Sorry for the weird hiatus. I've taken a crap-ton of pictures, and after multiple excuses not to post, I had a life altering event yesterday. It's not been a good 24 hours, thank god I'm an adult and have access to hard liquor to soothe me (responsibly, of course)
Instead of a normal post, I hope to satisfy with a random smattering and light commentary of the swatches I've done over the last few weeks.
I know at least someone has noticed that in 80% of my photos, I had bad cuticles, They're dry and they tear a lot, resulting in a lot of hangnails and a lot of general ugly. If anyone has experience with this, and has any advice beyond standard moisturizing/cuticle oil and cuticle remover gel, I'd love to hear it!
Onwards to swatches! Be warned: Some of these are newer, some are older, before I started blogging and are chippy/messy etc!
Two coats of Dollish Polish's 'Looking for my Mr. Big', a pretty light purple scattered holo. Formula was smooth, even.
Macro shot of Mr. Big.
One coat of Nail Venturous 'Pulverized' over Mr. Big' Formula was smooth (for a glitter), very easy to apply and move around.
I just love glitter 'shards'...
Macro bottle shot of Pretty & Polished 'Pool Party'. Semi-opaque sky blue jelly with multi-colored, various sizes of hexes and bars.
Two medium coats, no top coat. Formula was extremely smooth, no pokey glitters. Any use of topcoat is purely for shine, no glitter taming needed.
Bottle shot of Lacquistry's 'Sno-Cone' Pink jelly with light blue, true blue and pink glitters. Lacquistry has this gift of making her jelly bases -glow-, for lack of a better term.
One light coat of Sno-Cone over two coats of Essie's 'Muchi Muchi', an opaque baby pink creme. I didn't notice the curly hexes until I'd applied the polish, as you can see with the one glitter on my pinky, these are easy to flip and gently smoosh into your base, making them completely smooth.
Elixir Lacquer's 'Bad Kitty', I was lucky enough to snag this last time she put it on sale, as I'd missed it the first time. I am -so- grateful she was able to make more.
(I had a picture of the label, I must have stupidly deleted it when I was going through my photos.)
Bottle #95!
Three coats of Bad Kitty, no base, naked nail, no top coat.
This dried super fast, and amazingly smooth.
Look at that AMAZING blue shimmer!
Two coats of Rainbow Honey's 'Koi Pond' over two thin coats of OPI 'Brand New Skates'. This was a very chunky glitter, and took a coat of Gelous and a heavy handed coat of Poshe to smooth out, but worth the effort!
Two coats of China Glaze 'Electric Lilac, no base coat, no TC. I did put on a top coat, because the glitter was a smidge sandy feeling, but it smoothed right out.
Macro of the above mani after a coat of Poshe. I love the transparent AB glitters in this polish, it was everything I wanted Lynnderella's 'Bride of Franken' to be, and then some.
Pure and simple love. Two coats Revlon 'Royal' and two coats of Finger paints 'Twisted'. I don't think it gets any better than this. I'm still working on my camera technique, and the colors are a bit more washed out than they are in real life. I wore this for a record four days before it started to chip and I couldn't bear to disgrace the overall appearance with any more chipping. I got SO many compliments on this.
Macro shot. Again, the colors are a little more concentrated and vivid in real life, but this is still amazing. Also just noticed that smidge of VNL, hmph.
Two coats of China Glaze 'Cyberspace' and one coat of Pretty and Polished 'Sand Art'. I've heard that a lot of ladies got very different bottles of this polish, mine was far less blue than some I've seen.
Holy what! Oh. My. God. Seriously. This is one of the best one-coat-needed glitters EVER, it is so unique in it's usage of matte glitters and regular hexes. It looks exactly like Chelsea's inspiration of the sand art her and her daughters do. 10/10 on application, consistency, ease of use- everything!
Old picture, right after my last chop down. It's hard to believe they were that short! This is one coat of Essie 'Blanc', one coat of Julep 'Melissa' and one amazing coat of Lynnderella's 'The Glittering Crowd'. I'm not on the Lynn-is-a-god bandwagon that some people are, but she does have unique polishes that have a high spot on my polish shelf. Application was easy using the dab technique, but the end result was VERY rough glitters. It took two coats of gelous and a thick coat of Poshe and it was still a little rough, but very much worth it because TGC is like nothing else in the polish world.
I plan on re-doing this mani, because I was taking pictures for my personal use, and this was the only good one.
An old mani I did with a coat of home made hot pink jelly and home made 'Royal Jelly' I made out of Revlon Royal. Over those is a very generous coat of Lynnderella 'Boy Girl Party', and I think it was two coats of Gelous and one coat of Poshe. This wasn't as rough as TGC, but still pretty pokey. I can't photograph jellies well, the color was much more saturated than this.
Close up of the above mani. The complexity of Lynn's glitters are unparalleled...
Nail wheel shot of a home made lilac holo I made to dupe this:
Teeze holo in 'Outta Control', Photo courtesy of FashionPolish.com, because I don't own this polish. I know the picture of my swatch is odd because of the angle and the light, but I swear these are EXACTLY alike.
Old, chippy skittles mani with various Sally Hansen HD polishes and Dollish Polish
'Puttin on the Ritzzz'. I loved this mani.
Sad panda mani, and my Physicians Formula PH color changing lip gloss with light up LED applicator. I thought I was super cool when I took this picture, haha!
This is two coats of Candeo Color's 'Orchid'. I love love love LOVED this. Super bright fuchsia jelly with blue, pink and silver glitters. This was one of the best applying glitter polishes I've ever used, simply perfect.
Slightly truer picture of the color of the jelly base of Orchid, and slightly truer picture of my pale Irish skin.
Two coats of Orly 'Purple Crush' (I think this is what it was, this was months ago) and one amazing coat of Nail Venturous 'Floam'.
Amazing. Simply amazing.
Three coats of OPI 'Man of La Mancha'. Oh, the heavens did open up the day I found this on eBay for not highway robbery. It is a black label, and boy could you tell, it dried super fast thanks to that Formaldehyde in the formula. The polish is so much more coral than this picture lends on, I absolutely couldn't capture it. The shimmer is so intense and...it's just the perfect polish.
My attempt at a Devils playoff mani with Essie Blanc and Dollish Polish 'Team Salvatore'. I loved the glitters, hated the overall look of the mani, so needless to say this did not remain on more than one game, but we're still doing well so it's okay!
And last but definitely not least the Iron Man mani I did to go see the Avengers today! It's not the neatest one I've done, but it was 1 in the morning when I finished it. Two coats of China Glaze Ruby Slippers, Sally Hansen gold crackle, and the power core is a big dot of Milani 3D and China Glaze 'Liquid Crystal' all outlined with a black SH nail art pen. All but the power core accent nail had a light coat of Essie 'Shine of the Times'. I was exceedingly proud of this, I just wish I'd taken the time to really make it crisper than it is, especially that power core.
Hope you all enjoyed my apologetic swatch post, I promise to post at least once a week, hopefully two or three times.
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