Zoya Cassi - the perfect peach!

Let me start off by saying I absolutely love this color! This is easily in my top 5 favorite colors as well as hands down my favorite Zoya polish. I was looking for the perfect peach nail polish and I thought I found one when I stumbled upon Essie Van D'Go, but let me tell you--that polish absolutely sucks. I tried a different nail supply store and found Cassi and I knew I had to have it right away.

Cassi is a pinkish peach with subtle gold shimmer. Zoya decribes it as "An undeniably girly shade for fingers and toes." I agree! It's definitely a must have! It was opaque in two coats.

Isn't it beautiful?

Butter London The Full Monty + accent nail!

School is ridiculously boring, you'd expect me to be swatching a lot and taking pictures right? Well, I have been swatching, just not taking pictures because they keep coming out horrible... Today, however, I finally got things right with Butter London's The Full Monty!

One of my roommates got me The Fully Monty for Christmas and I was really excited to try it out so here it is for you! It's a very light and shimmery gold foil. It was opaque in two coats.

What I like about The Fully Monty is that it doesn't make your nails look all blinged out even though it is a gold polish. It is still a very subtle color that packs some shimmer onto your nail so that it doesn't look too boring.

And now you are probably noticing why my ring finger looks different from the others and is that still The Full Monty? I wanted to try an accent nail and decided to layer Butter London West End Wonderland. The finish came out a little grittier with hints of bronze glitter!

That's it for now. I'm working on a couple of swatches this morning and I hope the pictures turn out presentable!

Outliers

Today, I wanted to write about something different and focus on the more meaningful things of life. As much as I love nail polish, I also created this blog to write about my personal opinions.

Growing up, I always loved reading, but I feel like since college started, I haven't had the time or patience to read considering half of my time is spent devouring endless pages of boring textbooks. However, for my capstone course, my communication professor assigned us "Outliers" by Malcolm Gladwell. In my three and a half years of college, this is probably the most interesting book I have read.

The book defines an outlier as "something that is situated away from or classed differently from a main or related body" (3). In Gladwell's book, he gives examples of outliers--extraordinary people who have exceeded expectations through their successes. However, that's not what is so intriguing about this book. In Outliers, Gladwell explains what success really is.

People are often under the impression that success is self-made or an individual achievement, but Gladwell digs deeper into what creates success. It is not individual, however it is created through accumulated advantage. Sure, having a lot of talent or a high IQ can get you far, but at some point you just need to be good enough to be able to achieve a high amount of success. He gives an example about basketball players--yes, you need to be tall, but at some point, being 6'6" isn't much more different from being 6'8". As with intelligence, there's a threshold. The rest of the way, success is dependent upon creativity, opportunities, connections, your community, and those magic 10,000 hours that you need to practice in order to master your craft.

I'm not going to spoil the book for you, because I think you should read it. It is definitely a powerful way of understanding success.

Butter London The Black Knight

Well, I'm back in school which means more posts! Gotta love procrastination. Anyway, I was walking around the mall the other day and finally found The Black Knight by Butter London! I've only been wanting this polish for ages, and I finally have it! It's beautiful!

Maybe it was just my bottle, but application was really tricky. It was really thick and very hard to apply. The first coat dragged a lot, so there were a ton of bald spots. I was finally able to smooth it out and use three coats. On my right hand, I chose to save myself the trouble and layer a coat of The Black Knight over one coat of Zoya Cynthia and it worked really well, so I definitely recommend layering over a dark color. I smoothed it out with a coat of Seche Vite.

If you couldn't tell, The Black Knight is a glitter polish that includes magenta glitter which flashes different shades of red, pink, and purple in the light, as well as cyan and silver glitter.

I never buy nail polish for retail/regular price unless it's for a gift, but I just had to have this! Even with the tricky formula, I think $14 is worth it for The Black Knight. It was released as part of their Holiday Collection for 2011, and I'm pretty sure it's limited edition so get it now if you want it!

Guest Post: OPI Black Cherry Chutney

Hello! Today I'm posting swatches of OPI Black Cherry Chutney by my really good friend Sarah from The Weekend Diary! The Weekend Diary includes makeup tips and tutorials varying from neutral to colorful looks, Sarah's adventures, and her interesting thoughts on today's intriguing subjects. Go check it out!

From Sarah: This is the Black Cherry Chutney, it's a really deep plummy, wine color with subtle shimmers. One coat of this looked noticeably burgundy but I put two coats on and it almost looks black except for when you go out in the sun!! I saw this color on a lot of people's favorite's lists so when I saw it at the store, I felt like I should get it, hehe.

That's it for today! I hope you enjoy Sarah's swatches and check out her blog!

Packaging error

Just a quick post before work! ntshrwly informed me that the glitter in this mini set is actually Save Me not Metallic 4 Life, which is what I originally thought because I never heard myself saying I want Metallic 4 Life! Haha, but anyway as you can see from the set I bought, Save Me is clearly marked as Metallic 4 Life. Oops, OPI? Looks like a hiccup! So I apologize for my mistake! I fixed my post now. :)

Furthermore, I know this isn't the entire collection. I just bought the mini set.

OPI Nicki Minaj Collection Swatches and Review

I finally got a hold of the Nicki Minaj collection by OPI! I actually wasn't too excited about this collection because I envisioned really funky bright neon colors, but this was surprisingly a lot calmer than what I thought it would be. When I saw swatches, I knew I really liked the pink and I always have to ave the blue considering it's my favorite color! Anyway, this is the first time I bought minis from OPI and the small bottles were tricky to hold, but I don't think I'll be using up any of these nail polishes.

Did It On 'Em, Fly, Pink Friday, and Save Me

Pink Friday. I was surprised to see something so normal from this collection, but I do enjoy this 'bubblegum pink' as OPI describes it. It reminds me of cotton candy This is three coats of Pink Friday.

Did It On 'Em. OPI calls this as "a lusty little lacquer that loves the "lime"-light. This is three coatsand as you can see, I could've gone for a fourth. I'm not sure how I feel about this color. It reminds me of Shrek and looks horrible on my skin. If anything I plan on using this for nail art.

Fly. This is my favorite color! I admit, it doesn't look as good on my nail as I would have hoped but I like it anyway. This is two coats and I love how shiny it looks without a top coat.

Save Me over Pink Friday

Save Me over Did It On 'Em

Save Me over Fly

Save Me.  Save Me  contains gold, blue, pink bar glitters floating around in silver glitter. I'm not too crazy about  Save Me  especially considering how hard it is to control the bar glitter. Once it clumps in one place, it's hard to spread it all over the nail.

Truthfully, this isn't my favorite collection. It's not even my top 5, but I just really like the aqua and even the pink so I decided to get this mini set!

That's it for now. :)