Girl, Decorated

Although you can score salon brands like OPI and China Glaze from etailers* for under $5 apiece, I'm going to focus on drugstore brands that are too often overlooked by makeup geeks. Through shopping and swapping, my collection is now made up of everything from ~$1 polish to $18 polish (I actually only paid $9 apiece for the latter, courtesy Rescue Beauty Lounge's 50% off sale!) And, honestly? A lot of the cheap stuff is just as good in terms of application, color selection and wear, especially with a base and top coat. A lot of these are Big 3 Free, too, but do your research if it's a concern.**

I'm limiting this list to brands I've actually tried (and skipping the super-mainstream brands like Revlon and Maybelline, though gems abound there as well), so this is really only the tip of the iceberg!

( NYX, Milani, Diamond Cosmetics, Sinful, & Pure Ice. )

So what under-$5 brands have you tried and loved?


*Head2Toe and Transdesign are two good ones, and I also love Sparkling Nails on eBay. Thank you, Makeup Alley nail board!

** Admittedly, I'm of the "as long as you don't drink it, it's probably not going to kill you" school. Cavalier, perhaps, but there's only so much I can stand worrying about. But whether the health concerns are overblown or not, Big 3 Free polishes are definitely greener.

*** Nail blogs abound, but here's nail geek swatch central. Totally bookmark-worthy.

I wanted something subtle but colorful for a night out (at the Roller Derby!), and this is what I came up with:



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I used Urban Decay Jones shadow all over my lid with MAC Passionate in the outer corner/crease. I don't have a peachy glitter liner, so I combined two Urban Decay Heavy Metal glitter liners: Baked and Catfight.

Once my collection outgrew my polish rack (I know, I know, I was supposed to keep it to just the one rack...), I began displaying only my favorite/most eye-catching polishes and storing the rest. But then I'd forget to look through my untried polishes when selecting colors for a mani/pedi, so I decided instead to do the practical thing and store my untried polishes visibly on the rack instead. It was hard to put away my favorites, but I definitely want to try the ones I haven't!

Many of these have been swatched on a nail or worn with a Skittles mani (here and here), but have yet to be used beyond that:



After taking this pic I selected Rescue Beauty Lounge Coral for my tips and NYX Jungle for my toes, and am very pleased with the result. Jungle is amaaaaaazing. Once used, the polishes get dumped in the bins with the already-worns:



Now, to decide what to put on my tips next...

Remember my NYX haul? Well, I decided that my first mani would be with Juliette, a slightly metallic, shimmery teal. I applied two coats over Seche base, with Seche top coat, as usual.

Here's how it looked FOUR DAYS LATER:



Only tipwear! I rarely have manis last four solid days, and this was an inexpensive drugstore polish. I finally had to take it off for a job interview.

So overall, I'm impressed - we'll see how the other NYX polishes fare. I'm not sure whether the durability owes anything to the polish itself or to my improved application, but it may be the latter. I'm wearing another drugstore gem today (Sally Hansen Glow), and it still looks good on its third day of wear. I even washed dishes sans rubber gloves last night. (Not recommended if you're trying to make a manicure last.)

One thing I'm doing differently, aside from always wearing a good base and top coat, is making sure I wrap the tips of my nails with the base coat layer, the first color layer, and the final top coat layer. Wrapping the tips just means swiping or dabbing the very tip of the brush carefully against the front edge of the nail. (Some girls with long nails paint slightly underneath, too, but my nails are too short to bother with that.) In the pic above, the tips have worn off but the rest of the polish is intact. I probably could have dabbed a tiny bit of color on the very tips of my nails, and made it last another day if I'd wanted to.

As for my toes, I'm on my third week of wearing China Glaze Orange Marmalade, so the above technique will extend the life of a pedicure even further. Pedis last ages on me, but a manicure? Four days is some kind of record. I must be finally figuring out how to do one properly.

One of my recent green looks was very dramatic, so I thought I'd post one that was noticeably green but not overpowering. I wore this to a job interview, actually (for a freelance opportunity, so there was less at stake). I would consider it to be work-friendly for all but the most conservative settings. What do you think?



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Sorry, didn't take a full face pic... I know the cheeks were MAC Shy Beauty (a soft shimmery peachy shade) and the lips were MAC Saplicious gelee (a neutral pink-beige gloss with very little shimmer).

For the eyes, I used my usual Too Faced Shadow Insurance, then an assortment of MAC shadows: Mink & Sable (a lightly frosted olive green) all over the outer 2/3rds of the lid; a touch of MAC Lucky Green to the center lid; Bottle Green as a contour; Vanilla as a highlight; and Urban Decay 24/7 liner in Stash as a liner (top and bottom). Very simple. I should have evened out the crease area a bit as it's noticeably asymmetrical in the last photo, but overall, I think it worked.

I did this yesterday, just to try some different colors and compare them. I deliberately selected all pale, Spring-y creams. I don't normally wear pastels, and most of these turned out to be not pastel-y at all, anyway, but I still thought it was cute and I can't stop looking at it:



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I had to "franken" the pale yellow by mixing several drops of a white polish with one drop of a bright yellow, and applying it with the brush from an empty bottle. That was fun to do! If you're interested in frankenpolish, I have two blogs to recommend: Dr. Frankenpolish and Never Too Much Glitter. I love the mixes these gals come up with!

OK, not school per se, but I am going to save my pennies and make EVERY effort to attend the Makeup 101 seminar in Manhattan, August 1st-3rd! This looks like the entire semester of the NECEE course I was considering, but squished into three days and with actual industry pros teaching it. Plus, better makeup: it will be held at the Makeup Forever store in New York.

Just wanted to share my excitement! I'll be sure to write about what I learn. :)

I have long lemminged some of NYX's nail polish colors, because they're comparitively cheap and come in so many fun colors. So when the 50% off Anniversary sale rolled around in May, I took full advantage:



( Swatch pix & color names. )

(All three are MAC eyeshadows. The vast majority of the eyeshadow pans that live in my palettes are MAC, so I didn't bother labeling them as I did with the Urban Decay pans.)

I did this for a night out this past weekend. Actually, I had drawn these exact same three slips of paper the week before, but never got around to doing the look, so I threw them back in the bag. How I managed to draw THE EXACT SAME THREE again is anyone's guess. I suppose it was meant to be? (Well, that, or I didn't re-shake the bag...)



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In addition to the three colors listed above, I used MAC Beautyburst as a contour shade, MAC Delineate fluidline as top liner (thank you, sparkle_shortz!), and MAC Vanilla as a highlight. Prussian was applied on the lower lashline over one of the blue Makeup Forever waterproof pencil liners. (They're pretty cool, but for the record, I still like Urban Decay's pencil liners best of all. MUFE's aren't as buttery soft.)

Oh, and I used MAC Shy Beauty on the cheeks and MAC Strobe Kiss TLC on the lips. The foundation was Makeup Forever hi-def, and I used my usual brow stuff and Cover Girl Lash Blast. In hindsight, the look probably had probably an excess of shimmer (if the shiny full face pix are any indication), but hell, it IS almost summer...

This look came entirely from one of MAC's 2008 holiday palettes (Intriguing Scarlet: 6 Warm Eyes," if memory serves). It looks like this (MAC's promo pic, not mine):



I normally gravitate to cooler colors because of all the pink and blue undertones in my complexion. But I occasionally stray into earthier, mossier shades and, occasionally, I like the results. This was one of those times.



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