Misa Taking Chances

Hey all! Yeah yeah I know, I'm the worst blogger ever. This is also the last of my saved up swatches, so who knows when my next post will happen! I have been painting my nails and have actually done some really cute manis, however they unfortunately went undocumented.

This is a polish I picked up about a month ago on an impromptu Winners trip. I'm not sure what collection it's from, but I liked the goldy colour!

I can't remember if this is three coats or more, I'm sorry! Anyway short post but just something to get the cobwebs cleared out, hopefully I'll be able to post more!

Nail Pattern Boldness Boop Oop a Dupe

Hello there! Monday again, I can't complain though because I'm actually off today! Hopefully I'll do some swatching so I have posts for you this week! ;) After wearing EMIO for a few days, I thought I should throw a little somethin' somethin' on top to spice it up. My indie collection has been growing pretty fast lately, and I recently picked up a few polishes from Nail Pattern Boldness via Llarrowe. This is meant to be a dupe for the infamous Clarins 230 multichrome polish. I don't own it, nor am I ever likely to given it's astronomical selling price, so this is good enough for me!

The shimmer has a beautiful glow to it, and shifts from reddish to gold and even green at extreme angles, although I forgot to capture that on camera. I only used one coat over EMIO. The first picture is indirect lighting, then I hit it with some ray power!

I can't wait to try this over other colours! I've seen it used over a dark blue and it look fantastic that way, it might be my next experiment.

OPI Every Month Is Oktoberfest

I'm back again! This time I have a shade from the OPI Germany collection from last fall. At first I passed on it at first, but then as time went by I became convinced I had to get the shimmers or I'd regret it later! Anyone else do that to themselves? When my bottle of this colour arrived I was worried it was the same as my Ger-manicure because they looked so alike in the bottles, and I knew that there was a labelling mishap with the press pack samples bloggers received. BUT it was all good, my shades are right!

Every Month Is Oktoberfest is the most amazing dark purple, almost blue base but with gorgeous warm plum shimmer. It glows on the nail like jewels!  I think this was two coats. I didn't write it down, oops! Topcoat on all nails except my middle, not that it makes much of a difference with the shine!

Look at how that baby lights up in direct lighting! So pretty, I'm so happy I ended up ordering this one! And just wait until you see what else I did with it ;)

February Untrieds- China Glaze Bare if You Dare

Hey! So for today's untried I have an older China Glaze polish. I don't know when it's from, I picked it up in a clearance bin from a random salon. At first I was a little afraid I wouldn't like this colour because it looks almost frosty, but I ended up being  happy with it!

Three coats, formula was fine. There was a little bit of VNL left but I was coolwith it.

As you can see it's an orange with an almost frosty shimmer. Or is that pearl? I'm not sure, but I like it! I think it will be a great summer colour with a tan!

Don't forget to check out Amanda and Amanda for their untrieds!

Cult Nails Coveted- February Untrieds

I'm posting this polish as part of the February Untrieds Challenge along with Amanda and Amanda!

Man oh man is this ever an awesome polish!! I have definitely joined the Cult. Coveted came out as part of the recent Behind Closed Doors collection, and as soon as I saw swatches I knew I would be ordering it.

Coveted is a beautiful emerald green jelly with shimmer and green flakes. The flakes don't have a colour shift but they add a beautiful depth to the polish. Because it is a jelly it takes three coats to reach opacity but the formula is great and so easy to control. With Emerald having been declared the Pantone 2013 colour of the year, I'm sure to be getting some use out of this baby!

I did notice some texture from the flakes even after I topped it with Wicked Fast (also my new favorite topcoat) so if you have something like Gelous I would use that overtop to smooth it out. Any stray flakies that are poking off the end of the nail can be filed smooth, and I just pushed any that were poking out by my cuticule further into the polish while it was wet so I could get a nice smooth line.

So pretty! I love green nail polish, do you?

Joe Fresh Cinnamon

Hi there! Happy Friday! Have any plans for the weekend? My boyfriend and I are going on a date tonight so I'm excited about that, dinner and bowling, yay!

This is a colour I picked up last time I was at Superstore, I hadn't seen it before so I thought I thought I should pick it up. (Not like I was at Superstore expressly to buy polish...) It's a blue-based red with gold shimmer, and a great winter colour. Formula was good, two coats and it's good to go! Unfortunately the gold shimmer did get drowned a little in the base, but it's still a pretty colour.

In other news I'm still trying to fix my camera's white balance, I loved how it was set before but now my pictures are coming out so dark! I want to Photoshop them as little as possible so I really want to get it back to my custom setting. Ugggggh I'm so mad at myself!

Anyway I will hopefully have that figured out soon, I have lots of swatching to do!

Some Random Swatches!

Hey everyone! I hope your weekend is going well, mine got off to a bad start when I came home to find that my kitten had hurt himself falling and the vet said he broke his pelvis :( He's doing better now, hopefully he will heal up on his own and not need surgery. BUT my weekend is ending on a better note, I'm going to see Zedd tonight! I'm very excited, he's been on my to-see list for quite a while.

On a polish note, I have a few random swatches here and I don't feel like I have enough to say about them for each to get its own post.

Dynamite Blue Symphony- this is a little polish I grabbed in a clothing store I like, I was waiting in line and happened to see a display up by the front. Naturally I caved and grabbed a couple. This is a deep, bright blue shimmer. Not unique but a good shade to have on hand, and formula was good! Two coats.

China Glaze Immortal- A colour from the Halloween collection, Immortal is a grey creme with blue and pink shimmer. I really like it, but as you can see it was a bit patchy at two coats. Next time I'll be sure to do three! Formula was good otherwise, easy to control.

Jessica Platinum Wishes- I LOVE This polish. I've shown it over China Glaze Liquid Leather. It has multicoloured and holo multiglitter in a clear base. The colours look like blue, red, and green predominately, but there are others in there. I haven't seen this polish on blogs and I have no idea why not, it's from the Holiday collection and it's amazing. I have another glitter to show but it's like I forgot how to work my camera when I was photographing and all my pictures were terrible.

That's all for now! I hope you enjoyed.

Nubar Elegant Indigo/CND Raspberry Sparkle

Hey everyone!! How was your Halloween weekend? I'm scheduling this post, Saturday night I headed up to Edmonton with my boyfriend and some of our friends and we went to a party called Scream, it had Nicky Romero and Hardwell djing and they're fantastic, I'm sure I had a great time! Haha it's weird writing from the past, I'm not sure what tense to use.

This polish I picked up at Winners a long long time ago, but it seemed like it would be a biatch to photograph so I left it for Future me to deal with when I had a better set up. That would be now, so here we are! This is a black polish with glassfleck shimmer that shifts from pink to purple to blue. Super awesome! I'm not really much of one for straight black polish so the colourful shimmer in this one really brightens it up nicely for me. Formula wise this was great, nice and easy to control and only needed two coats for opacity. If you can find this, I'd recommend it!

Pretty neat hey? Anyways I thought that wasn't quite splashy enough so I did a gradient with my CND Effects Raspberry Sparkle. I'm a big fan of the CND effects, especially the sparkle ones. They're like duochrome glassfleck polishes in a sheer base than can be used over a variety of colours. I love them but they are a little hard to find, if you're in Canada they can be found in Chatters and are on sale right now!

In this shot you can see more blue shimmer.

And here you can see the purple/pink shimmer!

What do you think about this shimmer? Do you have any effects type polishes that you like to use?

China Glaze Rainstorm

Hey all! This is going to be a super quick post because I have to go get ready for work (laaaaame)! This is an older polish I picked up in the sale bin at some random salon in West Edmonton Mall a few weeks ago. It looked interesting in the bottle so it came home with me!

Rainstorm is a medium cornflower blue polish with some bright blue microglitter in it! The microglitter doesn't look clumpy or gritty in the polish, it lays smooth and makes it look really interesting. On top of that, there's also a very very subtle violet shimmer, almost a pearl effect. I think it's a super pretty colour! Formula wise, this one was a little odd. It's very sheer and needed 4 coats, and it was thick but runny at the same time. I didn't have much trouble controlling it though. Maybe the formula is weird because it's an older polish? Anyway, here are the pics! All have Nail Tek II basecoat and SV topcoat!

I think it does look like a rainstorm, don't you?

Joe Fresh Mulberry

Hey folks! I'm back with another awesome Joe Fresh! Since I just talked about them Monday, I'll go right into the polish.

Mulberry is a deep, vampy wine colour with amazing gold and what looks like burgundy microglitter/shimmer. Once again, the shimmer almost looks like teeny tiny flakies a la Zoya Neeka, and I loved that so obviously I love this too! This is a FANTASTIC fall/winter polish and I'm super glad I scooped it up! Formula was, it was perfection, I only needed two coats and had hardly any cleanup. I will note that the tiny bottles on Joe Fresh polishes take some getting used to, but after that it's all good. I loved this so much that I ended my swatch session and put it on as a full mani!

Let's see some pictures! All have Nail Tek II basecoat and SV topcoat.

 Can we just take a moment here and look at that bottle? Amazing.

Love love love. Thank you Joe Fresh. If he was a person, I would have to marry him.  

A Few L'Oreals!

Hey everyone! How's it going today? It's my day off and I've spent the day doing errands and then working on the blog, I'm loving the new setup! Swatching is way more fun now :)
These polishes I picked up at WalMart a few weeks back, L'Oreal's newish nail polish line seems to have pretty basic colours but I've heard good things about the quality so I wanted to try them out! And I didn't have anything like these two in my stash so I figured I was filling a niche, right? ;)

First up is Walk on the Beach, which is a sandy nude creme shade just like the name describes. I found it to be a very cool neutral, leaning more to the grey side of things than to a warm orangey/peachy neutral. In the pictures it was giving me some lobster hands but in real life it was much better, and I was playing with my camera's white balance. About the formula, it did not live up to the hype. It might be my brush, but the polish kept having these "scratches" in it from the bristles and it didn't want to level out. I ended up doing three coats to try and smooth it but you can still see the lumpiness in photos. That said, it is a great colour and from a distance, you couldn't tell. It's definitely a great palette cleanser!

Next we have Safari Chic, an awesome army green. In the store and honestly right up until I was swatching this, I thought it was a straight creme as well but there's actually some fine silver shimmer in there! It's very very subtle but I thought it was kinda cool! Formula was a bit better on this one, I really only needed two coats but felt compelled to do three (better safe than sorry right?!) This green seems to have a bit more blue in it than some other khaki greens, I wouldn't say it has brown in it at all. I love that's it's faded, muted, but not "dirty" looking. I'm still undecided about the famous ugly/pretty colours and to me, this is just a pretty colour! My skin is a different colour here because I custom set my white balance, so this is perfect!

There you have it, my picks so far from the L'Oreal line! I bet these colours would look great in a nail art look together, maybe one day I'll get super adventurous and do a tape mani, but don't hold your breath haha! Thanks for looking :)

Zoya Neeka

So this polish I had seen on another blog and I fell in loooooooooooove. The smoky purple base, the teeny tiny gold glitter that almost looks like micro flakies... Just gorgeous. The only problem is that Zoya is very htf in my area, unless you order online. Which for some reason, I kept dragging my feet on doing. But then one lucky day, I saw it up for sale on a blogsale over at Polish Art Addiction and I snapped this pretty up! You're looking at three coats and a coat of SV to really bring out that shimmer!

Isn't she beeeeeeeeeeautiful? Also, this is the first post using my totally ghetto awesome lightbox! It's actually just a hacked up cardboard box that I modded using Chalkboard Nails' tutorial which you can find here. This is going to be a super useful tool to help my swatches look way better and I'm super excited. I also got a copy of Photoshop Elements, I had used Photoshop before but I am no expert at all and could basically only crop and rotate. I like the dummy version way better already! Anyway, I hope you enjoy and see you again real soon :)

China Glaze Ingrid

I wore this a while ago but I've been sitting on it until now because it just wasn't fall-weather enough here for me to post it! China Glaze Ingrid is from the Vintage Vixens collection. I had seen swatches online and was interested in it, and then it turned up in the sales bin of my local Chatters and had to get it! I've been on a crusade to try and make myself more fond of brown (not a colour I normally wear a lot of) and this was a nice starter!

Ingrid is a taupe brown with a gold shimmer, and the shimmer is what really makes me like this polish! The formula was good, I only needed two coats here for opacity.

 sun

shade

Now that fall has set in, I definitely need to get myself a lightbox, Alberta is WAY too cold to swatch outside in fall/winter. Its supposed to snow tomorrow. Gross right?

What do you like about fall polishes? Muted cremes, or rich jewel tone shimmers? I think I like both!

Revlon Sunshine Sparkle

So today I have another Revlon polish for you, also part of their core line. Sunshine Sparkle is a light buttery yellow with subtle silver shimmer. I love the colour of this polish, it's very light and happy! Unfortunately, the formula leaves much to be desired. It's sheer and streaky, and refuses to self-level. The pictures show four coats, and some nails could probably have used a fifth but I wasn't having any of that. It's also very slow to dry on it's own, a quick-dry topcoat is a must here! All that said, I still love the colour enough to keep it around until I find a better pastel yellow. 

Speaking of quick-dry topcoat, I need to find  some polish thinner soon because my Seche Vite is taking on the consistency of glue, yikes!

Well that is it for now, I hope you all have a lovely day and thanks for reading!

Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Exquisite Peach

So today I have a weird colour. This has been in my stash for a little over 5 years now. I bought this at some dollar-store type place shortly before my high school graduation because it almost exactly matched my dress. Oddly enough, now I don't care for this colour on me nail polish-wise, but I loved my dress. Anyway now that I have sufficiently aged myself, let's get on with it!
This colour is weird because the peach is offset with a strange greenish shimmer. The base colour itself doesn't change, so it's not a duochrome. I don't see colours with unusual shimmer often, I think I would like it a lot in a not-peach tone haha. Formula wise I don't recall having issues, it was sheer so I used three coats. The first photo is in sun, then in shade, then close up of the unusual shimmer. Hmm there appears to be some kind of bald spot on my pinkie, oops! Look away!

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!

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!

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

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.

China Glaze C-C-Courage

So today I have a polish from The Wizard of Ooh Ahz collection China Glaze put out in 2009. When I did some digging, I found out that this was actually a re-release of a collection originally from waaaaay back in 2001. It was re-released due to popular demand, so that's pretty cool!

C-C-Courage is a blueish purple with silver microglitter. The base color is shimmer as well, so it has a nice multidimensional look. It does dry with some texture, so be sure to use a topcoat for a nice glossy finish. I used three coats to be safe, if you use thicker coats you might be able to get away with two. 

I just bought this on TransDesign a month or so ago, so at least part of this collection is still around!

 Sun

Shade

Sun again!