OPI - Gift of Gold (Ulta Exclusive)

I don't have an Ulta in my town, so when I saw pics of the OPI Holiday Ulta Exclusives, I began to plot how I was going to get my hands on them.  There are only 3 Ultas in downstate Illinois and the closest is over an hour away (and they never have anything good!), so I don't really have a lot of choices.  Fortunately for me, my mom went shopping in the Chicago area and just happened to find an Ulta next door to the scrapbooking store she was visiting!  She called me, I told her what I wanted, and she came home with all 3 exclusives, buy 2 get 1 free!  :D

The only one I've worn so far is Gift of Gold and it is an absolute stunner.  Let me preface this by saying I don't really like gold.  I don't own any gold jewelry and after I started swatching my stash, I realized this was the only gold polish I owned!  (I have since rectified this situation by purchasing OPI's Glitzerland and China Glaze's Midnight Kisses)  Something about this one just blew me away.  Would you like to see?

It's so blingy!  Your nails WILL be noticed in this one!  Can you see the tiny red glitter peeking out between the gold?

It's really hard to capture Gift of Gold's allure in pics.  It looks amazing.  It sparkles and catches every bit of light so you are always getting noticed.  I had so many compliments on this one, and I usually don't hear a peep about my nails, except from the other obsessed gals at work.

As for the formula... this one is THICK, but in a good way!  I think it's supposed to be a 1 coater, but I did two here to make sure there were no gaps.  It likes to eat top coat, so I am wearing a couple of coats of Gelous over it to make it smooth and shiny!

The best part for me was how long this lasted!  I was able to get a full week out of it, only touching up a couple of chips after 5 days.

I know China Glaze's Party Hearty was most people's choice for best 2010 holiday color, but I think Gift of Gold definitely gives it a run for its money.  I don't even like gold and I was absolutely smitten with this one!

If you love it and don't have it, you better get to Ulta quick - it *might* be on clearance there.  Don't fret though, I think the new Milani One Coat Glitter in Gold Glitz is a pretty close dupe.  I don't have it, but I have seen it and it looks pretty similar - it's also core, so it will be easy to find!

Number of coats: 2

Basecoat: Beauty Secrets Moisturizing Basecoat

Topcoat: Gelous + Essie Good to Go 

Ulta Wild Night vs Essie Midnight Cami

I'm still alive, I swear!  ;)  I didn't spend all my time cleaning the house either, I just got kinda busy and let my blog go by the wayside... but I have been taking pics and wearing polish, so here's a post to prove it!

But first... I got my OTT light, and while it does provide me with lots of light, it also causes some evil glare in my super-shiny polish pics... so methinks I'm going to have to create a light box.  We'll see when I get time for that!  :P  Until then, you'll have to put up with my glare, especially since winter is almost here and there is no possible way I will be able to take any pics in the sun, at least not during my work week (Mon-Sat)!

So there was a really decent sale at Ulta a couple of months back and I wanted to order some polishes, but I could not for the life of me find swatches of them... which was how this blog was born.  Wild Night was one of the polishes I bought and had I seen swatches, I wouldn't have gotten it.

 

Wild Night is a deep shimmery blue, similar to OPI's Yoga-ta Get This Blue and Essie's Midnight Cami.  Here's a close-up so you can see the shimmer:

 

The color is really pretty... but this bottle was THICK.  I don't have to thin polishes as often as a lot of people - not sure if I just don't notice how thick they are or what, but this one was a mess.  Not only was it super-thick, but the brush was just slightly wonky, enough to make a mess out of my cuticles.  This was post-cleanup, btw... so you can see how badly it stained!  UGH!

Once I got a look at this on my nails, I decided to compare it to the other shimmery navy I have, Essie's Midnight Cami.  I picked it up at Meijer on clearance - it said $4, so that's what I thought I was paying, but it rang up for $1.99!  What a deal!

Here's a bottle comparison:

In this pic, Midnight Cami looks slightly more purple than Wild Night.

Midnight Cami is in the middle here... and as you can see, they aren't *quite* dupes, but close... close enough for me to not have both.  Here's another shot:

You can see the differences a little more here.  Midnight Cami is brighter than Wild Night, not quite as blackened on the nail.  They aren't dupes, but unless you have a hankering for shimmering navys, you probably only need one of these... and if I were choosing, it'd be the Essie.  However, Ulta's Wild Night would be a good substitute if you didn't want to spend the money on a full-priced Essie.  In my experience, it needs to be thinned quite a bit to get a good application and don't skip your basecoat or you will have LOTS of staining!  This might be the time to use the old Vaseline-on-the-cuticles trick because cleanup here is MESSY to say the least!

Even though the polish was thick, drying time was good, especially with a layer of Sally Hansen Insta-Dry.  No bubbles this time, so it must have been the Seche Vite / Insta-Dry combo causing that.  I can't comment on wear of this one, as I didn't leave it on more than a couple of hours.

After swatching both and deciding I didn't need both, I passed Wild Night on to a very grateful friend who has worn it several times since.  Glad I could make someone happy!  :)

Ulta Salon Lacquer in Wild Night currently retails for $5 at Ulta and is often on sale.

Number of coats: 2

Basecoat: Instant Artificials

Topcoat: Sally Hansen Insta-Dry

Ulta - Femme Fatale

YAY my first follower!!  :D  :D  :D  I'm finally not talking to myself anymore!!  ;)  THANK YOU!!

Ahem... anyway... today I'm going to show you Femme Fatale, an Ulta Salon polish.

Slightly funny story on this one... my husband absolutely does not care one slight little bit about my nails or my polish, except for the amount of money and time I spend on them.  I could not for the life of me decide what color to do my nails the other night and so I kept asking him for help, which of course, he refused.  Finally I narrowed it down to 2 - this and OPI Royal Raja Ruby.  I begged him to choose, but again, he refused.  I whined until he finally did it, after much eye rolling, and he picked Femme Fatale.  I was a little disappointed at first - have you seen RRR???  However, once I had this on, it was love!!  And I made my man finally get involved, though against his will!  ;)

I don't have a ton of stuff to say on this one... it pretty much speaks for itself.  The photos are actually pretty color accurate, even though it is a purple - shocking!!  This has a great metallic finish, but not brush-strokey at all, which I adore.  This is fantastic for fall and I will be wearing it often!!  Application was great - nice and smooth.  This was two coats, so pretty standard.  I like the Ulta brush just fine and the cap is great for my small hands.

I took these pics on Thursday... and started cleaning the house (which was a disaster, not joking whatsoever... I'm still not done!) immediately afterwards.  Not only did Femme Fatale not survive, but neither did my nails... I broke 4 between Thursday and Friday and ended up nubbinizing on Saturday.  *SAD*  My nails haven't been this short in awhile and I haven't adjusted.  I put on a vampy to try to make it better (Essie Wicked), but it still doesn't seem right.  You've seen the pics - my nails weren't that long to begin with, but now... my thumb nails are so short you can see skin after the nail ends!!  :(

I'm actually kinda glad for the nubbins though... I know it was for the best.  I had been using a basecoat that I suspect was causing many nail woes *coughOrlyBondercough* including peeling, brittleness, yellowing, etc. and my tips were in BAD shape.  I had two silk wraps on my left thumb, a patch on my left middle, left ring, right ring, and my entire right thumb was covered in Orly Nail Rescue.  I think it was time to chop them!  Now hopefully as they grow back in, they will be nice and healthy, not the peely mess I was dealing with.  I just need them to hurry up and grow - I'm a little embarassed to take pics of these!!

In other news this week, I made 2 e-hauls (Burlesque!!  CND Effects!!), so I have lots of new pretties coming!  I also bought an OTT Lite, which I am SUPER excited about!  I work during the day and unless I take pics before work (yeah right) or on my lunch, the sunlight is waning by the time I get home and there is no good light in my house.  With the OTT Lite, I should be able to take some great pics indoors, which will mean more posts more often with the added bonus of my neighbors not staring at me like I'm crazy when I'm outside trying to take pics of my hands!

In not-so-great news, since I spent my vacation cleaning (and breaking nails), I did not swatch like I planned on.  I still have a couple of photos I haven't posted yet, but I am a little disappointed I didn't get to play much.  I still have so much to do here at home, and I'm trying to force myself to do it by not allowing myself to play with the pretties until the work is done.  It kinda makes me sad, but then when I walk into my spare bedroom (which I have not been able to walk in since I moved into this house almost 3 years ago!) and look at how fantastic and functional it is now... it's worth it.

Not that you really care, but let me tell you a bit about my hubby and me - we are SLOBS.  Not joking at all.  We don't mean to be... we just don't really care about that kinda stuff.  We only care when it gets really bad and we can't stand it anymore... then we have to do a huge cleaning that takes forever.  Plus, both of us have short attention spans, are easily distracted and have no motivation.  Therefore, it takes us several days to do what a normal person could get done in a day.  Everytime we get everything all cleaned up, we try REALLY hard to keep it that way, and sometimes we do for a long time (we made it almost 2 months once!), but something always happens - one of us gets sick, we start working like crazy, Christmas comes and we have to drag out all the decorations and wrapping paper, that kinda stuff.  Before we know it, everything is a mess again and we have to spend days getting it back the way it should be.  It's mostly clutter - boxes (I hardly ever shop in stores, I do most everything online), old mail, clothes we didn't put away, that kinda stuff.  We're pretty good not to be gross... unless you consider dust gross, and then we're absolutely disgusting.  At first it doesn't  bother me, I don't even notice, but eventually it starts weighing on me everytime I come home and look around.  I just have a hard time getting started... and staying going.  So this time, I denied myself my nail polish.  The house still isn't where I want it to be... but I would say that the polish ban is working.  The spare bedroom is now functional, the living room looks pretty decent (does need a good vacuuming and dusting yet), about half the laundry is done and neatly folded (I need to finish cleaning out drawers to put it all away) and the kitchen doesn't look *quite* as bad as it did when we started.  It's going to take a lot more work, so I won't be swatching until I'm done.  Maybe my nails will have grown out a bit by then?

Back to the NOTD... Ulta Salon Lacquer in Femme Fatale retails for $5 and is widely available (and often on sale!)

Number of coats: 2

Basecoat: Instant Artificials

Topcoat: Revlon Extra Life + Seche Vite