Time for more loot from Cult Nails via Gloss48! I have had a bit of a lemming for Princess for some time, so when it turned up as part of the sale, I jumped on it. I picked up Spontaneous as well, largely on the basis of seeing swatches on various blogs.
Princess is a soft blue with coppery shimmer. Spontaneous is a slightly dusty purple with intense purple glitter, and it is -glitter-, not shimmer. I chose to largely eliminate the subtle sparkle by tossing on a Spectraflair holo topcoat. I bought mine from Piper Polish Co., and have used it before, but various other companies have produced them as well.
I love how these two look together. Baby blue and purple please me as a pairing. This is two coats of each Cult polish topped by one thin coat of Spectraflair. Observe the purple glitter in Spontaneous. That stuff is a pain to remove. :)
The formula on these was lovely, smooth and generally pleasant to work with. Cleanup was easy, and I think they both look nice with the rainbow shimmer. Of course, doesn’t almost everything?
Princess is a delightful faded baby blue, mellow and relaxing. The shimmer is even and visible on the nail, though the topcoat does a pretty good job of rendering it invisible. I was in the mood for rainbows that day.
There’s a bottle shot where you can see Princess on her own.
If you like these, you can pick them up at Cult Nails’ website. The topcoat came from Piper Polish Co. on Etsy.
Tomorrow will feature another a-england and the first of several Twee & Honey polishes.
Welcome to the land of parenthetical statements. Buckle up and enjoy the slightly dubious ride.
Over the last while, there have been quite a number of limited sale sites that have popped up. I think Hautelook was the first I remember seeing, but there are many more now. Recently, Cult Nails debuted some very pretty topcoats at a shiny new site, Gloss48 (on hiatus as of 9/16).
Like the polish (and Cult) fiend that I am, I bought all three of the available topcoats, plus a couple of other colors that either hadn’t made it to their recent sale (PRINCESS. You will see that soon.) or that I had passed on.
A few days later, I happened to be at Ulta, looking for a polish that matched my phone case (don’t ask; I just get wild impulses sometimes.) and found that they had a super-secret stash of China Glaze hidden at the back of the store, including the entire Bohemian collection. I decided that the horribly named Want My Bawdy would suffice as a color match. I put it on the next day, decided it wasn’t quite close enough, so I layered on a thin coat of Glitter Gal Hidden Violets, a purple/blue duochrome. Later, I checked my mail to find my Glossy48 order, and promptly tore it open and slapped Alter Ego on top. The results made me feel mildly ‘meh’, so I adjusted with some dots in a-England Excalibur, followed by Essie Matte About You. The shrinkage was epic.
Long walk for a short reward, eh? I also got massively over-zealous when cleaning up my ring finger. Three coats of Bawdy, one each Hidden Violets, Alter Ego, and EMAY, single-dipped dots.
Here’s a soft-focus image so you can see just how shiny Excalibur is. It is the perfect metallic silver, aces for stamping (did I mention I got a pack of Bundle Monster plates recently? I’ve been toying with them, but I think I need to get a better stamper.) and dotting or anything else for which you might want a one-coat silver.
For whatever reason, I didn’t take any bottle pics with this mani. I can’t honestly remember why, but that’s probably the NyQuil speaking. I finally caught the cold that’s been running around my social/work/convention-going group, and am writing under the influence.
Hidden Violets is a blue, purple, reddish, and occasionally you’ll see a flash of teal multichrome. Like all the polishes in that set, it’s extremely sheer and best used as a layering polish. Alter Ego is a pinkish-based golden shimmer that adds a patina’d look to what it is layered over. The combination of the two was rather underwhelming.
This is a picture of the Resident Kitten, Nona, playing with a toy mouse. It has nothing to do with nails, but she was being super-cute while I was taking pictures, so here you are.
Yep, that certainly was a manicure I completed and wore a few days ago. It was notably thoroughly all right. I enjoyed the dotting, but I don’t know that I’d actually use this combo again. It ended up feeling very muddled, though the colors involved were largely pleasing together.
I buy China Glaze mostly at Ulta, Cult Nails generally at Cult Nails (the topcoats are all available now, including two that were not involved in the Glossy48 promo), and I bought Excalibur direct from a-england.
Tomorrow: Something better.
I have been up to all kinds of no good, for values of ‘no good’ that include: having a new kitten, attempting to manage peaceful relations between said kitten and resident older cat, registering for school and studying up on my maths for placement tests, and attending two gaming conventions. It’s been a busy week and a half.
That said, I’m stabbing away at moving back into regular posting, so here’s a mani I did a few days ago and haven’t gotten around to posting before now.
The orange is Essence ‘Gorgeous Bling Bling’, a terra cotta polish with some awesome gold glimmer and tiny flakies. The contrast nails are Cult Nails Mazo, and the dots on the orange are China Glaze Fast Track.
I’m still smearing my dots when I use my dotting tools because I am relentlessly impatient.
As you can see, Mazo is very sheer, and a lot more cream-colored than I initially expected when I ordered it. The gold shine is really lovely in person, though.
I hated this mani after I painted the main and accents. The colors didn’t please me at all. Hence the dots. Adding some contrast saved it for me, though I will admit that it’s still not my favorite one ever.
Two coats of the Essence polish, three of the Cult Nails, plus Butter London PDQuick topcoat for shine and smoothing.
I bought Gorgeous Bling Bling (ugh, what a name) at a Fred Meyer, but you can probably find it at a local Ulta, and I buy my Cult polishes straight from Cult Nails, generally. I love them; they aren’t quite as 100% flawless as some other companies I might name, but they’re at least 95% perfect, and have an amazing hand with subtle shimmers, which I love.
I’ve gotten quite a mass of nailmail in recently, so I’ve got kind of a backlog of polishes to show you. In the near future, you can look forward to some new indie topcoats (Lilacquer is at it again!), some swag from drugstores, and some more Cults. Whee~!
Would you like to see some pictures of the kitten who has been such a distraction lately? I can do that, too. ;)
Today we will be ignoring some terrible polishing errors as well as my usual rumplefingers. I swear they’ve been like that my entire life (though biting my nails for years certainly didn’t help), and it doesn’t matter how much I moisturize my hands. I will be scary as hell when I get older.
Eventually I had to actually bring some bolder colors back into my life, right? (Aqua isn’t bold? Hm.) Today I wanted some sparkle to counteract the relentless rain and cloudiness that this “spring” has been drenched in. The rest of the country is having heatstroke, and I’m still wearing out my winter coat. Thus, I pulled out MAC Bad Fairy for a quick hit of glitz. It’s not the only dense glitter in my collection, but it is one of the brightest I’ve currently got.
However, wearing it as a full mani seemed like a little too much for me, especially since it involved the pain of glitter removal in the not-too-distant future. So I paired it with Cult Nails Cruisin’ Nude. Might seem a little strange, but Cruisin’ Nude has an absolutely amazing pink shimmer running all through it that I felt balanced it out pretty well. Brilliant glittery red/pink/orange duochrome versus creamy tan with pink shimmer? I’m down with this.
It’s a pretty fun manicure, though I will admit that I showered too soon after finishing it and managed to ding it up pretty fiercely. Plus, all photos are in relatively dim household lighting because it was aspiring to emulate the Great Flood out today. The rundown on this is: two coats of Cruisin’ Nude on each finger except the accents, which are one coat Cruisin’ Nude as a base, then three coats of Bad Fairy.
Sparrrkle. This is the first time I’ve really worn Cruisin’ Nude and I am seriously loving it. The contrasting shimmer sets it apart from the other neutral polishes I have. The formula was also stellar, and I could probably have used one coat, unlike Bad Fairy, which, along with being slightly bitchy to work with, is a pill to get fully opaque. Not to be harshing on MAC, really, since I’ve experienced the same thing with similar types of polishes from other brands.
I should also mention that I am testing out base/topcoats again. I’ve tried a few, but I just got Butter London’s matte base and I am loving it. I’ll have to see how it responds to my Zoyas, as they’re the ones I’ve found to be the most picky so far.
I bought Cruisin’ Nude directly from Cult Nails during a sale, and I regret nothing. It is beautiful, and hopefully it will stick around, so if I ever run low, I can buy a second one. Bad Fairy was an LE from a couple of years ago, and I got it on the secondary market. You might be able to locate it on eBay or the like.
All polishes were obtained through my own efforts to hand money to deserving people in exchange for beautiful things to plaster on my nails. Rather badly, in this case. Hromph.
Vanitas Rex 