Fyrinnae Haul and Swatches

Those of you who follow me on twitter got a sneak peek at my recent Fyrinnae haul. I'd been planning what to buy for ages, but the site has had a lot of down time lately. So once the site was up again (temporarily) I went all out on samples. And once again, they do not disappoint. Even colours that I was a little iffy about or bought just for the name *Orangutan* are gorgeous. And they're are more than a few that I would buy the full size of if the samples weren't so generous. Anyway, let's get to the haul, shall we?

After reading Phyrra's rave reviews about the Velvet-Gel Silica Primer, I needed to try the dry skin version. I'll have a review up for that after I try it out a bit. Onto the samples: top row is Glow Blushes, then Arcane Magic shadows, and the last three rows are the loose eye shadows. I also got a sample of Pixie Epoxy for my sister. The lashes were a freebie included with my order. I can never get enough false lashes, so these are perfect for me.

For today I have swatches of the loose shadows; Arcane Magics and Glow Blushes should be up later this week. All swatches are patted on over Elf Studio primer. And as always, click on any pic to enlarge it.

Banana Mochi

Light shimmery yellow. Much softer than Bifrost and without the contrasting sparkle.

Biker Chic

Black base filled with aqua sparkle. This looks a little patchy in the photo, but I didn't notice any problems when swatching. You definitely want to enlarge this one to see the sparkle.

Bite Me

Somewhat dark, but still bright red with red shimmer. Fyrinnae describes it as "the hue of fresh blood" and that's entirely true. Darker than Kamikaze and more of a true red.

Chaotic Evil

Bright pink filled with silver shimmer. Actually reminds me quite a bit of the new Revlon, Sublime Strawberry. The base colour isn't identical, but overall they're pretty similar.

Curiouser and Curiouser!

Bright blue filled with blue/turquoise shimmer. This is much lighter and brighter than 1.22 Gigawatts as well as more aqua-leaning.

Damn Paladins

I'm not much of a neutral eye fan, but I saw a swatch of this taupe on a blog and became obsessed with it. The base is a fairly basic medium taupe but it has an amazing light blue hidden shimmer that makes this a must-have.

More shadow swatches coming! What are your favourite Fyrinnae shades?

St Patrick's Day: NOTD 3

I wanted to do a leprechaun for St Patrick's Day. This one definitely didn't turn out as well as I had pictured it in my mind. I like how his hat looks, and the beard seems okay, but it kinda goes downhill from there. Anyway, here it is:

I did the hat with these dots from Dollar Nail Art. I used Elf Innocent for his skin, a mix of SH Xtreme Wear in Sun Kissed and So Sexy Red for the beard, clothes are Xtreme Wear Emerald City, shoes are Xtreme Wear Black Out, and China Glaze Midnight Kiss for his belt. The background is Elf Mint Cream.

St Patrick's Day: NOTD 2

My second NOTD for St Patrick's Day is the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. So I could get more designs done, I switched to using false nails for this series, but my original plan for this one was to have the rainbow would continue from the thumb over to the ring finger. The design below with the pot of gold would then be on my pinkie nail.

I used bullion beads from Dollar Nail Art for the gold. The pot is Color Club Revvvolution and the background is OPI What's With the Cattitude?. For the rainbow I used (in order red to violet) SH Xtreme Wear in Cherry Red, Sun Kissed, Mellow Yellow, Green with Envy, and Blue Me Away, and Sally Girl in Your Majesty.

March Greens: Layering Lime Lights

Today's green is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Lime Lights. This is an iridescent pale green. My index finger shows three coats and it's still incredibly sheer, so this one is made for layering. 

Left to Right: 3 coats Lime Lights; LL over SH Xtreme Wear in Green With Envy, LL over China Glaze Jolly Holly, LL over SH Xtreme Wear in Black Out.

I love how this polish adds a little unexpected shimmer to lighter cremes and totally transforms black.

St Patrick's Day: NOTD 1

Here's the first in my series of St Patrick's Day nail art. I'm not sure how many I'll end up doing. It all depends on how many ideas I can come up with.

The green is Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Emerald City and the gold is China Glaze Midnight Kiss. The heart rhinestones are from Born Pretty. The tiny balls I found at Dollarama, but the colour bleeds out of them. Born Pretty has similar balls, which I plan on reviewing soon.

Heart Rhinestones (Click image to go to Born Pretty Store)

March Greens: Emerald City

Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear in Emerald City is a true medium-dark emerald green shimmer. Not too yellow or too blue. This is two coats, but it could use a third to even out a bit of patchiness. It's just slightly darker than the photo shows.

I'll have my first St Patrick's Day nail art up later today so check back in a few hours for that.

March Greens: Edyta

I don't share the green obsession that a lot of bloggers seem to have. I prefer greens that either have a lot of blue or have contrasting shimmer or something else going on in them. So here's another green that's not just green. Zoya Edyta is a dark grayed green base filled with green and bronzy-gold glitter/shimmer. I think this one was two coats. Maybe three?

Color Club Untamed Luxury

I'll post more March Greens this week, but I wanted to take a break from that to share a Color Club collection from Fall 2010 that I found recently at Winners.  Here are the seven polishes from Color Club Untamed Luxury: Every Shade of Indulgence. 

Pretty in Platinum

Light, pearl gray. I don't have anything like this in my collection. This was three coats. The formula seemed thick but runny and every flaw in my nails showed through the polish. The color is gorgeous though, so it'll be worth a good base coat and some patience. This was the only one of the set that gave me problems with application.

Wild Orchid

Shimmery medium gray, with blue/lavender tones. Two coats, great application. Another shade without dupes in my collection. I'm starting to think I'm lacking in the gray department.

Positively Posh

A great medium brown creme. Three coats but two might be enough. I have a few similar shades but this is a bit darker than the others; maybe I should do a comparison post for this one.

Soft As Cashmere

Greige, how I love you. Three coats on this one, too. 

Nothing But Truffle

Coppery brown shimmer in a dark chocolate base. Two coats. Similar to SH Xtreme Wear Chocolate Nut or NYC Canal Street but darker than either of those.

Jewel of a Girl

Metallic burgundy-wine shimmer in a blackened red base. Two coats. I have a Wet n Wild that's pretty similar-Under Your Spell. 

Ready to Royal

Dark, almost black, eggplant. This seems like almost a jelly finish. Two coats. Plenty of dupes for this one out there. I have a mini Funky Fingers (no name) that is close, Rimmel Deliciously Dark is pretty close too, and NYC Lincoln Park is just a little more burgundy than purple.

March Greens: Object of Envy

Our next March Green is from Color Club's Fall 2008 Glitter Vixen collection. I just got my first Color Clubs a few months ago and they're already becoming one of my favourite brands. Application is generally great and they have some amazing colours. Today's polish is no different. This is Object of Envy, a green glitter in clear base. This is the perfect, true green. And the glitter is just dense enough that you could use one coat over another colour, or it looks amazing with a few coats of this alone. So, I wanted to show how it looks after one, two, and four coats, without anything underneath.

Color Club Object of Envy 1 coat

Color Club Object of Envy 2 coats

Color Club Object of Envy 4 coats Flash

 

 

Color Club Object of Envy 4 coats No Flash

Speaking of Color Club, I was at Winners the other day and bought Untamed Luxury: Every Shade of Indulgence Collection. It was only thirteen bucks! Not bad for seven polishes. I didn't really *need* any of these colours. Never mind that I have near dupes for pretty much all of them. I just love greyish neutrals and dark vampy colours. Now that I know this location gets Color Club sets, I'm gonna have to start stalking them.

March Greens: Mint Cream and Layering

Here's Elf Mint Cream, a pale mint green creme. (Don't you just love those painfully obvious names?) This is four (or five?) coats. It went on fairly smoothly, for a pastel, but was a little too sheer. I love this polish. Perfect mint green that doesn't give me insane lobster hands. (They're a lot redder in the pic than in real life but the polish colour is accurate.) Elf polishes are available on their website for a dollar, but they always have great discount codes.

I wanted to try some layering with this one so I pulled out Orly Love Each Other. It's one of my all-time favourite layering polishes. Over dark colours, the pink shimmer is really visible but over pale colours like this one it's a more subtle, hidden shimmer that just adds a bit of interest.

March Greens: Hi-Tech

This is four coats of Milani 3D Holographic in Hi-Tech. The first two coats went on patchy but it eventually evened out. Light grass green (very yellow-leaning) dispersed holo. Photo is without flash, indoor lighting.

Milani Hi-Tech 4 coats No flash

March Greens: Zombie Zest

I want to share some green polishes leading up to St Patrick's Day. The first is China Glaze Zombie Zest from their 2010 Halloween collection. (It's only about four months late.) My sister found this on clearance a couple weeks ago, along with Ick-a-Body, and picked them up for me.

China Glaze Zombie Zest 3 Coats Indoor Light

My first thought when I saw this colour in the bottle was that it looks like slime. The base is a murky olive green, somewhat sheer but buildable. And it's packed with golden green shimmer. Definitely not my every day type of colour, but I absolutely love it for the one or two days I'll wear it each October. 

This went on smoothly and dried pretty quickly. The only downside was the major case of lobster hands it gave me. Zombie Zest is discontinued but still available on Amazon.com and some other etailers.