All Posts By

carinaeletoile

OPI – Color So Hot It Berns

Friday, 5 November, 2010
www.carinaeletoile.com

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?

 

www.carinaeletoile.com

www.carinaeletoile.com

0 Comments

Nubar – Midnight Rendezvous

Thursday, 4 November, 2010
www.carinaeletoile.com

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?

www.carinaeletoile.com

Looks flawless here.

www.carinaeletoile.com

Flawless? Not so much.

0 Comments

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.

0 Comments

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.

0 Comments

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.

 

 

0 Comments

Rescue Beauty Lounge 50% Sale

Friday, 29 October, 2010

This came to me by email:

Whatever am I thinking?

Last year’s 5-hour 50% off sale resulted in literally thousands of orders, 10 straight days of round-the-clock packing and shipping (during a blizzard, no less!), employees threatening mutiny and more than enough frantic emails to short-circuit the Apple store.

So why am I preparing to go through this all over again, beginning at 11:00 am – 4:00 pm on November 1, 2010 EST.

Why, because I love you, my crazy polish-heads. I swear, this will be the only time you ever catch me in sneakers, just to keep up with the demand

But I do ask that you follow my glamorous Do’s and Don’ts…

  1. Do stock up on your favorite Rescue Beauty Lounge polishes and body products (you asked, we listened!). And while you may purchase the new Real Housewives of the Tudor Dynasty colors, they will NOT be marked down during the sale.
  2. Don’t be fooled by a stray “Free Shipping” banner you may spy on the site. During this special event, you will be charged for shipping. C’mon, I’m already giving you a 50% discount!
  3. Do double-check your order before you purchase. We cannot edit, change or combine orders. And don’t go looking for the “customer notes” on your order form. It does not exist during the mayhem that is this sale.
  4. Do a practice run a few days before the sale to make sure you have the correct email address and log-in information and get familiar with how the site works. Don’t leave anything in your basket as they will be emptied a minute before the sale so we will have an accurate inventory of what is in stock.
  5. Don’t call us (or show up at the door). If you must email us, please do so ONLY to customerservice@rescuebeauty.com and not to any other email addresses. We’ll post something on our Facebook page if there are any technical difficulties. Do feel free to leave any raves there too.
  6. Do make a wish-list ahead of time along with some alternatives in case something is sold out.
  7. Don’t beg, plead or wheedle. Sold out means just that—we don’t have a secret stash in the back room.
  8. Do be patient with deliveries. We ship on a first come, first served basis. Allow approximately 10 to 15 business days for domestic orders, and 20-30 for international before you get panicked. (Again, check our facebook page for frequent updates). If you really need your “Frugalista” in a hurry, choose overnight or 2nd day shipping.
  9. Don’t forget that Rescue Beauty Lounge polishes make amazing holiday gifts. Stock up on stocking stuffers!
  10. Do check back during the sale as some shoppers will fill their baskets in a frenzy but not buy everything. Don’t hoard if you have no intension of purchasing everything in your basket.
  11. Don’t forget to use (FIFTYOFF) at checkout, otherwise you will NOT get the 50% discount.
  12. Do have your MasterCard, Visa or American Express card warmed up and ready to go!

That should do it! Now I’m off to bribe (lie to) my wary employees with promises of trips to Bali, holiday bonuses redeemable at Harry Winston, and rumors that packing boxes for hours on end actually eliminates wrinkles and reduces cellulite.

I’ve gotta go rest up.

As always, Ji

0 Comments

Zoya – Maura and a small Project Runway Rant – don’t worry, you won’t see it unless you want to

Friday, 29 October, 2010

Note: I’ll try to post pictures this weekend to make up for the past 2 days of no blog entries. I simply wasn’t motivated to do anything. >< However, I had a request for a pink and I found one I had yet to swatch! So if the weather permits, you will find it here on the weekend. =)

SPOILER WARNING/AVOIDANCE — To read my rant, highlight the paragraph below that you can’t see!

Small diversion/rant: I am not happy with Gretechen aka WRETCHED being the winner that was chosen for Project Runway. Furthermore, I don’t feel the clothing of said designer is now and hip. It’s frumpy. It’s dated. It lacks the wow factor I want in my clothing. It’s effortless dumpy. I don’t like hobo chic. That’s not boho chic. That’s right, I said it HOBO. That clothing is suited for coat rack built girls, not hourglass girls like me. Patterns were awful and I felt the collection was so bland. If that is where fashion is heading, I’m sitting out the next few seasons. Hopefully people won’t fall for the dumpy frumpy look of said designer.

Anyway, rant over…

Part of Summer 2010’s Flash collection, Maura is this wonderful cherry tomato red.

It’s funny because Maura on me looks red while I’ve seen it on some friends and it looks like a coral. OH MY! Friends don’t let friends wear coral. 😉 Just kidding! I’m always jealous of people who can sport colors like that and not look like they’ve aged themselves by 30 years. It’s the green eyed monster in me…pure and simple.

Now what I truly love about this color is that the moment I put it on, it was true to the color in the bottle – bravo! It didn’t have that odd undertone of when you sometimes put on some polishes and go, “Uh, I swear I thought I bought a RED, not a pink.”

Zoya’s formula, as always, is friggin’ fabulous – fast drying and perfectly opaque in 2 coats.

2 Comments

Nubar – Moonshadow

Tuesday, 26 October, 2010

I loved this color in the bottle. It promised great splashes of duo chrome-y goodness. I was disappointed that the duo chrome was so tame. I have Nubar’s Wild Life and that sucka throws off so much goodness I tend to get mesmerized by it when I wear it!

Nonetheless, this polish is beautiful…and I’d recommend it to anyone because it is a gorgeous purple in its own right. Please excuse tip wear – I had been wearing this color for a few days before I snapped the pics. Furthermore, I apologize for the misspelling of Moonshadow on the pics. I had done this a while ago and had thrown away the .psd for it.

It looks raspberry-ish in this shot, but it’s really a lovely purple.

Extreme shot and angle of MS to get the duochrome.

Hai, sun. You washed out the duo chrome!

0 Comments