Essie "Color Your Prom Night"

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Oh Prom - remember that night?  Yeah, I had a horrible prom too.  I actually got fake acrylics for the first time for my senior prom.  Yeah, dumb of me.

Essie can be purchased on their website [official website] or etailers like Head2ToeBeauty [official website] or TransDesign [official website].

ManGlaze #Matte is Murder

Also in my package of ManGlaze (snickers) was the #Matte is Murder, which is the black matte of the group.  Not sure why there is a number sign before the word matte.  It's that way with #Matte Astrophe as well.  Insight?  I've always been a bit shy with black polish but a black matte reminds me of a chalkboard, and I've seen some awesome black on black nail art lately, with matte and shiny coats being intermixed.


I used a base coat of Seche Natural and 2 coats of #Matte is Murder for this - again this polish was nicely mixed, good consistency and great dry time.  It's a great black matte, but I really think I like Fuggen Ugly better.  Sun picture!

Shade picture!

My hands have looked increasingly red lately.  I'm working on it.  New meds and stuff.


And of course, a layer of Seche Vite to make things shiny!

WHOA.  This one has even MORE rainbow goodness to it - check it out!  Seriously, click the picture and make it larger.  I was in LOVE.

You can see more of the green sparkle in this one - thanks green grass that is taller than me in some places (tomorrow is "mow the lawn day").  Rain + insane heat = tons of grass.  And mosquitoes.  :[


Again, another winner in my book by ManGlaze.  I like that you have two very different looks - a matte or a rainbow shine.  Always fun to get more than one look out of a polish.


You can purchase ManGlaze on their website [official website].

ManGlaze Fuggen Ugly

After seeing tons of blogs review ManGlaze, I wanted to try it out myself, so I bought the whole line (don't faint, it's only 4 bottles) and will be reviewing 3 of them over the next few days.  Gotta admit, I was a little apprehensive at first buying something called ManGlaze, but I figured it's a good ice breaker.


Fuggen Ugly is the "grey" of the group.  This is the original matte nail polish, marketed in 2007.  I have purposely avoided matte polishes because they normally chip after just a few hours, but ManGlaze is one that's a laster.  I can't wait to do an actual "last test" soon - it was supposed to happen this weekend, but my son had other plans for my hands (he wouldn't sit still).


I used a base coat of Seche Natural, and then 2 coats of Fuggen Ugly.  I was really happy with the dry time and consistency of this polish - most mattes dry so fast on the nail that you can barely get one coat on evenly, but this had just the right dry time to it.

Check this out!  It's the perfect steel grey that I've been looking for, and such a great application!

I really am happy with this color - it's probably my new favorite "quick" polish that doesn't take a long time to apply or dry.

Even in the shade, this picture holds up quite well - it's a pretty solid grey... no blue or purple undertones to it like some greys.


Now, for fun, I added a top coat of Seche Vite.  My pointer finger was smeared about 5 seconds into it though - again, my son was just full of snips and snails and puppy dog tails that day.

Do you see that rainbow sparkle?!  Holy cow, I was in LOVE.

You can see a little more of the rainbow in this one (middle finger).  Holy hotness, the Seche really blings this out, but as you can see, you could also just wear it matte and still have a wonderful manicure.  Aces, ManGlaze - aces.


You can purchase ManGlaze on their website [official website].

Wet n Wild Morbid

I remember Wet n Wild back when I was a teenager, but a lot has changed with this brand.  Surprisingly, they don't have as big of a following as I thought they would, despite their new marketing campaigns - better packaging, a Twitter account that is quite active - Facebook and MySpace, and then their official website has all been overhauled as well.  They also have a VIP program where you can apparently get free products and I'm guessing coupons.


The "Craze" collection came out in summer of 2009, but I'm a bit late to the party.  These bottles are smaller than your average China Glaze or Zoya (0.34 fl oz instead of 0.5 fl oz) but the price tag reflects it.  I only paid $1.99 for this (and I got another bottle to be reviewed later).  One bad thing with a small bottle is a small brush too.

I seriously thought this brush was going to be the death of me, but thankfully it wasn't that hard to work with!  I don't have petite hands, but I don't have huge man hands either - but the cap settled nicely in my hand.  Reminded me of a big crayon.


Wet n Wild is big 3 free, and it appears from a link on their website that they do NOT animal test - so those of you who are really big on that, yay for Wet n Wild!


Morbid is a dark green with teal shimmer in it.  It's definitely a unique color.  In the bottle it looked like dark moss green to me - like, it's been swimming in a scummy pond for awhile, but on the nail, it reminded me of a dark cousin of China Glaze Emerald Sparkle!  I used a base of Seche Natural, 2 coats of Morbid and topped it with a coat of Seche Vite.

Here's Morbid in the sun - the shimmer almost looks like a microglitter from here (remember all pictures are click-able to show full size 450x600).  You can really see that murky green in the bottle there.

Here on the side, you can see how it looks more like a dark cousin of Emerald Sparkle.  It's a nice vampy green that looks really different from each angle you look at it from.  I was a fan.

And a shade picture - I'm having a bit of an issue getting my outer pinkie polished as you can see.  I'm still learning ^_^


Overall, I was happy with this, especially knowing I only paid $2.  My recent Walgreens trip for the new Sally Hansen HDs ended up running me $50 for all 6 bottles and that's not fun to swallow.  I could definitely see this as a good wintery (or even fall!) night color.  I also would like to try some Konad with it someday! 


Wet n Wild is located at a variety of drug and grocery stories.  You can use their product finder on their website [official website].

My Hair

I'm totally deviating from nail polish in this post to talk about my hair.  I started putting highlights in my hair when I started my freshman year of high school.  My hair dresser started cutting my hair when I was 3, despite a few years of not seeing me when I moved out of state.  I trusted her completely with my hair, and so she put in some cap highlights in a pretty light brown color.  From there, I just started playing a bit.  In my junior year, I went for red highlights, which I LOVED and on my graduation of college, I went for RED hair.  The salon I was going to, specifically used Redken products [official website].

College was the time of experimenting.  On top of going to the salon to get red and blonde highlights (including one "omg" moment when my hair turned out orange and blonde - not sure what happened there), I started playing with box dye too.  My favorite was Clairol "Herbal Essences" in Cinnamon Stick, which was a Medium Warm Brown.

In 2005, I started to shake things up a bit, by going BLACK.  So there is a story here.  I was a radio station DJ, and every year on "Dead Day" (the day before finals start), we held a concert for the University.  This year, my friends and I decided to dye our hair... me with black, Al with red, and Sonny was going blue.  We show up at the concert, and I was the only who went through with it.

Pretty much after this, I quit playing with my hair for about 3 years, and just let it grew out.  2008 was the year of "fun".  First I tried to give myself highlights from a box with a wand and ended up with this.

I also went red

And did red highlights

Then I quit playing again.


Well, this year I decided it was time to play again.  First I went and dyed my hair dark and got bangs.

Then last week I decided I wanted to go purple.  Now, purple is not a very easy color to achieve, and I wasn't about to do it myself.  I was really excited to let my new hair salon and stylist play with me, and even though I fretted about it for days, I figured it was enough fretting - this is just hair!  Look at how much I've abused it already!


The salon I go to now, Bella Bella [official website] uses Goldwell, and this process is called Elumen [official website].  The best thing was that it DID NOT SMELL BAD.  In fact, they make it a point to have GOOD smelling products.  Um, yay!  I wanted violet peek a boo highlights, so first, we took up one layer of hair and put it to the side and started the foiling off of my section to be bleached.  I did the "10 foil" method which meant I had 10 foils on each side.  Now, we were lucky, and my hair took to the bleach very well - we got a "10" on the lifting scale and I was left with some BLONDE hair.

Next it was time for the purple.  Overall the process took about 2 hours, and again, the smell was not bad at all.  Now, I don't have any pictures (yet) from the immediate results, but I've been taking TONS (as I find time) of my hair, which I LOVE.

Ignore my face, haha - you can just barely see it peeking through.

But surprise!!!!

I can totally hide it too.

I'm super happy with it.  This salon also told me stuff that I didn't know, like that moisture is HORRIBLE for hair dye.  So now when I get out of the shower, I quickly go dry my hair.  I also use the Elumen shampoo and conditioner only, so that helps too.  I'm super happy with it, and it's so striking.  These pictures were taken about a week later, so you can see that the color is still super vibrant.  This color should last 4-6 weeks before fading to a lighter purple, at which point I'll see where I want to go from there.  This isn't very cheap though - for the bleaching and coloring of 10 foils was $190, but again I'm very happy with it.


More nail polish coming tomorrow. ^_^