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.
…The other’s insane~
First a short story.
When I saw twee & honey’s The Same Thing We Do Every Night, Pinky, I basically flipped my lid. It’s a gray jelly with appropriately mousy pink, white, and pale blue glitters, sparked with the odd nose-pink hex. It is amazing. I knew I needed it. I love gray, I love gray jellies, and I loved Animaniacs.
I placed an order near the end of July and waited and got distracted by vacations and a new kitten and realized a couple of weeks ago that I hadn’t seen it, and that the tracking info hadn’t been updated from “arrival at sorting center”. So I peeped, USPS determined that they had lost the package entirely, and the marvelous Cleo, proprietress and creator of the brand, sent me out a new package with a couple of extra bits and an upgrade. A happy ending, and I now get to show you how pretty twee & honey’s (noted hereafter as t&h) polishes and topcoats are.
This is a-england Iseult, a pale, shimmery petal pink, with two layers of t&h Pinky glitter (same glitter mix as The Same Thing We Do…, but with a clear base), one thin layer of Zoya Rose, a translucent pink with a green shimmer, topped with t&h This Is Matteness, which is exactly what it sounds like, a matte topcoat.
It was, unfortunately, a very yellowy morning, so I wouldn’t take most of these images as a perfect idea of what the colors involved are like. The third one is probably the closest, but I really liked the images otherwise, so please forgive me my “artistic” notions.
Iseult is, as all a-england polishes are, pretty much perfect. It’s more sheer than most, and you do get a bit of visible nail line at the tips at two coats. Three would probably take care of it, but I was in a hurry. As you can see in the bottle image below, it is quite shimmery.
Pinky was pretty easy to work with, even in a tiny bottle. I had to do a bit of glitter placement, but managed to get at least a few of each type of glitter without much fishing or glooping. I love the colors and the theme. While not hugely fond of darker pinks in a full manicure, I do apparently really enjoy them as facets of glitters. I can’t explain this with any degree of satisfaction.
Funny thing, when I reached into my box of Zoya polishes and pulled out a pale pink, I was aiming for Audrey, which is a plain sheer pink in a similar color family as Iseult. What I pulled out was Rose (no bottle image, sorry. None of those came out at all.), which is a cooler pink super-sheer polish (I’ve done -five- coats of Rose in the past and still not gotten it fully opaque) with a strong green shimmer. I didn’t realize my mistake until I’d already painted my first nail and thought it strange that it wasn’t quite sandwiching properly. Oops. It went quite well over Iseult and Pinky, though, so I went ahead and finished both hands. It seemed to make the glitter pop a bit more.
This Is Matteness is not the most matte of matte topcoats I have tried, but it does mellow out the shine and unlike some, doesn’t change the color at all, and at $5, it’s also substantially cheaper than most.
a-england polishes are available via a-england, Llarowe, Ninja Polish, Beautometry, and probably a few other places. twee & honey has a website, and occasionally sell on etsy, too. She is currently on a short hiatus, but from recent website updates (Halloween collection whaaat? Show me pics!), should be back soon. I buy my Zoya polishes from Zoya; they have frequent sales and promotions.
Tomorrow: RBL & CG — copper battle!
But this is possibly one of my favorite manis I’ve done recently. Along with Bawdy (as seen yesterday), I picked up a bottle of China Glaze Exotic Encounters. It’s a lovely deep teal creme, and I had a plan.
The Very Fine Human U. recently moved into a very lovely house and had a housewarming, and I knew I needed to have something pretty on my nails because, in my opinion, it is important to wear nice things to nice occasions. So — this.
This is one coat of Exotic Encounters, one coat of Piper Polish Co. Zebra Juice, and one coat of Zoya Frida, a dark turquoise jelly. I love the way this looks. The teal is gorgeous, the glitter adds interest, and the jelly brings it together in a lovely sandwich-y whole.
Zebra Juice is another of those fabulous black and white mixed glitter beasts. I’m not sure if it is intentional or not, as it’s not mentioned in the description, but there is also a very small amount of holo glitter mixed that gave it a very subtle but present sparkle when looked at very closely.
I did experience some really horrible bubbling, and I’m not sure whether to blame it on Zebra Juice, Frida, or the Butter London topcoat I used. Fortunately, it did blend fairly well with the glitter and was not noticeable in person.
Bonus cat picture: This is Zilla. She’s ten and cantankerous and, like most cats, loves basking in sunshine. She is also enormous. I refer to my two kitties as Great White (Nona) and Megalodon (Zilla). Nona has a fine white underbelly and lots of teeth, and Zilla is also bitey and over twice her size, plus she sharks around the house.
Here’s Frida’s bottle shot. This was the only polish that I had any trouble with. It was very thin and wanted to flood my cuticles like mad. I persevered, however. I really adore these types of colors, and they’re very popular for fall.
I found Exotic Encounters at an Ulta, and I’ve also seen the Zoya there, though I bought mine from Zoya directly during one of their sales. Zebra Juice is from Piper Polish Co. on Etsy.
Tomorrow will feature Cult Nails Princess and Spontaneous.
Because sometimes, really, the name of the polish is the best description. This is a new(ish) topcoat from Lilacquer’s Science collection, and it is AMAZING.
The base on this is the same one I posted yesterday, a-england Lancelot with a light layer of Pretty & Polished Heist. The topcoat is what makes this worthy of its own post. Antimatter of Opinion — it’s a duochrome in two ways! Both the hexes and the shimmer shift delightfully, green to orange to a bit of blue or teal in an otherwise clear base.
LOOK AT THE PRETTY. It’s like zero-work galaxy nails!
The green-to-gold is the strongest shift, but there’s quite a bit of blue, especially in sunlight.
I have two of the Science topcoats, this and Schrödinger’s Catastrophe, which leans more in the purplish/blue/teal/green spectrum. I thought this one would be a little nicer with the warm black-red backdrop of Lancelot.
I stand by my choice.
I cannot get over how pretty these are, and I honestly can’t remember seeing anything quite like them anywhere else. Lots of glitter topcoats, and many companies use variations on the color shifting shimmer and/or add the iridescent hexes to other colors, but nothing where they’re both together and looking so, so beautiful.
I buy my Lilacquer polishes from the Etsy shop.
Tomorrow features: China Glaze, a Cult topcoat, and some dots.
Hey, hey! Long time no post! …I have no excuses. I’ve just been lazy. :) I have, however, been polishing and photographing, so I’ll be spamming you with a post every day for at least a week.
Let’s kick this off with Enchanted Nails Magic Mirror and Tough As Nails Lacquer It’s All Over Now.
Magic Mirror is a pleasant purple holo with a few random flakies that, in my bottle at least, did very little other than to make the finish a bit bumpy. The formula is dense enough that they don’t really shine through. It’s All Over Now is a grey jelly-cream with turquoise, purple, white, and iridescent glitters of varying shapes and sizes. Shown here is two coats of MM and three of IAON.
The above photo really shows the bumpiness of MM. I was not best pleased by that, though I think the color is beautiful and it has a very nice holo gleam. In looking at these again, I am irritated by how many cat hairs are visible. :P So annoying. I’ll have to be more careful of those in the future.
It’s All Over Now was reasonably easy to apply, though as you can see, it did end up a bit lumpy in spots from shoving the glitter around. I think it’s probable that it would be easier to work with in a full size instead of a mini.
This is Nona, helping me take photographs. Just in case you were wondering where the cat hairs were coming from. Yes, we certainly do have a bare concrete floor! :D
I like purple and gray together, so a gray with purple accents seemed pretty great to me. If I did this again, I might toss a Spectraflair topcoat over it.
I have bought my Enchanted Polishes from Llarowe, though I think this color is discontinued. Tough As Nails Lacquers can be bought on Etsy. I want her Breakfast Duo No. 1 sometime, too. It’s just adorable.
Coming up tomorrow: a-england Lancelot, which is amazing.
Vanitas Rex 