Midtown Magic

I love this. I know it's everyone's standout from the Metro Collection, but I need to add in my love. Midtown Magic is a dark beauty. I've seen it described as a dark burgundy, but it looks like a deep chocolate brown with copper flecks to me. Whatever it is, it's gorgeous and I totally love it.

Meet Me Under the Mistletoe

Meet Me Under the Mistletoe is a gorgeous green sparkle bomb from a previous year of Orly's holiday collection. It has a blue-green base with lots of emerald/kelly green sparkles. This awesome combo results in the entire thing looking like a nice pine tree color. It catches the light beautifully, and I got lots of compliments while I was wearing it.

Lucerne-tainly Look Marvelous

I had an occasion to dress up in September, and I went and got my nails did. Because I was rockin' a bright blue dress with sparkly gunmetal shoes, I went with a sparkly gunmetal polish. I heart the matchy, matchy.

Lucerne-tainly look Marvelous is from OPI's Switzerland collection from fall of 2010. Its a shimmery gunmetal grey -- maybe a foil? It's close if it's not a true foil. It is SUCH a great color for us pale, cool-toned girls. Pictures below.

Zoya Jem

When I saw the previews for the Zoya Mirrors collection, I knew I needed to have Jem. Then I found a blogger who was having a mystery grab bag blog sale (10 for 27!) and this gem came in it (hah, Jem/Gem!)

Jem is a lovely purpley-red color with a lot of shimmery goodness. It pulls redder on me than most people (which is odd, because I tend to pull things bluer). Pictures 'neath:

CG in the City

So that hiatus happened. I apologize for the delay in posting. It's been the crazy busy season at work and September and October zipped by before I had a chance to catch my breath.

Today, I have for you CG in the City. It's been posted everywhere at this point, but here's my two cents. I didn't expect to love this given a lot of the negative buzz in the blogosphere. It's a multi-color glitter in a clear base. It took me three coats to build it up to a mostly opaque finish. Once I had done that, though, I adored how it looked!

I'm a sucker for all things silver, and this just looked like a silver glitter bomb on my finger. I have two pictures below for you. What do you think?

Hey Sailor, or Why Women Tear Each Other Down

Hello readers! Today I have for you China Glaze's Hey Sailor from this past spring's Anchors Away collection.

This color applied like a dream and required no post-polish touch ups. I love when that happens. It's a true tomato red, like a 40s pin-up girl. In fact, when I wore it, I had a vintage looking dress on and got some good compliments on the retro appeal of the whole look.

But beware...
There was one lady at my office who has achieved relatively high levels of success and has a reputation for woman-on-woman office crime, who saw fit to make a comment about the bright red color. In front of a huge group of our colleagues, she looked at the color and said "that's a very interesting shade of red." And I said "thanks, it's called Hey Sailor!" She replied, "It wasn't a compliment. It's a very specific red. It's red." I was really embarrassed and said "yeah, it's just 40s style." She repeated her take on it two or three additional times to the whole group. Meanwhile, I was too shell-shocked to continue in the conversation.

I really hate women who can't handle being around other women. And this, to me, was just plain tear-her-down-so-I-can-look-better. But, it does bring up a potential issue with this color. It's a bright red, and in the past those had a reputation. Despite the rather pedestrian reputation reds and pinks have for nail polish fanatics, the bold reds (and some hot pinks) still seem to scream "trollop" to some outsiders. And if you work with one of these outsiders, they may publicly humiliate you.

How would you handle a situation like this? Would you have defended your nails stronger, or would you have backed down (like I unfortunately did)? Tell ya what, I'm reticent to even wear a bright red or pink anymore! Boo to girl-on-girl crimes!

Takin' a Walk...

On the Wild Side...

I bought this lovely from the blog sale @NailStah (her twitter handle) had. I picked up several good ones there, in fact!

This is a color from Color Club. The formula Color Club doesn't seem to work as well for me as other brands. This is only my second, but I'm noticing that for me, I have a tendency towards premature chipping with both of the colors. It's absolutely a shame, too -- other people rave about them, and I LOVE their colors -- particularly their new bohemian collection! I'll probably still give some of those a chance... my body chemistry and/or the combination with Seche Vite just has seemed to reject so far.

This color, though, is fantastic. I feel like if you could paint your nails with a pencil, that's the color and sheen you get. It has a very graphite look about it (not Chanel Graphite... pencil graphite). I love the color a ton, but painted my nails last night and am already experiencing tip wear.