Manicure Monday

Hi again! I hope y'all have had a great holiday season. I've been enjoying my time off school and indulging in some reading for pleasure (it'd been years since I'd really done that!), which has left less time for research and blogging, but whatever. It's winter break! I'm going to hibernate. And code. (I finally actually made some headway in that department, and wow, I totally understand why people do CS. When it works, you feel like a GOD. It's awesome. When it doesn't work, you want to kill yourself and everyone you've ever known, but you can't, because then you'll never figure out the puzzle of why it's not working...)

Here are some pictures of manis I've done the last few weeks; I did a green and red one for Christmas, but didn't take pictures because I felt like ignoring my duties as a blogger, but I'm sure you'll see the polishes I used at some point in the future. For now, here are these!

Winter Wonderland

Schnee! Kar! Nieve! Snow! (All the languages I speak
use the same writing system. Sorry to be so boring.)

This is a single coat of three white polishes layered to try and create snowy nails. I did it during our week of snow, when I was trapped at home, before I got annoyed with the stupid white stuff. It's Wet N Wild's white $0.99 polish topped with Orly Au Champagne and Orly Winter Wonderland. It wasn't fully opaque, but I didn't really care, because the shimmer from Winter Wonderland helped disguise it. That polish is really appropriately named! It does look like frosty magic.

Chop it Off

I cut my hair again.

Fragrance Friday

Yesss, FF is back! For this week, at least.

Diptyque Eau Duelle (Oriental Spicy: cardamom, elemi resin, olibanum, bergamot, pink pepper, juniper, saffron, black tea, musk, ambergris and bourbon vanilla): One of my favorite perfumes is Diptyque Volutes, released last year, and Eau Duelle is very similar in feel. It's sweeter, and lacking the smoke, with more of an emphasis on the vanilla and spices, but they're both cozy scents perfect for snuggling up with a mug of hot cocoa (which, coincidentally, is exactly what I am drinking as I write this!). Eau Duelle is less interesting than Volutes, and I don't like it as much, but I'm sure I'll use the whole sample vial for those days when I just want to smell like a winter sweater.

Manicure Monday: Guest Post

S, another of my besties from college, has offered to do a guest post for Manicure Monday, on a great cheap polish. Enjoy!

Golden Rose Perfect Shine Lipstick 239 Quick Review and Swatches

This was the first makeup item I picked up while in Turkey. I wanted to try and find an MLBB, and since this was cheap (somewhere between $3 and $7, because my memory fails me), I decided to give it a try.

Taken on a bedspread in Bodrum in a hotel with very
inadequate a/c [not sure why I remember that and not the
price, and yet...]

Snowy Sunday

Another day snowed in (it got down to 0 here! And below 0 elsewhere in the city, which is super weird because it's always colder here than downtown...), another day to play with makeup! Larie requested more colorful eyes, and I can do nothing but oblige :)

I decided to do a look based on snowy trees, specifically the big firs outside my bedroom window. Dark brown trunks, dark green boughs, white snow, and bright green boughs where the sun shined through. I didn't feel like doing pure white again, so it's not as close-to-inspiration as yesterday's look, but I like it anyways. It's bolder IRL than in pictures, as tends to be the case, so it's not something I would wear every day, but it was lots of fun. I also decided to do a red lip, even with the bold eyes, because why the hell not!

Not sure if you can tell here, but I am freezing. It is 15 degrees. And breezy.

Snowy Saturday

We got a foot of snow yesterday, and today it is 18 degrees, so it's not going anywhere. I took the opportunity to do some snow-inspired eye makeup and tromp about in the sunshine (and wear my purchased-for-East-Coast-winters long down coat and shearling snow boots, which was like welcoming back an old friend, ha), and here are some pictures!

Snow is sparkly and reflects blue, so I did a shimmery blue and silver-taupe eye.

First, in the shade 

Ignore the stray mascara, thanks

Fragrance Friday: Perfume Tag

I'm getting back into smelling new perfumes and will have my thoughts about some of them next week, but this week I was inspired by Larie's Perfume Tag post, so I'm gonna do that instead.

1. What is the first perfume you purchased?
Probably Davidoff Cool Water Woman, when I was in high school. I would probably hate it now, given my general aversion to aquatics. My first real perfume love, though, was Chanel Chance eau fraiche. I haven't smelled it in years, so I don't know if I would still like it, but that was my signature scent for most of college. I went through two bottles!

2. What's your signature perfume? (also 5. What's your favorite spring/summer perfume? and 6. What's your favorite fall/winter perfume?)
I don't have one, anymore! In the cooler months, I gravitate towards ambers and warm woods, like Sonoma Scent Studio Forest Walk and Winter Woods, Frederic Malle Musc Ravageur, Atelier Amber Nue, Guerlain Derby, L'Artisan Safran Troublant, and Chanel Coromandel (though my sample is empty!!), among others. In summer, I tend to reach for citruses (Dior Eau Sauvage, Arquiste L'Etrog) and florals (Tauer Carillon pour un Ange, Diptyque L'Ombre dans l'Eau, Arquiste Flor y Canto). And Jo Malone Earl Grey and Cucumber is awesome always. There's too many pretty perfumes to choose just one!

Also, today I woke up to this:

Technically, not this, as I took this after my nap. But this,
minus 2 inches!

Super weird for Eugene, especially this
early in the winter. Happy end of term!

I got to trek to the bus stop carrying a bag full of cake (it's the last day of classes, and I promised my students a party after they finished their final test) at 7:30 in the morning. It was pretty awesome, actually. Snow is great! I wore Diptyque Eau Duelle, which is a warm vanilla musk––I think it's actually a less interesting version of Diptyque Volutes, but its simplicity was nice in the cold, quiet morning.

MAC Lipsticks, Part 2

I already posted about the warm pinks and corals; today, I cover everything else!

The Pinks and Plums

Left to right: MAC Positively Dashing, Shiseido Nymph, MAC Plumful, Revlon Sugar Plum, Golden Rose Perfect Shine Lipstick 239, Dior Atout Coeur, L'Oreal Rose On and On, MAC Lustering, MAC Sweetie

I'm not sure why I look surprised here.

Positively Dashing is a Pro Longwear Lipcreme, described as a "mid-tone 'berry' blue-red". It's a medium plum in a formula that's supposed to be lightweight with a creamy finish. It's relatively lightweight, but creamy? Not so much. I find it wears best when I apply and blend with my finger and repeat a couple times; then it isn't as uneven, and it lasts me 2-3 hours before needing to touch up, which isn't exactly long-wearing, but is longer-wearing than some. Unlike Violine Précieux (which is almost exactly the same shade), it doesn't dry my lips out, but it doesn't moisturize them, either, so it has the effect of making my lips look a bit shriveled. This is not ideal, as I have actually very nice lips, so I will continue looking for the plum lipstick of my dreams, but Positively Dashing will do for the time being. As long as I top it with balm. Grade: B-/C+

Manicure Monday

These reviews are all super wordy, so I'll skip the introduction.

Revlon Wintermint
This is one of the new scented polishes released by Revlon (they're permanent, no worries). I picked it up because I was just dying of curiosity as to whether it would be a dupe for my beloved Mermaid's Dream. It's not. In fact, I kind of hate Wintermint, even though they are really similar.

2 coats Wintermint on all except
pinky, which has 2 coats Mermaid's
Dream. All with 2 (or 3? damnit)
layers of top coat

Here's the deal: Wintermint's base is much thicker and more opaque than Mermaid's Dream, so it covers up the blue big glitters and gold little glitters in the base much more than in MD, and since there are less glitters to begin with in Wintermint, the end result is much more muted and less sparkletastic. And where MD dries uniformly bumpy, allowing all sorts of different layers of glitter to sparkle (and giving it a cool fish-scale effect, without the 3 coats of topcoat necessary to smooth it), Wintermint is lumpy and uneven from where the larger blue glitter pokes up.