!

I have a couple NOTDs for you ... both from Claire's. First up, my first ever Skittle mani! I bought a cute little set of minis on clearance a week or so ago. It contained 7 little bottles of pastels and brights with monkeys on them. I thought they were no names until I noticed that each of them had different words with the monkey pictures.

Sweet: a bright pastel lemon creme
Superstar: a bright pastel lime creme
2 cute 4 words: bright pastel blue creme
Whatev: purple shimmer
Smile: dark red leaning pink shimmer
Not Monkeying Around: lightish orange creme
Play: bright pastel pink creme








I'm wearing from Thumb to Pinkie: Not Monkeying Around, 2 cute 4 words, Sweet, Whatev, and Superstar. Aren't they awesome?! They are all jellyish too, which makes them even more fun. All required 3 coats except for Sweet (yellow) which took 4.

I gave The Divine Miss M (that's my 6 year old daughter) a skittle mani with these colors. After seeing mine, I had no choice, lol! It wasn't a request, it was a demand!

The only thing different is that she's wearing Smile on her thumb. Neither of us chose Play, so that one isn't swatched. It's just your basic pink.

Here she is holding a couple of the bottles:



The next NOTD comes from my intrigue with the whole Chanel Jade craze. According to many other nail bloggers, Claire's Dreamcatcher is a near dupe, soooo ... for $4 I had to see what was up.








I don't have this one in natural light as the weather hasn't exactly cooperated. We've had just a little snow here in NJ over the last week ... you know, nothing real big, just about 2 feet! LOL! But anyway, the color shown is pretty accurate. It's maybe a little darker in real life. Here's a close up of the color:




I like the color, a minty/jade green with a subtle shimmer, but it's really nothing all that special in my opinion. Application on this one was trrrriiiiicckkkyyyy!!! Glumpy as all hell, thick and didn't spread on the nail very well (I wonder if a little thinner would help this??). I had to keep dipping the brush back into the polish several times per nail. It took me 3 coats to achieve some semblance of even coverage. It was a super slow drier as well. I let it dry (with a thick coat of SV) for over an hour before going to sleep, and I woke up with sheet marks. :( Anyway, based on pics I've seen of Chanel Jade, Dreamcatcher is VERY close. I wouldn't call it a dupe, as Dreamcatcher leans a bit more green while Jade is bluer, but it would satisfy a craving if you just haaad to have it.


Last but not least, here are a few pictures of our winter "wonderland" (which I would refer to as a nightmare, lol):







And a little kitty torture (don't worry, he was only out there for a minute or so) ...




Hope everyone has a good night!!