Category Archives: Product Reviews

Illamasqua Noble Swatches & Review

Illamasqua-Noble-Swatches-ReviewThe amazing Illamasqua team did it again – I came home to find a surprise package that instantly lifted my spirits!

Inside was Illamasqua Noble, which the handwritten note said was the latest addition to Sephora counters!

It came at a good time because, that night, I was already planning on changing my polish. No need to rummage through my bottles and decide. Illamasqua gave me the perfect polish to wear. No “I don’t have anything to wear” moment. 😉

Unfortunately, the weather was gloomy when I had my camera handy, so I couldn’t get any sunlight photos. And for some strange reason, I wasn’t able to accurately capture the colour despite fiddling around with many settings. (It is not a wintry blue like it appears in my photos! It’s a robin’s egg blue!)

I was so desperate to capture the true colour that I even took some shots in artificial lighting in my bathroom in hopes that it might help. (Yeah! That’s usually the worst lighting, but desperate times call for desperate measures, as they say…)

What a travesty, though, because I wish I could’ve shown you the true colour. To make up for it, I tried to describe the shade as best as I could in this post. And, although my photos don’t do this polish any justice, I hope that they’re helpful if only to see the finish and how smoothly and evenly the polish applies.

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OPI The World Is Not Enough Swatches & Review

OPI-The-World-Is-Not-Enough-Swatches-ReviewOPI The World Is Not Enough from the Skyfall Collection brings to mind the song by the musical group, Garbage.

Remember Garbage? #1 Crush was my favourite from them. It’s such a sexy, dark song. And even to this day, I think that Shirley Manson is incredibly gorgeous. (Hehe, you know how I feel about redheads!) 😉

Alas, I digress (as usual!)…Back to the polish!

This is a neutral that’s more than meets the eye. Upon closer inspection, I was really intrigued by what I saw.

So what did I see? The light at the end of the tunnel? A man doing the Macarena underwater? A frog playing the kazoo with its left nostril?

Okay, maybe not, but I did see something interesting!

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OPI Live and Let Die Swatches & Review

OPI-Live-and-Let-Die-Swatches-ReviewOPI Live and Let Die is the 3rd mini nail polish I have to show you from the OPI Skyfall Collection.

It was marketed as being an ‘almost black’ shade, haha, and if you’ve been reading my reviews for a little while, you’ll know that I’m not the biggest fan of near blacks. Usually if I want something very dark, I’ll just reach for a straight-up black.

However, in the bottle, Live and Let Die looked really interesting, and I gave this one a shot.

So did I end up eating my words (Mmm…chewy!), or did I stand by my stubborn approach to near-black lacquers?

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OPI The Spy Who Loved Me Swatches & Review

OPI-The-Spy-Who-Loved-Me-Swatches-ReviewToday I have another shade from the Skyfall Collection – OPI The Spy Who Loved Me!

I’ve had a long-time fascination with spies. Their dramatic and dangerous lives are poetic romance realized.

If I ever tie the knot, it’ll probably be to an artist, a graphic designer, a writer, or a spy. They make my heart race.

What did you want to be when you were little? When I was a kid, I wanted to be an international spy. Why international? I wanted to travel the world and lead a dangerous, exciting, and unpredictable life.

I made coding and deciphering devices for my friends to use when we wrote notes to each other in class (which was all the time, by the way).

While my female friends always wanted to pretend to be princesses, I always asked to play a spy. They didn’t like that, so I pitched the idea of being a princess who was also a spy. That worked!

Although I wasn’t a tomboy, I did enjoying playing with the guys who were in a grade higher than me. In particular, there were two guys who were my ‘adventure mates’. They loved pretending to be spies with me (on equal terms, too! No sexism! YAY!), and we’d run all around the playground, making notes on everyone’s decidedly suspicious behaviour in our books. And we’d make up adventure stories in which we were the heroes, naturally, and our classmates were masterminding some malicious scheme that we were going to get to the bottom of. 😉 It was exciting, and our imaginations were often so vivid that we ended up scaring ourselves or becoming paranoid…haha!

So…I kind of, sort of like the name of this nail polish. 😉

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OPI GoldenEye Swatches & Review

OPI-GoldenEye-Swatches-ReviewGold nail polishes usually aren’t my thing because a lot of times, they make my hands look washed out.

Then OPI GoldenEye came into my life, and it took my breath away like seeing chiselled Rob Evans with or without a shirt. (Damnnn, it’s not summer, but it’s hot in here!) Never has a gold nail polish ever made me swoon as much as GoldenEye.

It hails from the highly anticipated OPI Skyfall Collection that’s inspired by the James Bond movies.

While I’m not a big fan of James Bond movies (they’re okay), I’m a huge fan of OPI GoldenEye!

As you can see from my photo, I have the mini bottle from The Bondettes Mini Nail Lacquers Set. How cute! I’m going to have to track down a full-size version of it because I already know I’ll be wearing this many times.

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Deborah Lippmann Some Enchanted Evening Swatches & Review (Layered Over China Glaze Prey Tell)

Deborah-Lippmann-Some-Enchanted-Evening-Swatches-ReviewIn my very first Topbox (November 2011), one of the items included was Deborah Lippmann Some Enchanted Evening.

You may remember how excited I was because it more than paid for the cost of the Topbox – great value!

Haha, well, it ‘only’ took me nearly a year to try it out. (Isn’t it strange how you can be so excited about a polish, but then it takes you forever and a day to actually wear it?)

Better late than never, I say!

After wearing China Glaze Prey Tell for a short while, I felt the need to make it blingtastic. This manicure was the result.

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Maybelline Downtown Brown Swatches & Review

Maybelline-Downtown-Brown-Swatches-ReviewMaybelline Downtown Brown is part of the Color Show line, and this is a highly unique nail polish. In my stash of 600+ bottles, I don’t have anything like this brown-green duochrome.

I heard that it’s a bit similar to Misa Embroidered Emerald (which is an old and discontinued polish that I’ve been trying to get for literally years to no avail). So you can bet your bottom dollar that I was combing through the drugstores in hot pursuit of Downtown Brown.

After weeks of stalking Shoppers Drug Mart, they finally put out the display. I quickly snatched Downtown Brown from the display and then looked at the other colours more leisurely.

If you like this lacquer, don’t have an internal debate with yourself whether or not to get it. If you find it, get it. It’s a limited-edition shade, so once it’s gone, it may be gone forever unless they re-promote it in the future.

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