Month: May 2012

Of Life and Lacquer > 2012 > May

Zoya Charisma

Posted on by Cynthia

Now that I took off yesterday’s ick job, I wanted to try out something super bright. Zoya Charisma to the rescue! I was really surprised that this dried matte; I should have paid more attention to the description on Zoya’s page.

I love how saturated this color is: it’s glowing. I didn’t notice that there is slight vnl, but it doesn’t really bother me. This could be a one-coater if you’re careful enough, but I did two coats to even everything out. I guess I don’t have too much to say about this polish except that it’s pretty!

I should not have taken a freaking nap in the middle of the day…if you can call sleeping for 3 hours a nap. I hope I can fall asleep tonight. Soooo…I am debating about going to the gym tonight. I feel like everything I’ve been posting lately is all about the gym, but I just really have to lose weight for my health. Since I’m feeling motivated lately, I might as well take advantage of it, right? Sorry if all the gym talk is boring!

I hope you had a nice weekend, and thanks for reading.

Sunday Morning

Posted on by Cynthia

Am I the  only one who really really likes this song?

Anyway, happy Sunday to all. Thanks for stopping by! I am kind of exhausted right now. I didn’t get home until around midnight last night and didn’t fall asleep until almost 2 am. Then I woke up at 6 am because my friend and I wanted to go to the beach. It’s been eons since I’ve been to the beach even though it’s literally like 10 minutes from my place. It was so nice to be out that early breathing fresh air and hearing the sound of the waves. I also saw tons of people with their dogs. When can I get my dog, dangit?!

We were there for a long time. We walked along the sand laughing and making fun of each other. See, I’ve known V since we were like 10 years old. We didn’t like each other very much until we were stuck working together on a project for one of our classes in 8th grade. So 20-some years later, we’re still friends and I’m very lucky to have her in my life. I always tell people that my litmus test for friendship is to travel together. Well, we have gone on vacation twice and we had a fantastic time. The first time we went to Hawaii which was freaking awesome…even if we got so hammered we could barely walk up the stairs at the hotel. Ok, maybe that was just me but I  know she was probably pointing and laughing. The next time we took a trip to Europe and went to Paris, Florence and Rome. She reminded me today of how we were freezing in Florence (it was late fall/early winter) but we HAD to have some gelato late at night. So we went to find a place that was open and walked outside eating our gelato and freezing our bums off.

Since V is a true friend, she told me that my nails looked ugly. Haha! Yeah, true biatch. (I still love you, though!) I can’t say that she’s wrong because I didn’t like my nails much so I didn’t even post them yesterday. They just turned out so ugly…kind of ghettoish. I started with Zoya Malia. I don’t have a lot to say about Malia. It just looks like OPI Do You Lilac It? to me. It is a color that I like but not terribly exciting. The formula was great, and it only needed two thin coats.

You can tell by the crappy job that I wasn’t that excited about doing my nails for some reason. I didn’t even do decent clean up! But wait till you see them after konading.

My nails are starting to look wonky to me because they are so long. However, I can’t cut them because I am going to beat Nicole at our imaginary nail competition. I just noticed a hair or fiber that got stuck on my middle nail. Can you spot it? How gross.  Anyway, I need to take these things off asap and try another color.

Last night was really fun as well. I went into a sushicoma with my sil. We both didn’t eat all day so we could fully enjoy our sushi. So this place that we go to is a little neighborhood joint. The sushi is really good, fresh, delicious and reasonably priced. Their service has always been on the slow side which we don’t usually mind because we are slow eaters and talk the whole time. Sometimes it does get a little ridiculous like waiting an hour or more to get our food when they are super busy. Surprisingly, they weren’t busy last night so we were annoyed with attentiveness. We should have counted how many times the waiter came by our table or the busboy peeked to see if we had any empty dishes. It might have been 20 or more times. It was getting beyond annoying. At one point, we thought we were on some hidden camera show to see how much we could take before we told them to fuck off and let us eat in peace. After we were done eating, they brought us the check without even asking if we wanted dessert!!! So of course we had to order some out of spite (and cause who are we kidding? we love our sweets!). We laid a bet to see how many times someone would come to our table to bug us while we ate dessert. My sil said 3 and I said 5. I won. 5 times!!!!!!!!!

After that we watched The Lucky One which was ok. There really wasn’t anything else we could watch and The Avengers was sold out for the rest of the night. Is it just me or does Zac Effron still look like a baby?

I don’t know what to do right now. I want to change my nails, but I really want to take a nap. Wow, a nap sounds so good…………………

Illamasqua Nomad

Posted on by Cynthia

First of all, I would like to tell you about my disappointment when I removed Zoya Zuza, and I gazed at my blue fingers and nails. Zuza is stainorrific. Granted it’s not as bad OPI Fly, but there was still staining. I forgive you, Zuza. I’ll still wear you because you’re pretty.

I was super excited to try this new nail polish by Illamasqua. I haven’t purchased anything by Illamasqua before (make-up or nails) so I didn’t know what to expect. I am glad to report that I was not disappointed. The formula was creamy, highly pigmented and easy to work with.

When I first put this on, I immediately thought of China Glaze Four Leaf Clover. It really isn’t the same because Nomad is a more bright jade color while Four Leaf Clover is more teal based. My one complaint would be the cap. I find it so awkward to hold when I’m applying the polish. It’s just too big to feel comfortable in my had for precise application. The brush was nice except that it had one wonky bristle.

I am very pleased with my first Illamasqua purchase and will purchase more products from their nail line in the future. Future meaning June. Hee!

Tomorrow is Cinco de Drinko. Are you going out to get hammered?

I’m A Hazard To Myself

Posted on by Cynthia

Today’s workout left me feeling a lot better. I didn’t push myself as hard, and I thankfully don’t have a headache like the last two days. I’ve been having a really hard time sleeping since I started up with the gym. I toss and turn all night and wake up pretty much every hour. I don’t know what’s going on but it’s not pleasant.  I hope it’s just my body getting used to the exercise.

This is my third day of going to the gym and every day I think I keep seeing someone that I know. However, I can’t be sure because I don’t wear my glasses when I’m sweating on a machine so I can’t really tell if it’s really him. I know he goes to my gym so that’s what makes me think it’s him. I HATE him. I don’t say this often about people, but this guy is just a fucking asshole. I fired his psycho ass at my last job because he kept undermining me and my number 2. He just had this huge chip on his shoulder; I think his midget ass had a mean case of the Napoleon Complex. (Sorry to the short people out there. I’m short too.) So if it is him, he probably wouldn’t come up to say hi to me. If he did, I’d probably throw my sport drink at his face. My only regret is that I didn’t fire him sooner.

So moving on from a waste of space guy, I was getting really irritated at the gym today because my ipod was acting wonky. It got stuck on one song for like 30 minutes: Sarah McLachlan’s Possession. That is so NOT a workout song. Then it got stuck on Blind Melon’s No Rain. Then it got stuck on Spin Doctors’ Two Princes. I was not having any luck with my ipod. It finally started acting normal and I got to my workout mix. I guess I was already pissed about my ipod and about the assholio guy I think I see at the gym so I was getting irritated by people’s gym behavior. First of all, if you’re not going to the gym to work out, get the fuck out and off the machines so that people who are there to work out can do so…especially when it’s busy. Get out of the gym if you’re just there to socialize and check out people…you’re using up my oxygen. If all you can do the whole time you’re on the stair climber is check yourself out in the mirror, I hope you fall on your face. If you stop mid-workout to take a picture of yourself  in the mirror to post to your youtwitbook, I hope your phone explodes. People can be so freaking annoying and dumb sometimes.

I missed the first 30 minutes of Grey’s Anatomy because I was taking a shower after the gym. Grrrrrr. Now I’m watching Scandal. Is anyone else getting into this show? Because I’m just starting to like it so that means that it’s probably going to get cancelled. I still have not gotten over Dollhouse being cancelled…and V. I was really liking V.

Tomorrow is Friday. I don’t have many plans for the weekend…just a workout with one of my friends and sushi and a movie with my sister-in-law on Saturday. I am looking forward to both! I haven’t had sushi in a while and I’m going to allow myself one “cheat meal” per week. Sushicoma, here I come!

Do you have any exciting weekend plans?

Zoya Zuza

Posted on by Cynthia

I wasn’t expecting my Zoya goodies until Friday so I was very surprised when they arrived today. Happy Thursday to me! They arrived when I was in the middle of re-arranging my melmers and trying to figure out what color I wanted to use today. Welllllllllllllllllll, I decided to use one of the new polishes I received today. But which one? Hmmmmmmm. Decisions, Decisions.

I picked Zuza. I have never met anyone named Zuza but that doesn’t make me love the nail polish any less. It is a welcome change from Essie Haute As Hello for sure. The formula on this was fantastico magico. It was opaque in 2 coats and was so easy to spread on my my nails. I had pretty much no clean up at the end which I love. It’s not a shiny nail polish; it just has that grainy shimmer that I really like.

Oh so pretty! And I finally had some sunlight for these pictures!

I wanted to share this with you because I was laughing so much when I read it. I am a dog person for sure. I usually tell people that I hate cats but I really do like them. I guess that cats act so aloof sometimes that they don’t immediately endear themselves to me the way dogs do.

Are you a dog or a cat person?

Did you order any Zoyas through their Earth Day Promo?

Milestone!

Posted on by Cynthia

According to WordPress, I just published my 200th post. Wow, really?! I started this blog in late 2011 so that seems like an awful lot. Well, what should I do? I’ve never done a giveaway and that seems kinda fun. I have no idea how people run giveaways so I guess I’m going to have to do some research.

I want to thank everyone who visits my blog. I love the feedback and interacting with all of you so much! No one understands the mind of a psychotic nail polish hoarder like other psychotic nail polish hoarders.

The other day I ran across an article talking about how facebook cracks down on how giveaways are being handled and that some people have had their accounts deactivated. Apparently these rules have been around for a while but no one was paying much attention to them. It seems that you can’t ask people to “Like” your facebook page for an entry in a giveaway and you can’t advertise a giveaway on facebook either. Eh? I am not sure I understood correctly. Every giveaway I have entered recently asked me to “like” their facebook page so that seems weird.

In any case, if you have any suggestions on how to do a giveaway with the least amount of headaches, please share!! I don’t really know what I would like to give away either. Hmmmm….I guess I could contemplate it this month and then do it in June since I’m not buying any nail stuff in May.

Oh, and in case you haven’t done so, go like my facebook page! 😛 I’m trying to be more active on it. You can click the link on the right or you can click here.

Essie Haute As Hello

Posted on by Cynthia

Oh dear Lord where do I begin with this nail polish? Is it a neon? Not quite. Is it matte? Not quite. Does it look nice on me? Uh, NO! I think someone with a different skin tone might be able to pull this off. I’m just too dark for this to look ok. Taking pictures of it was like climbing Mt. Everest. It also had a sort of weird formula that dried kind of fast like a neon but it was pretty pigmented. It did pull and create bald spots when I didn’t let it dry enough before applying another coat. In order to even it out, I applied 3 coats.

These first three pictures were taken with flash. It washed out the color somewhat.

Please excuse the cuticle oil. I neglected to massage it in well enough which makes my fingers look like greasy sausages. I took the following pictures with natural light and they just look icky. My skin looks so grey.

I am so not happy with this color. I am going to leave it on my nails because I’d rather have this color on than nothing at all. I was wearing Mysterious Curse on my nail,s but I ruined them when I gave myself a pedicure. Not smart.

The gym was alright last night. I did 30 minutes on the elliptical and then walked 2 miles on the treadmill. It was ok as my first workout. When I got home, I had a massive headache. I thought I would sleep like a baby, but I didn’t really. I actually had a very difficult time tossing and turning all night. The other night I had a dream that I was in a psych ward and that Dr. House (Hugh Laurie) was my doctor. He was tearing us down patient by patient and when he got to me, I got so mad that I grabbed his cane and started beating him with it. Then someone picked up this big sink looking thing and threw it out the window like The Chief in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. We all stood there staring–I even stopped beating Dr. House.  That’s the last thing I remember.

I doubt I’ll wear this color again; maybe I will just use it for designs and stuff. Essie deception. You looked so pretty in the bottle.

Orly Mysterious Curse

Posted on by Cynthia

This nail polish is like the first born, blonde, blue eyed male child of my nail polish collection right now. Don’t get all judgmental on me; this is something we used to joke about at my previous job: that my department was the red-headed stepchild of the company and that I would make them into the first born, blonde, blue eyed male child if it killed me…which it nearly did. But that’s another story…

I can’t remember the last time I was completely blown away by a nail polish so I am giddy right now. I don’t know what it is about it that just mesmerizes me. It’s purple and blue. It’s dark and shimmery. It’s just so gorgeous I can’t stand it. Of course there was basically no sunlight today so I had to make do with indoor lighting and flash. I really would have liked to photograph this baby in direct sunlight but I didn’t want to wait since it’s been cold and overcast here for the last 3 days.

Don’t tell me that you don’t love it as much as I do because I will have to hunt you down and destroy you.

In other news, I’m going to the gym tonight just as soon as I finish watching The Office. I need to get my ipod out and update it with a few new songs. I was listening to the Gotye  song “Somebody That I Used To Know” and I thought: When did The Police record a new song? Just an FYI…I am the biggest The Police fan. I love them. Can you remember swooning over Sting in “Don’t Stand So Close To Me?” No? Well, you must either be way young or just insane.

Raaaaaaaawwwwwwwwwwwwwrrrr! I totally had a major thing for my college American Literature professor and I blame this video. Why does it seem that everything is more intense when you’re 17? I never missed his class even though it was at 8 am.

So what other songs should I download? Are there songs that you enjoy when you hit the gym? And, oh yeah…what do you think about Mysterious Curse?