Please forgive me for that.
This is going to be a bit laconic, as I’ve had a bit of vertigo all day and am not 100% on staring at the screen for a long post, but — here we are. My first serious all-glitter-all-the-time-my-god-my-fingers-are-so-disco mani.
This is China Glaze I Herd That, from the recent On Safari collection, with Ulta Walking On Broken Glass, a mini from the recent Glazed & Confused set.
This is three layers of each glitter over Zoya Austine (I Herd That) and Maybelline Avante Green (Walking On Broken Glass). I Herd That would have been fine with two. It was almost fine with one, as Austine was fantastic as a base for it, but three layers of Walking On… was just a bit more opaque and it looked odd without the second coat.
Both of these are extremely textured, and I Herd That dries slightly matte, which I loved. To be certain, it’s more common to toss topcoats on these for shine and even more twinkle, but I like the slight grittiness. I’m weird, I know. I’d love to find more glitters with the same texture as I Herd That — I’ve seen it referred to as a sandy or sugar-like texture, as opposed to more usual glitters.
I really loved wearing I Herd That, and am looking forward to receiving I’m Not Lion, the other glitter from that release. It’s a paler, more neutral-esque gold, whereas Herd has a lot of red and yellow to it. I liked the coppery-gold with blue-green color combo.
This one is in bright sunshine so you can really see the different textures and colors more distinctly. Don’t be fooled by the green undertone to Walking On Broken Glass — that polish is pure teal glitter. The green is all from Avante Green, which has just enough of a teal duochrome that I foolishly assumed it would make a good base. It was okay, but not perfect. Austine, on the other hand, disappeared under I Herd That.
Totally fun, and, thanks to some pure acetone and holding the cotton on my nails for about fifteen seconds each, it wasn’t really that difficult to remove.
I got both of these on the same trip to Ulta, but the CG is available at a variety of places.
Next up: A sort-of guest post — my nails, someone else’s polishes.
and the seas were white with raging spume — (no, that’s it, sorry.)
So I had a moment a few weeks ago wherein I decided I needed to own Cuprum (CU) from Rescue Beauty Lounge’s Fan Collection. It’s blue, really, really blue, metallic, and full of tiny coppery flakes of glitter. It was inspired by, well, let me copy the text of the color description from the RBL website:
The metamorphic moment when the presence of ammonia meets copper (II) transforms into a radiant blue. Cuprum is Latin for copper, and the dual nature of this element is what Neeta wanted to capture in a bottle.
Being the sort of person I am, with the poor impulse control that I have, I bought it. There was something else in that order as well. Something mysterious. But that is not a tale for this afternoon. Today, I will be showing you Cuprum and the only color that I found in my stash that seemed to complement it well enough to be an accent nail — China Glaze Harvest Moon.
This is two coats each, with a shiny topcoat that I added more for protection than because either of them needed it. Harvest Moon is from the Hunger Games collection CG released earlier this year. It’s really more red-orange than I would have considered optimal, but I’m not sure I know of a properly pink-toned copper polish that would really represent the shade of a bright new piece of metal. There’s probably one out there, but I haven’t met it yet.
The formulas on both polishes were very nice, with Cuprum being easy and smooth and willing to go where directed, and Harvest Moon being a bit more sheer and thin at the first coat. Both were easier to work with if I let the first layer dry fully before moving on.
The thing with Cuprum is that it has these copper flakes that, when the polish is shiny and you’re attempting to photograph it, don’t show up at all. They’re there in person, most definitely visible — here’s a bottle shot so you can see what I mean:
See? There are lots of irregular copper bits glowing through the blue! I chewed on the difficulty for a bit, tried a few different areas of my house for lighting adjustments, and eventually gave up for a while. But later that day, I remembered how much more flakies stand out when you slap a matte on them, tried it and — bingo.
There they are, and both Cuprum and Harvest Moon looked beautiful matte. Please do understand, those copper bits are truly present in Cuprum when it’s shiny. That blue and copper combination is wonderful. I’ll be looking for a brighter, pinker, copper color to wear with Cuprum, too.
I’ll also be working harder on not chewing on the skin around my nails. I had a really weird couple of weeks, then got sick, and I promise they’re doing a bit better now, but och, my fingers are so bad in these photos.
Rescue Beauty Lounge is available on their website. I bought my China Glaze at Ulta, where the Hunger Games collection seems to be going on clearance, but they are also available cheepcheepcheep from Trans Design.
Tomorrow: GLITTERBOMB. And after that, we are returning to our regular odd-days-only updating, as I’ve cleared my backlog and am starting school.
If you pair that ranger with an impolite thief, you get the beginnings of a D&D-inspired slash fic. (Sorry.) (Not really.)
So the most popular search term that people use to find this blog is “butter london sloane ranger”. That’s fine, but the only pictures I have of it are not particularly good. So I took some (hopefully) better ones. I was not particularly in the mood to do a one-color mani, so I paired it with a recent purchase — Illamasqua Faithful, a coppery brown. I’m not 100% convinced my choice was perfect, as Faithful is a little warmer than I think goes well with Sloane, but I enjoyed wearing them together nonetheless.
I’m very pleased; this time I managed to catch the silver shimmer in Sloane Ranger. It contrasted nicely with the golden/coppery shimmer in Faithful. I’ve been itching to buy Faithful since I first saw swatches of it, so when I saw the Naked Strangers display finally up at Sephora, I jumped on that like a kitten on her dinner. I adore that sort of semi-metallic shimmery finish, and the color is lovely. The base is almost caramel in tone.
Sloane Ranger continues to be a very pretty grayish green with a decent formula and a subtle silver shimmer. It hasn’t changed at all since I first posted about it in June, though I’d like to theorize I’ve gotten a little better about my camera work since then. :) I’ve still got quite a long way to go, but I’m working on it!
Observe the sheen! That silver shimmer doesn’t show up at all at a quick glance, or even a second one. You have to really hunt for it when looking at your nails in person.
Faithful looks considerably more copper in the bottle, in fact, it needed to be shaken slightly before using it because it had separated in a really beautiful swirl. This mani was two coats of each color over Butter London Nail Foundation and topped with Butter London P.D. Quick topcoat for shine.
I bought my Sloane Ranger at the Butter London salon in Sea-Tac Airport, but you might more commonly find it at their website, or at Nordstrom, or at any of a number of other possible places. Illamasqua I purchased at Sephora, though many people also buy through their site. They are more expensive that way, due to the exchange rate from the U.K.; however, there are some colors that Sephora doesn’t carry, and you can get things earlier direct. It’s a trade-off. *shrug*
Blue and bronze: book-version Ravenclaw colors. One might argue that OPI Warm & Fozzie is more like gold/copper, but isn’t that a pretty decent description of bronze? ;D I didn’t actually plan it to be a themed mani, though. I just thought these two colors would look nice together.
The blue is another Ulta mini from the Paint the Town set — Nauti-cal but Nice. It’s a very deep blue with a very subtle teal shimmer, so subtle that you cannot see it in the bottle, only in very direct light on the nail. This is two coats. There is a topcoat on it, a sweet purple/blue/green glimmering confection that I’m not entirely sure how to talk about, as it was a gift-with-purchase, and as far as I know, doesn’t have a name yet.
Warm & Fozzie is gorgeous, a flecky, dense glittery beast with a mild duochrome effect (copper to gold, with hints of green at extreme angles) in a smoky brown sheer base. This is two coats; the first was translucent and streaky, and the second was pretty much perfect. A third coat might have given me a little more depth, but my experiences with other polishes like this (MAC Bad Fairy, ORLY Space Cadet, etc.) made me a little leery of drying time.
Nauti-cal had a fairly lousy formula and wore terribly. Even with a topcoat, I had minor tipwear after a couple of hours. You can see it on both hands. It’s a nice color, but I’m not sad that I only have a mini, and I probably won’t wear it that often, though I might seek out other colors in a similar family. I don’t have anything else quite like this — it’s darker than most of the other blues (Revlon Royal, ORLY Royal Navy) I have, and more decisively blue than some of the other dark bluish shades in my collection (Zoya Cynthia, Nails Inc. Kensington, both are much more teal and neither has shimmer). On the plus side, however, it did not stain, though I do always use a basecoat, so that may affect my results.
Ayup. It was fun to wear. The blue started chipping, but I’m betting Warm & Fozzie would have worn pretty well for another couple of days. I’m happy to have it in my collection, and will be wearing it again with glee, especially as we shift towards autumn.
The Ulta polish was bought at *gasp* Ulta, and the OPI was purchased via a blogsale. It’s discontinued, from the Muppets collection last year, but you can still find it for sale at various places around the web. The glittery topcoat on the blue is an unreleased promo from Lilacquer, but I imagine you’ll probably see it, or something similar to it, sometime in the next while. :) I know I’m looking forward to seeing what her next theme is! :D
Bonus image of a different mani under the cut — RBL Jane and my first attempt at a newspaper accent nail.
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