Shiro swag 2: first looks

I’m clearly just not a patient person.  It seemed like no sooner had I opened my Shiro discontinued-products-sale order than I had worn them all at least once!

Being a bit of a pedantic completionist, I paired off the colours and went with your basic two-colour scheme:  one colour over the whole lid, the other in the crease and blended up and outwards depending on how adventurous one was feeling.

The only look where this didn’t work out so well, as you can see, was where Dimitri kicked Mew to the curb and I ended up looking thoroughly 80s camp sci fi.  Not that this is either a bad thing, nor unprecedented.

The second look is a little more subdued, pink Jigglypuff being stomped all over by blue Oshus.  Oshus is a fascinating colour, a deep blue with bronze glitter which doesn’t show up in this shot.  What can I say, I take these pics first thing in the morning in rubbish light.

Both looks over Napoleon Perdis Auto Pilot eye primer, with Maybelline Great Lash mascara, which is becoming a surprise favourite on the basis that it’s the product I’m most likely to be able to find with my glasses on in the morning.

Nails of the week: Disney Princess style

I finally decided to try my hand (as it were) at a tape manicure, inspired by the definitely-more-artistic-than-I posts on the topic at Out Damn Swatch!

First mistake:  picking a glitter polish for the base.  Because what you really need as a rank amateur in the field of tape manicuration is the extra level of difficulty involving in getting the damn tape to stick to your damn nails.

But I persevered!  Somehow I was quite enamoured with the combination of pink glittery base (OPI Excuse Moi!) and dark red tip (tee hee) (OPI Not Really A Waitress).  At least I had the sense to go for a straight-up French manicure-style effect rather than, well … sheesh, way to make us all feel massively undertalented.

Two pics are presented of the final results, one with flash and one without, since it was night and my indoor lighting is horrid for photography.  All things considered, I was okay with how it looked; there was a saving grace to the glitter, which was that just as it doesn’t show chipping too badly, it doesn’t show (that much) how the tape totally wasn’t stuck down properly on my index fingernail.

It was about a day or two into wearing it that I realised I was totally channelling the Disney Princess merchandising line.  But I chose to rock it.

I’m thinking of something more ambitious for next week.  Let’s see how that goes.

Nails o’ the week catchup: Sparkletoast

It feels like I haven’t posted about my nails in ages, and the poor dears are starting to think I don’t love them.  And I do, especially now I’ve discovered what a difference pampering the living crap out of your cuticles can do.

So this was a fairly demure, totally work-appropriate look – i.e. two coasts of OPI Chicago Champagne Toast – jazzed up ever so slightly with a single coat of Excuse Moi! over a coat of CCT to slightly take the edge off the pink.

The flash shot makes it look very red, but since I was shooting in rubbish light in my lounge in the evening (who swallowed the spider to catch the fly, etc) I wanted to give some comparison to the slightly washed-out pics.

I spent a good deal of time while waiting for this to dry pondering why the ring finger is so often used for the “accent” nail in manicures.  It’s probably part psychology, part practicality.  It’s not going to be the middle finger for obvious reasons …

Nails o’ the week: Rosy Rainbow Connection

Following on from last week’s glitter-tastic extravaganza of sparkle, I felt like something a little toned down.

But still glittery.

Inspiration suddenly hit me:  since the main thing people seem to say about OPI’s Rainbow Connection is “the glitter’s not that thick, but if you layer it up/dab it on/scrape it along the edge of your nail …” – why don’t I try taking OPI at their word and using the polish just as it comes out of the bottle?

And just to keep things really dialled back after pairing it with a bright, warm yellow, I picked Avon Speed Dry+ in Adoring Rose.

So it was topcoat, two coats of Adoring Rose, and then, squinting one eye to control my natural put-glitter-everywhere tendencies, I just swept the Rainbow Connection over the top in one clean stroke.

And went back after it had tried to do a second coat on some nails, just to ensure even glitter-distribution.

The fact is, Rainbow Connection is a fussy, inconsistent little bastard polish.  As I went from nail to nail I noticed the glitter seemed to get thicker with repeated brush-dips – except for a few times when all the glitter ran away and hid.  It certainly wasn’t the simplest of processes to end up with a good, uniform result – but it was very pretty, maybe even a little too whimsical.

Compared to the bright yellow and the thicker application, the lighter base coat brought out the different colours in the glitter a little better, rather than being predominantly silver with a few flashes of green/blue/pink.

Verdict: happy!  But still questing to discover the One True Way to wear Rainbow Connection.  My life is so hard!

Nails o’ the week: sweet glittering yellow brightness!

This was not my original nail plan for the week.  My original plan involved my supercheap, as-yet-unused pharmacy-bargain-bin MIKI blue shade and some kind of belated celebration of the New York Giants’ well-deserved victory (sucks to be you, Bill Belicheat.)

But as you can see from the pic things got off to a bad enough start when after 3 layers we were not in sight of reaching anything like the shade it is in the bottle, and things went downhill from there.

Ah well, $2.50 down the drain, boo hoo.

*reloads from previous save point*

So.  I must admit to having shamelessly stolen this idea from Astra, but rather upped the ante on vivid cheerful shout-it-out-loud brightness.  Dark-plum-and-glitter may be edgy and gothic (in the literary sense) and stunning and all, but I wanted to show absolutely no restraint.

Besides, my mood was already a tad low from the previous nailfail, so in one of my regular bids to pep myself up through fashion choices, I went with OPI The “IT” Color and tried my hand at some gradient layering with Rainbow Connection.

I think it went well.

Things were definitely helped by the fact that Rainbow Connection applies so thinly if you just brush it on like a normal polish.  To get the tips opaque with glitter, I put the brush perpendicular to the end of the nail and just scraped the glitter off like you would scrape excess polish off on the side of the bottle.

Downsides:  the extra thickness of glitter on the tips got a tad annoying as the days went on (I think the extra thickness there was even messing with my dexterity, and that’s poor enough at the best of times) so eventually I just peeled the whole darn thing off.  The silver lining there is that once you’ve slathered on enough layers of Rainbow Connection, peeling it off is the easy part.  If your nails forgive you.

Christmas nail trifecta!

Happy holiday-of-choice, all!  This large pink woman may or may not be blogging much over the break since a temporary divorce from any and all computer screens is totally in order.  Be good to each other!

As the weeks have been winding down to Christmas and slowly but surely my chance to spend two weeks wearing a maxi dress/a selection of old t-shirts with leggings, not doing anything with my hair, and generally slouching it up, you can understand a girl needs some sparkle to keep the motivation up.

Sparkle I have in abundance, especially enhanced by the purchase of OPI Gold Shatter – where my wonderful local Unichem failed I turned to Kirkcaldie’s, who may sell stupid stockings but won’t usually set you wrong on the path to Serious Brand Name Products.

The first look was really accidentally Christmassy, and set off this whole thing.  I wanted to try out the third of my Unichem-on-special trio, Chicago Champagne Toast, and I wanted to try my gold shatter.  And fortunately these things combined in a way that was pleasing to me.

Notes on gold shatter:  where black shatter is gluggy, gold is downright goopy.  It applies like clotted sludgy grossness, as the second pic kinda shows and that makes it a lot harder to deal with than black shatter – probably not a shatter shade for the newbie.

It’s also got a serious glitter to it, which – at least in this colour combo – made the crisp shatter-y effect less striking.  But if you want to glam the hell out of your nails, this is the polish for you.

And, as I realised once it all fully dried, the whole shebang reminded me of nothing so much as an 80s Hallmark card, all rose and gilt and anatomically-impossible rosy-cheeked babies.  Which … works.  It certainly didn’t scream “Christmas” and I got no comments as I had with my bright-pink-yet-somehow-Christmassy watermelon colour scheme, but it combined subdued elegance with OMG SPARKLES and definitely brightened up my day.

I’m not, however, a woman to do things by halves.  Like an episode of Mythbusters, once I establish a principle is sound I ramp it up until there are fireballs.  Or we hit the other end of the 80s style spectrum.  The amazing end.

I’m calling this my Flash Gordon scheme.

(Incidentally, best movie ever.)

So, the look:  it’s two coats of I’m Not Really A Waitress under one of gold shatter.  It’s a little bit lava, a little bit Christmas-on-crack, it’s wonderfully over-the-top.

A further gold shatter note:  it’s probably something to do with my brushing technique, but I did find the coverage sometimes faded at the top of the nail.

Given how goopy gold shatter is I think loading the brush up until you’re not sure it’ll get out of the bottle may be the way to go to get your full gold hit.  Tragically for me, this may require further experimentation.

It certainly also doesn’t crack as delicately or finely as the black, so really the take-away is something like “Gold shatter: for letting the world know your style is unsubtle and quick to anger.”

Did I mention Flash Gordon is the best movie ever?  Someone should encourage me to do a post on how Princess Aura and Dale Arden are brilliant style icons, especially for the hyper-femme glitter-focused among us.

Of course, after a harrowing two weeks straight with the same basic undercoat-and-shatter look, with one final working week to get through before holiday relaxation could commence … it was time to bring out the big guns.

The big, Muppet-y guns.

And you’d better believe this look got some Christmas comments.

I’d already done a Waitress-based look for the Flash Gordon bestmovieever style above, so went with Meep Meep Meep for the base colour.  Besides, the aim here was for maximum sparkle.

Not that you can really see MMM’s subtle orange shimmer under two coats of Rainbow Connection.

It’s … an interesting polish.  Completely clear, huge amounts of glitter in all shapes and sizes, but it sure doesn’t apply the way you’d imagine from looking at the bottle.  The glitter disperses itself far and wide, and there’s the gold shatter issue of not really getting a lot of colour at the end of a nail-long brushstroke.

Once I got used to it, I liked it, but still ended up with two coats and dabbing the glitter on rather than brushing, plus a topcoat layer to smooth the edges where the big chunks of glitter were poking out from their medium.

Rainbow Connection is definitely not recommended if you’re wanting even application or a consistent look across all your nails.  I suppose you could be really pedantic about it, but at that point I’d suggest getting a naturally-glittery colour like Excuse Moi or just sprinkling $2 Shop glitter over a clear basecoat.

Needless to say:  all three of these were hell to take off, and Rainbow Connection was the worst.

Now I’m sitting here with naked nails pondering what to do for Christmas proper.  And I just received an Avon delivery …

Wednesday Wanty: geekgasm

Pikachu

Definatalie summed it up: Shiro Cosmetics, made of win.

You know you’re onto a good geeky meme-y thing when the FAQ says “Shiro is the Japanese word for castle. Because the princess is in another one.“

You especially know it when the collections are themed along the lines of Death Note, Pokemon, Zelda … and the best computer game ever sodding well created, Portal.  (Even Yahtzee says so.  Come on.)

Still Alive

They’re vegan, cruelty-free, the creator, Caitlin, is an amazing multitasking wizard of awesomeness … I’d be tempted to buy themeven if they weren’t fairly cheap and really pretty (and if you check out Definatalie’s post or Shiro’s Tumblr, they go on damn bright.)

Are You Still There?

But damn.  Look at these colours (and of course, on reflection, I’ve picked the big bright ones; but the neutrals and less in-your-face shades are also amazing!)

Bright, multi-dimensional, any hue you can imagine (and although overworked, the ridiculously talented Caitlin even takes custom orders, though you’d have to be pretty specific about what you want if you can’t find something to fit already!)

I’m already excited about putting on some shiny-bright eye looks with Shiro product.  And I don’t even own any yet.  But when a full-sized eyeshadow is US$5 with a US$3.50 flat rate for international shipping (and I know they can safely get to Aussie, at least) … you better believe that is going to change, people.

Majora's Mask

Wednesday Wanty: hair accessories of many colours!

So due to other life events, the Great Haircutting has been moved forward to this Saturday.

Squee/ohmygod/nerves/excite etc. etc.

Given my utter hair-laziness of the past years and how my hair has seriously behaved itself since I started treating it right, I just don’t have many hair accessories, beyond a few dozen random hairties which constantly turn up in my wallet, random bathroom drawers, the bedside table, etc. etc.

These are basically necessary because my hair routine consists of washing it in the shower in the evening, a loose combing, and back in two ponytails to basically dry overnight.  Usually by mid-morning it’s dry and falling into some nice natural curls and that’s about it.

HOWEVER.  The days of shorter, curlier hair are approaching, and I think that necessitates a change to the hair routine … and hair accessories!

Because really, this could all go horribly wrong and if I do have to spend at least the first week or so pinning everything down so it can’t move I am most certainly going to look adorable doing it!

Rita Sue is a store I’ve had my eye on for aaaaaaages.  Unfortunately, their clothes are out of my size range by about 2-3 inches (and that’s assuming I could ever find anything in stock in a 3XL).

Fortunately, though with a slight sigh at the cliche, their accessories are awesome.  All the polka dots and nautical theme and roses and leopard print a girl could want, in hair clips, handbags, sunglasses, and freaking parasols.

If I must be the fat girl looking at accessories while everyone else tries on clothes, Rita Sue is going to be the shop I do it in.

ASOS is another store I’ve had my eye on (the problem with online shops, I think, is that unlike my local City Chic there’s no fellow-fat-woman behind the counter going “I love this dress, you should buy it ’cause it looks amazing on you”) and free shipping is nothing to be sneezed at, especially with how well the NZD’s doing against the pound.

One thing I appreciate about ASOS is how they cover any number of different styles and eras of fashion, so it’s hardly like you’re stuck thinking “Well great, it’s a 20s/flapper spring season, that’s my jonesing for tailored-hourglass-60s personal screwed.”

(There’s still a problem where the Curve line hardly matches up number-wise to ASOS’ straight size offerings … if only I could find that damn post I read recently which crunched the exact numbers on that!  But what they’ve got is still varied, has some nice versatile pieces and pearl-clutching bright colours, and also free international shipping, yo.)

So whether it’s adorable pseudoturbans (I seriously think I could develop a bit of a 20s-twee turban fetish with the new hair …) or satisfying your inner Minnie Mouse … ASOS has it.

I am so.  There.

When my damn shopping budget allows.

Face talk: Avon party set

Curse Avon, and curse its fantastic deals.  The above was (I think, it was a few months back) a SuperSaver deal with some kind of “complete party set” name for $40 with any $15 purchase.  Or it was just $40.

Either way: Forty.  Dollars.

For an eyeshadow duo in “Stardust”, a black “diamonds” eyeliners, a SuperShock mascara and a lipstick in my new favourite matte red, Red Kiss.  Red?  And monochrome eyeshadow?  And forty dollars?

SOLD.

And since it was marketed as a party set, I of course wore it to a party.

Besides some foundation and the faaaaaantastic Napoleon Perdis Autopilot eye primer which (touch wood) never seems to run out, that’s just the four products in the set on my pretty face.

(The frock and belt are City Chic, the cleavage is all me.)

I was totally thrilled by the way the eyes turned out, since I still consider myself a student in the art of eyeshadow.

On the other hand, wearing nice thick-purple-framed glasses means I feel okay experimenting with heavy amounts of colour – and on the third hand which agrees with the second hand, always remember: you’re always looking at yourself a lot more closely than anyone else probably will.

And if anyone else is looking that closely, they should be the kind of person who doesn’t give a crap your eyeliner’s slightly wonky.  Or, the kind of person who will in full friendship tell you it’s wonky because you really do want to know.  Or something.

Enough yabbering.  CLOSEUP!

The mascara is fairly basic but … somewhat intimidatingly big.  I’m really resisting the urge to make a Freudian joke here, but seriously, it’s a substantial mascara wand.

The eyeliner is your basic Avon Glimmersticks nice-smudgy-wind-up-crayon with a sliiiight shimmer.  But a spare black eyeliner is always nice, especially if you’re me and you constantly lose things.  No one tell my partner I admitted that.

If I have one criticism of the eyeshadow, it’s that the white/pale pale grey shade is very hard.  As in, scrape-off-the-top-layer-with-your-fingernail-and-then-dab-with-brush hard.  The dark dark grey, much less so.  Weird, but manageable for forty dollars.

One more look!  This was for work on a day when bright-red-lippie-management was too much effort so I attempted a bit more of a smoky-eye look, with the dark grey further down on the lid and lots of mascara.

The lippie is another part of my surprisingly-epic Avon collection (I know I order it, and it arrives, but then a month later I’m all “where the hell did this all come from?”), in a shade called Champagne Glow.  Goes on quite pink on my lips because they’re pretty dark compared to my pasty whiteness.  If you can’t afford/find MAC’s Marquise D’, from the Wonder Woman collection, buy this one instead.

(You may recognise the top of that outfit from a previous post.)

Chippin’ away

So, when I applied my first go at Excuse Moi! on a fine Sunday afternoon in front of the telly, I decided to pay attention to how well it lasted, on the gut assumption that a glitter would chip more quickly or more easily that a smooth-consistency polish.

Here are the results!  Photos taken on a Thursday, after a hard week’s typing, nervous picking at things, desperately resisting the urge to see if my nail polish was peeling yet, and tending to two guinea pigs.

The big benefit of the glitter’s busy-ness, when it starts to chip, is that you don’t notice the little marks and irregularities, the way you do when it’s a smooth, precise coat of a single colour or a crisp French manicure line.

But by the end of the week the chips were getting plenty bigger and definitely noticeable – if only to me!  But really, the gap around the base of my ridiculously-fast-growing nails was probably the most obvious issue.

Biggest issue:  my Gods it was a pain in the butt to remove.  I had to resort to pouring out some nail polish remover into a bowl and soaking each hand in turn, which my skin did not appreciate, and then scraping off the remaining bits of glitter on Saturday morning after a hot shower.

Possibly an acetone remover would do a better job, but given I’ve just bought a fresh bottle of acetone-free I’ll probably go for the easy option and save the glitter for special occasions.