It’s the most wonderful time of the year… (Halloween at BPAL!)

It’s that time of year again! Please note, 13, which is all the way down at the end, is ONLY up until 8/14, so if you want that one and need time to think about the others, order it today! (Link to the Lab is in my sidebar!) (Copy below is from the BPAL website, not my own words!)

BPAL Walletpocalypse Continues!

Yeah, my wallet is never, ever going to recover. BPAL outdoes themselves once again. Scents based on Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, Boom! Studios’ (and Mark Waid’s) Irredeemable, and Top Cow’s Witchblade are coming soon! The scents are debuting at C2E2 in Chicago (next weekend?) and there are some exclusive scents that will only be available there, but the ones listed here will be available on the BPAL site soon. (I’m thinking I might have to look into Irredeemable, because that theme kind of hits a few of my storytelling kinks…):

++ NEVERWHERE

ANESTHESIA
A scent that slips through the cracks: peppermint, lavender, bergamot, and mandrake.

MR. CROUP
Pompous and predatory: tonka bean, black musk, bourbon geranium, nd crushed porcelain.

DOOR
Golden honey, nicotiana, blue chamomile, and cistus.

THE FLOATING MARKET
A cacophony of curious scents: copaiba balsam, petitgrain, citrus rind, sinicuichi accord, betel nut, wasabi root, coconut palm, and wattleseed layered atop innumerable strange herbs, spices, and woods.

HUNTER
Leonine amber, tanned hides, clove, and clary sage.

LAMIA
Deadly elegance: pale orchid, vanilla amber, black currant, white peach, champaca, coconut, Arabian myrrh, Burmese vetiver, and oude.

THE MARQUIS de CARABAS
A splash of bay rum, leather, dusty black wool, massoia bark, and opium residue.

NIGHT’S BRIDGE
Stone and darkness.

THE RAT SPEAKERS
A snuffling, brown scent: earthy patchouli, sage, russet sandalwood, grimy leather, fig leaf, and lemongrass.

MR. VANDEMAR
Dark and gangly, with a glint of razor-sharp stainless steel behind it: opopponax, costus, black pepper, black sandalwood, and polished metal.

THE VELVETS
Smooth inky musk, cathedral incense, ylang ylang, violet leaf, rose-infused amber, red sandalwood, and iris.

The Neverwhere scents are part of an ongoing not-for-profit project, and proceeds from the sales of all Neil-inspired perfumes go to benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which works to preserve and protect the First Amendment rights of the comics community.
—–
Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab is thrilled to present their first collaboration with the wonderful people at Boom! Studios. The first scents in Black Phoenix’s new Boom! line are inspired by Mark Waid’s phenomenal comic book series, Irredeemable:

What if you go from, you know, Captain America to Doctor Doom? What if you go from Superman to Lex Luthor? How do you go from being the greatest hero in the world — someone that everybody knows, and everybody loves, and everyone recognizes — to the greatest villain in the world? What is that path? It’s not a light switch, it’s not an on-off switch, it’s not something that you wake up one day and just become evil. – Mark Waid

++ IRREDEEMABLE

PLUTONIAN
Soapy cleanliness sullied by blood and ashes.

BETTE NOIR
Benzoin, wild plum, smoky amber, bergamot, orange blossom, myrrh, and dark berries.

KAIDAN
Rosehip, plum blossom, white sandalwood, jonquil, and amber-laden incense.

ALANA PATEL
Faded perfume, cigarette smoke, and gin.

MR. QUBIT
Gleaming metal, electrical discharge, and a whiff of tinny cologne.

VOLT
Leather with a shock of eucalyptus, green mint, elemi, ravintsara and lime.

YUREI
White tea, hibiscus, Arabian sandalwood, white amber, white tea, ho leaf, pale Japanese flowers, and vetiver.
—–

Also debuting at C2E2 – the first in a line of Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab scents inspired by Top Cow’s Witchblade!

++ WITCH BLADE

THE CURATOR
Mysterious herbs and ancient resins. Dust settled on ancient relics, both holy and malevolent.

DET. PATRICK GLEASON
A classic men’s cologne splashed over a leather trenchcoat and a hint of gunshot residue.

SARA PEZZINI
A hint of leather and an understated vintage musk layered over the scent of lightly perspiring, honey-dusted skin.

WITCHBLADE
Antediluvian, sacred metal, glowing red musk, blessed frankincense, and antiqued amber.

The Witchblade perfume was created to layer seamlessly with Sara Pezzini’s scent, and is made to be worn with all of the future Black Phoenix scents inspired by Witchblade wielders.

Proceeds from every bottle sold from the Top Cow Witchblade series go to the Hero Initiative, the first federally recognized not-for-profit organization dedicated to helping comic book creators, writers and artists in need. Founded in late 2000 by a consortium of comic book and trade publishers including Marvel Comics, Image Comics, Dark Horse Comics, Wizard Entertainment, CrossGen Comics and Dynamic Forces Inc., the 501©(3) charity aims to assist comic creators with health, medical, and quality-of-life assistance.
—–

In addition, Black Phoenix will be debuting a scent created solely to benefit the CBLDF:

BANNED IN BOSTON
Banned in Boston was a phrase coined in the 19th century that was used to describe material, be it a motion picture, photograph, literary work, or other work of art, that contained objectionable or obscene content. Boston city officials and the Watch and Ward Society took their lead from the Comstock Law, which prohibited obscene materials from being distributed via the US Mail service, and formed their own strict censorship guidelines. Provocative or offensive material was prohibited from distribution or exhibition within Boston city limits.

The effect was much like that of the RIAA’s Parental Advisory tags: if something was Banned in Boston, it only served to pique interest and spike sales or attendance.

Obscene, lewd, lascivious, and decidedly objectionable. A filthy, post-coitus scent: sweaty and sweet, laced with laudanum, splashed with booze, and stained by tobacco.

(Please note: the Banned in Boston label is NSFW.)

Yeah, I might have to get that one too, just because…

BPAL exposes the world’s conspiracies for April Fools

Every year, Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab does some really fun releases for April Fool’s Day — this year is no different, and in my opinion is actually the most awesome release EVER. I love conspiracy theories and lunatic fringe stuff, and an entire set of scents based on them is sheer creative genius!

The set is called BLACK HELICOPTERS OVER BLACK PHOENIX and each 5ml perfume oil bottle is $20. They are “Presented in a suspicious amber apothecary glass vial,” and no samples (Imps) are available for this series. You can probably join a decant circle to get Imp-sized decants at the sinandsalvation or bpalmarketplace communities on Live Journal, or at the BPAL forum. The series is available until May 29th, 2010, so there is time to get decants, test the scents, and make decisions on bottle purchases. Oh — and every purchase of a Black Helicopter blend comes with an imp’s ear of Tin Foil Hat. It doesn’t get any cooler than that!

The Lab (BPAL) is AWESOME and a small disclaimer/wibble

First, let me tell you a little tale about how freaking AWESOME the folks at the Lab (BPAL) are. I had been waiting for part of an order for a while — it was backordered, and then part of it was accidentally left out of my box, so I had one last item I was waiting for. I received a CnS (Click’n'Ship) notice, and when the box arrived, I thought it was strangely heavy for what it was, but brought it home and eagerly opened it. When I started going through the items in the box, it became very obvious that it was not my order.

Instead, it was someone else’s eBay win. Someone else’s very, very expensive eBay win.

I kind of did this O_O and then this :O and very carefully wrapped everything back up and e-mailed Puddin’ (the fellow in charge of the Black Phoenix Trading Post, Beth’s husband, and a really cool guy) asking what address he wanted me to ship it back to. There was no way I could keep it — I know how rare the scent is, and someone paid a lot of hard-earned money for it (and I was definitely shipping it back insured, because I would just die if something went wrong between here & CA)!

Puddin’ gave me the address to ship it back to, and said he was going to send me a little something extra in my box with the remainder of my order, and I thought that was incredibly sweet but told him he didn’t have to. He did anyway, and I’m now the proud owner of a prototype room spray and a limited edition room spray from earlier in the year (Valentine’s Day release). I was absurdly gleeful when I got those, and thought Dude, the Lab is so awesome!

Well, this past week, I got another box from the Lab, and wondered if it was my most recent order just showing up with no CnS — this happens occasionally when the USPS software is being wonky. So I opened the box, and got the surprise of my life: another note thanking me for my honesty, and THREE PROTOTYPE BOTTLES OF OILS FROM AN UPCOMING COLLECTION! O_O

DUDE. The Lab is AWESOME!!

I sent the eBay win back because it was the right thing to do — I never expected any kind of gift for doing that, but omg I’m just so overwhelmed by how generous and lovely the Labbies are. And if anyone ever says they are anything other than that, I will smack them upside the head!

Secondly, I ran into this article and am a little on the O_O side.

I can see where it would affect the big, well-known bloggers, and the ones who do this as a semi-professional, or even professional thing, but what about those of us who do it out of love for various products, etc.? Are we still at risk for fines and such?

Well, I guess, to be on the safe side, I should state clearly and plainly, I do not receive free products from any of the companies or people I blog about. I purchase everything myself (with the express exception of free samples/free bottles from BPAL that anyone ordering from them gets (2 samples per bottle ordered, free bottles sometimes with large orders) and a couple of gifts because the Lab is Just That AWESOME).

(Someone want to tell me how to NOT automatically generate ‘possibly related posts’? O.o)

BPAL Halloweenies 2009

I’ve fallen obscenely behind on this blog with Real Life (TM) taking up way too much of my time. However, I’m trying out the iPod Touch/iPhone WordPress app to see if the draft feature works, and typing this while in the car (no, I’m not the driver.)

I should have posted these when they were first released, but they’re still available until November 5th:

The Greening of Summer

Disclaimer: Please ignore the crapplication in some cases. I do not have a good digital camera, and am making do with my ancient Kodak DC215 ZOOM. I’ve cropped and prepped the pictures in Photoshop, but tried very hard not to change the colour. These are all flash photos from indoor light.

Okay. I love green nail polish. At some point when I was younger, green was my favourite colour, before I decided purple was. Green is a great colour for nail polish, and it’s not all that common, although the bigger companies have been adding it to their lines more and more often. They’re not dumb — they realize when something is big with the customers!

I’m trying to figure out what’s the best Slytherin Green to wear to the HP movie, with stripes of Zoya Trixie (very silver) as a great HP Slytherin manicure. I do know some greens that aren’t right:

MAC Peppermint Patty:

and
The first picture is the first time I wore it, the second picture is a number of weeks later when I wore it again, after my nails had grown considerably. It’s a gorgeous minty green (and is not as blue as it photographs!) , but the application is difficult to say the least. It’s a pastel creme finish – cremes are bad enough, but a light colour along with it just makes it so hard to deal with. Lots of streaking and cuticle drag… I think this is 4 coats. Neither picture is showing tipwear, it’s just that one of the shots has a lot of reflection along the edges.

Misa The Grass is Greener on My Side — a pretty neon teal green. Shimmery and bright. It dries matte, but this is with a topcoat so it’s obscenely shiny!

China Glaze In the Lime Light — NEON lime green. This dries very quickly and dries matte like many neons. It has a slight shimmer, which shows up best if you use a topcoat.

Sally Hansen Insta-Dri Jumpin’ Jade — this is a specially formulated polish that dries under 1 minute. The brush is WIDE and weird, and the polish is very pigmented, but I thought it was covering in one stroke and only after I’d added a topcoat and all did I realize it was streaky and blotchy. You’d do better to do two coats, being careful not to do anything odd because it really does dry THAT fast. Here’s another picture (where you can see how uneven it is):

This colour is available now, at Target and probably CVS and other drug stores. If you love dark green/teal shimmer, I advise you grab it now while you can!

And finally, two that might actually fit the Slytherin Green. Both of these are creme finish, and other than 3 coats each and a nice shiny topcoat, both of them behave about the same.

1. Rescue Beauty Lounge Recycle:

and 2. Obsessive Compulsive Cosmetics Blackboard:

Blackboard is exactly the green of an old chalkboard from my high school (in grade school, we actually DID have blackboards, but once we got out of the old buildings, they had the green ones…). It’s a little more blue-shaded and blackened than Recycle, so I’m thinking it might not be the best for a Slytherin green. I’m pretty sure Slytherin green is a more yellow-tinted green. Recycle may be the best, or one of the ones I haven’t tried yet (Like Illamasqua Rampage…). Whichever one I end up going with, I’ll make sure to post pictures of my movie night manicure!

Drive-by Update

Work has had me completely snowed under for the past few months. I’m going crazy here, and burying myself in pretty nail polishes and wonderful perfumes, but wanted to let you folks know:

Moonalisa is doing a sale tomorrow (May 28th)! Check out her site at 9:30pm Eastern (6:30pm Pacific)! Don’t be late!

And BPAL’s partner, the Black Phoenix Trading Post, has a special event, an “Inquisition”, available through 5/31/09. The theme for this inquisition is Warrior Queens, and you can either “plead” your case via submitting a story or other request (someone did a great art post of her face edited into a picture that represented each queen), or just let the Trading Post decide what scent might fit you randomly (you can also request a specific scent, and they will honour it, but giving them a random request can be kind of entertaining if you’re not worried about any specific scent). Check out the Limited Edition link if you didn’t catch the one above.

And now I’m going to crash. Hugs to all!

E-tailers I love – Moonalisa

Moonalisa, a Supernatural Clean. This etailer is a wonderful woman who makes all of her own stuff and puts an amazing amount of love and care into everything she makes. She doesn’t stay open constantly — instead, she opens for short periods with a limited stock, then closes up and makes all of the orders and sends them out. After that, periodically throughout the year, she opens again.

Part of the reason that making everything and sending it out is a lengthy process is that she makes everything a completely beautiful artistic endeavour. Not only are the products amazingly high quality and the fragrances beautiful and complex, the packaging and presentation is first rate. Here are some pictures of my winter order placed on 1/1/09 and received on 3/4/09:

More Nails of the Day

I still desperately need to buy a new camera. This one has a terrible zoom (it was good when I bought it, but that was something like ten years ago!), and the battery tray catch has broken, so it is held together by a rubber band…

I also have no decent natural light, because I just don’t get out during the day. I am so nocturnal it’s not funny, and work from 9am to 6:30pm, so I spend most of my life in indoor lighting…

However, I’m still stupidly taking pictures of my nails, so, here are some of the recent ones:

First, Zoya Colbie. It’s a beautiful rich red shimmer, a much better colour than this picture shows. I don’t wear bright reds — this really is not a good example of the true colour:

Next, Misa Fatal Affair. SO many other people have posted better pictures than I have, but I still figured I should post this. I put this colour on, and it refused to shimmer except under flash lighting. In all other lighting it was nearly a creme finish. So eventually I put a Nfu-oh opal colour over it, but I haven’t edited those pictures yet. Here’s the ONE picture I got that even remotely showed the beautiful colour of this polish’s shimmer:

Here’s Misa Forbidden Lust, one of the most gorgeous shimmery purples of the fall collections:

And last but not least, China Glaze Passion in the Pacific. I know Scrangie mentioned a while back that she was having trouble with her ChG polishes not drying — this was one that I had the same problem with. I put this on, and a full 24 hours later, it was STILL soft enough to dent. I ended up taking it off and putting on the Forbidden Lust mani above. BUT, it’s such a pretty colour…

That’s all for now — we have huge storms, and I still have to edit a bunch of other pictures before I can post them. If anyone out there is actually reading, *hugs!*

A little upset with Zoya shipping practices

So. I got an e-mail from ArtOfBeauty.com (Zoya distributor) saying that there was a code for a free Zoya polish ($6 credit). I had wanted a few more colours and needed more Qtica cuticle balm, so I ordered the cuticle balm, Zoya Akyra, and Zoya Casey.

First, ArtOfBeauty.com only ships via UPS, so there’s a ridiculous cost there to begin with (plus I can’t have it shipped to my PO box which is the safe place for me to receive mail; instead I have to have it shipped to work because our hours keep us from being home to get UPS or FedEx packages). $6.95 shipping for the package, even if I’d only bought one polish.

However, the real problem comes from the fact that you can’t tell when you’re ordering if an item is out of stock, and unlike Amazon.com there’s no option to ask to have the shipment held until everything is available. Casey happened to be out of stock at the time, so my box with the cuticle balm and Akyra shipped by itself. $6.95 shipping, boom.

And then Casey, my free polish, shipped. For another $6.95.

I actually ended up spending $.95 more on the order than I would have if I’d got one shipment and paid for both polishes.

It’s not terrible, but it’s still a little aggravating — I’d rather know up front if something is out of stock (I’d pick something different, then), or would rather have the shipment held until the out of stock item is available, than pay overly expensive shipping, twice.

On the plus side, Akyra and Casey are beautiful colours, and Qtica cuticle balm is the best in the world.