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Blues Smackdown

Posted on 27 March, 2013 by Cynthia

With all the gorgeous blues that have come out lately, the questions about possible dupes is inevitable. As a blue polish lover–and hoarder–I knew that I would cringe when I finally sat down to evaluate all the possible bright blue polish dupes. Today I chose two older and two newer blue polishes to compare. For my blues smackdown, I have the following four polishes:

Color Club Bright Night – Essie Butler Please – Kiko Electric Blue – Nails Inc. Baker Street

While all of these colors are fairly similar, I think that Color Club Bright Night and Kiko Electric Blue are dupes while Essie Butler Please and Nails Inc. Baker Street are dupes. All of these polishes have a glossy creme finish except for Color Club Bright Night which dries to a satin finish.

These are 3 other polishes that I thought might be close to these as well:

Nubar Dusk Till Dawn (I suspect it’s pretty close to Nubar Blueberry too!)

Cacee BFF Sky

And lastly, this is Essie Avenue Maintain which is NOT a dupe for any of those blues. People had asked me how close this is to Essie Butler Please, and it’s obviously not close at all.

I hope this helps some of you decide if you REALLY need certain blue polishes, but I have a sneaking suspicions that the true polish addicts won’t care. And just for the heck of it, here is my polish haul for this week. I had commented that I basically blew through my polish budget for the next few months…if I had a polish budget.

I picked up 3 of the 4 new Essie Resort Collection polishes and also got an extra set for a giveaway so be on the lookout for that. Thanks for stopping by today!

Essie Madison Ave-Hue Collection Spring 2013

Posted on 6 March, 20135 March, 2013 by Cynthia

The new Essie collection for Spring 2013 has landed! I was pretty excited when I found these at one of my nail places so I grabbed them all. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t been excited about any Essie collection for eons. In fact, I think that the last collection I really loved from them was the Bikini So Teeny collection. Let’s take a look at the Essie Madison Ave-Hue Collection, shall we?

Madison Ave-Hue is like a Pepto Bismol explosion on my nails. This polish was a little difficult to deal with because it felt kind of runny but also goopy. I know that sounds weird, but that’s what it felt like. I ended up really liking this color because it has this very pretty shimmer that isn’t very visible in my pictures but you can definitely see it in real life.

I was really excited about Maximillian Strasse Her but the formula was super runny. I don’t know if maybe I needed to shake it up a bit more to mix the polish, but it was way too thin for my liking. I had to apply 4 super thin coats to avoid flooding my cuticles as well. It’s too bad because I really like this type of color.

Avenue Maintain is definitely the winner of this collection. This polish is so incredibly gorgeous and pigmented that you can get away with one coat if you’re careful. This is one of those colors that just screams for attention, and I can see myself wearing this all summer long.

I wasn’t very excited about Hip-Anema when I first saw it. It’s a very nice fiery red-orange crelly, and I always appreciate a great formula which this one has. I love how glossy and shiny this polish is!

Are you getting tired of these bright lilac polishes such as Bond With Whomever? I do continue to appreciate these colors but I don’t think I want to have a million of them. The formula on this was decent, and I got complete coverage at 3 coats.

I am conflicted about Go Ginza. I really want to love it, but I think I would have wanted it to be a little less pink/purple. The formula on this was also a bit difficult and it applied a little streaky which you can probably see in these swatches. I also don’t like that Go Ginza and Bond With Whomever are so close in hue. They obviously are not dupes, but did we really need them both in the same collection?

So what do I think about this collection overall? Well, I really do love Avenue Maintain and that’s about it. hahaha I actually do think this is a very pretty collection but it’s so ho-hum that it feels uninspired. Don’t we all have dupes of these colors even from Essie itself? Eeehh….most of these are going on my blog sale. I’m really interested to hear what you think about this collection. Do you have a favorite color here? Let me know!

Thanks for the visit today, and I hope to see you around here again soon.

Sephora by OPI XOX Betsey

Posted on 6 January, 2013 by Cynthia

Since I have the big interview tomorrow, I wanted to wear something really lady-like today to get me in the mood for tomorrow. I already have my nail polish picked out for the intereview, and I hope that it brings me lots of luck but I’ll show that to you tomorrow. Today’s mani features Sephora by OPI XOX Betsey which I purchased on super sale a few months ago.

There are always colors that my camera manages to hate and this is one of them. I swear it was capturing this color in all sorts of crazy ways. Sephora by OPI XOX Betsey is a pinky-peachy putty color that I liked way more than an I anticipated. I was super surprised byt he wide brush–did all the SOPI polishes change over to this thicker and wider brush? If they did, I am really loving it!

Jen from The Polishaholic had this really cute nail look a few months ago, and I knew I had to recreate it. You can see her mani here. There really is nothing difficult to create this mani unless you think it’s difficult to place the stripping tape. Once you have applied the stripping tape, you just apply a matte top coat and quickly remove the tape. I prefer to do one nail at a time because you don’t want the top coat to completely dry before you remove the tape.

Once you have removed the stripping tape, you can add the rhinestones where the stripping tape criss-crossed. This looks so girlie but a little badass too. I was going to use studs but wanted to keep this whole mani pink.

What do you think of this mani? Pink overload, perhaps? Thanks for stopping by today, and I will talk to you soon!

P.S. Please wish me luck for tomorrow’s interview. I really need this job to come through!!! 🙂

Butter London Wallis

Posted on 3 January, 20133 January, 2013 by Cynthia

I was super excited this morning because I landed an interview for tomorrow morning and then I got called back to see if I could come in on Monday instead. WAH WAH WAH!!!

I swear that I heard that noise in my head when I got that call. Sometimes I think that my life truly has a soundtrack and, sadly, most of the sounds can be found on Looney Toons Cartoons. Anyway, I am glad they called to reschedule and not cancel so now I just have to wait until Monday. I was already planning out my outfit–black suit, cream colored blouse and some “sensible” black pumps. Oh my God I am a grown up!!!!!!!! I was also trying to decided what to do with my nails. I was vacillating between a french manicure or Butter London All Hail The Queen but since the interview got rescheduled, I decided to do something a little more interesting today. I was already looking through my Butter Londons so I decided to use Wallis.

I knew I wanted to do some dots and also mattify everything so I took at out polishes and tools that I would need: Butter London Wallis, China Glaze Liquid Leather, Essie Matte About You and a dotting tool.

When I first bought Butter London Wallis, I honestly thought that it was kind of ugly: one of those polishes I wouldn’t buy from looking at it in the bottle unless it was on super sale. I love this brand so I decided to give it a chance because that’s what polish hoarders do. This polish is pretty darn pigmented and easy to apply so all I needed was two coats.

I can’t remember where I first saw Wallis mattified, but I fell in love with it. Look at it!!! It has this amazing depth to it and the color changes and looks almost velvety. I have a few mattifying top coats that I rotate but they all pretty much work the same. If you’re looking for an inexpensive matte top coat, I recommend NYC Matte Me Crazy which can be purchased for $2–can’t beat that price!

Can you tell that I love dots? I am really diggin’ this dotticure. I thought about mattifying the whole thing but I ended up liking the contrast of the shiny black dots. There is seriously no easier way to spruce up a manicure than to bust out a dotting tool.

While I was editing this post, I was also talking to Nicole on twitter and I told her that I was going to make an egg and chorizo burrito. We then proceeded to have a conversation about what kind of chorizo to use and how to prepare it. Nicole likes to say that she’s Mexican on the inside…I guess I can let her keep that honorary title since she did try to use the word “carniceria” nonchalantly during our conversation. You may thank Nicole for the following…

Crumble some chorizo and cook it in a skillet. This is my special omelette skillet! You should drain some of the fat that the chorizo releases because it’s A LOT. I use 1 egg yolk and 3 egg whites and scramble them.

I then pour the beaten eggs into the hot skillet with the chorizo and scramble them together. You can add salt and pepper at this time if you like. Take your favorite flour tortilla and warm it up. Once the tortilla is warm, place the egg and chorizo filling on the flour tortilla. Some people might want to add some cheese but I prefer it without. Make sure that you don’t overcook the eggs because they will continue to cook when you roll the whole thing up.

And voilà…here is your egg and chorizo burrito. I love this for breakfast, but I really felt like eating this tonight for dinner. The egg and chorizo mixture will make 2 burritos in case you were wondering.

Well, I hope you liked my Wallis dotticure and my burrito! Thanks for catching up with me today and talk to you soon.

Disclosure: All items featured in this post were purchased by me except for the Winstonia Store dotting tool which was provided to me by the manufacturer. For more information, please visit my disclosure policy tab.

Sation BYOBottle

Posted on 17 December, 201217 December, 2012 by Cynthia

I had mentioned in my previous post about wanting to slow down my blogging schedule a bit for a few reasons. One of the main reasons is the fact that I am really busy looking for a job right now, and I don’t think that crazy or colorful nails are very interview appropriate. At my last job, one of the things I hated the most was interviewing people. I have so many stories about strange applicants! One of the more thought-provoking moments was when I called up an applicant, and she sounded like the perfect candidate: she had a perfect resume, was well spoken and energetic. When I brought her in for an interview, she was dressed immaculately but was wearing the world’s largest fake eyelashes. Ok, you don’t understand…her eyelashes were all I could focus on when I looked at her face. They weren’t just thick, they were LOOOOOONG. The interview went ok, but I just could not understand what made her think that wearing those eyelashes was a good idea–it just made me think she was lacking some common sense. I was kind of willing to look past the Snuffy Snuffleupagus eyelashes until she started calling me multiple times per day to “follow up” despite me telling her I would be calling people back in a week for a second interview. I could go on and tell you about the woman who kept wanting to reschedule her interview because she got her period and didn’t sleep well, but I’ll stop there. While going through my melmers for some pretty and subdue colors, I zeroed in on Sation BYOBottle.

Sation BYOBottle is a beautiful raisin-y plum color from their grooooooovy Nailstock Collection. This polish was so incredibly smooth to apply–it was almost a one-coater! Are there any 80’s kids here? You will totally get flashbacks, but I kept singing “I Heard It Through The Grapevine” because this polish reminded me of the California Raisins:

For this design, I used Essie Nothing Else Metals and an image from plate MASH 44. I’ve been using my MASH plates a lot more often–they really are great quality plates and I hope that they put out some more sets in the future.

Today I was supposed to go to an interview but my gut kept telling me that there was something fishy with the whole thing. The person who contacted me was responding to the resume I had posted, but she wasn’t really giving me all the information about the actual position she was hiring for besides a vague description. She then told me she wanted me to meet her at a different location than where the job was supposed to be. Her directions sounded something like: “go down Main Street, hang a left on the napping bum, walk 500 ft down the dark alley and knock on the rusty door with an X marked in blood.” Uhm, yes I need a job but I do not need to be on the news as a murder victim. I did do my due diligence on the company and the person who contacted me so don’t worry–I’m not gullible. Ultimately, I just felt that there was something off about the whole situation so I passed. I have a few other prospects so I’m just going to keep on moving forward. Hopefully I won’t have too many of these job hunt stories to relate!

There is only one more week left for Christmas! Have you done all your shopping yet? Thanks for stopping by and I’ll see you around soon!

Disclosure: Sation BYOBottle was provided by the manufacturer or their PR firm. For more information, please see my Disclosure Policy tab. Essie Nothing Else Metals was purchased by me.

31 Inspired Days of Nail Art – Day 28: Pattern Inspired Nails

Posted on 1 December, 2012 by Cynthia

I can see the finish line…I can see it! After today’s challenge, there are only 3 more challenges left, and then we are done! I am pretty sure this is my first AND last challenge…not that I didn’t enjoy it for the most part but it was just to much and way too long. While I wondered that the heck to do for the pattern inspiration, I saw this really cute paisley pattern dress in my closet so I decided to just use my paisley stamp and not worry too much about it.

Want to know how I created this mani? Read below….

I freaking love Jungle Queen. It’s one of my favorite–if not my favorite–polish from the On Safari collection. This is two smooth coats.

And this is Jungle Queen with one coat of Max Factor Fantasy Fire which I am now calling Jungle Queen On Crack.

I used Essie Nothing Else Metals to stamp the paisley design from Bundle Monster plate BM 315.

I’m not feeling too talky today…I am not feeling well at all. I had some pizza and it somehow started a lot of bad stuff in my stomach. lol Let’s leave it at that. hahaha Let me know what you think of this mani and don’t forget to check out Nicole’s IKAT nails over at Polish Me, Please!

31 Inspired Days of Nail Art – Day 23: Nails Inspired By Nature

Posted on 21 November, 2012 by Cynthia

I had absolutely no idea what to do for today’s challenge. I mean, nails inspired by nature? I am a city girl through and through and the closest I get to “nature” is the Jungle Cruise at Disneyland. Nicole and I were talking about this challenge yesterday and she mentioned that she thought of not painting her nails at all and showing us her “natural” nails and calling that her interpretation of nature. hahaha! I got so annoyed with today’s challenge that I waited until the last possible second to do them. Unfortunately, my nails ended up looking craptastic for various reasons. First of all, let me show you the polish I used as my base color:

Jessica Brown Sugar is from their Spicy Dream Fall Collection. It’s a red-based brown with a very distinct shimmer. I don’t really wear these types of browns because I don’t think they look to good on my skin tone, but I do like this polish because it’s just so different!

Then I decided to do some stamping and that is when it all went downhill.

First of all, I should have used a different polish to do the stamping because Essie The Cove Copper does not show up too well. I think this is a pretty old discontinued polish because the label looks different and it definitely smells different as well. I placed some red microbeads where the leaves appeared to have little bead shapes, but it just ended up looking weird. I was so annoyed with this overall mani that I took it off right away.

Now, in order to make up for such an atrocious manicure, I am sharing with you something that I made for our Thanksgiving feast tomorrow….

These are not just your ordinary deviled eggs; they are BACON CHEDDAR deviled eggs. These are so delicious that I defy anyone to have one and not have a foodgasm. They are basically traditional deviled eggs with some crumbled bacon and shredded sharp cheddar blended into the egg yolk/mayo mix. Whenever I make these, they literally disappear instantly. Yes, they are that good. I can’t wait until tomorrow so I can eat some of these babies up.The recipe is pretty standard but I know someone who hasn’t made deviled eggs would want to know. To tell you the truth, I eyeball all of the amounts so this is an approximation.

12 hard-boiled eggs
1/2 cup mayonnaise
4 bacon strips- cooked and crumbled
1/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1 tablespoon yellow mustard
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

After you cook the eggs and peel them, cut them lengthwise and remove the yolks. Place all the yolks in a bowl and mash them up. Add the mayo and mustard until the mixture is creamy and well blended. Then mix in the cheese, crumbled bacon and black pepper. After this, I usually use a pastry bag to pipe the mixture back into the egg whites. If you don’t have a pastry bag, you an always just use a plastic bag and cut off a corner to make a small hole. Lastly, sprinkle the deviled eggs with paprika and bask in the glory of rave reviews that your dish will get.

Can we please just ignore my nails and focus on the food? That would make me happy. Do you have any special Thanksgiving plans for tomorrow?

31 Inspired Days of Nail Art – Day 20: Delicate Print Nails

Posted on 15 November, 2012 by Cynthia

Delicate. Nothing is “delicate” about me so I had to really think about what I wanted to do with my nails today. I looked through polish stash, and I zeroed in on China Glaze Who’s Wearing What. As far as I can tell from various internet sources, Who’s Wearing What comes form the 2004 Creme Couture Collection. I can honestly say that this is my absolute favorite greyed dusty purple EVER. I am not kidding. It’s the absolute most perfect dusty purple/grey for my skin tone. In fact, I love it so much that I’m going to have to get a back up or two since I sold recently sold my extra bottle in my blog sale. (Shameless plug: go check out my blog sale–I am adding tons of new stuff every day.)

Didn’t I tell you this was a gorgeous color? For those of you who like to go dusty hunting, this is one to put on your list if you don’t own it yet. Since it’s close to 10 years old, it is not big 3-free in case that is a major concern for you. The formula is nice and definitely needs two coats. It is super important to apply thin coats because it does tend to get a little streaky as you can tell from my pics. Still…I adore it.

And here is my idea of delicate print:

I decided to use Essie Nothing Else Metals again and used a design from Bundle Monster plate BM 310. What an awesome polish for stamping! In fact, all of the Essie Mirror Metallics rock for stamping.

And in the “I eat like a pig” food chronicles, here is my dinner:

Tacos al pastor…I love you. That’s all I have to say about that.

What do you think about my delicate print nails? Did I achieve a delicate look? Don’t forget to check out Nicole’s delicate print nails over at Polish Me, Please!

Birthday Polish: Dollish Polish It’s A Me, Mario!

Posted on 12 November, 2012 by Cynthia

One of the pivotal moments of my childhood was in the late 80’s when my parents finally caved and bought my brother and I a Nintendo. The NES (Nintendo Entertainment System) became like a babysitter for my mother because it would keep my brother and I entertained for hours. Any time she wanted to punish me, she didn’t take away the TV or my toys: she took away the Nintendo. Although I was only 8 years old, I became quite good at Super Mario Bros. and my life’s goal became to pass all 8 worlds. I don’t even remember how long it took me to pass the whole game, but I do remember the day it happened as if it was just yesterday. I had gotten to world 8 stage 4 and I had no more lives left and I was little Mario which meant that one touch would kill me. I made it all the way to Bowser/Koopa and in some random inspiration, I just ran under Bowser when he jumped up and pulled the bridge out from under his feet. At that point, both my brother and I stared at each other neither daring to utter a single word. Once we saw Princess Toadstool, we both screamed. I threw the control in the air and we jumped up and we hugged each other while still jumping up and down. Does this make me sound silly? Maybe. But I don’t think I can remember any other massive accomplishment at that age that rivaled the sweet triumph of beating Super Mario Bros. This video is of level 8-4 and obviously this person is pretty good at the game. I just wanted to show you what it looked like:

Even the music made me what to cry. So why am I telling you about my nerdiest of nerdy childhood moments? (Ok, there is another moment that is nerdier than this: I created a “Plant Club” and made all the neighborhood kids join. It involved digging holes and looking for pre-hisotric plants and fossils. Yeah, stop laughing. Now. Bite me, ok?) The reason why I am sharing this is because you might start to imagine what a video game and polish boner I got when I heard about Dollish Polish’s Super Mario Bros. Collection. So when I got It’s A Me, Mario! from the lovely Amanda (go check out her blog–she’s awesome!!) for my birthday, I was seriously in Nintendo heaven. I’ve been admiring it on its velvet cushion for the last month or so and finally decided to use it. I started with 2 coats of Essie Butler Please:

When I applied the first coat ofButler Please, I was kind of surprised at how watery it seemed. It was really thin and kind of streaky. However, after a second thick coat, it was fine.

And here is the star of the show:

This is 1 coat of Dollish Polish It’s A Me, Mario! The blue and red glitter was not very hard to apply, but getting some stars was a serious bitch. I had to fish for those stars for what seemed like ages. In the end, I don’t care that I had to fish for stars because they were worth it. I love this polish.

Ready for some food porn?

I didn’t have anything to eat for lunch so by around 5:00, I was starving. I wanted a sandwich–with a twist–so I decided to go to El Gallo Giro which is a chain of Mexican food restaurants that are based in Socal. I was craving horchata as well so I thought it would be perfect. This was my lunch/dinner:

This thing was massive–massively delicious. It is a carne asada torta which is basically a grilled steak sandwich. They grill thin steak and layer it in a toasted bun with mayo, cheese, lettuce, tomato, jalapenos and guacamole. Holy moley this was good…and I’m full until next week.

What do you think of my Super Mario Bros. mani? Do you have any nerdy childhood moments that you would like to share? No? Just me? Alrighty then.

31 Inspired Days of Nail Art – Day 19: Floral Print Nails

Posted on 12 November, 201212 November, 2012 by Cynthia

I was at a loss today. I didn’t want to do any dotting tool flowers but knew I couldn’t really freehand any flowers unless I wanted my nails to look messy and silly. Stamping to the rescue! As much as I try to stay away from stamping during these challenges, I know that I am just NOT good enough to whip out my nail art brushes and come up with something amazing. Well, let me tell you that stamping didn’t help me much today anyway. I actually did two looks today and I am not really happy with either. I’ll show you the one I settled on first and then I will show you the one that made me try again.

First, I started with OPI We’ll Always Have Paris.

We’ll Always Have Paris is one of my favorite dark polishes from one of my favorite collections: La Collection De France. This polish is just so pretty, super pigmented and shiny.

I used Bundle Monster stamp BM 323 for this rose design and alternated white roses and metallic roses (using Essie Nothing Else Metals.) Why did I do that? I have no idea. I was just kind of irritated and frustrated with my first design. Are you ready to see it?

Ehhhh….I don’t know what to say about these either. I wish I had just stuck with my simple mani of We’ll Always Have Paris and stopped there. As I’ve said before…not every mani is going to be a winner and clearly these are way at the bottom of the totem pole. The next challenge calls for delicate print…what the heck am I gonna do then?? At least I have a few days to think about it.