outer space

Orly - Out of This World

So I guess you guys know that I am absolutely in love with Orly's Mineral FX Collection. And yes I do have the whole set. Today I'll feature Out of This World.

Out of This World is a deep violet jelly-based polish, dense with mini duochrome flakies (or glass flecks, I can't decide) whose colours shift from purple to gold.

Well okay I'm not too sure about the colours of the flakies, they do confuse me. Pictured is 3 thin coats of Out of This World on my nails (sorry for the mess on the ring finger, I was in a rush!) And the duochrome reveals mostly purple shimmer. I'm looking at my nails right now and I honestly cannot detect any obvious gold shimmer, only slivers of it in indirect sunlight. I'm pretty sure the flakes are duochrome, though I considered the possibility that it's just gold mini flakies whose sheen got drowned out by the deep purple base.

Either way, I still felt cheated that from the bottle, Out of This World looked so amazing - just check out the picture of the bottle I've included below. See all that gold shimmer shining through the side of the bottle? Beautiful isn't it! Now compare that to the pictures of my nails. Tell me - just where the hell is that gold shimmer!? :-(

I guess I can see it. If your nails are really curved you would see them along the sides of your nails. But I do wish it was more obvious anyways. Perhaps it seems this way because I didn't apply my Seche topcoat like I usually do. But anyhow, I think the lack of gold impact really steals away from the whole galaxy theme Orly was aiming for. It just loses its oomph. Perhaps I should try this colour on with Seche Vite next time.

Anyways besides the confusion with the shimmer, I realised that 3 coats is ideal for application because of the jelly base which runs slightly thin, like jelly bases usually do. But the surprising thing is that the reflectiveness from the crazy amount of shimmer flecks actually give the illusion of opacity at 2 coats, which is nice.

Anyways though I was pretty disappointed by this polish (I was expecting to be blown away, like the rest of the colours did for me. ESPECIALLY Galaxy Girl!!!!) but, its being less flashy does qualify it a very wearable polish, like the kind of polish which will be your one and only, most cherished polish. So purple lovers, this will be your baby! :-)

Well, Out of This World's vampy look (it actually looks like a vampy OPI Ink) does flatter me! I look good in dark, vampy shades. I guess this one's a keeper for me.

I also realised that this polish looks very similar to OPI DS Mystery, and hence will do a comparison between these two sometime. :-)

Till next time!

x, Ish

showstopper

OPI – The Show Must Go On!

How often does one come across vintage polishes!?

Okay I consider this ‘‘vintage’’ because Burlesque polishes have literally vanished off the face of the consumer market. But guess what I saw sitting on a shelf at the pharmacy while I was in LA…... :-) :-) :-)

Obviously I grabbed it! Didn’t even have to think twice. But upon closer inspection, The Show Must Go On! proved to be something more than just a red shimmer polish.

The Show Must Go On! is a red shimmer polish with a coral-red tinted base, and filled with red and gold shimmer. When the light hits it, you’ll also notice a red-goldish-pink duochrome. (The pictures show a little glimmer of duochrome! It shifts from red near my cuticles to orangey-gold and then pinkish near the tips!)

I think the name is so apt for the situation in which I used it! If you read my previous post, you’d have known that I was aiming for Barbie pink nails but failed because of darned Wet Paint Nail Glaze System. The end result wasn’t satisfactory so I removed it immediately after application, but I just couldn’t go with bare nails for the night. I was almost freaking out because I am quite anal about my nails being painted and at that point I didn’t even care that the colour didn’t match the outfit, then I spotted something red on my nail shelf. Anddd The Show Must Go On! saved my night, matching my outfit and all :-) I know it sounds corny and everything but, admit it – it is apt isn’t it!

The formula on this ran a little thinner than I’d expected. Seeing that it’s a shimmer polish, I’d expected a quicker-than-usual dry time (because from past experiences, shimmer shades tend to behave that way). However I took a little more time for it to be dry to the touch, and even then it was a little prone to denting. I’d majorly messed up my left index finger after snapping a few shots of my manicure, leaving a couple of obvious crescent-shaped dents.

Here’s the amazing bit: I just tried to smoothen out the dents my pressing it smooth, and a few hours later, the nail looked flawless. I’m dead serious, I asked a couple of people and they echoed the same response, ‘‘Nothing’s wrong, it’s perfect.’’ THIS is why I swear by shimmers and glitters!!!

On top of that, the duochrome is just lovely. I don’t think I even have to touch on how amazing it is in sunlight – all duochromes are beautiful in sunlight. The interesting part is when it’s night-time. The red-gold-pinkish mix creates a warm, orangey glow which is especially noticeable under shade or in the dark. It’s truly fascinating. I’m sorry I didn’t include a picture of such a phenomenon but wow you have to see it for yourself to be wowed. Come to think of it, the look actually it reminds me of Take The Stage, a burnt copper-orange foil-ish kind of shade. It’s also from the Burlesque family. I am going to have that swatched next! :-)

Well until next time, guys. :-)

x, Ish

mattel

Wet Paint Nail Glaze System – Inspire

Essie – Matte About You

This was my vision: Barbie-pink nails with the texture of plastic. I had it all planned out already and even swatched out different shades of pink to achieve that ultimate Barbie look.

Pictured here is about 3 to 4 coats of Inspire and 2 coats (this was a big mistake) of Matte About You. (Sorry for the little mess around the cuticles! I was quite annoyed...) Affection is a Barbie-ish Hot pink crème shade. It’s really rich, but borders on thick. Which really isn’t a good thing. Matte About You looks like a translucent milky formula in the bottle and applies slightly translucent, and dries matte to the touch. It may alter the colour of the base very slightly, but for Inspire it was barely noticeable.

Application was disgusting. The brushes aren’t even cut straight at the bristles. Though I managed it at a weird angle, 2 minutes later the surface would become uneven – BUBBLES. Fml. It’s probably the brush - it just incorporates air into the layer being applied onto the nail - but it was so annoying.

Pictured here is 3 (or was it 4?) layers of Inspire and application was an excruciating process. It’s like slowly sawing your arm off and then, letting you bleed to death. I’m sorry for the bad image but that was really how I felt.

So I decided to go on to the mattifying part. I was pretty excited about it, because I’ve heard many good things about Matte About You. I still remember a customer’s response to me when I offered her Matte About You to satiate her desires for a matte topcoat. ‘‘Essie? Eee, Essie is not matte leh, it’s more suede lor! I think Nubar V or China Glaze one better!’’

For one, Suede shades are matte shades. (OPI has a Suede line of shades.) I think the texture differs slightly (some softer and others, harder) due to chemical composition. Furthermore, Nubar V for Men is the most disappointing matte topcoat I’ve seen in pictures. It completely mattes the life and soul out of the base colour and makes our nails looks very flat, unsophisticated and extremely amateur. That’s how I would describe Nubar V for Men. I’ve not checked out China Glaze’s Matte Magic (I've heard it's pretty alright) but I would like to talk about Essie.

Matte About You is brilliant. I was quite annoyed when I tried it on a few nails because it made the base colour look sooo flat. It looked so dead. But I re-read the instructions on the box: Apply one thin coat. Well guilty as charged, I did apply a thick blob of Matte About You. So I tried again, and this time it was amazing. The colour changed slowly and had a very very very light frosted glass finish to it. I describe it as frosted glass because you know how at Christmas time, the warm glow of the fireplace through a frosted glass window witnessed from outside has that sort of luminesce effect. That’s how it seemed like to me – soft and subdued colour, not deadened.

The texture is so nice, too. Why would you want a flat out dead matte texture when you could have a softer look and texture? And to that random customer, why don’t you like the soft-matte texture of OPI Suede, or Matte About You!? It’s the one of the nicest kinds of matte you can get. I don’t understand you!

Anyways as the pictures show, I did manage to achieve the Barbie look. However a couple of minutes after pictures, white flecks appeared on the nail and I knew the bubbles would all surface given the extremely prolonged dry time. The whole manicure was extremely thick as well so I decided to scrap the whole look.

Perhaps next time I’ll try this one out again, after I thin Inspire out or use a different shade of pink! I am totally dying to use Matte About You again :-)

x, Ish

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Tonight:
New posts! :-)

Keep your eyes glueddd!

x, Ish

space weed

Orly - It's Not Rocket Science

At some point in time there was quite a bit of hype about gross, puke colours being made into beautiful nail polishes. It's Not Rocket Science is one of them.

It's a very ugly yet beautiful polish... I can't even describe. It also has lots of colours in it! What I see is gold, dark green and some bronze shimmer micro particles in a murky olive-tinted base. It also has a bit of duochrome!! How exciting. I can't really figure out what exactly's in this polish though.

Well I remember reading about this polish on Scrangie so here's a little extract from her:

It's Not Rocket Science. It's Rocket Surgery. Hehe. But seriously... super beautiful polish. Murky warm green with gold and yellow and blue sparkle and slight duochrome with a swampy green sheer base. Strange description but the end result is fantastic! Also, this is the most opaque of the recently-released similar colors and has more blue tone to it than the others.

I guess the commentary on the colours is subjective, but I want to emphasise that Scrangie is right about It's Not Rocket Science being opaque. It indeed is rather pigmented, which is a nice thing so 2 coats would suffice :-) Furthermore, despite the crazy shimmer particles - which are actually really teeny tiny flakies similar to the 24k gold in Deborah Lippmann's Boom Boom Pow - this polish dries perfectly smooth to the touch!!!

Well I know a lot of my friends would have issues wearing this polish. Even I was pretty unsure of whether to get this polish or not! In fact (I feel quite guilty to say this...) but I only purchased this polish to complete my Orly Mineral FX Collection. But surprisingly, this polish is actually the most wearable while being interesting, considering it's the most used bottle out of the rest of my Mineral FX's. It looks especially flattering on my mom's hands.

Anyways with other pretty/ugly shades besides It's Not Rocket Science like China Glaze's It's Alive, Chanel's Peridot and OPI's Stranger Tides all floating around in the consumer market, I hope girls get a little bolder and try out these shades because they are a unique kind of beautiful :-)

Speaking of Chanel's Peridot, I really wanted to get it but mannn, the price. :-((((((( I truly cannot afford it. But well, I am very happy with It's Not Rocket Science!

x, Ish

no shit, sherlock

OPI - You Don't Know Jacques!

This colour is one of the most coveted OPI shades in the history of OPI. It was featured in the Best of The Best Minis, and indeed is a very interesting shade.

You Don't Know Jacques! is a taupey-brown, which leans very heavily on the brown side. Brown with a tinge of mushroomy taupe.

Initially from pictures, You Don't Know Jacques! looked a little lighter, just like it's pictured here. I'd wanted to match them with my other pair of Guess heels. I've included a picture below.

In real life, it's about like... 3 shades darker. But it's a lot more chocolate than this brown, so it didn't exactly match but at least I did achieve the earthy pink-taupe palette I was aiming for.

~~ On a side note, does anyone want these heels? They're too killer for me. My sister-in-law's called dibs on them but meanwhile, if anyone can offer me something I like these shoes are yours :-) US 8M (which is basically a size 8). ~~

Anyways, application for this baby was a dream. Except that the polish is such a chameleon. It looks one colour through the bottle, another on the brush, another while it's wet on the nail, and finally a taupey-chocolate when dried on the nail. Well I guess we really don't know Jacques... Haha pardon my bad joke.

Well the best part about this polish is that the colour doesn't look clayey, as if I were a potter's assistant. It's a rich creme, very shiny and very sophisticated. It takes a mature woman to wear this shade, which is why I think it looked better on my sister-in-law than it did on me. Hence I have a lot of respect for this polish, haha.

I think the cremes are out to get me on Team Creme. We'll see :-)

x, Ish

smokin'''

China Glaze - City Siren

inm - Northern Lights Holographic Topcoat (Silver)

So this is my second bottle of red nail polish. This time it's a creme.

City Siren is a Cardinal red creme polish that I actually only purchased because I wanted a polish to match my Guess sling-backs HAHAHA. The polish also has a touch of smokiness and is very very sexy.

I usually don't enjoy using cremes because they're so easy to mess up... So pictured here is 3 coats of City Siren, and I had matching toes as well.

I wish I snapped a picture of my outfit and my heels or at least my toes with my heels but I didn't. Why do I even own a camera... Anyways I paired the nails with the heels, which I paired with a black dress with gold sequin print. That dress is so old but I could wear it over and over. I won't post a picture of my dress, but here's one of my heels:

Sexy right! My feet don't do them justice... So I decided my nails and toe nails needed to, as much as they can!!!

So the first time I saw City Siren, I was like ''OMG THIS SHOUTS GUESS''. It's a very complex red creme and I love it so so much!!! Which is pretty impressive because I don't fancy creme finishes so much. I always found it so difficult to get them to dry perfectly smooth and perfectly neat. Glitters and shimmers hide that better.

Anyways I don't think I have much of a commentary on this polish, except that application is excellent, dry time is excellent and the colour is so so so pretty. I'm not sure if there's actually a dupe for this colour out there. Or maybe I'm not just not well-read enough. But anyways, well done China Glaze, another good creme!! For Audrey is the only other creme I like a lot, and usually China Glaze is better at glitter shades. So to produce amazing cremes as well... a really good job :-)

This is just for fun but here is Northern Lights Holographic Topcoat in Silver over City Siren on my toes!!! I think now that I have to trim my fingernails for training, I can use it more without it frosting up at the now non-existent overhanging tips! :-)

x, Ish