Archives: April 2009

Today I thought I would do something a little different. I wanted to take you on a “tour” of my website to show you all the features that are on it, that you may not be aware of.

The left-hand side is where all the information is located. First off you will see the “Find me” box. There you can find my email address, Facebook name, Twitter name and Ideeli blog, whom I write a nail polish column for. Under the first advertisement, you will find my “Subscribe via Email” section which is where you can get Vampy Varnish delivered to your mail box every day rather than come to the actual site, if you wish. Under that you can also subscribe to my site via an RSS feed.

Under the next advertisement is my “Site Translator” area for those who don’t speak english to translate my site into another language. I hope this is helpful and actually is translated well! Under the translator is a “Quick Search” feature which is useful when you are looking for something specific. The Alltop Beauty Feed is next and it’s a feed from Alltop’s website which features various articles being published on various websites, which can be fun to review.

Next you will find “Recent Entries” which lists the 10 most recent articles I have published. Under that are my “Monthly Archives” where you can peruse the site by month. Then we get to “Categories” which may be the most useful feature of all. Here you can search all my posts by nail polish brand, or color, or finish, etc. I find this INCREDIBLY useful when I check out other websites and get really frustrated if people don’t have it!

Beneath that you will find an area called “Original Swatches”. These are swatches I took before I started writing consistently and they are all older polishes, for the most part. I still wanted to show pics of them but since they weren’t new I didn’t want them being posted daily. The pics are horrendous (old camera, low pixels and horrible hand placement) but might still be helpful. I have come a long way in 8 months!

Under that are the “Blogs I Love”. I have listed blogs that I love as well as a “Websites I Love” section, which are mostly non-beauty sites. At first they were all alphabetized, but it’s a HUGE pain in the ass doing that with the way my blog is set up, so I started not doing them that way. The order of the sites in no way reflects which ones I like best/worst, etc. And I want to say for the record that I strongly believe in helping new blogs out and adding them when they request. I am in no way intimidated by the “competition” that listing other nail polish blogs might bring. There is room enough for us all and we are all different anyway and as far as I’m concerned, there isn’t one nail polish blog that’s better than any of the others.

Finally, under the blogroll is a section of “Where to Buy Varnish”. These are various e-tailers and polish websites where I find most of the polish I buy online.

I hope this was helpful to some of you and sorry if it was boring!

TGIF! BB Couture, which is rapidly becoming a favorite brand of mine, is coming out with some *SICK* new colors and I am showing you the latest ones today. Three of these I absolutely LOVE and two are nice but kind of strange for me. Pics taken in sun with no top coat.

Blind Love is a really great metallic gold/silver that has a foil like finish and a greenish tint to it. In the bottle the stuff looks totally weird and cool. It looks thick like molted metal. The color is somewhat like Chanel’s coveted Kaleidoscope, but this is slightly darker and a tinge more olive colored. That’s the closet dupe to it that I own. The polish is opaque and not streaky at all and this is only two coats.

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TGIF party people! So I found out some exciting news today. Illamasqua now ships to the USA!!! Now we can enjoy the fabulous nail polish they offer (among other cosmetics). If you haven’t seen my swatches check ‘em out here. Also I will be showing you their new collection for summer 2009 soon! Their website can be found here.

So whatcha up to this weekend, anything fun? I have an acupuncture appointment tomorrow (my first time going) so it should be interesting! That’s really about it for me…

Essie has done it again! A fabulous unexpected collection for summer, this time neon’s! These are what I would classify as mostly true neon’s, especially the yellow.  The application ran from fabulous to streaky-as-hell, but I love them all anyway. Pics taken in sun with no top coat.

Funky Limelight was the streaky-as-hell one, BUT that’s to be expected because yellow’s are always a hot streaky mess for some reason. This is a true highlighter yellow color. I did my absolute best to show you the true color of this. It’s SUPER UBER NEON and really cool. However, because of the sheerness and streakiness I needed four coats and you can still see my nail tip through it. I don’t care, I really like it anyway!

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Orly’s new collection for summer 2009 is called Tiki Time and it’s a collection of four bright (but not neon) cremes. I REALLY like this whole collection and am very happy that A. it’s not a HUGE collection (4 seems just right) and B. that they are not neon’s. Not that I don’t like neon’s, it’s just that I have been seeing a lot of them lately. I had absolutely zero application issues with these. They were smooth, opaque and fabulous! I have heard people say that Orly takes a long time to dry, but I have never had that experience and these dried just fine. Pics taken in sun with no top coat.

Mint Mojito is just a perfect mint green creme. We have been seeing a lot of variations of mint creme’s this season (MAC Peppermint Patti, BB Couture Laguna Lagoon and Make Up Store Paula) but I think this might be my favorite one. This is what I would call a true mint green. The application was just perfectly buttery smooth and opaque in two coats.

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