Sephora by OPI 212-Sephora

Have you ever thought to yourself, Gee, I wonder what fairy puke looks like...  No?  You haven't?  Is it just me?  I'm pretty sure that if there were fairies, and those fairies did vomit, their vomit would look exactly like $OPI 212-Sephora.  I'm not saying that this is a bad thing, per se.  Personally I'm kinda digging 212-Sephora.  Here, see for yourself.

Hm.  How to accurately describe this.  It's flakey and small holographic glitter particles in a bronze-y olive-y base.  I bought this because I'm kind of on a mission to own every olive-ish polish ever, slowly but surely.  I don't usually wear glitter, and I know this one is going to be a bitch and a half to remove.  I used three coats here.  Two may have been fine, but I did three just to be safe.  And I wrapped my tips.  I want this manicure to last for a while because I'm about to start the week from hell and I know that I'm not going to have time to scrub off the fairy vomit and apply something else until Thursday evening or Friday afternoon.  Here's a macro for you, too.

I do really like this polish and I'm glad I bought it.  I just hate paying $9 for $OPI.  It's the principle.  I also don't like the $OPI skinny brush.  I much prefer the pro-wide on reggity-regs OPIs.  The formula on this also wasn't great.  It was kind of like painting my nails with curdled milk, and the tiny brush didn't help matters.  Regardless, I still did an okay job.  I didn't do any clean-up.

So it's Monday.  And I'm just waiting for the weekend to come again.  I was texting with my friend yesterday and she said to me, "Remember when weekends were weekends?"  Truth be told, no I don't.  For the past six years I've been either working on weekends or doing insane amounts of reading for school on weekends.  This past weekend was nice, though.  Well, Saturday was.  I slept really, really well on Saturday night and woke up refreshed.  My boyfriend being around probably had everything to do with it.  

Okay, enough babbling.  I have five minutes to do something to my hair and get out the door for class.  What do you guys think of 212-Sephora?  Is it fairy vomit in a good way or a bad way?  Do you just want me to stop typing vomit?  Personally, I like this polish.  It's like a subdued glitter-bomb.  And the sun even came out today so I can wear it properly :)

NEW American Apparel African Violet

I'm sorry I've gone so many days without posting.  I thought that this week might be an easy one for several reasons, but it ended up kicking my ass anyway.  I have a new American Apparel for you today.  It's gorgeous, as is to be expected from AA.

This is African Violet.  It's a nice mid-tone purple that leans just a tiny bit red.  Normally I like to show you a picture in natural light as well as in artificial light (the two images above are artificial light) but the natural light here lately is utter crap.  Also, these images came out surprisingly color accurate, so I figured we could just make do with them for now.  My application of this was not great despite the superb formula.  African Violet is everything that I expect an American Apparel creme to be:  flawless.  Easy to apply, two coats to opacity.  I'm pretty smitten with this color, actually.  If anyone is wondering, no, this is not a dupe for Rescue Beauty Lounge Mismas.  Compared to African Violet Mismas leans blue.  

Why did I choose to wear this polish?  Because the other night my boyfriend came in bearing flowers.  No one has ever gotten me flowers before!  I was so delighted that I'm afraid that I didn't convey my delight to him accurately.  It's amazing that one little thing can make me so happy.  I feel warm and fuzzy inside when I look at them on my mantle.  I didn't have a vase or anything, so they're currently housed in one of my Target tumblers.  Because I'm classy.

Sweet Jesus, look at all of my freckles in that picture.  Insane.  Anyway, lookit how pretty they are!  Orange and yellow!  They brighten up my mood just a little bit every time I look at them.  It was so sweet of him.  He's the bestest.

That's all for today.  How are you guys feeling about African Violet?  I think if you're a fan of purple polish you should definitely go pick this one up.  Also, any fun weekend plans?  I'll be stuck reading piles of articles and historiography, so maybe I can live vicariously through you all.

Happy Friday!

OPI Tickle My France-y

Ew, it's Monday.  Despite only having a single very short class today I still feel like I have a lot to do.  I'll probably be on campus until 6pm or so.  Not looking forward to it.  For now, though, I'm still in my slightly-too-warm apartment drinking a really nice cup of holiday coffee (I still have some of the Coffee Inc. holiday blend left over).  


I was thinking yesterday about what I wanted to put on my nails.  Rescue Beauty Lounge Film Noir was beat up and chipping so I knew I had to replace it.  When Tickle My France-y came to mind I thought, "But I've shown that on my blog a million times before."  Then I realized I hadn't shown it on my blog a million times before.  I've mentioned it a million times.  I've thought of featuring it a million times, but I've never actually posted pictures.  So here are two.  Please excuse the bad light; we are in the middle of nuclear winter.

So here she is, in artificial and natural light, respectively.  I've declared another polish to be my Favorite Polish of All Time, but little Tickle My France-y comes in at a very, very close second.  Let's break down why it's awesome.  First, the formula.  Perfect.  Two coats to opacity.  Second, for my skin tone this is an absolutely perfect neutral.  It's somewhat cool-toned, so it goes well with my skin.  When I look at it in natural light I feel like there has been a drop of purple added to it which gives the color a bit of an edge.  Edgy neutral!  Love it.  Third, the name.  I will admit that OPI's puns sometimes rub me the wrong way, but this one is just adorable.  This polish looks killer on me.  My bottle of Tickle My France-y is about 25% gone which really says something about how I feel about it.  It's the only polish I consistently reach for.

I think it's kind of funny that I have a few really expensive polishes (Chanel, Rescue Beauty Lounge, Illamasqua) but it's China Glaze and OPI that really capture my heart.  The polish in my stash that's most similar to Tickle My France-y is probably Rescue Beauty Lounge Grunge, which I also love.  But I prefer the OPI.  It wears better on me and it's a creme.  Grunge has a slight shimmer, which is gorgeous, but I prefer the creme finish on a neutral, to be honest.  


That's all I have time for today.  I need to braid my hair and run to class.  I'm glad I finally featured Tickle My France-y, though.  So what about you guys?  Are you as in love with this polish as I am?  When you want an "edgy neutral" what do you reach for?


I will survive this Monday.  Coffee, please.

Rescue Beauty Lounge Film Noir

IT'S THE WEEKEND!!  Thank goodness.  This week was long and taxing.  Although the weekend doesn't provide much of a respite because it's full of reading and writing, it is free from the annoying sound of alarm clocks, which is a welcome break.  I did my nails the other night in a very dim room so I didn't do a great job around my haggard cuticles, but I'm showing you anyway.

This is Rescue Beauty Lounge Film Noir.  I took these pictures the morning after I did this manicure, and there's already weird tipwear.  I wrapped my tips with polish, too.  I don't know what the deal is.  It looks like I missed spots or something.  But I don't think I did.  The formula was not what I expect from Rescue Beauty Lounge on this polish.  It required three coats to avoid bald patches, and as you can see I still got a bit of a bald spot on my ring finger nail.  I love the color, though.  It's very, very me.  But I probably have a million dupes of it.  It's more red-based than something like OPI Lincoln Park After Dark, but after three coats the effect is basically the same.

Despite my complaints, I still like this polish.  It's pretty.  A polish like Film Noir reminds me why I named by blog Short n Chic:  dark polish looks so incredibly chic on short little nails like mine.

Doesn't it?

I don't see this lasting for too long on me, so I'll probably be back to show you something new in a couple days.  As I said, I'm glad I got this polish and I think it's worth the $9 I paid for it (since I got it on sale).  Had I paid the full price of $18 I might be kind of pissed.  Maybe I got a bad bottle, formula-wise?  Who knows.  I shouldn't have to do three coats with a vampy color from RBL.  At least I don't think so.

Does anyone have Film Noir and love it?  Does anyone have a favorite vampy color?  I don't know what mine is.  I'm partial to OPI Black Cherry Chutney, but I don't think I can call it my favorite...

Happy Saturday!

This is a Total Anomaly

Some things are good in theory but perhaps not in practice.  Last night I decided I wanted to remove the nail stickers that you saw on this post.  By the way, a couple of you asked in the comments if I put topcoat on over the nail stickers.  I did not.  I don't know if doing that would lengthen the wear-time, or if the Seche would react weirdly with the sticker or what.  Maybe I'll try it someday.  I didn't want to remove the stickers because they were coming off.  On the contrary, they were still completely stuck on with no peeling whatsoever, even after an additional bath.  I was surprised.  I don't know why I felt compelled to peel them off, but I did (and they came off quickly and easily; no muss, no fuss.  Love them!).  Then I wanted to do my nails, but I was feeling lazy.  I thought, hey, what the hell.  I'll just use a sheer.  So I did.  Meet Color Club Translucent. 

This is the first time that I've shown a true sheer.  What do I mean by true sheer?  I mean that this color cannot be built up, no matter the number of coats.  This is two coats here, plus Seche Vite on top.  It gives my nails a slight pink tint, but other than that it's pretty not noticeable.  I got a little but of fuzz on the nail on my index finger, which is annoying.  Of course that happens when I'm wearing a translucent polish.  Thanks fate.  Anyway, I don't usually wear sheers for a couple reasons.  First, I find them a bit boring.  Second, the white bits of my nails aren't exactly even-looking.  They're a little bit wonky, which is something that I can't help.  I just don't like to show them.  My nails aren't stained at all.  If they look it in these images, it's because the artificial light of my desk lamp is making them look a bit yellow.  Okay, now I'm getting defensive about my nails.  Eh, they're fine.  I just usually don't display them.  

So I don't really know how I feel about this.  Maybe if I had a job interview I would do a look like this, but I would probably go with a nice neutral like RBL Grunge.  I will probably keep Translucent on for a day or two to see if the look grows on me, but I have a feeling that my next manicure will be super vampy to compensate for this sweet-looking sheer.  

Do you guys like this?  Do you wear sheers?  Are you more likely to wear them for formal occasions like job interviews or important meetings?  Like I said, I think I'll stick with my edgy neutrals...

Nail Stickers!!!

Ahhh, look at my adorable flower nails!!

I have been hearing about these Sally Hansen nail sticker things for a while now, and one of my friends recently sent me a tantalizingly cute picture text with an image of her stickered nails.  I haven't been actively looking for these things, but while I was at one of my regional drug stores I ran across the Kiss version, Broadway Nails Nail Dress Stick-On Wraps.  Sounds kinda ghetto.  Here's the box and the contents therein.

I'm sure you guys have been hearing about these types of things ad nauseum lately, but I'm throwing my hat in the ring.  In this particular package you get 28 nail stickers of varying sizes.  You're supposed to choose the ones that best fit your nails, peel off the backing, lay them down, smooth out the bubbles, and then file off the excess.  It sounds time consuming, but I think that doing all ten of my fingers took about thirty minutes.  As I thought about it, I realized that I usually spend about thirty minutes doing my nails anyway, including dry time, so this really isn't that ridiculous, time-wise.

Here's my right hand in the process.  The entire sticker is on my middle finger.  The next step after this would be to fold over the excess and file it off with that tiny nail file you see to the right (it comes with the package).  And look, there's my naked nail!  I've never shown a picture of naked nails before.  They're not stained or anything so I don't know why I hide them.  Oh well.

And the finished product.  I don't know how long these are supposed to last.  My friend said the Sally Hansen ones purport to last ten days.  I don't know about you, but I'm kiiiiiiind of dubious.  I have to wash my hair later, so we'll see if they even hold up through one shower.  As it is, though, I absolutely love how they look.  They're so cute and girly.  I have 14 stickers left over which don't fit my nails, but I think what I'll do with them is cut them to size with manicure scissors.  I don't know if I'll end up ever doing all ten fingers again, but I think it would look really cute to do all of my nails a vampy color and then accent the ring fingers with the stickers.  That way it was $5.49 well-spent, no?

Edit:  I've taken a shower and washed my hands several times and the stickers are still fine.  No lifting or peeling that wasn't already present when I got in the shower due to application failure on my part.  I just wanted to let you all know that!

So what do you guys think about this?  Are you liking the nail sticker/all-over pattern trend?  I'm so awful at any type of nail art, even Konad, and this is basically foolproof, which means I like it.  I did this while I was watching Exit Through the Gift Shop for the second time and I'm so happy with the results.  I'll let you all know how or if they hold up.

China Glaze Zombie Zest

No, that title is not a mistake.  I actually waited until January to both purchase and wear a Halloween polish.  I was at Sally's last weekend when I noticed the China Glaze Awakening collection on the clearance table.  They had two of each polish, so I grabbed a bottle of Zombie Zest for $1.99.  Pretty sweet deal.  I never saw any of these polishes in stores around Halloween-time (my favorite time!), so I'm glad I got the opportunity to see them.  And buy one.

I took so many pictures of this one.  It's difficult to capture accurately and probably even more difficult to describe.  Zombie Zest is a swampy green jelly loaded with iridescent shimmer/glitter that flashes green, blue, gold, olive...and I feel like I've seen red or orange at different angles.  China Glaze really knows how to make good jelly polishes that have a lot of depth.  After the first coat I thought this was the ugliest polish I had ever seen.  It looked waaaaay too yellow and kind of reminded me of cat vomit.  After the second coat more of the green came out, and after the third coat the effect was kind of an overall olive color.  As we all know I love olive, so I was hooked.  I love this polish.  I'm glad I got it.  And for $1.99!

I'll leave you today with a few pictures of icicles outside of my apartment.

These last two pictures are the buildings across the alley from my place.  Those are some daunting icicles.

I have a day off from class today!  Yay!  ...but I have to do mountains of reading, so I'm off to do that.  How are you guys feeling about Zombie Zest?  I know everyone wore this one around September/October, but I'm just so behind on collections.

Taggity-Tag

Oh hey, I've been tagged!  To my knowledge I've been tagged twice for this award, by both !Kendal and Varnish Vixen.  Thanks for thinking of me!  I haven't been overly present in the blogging community for the past several months, so it's really nice that anyone remembers me.  And I like tags.

So I guess the rules are:

1.  Thank and link the person who gave it to you,
2. Share 7 random facts about yourself
3. Give the award to 15 other bloggers and let them know about it. 

I already have a bunch of random facts about myself listed in my Who Am I? tab, but I'll try to come up with seven more that aren't too uninteresting.

1.  One of my favorite albums of all time is The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds.  It's one of those albums that I can listen to all the way through, over and over again.  The songs have fantastic continuity and they fit together so well.  I enjoy every song, but especially Wouldn't It Be Nice, That's Not Me, Sloop John B and You Still Believe in Me.  What I find so interesting about Pet Sounds is that it was sort of Brian Wilson's response to The Beatles' Rubber Soul (another great album).  In turn, Pet Sounds went on to influence McCartney and Lennon pretty profoundly in the production of Sgt. Pepper's.  

2.  I've taken four years of Latin.  Sometimes I'm surprised at how much I remember.  I had a really fantastic teacher.  I translated several books of The Aeneid at one point, and although it was an agonizingly difficult and slow process, it was still really fun.  I'm thinking of getting ars longa, vita brevis, a Hippocrates quote, tattooed somewhere on me (which means "art is long, life is short").  I've been thinking about it for years, but as I trudge my way through graduate school the message is seeming more poignant than ever.  Hippocrates was a doctor, so ars in this instance is usually translated to mean something more like "craft" instead of "fine art," but I still like the message.

3.  My favorite piece of jewelry is probably this crazy costume necklace I got at American Eagle for about $8.  I find myself wearing it pretty often.

I enjoy wearing it with this plaid shirt from Target for some reason.  The juxtaposition of the pseudo-fancy jewelry with the lumberjack-looking shirt is fun to me.

4.  It's a known fact that mentioning the words "Dumbo's mom" will make me cry within minutes.  Whenever anyone says that, the image of Dumbo sitting outside of his mother's little "mad elephant" cage pops into my mind and literally makes me burst into tears.  And she rocks him in her trunk :(  Actually, I'm Google imaging that shit right now and crying.  It's horrible.  What is wrong with me?

AHHHH TINY ELEPHANT TEARS!  :(

5.  My favorite thing to eat lately is eggs benedict.  Is there a better meal out there?  I don't think so.  I mean, it's eggs on ham on an english muffin covered with MORE EGGS (mixed with other things of course).  Mmm.  Maybe I'll take myself out to breakfast tomorrow.

6.  I really like flowers.  You know, like bouquets of flowers.  They're so ephemeral and beautiful to me because they only last a couple days.  The guy I was with for a long time adamantly refused to give me flowers.  He would always say to me, "I'll give you flowers when you're dead."  Sigh.  After I moved into my apartment my boyfriend got me a tiny pot of flowers, but I haven't been very good at keeping them alive.  I can hardly keep myself alive.  

7.  I really love [almost] all things Joss Whedon.  Buffy, Firefly, Dollhouse, Dr. Horrible...I haven't ever watched Angel, but I've heard it's pretty awesome so I'm sure it's just a matter of time.  I would love to own the complete Buffy series someday.  Watching it helps me unwind, but I can only get the first couple seasons online.

Phew.  That was hard.

So I feel like I might be late in doing this tag, and I don't know who else has already been tagged, so I'm just going to do the lazy thing and say that if you've read this (which is laudable in and of itself), then you're tagged.  Thanks again to the girls who thought of me!  That's so sweet.

Oh, and happy Saturday.

NEW American Apparel Trenchcoat

When I went and bought the polishes to send to my last American Apparel giveaway winner I picked up a few for myself, including Port, which I showed you here.  This polish is another part of that haul.  It seems to me that American Apparel released a couple "safe" colors, a couple trendy colors, and a couple of ugly-pretty colors.  The following, Trenchcoat, falls under the last category.

The real color of this polish falls somewhere in-between the photos in natural light and the photos in artificial light.  While the natural light photos represent the polish well in terms of tone, the artificial light photos show how yellow this shade leans.  While I wouldn't describe it as yellow per se, I think the color bears a striking resemblance to Grey Poupon Dijon Mustard.  It has been snowing in Cleveland pretty much non-stop for the past forty-eight hours, so good natural light has been hard to come by, as you can probably tell from my abysmal photos.


The application on Trenchcoat was not as good as I would expect from an American Apparel polish.  It was very thick and difficult to get even.  It only took two coats for opacity, but I felt like I should do a third to even things out.  I didn't.  I let Seche try to even it out for me, and that worked fairly well, as you can see.  After having worn numerous American Apparel polishes, I can tell you that I love many things about them but also dislike a few things about them.  I love that AA makes unique and beautiful cremes. I love that [for the most part] they're really easy to apply.  I love the square bottles.  However, I dislike the wear time.  I often have chips or tipwear within hours after application and I have never had an American Apparel polish last for more than two solid days on me.  The new polishes that they have released that I've tried have had formula issues.  Port was too runny and Trenchcoat was too thick.  If you let the polishes sit for an extended period of time--I'm talking like, four days--the formula separates, requiring extremely vigorous shaking or rolling in order to mix the separated parts.  Also, the names differ slightly on the website as opposed to what's printed on the bottle.  For example, the website calls Berry "Berries" and Trenchcoat "Trench Coat."  I know this is a small, nitpicky thing, but these are the things that I notice readily.


Will these beefs stop me from purchasing American Apparel in the future?  No, of course not.  They're pretty.  L'Esprit is one of the most beautiful polishes I own and California Trooper is too unique and weird not to love.  I really like a lot of their polishes.  I just thought I should get these grievances off my chest, so to speak.

Here's a [not so good] picture of me wearing the polish.  As you can see, it doesn't go well with my skintone.  But I still kind of like it.  It has that Sally Hansen Salon Forsythia quality to it that I'm so fond of.  Another great color, American Apparel, but please fix the formula on this one.  


So!  School has started.  It's Thursday and today is the day that I have the seminar I'm most worried about this semester.  I guess I just have to dive in and trust that I'll do okay.  I have been having a lot of trouble sleeping lately, which is strange because I've cut back slightly on the caffeine.  I had what I believe was a small panic attack on Monday morning before I left my apartment for my first class.  I don't know when I became so high-strung that I can't even cope with the first day of school in a normal way, but there you have it.  I think I'll be really glad when the weekend comes, although this semester appears to be even more reading-intensive than the last, if that's even possible, so I surmise that I'll be spending most of my time either in the library or a nearby coffee shop.  


In fourteen and a half weeks I'll be done with this semester, too.  And then I'll be halfway to my Masters.  Eyes on the prize, right?


So that's what's going on in my little world.  How are you guys feeling about Trenchcoat?  It's admittedly an ugly-ish shade, but would you buy it?  Wear it?  Am I crazy for liking it?  Spill. 

Revlon Perplex

This is a picture-heavy post, so stick with me.  So, we all know about this polish.  We all know about this polish because it's a supposed very close dupe for Chanel Paradoxal which is insanely beautiful but also insanely expensive.  The problem with Revlon Perplex is that it's "limited edition" and somewhat difficult to find.  I found one bottle right at the beginning of my winter break at a ghetto CVS.  Then I lent it to my boyfriend's mom before I used it myself because I thought she might like it.  Then I found another display, so I picked up another and told my boyfriend's mom she could keep the first bottle.  Perplex and I have had a month-long relationship.  It wasn't on my nails, but it was in my bag every day, staring at me with its pretty purple shimmer and its ugly, ugly bottle.  Finally, I put it on.  And here it is.

Sorry for the bad application.  I was rushing to catch the sunshine before it disappeared again.  The formula on Perplex is excellent.  It almost only required one coat and it was easy to apply.  I don't have the Chanel to compare, but I've seen photos on several blogs that indicate that for all intents and purposes it's a dupe.  Basically, if you can find this polish, buy it.  I saw a display at Ulta last weekend when I was there and it was full, probably because someone had just put it out.  It'll probably be easiest to find at CVS, though.  Revlon polishes retail for about $5, which definitely beats the $23 you'll pay for Chanel Paradoxal.  For reference, here's what the display looks like.

Anyway, my break is officially over.  When this posts I'll be in class.  This month went so insanely quickly.  I'm not ready to go back to school at all.  I still feel completely overwhelmed by...well, life.  My last weekend as a free scholar was actually pretty nice.  On Thursday night I watched many, many episodes of Six Feet Under, one of them from the bathtub (which is probably my biggest guilty pleasure; spending hours in the bathtub is really not something I'm proud of).  On Friday night my boyfriend took me to dinnertimes and it was delicious and Asian.  Saturday night we went to see The King's Speech which was awesome.  Before the movie, this is how I spent the majority of my evening.

Drinking coffee, reading a very heavy book about Rembrandt connoisseurship, and sitting by the fire at Coffee Inc.  I was feeling very relaxed and very warm, so I took a picture.  Doesn't it make you feel cozy?  Also, I'm sure you remember my hipster scholar glasses.

I got these the day before my first semester started in order to inspire me to be ridiculous and scholarly.  Fittingly, they broke right as I was finishing my final final paper at the beginning of December (yes, I actually wore these to write papers).  So I had to get some new ones, and here they are.

Look, I'm so blase about life, just like a hipster.  I actually really like these frames on me.  Plus they're a nice brown tortoiseshell, so they're a little less shocking than the black ones.  New semester, new scholar glasses.  Anyway, that's how far I've gotten in the way of preparations for school.  Grad student costume complete.  

So that's all.  You've got a little Perplex, a little fireplace-readin', and a little ridiculousness.  Who has found Perplex?  It took me a while spot it, but I'm really glad I finally did.  What a pretty, pretty polish.  Congratulations, Revlon.  You definitely stuck it to Chanel.