Organic Nail Polish Remover? Really?

I almost never write about other beauty brands, but I stumbled across a great non-Lancome product recently. Shocking, I know. : )



I was in a new indie beauty shop in my neighborhood called Shen when I spotted an organic nail polish remover. (The full name is Karma Organic Organic Nail Polish Remover with Soybean Oil and Lavender.) I never expected it would work, but since nail polish remover always smells terrible, I thought I'd give it a try.



Earlier this week, I wanted to switch from wearing my favorite blue-grey Le Gris L'Wren to the ruby Le Rouge L'Wren (both from our holiday collection. Did you read All Lacquered Up's rave about Le Rouge? Amazing! So I grabbed the Karma remover and to my surprise, it worked. Really well! It's also very oily, which I'm hoping is good for my nails.



I'll be sure to break it out again this morning because I'm going to give our spring 2011 purple another test run. It's the coolest color. I wore it once before and everyone asked me what it was. (Even a Gossip Girl asked me to send her a bottle as soon as I could!)



(The photos above are backstage pictures featuring Le Gris, Le Rouge and the spring 2011 purple.)



I'm not sure where you can find Karma, but you can always called Shen. 718-576-2679. (It's Small Business Saturday in the U.S., so it's a good day to buy something from a small business! )



Are you wearing nail polish today? What shade? And did you apply it yourself or get a manicure?

What's Up With Our Fave Blogettes? And Congratulations to Erin and Her New Bébé!

My blog sabbatical also included, unfortunately, a break from reading beauty blogs. I'm trying to get back into the swing of things and catch up, so I thought I'd do a little roundup. Just in case you're behind on your blog news too...



--Happy anniversary to our friend and new mom Mildred over at Beauty Logic. She's been blogging for three years, which is quite an achievement. The sheer number of blogs makes it seem like an easy activity, but it's not! And now Mildred has a blog AND a newborn to juggle.

--Former Allure editor Tory Kirby (and my former Harper's Bazaar colleague) is doing some great posts over at makeup.com. My parent company acquired makeup.com and hired Tory as the editorial director. Smart move, as Tory knows everybody in the beauty biz. If you haven't checked it out, please do. Don't forget to follow makeup.com on Twitter and Facebook too.

--The already fabulous Fab Over 40 had a bit of a facelift. In addition to the great new look, there's a Lancome giveaway. Make sure to enter.

--Michelle, the All Lacquered Up princess of polish, whom we adore, has a RAVE for our Flash Bronzer Face Lotion. It's part of her "As Amazing As Polish" series (see pic above), which is pretty darned clever. (Totally off subject, I think Michelle is going to see Lady Gaga soon. I hope she takes lots of pictures and does a fun post or two.)

--I got to see Miss Whoever You Are this weekend. Some of you might know MWYA was our intern a few semesters ago and we miss her very much. MWYA is celebrating an anniversary as well, as she's been blogging since July 8th, 2007! In blog dog years, that's a really long time.



Lastly, we want to congratulation our dear dear Erin who gave birth to her first child today. (Many of you know Erin as she worked closely with the bloggers for Lancome.) A little boy, almost eight pounds! Baby X doesn't have a name yet, so if you feel like leaving a name suggestion for Erin, she might appreciate it!

The Giveaways Are Back! Win Aaron De Mey's Spring Nail Shades from Europe!!

I'm caught up with the last round of blog giveaways, so time for some new ones. I'm spring cleaning over the next few weeks, so there will be some fun giveaways. The first: our spring nail polishes from Europe, from Aaron De Mey's O My Rose collection. You couldn't get the polishes in America and some nail fanatics were NOT happy. Our European friends couldn't get Chris Benz, so it all works out in the end.

Anyway, the colors are Pop Petrol, a gorgeous dark teal shimmer, and BB Sand, a sexy pale gold glitter. I picked these up when I was in Paris earlier this year. It's the Le Vernis formula, so it comes with that fabulous brush that makes it so easy to paint your nails. It puts skinny brushes to shame. Try it and you'll see exactly what I mean.

Die-hard beauty blog fans will remember that the fabulous All Lacquered Up did a review and giveaway of Pop Petrol in January. That's Michelle's photo above. Nail of the Week did a NOTD (nail of the day) with BB Sand, as seen above. She didn't love it, but that's okay. You can't love everything. (Or can you?) Nail of the Week, how do we get in touch with you? We love your blog and I want to make sure it's okay that we used the photo above.

If you'd like to be entered to win, leave a comment detailing what spring cleaning you need to do. Do you need to organize your makeup, clean out your closets, get rid of a boyfriend? : )

Please post by Wednesday night and we'll pick one post at random. Good luck!

NOTD? Ms. Perfectly Pink Le Vernis

Lara recently asked if we could start doing some NOTDs (a.k.a. Nail of the Day) on the blog. I'm wearing our new summer color, Miss Perfectly Pink, a truly perfect fuchsia color, and it matches my dress so I thought I'd give it a shot. I took the pictures above in my office a few minutes ago. (That's my favorite Harper's Bazaar cover ever in the background.)

Actually, I took about 200 photos on my MacBook Photo Booth and those three were the only ones that didn't make my hands look like something from a scary movie! Oh, and I'm wearing a ring because I read something in the current issue of Allure that said rings make your hands look more youthful. Bring on the rings!

How do All Lacquered Up, Nail of the Week, Scrangie, The Hungry Asian and the other fab nail bloggers do it? Their hands, nails and manicures always look lovely in their photos.

Anyway, Ms. Perfectly Pink is a fun color and it makes me wish summer were here RIGHT NOW. One note about the color: in person, it's a bit brighter and a bit less blue than in the pictures. The Bronze Riviera summer color collection, including MPP, just went live on lancome.com, so make sure to check it out. Lots of pretty, wearable items!

How do your nails look today?