Beyond The Sea (A.K.A. Orly Royal Navy)

I had originally scheduled Tuesday's post (a red, white, and blue manicure) for today, seeing as it is the 4th of July and all. Thinking back, it even had a polish called Stars and Stripes in it, lol.

Instead, I'm going to show you a polish from Quo. The Canadian ladies will know that Quo is basically the store brand cosmetic line from Shoppers Drug Mart, and their nail polish is actually manufactured by Orly. When Quo started putting out their polishes, I didn't really have too much interest in them -- the colours were nice, but they were $10 each, and frankly, the colours were not that nice. I only ever bought them if they were on sale, or if I had a friend who worked at Shoppers with me (the perks of Pharmacy School!). 

However, last February, during my first experience working at a Shoppers, this happened:

Two dollars. And best of all, Quo was now carrying some of the more popular Orly shades (which run $6.99 at Sally Beauty Supply), including those from their Spring and Summer 2013 collections. (The Shoppers down the street, mind you, still had all these things full price). I must've swiped up a dozen of these babies, starting with Beyond The Sea, a "dupe" of Orly Royal Navy.

Beyond The Sea is an electric blue jelly with blue glitter/shimmer running throughout. I was expecting it to be sheer, but it covered nicely in 3 coats. You can see a bit of nail line in the sunlight picture, but nothing that can be seen from afar. 

It seems to be a close, brighter cousin to Revlon Royal, with shimmer. I've read from other bloggers that if you don't care too much for the glitter, you can let the bottle sit for awhile and the shimmer will settle to the bottom. So I've heard.

Beyond The Sea usually retails for $10, but I got this one on mega clearance for $2. It doesn't seem to be a part of the core Quo by Orly line, as I haven't seen it on the regular racks since then. If you're going to grab yourself a bottle of this, you might as well get Royal Navy. It's much easier to track down, and it will probably be cheaper, too.

K

Essie Mojito Madness vs. Orly Mint Mojito

I know, I know, I've been going on about these colours forever and ever. But this is the last one, I promise.

While I was wandering through Wal-Mart, trying to decide whether or not Essie Mojito Madness was too similar to Orly Mint Mojito, I scoured the internet on my smartphone trying to find some comparison swatches. I bought it anyway, despite the lack of comparisons; not sure the outcome would have been different had I found those swatches...

From these pictures, you can tell that these two are not exact dupes of each other. Mojito Madness has a much more saturated colour, while Mint Mojito is slightly paler and dustier.

The flash pictures show the difference a little better:

So, do you need both? Probably not. To the average person, these colours probably look exactly the same. From a distance, it's hard to tell the difference, but they are definitely not the same. You will probably only want both if you LOVE THIS GREEN, like me. If you were to only get one, I would say the Essie is the best choice, based on formula.

This picture is after a single coat of polish. Placed right, the Essie comes close to being a one-coater. The above swatches were 2 coats of the Essie, 3 of the Orly. The Essie reaches opacity much quicker, and is also probably easier to find.

I got Mojito Madness at Wal-Mart for $8.99. Mint Mojito was $4.99 (+ $5 shipping) from an e-Bay retailer.

Orly Mermaid Tale

The first layering experiment I had with nail polish back in high school resulted in a combination that my best friend said looked like a mermaid. I told her she was being dumb. Until another person told me the same thing. And then another. And another...

I bought Orly's Mermaid Tale from the Flash Glam FX collection on a whim at Sally's with a bunch of other polishes. I thought it would be the same price as a normal Orly polish, but it wasn't until I got home that I realized that it cost more.

\

I'm really digging the big holographic teal hexes. I've got to say that \I don't own anything else like this in my collection. It's a clear base filled with larger teal holo hexes and small round green glitter. In the  picture you can see that I put more glitter on my pinky nail (unintentionally), and I think it really does resemble what a mermaid's tail would look like.

Beauty.

Nail Art Is the Best Medicine

This specific attempt at something resembling nail art has been cooking in my head for awhile, ever since a coworker at the pharmacy mentioned that it would be awesome to have a nail polish that was the same colour as the capsules she was currently counting out. Sometimes I think my friends support me and my addiction too much. BUT THANKS GUYS, I LOVE YOU ALL!

Considering that I spend most of my time in the summer working around prescription drugs, and most of my time during the school year [pretending like I'm] learning about prescription drugs, it was only a matter of time until this found its way into my nail obsession.

It's an idea I've had for a VERY long time, but I wanted to wait until my nails were the right length/shape for them to resemble capsules. I did these by painting on 1 to 2 coats of the lighter or least opaque colour of the capsule on each nail, and then painting on the second colour on the other half. I was going to use scotch tape to guide painting on the other half, but I was much too impatient for  that and ended up free-handing them. The numbers were put on using a toothpick.

I also had a ridiculously hard time deciding which capsules should be represented. I wanted to have those which were common enough to recognize, but also something unique enough that one who knew what these were would be able to distinguish it as such. A few of them could be a number of things...but I tried.

I'll let you guess. Don't scroll down just yet...here are some lolcats to entertain you while you scroll.

Here they are, if you were actually attempting to guess instead of attempting to care. :P

Colours used:

• Orly Mint Mojito
• Zoya Cho
• Joe Fresh Crush
• Orly Wild Wisteria
• Color Club Almost Famous
• Wet n Wild Black Creme
• Wet n Wild Through the Grapevine 

Colours used:

• Orly Mint Mojito
• Sally Hansen Wet Cement
• Wet 'n' Wild Candy-licious
• Wet 'n' Wild Black Creme
• Color Club Almost Famous
• Sally Hansen Cherry Red
• Sally Hansen White On
• Zoya Breezi

Now, I'll be completely honest. As much as I enjoyed this manicure, I only wore it for about 2 hours before I decided that having all these colours together in one manicure was just...ugly. It was a novel idea and something that has been on my mind for awhile, so I was glad that I did it no matter how brief  the wear time was. :)

My First Ruffian

Remember how I said  I had bigger plans for Orly Wild Wisteria?

My very first ruffian manicure! I was really excited about doing it, since I waited until my nails were of a good enough length. The decision about the colour combo took a little while, though. I saw the new Revlon French Mix duos at Wal-Mart last week, and the light purple/pink glitter duo drew my eye. The pink glitter looked sheer as hell, and I wasn't willing to pay $7.99 for 0.26oz of that gorgeous purple shimmery polish, so I got Maybelline Iced Queen (from their new Color Show line) instead and topped it off with Essie Pure Pearlfection. I think it replicates the general look of that purple polish. I've read that it's pretty sheer, so I'm happy with the decision I made.

I didn't know how difficult it could be to get a good shape on the design. I ended up going over the darker part near the cuticle again with Wild Wisteria to get the shape right, but  there are a few nails on my right hand where I got the hang of shaping out the lighter part with just a once over with the lighter colour. There's also a bald spot on my pinky because I used too many brushstrokes. I could have fixed it later, but I didn't notice it until after I had put on a coat of the Pure Pearlfection, and...I'm pretty lazy.

This photo here is probably the most colour accurate. My camera doesn't do well with anything that has blue in it because that seems to be the only nuance that it likes to pick up. I had to colour adjust for temperature on these to get them to even remotely resemble the medium purple that Iced Queen is.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with myself and how well this turned out. I really enjoy the look of it and I will definitely be trying this trend out again!

Deep Purple

Back in January, when I bought that groupon with my friend Tracy, I had intended to buy the multi-coloured sparkle one as well as Imperial Purple, just based off the colour swatches provided on the website. Of course, I forgot the name of the one that I wanted on the day of and instead bought Mount Royal, which is nice, but it wasn't what I was looking for. Not wanting to pay the regular price for Imperial, I went to the blogs for advice.

According to a blog out there, not sure which one, Orly's Wild Wisteria is supposed to be a dead on dupe. I got it as my free polish when Sally's had a buy 2, get 1 free sale.

This is one coat of Wild Wisteria. I had bigger plans for this colour, so I only did one coat and it came out fantastically in terms of opacity. I'm loving the deep purple colour as well. It looks like black from far away, but you can still tell that it is a beautiful shade of purple. :)

Flashback: Prozac

The delay between posts can totally be blamed on Daylight Savings Time. I'm all for having long summer days and all, but the time change was such a bitch this time. In case you were wondering, we lost. And now I'm back to my normal hating U of T (though secretly harboring a glimmer of may be school pride, or, heartburn).

As part of my green series, I am posting a manicure that I did in the summer, prior to writing the Jurisprudence exam. This is Orly - Mint Mojito.

No, my hand is not really that yellow. I very unskillfully altered the colour of this picture to reflect more closely what colour this polish is. The formula was a little thin, so this is three coats to acceptable opacity.

The story of how I acquired this colour is such a saga, which began with my very first post on this blog. I mentioned that I had completed my quest to find a colour that matched the green half of a Prozac capsule. This was all due to one of my lovely co-workers musing that it would be nice to have a nail polish colour like that, fully aware of the extent of my craziness, knowing that her very statement would send me into a frenzied hunt...

The hunt led me to the internet, of course, where I stumbled upon swatches of this Orly beauty after failing hard with Four Leaf Clover and almost getting there with Mermaid's Tears. Sadness overcame me when I realized that I had never seen Orly being sold anywhere and would likely never see the chance to swatch Mint Mojito. I forgot about it for the next few weeks.

Enter Sally Beauty Supply. The first time I walked through the door, I bubbled with excitement when I saw the rack of Orly polishes. It was meant to be! I asked the lady there if she knew if there were any bottles of my much coveted Mint Mojito from the Summer 2009 collection in stock. Of course, she scoffed at me and said no...as a nail polish noob at the time, I did not understand the concept of "collections" and other "polish fiends". In desperation, I turned to e-Bay.

That's right. Mint Mojito was my very first online purchase, and I do not for a second regret it. Green is my absolute favourite colour. You can never have too many green polishes!