Zoya Anja and Orly Fowl Play

oh Zoya, how I do love thee!

I intended to order Anja in Zoya's recent buy 1 get 2 free promo.  A mixup in my order left me without this gem.  (No pun intended)..

Imagine my delight when I found out Ulta was carrying the Smoke and Mirrors line.  I did not have to be without my beloved Anja anymore. 

Anja is a darkened plum creme that goes on like a dream and covers well in one coat.  She dries nicely and is so smooth and glossy and vampy.  I loved this.  The last sunlight pic is the most color accurate.

But this was not enough for me - oh no!  I had to give myself an eye candy meltdown by applying Orly Fowl Play over the top.  Fowl Play is part of Orly's fall line and is a dark red base with tiny blue and purple glitter with red flakies. I used 2 coats of Fowl Play for full saturation of color  Fowl Play really is lovely - it's a little sheer so you'll want to layer it over something else.  Application is smooth and dry time is good.  Unfortunately the pictures don't showcase how pretty this polish is unless you enlarge them.  Enjoy!

Both are beautiful colors and I truly love them both!

Autumn Leaves Nails

Hi all! Fall has officially started for me. It's been about 60-65 degrees all week here in Indy! Let the autumn colors begin!!

I started off with three coats of Color Club Positively Posh. It's a nice dusky mid-brown color. Perfect for fall!

Then I took Pure Ice Fast Lane and sponged it over the brown in little lines. This is supposed to look like little tiny particles of dried leaves floating through the air. Please tell me you know what I'm talking about :)

I didn't have any stamping polishes that looked exactly the color of autumn leaves. What I did was alternate between using red and yellow Konad polish. I also used both colors on stamps sometimes to get a look of uneven color on the leaves. I think it worked pretty well, just wish the polish showed up a little brighter! I was a little disappointed with that, but oh well. Top with Seche Vite and voila! I still think these are very fall appropriate.. I'm digging them :)

When I was taking this picture, a maintenance guy from the apartment walked around into our backyard. He gave me a "WTF are you doing?" kinda look. Embarrassing.. I hate it when people see me taking nail pics!

Take care!

-Amanda

Revlon Devil's Lure

This is the only polish I picked up from Revlon's fall limited edition Masquerade collection.  It caught my eye the first time I saw it and I picked it up and looked at it.  But then decided against buying it.  Yesterday I was back in that same drug store, saw it again and couldn't resist.

In the bottle its a DEEP red, as close to black as it can get without actually being black.  I noticed as I put it on my nails though, it applies much lighter.  The first coat was more of a dark blood red - then with each successful coat the color became darker and more intense.  I ended up using 3 to achieve the bottle color, which I would describe as an extremely dark bing cherry.  You can see a little more of the red in the flash picture below.  The formula was ok, a little thin and hard to work.  I had some streakiness on my first coat and a little on the second as well.   I also had a tiny bit of bubbling because I had to apply the polish a bit thicker than I usually would to try to even out the streaks.  It wasn't terrible, but I wouldn't give it an A for formula either. 

I swatched this color on some wheels to compare it with other colors in my collection.  The closest colors I could find were China Glaze Ravishing, Dahling and Zoya Anja.  On the wheels I discovered it's not a dupe for RD at all, as Devil's Lure is much darker.  It's actually quite close to Zoya Anja but the formula is not quite as workable.  All in all I think it is an acceptable substitute for Anja.  What do you think of the vampy Devil's Lure?

Also - look at the loveliness that my local Walgreens has installed.  They recently finished remodeling their store and added this awesome nail bar to their cosmetics section.  I wish I could have one in my house!

That's all for today, have a lovely day everyone!

A Rant About Luuux

So, a few weeks ago I signed up for luuux.com. I forgot about it and logged back on today. I googled a little bit about it, and found that a lot of bloggers were really upset because people were taking other bloggers' images and profiting from them.

If you don't know what Luuux is, you blog on the site and receive points for your activity for which you can redeem for prizes (really nice things like iPods and Louboutins, etc). I'll admit, I was excited at the prospect of winning things. I figured, hey, I'm a blogger, I have some nice pics... I should get some traffic on my account. The site rewards the winners for each day/week/month (people who have the most activity on their posts). When I was researching, I found that a lot of bloggers were irritated about the lack of controlling what people post on the site. You can upload anything -- even if it's not yours.

So upon browsing through past winners, sure enough, someone used my picture of my dandelion nails and won points for it. Which really really upsets me because this person is essentially receiving money (ie points to put towards prizes) for using MY pictures and MY design. They have our watermark on them for crying out loud!

I just don't think it's fair that people can just freely use other peoples' images, put a source in the credit bar (or not!) and still get credit for it. Even if you credit me for the design, it's still unfair that you're benefiting from something you didn't even do. It really makes me not even want to put anything out there anymore if people are going to steal my pictures and profit from them. I'm trying to shut down my account but I can't even figure out how to do that.

I realize I should've researched this more before I signed up for it, but I was excited and it seemed interesting. And even if I hadn't signed up, my images would still be on there without proper credit. I mean, it says right on the image that it's from here and people can't even credit the right website. Now the more I think about it, the more I think it's unfair and a scam. People want points so they'll post things that aren't even theirs.

Am I wrong in being frustrated about this? Opinion?

Uh Oh Roll Down The Window + A Golden Konad!

Hello lovelies!

I started with two coats of OPI's Uh Oh Roll Down The Window which is a lovely.....baby poop green. It's actually very nice by itself -- I hear that military greens are going to be quite the trend this season!

Then I stamped over it with the feather (?) design from plate BM-210 and a Sally Hansen pen in Gold Chrome. These pens are fabulous for stamping! I thought it was going to suck because the color didn't come out of the pen very thick but it was PERFECT!

I am really loving this Konadicure! I think it's so pretty... I love the color combo on it. What do you all think? Are you ready for fall colors? I sure am! I want my vampy shades and muted colors! Yay!


-Amanda