Enchanted Forest with Tips of Rage

I actually have a ton of other ideas for fun nail art-ish things using Enchanted Forest as a base. Gosh I'm obsessed with this color!! Anyway, this isn't quite what I envisioned, but I wore it anyway:











Close Up




2 coats Orly Enchanted Forest
1 coat Poshe
I used fun shaped scrapbook scissors to cut tape that marked off the tip.
Tips with 1 coat Orly Rage

I initially wanted to do more of a geometric type of thing using Enchanted Forest and Rage because I think they're SO complimentary. But when I tried that, it just wasn't working. So I grabbed some scrapbooking scissors and tried to cut tape a few different ways. I actually didn't want to do tips, I wanted to split the nail with each color vertically, but the tape was too skinny and not cooperating so it was tips or I was throwing the scissors and tape out the freakin' window. Driving a mile down the road to Target to get the right kind of scotch tape was not an option... but as I type this and I'm remembering I have packing tape that would have worked perfectly, I'm not actually really annoyed. Wow.

Gorgeous Orly Enchanted Forest

Welcome To My 100th Post!!
Was gonna do something special for it, but couldn't think of something. Lol, so bad I know. But instead...
Continuing on with my Once Upon A Time polishes, here is Enchanted Forest. One of my FAVORITE greens, creme or otherwise. It's just beautiful. Have a look...











Direct Sunlight








2 coats Orly Enchanted Forest
1 coat Poshe

The color of this green is beautiful. It's an obvious blue-based dark green creme, which I think is a nice change from yellow-based greens (which I love too!). I've seen some photos that make this polish look yellow-based. No idea how that was managed, but let me assure you it is definitely blue. In some lights, it almost looks like a deep green teal. Those "some lights" is the lighting as I sit in front of my computer typing this. Anyway, I think the name Enchanted Forest fits it perfectly. I imagined Orly choosing the name Enchanted Forest for an unknown color, and this is what they came up with.

The formula was lovely. Not as thick as some of Orly's newer cremes, but beautifully and easily opaque in 2 thin coats. First coat seemed a little uneven, but it was perfectly evened out with the second coat.

Prince Charming

I'm so sorry I keep disappearing :( This is the second polish I'm showing from Orly's Once Upon A Time collection. Again, I'm going over this entire collection because I think it's one of the best collections ever, especially for fall. Orly captured everything about the fall season with the collection. It's amazing.













2 coats Orly Prince Charming
1 coat brand new, super thin/runny Poshe

First off, this polish was like painting with chocolate. Does it look like chocolate? Eh, not totally. But you know how when you melt chocolate, it looks lighter and darkens as it hardens? This polish darkens enough so that the second coat going on is lighter, so it legit reminds me of painting my nails with melted chocolate... and now I want a s'more with the yummy melted chocolate and my delicious vegan marshmallows!! lol

So more about the actual color since it isn't identical to chocolate. It's definitely in the taupe family. I spent half the day thinking it was warm toned and the other half thinking it was cool toned, so I'm going to say it ends up being fairly neutral. It almost has yellow-ish undertones, but there is such a purity to the taupe color itself that I find it hard to pull out true undertones. At one point I swear I saw grey undertones and another time I definitely saw violet undertones. Regardless, it's beautiful.

The application was great! It was actually unlike Orly's more recent cremes. Orly's newer cremes seem to be opaque in 1 coat and on the thicker/highly pigmented side, while still being perfectly manageable. NOT the think/pigmented/dries on the brush in like two seconds and is goopy and pulls and is difficult to work with. But this polish is thinner but still well pigmented. The first coat was kind of uneven and is where I saw more yellow-ish undertones. If you thickened the first coat, it wasn't uneven. But either way, it went to perfectly opaque and perfectly even with the second coat. A very easy to work with polish.

Side Note
I feel awful about these big gaps in not posting. As I said, I'm moving on November 1st, and as a result, I've been OUTRAGEOUSLY busy. There are tons of things I need to get, and I've been picking up tons of hours at work on top of going to school (where I've had two exams in this past week). And I've been sick for the past week as I sit here with my left ear completely blocked and coughing like whoa (no stuffy nose, though! And I've still got energy). Ugh. So anyway, I haven't photographed too many of my nail designs. I'm going to have to go back and redo things as I've already worn another one of the Once Upon A Time colors but never took any photos. I'll try my best to get on it!! The other crappy thing is I have two silk wraps on my photographing hand (my index finger and ring finger), so I'm avoiding glitters and it stinks because I have so many new glitters!! Gahhh!!!!

Happily Ever After

MISSED YOU!!

It's been 2 weeks since I've updated my blog. I've obviously continued to paint my nails while not blogging, but I've just been way too busy with work and school to take photos, crop and mark them, upload them, write the posts, etc. Beneficially, I used that time to rewear a lot of colors I've already posted on my blog that I'd assume people don't really care to see again.

So while I was MIA, the first day of fall came a few days ago on the 23rd. While I happily told my patient's to have a great first day of fall, my mind continued to float not only to everything awesome that comes along with the fall season, but also to wearing all the GORGEOUS fall colors!! So be prepared.

Also, I'll be moving at the end of October/beginning of November, so around that time you'll see my nails lose some length. I'd much rather file them shorter than snap them off in the moving process! That and my Mom has shorter nails and she was wearing some gorgeous deep, rich red like a week ago and I realized how freakin' adorable her nails looked. But since I'm weary about making my nails shorter, I figured when I move is the best excuse to do it!!

End Unrelated Intro
Over the coming days, I'm going to be posting my FAVORITE fall collection ever. Orly's Once Upon A Time Collection from 2009. This had been the only full collection I owned up until like a week ago when I found Color Club's Wicked Sweet collection at TJ Maxx for $9.99.
Anyway, this collection has such simplicity but at the same time, captures everything about fall and is just gorgeous. So we are starting off with Happily Ever After.













And here's the shimmer in the bottle




2 coats Orly Happily Ever After
1 coat Poshe

Happily Ever After is a deep berry that looks like a creme in almost any light, but the bottle has a gorgeous fuchsia shimmer that is nearly undetectable on the nail even in bright outside light, which is definitely unfortunate. It's still a gorgeous color, rich without really crossing into vampy thought it does look darker in indoor dark lighting. It just woulda been absolutely amazing and super unique if the shimmer was apparent. Oddly enough, the hidden shimmer gives the polish kind of a dusty feel. Reminds me of the finish of Revlon Perplex (I don't own Paradoxal, so I don't wanna say it's also like Chanel's finish).

The formula was ok. Opaque in 2 coats, but the first coat looked uneven. Not streaky, just uneven. And I feel like if you did two thin coats, the color would look lighter than if you did two medium/thick coats.

Lots of CG In The City

In celebration of removing all silk wraps from my left hand, I'm going with a glitter. I avoid glitters when I have a silk wrap on because removal is horrific because I don't use acetone on those nails. But I just picked up the two glitters from the Metro collection the other day, and I don't feel like waiting for the wraps to come off of my right hand.

I had intentions of just getting Skyscraper, but once I saw CG In The City, I just had to have it. So here it is...

1 coat CG In The City over 2 coats China Glaze Spontaneous

Shade

Sunlight


2 coats CG In The City over 2 coats China Glaze Spontaneous

Shade

Sunlight


3 coats CG In The City over 2 coats China Glaze Spontaneous

Shade

Sunlight



I didn't like the way the polish was without a base polish. I felt it looked just... not right. So here's a view on 1, 2, and 3 coats without a base color.

Sunlight

Shade


On its own, it makes me think of someone putting glue on their nails and then rubbing them in sand. It's natural like earthy and raw. Here in New England, we have some beaches that have dark sand (moreso TEENY TINY rock sand) that even looks sparkly because of crushed shells and whatnot. That description makes it sounds way more awesome than it actually is, so don't think you're missing out if you're not from New England lol.

Here's a stock photo that shows exactly what I'm talking about. This photo is apparently from a beach in Portland, ME.

Source

So I'm sure after seeing that, you can understand what I mean. Ironic that it reminds me of sand on a beach when the polish is from a Metro collection and called CG IN THE CITY. Haha.

Let's discuss the color
So China Glaze says this is a "glittering dusty purple, bronze and silver multi-tonal glitter". Well, I'm going to assume China Glaze knows what they're talking about since they made the polish, but I swear I see black glitter. To me, I see light purple, black, bronze, and silver (it's a clear base, by the way). It's such a bizarre mix of glitters. I put it over Spontaneous to try to pull out the purple glitter because the whole thing just confuses me. I might also try it over a bronze (Orly Rage would rock for this!!) and a gunmetal like Zoya Freja. Speaking of which, I have no idea why, but this polish reminds me of the glitter version of Freja. Strange.

Orly Nite Owl... Give This Polish Some Love, Please!!

So all the hype has been about Fowl Play and its dupe-ness for OPI Merry Midnight. While I was able to get my hands on it, that's not the polish from the Birds of a Feather collection that I was really dying to try. If you follow my blog, you might know my love of Orly polishes. If you don't, let me just tell you that I LOVE Orly polishes. More specifically, I love Orly fall collections. I personally think (despite my affection towards Orly in general) that over the past few years, Orly has put out some of the most amazing fall collections out of all nail polish fall collections. Their Once Upon A Time collection from 2009 is the only full collection I own by any brand (I will be posting all of these throughout the fall). Their Cosmic FX polishes in 2010 were a huge hype, too. I only have Space Cadet due to their increased cost. And now Birds of a Feather.

I love that Orly GETS fall. They understand the colors that are very "in" colors for fall. Colors that I love seeing because they immediately make me think of fall which then makes me think of fairs, apple picking, leaves changing colors, sweaters, delicious fall smells. All amazing things.

So here we have Nite Owl.













Closeup of the gorgeous shimmer

*Kindly ignore the Poshe smeared on my cuticle that I didn't bother to clean up.

2 coats Nite Owl
1 coat Poshe

Apparenly Orly describes this polish as a beige shimmer. I'm disagreeing and saying this is definitely not beige. It's obviously taupe. The shimmer is a very fine silver shimmer that gives this polish an overall cool tone as opposed to warm. My skintone is important to know for this polish. I have a warm/neutral skintone, but I have olive/yellow undertones. I am pretty pale, like a MAC NC20. Normally, I wouldn't expect this polish to work for me being that it's a cool-toned taupe, but it does. And I love it. Let me try to explain how much I love this polish. If I had to severly downsize my polish collection to like 10 polishes, this would be one of the first ones I grab. If I were a person to switch between 2 polishes a season (instead of my different polish every day), this would be one of those. I love the color, I love the color on my skin, I love the shimmer, I love the overall look, I love the fall-ness, I love the neutral-ness, I LOVE this.

The formula... was fantastic. This was opaque in 2 coats, maybe opaque in 1 thick coat? Let me say it is flat out impossible to make this polish streaky or uneven. Say you missed a spot on your nail when painting. You can just paint over that spot instead of going all the way from cuticle to tip to keep it even. It is easily one of the most forgiving polishes I have ever used. I wore this to a bridal shower today, BTW. Getting ready for the FIFTH wedding I'll be attending this year!!

My final remarks? STFU about Fowl Play for a second and please give Nite Owl some lovin'!!