ORLY Fowl Play!

Hey pretties!

Hope you all had a great holiday, I sure did!  But it's back to work tomorrow and Thursday!  Ugh!

So this is a swatch from like...a month or so ago that I forgot to post!  Bummer :( 

But that's okay, I'm getting to it now!  If you haven't seen it already, ORLY Fowl Play is a beauuutifulll dark purple FLAKIE polish!  It has a purple jelly base with a bunch of different colored flakies in it including red and yellow with some small silver glitters as well.  I love it.  It's definitely my favorite from the whole Birds of a Feather collection!

It needs two coats for opacity, but these pictures are with three since I needed to fill it in a bit.  Check out this beauty!

Ahhh!  Love it.  My pictures are a little on the dark side, so I encourage you to check out some other swatches as well to see the full extent of this awesome polish!  Or just go take my word for it and buy it immediately :)  I know you have Christmas gift cards to use! 

Love you ladies!

<3 Whitney

Christmasss timeeee

Hey ladiesss!  I've got a few Christmas mani's to show you the next few days! 

Here is the first one.  It's kind of a mix of a bunch of different things and then glitter-fied so it looks super bling.  I didn't get very good pictures of this, some are from my cell phone, so I apologize in advance:

Cuticle oil FTW

So yes...very...Christmas-ey. 

For the red nails I added a layer of OPI Animalistic and then two layers of OPI Gettin' Miss Piggy With It! 

For the greens I did a layer of ORLY Lucky Duck and then two layers of OPI Fresh Frog of Bel-Air. 

Then I decided there just wasn't enough silver glitter and added some Color Club Orna-Minted, which is super huge silver glitter pieces that smell like mint.  Yum!

It was a glittery mess, to say the least, and ended up being super thick, but I rocked it for a few days anyway! 

Hope you all are having a great holiday season!

Recent Hauls!

I'm going to show you my recent hauls from my trip home!
From my first trip home, the weekend of Oct 21-23rd, I hit up my favorite beauty supply store in Columbus!

Jackpot!  Essie Super Bossa Nova, some Muppets, ORLY Collection, and a holo top coat!

I nabbed all the Muppets I could find: Excuse Moi, a 2 pack with Animalistic and Gettin' Miss Piggy With It and some glittery toe separators, Rainbow Connection, another 2 pack with Pepe's Purple Passion and Divine Swine, and Fresh Frog of Bel Air!

I also picked up ORLY's Holiday Soiree collection (which you saw yesterday!), and a Silver Holo top coat!  I got a GREAT deal on all the ORLY's...$3.75 each!

When I went back again this past weekend (Halloween weekend), I picked up some Bare Minerals Makeup:

A bunch of eyeshadows!  The four on the left are named after cute cocktails (Kir Royale, Strawberry Daquiri, Long Island Iced Tea, and Mojito) and came with a brush (not shown). The three on the left are all shades of brown.

I also picked up an eyeliner set (Retro liner plus brush) and a 7 Piece Girlfriend Collection that came with a mineral veil, blush, two eyeshadows (k.i.t. and b.f.f.) and an eyeliner and double-ended brush!

And here is MY BEST of the past two weeks:

OPI DS Signature, and OPI Ink (Suede version)  I found both of these at a GIANT EAGLE for $8 each!!!  Wish there had been more of the DS collection, I would've bought more.  BEAUTIFUL!

And finally I came home to nail mail!  From a giveaway I won from Carly at Lacquered Lover!

Yay Halloween polishes!!

Woooooo!  What a great past two weeks.  I've really not been buying polish for a while, so this was awesome for me!  I've got a lot of swatching to do :)

Have any of you picked up any of the ORLY Holiday Soiree Collection?? 

<3 Whitney

ORLY Holiday Soiree Collection Swatches! **Picture Heavy**

Sorry for the lack of updates again!  I've been busy the past two weekends, I had to go home to Ohio, but I'm sick today so I have time to update, hah ;)

I'm taking a mini-break from my 31-day challenge and I'm going to show you the entire ORLY Holiday Soiree collection!  I've picked up a lot of polish and make-up the past two weekends, I'll show you all the hauls tomorrow, but for now, onto the ORLY's!

First up: Ingenue. 

Ingenue is a pink polish with some severe gold shimmer!  I needed three coats for this polish to be as opaque as I wanted.  It looks GREAT in the sun, but I feel like its a complete dupe of Zoya Faye.  So I'd say if you have Faye, pass on Ingenue.  I'll plan for a side-by-side comparison in the future :)

Next up: Le Chateau.

Le Chateau is a dark, dark blue-ish green jelly.  It goes on pretty dense, so only two coats were needed to be opaque.  I feel like it's TOO dark and very much looks black, even in the sunlight.  I liked the formula a lot, though!

Next up: Au Champagne.

 
Au Champagne is a shimmery white polish that looks frosty without the streakiness of a typical frost.  I think this color is fantastic.  White nails were all the rage this summer, so I think the tint of creamy shimmer added to this polish is perfect for the changing seasons!  I used three coats in these pictures.

Next: Oui.

Oui looks very similar to Ingenue in the bottle, however on the nail it's much different!  It's very obviously a dark purple, especially in the sun, but it's also packed with a gold shimmer!  I got away with only two coats of this polish, and I LOVE it!  I wore it recently for a wedding I was in and got a lot of comments on it.

Next up: Ma Cherie

Ma Cherie is a typical bright red jelly polish.  I loved how easy it went on, but it took three coats to be opaque and even then you could see my nail lines sometimes in the sun.  It's not super original, but I don't have a red as bright as this one in my collection, so I was happy to pick it up with the rest of the collection.  What's a holiday collection without a red, right?  My only issue with Ma Cherie was that it stained really bad when I took it off.  I even tried the glitter tin-foil/cotton-ball remover technique with no avail.

Last and certainly not least: Androgynie.

Androgynie is by far my favorite polish in the entire collection.  It's a beautiful black jelly with silver mini glitter and large, blue, green, and yellow hex glitter.  I love love love it.  It's a perfect winter polish with just enough glitter to make you excited to wear it!  I only needed 2 coats to get it opaque, but the pictures are like 3.5 coats because I was having trouble getting the hex glitter onto my nail...despite the mini hassle I had, it's still my favorite. 

Well there you have it, folks!  The entire 2011 Holiday Soiree Collection from ORLY!  My favorites were Androgynie, Au Champagne, and Oui.  I have Zoya Faye so I don't think it's necessary for me to have Ingenue (although I'd love it if I didn't have a dupe already).  I probably won't wear Le Chateau often because it's too dark and boring for me...and I'm glad I picked up Ma Cherie, but it's not my fav.

Have you guys gotten any of these yet??

<3 Whitney

31 Day Challenge, Day 5! ORLY + Klean Color Chunky Holo Teal!

Ooohh dear I can't believe I even made it to day 5 on this challenge, haha.

For this day I decided to try another polish I haven't used before: ORLY It's Up to Blue topped with Klean Color Chunky Holo Teal!

It's Up to Blue is a little frosty and streaky for me.  It's a fun bright summer color but I don't think I'd wear it any other time, so it was only on for a day!  I had to use three coats to get it semi-smooth looking:

It was getting dark so the color looks ulta bright blue

Inside it's a little tealy looking

I topped this with two coats of Klean Color Chunky Holo Teal.  Pictures for this kind of failed:

Inside picture since I did this at night...but you can still see all the great colors in CHT!

Since I had 900 coats of polish, when I went to take outdoor pictures the next day, it had got all wrinkled :(

Due to wrinkly pictures, here are two of my notoriously weird looking right hand!

Check out those flakies!

Ahhh it's so bright!  I didn't love the brightness of the blue since it's getting colder and I'm kind of bitter, haha--so I'm kind of glad it got messed up so I could take it off and put on a more "autumn" toned color.  Stay tuned for day 6 (violet) tomorrow ;)

<3 Whitney

P.S. I haven't forgot about my promised surprise!

CG Ruby Pumps vs. ORLY Star Spangled

When I saw ORLY Star Spangled for $1 at a Sally's "damaged sale" I HAD to pick it up.  I hadn't actually tried my Ruby Pumps, yet, but I knew a lot of people really liked it, ORLY looked similar, and for a $1 I couldn't pass it up!

So without trying either of them, I decided to swatch them together because they look so similar in the bottle!  Here they are, together.  Please forgive my terrible clean up of these.  I'm embarrassed I didn't clean up better when I did this comparison a few days ago...red is hard to clean :) 

Also ignore my stained, non-polished thumb.  I didn't think it was necessary to paint at the time lol

Shade, bottles side by side

Sun, bottles side by side

Ew please don't stare at my pinky

Shade

Up close...

Up close again

So overall, they are pretty similar but I definitely wouldn't call them dupes.  The CG Ruby Pumps goes on flawlessly with 2 coats while ORLY Star Spangled needs 3 coats to look as opaque.  I would say that Ruby Pumps formula is better specifically for this reason.  The glitter is also much more dense with China Glaze than ORLY, I can really see why so many people like Ruby Pumps.

The color is pretty much exactly the same, CG might be slightly darker, and the prices are usually pretty similar, but based on the glitter density and the formula, I like China Glaze Ruby Pumps slightly better (2-coat polish FTW)!  I'm still pretty psyched I got the ORLY for $1, though! 

Do you guys have both of these polishes?? Which do you like better?

Hope you all had a great 4th!

<3 Whitney

ORLY Velvet Rope

Sooo I know I've done a decent amount of purples lately...and you know, I really don't wear purple that often!  BUT I thought since I mixed ORLY Velvet Rope as a main ingredient to my franken, that I'd show you what it looked like by itself!

The pictures below are shown with 2 coats of polish (If I remember correctly, it was pretty opaque!) and one day of wear.  You can see the tip wear on some of my fingers already starting to show.  I can't figure out what I'm doing wrong to get this much wear after less than one day!  I don't know if it's my top coat or what...probably my lack of tip-wrapping.  Oh well!

Outside sun

I really liked this color.  It was a bit dark for my normal taste, but it appealed to be greatly on the shelf.  It's a beautiful dark purple with flecks of very fine silver glitter in it.  It does like JUST like one of those shiny velvet ropes you see at the theatre :)  It went on very smooth and like I said, it was opaque after two coats!  I really, really like ORLY.  I'm sure I've said this before but their formula is always so great and their brush is the perfect size. 

Do you guys like this polish?  I loved it but it didn't exactly match the bridesmaid dress I had to wear last Saturday, which is why I used this as a base color and lightened it and added some more glitter to it! Love!

That's all for today, folks :) I'll mention how my interview went tomorrow for Pink Wednesday!  I'm glad I'm a little less busy and have time to participate this week!

<3 Whitney