Tag Archives: Orly

Orly Androgynie: the lazy lacquerhead’s galaxy nail

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I was after a glittery black polish for a while. I’d toyed with the idea of Butter London’s The Black Night, I’d read the disappointed posts on China Glaze’s Smoke and Ashes and I’d heard underwhelming views about Orly’s Androgynie. So like the enthusiastic lacquerhead that I am, I went ahead and bought all three. Purely for research purposes you understand.

So today I’ve got Orly’s Androgynie.

Orly Androgynie

This is the first time I’ve worn Androgynie. It’s a black jelly with a mix of fine micro and larger hex glitter in a variety of colours. The concept of Androgynie is wonderful. The colour combination of the glitter in the black strikes me as a cheat’s version of a galaxy nail. But then I have very low standards when it comes to such things since I’ve no clue about nail art.

Orly Androgynie

This is three coats of Androgynie with a base coat and then a top coat of Seche Vita. Drying time was fine. The formula of the jelly base is a little thin so you need to watch your application to avoid the polish pooling in your cuticles.

Orly Androgynie

The difficulty with Androgynie is, aside from the fact that the black jelly base is always going to obscure much of the glitter, getting the larger, multicoloured hex glitter onto your brush and then onto the nail. My little finger ended up with basically no visible hex glitter on it by the second coat, so on the third coat I played around a bit in an effort to dab some hex glitter on that nail close to the surface.

I had read somewhere that the trick is to store the polish upside down so that the glitter particles collect at the neck of the bottle but I’d forgotten to store it that way when I was reorganising my stash recently. I’ve turned it upside down now so I will wear this again soon and report back if there’s any improvement.

Overall though, whilst I understand the disappointment many lacquerheads had with Androgynie I’m still actually pretty happy with it. Yes, a wee bit more glitter on the nail without the slightly dirty coating that the black jelly leaves would be nice but is perhaps an impossible ask. I’ve not tried Butter London The Black Night yet, and have only applied China Glaze’s Smoke and Ashes to my niece’s nails. I think Smoke and Ashes is out of the running because what I’m longing for is a black-based multicoloured glitter polish. But again, I’ll report back once I have done further research:).

Orly Androgynie and Lego Crook Man

The last pic is thanks to my partner who was loitering about whilst I was taking these photos and decided to play the joker as usual:)

Have you tried Orly Androgynie yet? If yes, what did you think of it?

Can you recommend a good black-based multicoloured glitter polish?

Tell me about the joker in your life who mucks about in order to make you laugh and smile:)

xx

 

Rescue Beauty Lounge – Stormy: or why I now get what the fuss is all about

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In my post about Orly’s Royal Navy here I said I was unsure about whether or not to order any polishes from Rescue Beauty Lounge (RBL). So with the benefit of some of the comments I got on that post I now understand the RBL limited edition thing and the Bring it Back etc. Anyway, I caved in to the RBL temptation.  A girlfriend and I went in together on an order to share the postal cost. As it turned out we needn’t have worried about postal cost as between us we easily ordered enough to qualify for free international shipping. Erm, in deed my order alone would have qualified for free shipping…yes, I got a wee bit carried away.

I’ve heard mention of the quality issues associated with IKB: 2012 but that ordinarily you can expect great things of RBL polish. So on receiving my RBL nail mail the other day I was only too happy to put that expectation to the test. Thus far I’ve worn Catherine and Stormy. Catherine was a last minute purchase of the ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ variety. And I’m so glad I did because it is so much more complex and lovely in real life than it appears on the RBL website. Unfortunately though I didn’t get around to taking any photos so I’ll have to share that one with you another day. However, here is Stormy.

Rescue Beauty Lounge - Stormy

Stormy was a last minute purchase. I’ve got half a dozen grey cremes of slightly different hues and I didn’t really think I needed another one but my inner Lacquerhead got the better of me and I put Stormy into my cart. I can tell you I’m very glad I did.

Rescue Beauty Lounge - Stormy

Rescue Beauty Lounge - Stormy

I wore Stormy for two and a half days and for much of that time I was completely distracted by my nails. It’s medium grey creme with a fair amount of blue as far as I can tell. In low light, it looks almost dusty blue. I couldn’t stop looking at my nails. The formula was just lovely. It was very easy to apply, very pigmented and you could almost get away with a single coat if you were careful.

I can safely say that I entirely get the ‘hype’ around RBL. Like Cult Nails, it’s entirely apparent that it is devised by people who actually love and wear nail polish. So on the strength of Stormy and Catherine, which was also gorgeous to apply and wear, I ordered four colours from the pre-sale event for RBL’s new Georgia On My Mind Collection last Friday and I can’t wait to receive and wear those.

xx

 

Orly Royal Navy: how to cure a lemming

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Hullo. Noosa Heads turned out to have pretty unreliable 3G network coverage. Well, our apartment was literally across the road from the entrance to the national park so I really shouldn’t have been surprised. Anyway, upshot of that was no blogging for the week. But otherwise lots of reading, walking, swimming, shopping and relaxing so a pretty lovely time all up.

Got home Friday night to a pile of nail mail. My poor partner was worried he was going to get investigated for polish trafficking there were so many wee packages:) I’ll bore you with the details later but one of the wee packages was Orly Royal Navy.

 

Orly Royal Navy

 

Now being very new to polish obsession, the hype of the Rescue Beauty Lounge Fan Collection launch kind of passed me by. I was still wandering about in the online nail bloggersphere completely distracted by a succession of shiny, pretty things. A while later I started seeing all these swatches of IKB 2012 and slowly came round to the view that maybe wearing bright blue on one’s fingernails wasn’t such a frightfully ‘out there’ thing to do after all. But of course by that stage IKB 2012, being limited edition and all (how better to generate hype?), was done and dusted, sold out. So I casted about for something approximating a dupe. Queue Orly Royal Navy.

 

Orly Royal Navy

Orly Royal Navy

Orly Royal Navy

Apologies for the dodgy cuticles and clean up – colours like this are so difficult to clean up completely when even a tiny bit of polish gets into the cuticle. All pics are 2 coats of Royal Navy on top of NailTek II base and with a coat of Poshe top coat (man I love that stuff!). Royal Navy dries to a matte finish which was interesting but I prefer it with a shiny top coat.

Royal Navy has fine sparkles of course, whereas IKB 2012 appears, from the swatches I’ve seen, to be flat creme. But Royal Navy will more than do me. Today was yet another day when I found myself staring at my nails. Yes, I really am that shallow at times:) It was a good thing I wasn’t driving! I got quite a few comments on it, including from a sales person in a tea shop. Yet another win for Orly. I’m yet to come across dodgy formula in an Orly polish.

As for Rescue Beauty Lounge, as much as I’m fond of exploring new (to me) brands I’m undecided as to whether or not to go there with RBL. At about $20 USD a pop plus a hefty shipping cost given there’s no free international shipping until you spend $200 or more, I’m still perched firmly on the fence. There are so many out of stock colours on their site. I gather that a number of them are limited edition and so wont be restocked or re-released. Presumably though not everything on their site that is out of stock is limited edition? Anyone know? I’ve not had the time or inclination to search through the forum attached to their site. Maybe I’m odd or something but if a polish is a limited edition and you have exhausted all stock then why keep the polish on your site? Please, can someone explain? Perhaps I’m just not sufficiently glamoured by the hype yet? Or perhaps it’s my first day back at work after a week’s leave and I’m being a grumpy arse? Jury’s out.

But for now, I’m more than happy with my wee bottle of Orly Royal Navy:). Love and warm fuzzy feelings abound.

xx

Brazilian gorgeousness: Hits Speciallita Mari Moon Unconventional

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I’ve said it before. I love duochrome! Sigh, it is what it is. The result of my new-found infatuation, however, has been a bit of a duochrome bender. I’ve bought rather a lot of them lately. And I’m not sure what it is about South America, or perhaps its more just Brazil, but there seems to be such a range of interesting polishes that spring from that part of the globe. And duochromes seem to get a lot of love there.

I mentioned last week that my order of both Hits Speciallita Mari Moon sets, Unique and Modern, from Llarowe arrived in the mail.

Hits Speciallita Mari Moon - Unique & Modern

Unfortunately I’ve been too distracted with work and other things to try all eight of them out. Unconventional is as far as I’ve gotten so far. It’s a lovely purple based red in normal light, but direct it towards the sun or bright light and it transitions into a russet-ish golden red colour.

Hits Speciallita Mari Moon - Unconventional

Hits Speciallita Mari Moon - Unconventional

My limited photography skills unfortunately don’t do the colour justice. In normal light it reminds me of Orly Royal Velvet a bit although obviously it’s far more red than cool purple but it just has that silky purple tinge about it. But I think the last photo shows the russet colour at least. Application was fine once I added a bit of Seche Restore. The brushes on these little bottles are huge by comparison. Not the best I’ve worked with but manageable. Because of the long bottle the stem of the brush is obviously quite long so it collects a lot of polish as you withdraw it from the bottle. I found I had to take care to make sure I got as much off as possible and thinning down the formula a little helped with that.

The rebel in me, well beaten down though she is, kinda likes the fact that brands like Hits and Up Colors are anything but 3 or 4 free. These babies are the hard-drinking, red meat loving girls of the nail polish world. I know that’s politically incorrect and there’s probably a whole host of worthy reasons why these old school brands shouldn’t be entertained but meh. What can I say? I’m a shallow, duochrome loving slapper.

So what do you think? Have you tried Hits Speciallita? Do you avoid brands that aren’t 3 or 4 free? Or is it all about the bright shiny things at the end of the day?

xx