MAC Formidable!

for·mi·da·ble : arousing feelings of awe or admiration because of grandeur, strength, etc.

I'm liking this definition based on the new MAC Venomous Villains Formidable! color. OK yeah, so obviously it's supposed to be based on the actual Disney villains, and therefore should strike fear. I figured it would be the next best one to swatch besides Bad Fairy. The one I was second most excited about.



Formidable! is a beautiful deep purple base, with green glitters. In some light it looks more wine colored. I'm not a dark nail type o gal. I shun black. It makes me look too pale. However I really enjoy this color, and I swear it makes my finger nails look sophisticated. I mean, as sophisticated as nail polish can make one look.


Formidable! Nail Lacquer Under 14k lighting

It's also a GREAT halloween/fall/winter color. It's deep and dreamy, perfect for the cold weather months, without being over-bearing and making me look washed out. I'm very very pale anyways, I don't need help in the vampire look department.



It glided on like butter, even with the glitters. Even better than Bad Fairy did. Maybe this was also partially because the brush on Formidable! was perfect. I assumed with the dark color I'd only need 2 coats of the polish. I was wrong. It also needed at least 3 to not have transparent spots. Luckily, MAC dries super fast.



I really can't think of any color that would go good with Konad stamps on it, because I don't want to hide the polishes own beauty.



Again, this one is also Limited Edition. I had a REALLY hard time tracking these down, even though I began looking the first day it was released. My biggest suggestion, call ahead. If you're at your wits end, ORLY's Galaxy Girl is supposed to be near identical.

MAC Venomous Villains Bad Fairy Review

This was such a struggle getting the new M.A.C. Nail Lacquers in the Disney villains line-up! I could've pre-ordered them (or at least one) through Macy's I suppose. That didn't register in my mind I guess.

On the official release date (apparently, some had been released earlier) of September 30th I went to the local mall and bee-lined for Macy's since I have a gift card there from last Christmas. To my dismay they had every cosmetic counter available EXCEPT M.A.C.! So I cruised the mall for an actual M.A.C. store front, but to no avail. I left empty handed and disappointed.

On Saturday I went to yet another mall up in N.H. and I was in luck, they had a M.A.C. counter, with the Venomous Villain setup. The girl working there just watched me, closely, but didn't speak. I grabbed the polishes and begin swatching and went "What the HELL? Why are these colors here?" They had placed Concubine, Jade Dragon, and Ming Blue bottles from the Fall 2010 Limited edition line in the place of the Villain line. I was so excited I didn't even notice they were so wrong until painting. At this point the young girl working took notice and said "Oh...um... We sold out of the real ones the first day".

Finally, I hit Natick Mall. The awesome people at the Macy's counter said they had one of each bottle left. I was only going to grab Bad Fairy, but this news and troubles led me to purchase Formidable! and Mean & Green too.

Anyways onto the swatches!



Bad fairy is a deep pink, with lighter pink sparkers. I have NO complaints about the color, I love it. I'm usually not a pink girl, but this is lovely. In the darkness it actually looks more red with pink sparkles. So it's not overbearing in different settings.



I have a complaint about the brushes though. Two of the three polishes had ruined brushes. The only one that survived the manufacturing defect was Formidable!. I was extremely disappointed. I'm not really sure what to do, since everywhere is sold out around here. It's not like I can exchange them! I think I should call M.A.C.



My only other complaint, and it's a smaller one. I had to use 3 coats to get this looking right. Even then it was still slightly spotty. I, personally, really hate using more than 2 coats as I'm afraid it will never dry. You know, unless I have a whole day to devote to painting my nails.




In the image below, you can see the beautiful deep pink color best. But also how translucent it is in places, even after 3 coats.




Next Up in the coming days, Formidable! and Mean and Green.

MAC Venomous Villains Disney Preview

The three new M.A.C Lacquers
Bad Fairy, Formidable!, Mean & Green

M.A.C teams up with Disney together are releasing their Villain collection September 30th 2010. Check out some of these new nail polishes. I'm really loving the color and I will probably be at my MAC counter first thing Saturday to pick up Bad Fairy, if not all three.

M.A.C. 2010 Venomous Villains lacquers and makeup

Mean and Green

Bad Fairy

Formidable!

I've read from several sources their are Orly matches for all except Bad Fairy. Which of course saves you a few dollars over the $13 a bottle M.A.C. Price. I just hope these don't stain my nails like Earthly Harmony did! I still can't remove the stain.

You decide, is MAC worth the extra bucks?

Another Award Ceremony

Given to me by 99% There

Rules:

• Thank and link back the giver of the award
• Share 7 things about yourself
• Pass it along to 15 other bloggers
• Contact them and let them know you love 'em

7things 

1. I'm a bit of a control freak sometimes
2. I have slight OCD, it drives me batty when I can't clean everything perfectly. Or when I take a picture of my nails and its messy but I've repainted them 7 times over several hours and I need to post NOW.
3. Sometimes, I let my daughter have ice cream for breakfast! Some battles are lost to win the war.
4. I don't like to drink, and do it maybe once every 3-6 months. I always regret it after even though I've never been hungover.
5. I have a second blog I recently started... On being a mommy. I hope to fill it with stories and witty humor.
6. I'm not so sure I want to marry, even though I dream about a wedding. I do want to spend my life with the hubby.
7. I get gift cards for Christmas, and don't end up using them for at least 10 months. I hate gift cards!

Who I am passing this award onto. I'm going to try avoiding double awarding from the sunshine award, although I have blogs I REALLY like.

A Grown Up In Training (My sisters humor blog)

Mail Order Cook (quick easy recipes)

All Things Nails

A Polish Problem

Polish and Konad

Never Enough Nails

PerryPie's Nail Polish Adventures

Polish Obsessed

The Nailphile

Nail Fanatic

Biba's Beauty Corner

Nails by Asami

Perth Fashionista

Gilded Lily Nails

Concrete and Nail Polish

Konad Pure Ice blue with clouds

So I've been liking fluffy cloud nail designs. I think Katy Perry did them? I'm not sure, I can't recall where I saw them before. Can anyone help?

Anyways, I decided to do it a bit different, instead of light blue with white clouds, I wanted dark blue with light blue clouds. I'm usually not a fan of dark blue polish, however its on a lot of the Fall 2010 trend lists for colors this year. So I'll have to pickup some new bottles,

Unfortunately, for whatever reason I purchased the wrong plate (Konad M60) which is a more cow hide then fluffy clouds. However, if someone is not looking like super close I doubt they'll tell the difference.

Pure Ice Nail lacquer

The Pure ice color is an old... old... bottle. Akin to(newer) Pure Ice Celestial. The old sticker/label was long gone so I can't give an exact color. I can just say there are many shiny blues out there available that are quite like it.

Nail Design with Konad image plate m60

The stamping was done with Konad Sky Blue special polish. My little girl yaya is absolutely in love with my nails today and she wants me to duplicate the look on her. Her nails are too small though so I'll have to get crafty!

Blue nail art

All in all, its a great way to wear blue nail polish in my opinion.

ELF Moonlight and MAC Earthly Harmony GCOCL m10

It's my friday! Somehow I ended up with not one, but three bottles of E.L.F. Moonlight nail lacquer. Figures? I guess I really liked it.

I was going to stamp with black, but I realized the tiny bits of my MAC nail polish would look much better. I actually am beginning to think my little one only poured out about half the bottle.




E.L.F. Moonlight ($1) is much like OPI Kyoto pearl, only a warmer color. It has a slight golden hue to it which is beautiful.

The Earthly Harmony ($13), which was recently sported on Lady Gaga, perfectly complements it for a stamp. It also stamped exceptionally well, even though it has sparkles.

For the plate, I used my E-Bay image plates to find something that reminded me of cherry blossoms. This design is on plate m10. Although I don't enjoy most of the images on GCOCL plates I was surprised by this design.

I did mess up a little trying to fill in some gaps, but overall am pleased with the outcome. My short nails have not been fun lately, but I've begun using Mavala Nail Hardener. I hope they start growing soon!




Have a great weekend! I hope it's warm enough to go fishing.

TooFaced LashGASM Mascara review

I was born with long blonde eyelashes. I guess I lucked out they're long, but otherwise they're thin and well... blonde. Sigh. I dreamed of black, luscious, THICK lashes my whole life.

I never liked the feeling of mascara, but I do wear it from time to time. If you saw me walking around Boston, this is how you'd most likely see me.




So I decided to try out a few different mascaras starting with Too Faced LashGASM mascara ($21). It claims to be like the godsend of mascaras with volume.

I found it worked better than most mascaras I've tried in the past, but I'm not crazy about the volume. I mean, my lashes look LONG. I didn't even use a curler, but I actually felt they looked more sparse.



However, can we have both length and volume with mascara alone? I was told by a Sephora associate once "We're ALL looking for THAT perfect mascara, it doesn't exist. You get one OR the other"(meaning volume or length).

Watermarking of photos

Its not something I want to do, but it looks like I'll be watermarking some of my photos. I use Photobucket for some of my photos on here (when I don't use compose option) and can see statistics for viewing. Seems like one or two photos are getting heavy usage on a couple other sites. They have been watermarked. I will begin the tedious process of watermarking the rest.

On another technical note, I've also noticed my blog roll was lost (AAAH!) I'm really sorry to anyone who was blog rolled and I will begin updating this list again.

Incoco Lemon Fizz with Konad nail art design

I wanted to use more of the Incoco dry nail appliqué this week. When I asked for my colors I requested "Lemon Fizz". I knew it was a neon, but for some reason I didn't expect to be able to direct traffic with my nails!






My guy made a comment that my nails looked Jamaican when he came home from work! Hehe.

I did an earlier review on their glitter dry nail polish, and stated how easy it was. The non glitter varieties are much harder to work with as they have no substance. I had a harder time working with them, but it still came out really lovely. It took a bit longer to smooth out wrinkles, and they tear easier then their glitter-cousins. Otherwise, I still really enjoyed it.




Since they were all crazy anyways, I decided to stamp it up with one of the images on Konad image plate m70. I picked an image I probably otherwise would not use and the dark blue special polish. It turned out a bit green looking, but that was fine by me. No comments yet except from the fiance, but I've gotten quite a bit of staring at my hands. I can't tell if their faces were like "WOW" or "GAG"? Who cares what they think? I sure don't.







Now I'm going to apply for a job as a cross walk attendant, or maybe as a police officer. Do you think this color is a bit too crazy for everyday life?

Resurf.A.Stic review for ingrown hairs and calluses

Recently I was adding some cosmetic companies to my facebook likes. I was hoping to be informed sooner about product releases. In one such case, Blinc cosmetics talked about their new line called Resurf.a.Stic. I added them on facebook and entered one of their comment giveaways. Since not a lot of people have friended them yet, I won! I was excited, I almost never win anything.

They sent me two products: one for ingrown hairs, and one for calluses.  I got to try them out last week and wanted to share my results. Both are shaped like old school deodorants, and are like a hydrating gel stick with medical grade microdermabrasion crystals. Depending on the stick you're using you wet the stick, or skin and rub the stick lightly in a circular motion.

Resurf.a.Stic Ingrown ($40)

Resurf.A.Stic ingrown is really nice. The directions state to use prior to shaving. The crystals are medium sized (in my opinion) and smooth. It smells pretty nice.
 My problem with most scrubs/dermabrasion like products for ingrown hairs is they're too harsh and cause serious sensitivity. I was willing to give it a try though as I have a couple embarrassing non-inflamed ingrown hairs on my lower legs. It worked quite well, although it didn't release all the ingrowns on the first attempt.
However, I had no sensitivity and it didn't hurt. I would definitely recommend this product for any ladies with sensitive skin.

Resurf.A.Stic Callus ($30)

 Resurf.a.Stic Callus is OK. It smells pretty minty and has much larger crystals. I'm not extremely callused and it did smooth out my palms and backs of my foot decently well. Maybe its just cause it's a new stick, but it didn't seem to have many crystals. If I saw better results I might use this in conjunction with my Mr.Pumice, but I didn't see a huge improvement. I'll keep trying it and if I see a major difference in the upcoming weeks I'll post again.

I really wish I had won the face version, but so far my L'oreal go clean 360 is working decently well on my Retin-A flakiness without being too harsh. Although my daughter did call me alligator face the other day - OUCH.

What do you use to smooth your body?


[This was not a sponsored post, Resurf.a.Stic and Blinc did not send me these items to review. I happened to win them on a facebook give away and wanted to share]

E.L.F. Nail Polish Swatch Sunset

Sorry it's been a slow week. I must be stressed much more than I think over the sinking bed because I landed in the E.R. on Saturday night with chest pain and heart palpitations. I think everything's O.K. but I have to follow up. As you can imagine, I haven't been feeling well enough to paint my nails as much.

Last night was good enough to give it a try. So I did a quick swatch and snapped some pictures as best I could. I realized after the pinky looks distorted but it looked beautiful actually on my nails. 

E.L.F. Polish Sunset

E.L.F. Sunset nail polish is a beautiful deep pink color. Not something I'd associate with the name "Sunset". I guess I envision a different time of the evening (orangey-pinks).

 It's still a beautiful color, and application was so easy. Most of my ELF colors dry super fast, and this one is no exception. By the time I finished my pink the thumb was completely dry. I finished with Sally Hansen hard as nails UV top coat.

I've been trying out Blogger's compose instead of edit HTML. So if you notice any issues with the posts, let me know.

Sunshine Award Tag You're It!

Karen D of Frazzle and Anipolish tagged me earlier this week, but I've been feeling not so well so I waited to post it until I felt better.



The rules for this award:
1. Post the image on your blog
2. Link the blogger who gave it to you
3. Pass it on to 12 other bloggers
4. Link those 12 bloggers
5. Let them know you've tagged them by commenting on their blog


Portrait Of Mai What can I say? I love Mai already. She leaves little comments on most of my posts. She's absolutely adorable. And her blog is cute!

Bella Gets Real a fashion blogger. I really like her sense of style, her cute pictures, and her wit. Quote from her blog "Why did I picture Cosmos in mini glasses?"

Magic Maid So I love love love her nails. They're so beautiful. She's really a sweety too.

Lacquer Ware for Tips and Toes First, she's a doll. She's been really nice to me. Also, she posts nail polishes I'd like to see and purchase. You know, not just $10+ bottles. She also posts the retail price so I'm not surprised when I go shopping, which is something I should do more often.

Almost Never Without Nail Polish A Swedish blog. I love the hand painted designs. She doesn't have many followers, but its definitely a must read (if google translator works for you)

Getcha Nails Did So she hasn't been posting lately due to a computer issue and a sick puppy. However, I love her blog and I'm sitting on pins and needles waiting for a new post.

Cel's Deco Nails I wont lie, I have a sweet spot for anything Japanese. Well... Almost - Cow tongue ice cream is near the bottom of my list. But Cel features some Japanese nail art that is to die for!

Also Known As A big inspiration and she has really pretty polish.

Hyperbole and a half Not a beauty blog but a comedy. Any time I need to smile, this is where I go. I've probably read all of her posts. Now almost every time I type "alot" I now get pictures of her Alot monster running through my head.

The Nailphile Im not sure its just me, but her blog seems to come out sort of discombobulated on my computer. However, I still love it. The polishes she uses are amazing(check out the Khaki Chanel color!)

I'm leaving the last two spots open to whomever YOU would like to recommend. Tell me about some blogs I may not know about so I can add them to the list!