Friday 29 June 2012

Harlow & Co Sparkling Waters

Hello hello! I managed to find time to squeeze one more post in before I go away for the weekend! I'm scheduling this post so I'm writing it on Thursday. I like doing scheduled posts, it feels like time travel almost. Haha. I'm cooking food for the weekend so I thought I might as well paint my nails and put up another post while everything is in the oven.
I decided to wear a glitterbomb for the weekend because they last longer, and my order from Harlow & Co. had just the polish. Sparkling Waters is the first glitter I've ever loved. It's full of blue and silver microglitter with larger silver hexes. And when I went outside, I found a happy surprise- holo microglitter!!! Yes! The formula is great, not too thick or thin and I didn't need to place the glitter with the brush or any other annoying procedure. The pictures show three coats of Sparkling Waters over one coat of Nicole by OPI Party in the Penthouse.

 Sparkling Waters can be bought here and I definitely recommend checking out what else they have, they carry lots of amazing brands and best of all shipping is cheap in Canada!

Pictures are outside in the sun!



Sparkly and... upside down? Ok then. Hope you enjoyed! Do you like glitter?? What's the best glitter you have?

Thursday 28 June 2012

Anne + Florio red shimmer??

Good morning! I'm dashing this post of really quickly while I eat my breakfast :) The boyfriend and I are headed off to Boonstock tomorrow and I have a lot of packing and running around to do today before I go to work. It's kind of stressing me out haha but I know that this weekend is going to be great so it's okay. Boonstock is a music festival here in Alberta, and the lineup is really awesome this year! I love electronic music and Aviici, Knife Party, Kaskade, Afrojack, Rehab, Chuckie, and Kill the Noise are all at Boonstock. It also has rock artists like Billy Talent, Korn, A Day To Remember, Volbeat, and GOB. So that will be cool to check out too! I'm most excited for Aviici, I've seen him twice before and it's always fun. He goes on after the Canada Day fireworks on Sunday! So this is probably my last post until Monday, unless I somehow manage to have time to throw one up tomorrow before we leave.
Anyway, on to the polish! This was the other polish Leigh, my boyfriend's client, brought me from Thailand! I've had it for months now but just got around to it now. Oopsies. It's a cranberry red shimmer. Formula was good, I managed to stop myself at two coats! The colour is pretty but it's not something I would have gotten for myself, the first day I was wearing it I kept looking at my nails trying to decide what I thought of it. I ended up liking it, and I think it photographed well. I lent it to my mom yesterday, I could see it looking really good on her. Unfortunately I forgot to make note of it's name so I will have to edit that into this post later! Pictures are outside in the sun.  I'm experimenting with different ways to hold the bottle so that my fingers don't look so silly (ie Royal post... ohgodwhy). AND I'm hoping to acquire Photoshop or something soon so that I can edit my pictures. Right now they're raw, straight from my camera. Realtalk haha. Anyway thank you for reading and I hope you have as great a weekend as I will! And happy early Canada day!



Monday 25 June 2012

Joe Fresh Cement

Hi hi hi! I had a terrible tragedy yesterday. Ok not really, but one of my nails broke, not just a little bit, oh no. All the way down to the nail bed almost, and at the corner too. I had to trim all my nails right down and round them. I never used to understand the big fuss over breaking a nail, I definitely find it annoying now! At least these shorter nails are less hassle and stress. My nails are weak and brittle so when they're longer I find myself consciously trying to baby them so I don't break one, and if I see a break starting it drives me crazy. Clearly I have issues!!
So today I have another Joe Fresh to show you! This is a pale creamy gray. It's more of a blue gray than a brown gray so it looks clean and sophisticated to my eyes. And I think it looks nice on my nubbins haha. Formula wise it was easy to control and not too thick or thin, however it is very sheer! The first coat it didn't even look like I had anything on my nails. This is four coats and it's still not completely opaque, but I don't mind because when I lost the length I also lost the gross staining I had on my nails! Blessing in disguise!
I think I mentioned this in my first post, Joe Fresh is available in Superstores here in Canada and is dirt cheap at 3 for $10.  Bottles do hold only 6 ml though.

So pictures are outside in natural light. It is yet another gloomy, overcast day here in Central Alberta!

Okay and this is completely unrelated to nail polish, but I think my computer is possessed. The typing line thingy, I don't know what it's called. The vertical line that flashes and shows where you're typing, mouse pointer maybe? Anyway it keeps moving around or just disappearing entirely, without me doing anything! And sometimes the window minimizes itself. Super weird and SUPER annoying. Cursor! That's word I was looking for! Hahaha.




Nail Mail!

So this is actually from last week but for some reason I'm just putting it up now! This nail mail came from LLarowe. I know I've featured a few polishes I've gotten from that site, but I'll give you some more information about it. Llarowe is run by a wonderful woman named Leah An, and she carries hard to find and international lines, such as Glitter Gal, A-England, HITS, Ozotic Pro, and many others. She also stocks indie sellers like Enchanted Polish and Girly Bits. And if that isn't great enough, she recently announced that she will be adding three new indie lines soon! I highly suggest that you check out her site!  You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook!

Anyway, now that I've gushed about her amazing store, I will talk about the polishes! First, I HAD to buy some of the Ozotics that are being discontinued. I ordered Ozotic Elytra 528, and one of the holographics, 513, which is a purple holo! I also ordered three polishes from HITS: Twist, which is a blue and green flakie in a blue jelly base; Atena, a bright pink holo, and Moonbow. I didn't research my swatches thoroughly and it turns out Moonbow is almost a dead dupe for 528! Oops! I'm really not upset about it though, I think of it as backup!

Last but not least, I also bought Promise Me by Girly Bits and a mini of Lizard Belly by Glitter Gal.

What an awesome nail mail package! I've already posted on Atena, and the rest will be coming soon!

Ooh I almost forgot! I made this blog it's own email and twitter, you can write me at lacquerliciouslove@gmail.com and follow me @LacquerliciousL! I did it mainly because I share posts on twitter lots, and I figured it was probably annoying for my non-lacquerhead friends to keep seeing all these nail posts. So I made them a home of their own :)

And I'm so sorry the bottle shots here are atrocious. I have a hard enough time taking pictures of my nails, you'd think a simple bottle shot would be easier but apparently not!



Sunday 24 June 2012

Jelly Sandwich with Revlon Royal

Hi there! I hope you all had a great weekend, I really didn't do too much. It's hard to find stuff to do that doesn't involve food or drinking, I'm 15 weeks away from my competition so that means I need to be strict. So I stayed at home with my boyfriend watching movies and painting my nails, of course.  This time I did something a little bit different for me. I bought Revlon Royal a while ago because of the hype it gets on blogs, and I have to say I can see why! The colour is bright and intense and doesn't look black in low lights or inside. And the jelly finish is awesome on its own or as a sandwich. For this look I used two coats of Revlon, then a coat of Revlon Stunning, then another coat of Royal. Stunning is silver and holographic microglitter with small silver hexes. The third coat of Royal covered the holo-ness of the glitter more than I wanted, so I added China Glaze Fairy Dust sparingly over the top. The only negative thing about the polishes was that Royal wanted to run up into my cuticles, it was a little hard to control. 

The weather here is gross again, I ran out and took these pictures in the only 5 minutes of sun we've had in the last two days. Stupid Alberta weather. Excuse the tipwear too, work isn't kind to my nails.




 Blurred to show the pretty sparkle!

Thursday 21 June 2012

HITS No Olimpo Atena

Hello! Yesterday I had some awesome nail mail from Llarowe, I got a few of the discontinued Ozotics as well as some other polishes that caught my eye. Including this one, Atena from the No Olimpo collection of holographics. Before I got into reading nail polish blogs, I had never seen a holographic polish before. They're amazing, and I'm very happy to own several now. This one is awesome because it's such a bright colour. It seems like lots of holos out there are really pale subdued shades, but this way you get the double whammy of bright pink and holo! Formula was good, I used three coats with basecoat but no topcoat. I didn't have any problems with patchiness or streaking. The HITS brush is a little different but once you get used to it, it works fine. In the shade this looks like a bright cranberry pink with silver shimmer, but out in the sun or bright lights you can see the rainbows! I apologize for the weird bit of polish on my ring finger, I didn't see it in real life and now the sun is hiding again so I can't retake them. The weather here is so unpredictable!






Sunday 17 June 2012

Quo by Orly Purple Daydream

Hello! Happy weekend everybody! I'm bagged today, last night my boyfriend and I drove down to Calgary to see Porter Robinson. It was a good show and lots of fun to go dancing for the night, but we (namely me) drove back after the show because we had to be home early today and I am sleepy! Definitely going to be napping before work.
Today I have another bright polish for you. This one is my boyfriend's favorite, he actually bought it for me after seeing it on one of his clients. He asked that I wear it again soon, so I decided to put it up on here! It's from a brand called Quo that is available exclusively at Shoppers Drug Mart. The nail polish line is parented by Orly, so it's of good quality. The colour is called Purple Daydream, although you can see that it's really not purple at all. This is a bright fuschia, almost neon. In fact it does dry to satin matte, so remember your top coat! This is another polish with secret shimmer, which becomes more obvious when topcoatted. Formula was good, as you would expect from a polish giant like Orly. I believe I used three coats for peace of mind, two probably would have been okay but I have some staining near the free edge from a blue colour I wore a while back. Gross.
Photos are all outside in the sun! I wish it would be sunny more, June has been ridiculously rainy so far. I want to swatch my holos!


Saturday 16 June 2012

China Glaze Custom Kicks

I've been painting my nails like crazy lately! I bought this colour quite a while ago and it's been sitting neglected and forlorn in my untrieds bin. I finally put it on and I was like "Whoa, why have I been ignoring you all this time?!" This colour is awesome. Bright blue-green, with a very hidden golden shimmer. It shows up on the bottle but not much on the nail, and not with my crappy old camera haha. I would almost count this as a creme because unless you're peering at your nails you aren't going to see much shimmer. This colour is from the Kicks collection China Glaze put out way back in 2009. That's pretty old. Formula wise I recall this being decent. I doubled up on base coat because I was afraid of staining and when I took it off, I didn't have any. So that's good. I think I used three coats because that's just how I roll. Trying to take a picture of this polish was a real pain (you like my alliteration??) my camera did not want to focus to save its life. Kind of like me right now, but I'm writing this post very late at night because I couldn't sleep. :( Anyway, on to the good stuff. 
The first one is indoors at night with (badly aimed) flash, the second two are outdoors in the sun. If you look really closely you can kind of see the shimmer where the sun hits my nails. And also a random piece of lint or something attached to my ring finger in the bottom picture :S




Friday 15 June 2012

OPI I Don't Give a Rotterdam

Hello! :) A week or two ago I was at the mall with my boyfriend and he was sweet enough to treat me to a few nail polishes! I picked some I had been eyeing from the Holland collection OPI put out recently. The one I'm showing you today is I Don't Give a Rotterdam. The name makes me smile! I really like this colour, I didn't have much in my collection for blues. A few cremes, dark blues, a couple frosty disasters. This one is different than all of them though! It's a light, slightly greyed out blue with silvery and gold shimmer. Very pretty. I Have a Herring Problem from the same collection is quite similar, but more warm toned. I wanted a "truer" blue so I went with IDGR.
The formula was the kind I love to work with- thin enough to put where I wanted it without being so runny it flooded my cuticles. I like thinner coats because I feel like it dries better (yes even though I use quick-dry top coat). I believe I needed three coats, but once again my coats tend to be thin.
After I put it on and took a few pictures I decided I wasn't done, and added Base flakie by Up Colors. I really liked the combo in real life, but trying to take a decent picture was frustrating. My camera was pretty much like LOL, nope!!
These pictures were indoors in natural light. I think the last one may have been in dim lighting because the flakies showed more.




Monday 11 June 2012

Sally Hansen HD Lite

Hi there! Sorry for my absence the past few days. Things are ramping up here because I have started contest prep, I am less than 17 weeks out now from my first ever bikini competition! I'm super excited but that means that now I have to be much more strict with my eating and make time for cardio first thing in the morning AND going back to the gym later to train weights. So between the extra cooking, planning, and gym time, it took me a while to get into a groove to have time to blog.
Today I have a polish that's a few years old. It's from the first range of HD colors Sally Hansen put out, and up until very recently, it was the only yellow I had! I think it's a good one. The formula is a little but runny but not too difficult to work with, and the colour builds up to opacity after 3 coats, which for a yellow is not bad at all! The color is bright and saturated, and has a slightly metallic finish. I think it's a great colour for summer, very sunshine-y and happy!
It was overcast the day I swatched this, so photos are indoors in indirect sunlight. For some reason the camera made everything look more cool whenever I tried to take a close up, the color is a bit warmer, like in the third picture.



Tuesday 5 June 2012

Claire's Mini Neon- Orange

Happy Saturday everyone! I've spent the day doing absolutely nothing, I worked a split shift yesterday and picked up a shift waitressing at a nightclub last night so I needed to recover! I didn't get home until almost 4 am and I was so tired I crawled into bed with my clothes on haha. Later on my boyfriend and I are going for dinner with another couple, but that's about all the excitement we have planned.
Now that it's summer, neons are super big right now. They're not usually my speed, but I picked up a set of 5 neon mini polishes from Claire's ages ago and thought what the heck. I went with the orange today because I haven't used it before. I used a coat of white underneath to amp up the color, and it's definitely bright! Formula wise, I did find it to be kind of streaky and patchy. Thicker coats helped but I still needed 4, and maybe it would have looked better with 5. It also dried matte, so I used topcoat to shine it up. The color is definitely BRIGHT though, my camera couldn't get it right! Pictures kept making it look yellowish, it's very very orange in real life.
 Haha that is all written from Saturday, I didn't get around to putting pictures up till today.