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!

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! =)

Orly Sweet Peacock

Like yesterday's beauty, Fowl Play, Sweet Peacock is from Orly's Birds of a Feather collection.

Sweet Peacock is a gorgeous medium blue... foil? Metallic? I'm not sure which this is... perhaps it's both. =) I have a ton of blues, but somehow nothing like this in my collection.

Great formula, two easy coats. A little brush-strokey, but nothing I can't handle.

I even got a compliment on this one. I had to sign for a package today (my Ozotics *squee*) and my mailman goes, "Hey, nice nails!" ^_^

Absolutely gorgeous. I think this might be my next pedi!

Happy Hump Day. Thanks for reading!

As Promised - Orly Fowl Play

Love, love, love, love, LOVE.

Holy schnikies.

Three coats. I actually think it would have been fine with two, but I was battling a headache and I needed three coats to fix the messy application.

I am like this:  O.O

Incredibly beautiful and complex. Shimmer, flakies, glitter, all wrapped up in a dark purple jelly base.

Unbelievable.

Happy Tuesday, y'all. Thanks for stopping by!

Orly Royal Navy

The theme this week on the nail board is Forgotten Loves, polishes that we love but haven't worn in a few months. The first one that popped to mind for me was Orly Royal Navy.

Royal Navy is a royal blue jelly that is packed with aqua shimmer. It tends to settle to the bottom of the bottle, so when I know I'm going to be wearing it, I turn it upside down for a couple of hours to let the shimmer mix back into the polish.

I've mentioned before that my husband has a mutant power where he can pick out the polishes that I should get, even when I'm not that excited about them at first. This is the first polish he ever did that with.

I picked it up and put it back in the rack and he basically went, "ARE YOU CRAZY?" and pulled it back out of the rack. ^_^ I love my husband for many reasons, but my heart just soared that day.

Interesting aside, you'll probably notice that my pictures look dramatically different with this post. I added some more lights about a week ago, and I realized that instead of making my pictures look better, the new lights made them look worse. o.O

I asked for some advice on the nail board today, and some lovely ladies helped me out. (Shout out of thanks to Love8Brain, rachtotheizzo, JabberwockJess, steffels, ch3ryl89, shellly - as well as KtB for moral support!). They taught me how to use my camera (duh) and now I am actually happy with the photos on this blog. 

It never ceases to amaze me how helpful and generous and just plain awesome this community can be. Thank you, ladies. You saved my sanity today! =)

And, as always, thanks for stopping by!

Orly Frisky + Comparisons

When I first saw the promotional bottle pics of Orly's Happy Go Lucky collection, I immediately got that telltale tingle of a lemming being born.

The blue shade practically screamed that it had to come and live with me. I was also interested in the green and the purple, but the blue... the blue! I was a bit concerned, though, that this would turn out to be too close to other sort of medium turquoise blue/aquas that I own, so I knew that I had to see this one in person before blindly purchasing it. I popped into Sally's yesterday to find a full display of these. Yay, I could compare the bottle to other similar shades! I compared it to China Glaze For Audrey and Orly Gumdrop, and it was more blue than either of those, so home with me it came!

Ooh, ahh. It's so pretty! It practically screams summer to me. I was still worried about duplicates in my stash though, so I pulled out some the most likely candidates.

Once I had them lined up like this, I could tell that none of them were actually that close. But bottle appearances can be deceiving, so I swatched them all next to each other.

Now. If you don't have the same kind of crazy that I do, you might not need this color. But for me, the fact that it's more blue and brighter than any of its cousins that I own means that I am a very happy camper right now. =)

The formula is what I've come to expect from Orly. It's the right consistency, neither too thin nor too thick, and gives full coverage in two easy and cooperative coats.

What can I say? I love it! =D

I hope you found this post helpful and, as always, thanks for stopping by!