Girl with the N7 Nails

So, I'm essentially obsessed with the Mass Effect series. Even Diablo 3 couldn't dislodge the singular fixation I have with the game. I've had my eye on the Tony Moly Galaxy line for a while, and I wasn't sure why, but Mercury in particular called out to me.

 Tony Moly Mercury: Black jelly base and silver, blue and red glitter.

It just screamed Mass Effect to me. So I did the only thing a lacquerista with a nerdy obsession could do: I did a N7 themed manicure.

Non-dominant hand. I messed up the logo a bit on my right hand. Nail polish fumes and lack of sleep do not mix my friends.

Tony Moly Mercury (GT01) with a sheer black jelly topcoat to darken and create depth. Accent nail was done with homemade tape strips using Zoya Purity and Zoya Carmen. Underneath that is Zoya Raven stamped with Julep Kim.

Got my thumb in there!

This glitter is seriously stunning in daylight. 

Macro glitter shot! I finally figured out that the red and blue glitter reminds me of Paragon vs. Renegade

I want to do an entire series of themed manis centered around Mass Effect. Archangel or Shadowbroker nails next I think. 

Summer Days

Oh my poor neglected blog. So post-transfer applications and transcrip request insanity, I decided to go seasonal and do a beachy manicure inspired by a Reddit lacquerista Colieshark. I also thought it would be the ideal opportunity to try out a water marble (but only on 2 nails, I wasn't about to overextend myself).

 Right Hand: Zoya Zuza on pinkie and index.
Marble with Zuza, Zoya Wednesday, American Apparel The Valley, Diamond Cosmetics Head Over Teals, and Zoya Purity.
Accent Nail: Essence Irreplaceable, Butter London WestEnd Wonderland, Butter London Tart with a Heart

 Left hand. Same colors!
Tart with a Heart + WestEnd Wonderland combo blew me away. It ended up looking like a holo, but a holo with scattered glitter bits and specs of tiny black glitter. It was the perfect sand!

Close up for glittery sand goodness! In the sun.

And in the shade, either way, it was stunning!

Okay, but my absolute favorite part of this manicure was this:

Tiny nail surf on a tiny nail beach! I got quite the kick out of it because I'm easily amused.

When Life Snaps Your Nails...

You buy nail art wheels!
Just in time to swatch the new Diamond Cosmetics Spring 2012 collection!

Diamond Cosmetics Cherry Blossom, Tiger Lily, I Love Iris, and Cactus Flower

Diamond Cosmetics Cherry Blossom (2 coats, natural light)

Pale cool-toned pink creme. In the bottle it looked very similar to OPI Pink Friday and as you can see, its just a shade lighter. I'm curious as to how this would compare with Ciate's Strawberry milkshake. Formula was easy to work with. I haven't been big on pinks until recently, so I'm glad to have this to close the pink gap in my collection.

Diamond Cosmetics Tiger Lily (2 coats, natural light)

Creamy orange with a silvery micro-shimmer. I thought I would love this more than I actually did. I think the silvery shimmer puts me off a bit, silver and orange aren't my favorite of color combinations. 

Bottle shot! Looks really close to Butter London Bossy Boots. Threw the minty ORLY in just for fun

Diamond Cosmetics I Love Lily Comparison (Natural light 2 coats on each swatch)

Warmer and slightly darker than bossy boots. Jealous, Much? is just in there to show how non-minty these colors are. I do love pale greens of all kinds!

Diamond Cosmetics Cactus Flower Comparison

Look at this gorgeous microshimmer!

Cactus flower is in the same color family as Caitlin and Grape Gumball. Zoya Lotus was much darker and less blue toned. Cactus flower pulls the most blue of them all.

I couldn't capture the microshimmer very well. In person it's still fairly subtle but far more noticeable than in these pictures.

Macro to see the beautiful shimmer! Gah, I love shimmery cremes so much!

I forgot to do a non-macro bottle shot for this. But it is part of the Diamond Cosmetics Fall 2011 collection. Head Over Teals. Natural lighting

Indoor lighting, varied coats (2 and 1). This polish is so thick, I'd recommend only using 1 coat. 2 makes it really lumpy and the creme is too thick to let the glitter really shine through.

Indoor lighting (1 coat with 2 coats Seche Vite)

Indoors, this teal pulls more green. In natural lighting, it's bluer. Gorgeous teal!

New Year, New Posts

Now that finals and holidays are over, time to post! Starting with my New Years mani :D 

 Illamasqua-Scorn (black) Glitter accents: gold glitter, Pa-Lame Grande, and Love and Beauty-Disco

Up close! I loved this mani but it took foreverrrr to dry, resulting in a smudged thumb on my right hand :\
For Christmas, my best friend bought me a bunch of Diamond Cosmetics. So pretty!

 I decided to do a swatch comparison of Love Letter with Zoya-Jules and Essence-Irreplaceable.

Love Letter is darker and the shimmer is more gold, whereas Jules is a multi-tonal shimmer. Irreplaceable has more obvious bright gold shimmer (similar finish to China Glaze-Ice Cap). All are gorgeous and my camera doesn't capture the differences too well. I'd say they are pretty different enough to justify all three if you love these muted gold taupes like I do.

Close of of Love Letter to show the shimmer better, this color is super awesome!

My Little Pony and a Birthday Mani

It was my adorable cousin's birthday yesterday, she turned five. My aunt is only 2 years older than me and we grew up together, so I consider my cousin to be more like a niece and spoil her accordingly. She is also super girly, so I have a ton of fun shopping for her. This year I went with a massive My Little Pony and the DVD of the new TV show (it is actually really cute).

I also did a birthday manicure befitting a girly, 5-year-old party :D

Zoya Lolly (dark pink matte), Milani Tip Toe Pink (light pink) and my glitter franken with Diamond Cosmetics matte topcoat.

My cousin/niece was very impressed (she loves nailpolish, this girl is awesome).

Calculating Horror

No haunted houses for me tonight, I have something much more terrifying to deal with: derivatives...dun dun dunnnn! Anyway, Halloween lost all charm for me the second I was told that my age made it weird for me to go door to door begging strangers for candy. Sigh, 19 was a tough year.
My boring plans did not stop me from doing a slightly Halloween themed manicure. I figured why go orange? I went with green and black splatter.

Illamasqua Scorn (Rubber Matte Black) and Zoya Matte Mitzi

Thumb and middle finger have Love and Beauty's Light Green splatter. Other fingers are Mitzi stippled with Wet n Wild black (I repurposed an eyebrow brush that I no longer use)

Scorn is amazing, I love the black rubbery texture.  

It doesn't scream Halloween, I think it would have been better if I managed to get ahold of a Glow in the Dark. I just pretended that they were glow in the dark anyway.

Unfulfilled Polish Cravings and Random Manicures/Swatches

Awesome Giveaway

A Polish Change is doing a fantastic giveaway at her blog. You can check it out here!

She also has a wonderful tutorial that I will be following religiously, as my hands are so quite obviously dried and haggard.


I was craving the entire FingerPaints Fall Fashionista collection. But I held back and am currently regretting it as they are nowhere to be found at Sally or Amazon/Ebay! Argg, Catwalk Queen, Purple Pinstripe, Raspberry Taffeta, you will never see the inside of my nail drawer. Sadness. Also, I have a massive Calc exam looming on the horizon. Today has not been kind!

Anyway, I did go fairly nuts at Forever 21 these past couple of weeks, buying a ton of Love and Beauty shades. The formula is hit or miss, but the color selection is massive. Plus they are cheap enough ($3) for me to be more adventurous and buy colors I normally wouldn't go for.

The shades aren't really named. But from left to right is Green Tea scented, Light Green, Indigo, and Periwinkle

I did a quick tape mani with Indigo and Zoya's Savita matte purple. Indigo pulls a lot of purple despite showing very blue in this picture.

 Please excuse my terribly dry hands. Non-acetone nailpolish remover leaves this odd white drying residue on my fingers, making my hands look super icky. 

I also did a quick dot mani expirement with the Light Green  (this color was predominately a yellow, I mixed in 10 or so drops of the Green Tea shade to green it up a bit) , Green Tea, Ulta's Flamingo, and a Rimmel white.

You might have picked up that I mentioned buying a ton of these, where I only showed these four. I've been behind on my swatching/pictures as I still have 10 more shades to do!

Ciate Cupcake Queen Comparisons

So I decided to combine posts and do my Ciate swatches and comparisons at the same time. 

Ulta is currently having a 2 for 1 sale on Zoya, and you can use the $5 off coupon towards the purchase. Sweet deal, I bought the Mod Matte collection.  It may be slightly obvious that I'm going through a hot pink trend...the Sally Hansen and Sinful Colors are bottles that I don't have in my polish drawer, so I kind of forgot about them until today. Oops!

If you haven't heard of Diamond Cosmetics,  you're in for some excitement because this company is AMAZING. Beautiful colors and wonderful formulas for just $2.50. I used to be a brand snob, but I mended my ways after buying 10 or so of these babies. It's a small company, but the costumer service is stellar. I cannot recommend them enough. I've yet to wear any of these as a full manicure, as I ordered them in the summer and my summer wardrobe did not have anything close to these hues. On to the comparisons!

Indoors with natural light

Indoors with more direct sunlight.

Please excuse the smidgen of Strictly Legal on my ring finger! I found it hard to tell the difference between these. Sally Hansen's Hot! Frost is a shimmer, although my camera didn't pick up on it very well. It is also hard to see the blue iridescence in Cupcake Queen. I would like to note that formula-wise these are all dramatically different. Cupcake Queen is swatched at 1 coat on my peely horrible index nail. Sinful Colors, I believe is at 4 and still has a VNL, this polish is VERY sheer. Zoya's Lolly is a matte with a topcoat and like most mattes, needs 2-3 coats to even out streakiness.

Indoors, cool light.

Indoors, warmer light

Indoors direct sunlight.

All of these come alive in the light (Cherry Tobacco, you gorgeous thing). The purple hues of Strictly Legal are more obvious out of the bottle to me. I had to label Joust and Decadence because they look exactly the same in bottle. Weird how strikingly different they are on the nail. To me, the closest match to Ciate was Joust. Here's a better comparison of the two next to each other in the same light:

Still pretty different though. I cannot wait to wear all of these gorgeous fall shades once Vegas decides to stop being so insufferably hot.