China Glaze DV8 is Truly OMG!!

(Wednesday, November 25, 2009) I have a bit of a conundrum. I love the rich creme polishes that would be great for fall. When will I be able to wear them all, especially since I keep obsessing over glitters?! Fall is waning, and then it will be the holidays---time for glitters!! And then winter: time for dark colors rotated with more glitters to brighten things up. That's my plan.

I don't have long to wear the forest green, the olive, the brick red, the lilac gray, the medium gray, the putty, the...well, I think I've established what I mean. 

So, on Monday I resolved to wear a nice fall color in a glossy creme finish. Then, I spotted my new China Glaze OMG polishes. Wee! Fun! Oh, but wait, I told myself: must do a fall medium color. But the lol polishes, they are so pretty and I love the colorful holographic effects!

I caved and went with DV8, the darkest "LOL" polish of the six I ordered. It has a dark turquoise base color and looks like an oil slick on my nails! If an oil slick were an electric turquoise instead of icky brownish black! The iridescent metallic effect of the additional colors is just amazing! 

In certain lights, such as outdoors on a rainy day, the holographic effect doesn't show up as much, giving me the perfect opportunity to admire the rich, gorgeous blue base. I wore a teal blue sweater so the nails wouldn't stand out as much, and it was actually a perfect match. Lovely!!

On Tuesday, I noticed the tips of my nails started to wear away and look about to start chipping. I have to assume this is operator error and not necessarily the polish. I could have easily touched it up a bit to make it good as new, but I was busy driving all day and night to get to south Georgia.

So, today (Wednesday), the chipping at the top was getting worse, and I was itching to do some swatching. But....first I sprinkled my new Lippman "Happy Birthday" sparkle polish on for a bit of fun. Wow! Love!! 

My nails looked speckled in a very artistic way. Too bad I didn't bring my matte topcoat on my trip, that would have made the experience complete, lol! My camera picked up the holographic effect while it didn't show up as much in person as I was admiring the fabulous multicolor sparkle effect. 

China Glaze "DV8" = OMG! Plus Lippman "Happy Birthday" = OMFG! GR8!!! LOL!

Chanel Chance Eau Fraiche

Wow! Look at how much of my new Chanel Chance Eau Fraiche I have used since buying it in October!

I usually choose from my collection of Guerlain Aqua Allegoria, focusing on a current favorite. When I received my Chanel Jade polishes, I started using the enclosed Chanel Chance sample and decided I love it. When in Barcelona in October, I tried on the Eau Fraiche version and was equally smitten!

Fast forward to a few days later: I was in Heathrow changing planes after suddenly aborting my vacation. The duty free was simply amazing. I tend to pick up my Aqua Allegorias in duty free shops in Europe because I can't find them as easily in department stores in the States (try Saks Fifth Avenue in San Francisco, where I picked up two of these fragrances last New Years). Well, I made the duty free moguls even richer with quite a spectacular haul of two Guerlain Acqu Alegorias, some Chanel lipstick and nail polish, and BOTH Chanel Chance and Chance Eau Fraiche. You basically have to pass through the giant duty free store to get to your gate, and I was able to do this kind of damage very quickly and efficiently so as not to miss my flight.

I opened up the Eau Fraiche when I arrived home, and I have been wearing it every day since then. It is so yummy! I could bathe in this stuff! Mmmm.

According to Fragantica, this fragrance, introduced in 2007, is a "chypre floral" with top notes of citruses and cedar, middle notes of pink pepper, water hyacinth and jasmine, and base notes of teak wood, iris, amber, patchouli, vetiver, and white musk. Mmmm. Yummy!

NOTD: China Glaze "Latte"

These nails were from a day last week, to be exact. I thought I would try to make a small dent in my stash from the China Glaze specialty collections of glitters and chromes. I pulled out Latte, a beige "shimmer" that has really more of a pearlized finish. Looking at it through the day, the word that kept popping into my head was "nacre." Yup, it was really pearly.




I had a few issues applying this polish, namely a bit of bumping up and streaking, which I have learned is fairly typical of the pearly polishes. It wasn't so bad, though. The color was a beige-nude but the shine made it a lot less subtle than your average beige. Just the thing for when you want nude but with a little more oomph to it.

I got mine at Victoria Nail Supply for $3.25.

China Glaze Holiday 2009!!

If you haven't gotten China Glaze's holiday collection yet, then what are you waiting for?? Well, maybe you've already exhausted your nail polish allowance on all the fabulous glitters China Glaze has released this fall!

China Glaze "Loves You Snow Much" collection features the famous "Ruby Pumps," a red glitter; a re-release of the popular "Emerald Sparkle," a gorgeous dark green glitter; "Tinsel," a lovely very fine silver glitter also from last year, and "Five Golden Rings," a new gold version similar to Tinsel. It's more China Glaze glitter fabulousness!! I already had Ruby Slippers, which has been available on regular CG display racks. I got the others from Sally Beauty and Victoria Nail Supply (I've ordered from VNS twice, and I can highly recommend them so far.)

All four polishes are glitter polishes. The gold and silver have very, very fine glitter for a very elegant look. The red and green are both polishes that apply smoothly and contain glitter of the same color. Gorgeous!


The 5 Golden Rings is the new entry this year.


To me, this picture (below) looks almost like applesauce---that's how fine the glitter is. It makes for a delicate and ethereal look, as opposed to some of the bigger, blingier glitters this season. The polish is festive and appropriate for a nice holiday party, but still brings a shiny gold sparkle.




"Tinsel" is a fine glitter version of the "5 Golden Rings." It is so pretty and has the same elegant look.



Emerald Sparkle had apparently been a limited edition, as I had heard it mentioned in nail blogs in almost hushed tones. I am very psyched for the re-release, as it is a gorgeous dark green glittery polish par excellence. I wasn't able to capture the sparkle very well, but I will definitely be doing a mani with this soon and will try again.


What can I say about Ruby Pumps? It's a classic, perfect red containing wonderful red glitteriness. It has been available this fall, and now in this holiday collection AND in the re-release of the Wizard of OohAhz from China Glaze. This polish captures Dorothy's ruby shoes perfectly, and I imagine this polish is the standard by which red/red glitter polishes are judged.



This is a catnip pillow (below) that my cats got the last time they boarded at the vets. It's a chocolate chip cookie!! How wild is that.


Ah! Not the best pictures in the world, but I think the cat toy pic does capture the beauty and perfection of this collection. I have indeed deemed this collection to be perfect: the four basic colors of Christmas perfectly done, all with lovely glitter that is just the right amount, and the application worked very well for me, the ultimate nail polish novice. With these four polishes, you simply don't need any other holiday polish.

Euridice Scores:

Originality: 5 (the colors are not original, obviously, but perfectly done)
True to its brand: 5
Application for newbies: 5 (that green gave me some issues!)
Beauty: 5

Overall Score: 5 (a "Euridice YAY!")

Essie Holiday 2009: Sweet Time of Year

Essie's holiday 2009 collection contains three colors based on candy. Yum!

"Rock Candy" is a sheer pale pink; "Lollipop" is a plain red; and "Mint Candy Apple" is pale mint green. Mmm, candy! Cue up the Homer Simpson drool.

To be honest, I like my candy with chocolate (caramel and toffee accepted, too). Hard candies such as peppermints aren't my thing, and in terms of the colors offered here, they are not ones I am lusting after for the holidays. I love the mini Essie bottles, so the little miniature collection package is a great way to sample the collection.


"Rock Candy," the sheer pink color, applied very nicely. I put three coats on. I don't mind the visible nail line; I think it is supposed to show a little.



"Lollipop" is a bright, traditional red that goes perfectly with the Christmas season. I have already stated that I am not very interested in red polish, but I do think this red is pretty and a good red representative for my polish collection.


The green seems to be the standout, especially since my ULTA has plenty of the red and pink in stock, but no green. :-P The pale mint green is very striking, but I had issues applying it. In fact, I had to remove my first attempt and start over. I also did an additional nail just to see if this problem was a fluke. (What is it with me and pale green polish problems? lol!)



I always think of candy apples as red, although of course there are the caramel coated ones as well. I wondered about the mint candy apple, and was pleasantly surprised to find Lacquer Laine contained the research and had found a real-life example of a mint candy apple. She gets extra points for the pictures of other scrumptious versions of candy apples, as well!!


Verdict: "Sweet Time of Year" is very "Essie" with its sweet approach; after all, we've got yet another soft, sheer pink. Yet, we have the fabulous and fashionable mint green, which is a great way to do this pale green trend without shelling out for Chanel Jade or MAC Peppermint Patty. I loved the Essie fall collection, with the fashion-forward putty, navy, mauve and gray accompanied by the on-trend neon hot pink and neon orange, and I find this a cute follow-up.

Euridice Scores:

Originality: 5 (everyone else is bringing on yet more pearls, frosties, shimmers and glitters...not that there is anything wrong with that).
True to its brand: 5
Application for newbies: 4 (that green gave me some issues!)
Beauty: 4.5 (it is awfully pretty!)

Overall Euridice Score: 4.5 -- Almost a Euridice yay!

Holiday Nail Polish Collections!!

Okay, with Halloween behind us, it's time to focus on the special collections offered for the holiday season. Let's see what we've got!

Essie's collection is called "Sweet Time of Year" and focuses on candy colors with a red, a sheer pink, and a mint green. I purchased an adorable set of mini bottles at ULTA in order to give this a non-committal sampling.

OPI has a fabulous holiday collection out, with the trademark clever OPI nail polish names. It's a large collection that has a wide range of interesting colors, but reds seem to make up half of it! Do we really need so many reds? I'll weigh in when I review my selections from the collection.

China Glaze has a 4-polish collection featuring glitter!! I have all four of them, predictably: red, dark green (re-release), gold, and silver!

At the drugstores I've seen holiday displays from Milani, Wet 'n' Wild, and Sinful.

At ULTA, I purchased one of two sets available from Borghese: a set of tiny samples in a plastic case that features a lovely flowered print.

Scrangie's blog turned me onto the Fingerpaints holiday collection, and I am very impressed! It's available at Sally Beauty Supply.

Finally, my holy grail has been Deborah Lippman's holiday offering, "Happy Birthday." I just got it, and I am not disappointed!! It's a multicolor glitter, excellent in its own and over so many different colors!

What other holiday nail polish collections are out? Which are your faves??

Check this space for reviews of all these collections and more! (Or at least, that's my plan!!)

Getting on with Life...And Blogging

I've taken quite a little hiatus from my fledgling blog.

Well, it was going really well. I was enjoying blogging, and people were reading it, which made it even more fun. I found I was able to keep up with posting regularly, although I had realized that blogging is also not completely easy. Especially when you really need to take decent pictures. Uh, I might not have mastered that part of things, but I was trying.

Then, I went on vacation. A much-needed and anticipated vacation to Europe. It was going really great. I was having fun, and I had scheduled blog posts so the blog did not stop. I was also going to supplement the prescheduled posts with some reports from the trip.

Until...I got an email that my mom might be sick. My brother was going to travel down to our hometown to see what was going on, since she was refusing to let people help her. As I checked emails by ducking into different Starbucks in Geneva for that 30 minute free wifi on my iPhone, I exchanged some anxious emails with my brother. Over the next couple of days of traveling through Switzerland, with only intermittent access to the Internet or phone, I found out as things unfolded that my mother had been taken to the hospital for dehydration, she actually had a mass in her lung, she probably had terminal lung cancer, and radiation was going to begin in order to keep catastrophic things from happening since a vein or aorta to the heart was getting blocked.

I had to suddenly book a flight for the following day (changing my reservation cost me $1300), fly to Philadelphia to get my car, and then travel to south Georgia to be with my mother. We started out thinking she might have a few months, but she went down fast. Just four days after I was able to get home, she passed away quietly. She had known who everyone was and had not been in any pain---my biggest fears based on witnessing other people's experiences.

If this horrible thing had to happen to my mother---and to my brother and me---then it was the best possible way it could have happened. Fast, quiet, painless, and dignified.

I am planning to resume blogging now.

I didn't have much access to the Internet, then when I was ready to travel back and start working again, I was too exhausted and stunned to have any interest in talking about nail polish. Or anything else.

I still don't think that I really have absorbed what happened in the last few weeks. I am still digesting the sudden acquaintance with funeral arrangements, probate, and arranging to clean out and sell the home I grew up in and still considered my real home.

I am still struggling to get caught up at work, compounded by our director leaving in October and leaving more work for everyone to do. I do really want, however, to get back to my little blogging attempt. Celebrating beauty and color through my nail polish obsession and handbag addiction just might be a good way to entertain and cheer myself up. I also want to expand and get into the travel-related writing I had originally wanted to include.

So I am getting on with life, however slowly and clumsily. As I resuscitate my blog, I hope my readers find their way back to me. And I hope I find my way back, too.