Orly - Nite Owl and Drikk Dkr-B

In Greek/Ελληνικά

The Dkr-B plate has finally been released! I was so looking forward to it as I loved the designs from the previews we were getting from time to time. I orderd my plate from Ninja Polish and I have to say I was amazed with their service since it got from the US to the UK in 3 working days. Excellent service!

For this I used Orly's Nite Owl as a base and stamped it using my old faithful, Stargazer 232. It's funny how it looks like it has an almost blue hue compared to the warm silver shimmer of Nite Owl. On the nail it looked more silver and made the shimmer look a bit goldish. For the owl I used my other old faithful Le Chat CM nail art 04 Brown with some details using Stargazer 233, a chrome blue.

Artificial Light

Aren't the designs beautiful?

Tangerine Summer with RMK

Greek/Ελληνικά

By now I think we've all gotten enough of the Pantone colour for this summer, Tangerine Tango, in all sorts of products and -most prominently- lip colours. I can't say I've taken part in the tangerine madness and it's all due to these two products which I've been using non-stop for the past two summers and will be using for this one, too.

RMK Gloss Lips N CL-02 Clear Orange is the only lipgloss that's ever won my heart. I am a lipstick girl through and through and, yes, I did manage to spent all of the 00s without becoming enamoured to lipgloss; CL-02 is just this special and different. It's not sticky and it's not icky in the way a gloss can be and it has no sparkles. It's a beautiful clear orange; I liked the clearness of it so much I used to get obsessed about not tranfering any lipstick in the tube with my brush. I apply it sheerly and it enhances my natural lip colour and makes them look juicy. I start using it when the days are growing warmer, and it's one of only two lip products I took on my holidays last year when I decided I wouldn't take too much make up with me. It's summer in a bottle for me! The applicator is a plastic brush which started splaying after I'd used about half of it, but it was nothing I couldn't fix with a pair of scissors. The good news is that CL-02 is part of the permanent line. Permanent lines are so often ignored in favour of seasonal lines, but look at the gems one can find! I'm already on my second tube and will be getting more after this. 

RMK Sweet Colour Lip 01 Tangerine was part of a seasonal line from 2007 or 2008 and it is a coloured lip balm, pretty much in the same vain as the Clinique Honeys and all the other sheer lipsticks that have become so fashionable. I love lip products like that cause they give a bit of colour, but you can still see the natural colour and texture of your lips. I'm not going to say much more about it since it's a long discontinued product, but I like it so much that I couldn't leave it out. It was -in my opinion- the best one of that line and I use it all through the winter. I was lucky enough to find one on ebay earlier this year as I had finished my first tube ages ago and after this one is gone, I'm going to miss it!

RMK products are a little difficult to find, but you can check out their website in case there is one near you or you can order via telephone.

Comparison: Orly - Mysterious Curse(Dark Shadows Collection), Orly - Royal Velvet and Stargazer - 317

Greek/Ελληνικά

Hello my dears!!

I'm so sorry for being absent for almost two weeks, but I've been having such a nightmarish time with blogger and Google Friend Connect! I couldn't make them work at all and after trying out a million different things, they just went back to normal as if nothing had happened.

I couldn't even enjoy the first time I've ever been featured on another blog! The Driveler Kate from one of my favourite blogs, drivel about frivol, featured me along with other great bloggers in this post. Thank you so much Kate for the feature and your kind words! I really loved the idea of the Liebster Awards and I've been around to look at some of the features, though of course GFC wouldn't let me follow any at the time *ugh*. I will have a look around again though! I also see I have some new followers; hello new followers! I will in time do my own nominations for the Liebster award, but for the time being I have a comparison for you that I'd prepared ages ago.

Mysterious Curse, Royal Velvet, 317, Natural Light.
Check out the colour shift of the shimmer on the StarGazer bottle!

Along with Buried Alive, I also ordered Mysterious Curse from the Orly Dark Shadows collection. I could tell it was somewhat similar to another polish I had from the Spring 2011 collection, Royal Velvet, I just wasn't expecting them to be almost identical. So, here is a comparison I did between those two and another similar polish,Stargazer 317 version 1.

All three have a deep purple base with a lot of fine shimmer in that shifts from bright pink, to blue. The pink shift is actually a lot stronger than what you see in my pictures, but my camera consistantly fails to capture it. They are practically dupes and their only differences are:

*Orly Royal Velvet is much less pigmented than the other two (requires 4 coats at least as opposed to 3) and harder to apply. It's a pooling nightmare as you can see in the pictures.

*Both the Orly polishes left behind red staining in spite of using a base coat. 

*Stargazer 317 has a lot more shimmer in and a slightly darker base colour. It is also more pigmented, you could get away with only 2 coats of it if you're careful. 

Mysterious Curse is a better polish than Royal Velvet as it is more pigmented and more manageable, but I can't help being very dissappointed in Orly who came out with -practically-the same polish twice in a year. If the Stargazer 317 was easier to find, I would undoubtedly point you to its direction as it is much better and a lot cheaper at the same time. What a shame it's not!

Paper swatch along with some more colours, natural light

One coat/ 3 coats, artificial light 

First coat

Natural light

Artificial light

Artificial light and as much of the pink shift as my camera could capture.

Stargazer 317 Ultra Cover Nail Polishes

Last year I saw this polish here and really really liked it. Purple with a blue sheen, what's not to like! However, when I ordered it from the Stargazer shop, what I received was completely different. The one I received is a bright pink with a multichrome shimmer that shifts from pink to purple, the same kind of shimmer you find in Stargazer Ultra Cover Nail Polish 305. I looked around on line and in the end I found the version of 317 I was originally looking for, but no further details as to why or how they are different.

The odd thing is, even their barcodes are exactly the same. I thought I should point this out on a separate post in case someone is looking for the Stargazer Ultra Cover Nail Polish 317 and ends up having the same problems I did.

direct sunlight

direct sunlight

Natural light

Orly - Buried Alive (Dark Shadows Collection)

Ελληνικά 

Recently Orly brought out a small collection of polishes inspired by the film "Dark Shadows".I have yet to watch it, but I got excited about the collection nonetheless. I wasn't that crazy about the creams, but the shimmers seemed interesting so I went ahead and ordered them. 

'Buried Alive' is a brown shimmer. In the picture it looked a bit more interesting than in real life I'm afraid. I thought it was going to be a bit more 'lit from within' as a shade, but it's not. The base colour is a very yellowed out brown which brings to mind things that are unpleasant, even with a ton of shimmer in it, but it loses 'look' that when you apply more layers.

It's an ok shade, I didn't like it as much as I thought I would, but it has some major drawbacks. It requires more than two layers for full opacity, it's very runny and hard to avoid pooling around the cuticles as you can see in the pictures, and when you try to clean them up there's a slightly yellow stain left behind which doesn't go away unless you scrub-scrub-scrub. I'll try it again in Autumn, since it is a very autumnal shade, and maybe I'll like it better then. 

Artificial light

Natural light(overcast)

I tried comparing it to other brown shimmers I own, but I can't say it really looked like any of them.

Drk-A, Westside Warrior and Crop Circles

Greek/Ελληνικά

I've had China Glaze - Westside Warrior for the longest of times and hadn't worn it for some reason so I decided it was about time. It's actually a very nice polish, maybe a little too yellow-leaning for me to love it (I have Foubert's place for that), but the texture is nice and it applies smoothly in two coats.

I also decided to go one step beyond and do the 'dreaded' accent nail for which I used  Bourjois 39 Jaune Trendy and Westside Warrior as a stamping polish using a design from my beloved Drk-A palette. WW is actually fantastic for stamping as it is very pigmented. I really liked the end result, it looks like a field with crop circles!

Artificial light