This one’s for Audrey

Between last-minute Christmas shopping and taking care of a new kitten oh, and playing Skyrim, I almost managed to neglect the blog. But not quite. Because this one’s too pretty not to post:

China Glaze For Audrey.

Inspired by Audrey Hepburn and the vibrant blue of Tiffany & Co., For Audrey is a muted medium turquoise creme shade. Not as bright as Orly Frisky but still effortlessly pretty.

I love turquoise, but the polish shades I buy tend to look the same or so similar that I can do without one or the other. After declaring Orly Frisky my absolute favorite turquoise (poor Orly Gumdrop lay neglected in a corner), I told myself I would not buy another turquoise creme.

I first spotted For Audrey at the bazaar where I bought China Glaze Strawberry Fields and Color Club Wild At Heart. At the time, I hadn’t worn Gumdrop and hadn’t bought Frisky yet. I thought I didn’t need another turquoise creme when I had a perfectly good one sitting at home. So I passed on For Audrey. But I put it on my wish list in case I decided later on that I needed it after all.

A few months later, I spotted a China Glaze shelf at Landmark in Makati. It carried the core collection plus Crackle Glaze. And sitting in a corner on the  bottom shelf is a lone bottle of For Audrey.

It was too pretty not to take home. And it looks happier in my collection than it did in Landmark’s shelf.

I wore For Audrey for a full week and it stayed perfect and pretty. It withstood repeated hand washing, constant typing, rummaging through my bag and digging for lotion, spare change and Starbucks promo cards. Minimal tip wear. No chips at all. This one’s a keeper.

China Glaze is available at Landmark for about PHP350. (I am a dork and forgot the exact price.)

Superpower me up!

Earlier this year, I went on a shopping spree at a bazaar in Rockwell. I’d just started getting into nail polish then and went crazy when I saw these at a stall selling imported make-up:

Limited edition MAC Wonder Woman nail polish.

They had long sold out at the MAC stores, I had no idea where to get them online without having to shell out half a month’s paycheck. And, to be honest, I wasn’t even looking for them. They were just sitting innocently on a shelf next to a row of designer perfume, and when I passed by, they called to me.

This one said, “Obey Me.”

So, in the Spirit of Truth, I did.

I grabbed them. They were expensive. MAC nail polish retails for PHP695 a pop; add another PHP305 and you’ve got the bazaar selling price. I figured, limited edition, no longer in stores, nowhere else to get them but ebay, blah blah blah. My credit card protested. But, as I said in a previous post, Wonder Woman is more awesome than you and me.

And she really is.

This is Obey Me, a vivid candy apple red.

The shade has strong blue undertones and looks darker in the bottle than it does on the nail. It’s quite wearable. I own very few reds, and this is easily my favorite.

Obey Me is surprisingly flattering to my skin tone. It doesn’t give my fingers an odd reddish cast.

Unfortunately, my daylight/indoor shots are crappy because I shot them in the late afternoon. I shall take better pictures the next time I wear this shade.

Here’s Spirit of Truth, a navy blue creme.

Like Obey Me, Spirit of Truth looks darker in the bottle. I love dark blue shades, and I adore how this looks on me. It’s an absolutely gorgeous color.

It’s a perfect pedicure shade but I can see myself rocking it on my fingers for weeks and weeks.

I also see so many layering possibilities — perhaps Lippmann Today Was A Fairy Tale, OPI Silver Shatter or Sephora by OPI Celibacy Club?

The formula is nice, thin and very easy to apply. The spills were mostly due to my inability to control the brush as well as I needed to — chunky bottle caps and tiny fingers do not get along. But I can work with MAC’s bottle cap better than NARS’.

Overall, I really love this superpowered duo, from the color and formula to the entire packaging. It makes me want to fire up my invisible jet and chase after bad guys.

Hyperspace

Images of broken light
Which dance before me like a million eyes
They call me on and on
Across the universe

— John Lennon and Paul McCartney, “Across The Universe”

I like Fiona Apple’s version, which appears on the Pleasantville soundtrack. And Siobahn Magnus’, which she performed on American Idol.

Oh, and Deborah Lippmann’s.

This gorgeous bottle of glitter has been on my wish list for a while. As I wrote in last week’s post, I’ve been hesitating from buying glitter polish because I hate having to remove it. But when I was planning my outfit for the office Christmas party, I decided I just had to have glitter on my nails.

I didn’t end up wearing Across The Universe to the Christmas party. But I love it anyway.

Across The Universe has tiny blue glitter and larger blue and green hexagon glitter suspended in a sheer dark navy blue base. The base is very sheer at one coat. I didn’t want to wear three layers of glitter polish just for opacity and take two hours to remove it later. So I used creme polish.

Deborah Lippmann Across The Universe with Zoya Cynthia

Zoya Cynthia has the perfect dark peacock blue base to set off all that gorgeous glitter. I used two coats of Cynthia and one coat of Across The Universe.

The little pinpricks of blue and the sequins look subdued under a white lamp.

It’s like the light of the stars and planets are slowly being swallowed by the thick darkness of space.

The dark base of Across The Universe all but blackens Cynthia’s deep blue. I’m not complaining. The darkened base contrasts nicely with the glitter and the sequins.

I love that the dark base doesn’t eat up the glitter and you still get lots of sparkle even in indirect light.

Sunlight intensifies the glitter. I took this picture by the window when the bright morning sun was shining. My nails and the bottle perfectly capture the view from the cockpit just before the Millenium Falcon enters hyperspace.

I got a lot of overlapping sequin pieces because I just brushed on the polish. Next time I wear this, I’ll use multiple strokes to distribute the sequins more evenly.

Though the glitter looks chunky in the bottle, when applied on the nail, the surface is relatively smooth. I ended up using two coats of top coat. Orly Glosser dried my polish to a bumpy finish, probably because the coats underneath weren’t as dry as they should be. I used Orly Sec ‘n Dry to even out the bumpy spots, and I got an extremely smooth, extremely shiny nail surface.

Deborah Lippmann nail polish is available at Rustan’s The Beauty Source. Across The Universe is PHP825.