Catrice Beam Me Scotty!

I love Catrice, oh yes, I do. =) I'm so lucky that I have a long distance buddy who is able to get these for me. I love the bottle, I love the brush, I love the formula on all that I've tried, and this baby is no exception.

Beam Me Scotty! is part of Catrice's Out of Space limited edition collection. I totally needed it just for the name, but luckily it's also a stunning polish. It's a beautiful forest green with a suede finish. I know it looks grey here, but trust me, it's forest green.

Here it is with shiny top coat, which is how I wore it. This is two coats, but only because I wasn't sure how the wear would be. This was perfection in one coat. I took some shots outside as well to try to get it to show green instead of grey.

These are better, but still not perfect. The Swatchaholic has some great swatches of this collection. I'm sorry I couldn't get mine to be more color accurate. =\

Bottom line - another winner from Catrice!

Happy Wednesday, folks... and thanks for stopping by!

Golden Rose Metallic 10 - Fail on My Skintone =(

These pictures make the situation look better than it actually is. It gave me dirty zombie hands. My mother walked by and said, "That is... not flattering... at all." I know it doesn't look bad in the pictures, but it's really not pretty. It's a shame because the polish itself is wonderful, great formula, dreamy application. I think it would look great on someone with warmer toned skin than me. But I'm posting the pics anyway since I figure someone might be looking for swatches of it someday.

H&M No Mambo Jambo

This is another H&M polish that I received in a swap with a lovely nail boarder. I absolutely love this baby, though I have to say that it is a close cousin of China Glaze Turned Up Turquoise.

I don't know what it is about these more green leaning turquoises, but it's incredible to me how different they look indoors and outdoors. I wish I could say that it's user error or something weird with my camera, but nope - these are actually pretty darn color accurate, it just looks that different under different kinds of lighting.

As with Peppermint Fusion, the formula on this baby is really top notch. It's not a neon like Turned Up Turquoise, so it doesn't dry with that flat finish, but the color is quite close. The biggest difference is that the shimmer in this one is more blue leaning than more green leaning. I know I should have compared them, but I was working and tired and just wanted to do my nails!

I can't decide if I want to keep this one or Turned Up Turquoise - I'm leaning towards this one because I like the formula more. I may end up keeping both just because Turned Up Turquoise dries so fast... hmm! 

Anyway! Thanks for stopping by and for reading my ponderances of which polish to keep!

Request for a Favor - Julep Referral Program

Hi folks! I just heard back from Julep, and there was something wrong with their referral program. If you used my referral link to sign up for the Julep Maven program, it didn't get credited properly. If you used my link to sign up, if you could shoot me an e-mail using the contact button on the right side of the blog with your name and/or e-mail address, Julep says that they can track down those credits for me. 

It's totally fine if you're not comfortable doing that, but I just thought I'd ask. Thanks a ton! =)

Orly Stone Cold

Hello, gorgeous! Stone Cold is the other polish I wanted from Orly's Mineral FX collection, and I picked it up yesterday.

I'm not sure what to call this finish. It's kind of like a glass fleck, but it's really more like very, very small flakies.

The formula is a little odd. It started off really good, but it started feeling oddly goopy by the time I got to my second hand. I think I'll add a little thinner to it next time I use it and see if that helps.

It dried totally smooth for me, which is nice. I was kind of expecting it to have a rough finish, but it's smooth with just one coat of top coat, yay!

Kind of running out of things to say here. *Derp* It's beautiful. Get it!

Macro!

And a comparison with Orly Sweet Peacock and Orly Lunar Eclipse. It's not a dupe to either of those. It does remind me a bit of Lunar Eclipse, but without the purple flash - and it's actually got much more shimmer too.

Hope the comparisons help you guys! As always, thanks for stopping by!

Golden Rose Metallic 08

Yay, my latest swap package with my friend Nola came today, and in it were some major beauties! It was a very timely arrival too since I've discovered that I absolutely love metallic polishes, and this package included a few of Golden Rose's new metallic polishes. The one I elected to wear first is 08, which is a cooler leaning green that also flashes aqua.

I tried to capture the duochrome goodness, but the finish is so insanely shiny that my camera kept freaking out!

I have no experience with Golden Rose, but this polish seems pretty great to me. The formula is excellent, I barely had to clean up at all. I can't comment on wear time because I've only had it on for a few hours. 

I got some shots of it in the sun. Oooh, shiny!

I'm not sure if these are available anywhere in the US yet. They're not up on the Golden Rose website yet, so I don't know if they'll make it here or not. If you like metallics and have the opportunity though, I'd definitely get some of these. Color me very impressed!

H&M Peppermint Fusion

I first became aware of this polish when I saw it posted over at Lacquerized. I wanted it immediately, but I didn't spend a lot of time trying to track it down since it seems to only be available in Europe. I pretty much put it out of my mind, then one of my buddies told me I really needed this polish... then another sweet nail boarder offered to get it for me as a part of a swap. And so the lemming came full circle and came to live with me. =)

Don't ask me what periwinkle has to do with peppermint, but Peppermint Fusion is indeed periwinkle. It's a beautiful creamy periwinkle with blue shimmer.

The shimmer isn't super in-your-face, but it's definitely noticeable, and it gives the polish a really nice depth. Side note: I wanted to compare this to Essence Forget Me Not, but my bottle of Forget Me Not is MIA. I think it's in Missouri with my husband.

The formula is really fantastic, super easy to work with. The brush is good. I'm not wild about the flat H&M caps, but they're not a huge problem either. 

I did use three coats for this mani. It looked okay with two, but maybe a little patchy in spots, and it's perfect with three. The drying time was just fine even at three coats, so I'm not complaining at all.

Total love. ♥

Orly Rock Solid

Rock Solid is from Orly's new Mineral FX collection. It is hands down the most difficult polish I've ever tried to photograph, so I apologize that these are not up to my usual standards. Rock Solid is a dark silvery grey foil type polish, but with a twist. It's infused with very fine holographic glitter particles that sparkle like nobody's business.

If you click to enlarge these, you'll be able to see some of the holo sparkle going on. (Fun fact, you can click to enlarge all my pics... just in case you didn't know!). My camera does NOT want to show you how awesome this polish truly is. It kept freaking out and wanting to make everything blurry. o.O

The formula is great. Two easy coats, not fussy at all. It is rather gritty, however, and it took me two coats of top coat to make it smooth.

I took pictures in every conceivable lighting configuration I could think of to try to show the sparkle. These last few are not entirely color accurate, so try to ignore that part and just concentrate on the sparkle.

And a macro to try to show the sparkle that way! They make me think of small sparkling Christmas lights. =)

As always, thanks for stopping by! =)