Revlon Vixen and OPI Man With the Golden Gun

Happy weekend, readers! I have a fun weekend planned. It's filled with studying for midterms, a violin performance and a twelve page research paper. Thankfully, I'll be taking a lot of study breaks to keep myself sane. Here's what I'm wearing now, Revlon Vixen:

And here it is topped with OPI's Man With the Golden Gun. I snagged this one up at Ulta after looking for it since the Skyfall OPI collection came out. I played around with my lighting in the first of these pictures and my topcoat looks crazy shiny!

Talk to y'all soon, and have a great weekend!

OPI Stranger Tides

Here's a go-to favorite of mine. I swear it looks nice on my skin, for some reason my camera just freaked out and wanted to show lobster hands! At least Zoidberg is a funny character so I'm okay bearing a resemblance to him.

OPI DS Original

Hey everyone! School year resolution: blog more. On this blog. I started a neuroscience blog last year but it's pretty pathetic (as in zero people visit it) and I do enjoy swatching, so I'll be posting here more frequently!

This is two coats of OPI DS Original, which I realized I have no swatches of alone on here. Here you go!

Hope everyone's doing well!

OPI La Boheme

Hey everyone! Long time no see. Sorry about that- life got in the way. I'm not going to make any promises about posting regularly, but I completely lost interest in nail polish in the past couple months and it's just now starting to come back. I have a couple pictures I never got around to putting up on here which I'll cue up to post in the next couple of days.

Here's OPI La Boheme. She's a multifaceted beauty! I tried getting La Boheme at different angles with my camera, and experimented with different kinds of light. Here were my results. I'm sure most of you have seen this polish before, but I hope that my pictures show what it looks like in person more accurately than others I've seen.

Here's a "boring" shot under my OTT light. Nothing special going on here.

Here she is with different tilts. You can really see the green and gold in these pictures, especially on the left side of my nails!

Finally, under direct sunlight at different angles. It kind of reminds me of embers glowing in a freshly put-out fire. Cozy but beautiful :)

Thanks for still checking out my blog while I've been gone- I noticed I accumulated 200 followers during my absence. You guys ROCK!! Thank you!

OPI Hungary for my Honey

Have you guys ever wanted or bought a nail polish just for its name? That was the sole reason I bought OPI Hungary for my Honey. I thought the color was fugly when I saw swatches of it online, but I thought since I am Hungarian I had to have this color. I was happily surprised when I put it on... the color aint half bad! It reminds me of paprika, which I'm sure is what they were trying to go for. Fun fact- OPI was actually started by a Hungarian!

OPI Road House Blues + Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure

I bought Road House Blues because I heard it was a dupe for OPI Sapphire In the Snow. I can't compare the two, but I do really like Road House Blues! I wish it was a little more purple, however. I messed up on this mani so I put Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure over it all, lol... I think it looks good!

OPI What's Dune?

I love this polish! It reminds me of abalone... if you look at it in the right light it reflects pink and blue. Unfortunately, I didn't get to capture that, and I only captured the holo. Still beautiful! This was 4 coats.

OPI Do You Lilac It? Plus CND Gold Shimmer

For some reason I only took one picture of this manicure, silly silly me. As the title states, this is Do You Lilac It with CND Gold Shimmer layered over it. I thought I would like this mani more than I did, but I think it's just a *little* too girly for my tastes.

Thanks for looking! Just out of curiosity, would anyone be interested in what products I use to moisturize/take care of my cuticles and hands in general? I still gotta make them frankens, I ordered some bulk TKB glamour base and I'll be making them shortly :) hold tight!

OPI Suzi Says Feng Shui

I love this color - OPI is by far my favorite brand. Their colors aren't always 100% unique nowadays, but their formula really rocks. This is two coats of Suzi Says Feng Shui.

Waiting in line.

So I originally made this post while waiting in line to get into the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows P.2. Now I'm just editing it so it makes sense and isn't a jumble of words and pictures :). I decided to do a themed manicure for the premiere. I started out first with OPI Chick Flick Cherry:

Then I added Revlon Gold Rush on my ring finger for an accent. Next I cut off pieces of tape and put them on my nail so there would be a blank spot that looked like a lightning bolt. Sorry that this picture is so poorly lighted, I took it while I was in line.

I hope you like the final result! The premier was SO much fun but I'm so sad the series is ended. Here is a picture of me from the premiere:

I didn't get to dress up for the premiere unfortunately, but I did dress up the day after the premiere! I hope everyone who went had fun and I hope the Potter depression doesn't last long :)

OPI Gal Meets Gal-Veston

Good morning! Today I have one of the OPI "sorbets" (AKA jellies) to show you. I bought all the jellies from this collection, that's how much I love them! This one is OPI Gal Meets Gal-Veston, probably my favorite from the collection.

After I took these pictures I decided to give my Black Shatter a chance. Black shatter just isn't my cup of tea... I know a lot of people love it but I bought it and this was my first time using it!

Bleh... still don't like it. Oh well! Thanks for looking! :)

Sparkly Mermaid Nails?

Hi guys! I was originally planning on waiting until I got these cropped and watermarked to put them up, but I can just do that when I have access to a computer! If anyone knows of a good photo editing app for the iPhone or iPad please let me know!

So anyways, this is Sephora by OPI Caught With My Khakis Down topped with OPI Sparkle Teal Sunrise. I had this on my nails for 4 days and it barely chipped, I just had some minor tipwear! This is actually a picture taken on day 3.

And here is a picture of the Sephora by OPI all by herself. I love it! Sorry about no polish bottle, I was away from home!

Thanks for looking!

Cozu-Melted in the Sun

Hi everyone! I hope you aren't too tired from partying yesterday :) I have a nice summery color to show you today - OPI Cozu-Melted in the Sun. This is the black label version of the color, meaning that it is made with the old formula OPI had that wasn't Big-3 Free. Their formula now has no harmful chemicals in them, but you can still find old formula bottles in nail salons. This was 3 coats. It's a nice refresher mani after wearing crazy colors!

4th of July

Happy Independance Day, American ladies! I'm celebrating by going to my friend's neighborhood's park and watching fireworks. First I painted my nails with Wet n Wild French White Creme as a base. Then I used OPI Chick Flick Cherry and ORLY Sapphire Silk for the swirls. I'm planning on posting a tutorial on the water marble technique soon (hah I say this a lot...), hopefully Wednesday-ish. I tried doing this twice and I definitely like the results I got the second time around better. Which one do you prefer?

Here's try one:

And here's try two:

And here's my right hand:

Have a great 4th everyone! And to those of you not celebrating, I hope you have a great day!

Giveaway! -now closed

Hey guys! It's finally that time... time for me to finally do my giveaway.

Rules

-You must be a subscriber to enter (please only participate in the giveaway if you plan on sticking around if you're a new subscriber!)

-To enter, either post this giveaway's URL on tumblr, Blogger, Twitter or Facebook:
http://lavenderparfait.blogspot.com/2011/06/giveaway.html

-In the comments below please post the URL of where you posted this giveaway with your email address so I can contact you if you win
-The giveaway will close on July 12th

That's all! Good luck!

Here are the polishes I'm giving away:
(from left to right) Island Girl Aloha Sunset, Mahalo Dream, OPI Absolutely Alice, Island Girl Aloha Girl, Waikiki Sunset and Island Volcano

Closeup on Aloha Sunset and Mahalo Dream

The blues! Waikiki Sunset, Island Volcano and Aloha Girl

Last but not least, OPI Absolutely Alice

Hope you guys like it, and again good luck!

My Top 10

Good morning! Today I wanted to share my top ten favorite polishes in my collection. I think I've posted manicures of most of these, but if you want some swatches of any of them feel free to let me know!

First up is my cremes. From left to right: Essie Lapis of Luxury, OPI Do You Lilac It?, Maybelline Banana Puddin' and Rimmel Steel Grey. The only one of these that is hard for me to apply is Banana Puddin', which is a bummer because I love the color so much!

 My favorite glitter. Those of you who read this blog should have been able to guess this! Deborah Lippmann Glitter in the Air. I love how sheer it is and how I can layer it over any other color.

 My duochromes! OPI La Boheme and Liquid Euphoria Dreamy. I honestly can't pick which one of these I like more... they're both so cute!

 And finally, my favorites, my holos! OPI My Private Jet, OPI DS Shimmer and OPI DS Original. I love how OPI does their holographics, I wish they would make more! I spent a very long time tracking down My Private Jet so I didn't have to pay eBay prices, and I'm so glad I did!

Hope you enjoyed! I'll post another one of these when my stash grows. It will be fun to look back at this and see how my tastes have changed (if they have!). See you guys soon!

OPI Do You Lilac It? and Clarins 230

Hi guys! So I just got this in the mail and I decided my top ten could wait because I wanted to put this on! This is Clarins 230, aka unicorn pee. I really like it, even with my nubz! I do wish the green shimmer would show more. If anyone knows good combinations to layer this over please let me know!

First up is OPI Do You Lilac It, which is my favorite light purple polish

Cute huh? Now here it is with Clarins 230 over it. I like the color it changes the polish to! Beward, this was hard for me to photograph so sorry if these aren't great photos. I know I will wear Clarins 230 again very soon so if you want to see more then you're in luck! :)

 You can see the shimmer in this one well:

Here's a close up so you can really see the shimmer on my nail.

See you soon (with stash pictures, I promise!)


Update: I just hit 1,000 views! Thanks guys :)