Presented largely without comment because I’m posting in a hurry, here is Enchanted Polish I Am The Walrus, another super-lovely multichromatic holo from their Beatles collection.
It’s basically my idea of the perfect autumn color. It shifts from cranberry red to fiery orange to brilliant gold with a skip by greenish on the way. If fallen leaves were sparked with a rainbow gleam, this is what they would look like.
The holo is not the strongest, and totally disappears without bright light, but it’s beautiful when it shows.
I loved wearing this and got several compliments. This is three coats; the first was a little sheer, the second was mostly opaque, but I think the third was perfect. I used the Butter London PD Quick topcoat.
More of the red.
I’ve only got a couple of the Beatles collection, but they’re so gorgeous; I want them all. I’m glad she expanded it, and am dearly hoping that she continues to do so as she finds new and interesting pigments.
I have bought all my Enchanted Polishes from Llarowe.
Next post is a verrrry subtle holo that I just got via an amazing online deal.
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.
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. ;)
My current obsession, aside from holos and matte topcoats and indie polish companies, is Essence, and especially their Colour & Go line. They’re ridiculously cheap, rarely fully stocked, and strangely awesome. I have yet to find one that I think has an awful formula, and most of them are quite fantastic. I buy them whenever I find them, in twos and threes and fives (when I find a display that actually has that many colors stocked), and as they’re only 5 ml bottles, they’re economical for space as well as cost. This fascinating charmer is 73 – Princess Prunella, paired with a pretty neutral holo called Flash Mob from an indie company called Piper Polish Co.
Princess Prunella is not only fun to say, but also a very peculiar color, both brown and purple in nearly equal measure. I’m pretty sure that the base polish is a frosty milk chocolate brown, but there’s so much purple shimmer that it overwhelms the base much of the time. They managed to recreate the effect in plastic on the cap, too, which amused me. I love the coordinating caps on these; it makes them really stand out in the sea of black and silver in my polish boxes. The brushes aren’t bad, either.
Flash Mob is a very pretty shade, but it’s almost a non-color. Tan? Taupe? Pale gold? Except it’s grayer than those; it’s like a holo topcoat with a tint and good coverage. It is described as a “bronze metallic”, but I think of bronze as darker than this is. I want to describe it as a “my nails but better”-style of color. This is two coats and in person had zero visible nail line. It had a pretty good formula and dried quickly, though it did like to flood a bit.
Yep, back to my old alternating accents tricks again. This picture really shows the base of Princess Prunella. I used Butter London P.D. Quick topcoat with these to heighten the shine, especially on Prunella, which can get a bit brushstrokey due to the frostiness.
Flash Mob has a nice semi-linear holo. It’s not tremendously strong (it actually photographed stronger than it looked in person), but pretty. This morning I stacked on a Spectraflair topcoat (also from Piper Polish Co., though many companies, indie and major, carry them), which intensified and unified the look considerably as well as looking fantastic on Princess Prunella. However, I didn’t manage to get any photos. Can you see my sad little broken thumbnail peeking through in this photo? All my nails are that length now, as I worked at my old comic shop again today and managed to drop boxes and catch my nails on cases with sliding doors and broke two others. :/ So I’ll have stubs for a little while. Bah, humbug.
I bought the Essence at a Fred Meyers, but you may find them at Ulta, or possibly Target, or other similar places. Flash Mob was purchased from Piper Polish Co., who has a shop on Etsy.
Hoo hoo hoo. I am super stressed out right now, but that does not mean that I have not had time to do my nails. This may be not always be a good thing, as sometimes I come up with some terrible, terrible ideas. This was not so bad, but it was preceded by, well. You’ll see, safely under a cut.
HITS no Olimpo Hermes and Rimmel Night Life — lovely golden linear holo and fascinating brown-taupe-that-looks-purplish-in-certain-lights with a rather gorgeous copper-gold-red shimmer.
I like the way they look together. Observe the shimmer on the bottle. It’s a bit more subtle on the nail, but not that much.
Rrrrrainbow! Also, Night Life displaying a bit more gold. That’s three coats of Hermes and two of Night Life. Next time I wear Hermes, I might consider using a base, as it goes quick. The bottle’s not huge, and if you mung up your mani three times as I did, well, you may draw an unlovely picture from there. The Rimmel was streaky in one coat and good in two.
I’m still really enjoying the double-accent manicure look. I’ll get ’round to something else sooner or later, but there are a lot of things that are currently popular that I just don’t particularly groove on, or, alternately, haven’t got the supplies to attempt.
Please note that I will never attempt ‘caviar nails’, because I think they are terrible. Flocked nails, likewise. I give such things sideways glowers.
Mind you, this does not prevent me from some hilarious things — see beneath the cut for a painfully bad one-hand mani.
Hermes was bought at Llarowe. The Rimmel was another present from the fantabulous U. ;D
Vanitas Rex 