Revlon Royal... Cobalt jelly, anyone?

Hi Kids!
I can't believe I haven't seen anyone Blog about the new Revlon Top Speed enamels! I found a large step display in Walgreens and picked up 2- Royal and Emerald.

Revlon Royal is an unbelievably gorgeous shade of deep cobalt blue. This is one of those polishes that's not a creme, and not a full jelly, but somewhere between, a hybrid. For the sake of classification, I'm going to say this is a highly pigmented jelly. The formula is thick and sticky, making application a bit tricky because it's too thick for the Revlon brush. I didn't add thinner because I knew from swatching on a nail wheel that Royal is a 2 coater, and I didn't want to mess with that. This polish skimmed over very quickly and dried to the touch to a satin finish in minutes.

I love this one sooooo much. Revlon Royal positively glows with richness, and depth and is the most perfect shade of vivid cobalt blue I have ever seen in a nail polish. It's unfortunate that my pictures do not bring out just how amazingly rich, deep and vivid this polish really is.
Click to make bigger...

This is why I'm calling this a jelly. Look at how glow-y this looks with light shining through!

Here is  a side by side with Orly Royal Navy. If you back away from your monitor, you can see the base difference a bit better. Irl, tRevlon Royal looks *almost* blurple next to the Orly.

Golden Ticket Tiger Stripes fauxnad

Hi Kids!
I finally have a few minutes to slip in a quick post today. I've been doing my nails, but haven't had the time to take pictures. We're very short staffed at the restaurant and it's causing all kinds of stress for me in addition to sucking up all my free time and inspiration.

Anyway, since I did not have time last night to change my current mani, Sally Hansen Golden Ticket, I  decided to "refresh" it with some fauxnad. Although not very creative or imaginative, I settled on doing the tiger stripe full nail stamp from fauxnad plate H3.
Mani;
2 coats Isadora Apricot (sheer apricot with a bold golden shimmer)
2 coats Sally Hansen Golden Ticket (not very "golden" to me...sheer apricot base with brass and lite copper glitter)
Fauxnad plate H3 stamped with my Dollar Store find- QingYu #57- The blackest pigmented black I own to date)
1 coat Seche
Although animal prints are not really my thing, I do think the tiger stripes work well with Golden Ticket. The base and stamp are equally bold, giving this mani good balance. The stamp does not detract from or over-power the sparkley base. Click to make these bigger...

Stars and arrows funky french and fauxnad

Hi Kids!
I'm back with a full image fauxnad from Bundle Monster plate BM20 along with a bit of Fing'rs nail stickers. I put this on a funky french that I free-handed with Color Club Where's The Soiree. I also layered some shimmer sparkle from I franken I made by mixing equal parts, NYC Love Letters and Revlon Sheer Sparkling Nude over the hot pink base I posted the other day. After adding the stickers, I felt that the fauxnad needed something more, so I dotted colors found in the stickers to accent the centers of the stars.

Although this is not my style, I couldn't help but smile every time I looked down at my nails.

3 NOTDs, Color Zone, BB Couture and Risk

Hi Kids!
We were super busy at the restaurant every day last week....thank goodness it's finally over!
No rest for the weary, though. I woke up early today to get a good start on sorting summer and non fitting clothes from my closet and bureau. I have 8 loads of laundry to tackle! I also have an awesome jewelry and belt organizing idea I'd like to get to today as well. That may be biting off more than I can chew on my only day off, especially since  my sanity is in dire straights right now and would benefit some serious attention via nail art.
Lolly-gagging - certainly not an option today if I want to get anything done...

My current mani is 3 coats of a hot pink pearl from a trio of colors by Color Zone. Unfortunately, I threw out the packaging, (and all the information it contained), shortly after I purchased the set in August 2009. The hot purple from that set turned out to be very pigmented, and is my "go to" purple stamping polish. 
I'm happy I chose to wear this pretty, pearly hot pink. Even though it's a bit streaky, it turned out to be the perfect color for the weather today- overcast and dreary. If this mani survives my wardrobe organization, you'll get to see some nail art on it tomorrow.
Oh yea...lookit how short my nails are! I removed a lot of acrylic with my last fill and filed the tips to the length of my natural nails.

Saturday's mani...3 coats BB Couture Peony Pink. The formula on this really sucked. It was thin, runny, very hard to control, and the blue flash from the bottle- totally invisible on the nail. I tried to save this mani with Dazzling, a very delicate, iridescent glitter, top coat from Love My Nails to no avail. This looked terrible on me.

Next, mani from last Tuesday. 3 coats Midnight Cruise, a pretty blue shimmer from Risk. Formula was wonderful on this one and it dried fairly quick. Midnight Cruise is one in a set of 4 polishes purchased at Ross. After a couple of days, I added 1 coat of China Glaze Shooting Stars.

$1 well spent!

Hi Kids!
Goodness- is this purple polish amazingly glow-y and gorgeous- or what?
This is just what I needed after the very cool toned, Avon Olive Green mani from last week.

A couple of weeks ago, I hauled 8 FCC lacquers from a dollar store. At a dollar each, I wasn't expecting much from the polishes. Honestly, I was only after the pretty gold toned, filigree encased, bottles, and am truly surprised with the quality of these lacquers. I wouldn't call them outstanding, or anything like that...but they are good.

Although not a dupe, FCC 21 is very similar to Claire's Magic...same formula, same blurple base, but he shimmers differ. FCC 21 has a finer, more prominent and warmer shimmer that glows twice as hard as Magic's. The color of the shimmer pigment differs as well. FCC 21's plum shimmer pulls more magenta.
It's very, very pretty with my skin tone. What I like most about FCC 21 is the chameleon like properties it has. The color changes it makes under different lighting conditions is quite amazing. It certainly had a lot of people thinking I was in a constant flux of changing my nail polish all weekend.

My camera did a decent job at bringing out all the color facets of FCC 21...

I'll be removing this today, and am not sure what color I want to wear!
I'm *really* itching to get back to 'nadding.

Avon Olive Green

Hi Kids!
I'm back with another Avon Nailwear Pro. Since Olive Green was my biggest color disappointment in my Avon haul, I was just going to put it up on my "greens" shelf, untried. When my Blog buddy, Sasha from Nihrida, left a comment on my Avon haul post, showing an interest in this one, I changed my mind.

Anyway, Olive Green is a blue leaning, drab green, creme. It's too blue to be called olive or an army green.. As I worked the register last night, it dawned on me where I had seen this color before...Avon Olive Green is the exact shade of green found on US paper money.

The formula of Olive Green skins over very quickly, and it's on the thick side. Because it's very pigmented, and on the thick side, this polish would make a perfect 1 coat mani for those with short nails. I, however,  got a lot of drag ridges, (almost every nail), applying the first coat. For long nail gals like me, add thinner ( I did 13 drops).  It did wonders for the consistency, and I was able to get the second coat to level out/fill in the ridges of my first coat quite nicely.
Something worth mentioning...I had to shake my bottle of Olive Green- a lot. The pigments in this polish separate something terrible, and are very visible not only from outside the bottle as marbling, but on the brush as well in long blue and yellow streaks. I shook my bottle vigorously every couple of nails and did not get a single bubble.

I color categorize Avon Olive Green in the very popular, color tone of the season... with all those greyed out, tauped out, smoked out colors and greiges. I lump all those polishes in what I call Grunge. The mood of those types of colors remind me of the Grunge music movement of the 90s... Organic, distorted, toned down, dirty and a little depressing .
I'm betting that 10 to 20 years from now the Grunge color fad of the present will be seen not chic- but  depressing, as noted above. I truly believe that the colors in fashion are a reflection of the over-all mood of people in industrialized countries, just like all the brights, patterns, must have vivid eyes, cheeks and lips, over-sized shoulders & accessories, and bling on bling of the 80s were the reflection of the excesses of that decade. I don't believe that Grunge colors will get as big as what happened in fashion during the 80s- no, nothing will ever top that.

Good grief, I'm rattling on and on!
I'm a bit nervous about some Ultrasound  results, and it's showing.

Avon Olive Green mani- 2 coats, 1 coat Seche;