A nice zest for Friday night

Guess what appeared on my front-step this morning? That's right, Zombie zest. I couldn't help myself and hunted it down on the swedish part of Ebay, Tradera. Seller was Nagelglädje, highly recommended by a lot of polishoholics as well as myself.
First time I let a lemming control me.

Read more »

long lost lover

Declaring this, I'm aware it put's me in the que for a show like What not to wear (where Mica Paris will tell me mature women don't do punk), but for 10 years or so, my favorite eyeshadow has been a turquoise from HM. The cheapest of the cheap at $1.8 á piece, more vibrant and pigmented than any  you could find elsewhere. I don't know how many of these I picked up and send to my friends in States and the UK, but it wouldn't surprise me if I was the biggest customer in my town.

Of course, it was discontinued ages ago and when my beloved kid found my beloved (unused, saved for later) eyeshadow stash and played dress-up with it, I was less than happy. So, when I found it and some of it's siblings online, I was ecstatic. Let's hoard eyeshadow like there's no tomorrow, or rather, like I'll be around for the next 300 years!

Unfortunately, when I got them and realized that HM had given the eyeshadow a makeover before discontinuing them and that makeover wasn't just the package, but the shades as well. Same numbers, different slightly colors.The ones marked as Divided eyeshadow are the ones I used to wear and these new ones are duller. All of them are duller. Reading the ingredientlist it's obvious it was intended as it's not the same.

I feel cheated. Not financially as they are still dirt-cheap, but cheated of my dream of being able to wear the same color I wore when I was young and un-hip.

Read more »

Feeling blue

I might just have stated that I love anything cute or kawaii, but there's one major exception to that rule:
Hello Kitty. Can't stand her and what she does to cool women. She's just a cutesy cute cat that drinks tea all day and has no ambition in life what so ever.
My kid, Iggy, she loves Hello Kitty though and I have made her a promise : all nailpolish with a Hello Kitty on the bottle can and will be hers. It was a way for me to be able to keep my precious Orly and Essie to myself, but it just backfired:

I found the perfect turquoise in a Kitty bottle. Not too green, not too blue and with the tiniest glitter which gives more of a texture than a sparkle. It's divine. For the first time ever I have worn a manicure for 5 days and removed it, just to re-do it the same color. 8 days of Hello Kitty and I am not through with this color.

The tricky part is to capture just the right shade and that is why I haven't been praising it earlier. Well, that and the fact that it is a Hello Kitty product, but the color is fickle. Looks babyblue in the bottle but perfect on the nails...but then it clashes with your skintone (mine is rather yellowish) when you try to take a decent photo and you end up trying to rescue it through color-correction just to realize that this is probably the Holy grail - it refuses to obey and will not be captured to be put on a blog.

Now, I know that some of you might have a hard time getting your hands on this as it's an HM-polish but please do try. Not only is the color divine but it's also a big bottle, 16 ml which is bigger than a full-sized Orly, for just $3.65.
If you don't have anybody you like to do trades with, you should enter Jellynat's giveaway where one of these darlings are at stake.

Personally, I'm going back to pick up a couple to have for future trades or giveaways. It's that lovely.

Read more »

Farewell my love

The love of my life lips is on it's last legs. To be honest, it doesn't even have any legs left. My favorite lipstick, You'll never-never land me by Benefit, is finito.

This was my 2nd lipstick of this particular shade, hotpink but sheer and warm-toned, and now I regret not buying a 3rd while stores still had it in stock. Now it's discontinued and sold out. Now I can't even find it on Ebay. Now, I cry.

Read more »

The perfect red

I didn't believe my luck when I scored the perfect red nailpolish for next to nothing. It's not just the perfect red, a cold blueish crimson, but it's the holy grail of reds. That and it's Orly. When I came across Orly's Cashmere Cardigan last year, it was love at first sight. Unlike bloggers en masse, I like Orly. To be honest, I don't just like Orly, I think I love them, their bottles, their userfriendly cap and their formula.

Being so infatuated with this brand, I have asked myself (and others) why Orly is a brand rarely mentioned on beautyblogs, but the only answer seems to be that they're not slaves to the trends and they don't send out as much pr-material and samples as the other companies do. Maybe they aren't even targeting that market and have decided that the (not so) young and hip is not for them? Whatever the reason may be, I rarely seem them mentioned on blogs unless it's about the Foil collection and that is the only collection I wouldn't even look twice at. I think I may just have worked too many years in a kitchen to fall in love with the copper saucepan-look.

So, what is this perfect red called? It's called Mandalay Ruby and pictured above next to the red that used to be my favorite, Eyeko's Red hot. While I still think Red hot and the candy it's been named after (my all time favorite) is one damn good red, Eyeko's polishes are far from top notch and unfortunately, I have yet to come across a polish that chips faster than the before mentioned. It's too bad as I really like Eyeko as a brand - fun, cute, colorful, sparkly and cheap. The focus seems to be about playing with colors rather than being the prettiest of them all, which is something I fully support. Have fun, you can go for pretty when you're old.

Read more »