Tag: Wet N Wild

Of Life and Lacquer > Wet N Wild

Ninja Polish: Nail-Venturous Humblebee

Posted on by Cynthia

Today I have another installment of the reformed glitter hater chronicles. I’ve been on a serious glitter high for the last month or so despite all of my previous statements about hating glitter. I still have issues with it when it comes to removal, but otherwise I am mesmerized by the world of indie glitters. There are so many amazing glitters out there and I recently I did something I said I didn’t have the patience to do: buy some polishes on Etsy. Now, that statement came from all the complaints I would hear about having to stalk certain shops, but I had no problems whatsoever getting the glitters I wanted. That is probably going to change in the new future once people get a load of the polishes I have coming. I’ll have those later in the week so I’ll be able to post them soon.

I decided to use the second polish I recently purchased from Ninja Polish: Humblebee. It is such an amazing matte glitter in the same vein of Floam. I layered it over Wet N Wild Pin ‘Em Slater from their HTF collection, Saved By The Nail. I didn’t really need a base color because you can build up Humblebee to opacity, but you have to be sure to allow each coat to dry or else you risk dragging.

 

 

    

This is 3 coats of Pin ‘Em Slater. If you don’t want VNL, you must wear some white undies.

    

And here is the majestic Humblebee. Ahhh….so pretty!

Sorry for more food porn…don’t mean to make you hungry. I was so in the mood for these carne asada tacos so they hit the spot.

Today was not as hot but it was still pretty gross. I can’t wait for this weather to just calm the F down. How has your week been? Ready for hump day tomorrow?

Also, don’t forget to enter my two giveways:

Free Julep Maven Intro box ($40 value) details here

Polish package + Beauty Samples details here

Thanks so much for stopping by and indulging my glittery beating heart.

Stamping Sunday: Silver, Gold or Bronze As An Accent

Posted on by Cynthia

I seriously feel like I need to tone it down. This is the second week that I create something for the group Adventures In Stamping and it’s a big fat fail again. I don’t know what it is about challenges, but it seems that I come up with the tackiest ideas ever. I don’t even know what I imagined anymore when I came up with this monstrosity, but at least it wasn’t as bad as last week’s look…at least in my opinion.

I started out innocently enough with China Glaze Exotic Encounters. I don’t know how many times I have said this, but the On Safari collection blew me away. I was really excited when the promo pictures came out and after I got them, they were everything I had hoped for and more. Kudos, China Glaze. “Well done. Whoo, whoo, whoo !” à la Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman.

Beautiful color, right?

The next step was taping off my nails in a diamond pattern and I used plate MASH 46 for the design and Wet N Wild I Can’t Stand Up Straight for the stamping polish. I should have taken a picture of that before I went ahead and added the glitter but I spaced out and forgot. It actually looked interesting before I added the glitter. This Dare To Wear glitter called Disco Ball and it is full of different holo glitter shapes. I think it will look very pretty over a dark base.  Once again, I’m not thrilled with this manicure, but I like it a little better than last week’s.

And for Sunday’s food porn, here is my breakfast: a delicious egg and chorizo breakfast burrito. Yes, it was heavenly!

Hope you’re having a nice Sunday! Let me know what you think of my stampicure.

Essence You Belong To Me

Posted on by Cynthia

I don’t know about you, but when you buy as much polish as your average nail polish fanatic, you are constantly on the lookout for sales. Just look at the great success of Nouveau Cheap! I love that blog because it fills me in on all the affordable cosmetics and drugstore sales. I know a lot of people stocked up on Sinful Colors despite the PR nightmare that ensued when they were caught using bloggers’ photos without their permission. Taking it one step further, they manipulated the images onto their models and incorrectly described the process of achieving the look. I find it rather tasteless on their part, and hope that they do right by the affected bloggers.

On my cheap polish quest, I found myself at Ulta a couple of times this week…and by a couple I mean I visited 3 Ultas in my area trying to find good deals. I had noticed that Essence polishes were being put on clearance and that the images of their bottles were different on the website so I figured they were trying to get rid of old stock. Well, tickle me cheap…I was all over that. I ended up purchasing all the colors I could get my hands on and they ended up being around $.79 each. Score! Today I found a few Zoyas on clearance including one of the flaky topcoats, Chloe. Woot! Major score. One of the polishes I purchased today is You Belong To Me which I decided to wear as soon as I got home.

    

While it’s not very noticeable in the bottle nor in my pictures, You Belong To Me has the faintest shimmer which makes it look so beautiful. The formula was ok…not really problematic but I needed a third coat to smooth it out.

    

I really like how delicate my nails look with this stamp design. I used BM 314 and my favorite WNW Silver for stamping called I Can’t Stand Up Straight. Does anyone have any recommendations for a cheap silver that stamps really well? Upon closer inspection, I think this design looks arachnid-like and it’s kind of freaking me out.

I was feeling really lazy tonight so I didn’t feel like cooking dinner. Instead, I made my special tuna sandwich: tuna, mayo, mustard, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, swiss cheese and slices of hard-boiled egg. Egg?!? Yes, egg. You have no idea how delicious it tastes. The creaminess and richness of the egg adds a whole new level of yumminess to this sandwich.

I don’t even know how many times I’ve talked about The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo on this blog, but I’m going to do it again because I have a major girl crush on Noomi Rapace. She is such a crazy badass in these movies. If you have Netflix, the full Swedish trilogy is online and it has like 2 extra hours of content that was edited out when they were released in the US. And yes, I’ve been watching the movies all over again. lol

I hope you’ve had a good and relaxing Saturday! Thanks for the visit and let me know what you think of my “spider nails.” hehehe

P.S. Do you have a preference for the picture size on my blog? I’ve made the images smaller for this post instead of using the full-sized images. What do you think?

Nail Mail!

Posted on by Cynthia

I feel like I haven’t done my nails in eons. Really, eons. Ever since I went chop crazy and cut my nails down to the nub, I haven’t really bothered doing my nails except for a half-assed attempt on Saturday which I promptly removed. As a little reminder, this is how painfully short my nails are right now:

Well, today I received something in the mail. Oh yes, dear readers, my liquid gold arrived!

The lovely Sabrina from Polish In Paris, recently went on vacay to London and she was sweet enough to get me a bottle of Max Factor Fantasy Fire. I know I will never get my hands on Clarins 230 so this is the closest I will get. Since my nails are still so short, I didn’t want to use any of my Fantasy Fire, but I couldn’t resist at least trying out the other polish she sent me: Essence Blue Addicted. For those of you who recognize this polish right away, yes it is a dupe for Deborah Lippmann Across The Universe. The base of this polish is pretty sheer so I knew that I would have to find a color to use as a base for this glitter gem.

So what color did I pick? Wet N Wild Blue Moon!

Pretty, right? Oh boy…look how short my nails still are. Yes, they still hurt and no, I won’t be doing this again.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! I love this. Shut up. I know it’s glitter. One thing I have to mention about the formula of this polish is that it is beyond goopy. I tried it on a nail wheel before I did this mani and it was really bad. It was patchy and goopy at the same time so I knew I would have to bust out the Seche Restore. A couple of drops fixed this right up and it was a lot more pleasant to work with. Either way, it’s worth the effort because I love the end result.

I also wanted to share the cutest card and drawing that she included in my package:

Sabrina’s little sister does the cutest drawings for her and you can see some of her other work here and here. How freaking adorable, right?

I hope my nails grow quickly so I can finally try my Fantasy Fire. What base color do you recommend to use under FF?

 

Merci Sabrina pour les beaux vernis et remercie ta sœur de ma part pour le dessin. Elle est vraiment douée! Je suppose que c’est ta soeur qui a fait le dessin! 😉

RGB Haze

Posted on by Cynthia

It’s about time I use this nail polish. I think that because it was associated with the whole SpaRitual/Beauty.com debacle a couple of months ago, I wanted to give myself some time to forget how they sent me empty nail polish boxes twice! I’m still wondering how that even happened. Eventually, I ended up getting the nail polish set and they refunded my money for all the aggravation. This is my first experience with RGB and I’m not really blown away. It’s a pretty color, but the formula seemed kind of strange: it was kind of streaky and goopy. At $16 for .40 oz, I guess I was expecting something better. I don’t know if I just got an off bottle because I’ve heard a lot of great things about RGB. It’s too bad because these are the colors I enjoy the most: dusty, smoky and PURPLE!!!

 

 

I haven’t used this design from Konad plate M73 in a while, but I really love it. This Wet N Wild silver polish called I Can’t Stand Up Straight is my favorite silver polish to use for stamping.

 

I decided to build a better lightbox today so I went out to purchase some posterboard. While I was at Dollar Tree, I saw packages of Big League Chew. Remember that stuff? It’s like little shredded strips of bubble gum that gave kids the impression that they were using chewing tobacco like their favorite baseball players. That stuff is almost as bad at the gum cigarettes that had a powder in them that you could suck and then blow out…like you were really smoking…at 5 years old. WTF? Anyway, it took me so long to build the darn thing, but I refuse to pay for one because they are super pricey.  For you ladies who are also nail bloggers, do you use a lightbox? I’ve been using mine a lot more lately which is why I decided to make a new and bigger one.

Today I chopped off my nails down to the nub so I’m going to lay off the nail polish for maybe a week and just work on hydrating my skin and cuticles.  I have a stockpile of pictures so I’ll still be posting regularly. Don’t worry…I know you’d die without my random nail/life ramblings. 😉 I am also putting myself on a no-buy. Yeah, yeah…laugh it up. I know I’ve said that before but I really need to tone it down a bit. I’m inching closer and closer to 600 bottles and I just can’t outgrow three melmers…I can’t!  The last time I put myself on a no-buy, this happened. Yeah. I will say that I will get the China Glaze New Bohemian duochromes…no  mater what. I think I am over the idea of getting the Essie Mirror Metallics because I know that I won’t use them too often so at least I’ll save some moola on that end.

And lastly, my giveaway for the Saved By The Bell nail polish collection is ending in a couple of days so don’t forget to enter. Today I went back to my lucky dusty and purchased a couple more bottles of the OPI DS linear holos for a future giveaway. I’m really enjoying all the new ladies who are stopping by and interacting on my posts so I want to make sure I thank you all by sharing some of the polish love. These are the two polishes I bought for future giveaways.

 

Thanks for reading, ladies, and have a nice Wednesday!

Wet N Wild Saved By The Bell Collection

Posted on by Cynthia

I went shopping at Ulta today because my mom wanted to buy some make-up so of course I had to get another Layla holo. I know…I know. Afterwards, we went to CVS to purchase some vitamins and other health stuff and I saw a Wet N Wild stand with a bunch of neon polishes. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it was a Wet N Wild Saved By The Bell collection. OMG!!! I nearly shit myself. Saved By The Bell?!

(For whatever reason, it was really hard to find a clip of the intro to the show. Totally weird…that’s why I went with this crappy one. Sorry.)

I used to watch Saved By The Bell religiously when I was a kid. It was one of my favorite shows along with Small Wonder, California Dreams, I Love Lucy and Gilligan’s Island. Fuck, I feel old. If you’re in your late 20’s-early 30’s, you probably watched some or all of these shows. It’s ok to cringe when you think  about  the Screech sex tape or Jesse in Showgirls. Anyway, on to the polish!

Pom Pom Kelly

Nerd Alert: Screech

Straight A Jesse

Pin ‘Em Slater

Fashionista Lisa

Chick Magnet Zack

I really liked this collection despite the fact that I think I’m on neon polish overload. My favorite color is Nerd Alert: Screech. I love that it’s such a fun, shimmery, neon lime green. I’ve never really been too impressed with the brushes on Wet N Wild Wild Shine polishes because they seem to work against me when I try to apply smooth coats. I did not apply any top coat to my swatches because I wanted to show you the satiny finish. Overall, I am beyond happy with this collection. Come on…for $.99 a bottle, can you really complain?  Let me know if you spot these. I don’t know if they are exclusive to CVS and I haven’t been able to find any information about this collection online. I find it very strange.

Ah, memories! Would anyone be interested in a Fresh Prince of Bel Air nail polish collection? No? Just me, huh?

 

Sephora by OPI My Personal Serpent

Posted on by Cynthia

I was debating what to wear on my nails today, and bright cheery colors just weren’t appealing. I’ve been in a crappy mood today so I wanted something dark and smoky. I looked at my untried stash and pulled out SOPI My Personal Serpent which I recently got on sale at Sephora. This color is part of their Fall 2011 collection called The Garden Of Good And Evil which included seven other polishes. Before I get into swatches and the stamping I did, I wanted to do a quick polish comparison. My Personal Serpent reminded me of Essie Bobbing For Baubles and Zoya Cynthia so I did a side-by-side comparison

Pretty similar, right?  I purchased Bobbing For Baubles first and really liked it. Out of the three, Essie has the best formula. They actually all are pretty great when it comes to the formula and you reach opacity with 2 thin coats.  I purchased Cynthia because…well…it’s my namesake so how could resist? I just imagined that my namesake polish is a crazy glitter in an alternate universe. NOOOOOOOOOOOO! So why did I purchase My Personal Serpent even though I have 2 other nearly identical colors? Because it was on sale, and who can resist any nail polish sales? I am such a psycho nail polish hoarder….

You already know I like blues so this dark smoky blue fit the bill today. This color is just so dark and saturated that it makes me dream of fall/winter colors. Ahhhh!

I am anxiously waiting the arrival of my Bundle Monster plates so I took out my konad and used my favorite mummy bandage plate design.

Do you have multiple dupe polishes from different brands? Do you feel dumb once you realize you purchased a dupe? I need a polish intervention.

Nails Inc. Tate

Posted on by Cynthia

Tate is the color that I imagine Roxanne wearing: a beautiful, glossy harlot red that she would wear before going back to her “home on whore island.” Sorry ladies, I just couldn’t help myself. I am a creme finish lover (wow, that sounds inappropriate), so of course I adore Tate. It’s bold, glossy, creamy and absolutely gorgeous. I love to wear red nail polish because it’s so LOUD and immediately commands attention. I am very animated when I speak, moving my arms and hands all over the place, so I love to have strong colors on my nails for dramatic effect. Ready for some swatches after I have babbled on and on about prostitutes, whores, and creme finishes? Ok!

No, I wasn’t lying. This is gorgeous and it’s a one coater!!!! I used two coats because that’s what I’m used to, but you can definitely get away with one coat.

GASP! Glitter!!!! I know, I know. I keep saying that I hate glitter, but I’m starting to think that maybe I’m just lying to myself. I can almost guarantee that I will *never* pay over $5 for any glitter but I am open to anything under that price point. I just hate how hard glitter is to remove most of the time and the thing that bothers me most is that rough feeling that it usually leaves on my nails. I really do like sponging–even though I still can’t get the gradient sponging right–so I mixed two glitters to sponge on my tips: OPI Servin’ Up Sparkle and Wet N Wild Rockin’ Rubies.

How do you like Tate? Do you love wearing red on your nails or is it just too loud for your taste? How do you feel about the glitter mix on my tips? Let me know! I love to hear your opinions.

Sation Jock Juggler

Posted on by Cynthia

When I first purchased this bottle of polish, I thought the name was Jockstrap Juggler. Besides it being one of those blues that I drool over no  matter how many similar shades I may have, I also got it because I thought the name was hilarious. As someone with a wickedly overactive imagination, I won’t even mention what images danced around in my head. I would also like to warn you not to google images for jockstrap juggler because you will be scarred if you see a few of the image results. I’m not saying that you won’t see a lot of nice, uhm, packages, but you will also see things that will sear your eyeballs to a crisp. So don’t do it. Please. Just don’t.

The actual name if this polish is obviously Jock Juggler. Is that any better? When I photographed this polish, it looked sooooo much like China Glaze Bahamian Blues but Jock Juggler has green in it that makes it look a little aqua. I’ll need to compare it side-by-side to For Audrey, Gumdrop, I Need A Re-fresh Mint…ad nauseam…to see if it is truly a dupe of any of those colors. Although it looks like a full on creme, in the bottle it has the slightest flash of blue shimmer, and I really mean slight because it doesn’t show up on my nails at all. I applied 3 coats in order to level out the polish. This one was slightly thick so it was a little difficult to get this to apply smoothly right away.

 

I then sponged Wet N Wild Cost Is No Issue on my tips. This glitter is so freaking pretty.  Do you think it’s a good combination with Jock Juggler?

 

What are you wearing on your nails today? Oh, and did you google jockstrap juggler? I knew it!

Orly Skinny Dip

Posted on by Cynthia

I don’t tend to purchase many Orly polishes and I don’t know why. They are just as easily accessible to me, but it seems that I don’t pay much attention to their collections. Even when I am aware of their upcoming collections, I am not as excited to get my hands on them. Their Summer 2012 Feel The Vibe Collection is full of neons which are super popular right now. However, I wasn’t really feeling the colors. The only one that I was interested in is Skinny Dip: of course it’s a blue that I love, and it had this super pretty light purple microshimmer flash in the bottle. As I have come to expect, the purple pretty much disappears once the nails. It dries satiny so you need a top coat if you want a shiny finish. I applied 3 coats and I felt that it needed all three. It is a sheer polish, but it’s easily buildable.

 

I’ve never really done sponging which I think looks amazing. I wanted to use some glitter (gasp!) to sponge on my tips so I looked through all my glitter polishes. I chose Wet N Wild Believe Me It’s Real which came out for the holidays in 2011. I had such a hard time finding this collection because it was a Walgreens exclusive and it seemed that no one had even heard of it. Since I don’t have Gelous, I had to apply like a million coats of Poshé to smooth out the glitter. This glitter is rough and eats up top coat like a mofo.

I can’t believe I still haven’t cut my nails yet. O_o I think this is the longest they have EVER been even when I wore acrylics. It’s been so weird getting used to the length, but I think I’m finally getting the hang of it.

I think the people I see regularly at the gym are going to start calling me the crazy nail girl. What do you think of this combo? Not too flashy?