American Apparel – Factory Grey

Monday, 15 November, 2010

First off — check out Belle, Bath and Beyond’s giveaway for Asian nail polishes: http://bellebathandbeyond.wordpress.com/2010/10/12/elianto-racing-green-other-nail-polishes-from-the-far-east-giveaway/

Definitely my first time trying out American Apparel. While I chose a color I feel has been done to death, the application for this was pretty good.

I chose grey for Monday because … it’s Monday and I have a blue on tap that really isn’t worthy of being dubbed a Monday Morning Blue, either. It’s bright and perky…and will be displayed tomorrow. I promise! Today’s Monday was (I thought) going to be grey and maybe a little depressing. Instead, the sun is shining and it’s feeling a little on the warm side. As I said yesterday in my Twitter – it’s mid-November, where the heck is my fall weather?!

Formula was a tad bit on the streaky side, but I could manage that. It was also fast drying. Woo hoo!

See below for the pics.

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OPI – Burlesque Glitter Givewaway

Monday, 8 November, 2010

Congrats to Jessica v Polish – the winner of this contest.

Keep an eye out because on December 1, I will be having another giveaway – this time for China Glaze’s Holiday Collection.

CONTEST IS NOW CLOSED — THANK YOU TO ALL WHO ENTERED!

Winner will be announced on Monday.

It’s my mother’s birthday this Friday…so in honor of her, I decided to stage this giveaway that ends on her birthday.

Why did I choose glitter as the giveaway? Well…my mother and I have this crazy love for anything that glitters and shines. The glitter loving apple doesn’t fall far from the glitter loving tree!

Yes, you are reading correctly.

Yes, I am giving away these 6 awesome OPI Burlesque Glitters. See the prettiness on me in this blog entry.

How do you score a chance at winning them? You have 3 ways to enter, so that means 3 shots at winning!

But before I go on, here are necessary details you must know.

Contest ends on November 12, 2010, at 11:59PM (23:59) PST. Any entries time stamped after that will not be considered.

Now, how do you enter, you ask…

1) Follow this blog on Google Friend Connect to the right of this entry.

2) Follow me on Twitter: carinaeletoile then Tweet the following: @carinaeletoile is giving away the glitters from OPI’s Burlesque collection – enter for a chance to win!Â http://wp.me/pUcSL-Ah

3) Reply to this entry with your name – please make sure you have an email address attached to your name when you post a reply.

4) BONUS ENTRY! If you’re a member of Yelp, add me as a friend – http://carinam.yelp.com

Final notes:

If I reach over 100 followers on my blog and over 100 followers on Twitter, I’ll be tossing in an extra something something along with the prize. You never know what it will be, but I guarantee you you will be surprised in a good way. Not a scary way. I promise! *pinkie swear*

This contest is open internationally as well as domestically.

Good luck and let’s hope I reach 100+

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OPI – Color So Hot It Berns

Friday, 5 November, 2010

This color is part of OPI’s Swiss Fall 2010 Collection.

I was a bit dubious when it came to this color, but I had such fond memories of Rescue Beauty Lounge’s Bangin’, I thought I’d slap this on my nails and see.

I’m also working on getting my left handed skills up and running again, so I’m going to start swatching with my right hand more often. Please be prepared for bad cuticles because I am very rough on my hands.

Formula was fast drying for this and frankly, the opaqueness really was wonderful. Two ultra thin coats was all it needed.

What I loved about this color is that it reminded me of old Hollywood Glamour. Would you agree?

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Nubar – Midnight Rendezvous

Thursday, 4 November, 2010

Nubar said this was a blood red/deep red with a hint of purple in it. It looked fabulous and it was a CREME! *swoons*

Meh. I think in my excitement I did a bad application and you can see VNL.

It looks decidedly vampy on me, doesn’t it? Like I said earlier, I can’t miss my old Chanel Rouge Noir when all the vampy colors are out and killing my lemming for it.

What do you think?

Looks flawless here.

Flawless? Not so much.

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OPI – Yodel Me On My Cell

Wednesday, 3 November, 2010

Pretty, pretty blue….how I do love you.

Please excuse the VNL – I tried a new technique on application and it failed me. I’ll try it again later, but if it keeps failing me I’ll go back to how I used to apply.

This formula was thin and a bit moody. I had to do 3 coats to get it to look this color, but you can still see nail line. Grr. It dried quickly, that was one of the saving graces…oh, and the brush wasn’t jacked up, either. YAY!

I’ve heard this shade described as an aqua blue, but it doesn’t really remind me of any kind of aqua nor does it remotely remind me of the sea. I kept thinking, “TEAL! Teal light.” However, the shimmer in this is just freaking fabulous. I mean, Rachel Zoe shut it down, I DIE kind of fabulous.

As always, keep clicking the thumbnails because the pictures get HUGE. These are merely thumbnails. The one downside to making the picture the original size is that you really see all the imperfections in my nails and in application. Oh well. That’s a risk I’m willing to take.

PS I’m still squeeing a little bit for my Giants! I’m TiVo’ing the parade and will watch with hubby when he gets home tonight…he took caltrain in to work and said the place was a MADHOUSE. Good thing I opted to drop him off at the Santa Clara Station, but even then, it was insane. I retweeted the picture and you can find it in my twitter feed in case you’re interested.

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Rescue Beauty Lounge – Lulu

Tuesday, 2 November, 2010

In case you’ve been living under a rock or are not American and couldn’t give a flying leap about American sports, in particular baseball,

THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS WON THE WORLD SERIES!

I decided to share this link from youtube because the artist, Michael Franti, is a Bay Area boy and he has tons of love in his heart for the Giants. He even re-wrote the lyrics for the Giants to fit the tune for his song!

Enough fangirl love about the Giants…I had an epic fail mani for the Giants and took it off because it was really ugly and I felt it did a massive injustice to them!

This would’ve been all fingers but…I um…well, I messed the other 4 up, so you only get a thumb shot. My bad! In my excitement over the game, the fast drying topcoat hadn’t quite dried and all my fingers (save for my thumb) got mangled when I jumped up and was screaming. I cried a little, too. I am so girl.

Lulu is an opaque pink that’s not quite baby and not quite grown up girl. On me, it looked kind of bad. It was this odd pink and brown thing going on. It definitely stood out and made my Filipina dark skin tone seem even darker. How is that even possible?!

Formula was streaky and hard to work with. Additionally it took a while to dry, too. That is completely the opposite of the normally superb Rescue Beauty Lounge formula.

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Rescue Beauty Lounge – Drifter

Monday, 1 November, 2010

In honor of the crazy sale at rescuebeauty.com, I decided to throw in a color I wore this weekend. I snapped a pic late yesterday, so please pardon the tip wear.

This is a great creme that is a lovely deep plum. However, with my skin tone it ends up looking a bit vampy in the shade, don’t you think? The color definitely looked plum in direct sunlight. I liked this color a lot.

Formula was wonderful (as always). It seemed to dry a bit faster than the other formulas by Rescue Beauty.