OPI Alice in Wonderland Collection

Meh. Not much else to say. After the winter's incredible reds, these are lackluster and boring. Winter's glitters were more interesting too. I love glitter, especially microglitter, and these are nice ones but they just don't wallop me over the head. Dunno why. Maybe I am over glitter tossed in clear polish unless it totally covers the nail? Who knows.

The OPI Alice in Wonderland Collection is small, and I bought the mini set.

OPI Thanks so Muchness! is red. It's a nice blue red shade. It's no world shaker

OPI Absolutely Alice is a neat dark blue that seems somehow to have black in it. It has gold micro glitter mixed in with the blue, for interest and dazzle.


OPI Off With Her Red! is oranger in person than the picture. It reminds me of burnt carrot casserole or something.


OPI Mad As a Hatter is a mainly dark purple microglitter with opalescent/pastel rainbow microglitter. If it had better coverage I'd probably be in love. This is four coats.

Zoya Reverie Spring 2010 Collection

I love pink/green duochrome shimmer. I LOVE it. And every single color in Zoya's Reverie Collection for Spring 2010 has it. Oh sigh. It's so fucking purty.

This is a kind of "Valentine's Day" collection, made up of two pinks, two red/oranges, a purple and a silver all in incredibly thick rainbow microshimmer, so thick it's nearly a frost in application. You might see streaks when you put it on, but let it settle and it goes back to a sleek coat. Just try to be a bit even in your application and you should be okay. It's a good formula, Zoya pretty much always is, so it applies nicely and two coats did me for a nice opaque polish job. This absolutely needs topcoat though, for you non-topcoat wearers, as I found it dried a bit dull, but you should wear topcoat anyway. It brings out the full beauty of a nail polish (except a matte, of course).

You can't always see the duochrome effect in my pics, I think the purple, Adina, shows it well, and I think Reece shows the pink aspect okay. Just know it has it.

Zoya Happi, the light pink:


Zoya Reece, the dark pink:


Zoya Gwin, the orangier red/orange:


Zoya Lana, the redder red/orange:


Zoya Adina, the purple:


Zoya Laney, the silver:

Zoya Matte Velvet Winter Collection 2009

This is the last late post I have for 2009 Collections. Thankful sigh! And there's little to say about these except that I think Zoya perfected the suede/matte formula. These have sparkle even when matte, tons of color, great texture, apply easily, and are colors we didn't have before in matte. Great collection. I love them, even if they do remind me of Vegas casino Mardi Gras beads. I mean these colors are exactly the beads they give you.

Zoya Sativa is a gorgeous deep purple.


Zoya Harlow, yummy red grape? I dunno. Very pretty whatever you call it.


Zoya Veruschka is complete perfection. FOREST green, not the everpresent yellowish greens we get, and full of tiny sparkles.


And like I said a month or so before, if you already have FingerPaints Evergreen Dream (sold at Sally's and a lot cheaper than Zoya) if you slap a matte topcoat on it (here shown with Essie Matte About You)you have an exact dupe for Zoya Veruschka. I needed both, obviously.


What a great year it was eh?? Within the week I will post my 2009 Polish mayhem Awards for 2009, so stay tuned!!

OPI DS Mystery and DS Glow, Where I Have Been and My Nails

SO! Where have I been? Well, I did say I'd be gone most of December. The Winter Holidays are a time of much celebration and stuff to do in my life. Then on December 31, I had some surgery. I recovered just in time to start school, then get sick. Eyeroll and sigh. I am all better now, for the most part. But since I started clinicals in Nursing, I will be much busier. I have also run out of stuff to do daily polish posts about. I'll be posting stuff I buy, and most new collections, but I probably won't be posting daily any more. To top it all off, I have to keep my nails 1/8th inch from now on, so pretty much everything you are going to see from now on is fake nails. Eh, no biggie. I have one more collection to post, possibly tomorrow, then get ready for the POLISH MAYHEM 2009 POLISH COLLECTION AWARDS. My Top 5 Favorite and Least favorite Polish Collections of 2009!!!

So anyway on to OPI DS Mystery and DS Glow. I've been waiting for these a while, and I am sure most other blogs swatched these ahead of me. I like these. Same great DS formula, so very easy to use and so pigment rich. The shimmer in these is intense, pinpoint, and packs a nice punch. Your typical OPI DS. Great quality.

DS Mystery is a nearly black deep royal purple jelly with a bronze/old gold shimmer. Really nice. I expected a lighter shade, but this is lovely.


DS Glow is the same bronze/old gold shimmer as in DS Mystery, but that is all there is to this. I really love this. So many golds are frosts, or cremes with a lot of shimmer in them. This is slightly sheer, and is gonna look INCREDIBLE in the summer, next to a good tan. Wearing this is going to make you look like a summer goddess, trust me. Believe me you will be seeing it on my hands!


Nice. OPI DS polishes seem to disappoint me very seldom.

China Glaze Spring 2010 Up And Away Collection

I've had these a while, but with Holidays and an issue on the 30th I had not yet posted them.

What a bullseye. China Glaze Spring 2010 Up And Away Collection exactly hits that happy fresh spring mark, and this time while there are many colors I find few if any superfluous. Fun, frisky, candy-coated confections!! Exciting! There are only a few colors I would call pastel, most are vibrant. And I LOVE them. They are all cremes and I had to start thinning them after a bit to apply better, but a few drops of thinner and a topcoat makes these lovely shades I will be reaching for often. So well done, China Glaze. Kudos!!

China Glaze Flyin' High is a smoky medium blue. I can't wait to wear this with a matching tshirt. Dunno where THAT fashion mistake idea came from. But I want to. :P


China Glaze Four Leaf Clover seems more teal to me. But so great!


China Glaze Re-Fresh Mint! Mint is not my color but this is fresh and sweet.


China Glaze Lemon Fizz, light yellow. Nice shade, not orange, not gaudy.


China Glaze Happy Go Lucky is a bright sunny yellow. I don't like yellows, but this is well done.


China Glaze High Hopes. I think this orangy red looks exactly like a persimmon.


China Glaze Peachy Keen. Peach! I am sure somewhere I have a dupe of this. But it is a lovely peach. Not too pastel, not too orange.


China Glaze Heli-Yum. Yum indeed. Love it.


China Glaze Sugar High. So sexy girly candy. I want to suck on my fingertips like a flirt. COME AND EAT ME.


China Glaze Something Sweet is a pretty standard pink, but I like the hint of blue.


China Glaze Light as Air. Again we probably all have a dupe, but this is soooo nice.


China Glaze Grape Pop - GREAT shade. I don't recall having anything exactly like this, certainly not in a creme. Edited to add this shade is very close to China Glaze Grape Juice but no glass fleck.



Pick some of these up. These will be great fresh pops of color for spring, and will easily transfer into summer.

FingerPaints Holiday Collection

I like FingerPaints. They have a good formula, easy to apply, looks great. Their holiday collection is six shimmers. I did not get the medium red with very fine subtle gold shimmer (Snowman's Scarf), it just looked like a ton of other stuff to me. Also I did not get Sparkling Snow, which is your standard silver shimmer. IMO if you have one you have them all.

The other four are pretty nice, though! the shimmer in most of these is large grain, almost like clear sheets. It's neat. It manages to be subtle and yet impactful. If glitter is a rhinestone covered dress, and shimmer is a sequinned dress, this is a satin dress. If you get me. It shines yet it is not on your face. If you can wear these color shades to work, you won't be worried they'll be too bling and get you a raised eyebrow. I think they're sophisticated.

FingerPaints Candy Cane Shimmer is a medium red with smaller shimmer than the other polishes. The thing about this is it really does kind of have a satin sheen, rather than any shimmer. And the genius of this polish is that it looks EXACTLY like the red ribbon you buy at the store to wrap presents with. Not the new prismatic or mylar ones, the old style. Go check it out and see! I think it's so cool.


FingerPaints Decked With Dazzle is my least favorite. It's a reddish purple, kinda a red grape look. It has very nice chunky shimmer, but it's very sheer. It's pretty but I am not wowed. But you may be and the quality is nice, just the sheerness was unwelcome.


Gorgeous deep purple with the same chunky shimmer, FingerPaints Icy Iris is absolutely taking a place in my "keep" pile.


The clear queen of the bunch is FingerPaints Evergreen Dreams. Wow, a green not named after Envy. Imagine that! It's a gorgeous emerald green shimmer. One incredibly cool thing about it is when you apply a matte topcoat, it looks EXACTLY like Zoya Veruschka, which I will be demonstrating in the next couple of days when I review the Zoya Matte collection which came out a while ago, which I somehow neglected to be sent review copies of. :disgruntled and horrified face: Grin. Anyway this is a winner.


Here's FingerPaints Evergreen Dream first topped with Hard Candy Break Up, then FingerPaints Evergreen Dream topped with Hard Candy Break Up and Essie Matte About You topcoat! What I won't do for fun, eh?

Hard Candy New Polishes at Walmart

These are a fine formula. They seem to be a lot of dupes of other polishes, so if the polish you want to dupe is over $5, you can buy these. Some of the polishes are quite pretty!

Hard Candy Envy is a black jelly with dark bluish green shimmer. Screams Zoya Suvi with way less shimmer. This is less $$ but also less pretty.


Hard Candy Hot Pants. When I saw this I said "Oh, hey! Nubar!" But it's cheaper and just as nice as their jelly glitters, so hey why not?


Hard Candy Mr. Wrong. Now this is a fairly close dupe of the incredible Sally Arabian Night I posted not too long ago, and while the base color isn't quite the same (I think Sally's is prettier) there is far more golden shimmer here, this is a STUNNER I would suggest everyone buy!!


There's another I have but I haven't swatched it yet. Stay tuned.

MollyHell's Grab Bag! - Nina Ultra Pro Purple X-ing

Do I need to type anything but this is available now??

Nina Ultra Pro Purple X-ing:

MollyHell's Grab Bag! - Dusky, Hot Sexy Purples

Thar they blow! Could be reddish, could be bluish. Whatever, I love them!

Sally Hansen Flirt:


Rimmel Night Before:


Rimmel Hard Edged:


Color Club Snow Queen:


Chanel Vendetta:


BB Couture Maleficent Magenta:


Creative Heiress:

MollyHell's Grab Bag! - NYX Las Vegas Green and Nyx Las Vegas Purple

Two great colors I couldn't live without. Nyx Las Vegas Green is less sheer than it looks. It's a brilliant dark emerald with dark blue shimmer. It is a lot like a greener version of Nubar Earth. I love it.


Nyx Las Vegas Purple is a deep purple shimmer with plenty of rainbow glitter. This

Pretty sure this is still available, but be sure to specify Green or Purple when you order, or contact the seller first, as both are just called "Las Vegas".

China Glaze Wizard of Ooh Ahz Returns!

I got a great package today! Whee! Wizard of Ooh Ahz Returns! Here is what China Glaze has to say about it:

"Click your Ruby Pumps and come travel with China Glaze down the yellow brick road to meet "The Wizard of Ooh Ahz"! Just in time for the holidays, China Glaze is re-releasing the ever-so popular Wizard of Ooh Ahz collection! Very similar to the original version that was released in 2001, these colors will remind you of exactly why China Glaze glitters are always in the forefront! Colors in the 6 piece acetate include:
Ruby Pumps: An all time red glitter favorite!
Good Witch: Pink Frost with specks of pink micro-glitter
C-C-Courage: Purple Frost with specks of purple micro glitter
Dorothy Who?: Blue polish with massive amounts of silver and blue glitter!
Cowardly Lyin': Gold frost with specks of gold micro glitter
the Ten Man: Silver frost with specks of silver micro glitter

China Glaze will take you to that special polish place, some where over the rainbow with these gorgeous glitter polishes!"

The formula is good, stays in place. This stuff is a bit sheer, all of these pictures are three coats. It dries quickly. VERY sparkly. These pix are on glue-on nails (except Ruby Pumps). All have topcoat, which I think the frosts need as they dry semi-matte. Without further ado, the polishes:

Let's start with Ruby Pumps, ruby red jelly with red glitter. This has not changed from the Ruby Pumps they always sell, so it's of course gorgeous.


The Ten Man, frost with tiny bright sparks of silver. Glitterier than the picture. The tip of the bottom finger is how glittery the polish actually is, also the gold and pink and purple.


Cowardly Lyin' is also far glitterier than the picture. Rely on the bottle to see the flash, as somehow this and the silver kinda photographed more showing the frost base than the micro-glitter.


China Glaze Dorothy Who? is a nice medium blue jelly, kind of a light cobalt, with silver and blue tiny glitter, and I also see light purple micro glitter in there too. Even blingier than in the picture.


Good Witch is a very pretty medium rose frost with tons of pink micro glitter. Once again go look at the bottom finger tip of The Ten Man picture to know how sparkly this really is.


C-C-Courage is my favorite. A dark grape purple frost with a somehow dusky tinge to it, it has not only great little micro-stars of purple glitter but a super all-over purple sheen to it.


So there ya go. I do not know if these are glass flecks or not, the insert I quoted only says they are glitters. I will email China Glaze and ask, then update this post. Also there is no appearance of the rumored on Twitter redo of Emerald Sparkle with gold glass fleck. I know they re-released Emerald Sparkle recently in a sort of themed re-release of old colors for the Holidays, called "Love You Snow Much", which also had Ruby Pumps in it. Maybe the redo of Emerald Sparkle is a fiction, or maybe it'll come later. I'll try to see if I can get an answer on that.