Urban Outfitters Sparkle Blue No. 5

Hallo darlings! Just look at this fantastical color my beauteous friendling Libby bought over spring break! I stole it as soon as I saw it. Unfortunately she made me give it back, but not before I got a lovely manicure out of it. :)

This is a polish from Urban Outifitters. I believe that UO polishes generally run around $8, although you can normally get a 2-for-$10 deal, I think. I've bought some polishes from them before, but have not been happy with the quality. However, this polish is wondrous. It is a blue (almost blurple) jelly with opalescent flakies. I KNOW, right?! Anything with the words "blue", "jelly", and "flakies" in it is definitely a good thing. All of those are some of my favorite attributes of nail polish. Hooray!

The wear and tear of this formula was strictly all right; nothing spectacular but nothing terrible. I think that I got some chips after 3 days, which isn't bad at all. There was some significant tip wear, but I was too distracted by the beauty of the actual polish to care. :)

I very much want to go out and buy all of the Sparkles from UO now... oh noes! my poor wallet!

Spring Break-ing...

Hey, dolls! Just letting you know that I am not as a matter of fact failing in my resolution to blog more - I am just in the midst of spring break at the moment and not feeling like doing much. My lovely friend, Candace, came from Indianapolis to see me and left this morning to go back home. :( Happily, I'll see her again this June when we go visit Indy. I had lots of fun while she was here - she turned 20 on Tuesday, so we had a tea party for her, which was quite fun. SO MUCH CREAM! We made clotted cream for the scones, the strawberries were stuffed with it, and it seems like everything else had some sort of cream or at least massive amounts of butter in it. :) Super yummy but super fattening. I'll have to be extra good the next week or two to make up for it. Actually, this has been kind of a fattening week... Candace and I kept going out and buying large amounts of candy when we were bored. Oopsy! Ah well, what are friends for if not to make you fat?

In other news, it is gorgeous outside, and I think I am going to read a book in the lovely sunshine.

A Post! And Some Topcoat Trials

Hey dolls. So I've been MIA for a while, yes? It turns out that taking 18 credit hours plus working 9 hours makes for quite a busy Faithy. I'm going to try my hardest to post more regularly from now on. Say, shocker, twice a week? That would be nice, seeing as I haven't posted in more than a month. Now on to your scheduled entertainment. Remember the lovely Topcoat Trials in which I try to find a topcoat that's just as holy grail-ish as Seche Vite without all the yucky parts that Seche entails (i.e. thickening, bubbles, short brush, $$$)? Yeah, that's what this post is about. Last time I believe I showed y'all a Sally Hansen. This time I have CND Speedey for you, which I found on sale at Ulta. I had heard many good things about Speedey, so I picked it up along with CND's basecoat, Stickey (which I absolutely love, by the way).

How do I feel about Speedey? Well, it is most definitely speedy, and does not disappoint in that category. I do hate a long drying top coat. Life is much too short to spend waiting for your nail polish to dry. I'd say it's dry to the touch in 5 minutes, and completely ready to go in 10. About the same as Seche, actually.

Speedey did not get thick or gloppy on me, which is lovely. I also hate thick top coats. Thick nail polish in general is probably one of the most infuriating things ever. I know that that's what thinner is for, but when you have to keep adding and keep adding thinner, it gets annoying. There was minimal bubbling as well. I think the only times I had bubbling issues were when I did a poor job applying the polish and was too lazy for the necessary thin coats.

So thus far we have three wins. Speedey is cheap (at least, it was $3 on sale. But I think it is about $6 normally), fast, and stays thin. But I did find it to be a little unsatisfying. I couldn't get that beautiful glass-like shine from it like I can with Seche, and my nails felt a little unprotected while wearing it - I think because it didn't feel as thick as I like. Oo, explanation is needed here. Or maybe just a broadened vocabulary. When I say thick in this sense I don't mean the same thick that I mentioned in the last paragraph. This thick is that protective coating over the polish, not that yucky draggy will-not-spread kind of thick that I was talking about before. All better? Good. :) Also, the brush is rather short. Boo short brushes! Come on polish companies, please make brushes that reach all the way down the bottle! It is so irritating not to be able to get that last quarter of the bottle!

I believe the final count is 3 wins: 2 losses. That's a winning record overall. However, I am continuing the search! I shall not rest until I find the holy grail. :) Hopefully that does not mean I have to go back to Seche... I'm starting to think that I'll never find anything comparable.