Revlon ColorStay Gel Envy

I’ve been seeing ads and commercials for Revlon’s ColorStay Gel Envy collection everywhere for months and finally bought it last weekend. The concept of the collection is that it’s supposed to give you a salon-quality manicure at home. Honestly, my feelings are a mixed bag.

I’ll start with the good news because I like being optimistic.

The Gel Envy polish real does give you a lovely and vibrant color, and there are 38 shades for you to choose from. Not too shabby, right? There are few things that I love more than pink nails, so I went with “Royal Flush.” It’s a rich pinky-red with maybe a bit of fuchsia to giving it a bit of sass. I really loved and maybe have just found my vacation nail color!

I found the application super easy. The Gel Envy process has two-steps, the base + color coat and the Diamond Top Coat. The base + color coat is a thick, opaque formula, so I only needed one coat. And even with the one, my nails had a gorgeous, rich color to them. The Diamond Top Coat was just as effortless, and I’ve honestly never seen a top coat dry so fast! And the system has no UV component, which saves everyone some time and money.

Lastly, my nails did feel harder and stronger while wearing the polish.

And now for the bad news…

This is another one of those gel-like nail polish systems that promises long-wear and a high gloss shine. It did give a nice enough shine, but I wouldn’t call it long-lasting. It didn’t chip per se, but by Day 2 I was already seeing some tip-wear on multiple fingers. It hadn’t even been 48 hours and I felt like I needed a touch-up. I wasn’t impressed. To its credit though, it’s Day 5 and there isn’t any flaking or major chipping going on yet.

The price is a bit of a turn-off too, at least initially. You need to buy both the base + color coat and the Diamond Top Coat, and each bottle is about $7.99 a pop. They do sell “starter kits” that have one bottle of color and one of the top coat, and that seems to be the way to go in order to save a few dollars for us penny pinchers.

Lastly, the thought the Diamond Top Coat had a funny smell, stranger even than other polishes I’ve tried over the years. Thankfully, since this system dries quickly the smell doesn’t linger.

The truth is that this is not a gel manicure. It’s gel-like so the results aren’t going to be the same. So, there are some pros and cons about the system, but I really do love the lush colors. And now that I have the Diamond Top Coat, I might try experimenting with other shades to see if they last a bit longer. The tip-wear did sour me a bit though, not going to lie.

Has anyone else tried ColorStay Gel Envy? What did you think about it?

*This post is not in collaboration with Maybelline, and the opinions are my own.

Book Review: SEX WITH KINGS

I swear it doesn’t usually take me months to finish a book! I started Sex with Kings by Eleanor Herman back in February but then got slammed with reading for work (#lifeinpublishling). I ended up having to put the book down for weeks (and weeks and weeks) before getting around to finishing it. The wait was torture; I was really enjoying the book!

Sex with Kings is non-fiction, not a novel, so it’s not going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is mine! As I mentioned in my history book haul, Sex with Kings is a history of the kings of Europe and their mistresses over the last 500 years or so. You’ll read about the famous mistresses like Anne Boleyn (a personal favorite of mine) and Madame de Pompadour as well as lesser knowns like Athénaïs de Montespan and Nell Gwynn. What a found fascinating about the book is that reads like a juicy gossip magazine with all the credibility of a historian. In fact, Herman is a New York Times best-selling author and a bit of a media darling when it comes to commenting on royal scandals, so credibility she does have in large supply.

The book is impeccably researched, based on “diaries, personal letters, and diplomatic dispatches” through the ages. Herman weaves a tightly knit narrative that explores what it was like to be a king's mistress. She unearths recurrent patterns in the lives of the women who captivated kings and, instead of reading like a biography, you read brief, almost episodic, tales of the cat fights between queens and mistresses, rivalries amongst mistresses, and much more.

Unlike today, when mistresses are hidden from view, royal mistresses had position at court. They were public figures who often dressed more opulently than the queen and held some political currency. Herman brings the various tropes of the royal mistress to life with one scandalous story after the next. Just when you think you’ve heard the most outrageous thing you could possibly hear, Herman one-ups herself. My favorites? Probably when the Austro-Hungarian emperor Franz Josef’s former mistress, Katharina Schratt, pulled down her blinds at Hitler’s passing motorcade during his procession through Vienna, or when Napoleon III’s mistress Virginie di Castiglione pulled a Miss Havisham (Great Expectations anyone?) and locked herself in her rooms, which she had painted black from floor to ceiling, with rats and trash as her beauty faded.

My one complaint about Sex with Kings is that the section that covers Prince Charles and Camilla Parker-Bowles needs to be updated. It seems to end in 2002, before Charles and Camilla’s marriage in 2005. There is also mention of Camilla automatically becoming queen when Charles ascends to the throne. However, Clarence House later stated that it is intended that Camilla will adopt the unprecedented style of Princess Consort instead.

Still, Sex with Kings was a smart, sexy, and often times hilarious read for a history buff like me. Elizabeth Herman’s wit knows no bounds. I’ll certainly be buying myself copies of her other books, Sex with Queens and Mistress of the Vatican! I promise not to take months to read those ones though!

Beginning of an Era? Disney's Cinderella (2015)

“Isn’t it strange that kids today are only going to know the live action Cinderella and might be completely unaware of the cartoon?”

My sister and I were headed home after seeing Cinderella when she made this comment, and it’s been on my mind since. I was somewhat flippant at the time, pointing out that the animated version is from 1950 and far removed from children today anyway, but maybe my baby sister was onto something.

Let’s face it, the Age of Saturday Morning Cartoons, with kids eating sugary cereal in front of the television set, is over. Even when I was a kid watching my favorite cartoons—Looney Tunes, Animaniacs, Power Rangers—the phenomenon was already on a steep decline, and that was during the Disney Renaissance with films like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King, to name a few. This type of animation was on the way out again by the mid-90s though, thanks to computer-animation and then the blending for 3D CGI and traditional techniques that we see in Brave, Tangled, and Frozen. Animated films as I knew them as a child aren’t in vogue anymore, and Disney has now branched, with smashing success, into the realm of live-action films with Maleficent, Cinderella, and soon Beauty and the Beast.

So was my sister right about little kids today missing out on the classic 1950s version of Cinderella with songs like “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” and “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”? The movie has been put in the Disney Vault on several occasions but it’s always been re-released with fanfare, so I don’t think there’s a real threat of Cinderella vanishing from memory, at least not yet. It’s still the one that most parents were raised on (including most millennials), so I think children will still have exposure to it. But maybe one day my sister’s premonition will come true.

As for the live-action Cinderella that’s currently in theatres? I absolutely loved it! The cinematography and renderings were breath-taking, and I don’t think that there could have been a better cast. Lily James was perfection as Cinderella, innocent and bright; Cate Blanchett, to my surprise, was the embodiment of Lady Tremaine, and I spent a large part of the movie experiencing wardrobe envy. It was also interesting to see the mistress of macabre, Helena Bonham Carter, playing the frothy, Fairy Godmother, although I wish she’d been a bit more present in the film. As for Prince Charming? I challenge anyone to find fault with Richard Madden. But the story was sadder than I remembered, and perhaps there is something to be said about having actors instead of cartoons on the big screen. I cried on more than one occasion. #sorrynotsorry

While I did miss the musical aspect just a little (I may have “A Dream Is a Wish Your Heart Makes” on my iPhone in a Disney Playlist…), if this is the direction that Disney is going in, I’m not complaining. It certainly breathed fresh life into the timeless story and is making it available to new generations. So maybe I should stop being a pessimist and, instead of seeing it as an end of an era, see live action films as the beginning of a new and exciting one.

So what were your thoughts on Cinderella?

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Review

As much as I would love to spend $8 on a bottle of OPI or Essie, sometimes that price tag is too rich for my student loan-burdened bank account. I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m almost exclusively a drugstore cosmetics sort of gal at this point in my life. But just because I want bargain prices doesn’t mean I want nail polishes that chip the next day or need a million coats to look opaque. I've found that Sally Hansen Insta-Dri line is a great alternative to designer polishes.

For $3.99, you get a thick, long-lasting nail polish and a large selection of colors to choose from. Depending on the color, one coat will usually do the trick, and it goes on smoothly and evenly. The “Perfectionist Brush” is wider than the average brush and has contoured edges for easy application. 

Now, I will say that the name is a bit of a misnomer. The nail polishes don’t dry instantly (I wish!), and they don’t dry in 60 seconds either.  The dry time is still faster than most drugstore nail polishes I’ve tried though. I do still use a quick dry coat to speed up the process, but that’s only because someone has a tendency to smudge her nails…

A couple of weekend’s ago I bought two new Sally Hansen Insta-Dri polishes for my collection.  Show Steel-er is a light gray with a slight blue tint to it (from certain angles it even looks a bit like powder blue).  It seemed like a perfect winter color to me and certainly matched the New York uniform (black, white, and gray). I can’t lie, I’ve been obsessed with this color since I bought it.  

The other shade, Expresso, is a rich mauve. It’s a deep enough shade to work as winter color but I think the berry hue could work for the spring too. I like that it’s on the more subdued side without appearing too neutral.

My Sally Hansen manicures usually last about a week without chipping and with minimal tip-wear, but the darker colors don't seem to last quite as long as the lighter shades (as was the case with Show Steel-er versus Expresso), not sure why.  Still, Sally Hansen provide smooth, vibrant coverage that really can't be beat for the price.