American Apparel Mouse

Three coats of simply marvelous.

While American Apparel has retained that odd flash photography motif, it's shed its beauty products from the website.

These polishes are just great.

They cover, self level and never fail to please when I wear them.

Might still be floating around eBay.

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Reboot, Reblog, Blues for Autumn

Autumnal blues are complex. They are the seaside shutting down after tourist season. They are the long shadows and deep even longer evenings.

Here is a blue that is just so perfect for fall, American Apparel Mount Royal

Three coats, a shiny, but non-self-leveling finish, this pretty deep cobalt feels moody and pensive like a storm about to slip over the mountains.

Gone the way of the dodo, the American Apparel brand seems to be defunct. This is available on eBay, so not completely extinct!

Here is a reboot of Amoresse Cool In The Pool.

Hard to fault. Defiantly blue sky in the late afternoon. Perfection.

Might be so rare that my earlier blog post (here) is coming up on the search! Hilarious!


A quick comparison:

Left to right:

Amoresse
AA
Amoresse
AA

Warm afternoons, cool nights, shorter days. A pair of pretties to enjoy the crisp days of autumn.


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Farm Curtains

Good news, I have other computer access so I can keep posting, yay!!

Been thinking of farmhouse curtains with this stamping plate. I will post a photo of it in another blog entry, it's a pretty one that I found on eBay, and it has a lot of variety.

American Apparel Downtown L.A. stamped with Wet n Wild black

Two coats of American Apparel Downtown L.A.

I won't lie, the black was supposed to be really dark. I don't think I shook it enough, because last time I used it, it was great! Dang!


Here is a version using Sally Girl Periwinkle as the base then stamping with American Apparel Downtown L.A.

I like how AA stamps, but the topcoat whipped it's heiny and dragged across the pattern.

Not the win I was hoping for.

I love how both of these remind me of curtains from a bygone era.


Thank you for reading my little nail polish journal!

The Blogging Year Recap

2016 is over. Wow. When I flip back through pages of blog posts, it feels like so little time has gone by. In fact, 2009 feels a lot like yesterday. (Well things were full of change and hope back then).

I'm still enjoying blogging, and that's key. I hope you are enjoying the polishes with me.

There are many changes in blogging and I don't think social media blogging has eradicated bloggers like me, yet. Yet. The challenges for me is time and accessibility. Instagram is very phone-centric, so I hope the new Sony A6000 will be up for that challenge.

I'm off the SinfulColors mailing list, much to my relief, and I don't have anyone offering me polish. Yay! So while I am not super timely with new things, my reviews will be my own. It's hard to be objective when you have free stuff arriving in the mail, despite disclosures and disclaimers.

This year I plan on trotting out a heck of a lot more indies and more stamping. I have to say I love both and with a better camera it's only my skillset that won't do right by it.

Finally, here are a few of my faves from 2016, enjoy!



FUN Lacquer Anna

OPI Into the Night and RBL Pardonne Moi stamped with white pearl (if I recall!) and topped with Orly Precious Metal

Maybelline Sand Storm stamped with Sally Hansen Frost Freeze

Guppy 77 over Sally Hansen Gray by Gray

Borghese Capriccio Blue stamped with Revlon Captivate

Sally Hansen Model Behavior

Illamasqua Muse

OPI Ro-Man-ce On The Moon accented with Milani Silver Dazzle

China Glaze All Wrapped Up

Petites Banish

Essence Back to Paradise

Diamond Cosmetics Tranquility franken

Nicole by OPI Sing You Like a Bee topped with Hidden Treasure all over Color Club Coastal Creme

American Apparel Tshirt

Dior Equis

Layering: Revlon Snow Bunny franken, SinfulColors Pinky Glitter, and Cover Girl City Lights

Morgan Taylor Making Waves

Dear Readers, thank you for reading my little nail polish journal!

Happy 2017!! (fingers crossed!!)

Lynnderella Forget You Not

Periwinkle and glitter.

The cold is inching in and I have to admit I have trepidation and excitement: it is supposed to be a snowy winter, but I am excited because I think we need the cold weather.

Duality has it's pros and cons.

Lynderella Forget You Not over American Apparel T-Shirt

Breathtaking and delicate, like crocuses emerging from the snow. 

This is two coats over American Apparel T-Shirt.

Large, small, and micro shimmers wiht pink and blue among the two shades of blue glitter. This is a gorgeous polish.

I will add though, that somewhere there is either glitter bleed or there is something murky about he formula. T-shirt is a pure white, but the base has a gray tinge that doesn't seem intentional. I decanted some of it and added thinner. Well see if it stops the bleed.

Good luck finding this one, long since discontinued in the Lynderella pantheon of glitter polishes, I can't think of a dupe, or anything similar. Well, except for a discontinued Cirque glitter that is a pretty periwinkle blue called Orphelia

Like a mountain flower, it's time might be short, but it's beauty is hard to surpass.

May I give a shout out to American Apparel T-shirt?

Two coats on my ridge-tastic nails and look at this???? Holy WOW! 

I am on the hunt for more of this discontinued polish. 

No streaking, no ridge filling base coat. I think I did slap it over a bare nails, though. 

Moving on...

Lynderella Forget You Not over NYX Purple Dream

Here you can see the difference between the glitter colors: one more lavender and one more periwinkle.

I thought NYX Dreamy Purple had been blogged, but apparently not. 

One thing I will say is that Forget You Not has a touchy formula. Not as bad as that green one I blogged a while back, but working on being very slow to dry, even with a quick dry top coat.

Beautiful, but tricky to dry if not patiently attended to, as it re-wets dry base coats and will cause smudges.

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The Not So New Neutral

I don't often pick up WetnWild polishes these days, but I did see this one and was enamored with it's subtle grace.

WetnWild Bite the Bullet

Three coats, no top coat. Though I think two coats would work just fine.

I love this little mauve delight. Though you can see I over applied on the index on the left, it really was easy to work with. 

I often think drugstore polishes have the hardest row to hoe since they often have to perform in less than perfect conditions.

Still available at your drug store!

Color Club Give Me a Hint

From the Color Club Alter Ego collection, this guy has been underutilized. It's a pretty little mousy mauve that has been on the "oh I don't need this" pile a few times. Only to be pulled back because the color is just amazing. 

Still on the Color Club site, so still available! It's a classic, very cool toned, but feeling autumnal at the same time.

American Apparel Dynasty

This is a bit more pink than it is in real life, but it is very subtle and extremely beautiful.

The formula, well, super nice. 

Here's a comparison

Left to right:

American Apparel Dynasty

Color Club Give Me a Hint

WetnWild Bite the Bullet

Truly a trio worth having!

Of ocurs if you can only get one, get the American Apparel. You can see how smooth and luxe it looks when done. I am using a Milani ridge filler, which is pretty nice, and it serves to smooth things out, the AA really takes it to the next level.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Lipstick Reds

Here are a pair that I think need an outing:

American Apparel Downtown L.A.

A true red with no apologies. Think bright 1950's red. Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell spritely parlaying double entendres and sexism into a classic film.

Fairly amazing formula and application. Love it. Three coats, no top coat.

American Apparel no longer sells nail polish, so who knows who they got the private label product from. Maybe down the pike they'll go in that direction again.

Perfect neutral red.

I found mine on eBay.



Revlon Love That Red

 This one reminds me of bright red circa the 1950's.  A wee bit deeper, but just as much oomph.

Three coats, no top coat.

Though black and white, this is what I imagine Gilda's dress and lips looked like. Blame it on mame, boys!

Found at Ross or Dollar tree, now maybe somewhere online?


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Red and Gray, Part 2

Back to the red and gray theme.

I love the combo because it reminds me of the 1950's.

OPI Athletes in Cletes, three coats no top coat.

I love this popping red chock-a-block with silvery shimmer.

Reminds me of a summer day at a triple A game.  I love it. It's a true red so it is very neutral.

Here it is stamped with American Apparel Factory Gray.

I used Pueen Leisure Buffet collection's plate 87.

I love the little bows.

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Indian Teal Redux

As I go through my polishes I realize I have so many of these shades. Wanted to hit some cremes.

Enjoy!

American Apparel Peacock

This polish is amazing. Can I say it? Smooth as butter, applies well and this is without a top coat.

I have to admit I've had more wins than misses with my American Apparels. 

Try eBay or other etailers like that for job-lotted AA's floating around. This is a real winner.

This rides the thin edge of teal and Indian Teal, it's more blue in real life, too.

Nars Superstar

Three coats, no top coat. Excellent formula. Excellent.

I found this on a blog sale and snapped it up, although it's similar to OPI Ski Teal You Drop.

Why? Well, before Todd Haynes became an A-list director, he did thing a little thing called Superstar, The Karen Carpenter Story. 

This is now - at this writing - on Youtube and can be seen with little effort. For those of you born after the advent of Google and the Interwebz, you can NOT imagine how hard it was to see this movie. I saw it about 100 years ago and when I bought this polish I zoomed on over to see it again. I recommend you watch it. It's epic. It's perfect. 

Godspeed, Karen. 

OPI Ski Teal You Drop

Three coats, no top coat.

Decent formula. Shiny! Those reflections looks like smudges, they are not, they are reflections!

I love this, and consider it a less stellar formula than Nars, but will wear it because I love this shade of teal very much.

Thank you for reading my little nail polish journal!

Greens for March: Hunter Green

So, American Apparel has been in the news as it revamps it's brand devolution.

I just went to their site and see that the polishes have been, for the most part, removed. Will they return, who knows. I'm not sure what direction it will go. 

American Apparel Hunter:

Three coats, lovey polish with no top coat.

I find the formula smooth and rather easy to manipulate. It isn't pure heaven, but you feel like you are on the road to heaven with this formula. 

Color-wise, it's beautiful and quite un-vampy so you do get the green payoff.

I wanted to compare it to a couple other greens:

Left to right:
Orly Enchanted Forest (blogged here)
American Apparel Hunter (actually blogging right now...hehehe)
OPI Christmas Gone Plaid (blogged here)

That blue you see on the center nail is flash, not some blue shimmer.
All three are quite similar, I'd say that in a pinch, one will do versus all of them.

I also think of the three, Orly is most green and brightest, with OPI Christmas Gone Plaid being the darkest.

Poking around eBay I see a few AA's, not sure if they will job-lot these, or they will show up elsewhere now that AA has stopped selling polish. I can't predict if they are just going to go back into the retail stores, or what.

All three are kind of hard-ish to find online. Worse, perhaps, OPI and Orly yield zero results when I search (found OPI's search engine!).

Interesting.  Nearly every collection that comes out in the fall has a red/burgundy/maroon/purple vamp. Why are green ones falling to the wayside? They are all so great!

Keeping one's eyes peeled on eBay might be the best avenue, you never know what will show up!

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

A to Z Hearts

Pulled out good ol' American Apparel Cotton to use as a stamping base. It's a beautiful pale yellow that reads yellow more in contrast with other colors than on its own. Perfect really. I also wanted to see if Zoya Cyma would work as a stamping polish.

Here are my results:

I used three coats of AA Cotton, Bundle Monster plate BM08. No top coat, which I think I should have added one!

I used the gray stamper that came with my Cici Sisi plate (all this time I thought it was an Essence stamper) and it's a little soft, so you can see it was a little bit squishy on the pinky.

Bundle Monster Series 1 has been revised, but this pretty heart is still front and center on plate 8. Yay!

Cyma doesn't stamp densely, but turns into a berry fuchsia once stamped.

In researching this post, I found that Zoya has discontinued Cyma. Why? It's a beautiful berry red shimmer. Such a shame.

Here's a solo outing of Cyma:

Juicy flash shot. Three coats.

Here's a shot under the lamps.

Anyway you cut it, Cyma is a winner. It's a rich not overly pink reddened magenta, with enough shimmery pop to sate you shimmer fans (count me among you!).

Good news, it's available online if you poke around.

An A brand and a Z brand whoopin' it up to make a pretty little Valentine's Day mani!

Thanks for reading!

Six Mint Swatches - The Good, The Bad, The Indifferent

Hey Sweet People!

This is a swatchfest with no comparison and as I assess my stash. I have 1/2 a helmer drawer of mints. Now, be aware that this is JUST cooler shades of mints. That doesn't include a dozen more warm mints or about a dozen teal/blue leaning mints. Never mind light blues. That's a lot. I love that shade. I also realize I've done very little swatching in that department, whenever I do "Green for March" I tend to grab more intense greens.

Time to change the trend.

A few things

• Only one has a top coat, and I will mention that fact.
• All are not twiddled with to get my skin tone close to correct, but for some reason it was like "holy cats, all my shots are turning out!" Very little tweaking, though some shades pull cooler than they are.
• All shot indoors under my Ott light. No flash.

Shall we begin? Let's!



Duri Summer in the City

Wow. Duri. Where have you been all my life? Two coats. Perhaps a touch, and just a touch, more green than this photo.

This formula beats everyone, except one, hands down. I mean hit the triple play, the trifecta, the 80 yard touchdown, well, you get my meaning.

I get Nails magazine (they emailed me and I said "You betcha!) and the ONLY place I see this advertised is in that magazine. I can't recall where I got this one, though. Might have been eBay. Hmm.

To describe the formula is to say that it is akin to Misa: self leveling, gorgeous viscosity, handles very well, needed scant clean up, and dried surprisingly fast.
No top coat here, by the way.




Orly Jealous Much?

Soft celadon green. Another win.
Three coats here, no top coat.

I really adore this one, too. Smooth, self leveling, looser and somewhat more thin than the Duri above, but not one complaint.

Another win. Not sure where I got this one either! Ugh!




Avon NailWear Pro Jade

This was purchased by me off of eBay during the whole Chanel Jade frenzy. It's two coats and a fairly nice formula.  More of a jade green and a nice, dense formula that covers in almost one coat.

Not bad at all. I might even try to stamp with this one. No comment on whether it stamps, because I didn't try, but just about one coat does the job and I'm feeling' the win with that.

This is no longer on the Avon site, but it's available on eBay.




Morgan Taylor Mint Chocolate Chip

Wanted very much to like this one, but it's not a very good formula. A bit lumpy and patchy. Unlike a lot of these polishes, it didn't separate. The Duri, for example, took a lot of shaking.

This is four coats to achieve coverage and smooth it out. No top coat.

The worst part was the brush:

This was after I tried several times to smooth it out. Ugh.

The win wasn't here for sure.

I purchased this one on Nail Supply, it's weird because they only have this color and one other. I was pretty much trying this color out, but have had good luck with other MT's, but not sure if it's a win with this brush, though.




American Apparel Office

Oh dear god. This never worked out: thinned a bit, shook a lot (I was sure something settled or a pigment didn't mix after long storage or something!), and reapplied. I could NOT smooth it out. It's like the exception to the legendary American Apparel formula.

Not really sure what went wrong. It was worse before the topcoat, too, which is even more frustrating.

Four coats and a top coat. Eep.





OPI Hey! Get in Lime!

This is three coats, but needed four. I have to admit this one was a little bit of a letdown. I want to blame it on not enough shaking, but I'm feeling a bit indifferent to this one.

I have a backup (or two) of this bad boy and feel a little betrayed. I love the shade, it's subtle, lovely and similar to Orly Jealous Much.

I can see from this photo that there is some residual deeper yellow on the bottom of the bottle, so I don't know if more shaking is in order.

Still, meh. After Duri and Orly's showing, this one probably would need a base color of some sort. That is a bummer in a creme, unless I'm trying to boost the hue.




In Summary:

The good:
Duri Summer in the City
Orly Jealous Much?
Avon NailWear Pro Jade

The bad:
Morgan Taylor Mint Chocolate Chip
American Apparel Office

The indifferent:
OPI Hey! Get in Lime!


Of course formula can be  different on different people, but I am getting to the point where struggling with a formula is getting to be a drag!


Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Color Club Taps Into Tesserae - aka Modern Mosaic Collection Part 1

I found these on Head2Toe Beauty while I was looking for something else. The one thing about Head2Toe is that they have a good selection of Color Club at a great price. Oh, and they take Paypal, which to me is vital. As an aside, I've never (knock wood) had an issue with paypal, which is the big win for me working through their site.

Back to swatches.

So, if you google micro mosaics, you will see some cool 18th and 19th century jewelry, and some artwork as well. It's a nod Ancient Rome's mosaics, and it reemerged in the Renaissance when all things "classical" were not only paving the way for modern man, but redefining culture as a whole.

Spend a bit of time looking at the fine work of micro-mosaic jewelry and art, it's astonishing. 

Here is a search that will boggle your mind.

A few notes before starting:

The formula is a bit thick, so thin coats are a must. 

I'd recommend thinning them after you determine how thick they seem to you, mainly because they can be unwieldy, as I found out.

No top coats

Some texture, but nothing a top coat can't take care of fairly easily.

These are very unique, inasmuch as most of the time people just mix these little glitters in as a background, filler, or mix it up for different sizes. Color Club just said "let's go with little"

In a nutshell the effect is charming, cute, and for spring it's delightful.

This is a "limited edition" collection, made in the USA, I believe most of my CC is made in China.

On to the swatches!

Color Club Subway Station

Soft dove gray and white. This is two coats, I tried three coats to try to achieve coverage. It gets thick, though after two. I redid it and ended up with two coats as a better mix

Two shades of gray that I can see in the bottle. 

One coat over H&M Miss Stone Heart. 

Perfect combination, although I LOVE the H&M, I had to get it in a swap and it's not on their US site, bummer. 

If you love gray, you probably will enjoy Subway Station. I have 1/2 a helmer of gray. Love it!

Color-Club Pixi-Lated

Pale orchid pink glitters, with scant purple glitters along with white. Pretty and soft.

Two coats, although it didn't cover as densely as I would have wished.

One coat of Pixi-Lated over L.A. Colors no name light orchid pink. You can see the white and the purple a bit better. I think this would also be very pretty over a soft pastel yellow.

Color Club Orange Crush

This is perhaps my favorite. A mix of white, yellow and apricot glitters. 

Here it is over American Apparel Palm Springs. I don't think I've blogged Palm springs before, but here it is alone:

Three coats and perhaps one of your better formulas. I really wasn't sure about this color when i first got it - it was part of a job lot on eBay, perhaps those "easy to break bottles" - and put it aside for stamping usage only, but I have VERY few apricot shades so this got pulled out of stamping and put to work for swatching and other things. I kind of love this color. Not sure if it's a win on my skin tone, but I like it a lot.

Part 2  soon!

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!