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Ninja Polish Mystic Glacier

Posted on 14 June, 2013 by Cynthia

I’ve been catching up on my TV shows this afternoon which includes mostly cooking competition shows, and now I want eggs benedict for dinner really badly. I get the most random cravings sometimes, but I just did not want to go through the heartache of trying to make my own hollandaise and have it blow up in my face. For someone who hates birds so much, I sure do love eggs. So what did I end up eating instead? I ate a chocolate pudding pop. Oh man, I love those things. While I ate it, I was thinking of one of my favorite episodes of Roseanne ever.

“It’s just me and my ganja.” OMG…I nearly died when she said that. Roseanne really is one of my favorite shows ever…I even forgave them when the show jumped the shark. Wasn’t the ending like a punch in the gut? Anyway this is a nail polish blog, right? I better start moving along and show you the star of today’s post: Ninja Polish Mystic Glacier.

No, your eyes are not fooling you: Ninja Polish Mystic Glacier really is THAT spectacular. I don’t even have the words to describe how beautiful this polish is. It’s steel-y, arctic, vibrant and just plain jaw-dropping gorgeous. The formula did feel a little thin so I had to apply 3 thickish coats to make sure that I had full coverage. When a polish is this gorgeous, you don’t mind applying 3 coats. Mystic Glacier dries kind of satiny so I think a glossy topcoat is a must.

It looks like Mystic Glacier is currently out of stock over at Ninja Polish so make sure that you sign up for an email notification of when it comes back in stock if you are interested in getting this. One day I was randomly looking at all the beautiful polishes and I noticed that Mystic Glacier was in stock so I jumped right on it. I’m just lucky that way! I hope you’ve enjoyed the polish and the Roseanne tidbit. Thanks for the visit, and I’ll talk to you soon!

Shimmer Polish Part 3

Posted on 13 June, 20132 July, 2013 by Cynthia

Heeeeey! It’s Thursday! Are you excited? I would be if I had a normal Monday-Friday job but I’ll be excited for you, ok? Well, I just got home from an interview. It was with an agency so I wasn’t expecting much because you know how most temp agencies operate. To be honest, this place did seem different but I was impressed because the recruiter was running late and made me wait 30 minutes while she finished up another interview. Then when she got me in there, I realized she had given me the wrong information for the job she was calling me about. She told me the company was located in one city but it ended up being another city that is a bit further away. I am kind of irritated at this point and the interview–if you can call it that–was just kind of lame. I’m not sure if I really want to work with them further, but I’m going to give them a chance because the company she wants to send my resume to sounds interesting and kind of promising. We shall see. I have another interview tomorrow (not an agency!) which I’m looking forward to. At least things are moving, right? And to cap off the day, I have lots of glitter babies to brighten my evening with their shiny and sparkly goodness. Let’s look at my third and final installment of Shimmer Polish swatches!

Shimmer Polish Liana (Finger Paints Go Van Gogh!)

Shimmer Polish Nichole (Finger Paints Tiffany Impostor)

Shimmer Polish Mary (Finger Paints Free Form Fawn)

Shimmer Polish Eva (Finger Paints If It Ain’t Baroque, Don’t Fix It!)

So what do you think about these glitters? I absolutely adore every single polish that I have tried–Cindy is a true glitter master! Make sure that you check out my other Shimmer Polish reviews: Part 1 and Part 2. Despite being massive glitter bombs, these polishes are easy to work with so I couldn’t be happier with them.

For news on Shimmer Polish and to keep up with all the gorgeous beauties that Cindy creates, don’t forget to follow her on all of her social media sites:

Website: http://www.shimmyshimmer.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ShimmerPolish

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ShimmerPolish

Etsy: http://www.etsy.com/shop/ShimmerPolish

Thanks for stopping by today, and I”ll leave you with a song I’ve been singing all day:

Morgan Taylor Lacquer – First Look

Posted on 12 June, 2013 by Cynthia

Ah, well…I wish I had great news today regarding the interview I told you about yesterday but things didn’t quite work out the way I was expecting. I’m really frustrated and disappointed right now but, you know what? I just need to continue to move forward. The more I dwell on things, the worse I feel so I’m just going to put it behind me. Something funny just happened to me. I went to the supermarket because I needed some groceries. If you don’t know this about me, I love to sing. Like I seriously love to sing and enjoy karaoke despite not having a good signing voice. Singing in my car is one of the things that I love to do and I usually don’t care if people look at me weird. So today I was singing Sublime’s Santeria at the top of my lungs when it came on the radio. Do you remember that song?

So right when I was in the middle of this, a car of stoner looking teens drove up next to me and they were like: “Awww yeahhh!!!” And they started singing with me. That made me crack up inside and kind of brightened my afternoon a bit. I was planning to do my nails to kind of distract me, but instead I decided to show you my swatches of a few polishes that I purchased last week. If you’re like me, you’re always on the lookout for new polish brands to try it. One of the owners of the handful of beauty supply stores that I frequent is always keeping me in the loop about new brands or releases. He had mentioned Morgan Taylor Lacquer a few months ago so I was super excited to see that they had gotten them in. I went a little gaga when I saw the full display but I held back by just purchasing 3 polishes instead of the 20 I wanted. Are you ready to see my swatches of the three Morgan Taylor Lacquer beauties I purchased?

Hot Hot Tamale is one of those really bright red orange colors that make your nails look like they are on fire! The formula on this polish was spectacular: super pigmented, smooth and glossy. I applied two regular coats for full coverage. I kept thinking of Hot Tamales the whole time. I may like this color even more since tamales are like my favorite holiday food of ALL TIME.

I don’t know if you remember the craze that Sephora by OPI Metro Chic caused when it first came out. Ever since then, I have been in love with smoky purple/taupe polishes. Met My Match is a smoky purple–definitely not very taupe-y. Again, the formula was perfection in a bottle and I only needed two coats for full opacity.

And lastly, here is Gotta Have Hue. Yes, I love this super hard. The color is gorgeous and the application was flawless. This was nearly a one coater but 2 coats are ideal here.

So what do I think of Morgan Taylor so far? Uhm, home run! Any time I try a new brand, I always go for their creme polishes first because that is my favorite finish. If a brand can’t make excellent creme polishes, I usually walk away. I am so happy with the formula, application and brush of these polishes which is good and bad; good because I didn’t waste my money and bad because I will now be wasting A LOT of my money on these. ha! If you can get your hands on these polishes, I highly recommend them. I’ll be picking up some new colors soon with different finishes to see how those perform.

I so appreciate all the wonderful comments you all left in my last post. I read every single comment, and I can’t tell you how much it means to me that some of you publicly or privately share your stories and words of encouragement. Never in a million years did I think I would find so many wonderful people in this lovely community–thank you all for taking the time to interact with me here, twitter and facebook.

Much love,

Butter London All Hail The Queen

Posted on 11 June, 2013 by Cynthia

Hello everyone! What a dreary day this has been! I’m starting to wonder what’s going on with Southern California lately because the weather is just so darn strange. I guess I shouldn’t be complaining because once it starts getting really hot, wildfire season breaks out and that is always a very heart breaking time of the year for us in So Cal. I was going to post a review today for some new polishes, but I decided to instead share with you my mani for tomorrow’s interview. I’ve talked before about how important I think it is to make a good impression which includes everything from your clothes to your nails. My all-time favorite neutral polish with a little bit of attitude is Butter London All Hail The Queen.

I don’t know about you, but this is such a gorgeous polish. If you aren’t into flashy colors, this is perfect–and even if you are, this is still a polish worth picking up. I just love how neutral it is yet it’s not boring at all. This is three thin coats of the polish but I think 2 thick coats would have been sufficient. It’s just a beautiful and glossy color–that’s all I have to say about that.

Growing up, there was a shopping center that was the place to go hang out. In the last 10 years, the place went to hell and was basically a ghost town. I am now happy to say that in recent months, this area has been revived. Look how pretty all these new restaurants and shops look!

I just love that this place isn’t creepy and decrepit anymore! My friend and I went to catch a movie so I took these pictures. Afterwards we headed to my sushi mecca:

Personally, I ate more than any sane human being should and my stomach is definitely protesting. I won’t take credit for this term, but any time that I eat too much, I always say I need to have a food baby or start talking about immediate evacuation. I don’t think people around me think it’s as funny…oh well!

If you wouldn’t mind, please send positive vibes my way for tomorrow. I always get super nervous about interviews beforehand, but my nerves melt away once I’m there. I hope that if this is the right job for me, that all goes well. Like I have said many times before, I just want a job that challenges me but that doesn’t make me want to jump off a bridge because I hate my life so much after being there for 8 hours.

Much love,

Yves Saint Laurent Violine Surrealiste

Posted on 10 June, 201310 June, 2013 by Cynthia

Well, let me tell you that I was planning to take a little hiatus from blogging for at least a week. I was feeling so incredibly run down, sad, stressed and just like a general loser overall that I just didn’t think I would have it in me to actually talk to you about nail polish. I’ve said it before and I will repeat it here: I credit nail polish for helping me get through the roughest period of my life to date, so I will always have a special place in my heart for all things nail polish. I think I have mentioned it before, but when I went through my hospitalizations a couple of years ago (June 2011 was the last month of my hospitalization), one of the things that I loved doing was painting my nails or other patient’s nails. They had the saddest bucket of nail polishes that I have ever seen, but it was a fun distraction that required some concentration. What else was I supposed to do? Listen to my schizophrenic roommate talk in her sleep or the guy in the room down the hall who screamed out “It’s too much!” at random times during the day and night? I asked him what he meant by “It’s too much!” and he responded: “Life.” Life was too much. Sadly, I understood him at that time. I think that the anniversary of some really bad events in my life has really been wearing on me to the point that I feel so down about all of that and my current situation of just having a job I hate that is sucking the life out of me. Well, today I got got a few calls regarding some promising job opportunities so that really gave me a little boost. I mean, I know I am a talented and intelligent individual, yet I have such a low opinion of myself and my abilities. I drone away at jobs I know I am sorely overqualified for because I am so afraid to challenge myself. I am not persistent when it comes to going after things I want and deserve–maybe because I am afraid of failure. But is failure something I should fear so much? Won’t it be worse to look back at my life, and realize I’ve pissed it all away because of fear? Anyway, this quote came up today and I do feel that it gave me another little nudge in the right direction: “Persistence –Press on – nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not – nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not – unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not – the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent.” (There is some conflicting information as to whom this quote can be attributed to, but it appears to be from Calvin Coolidge, the 30th president of the US) So here I am ready to have a good week–I will make this a good week. I have a couple of interviews so I’m hoping that this is the beginning of a turn around for me. I do deserve better and I do deserve a job that doesn’t make me sick to my stomach! Don’t we all? In order to pump myself up for good things, I’m going to share a classy beauty: Yves Saint Laurent Violine Surrealiste.

Maybe it’s just the YSL name that conjures up the ethereal beauty of Audrey Hepburn, but this color just screams classy sophistication to me. Some of you may balk at the $25 price tag, but if there’s one thing I tend to splurge on, it’s nail polish. I would say that the formula on this is not perfect. I found it to be a bit on the thin side so I applied 3 thin coats but I think 2 thickish coats could have done the trick. One thing that I would like to mention is that this polish went absolutely nuts when I used Seche Vite as my top coat. It got these weird streaks on it and then I saw some strange wrinkling. It was so strange that I just decided to remove everything and start again. I ended up not applying any top coat the second time around so this polish does dry amazingly glossy and shiny. Was it worth $25–uhm, probably not but I like it nonetheless.

And just to end a really great note, here is David Tennant (my one and only super celebrity crush bordering on creepy obsession AND the most amazing Doctor Who ever) singing with The Proclaimers. Enjoy Doctor Who fans! And if you’re not a Doctor Who fan or a David Tennant fan, I hope we never meet in a dark alley because I will MAKE you see the light. hehe

Thanks for stopping by today, and I’ll talk to you soon!

OPI Neon Revolution Minis

Posted on 6 June, 2013 by Cynthia

Although it’s not officially Summer yet, there have been quite a few hot days here in Southern California which put me in a horrible state of mind since I hate the heat so much and I hate June with all my heart. While the weather may still be acting wonky, one thing that I definitely like about this time of year is all the awesome collections that come out. I love bright and juicy colors so I was all excited about this OPI Neon Revolution Minis set. This time around, I ended up following the recommendation to use a white base to really make the colors pop and to have an opaque finish with 2-3 coats rather than with 5-6…or 10,000.

This set contains a white base, 4 neon polishes and a bottle of top coat. Let’s take a look at the colors…

Don’t Say It–Yellow It!—be still my yellow beating loving heart! This is a great yellow polish that would probably never look like this if you wore it on it’s own. I applied 3 coats here, and I like the coverage.

The Time Is Pow! is a great neon orange–formula-wise, it needed 3 coats for the coverage you see here.

I wasn’t expecting to like Pink Outside The Box as much as I do. In fact, this one ended up being my favorite polish in the set and it’s the most pigmented of them all. I only had to apply two coats here.

I am pretty sure everyone knows how much I like blues, so I was excited about Blue It Out Of Proportion. However, it was so streaky that I was super disappointed. I applied 4 coats here and it still looks streaky. Womp womp…they can’t all be winners.

Sorry about my clean up on these swatches. I ended up going a little acetone crazy with my clean up brush and ended up screwing up the edges by my cuticles. I didn’t even notice this until I uploaded all my pictures–ugh! Anyway, I liked this little set because it lets you try a bunch of colors without committing to a bunch of full sized polishes. While I’m not exactly a neon polish lover, these are nice and bright colors. This limited edition Neon Revolution mini set will be available beginning July 2013 at professional salons, including Beauty Brands, Beauty First, Chatters, Dillard’s, jcp Salons, Pure Beauty, Regis, Trade Secret, ULTA and ulta.com for $19.95 ($24.95 CAN) suggested retail for each mini pack (includes all six products).

Let me know what you think of these colors. Are you a neon lover? Thanks for stopping by today!

Dollish Polish Spank You Very Much

Posted on 5 June, 2013 by Cynthia

Happy Wednesday everybody–or as I like to call it, ONE OF THE BEST DAYS OF THE WEEK BECAUSE I DON’T HAVE TO WORK!!!!!!!! Woooot! I was lamenting yesterday on twitter that I have been finding an alarming amount of gray hair lately which seems to have creeped up on me in the last 4-5 months which coincidentally coincides with me starting the most horrible job I’ve ever had in my life. I guess a job could give you gray hair, right? In any case, I’m 33 so I guess some gray hair is ok so I’m not going to worry too much about it. I am way too lazy to dye my hair so I’ll let nature take its course. Today I have a super fun polish to share with you: Dollish Polish Spank You Very Much. This beautiful polish was a gift from the amazing Amy from The Fancy Side–she is just one of those people whom I have just clicked with because of our shared love of polish and the fact that we are both kind of weirdos and have the same morbid and disgusting sense of humor. I say that with love, Amy.

I love this so much…the combination of green, teal and purple glitters of many sizes is just gorgeous. I decided to apply one coat over NARS Ethno Run Right–an amazing navy blue that I previously reviewed here. This polish can look very different depending on the base color that you use or if you decide to wear it on it’s own. I love how it looks against such a deep base and I can’t wait to try other combinations. It was incredibly easy to apply this glitter so I have no complaints regarding application.

Look at this amazing macro shot! I just couldn’t help showing you how gorgeous this polish is!!!

I am about to start making something for lunch, but I have to go to the post office first and then I can sit back down and continue to feast on episode upon episode of Doctor Who. I am a few episodes into season 4 and I just saw Rose ad the end of episode 2…sweet baby Jesus on rollerskates, I am freaking out. I’m trying to get used to the idea of Donna as his companion, but to tell you the truth, I find Catherine Tate a little difficult to like…maybe because I didn’t like her in The Office either? I don’t know, but I’ll try to be “open-minded.” Anyway, thanks so much for stopping by today and as Ace Ventura would say:

I’ll catch up with you later!

Minnie’s Closet!

Posted on 4 June, 20139 June, 2013 by Cynthia

Hello everyone! I have some super fun news today that I am beyond excited about: I just got the news that my Minnie nail design was chosen to be featured on Minnie’s Closet on the OPI page sometime this month.

Holy mouse ears, Batman! I am so honored to have been chosen especially since I know I will be in the company of some awesome ladies with great designs. Make sure that you check out OPI’s facebook page as they will be unveiling new designs throughout the month. I previously reviewed the whole Couture de Minnie Collection and here are my swatches for the collection:

Aren’t these adorable? I decided to create something girly and sparkly with a hint of sophistication for my submission to be considered for the Minnie’s Closet gallery, and this is what I came up with:

Let me tell you that picking out each individual glitter from my bottle of Minnie Style was…hard. lol It was time consuming but I couldn’t do a Minnie design without polka dots! I also decided to incorporate a ruffian nail because Minnie is definitely a hip mouse in this collection!

And because I usually do a giveaway of minis for each OPI collection that is released, I picked up a set of Minnie Minis for one lucky reader! (I purchased this myself–it is not sponsored.) As always, this giveaway is open internationally–just enter using the Rafflecopter widget below.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Thanks so much for stopping by and supporting my little crazy blog. I hope you’re having a great day, and I will talk to you soon!

Jindie Nails Princess Consuela Banana Hammock

Posted on 3 June, 2013 by Cynthia

Happy Monday–not! So I hope your Monday was better than my craptacular day back to work after a day off. Last week I was moaning on twitter how I thought my package with my two new Jindie Nails polishes had gone missing–oh the horror!!! The USPS website was showing my package as delivered, but I hadn’t received anything. I have had quite a few mishaps when it comes to misdelivered and stolen packages so I was sad! The worst instance of this was back in 2000. I had gotten kinda drunk (You know those sad drunk times when you drink alone and cry? No? Just me? Alright!), and I was feeling nostalgic since I had just come home from a year in France. I got online and somehow managed to purchase a round trip ticket from LA to Rome for $375 on priceline.com I didn’t even notice that purchase until I noticed the missing money in my bank account a few days later. Well, I called priceline and explained what had happened (I was depressed and drunk and accidentally bought a plane ticket), but they told me there was nothing they could do since the tickets were non-refundable. Well…it was either throw $375 in the garbage or go on this trip…so what did I do? I went on the damn trip! But before that, my tickets were delivered to someone else. Since those were the good old days of paper tickets only, I was SOL. FedEx was no help and priceline told me there was nothing they could do–again! After tons of calls, FedEx told me that they “might have” delivered it to another Cynthia who lived a few streets over whose street was very similar to mine. WTF? Anyway, I headed over there and sure enough–my tickets were there. Why did those dumbasses take the package and not say anything? Anyway, that trip was kind of a comedy of errors from day one so I should have known better than to actually go on the trip. I got to Rome and stayed for a few days. I then headed to Florence via train and I ended up staying at the dumpiest hostel you could ever imagine where I proceeded to get the flu. It was the middle of Winter so it was colder than a penguin’s butthole. I dragged myself around the city trying to get medicine before taking a train to Paris for another few days. Ughhh…it was a horrible trip because I was so sick but I was still happy to be over there even if I was alone and sick. Ok, back to the polish: it actually hadn’t been delivered even though the website claimed it was and it arrived the next day. YAAAAAAAYYYYYY! One of the pretties I was anxiously awaiting is the featured polish for today: Jindie Nails Princess Consuela Banana Hammock.

As you probably already know, I have been having a love affair with yellow polish this Spring so I couldn’t wait to get my hands on this. Additionally, it pays homage to one of my favorite shows ever: Friends! Didn’t we all love Friends? I think Phoebe was probably my favorite character on the show and the episode where she changes her name to Princess Consuela Banana Hammock and Mike decides to call himself Crap bag in retaliation is classic. This polish was a little sheer but it builds up nicely. I ended up applying three thin coats for the swatches above. I do have to mention that getting the glitter out of the bottle is a real biatch. I added a few drops of thinner and let the bottle sit upside down for a few minutes before I used it which seemed to help a little but the glitter still likes to settle. Also, the larger pieces of glitter can lift a bit from your nails so make sure you apply a generous coat(s) of top coat so everything is nice and smooth.

Here is the classic moment between Phoebe and Mike:

Do you have a favorite Friends moment? Who was you favorite Friend? What do you think of Jindie Nails Princess Consuela Banana Hammock? Let me know what you think! Thanks so much for stopping by today, and I will talk to you soon.

P.S. Have you ever bought something ridiculous while drunk?

Essie Summer Collection 2013

Posted on 31 May, 20131 June, 2013 by Cynthia

Remember when I started crying because I didn’t find the new Essie Summer Collection? Well, today I am crying because I did find it. Ok, I won’t be so dramatic, and I will leave the polish commentary for below. I can’t tell you how excited I was when I first saw the promo pictures for the Essie Summer Collection. I was picturing brightly painted nails and flashy pedicures for a hot beach day–ok, not really, but I was still really really looking forward to it. I called my nail guy this morning, and he informed me that they had the new collection so I rushed over there after work to pick up a set. As soon as I got home, I immediately proceeded to swatch them since I just couldn’t help myself…womp womp. Let’s dive right into the swatches, and I will tell you what I thought of each polish.

The color of Rock The Boat is really pretty. I don’t think I have too many similar blues and the shimmer really makes it somewhat unique in my collection. Too bad the formula spread like diarrhea. Seriously. The formula on this is atrocious. Maybe I am exaggerating a little, but I found the formula so incredibly hard to work with. It was super streaky and I did my best to apply super thin coats and left plenty of time in between to make sure that I didn’t create any bald spots. Well, what you see in my swatches is 4 coats and it still looks uneven. Major sadness.

Why does Essie always have to throw in some lilac/purple color like Full Steam Ahead in every single collection? While the shimmer in this is nice and the polish color is pretty, it’s so yawn-worthy. Additionally, the formula on this polish was just as bad as on Rock The Boat. This is also 4 thin coats and I am not too happy with the end result.

Sunday Funday is a color that I imagined as a perfect pedicure color. The formula on this one was also streaky, but I felt that it covered a little better than the previous two polishes. I still wasn’t very happy with it even though I really like the color!

All I could think of when I saw The More The Merrier was pea soup. The fancy people call this chartreuse, but I just call it radioactive pea soup color because that’s how I roll. This polish was a little easier to work with, and I felt it leveled out a lot better than the previous three. I applied 2 thickish coats here.

The Girls Are Out (OMG how does Essie know about my UPS man mishap??) is a pretty color that I don’t find too unique but the formula was everything that I had hoped the other polishes had been like. It was smooth, very pigmented and leveled out perfectly after two coats. As soon as I applied the first coat, I knew this was going to be a winner.

And here is the very Naughty Nautical. This is the clear winner out of this 6 polish collection. The color is to die for. The shimmer adds that extra something to it AND the formula was immaculate. This is by far my favorite polish from this collection because of the color and formula. I just wish all the other polishes had been as easy to apply. I applied 2 coats for the swatches above.

Well, overall I am kind of disappointed with this collection. I’ve read a few reviews already which make me feel like I’m maybe doing something wrong with these polishes since they didn’t seem to have too many application issues. Is it me again? Are you there, God? It’s me, Cynthia. WHAT AM I DOING WRONG? Another thing that I noticed is that the brushes on a few of these bottles seemed “fluffier” than usual so I think that also threw me off a bit. To sum up my feelings on this collection in a few words: blog sale. Yep, these are all going on my blog sale so check it out before they are all snatched up. I’m really curious to see more reviews for this collection because I keep wondering if I’m the problem (kind of like with the China Glaze Summer Neons!). It’s really too bad because I really do like Naughty Nautical, The Girls Are Out and The More The Merrier–those are my recommendations if you’re going to be getting any colors from this collection. And lastly, I did pick up a mini set to give away to one lucky reader. Make sure that you enter for your chance to win this mini set by using the rafflecopter widget below. As usual, this is open internationally.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Please let me know what you think of this collection! Good luck and thanks so much for stopping by today.