Art Nouveau

Wanted something rich and luxurous that seemed like a fin de siecle velvet robe draped with long gold chains.

I sponged Sally Hansen Salon Formula Navy Baby and L.A. Girl Iron Red then stamped it with L'Oreal Bond Bronze.
SH is easily found on eBay, even if you don't get the old square salon bottles, there are ample navy shimmers about: Hard Candy has on you can find on eBay, too.
L.A. Girl has reined in their extensive line and Iron Red is not on their site, but it is on eBay.
Finally, L'Oreal Bond Bronze, can readily be replaced with a gold metallic shimmer. What I love about this polish for stamping is the micro glitter sparkles that show up scattered through the stamping. Very  unique.

Very simple to do for a freshman nail artist like me,but evoking the complexities of Nouveau at its height when it was taking the 20th century into the bright lights of its electrified self.

When I did this I imagined Norma Shearer devolving into vamphood in Strangers May Kiss.
(If you haven't seen many pre-Hays Code Hollywood movies, they are all worth watching, even the more obscure ones give you a peek at early 20th century culture in America more than the glossed over stuff that became the "golden age" of Hollywood)

Meanwhile, loved this a lot.
The foil of the red and the transition from navy through purple coupled with the soft gold chain appearance of the stampognevokes exotic-ness.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Blue Sky, Yellow Petals

Summer here has been more like spring: wet, mercurial, and a dearth of bright sunny days.

It has reminded me heavily of summer in Seattle when I lived there in the 90's. Nothing definite until the Fourth of July, and even then, good luck with those camping trips.

Today it is hot and bright. Blue sky and brightness all about.

I am really playing with my Cici Sisi plates and trying to master them, so I wanted to do a pretty color combo I've been longing to do for a while.

L.A. Girl Extreme stamped with Milani yellow nail art polish

L.A. Girl Extreme is, well, unique. It's a soft periwinkle shot through with a crisp silvered gold shimmer. The whole Color Addict line has this gold shimmer. Better still this line is still available at LAGirl's web site. I recommend these shades if you don't have anything like them in your collection. What's more, they hit this contrasting shimmer trend smack dab in the face, albeit with gold.

Worth a peek.

I'm stamping with a Milani nail art striping polish that I found at Dollar Tree. I've let some of it evaporate and I've decanted some of the clear portion when it settled: this helps immensely.

To my eye the contrast is very subtle because of the gold in Extreme, plus it's a soft blue, not an intense one. In low light conditions the whole thing takes on a green tone and you can't see much definition. Interesting, but logical.

I won't lie when I say I struggled with the stamping. This was with a very squishy stamper, so it wasn't bad, but a lot of patchiness. The design has a heart shape within a few of the flowers, but I think that this is so hard to see that it looks blotchy. (the pinky _IS_ blotchy from a double stamping from a blank spot).

I have mixed reviews on these Milani nail art polishes. I was so excited to find them, thinking that they would be like the L.A. Colors Art Deco nail art polishes, but these aren't densely pigmented and I have to actively evaporate them down to use. Argh!

I am not 100% sure this is a great combo. Wrestling with the stamping and then seeing this result isn't a super win. I want to stamp blue and yellow together, but in another iteration.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Greens for March: Guppy 77 And Friends

Olive green seems like it's coming into its own, with Wet n Wild Moss being a very popular polish last season.
Over the years there have been many good ones: from Butter London Wallis (nothing tastes as good as thin feels; except ice cream, pizza, potatoes chips, and lasagna, but I digress...), Chanel Peridot (and all the dupes - blogged here), and of course the long discontinued China Glaze Cat's Eye (not yet blogged for some absurd reason).

I have Guppy 77, which is a brand out of Korea. I purchased this on eBay a billion years ago, and finally cut to the chase and blogged it.

Add a swizzle stick, good gin, show it a bottle of vermouth and we've got a martini! Yum!

It's a pretty shimmer, three coats, no top coat. 

As I put this on I realized that the coolest thing about this polish is the base. It's not green, it's gray. You can see it a bit at the top of the edge of the bottle. It's a bit of a head turner, because this shade of green looks wonderful with gray and blue.

I thought I'd try a couple of blues out as a base.

First up here it is over a navy, L.A. Girl Vamp.

I love the dimension, how it darkens around the edges. This is one coat over L.A. Girl Vamp.

L.A. Girl Vamp is one of those older L.A. Girl polishes they had on their site several years ago, then they all seemed to pop up on Discount Cosmetic Outlet for a song.

I love this shade of navy: not black, you can see the navy.

Here it is, no top coat, being a fine navy, the perfect neutral.

As you can see, it's a beautiful cobalt leaning navy. Not too bright, still navy, but not black, which is fine, but sometimes you want to see the blue.

This is three coats. 

At this writing, I see that Discount Cosmetic Outlet has closed and the domain has expired. Boo hoo! I don't see L.A. Girl Vamp on eBay, either. No loss, it's a neutral and there are a ton out there. Still, DCO was a pretty amazing resource.

Now here is Guppy 77 over Sally Hansen Gray by Gray.

I. mean. seriously!

Virtuosity incarnate!

I am so pleased with this layering result. The gray peeps through the green, and it's just perfection.

Rarely do you find such wonderful combinations like this, and I can think of a small handful of polishes that can perform this kind of sleight of hand. Nice discovery!

I no longer find Guppy on eBay. 

Thank you so much for reading my little nail polish journal!

Blue Franken

So, I've blogged L.A. Girl Sheer Ecstasy in the past.

First as a sheer that is sheer and beautiful over a light shade, but not so good over dark, here.

Then I made another franken in honor of my girl, Maddie, here. (Still miss you every day, girl)

So I had a portion of a bottle left and wanted to try it out with a medium blue to make a nice pink shimmer creme.

I call it Mozu Blue, for my girl.

Three coats, no top coat.

The camera was not feeling the pink shimmer as much as I was, so I tried some lower lighting:

A bit better, but you can see that I've slacked off on diffusion of late and so I get some sharp contrasty white that makes more glare than I'd prefer. 

You can, though, see the shimmer much better.

Since I have a lot of SH Pacific Blue, I thought I'd stretch it out into some other finishes. I know, crazy, but it just ticks a lot of blue boxes for me.

Meanwhile, thanks so much for reading my little nail polish journal.

Pale Blue Shimmers - Part 2

Here is part two of some pale blue sheer shimmers.

Here is a link back to part 1.

This set is basically a dupe list for you if you are thinking of getting something like this as a topper. I will add that none of these polishes purports to be a layering top coat, just sheer, baby, sheer!

These are shown alone then over Color Club Bright Night, which I wanted to swatch an never seemed to get around to doing so. 

Three coats, no top coat.

This is a gorgeous bright blue. I will say that my bottle didn't have any mixing balls in it and since I've had it unused for a while (far too long, I might add) and the deep blue pigment sank to the bottom in a 1/4 inch layer, leaving a light blue polish.
It took me a ton of time to shake it up, I finally added some mixing balls and it finally worked out. As I write this it's been a few days since I took photos and the pigment has sunk again. Interesting.

On to the shimmers, shall we?

Sparitual It's Raining Men

Three coats, no top coat.

Now of course you can see this pretty light blue with an amber shimmer, but on the nail it's so sheer at three coats that you can see my stained nails. Ugh! Sad!  It looks uneven but you can see that on the right side of my pinkie and ring finger that when the light doesn't shine hard on it, it looks almost opaque and you can really see the light blue. Very pretty, but not enough. I think over a pale blue this would show up better.

Sparitual It's Raining Men over Color Club Bright Night

Suddenly the amber shimmer shifts red and it's gorgeous. I love this a lot. This is two coats only, no top coat.

I am sure that you can see how this is a topper versus a solo polish. It would be pretty over a nude, white, or pale pink, though.

Three free is the story behind Sparitual, I think I bought this directly from them quite a bit ago. I believe it was $10 a bottle and now that I look back, ouch! Especially after you see the next polish!

Right now this is on eBay, although I can't find it on Sparitual's website.

L.A. Girl Paradise Blue

Here is the super discount version of the above polish. Also 3-Free and found on DiscountCosmeticOutlet or maybe Beautyjoint for a song.

Same amber gilded look alone and here it appears to have somewhat more coverage.

DCO still has a lot of these old polishes, although not this one. I can't find this one on eBay, either.



L.A. Girl Paradise Blue over Color Club Bright Night

Two coats, no top coat.

Again with the gorgeous red shift. I love this a lot: great price point, 3-Free, and up to par with a decent formula. Just wish it was available because it's really quite the win.




Orly Sky Blue-Pink

Same thing as Spiritual. Color is a little dowsed and underexposed, but that's me. Three coats, no top coat.

Basically this is a pre-3-Free polish but identical to Sparitual. So, I am assuming, since I have so many Sparitual/Orly dupes, Orly makes Sparitual.  But, since this is not 3-Free, they must have trotted out the recipe for Sparitual.

Orly Sky Blue-Pink is an older polish, and I found it on Head2Toe's website where you scroll back through a bunch of old old old colors and can't really see what you are looking for nor can you really find swatches online. I think I just added it to an order to see what I got. Well, I got a dupe, basically.



Orly Sky Blue-Pink over Color Club Bright Night

Two coats, no top coat.

For some reason this one shows more brushstrokes.  Not much more to say, except that the 3-Free dries a tad bit slower than this one. In the meantime, this one stinks and it's not that much better. At least nothing a Quick Dry Top Coat can't handle.




I did want to compare these because they are absolutely the same:

Same order as my swatches:

Sparitual It's Raining Men
L.A. Girl Blue Paradise
Orly Sky Blue-Pink

Two coats over Color Club Bright Night.

Very pretty topper that is unique among the throng of pinks in that it shifts to a reddened shade versus a soft pink.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Purple Glitter Party

Here are four purples that needed an outing.

Quickly:

No top coat, two coats, and over a neutral base (Orly Bon Bon)

Enjoy!

L.A. Girl Glitter Addict Euphoria

This is a soft small blurple glitter packed with larger purple holographic hexes.

This collection came out a few years ago and is still on the L.A. Girl's website. They have changed their formula, so the jury is out on whether these are a win. They've got more of a suspension base now and it's a base-eating monster. This is an older version, so no issues.

Love the color, hard to fault.

Milani Lavender

Found this at the Dollar Tree. It's a lovely mix of darker purple and lavender glitter. I wish it was a bit more dense, but it's not bad. If you see it, if you like purple glitter, this might be a win!

Missha Purple Stone Glitter

A real bear of a polish. First you've got this gorgeous disco ball glitters that are fabulous, next you've got a thick base, and finally you have a brush that really can't deal with it all. It's very hard to get it to spread around well. Well, you can see it's a bit patchy. 

Meanwhile you've got a gorgeous glitter and a quick drying base.  I probably need to try again and see if I can wrestle it into a better wearing.

No longer on the Missha site and not popping up on eBay, but it is on Amazon. Unique bright lavender with a potential for wall to wall coverage. Just have to master it!

L.A. Girl Glitter Addict Eutopia

Got a jones for royal purple glitter? This is a powerhouse.

Two coats, great coverage.  

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Purple Foilicious

I won't lie. I love foils. Metallic or glass fleck, they turn my head.

Here are three with a comparison and a bonus that arrived in the mail after I'd finished swatching.

No top coats, but layers vary and I'll discuss with each swatch.

Enjoy!

Color Club Alter Ego

Blogged twice here, still a lover, wanted to compare these colors, so out it came. The gold fleck foil finish in a foil is delicious!

This is three coats. I think over a deep purple it might show the gold fleck a bit better. 

Ah the days of Ross deals. I miss them!

L.A. Girl Millenium

Three easy coats. I find this brand to be slow-to-normal dry time. I think now that I've rediscovered my Poshe' quick dry top coat, this would be less of an issue than I normally would fuss about, but it is not a zippy formula.

Still, great little foil. Reminds me of the recent Misa Date Nights to the Twilight, which is truly an amazing purple. I won't comp, this is less intense and less blue toned.

Found this one on Discount Cosmetic Outlet. 

Princessa Purple Storm

Blogged before, too, but worth a better outing. 

Three coats, and perhaps my favorite.

I saw a person on MUA post this polish and emailed and bought it from them. Princessa no longer makes this line, but they do packs at Ross. Their website is bizarre, if it's even still up.

Here's a comparison:

Left to right:

Color Club Alter Ego

L.A. Girl Millenium

Princessa Purple Storm

Bonus!

I had just gotten Nubar Vaso in the mail and wanted to snap some pix and pop it on, but didn't get a chance to compare:

This is three coats over the Color Club Alter Ego. I love this!

So glad I got it. Now I need to compare it to a polish I have that is similar, a WnW Lina Gale no name made by Markwin, aka WetnWild blogged here. 

Until I get that done, thank you for reading my little nail polish journal!

p.s. I just found another I should have added, but too late! Arge!

When Formulas Collide

It's kind of frustrating when a polish behaves poorly.


Here's L.A. Girl Glitter Addict Nostalgia over white:

Ugly, huh?

Not to get into any kind of manifesto mode, I do want to say that for my own purposes it's important to try to publish the good with the bad, and at times I ignore the bad.


This was an amazing glitter color: pastel emerald green. But lo and behold, when I put it over my old Borghese White (which has been quite a stand-by as a base with no problems) it melted the white and slid off my nails. And I mean slid.

This photo is my third try with one coat of white.

Teeth gnashing at this formula.

Worse, the glitter is very sparse.

I tried then to sponge it onto my nails again.

This is under a very bright lamp, and there are more glitters, but I found it, as you can see, very hard to control. Melting still tried to happen, but I had to put my nails under the fluorescent bulb to try to heat them up to dry, but you can see white meshed with the glitters.

Super UGH. And pretty fug. I mean, hey, if you've followed me for any length of time you know I started out posting some awfully optimistic manis. Part of my delusion was that I just liked to post and enjoyed sharing the manicures.
I am trying to do like Walt Disney did: put the critic in a dark room away from the creative, but this was just gnashing of teeth by the critic and the creative didn't really find much thrill in this.

Eep.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Forest Floor Layering

Normally I do my swatches/manicures in the evening so I don't get sunshine. Somehow planets aligned and I was able to get some of that winter sunshine for my photos!

Yay!!

I layered L.A. Girl Uninhibited over Maybelline Bronze Beam. I also wanted to add a bit of a shimmer feel, so I took Sally Hansen's Baroque Frost to finish it.

Results:

The green sheen is from SH Baroque Frost.

Two layers of Maybelline Bronze Beam, two coats of L.A. Girl Uninhibited, one coat of SH Baroque Frost.

No top coat.

SH Baroque Frost reminds me of blooming lichen here in the PNW. It just has that PNW forest-y vibe. Wet from a recent rain, fungi growing everywhere, ferns and moss. Not a snow filled visage that people normally think of forest in the winter. 

A temperate rainforest is full of dark mysteries that are beautiful in their own right, but at most times they are subtle and you have to peer closely to see things like lichen blooming in spring, it's not a field of tulips, but it's gorgeous.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Ice. Blue.

Long days seem to drag by when you miss someone special in your life.

The day after Maddie left us, a heavy cold fog settled here and for over a week every single thing was covered with a thick hoar frost that lasted all day, with scant few hours of it melting, only to re-form as the sun slipped away without ever making a proper entrance.

Sky covering its face in respect for our sorrow.

My favorite days of winter are the ones where a lost cloud floats in and the deep cold deposits everything onto trees, fences, and all the things that seem normal look like poetry.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Undeniably I need to find busy work to take my mind off this, so I'm delving back into the blog.

Picked a color that seemed to echo the winter sky.

Now-discontinued L.A. Robin Blue.

This is over two coats of an old Maybelline Express Finish white.

The color varies from a sweet purple leaning periwinkle in true white, color corrected light. In warmer tungsten, or lower lighting it pulls more gray and slightly blue.
Quite a pretty polish.

Old big 3 formula it is a sheer polish. The first coat was patchy, in fact, it made a delightful watercolor effect, this might have been because it does grab the coat below (which means it does drag a bit when applying). It's thin, tends to slop into the wells of the cuticles and cleanup was a must.
Although, I will add, my cleanup wasn't super thorough enough to get all the white out.

Three coats and it dried surprisingly well.

It is a "foamy" kind of creme: sheer, with a soft shimmer hidden deep in it and virtually invisible once on the nail, but apparent in the bottle.

Pretty.

This polish can still be found at Discount Cosmetic Outlet.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Last week we had a heavy snowfall that left more gossamer shapes made by massive snowflakes piling up in thick piles that flickered in the sunlight.

New days.

Here's a close up of the snow:

Enjoy.

Thank you for reading my little nail polish journal. Truly.

Purple That Has Regality in Reality

Hey sweet people!

Thank you for reading my blog! I know we are now in a bath of blogs and a myriad of polishes are released daily. Hoping I can - have and will - help you in your path to polish happiness!

Here's a L.A. Girl Color Addict collection polish called Intoxicate.

Please do enlarge and peek a the richness that this polish serves up.

It's a deep warm purple that in some light - not my ring finger above, looks almost red, but then turns at once into a vampy purple. It's not too plummy but can shift into that direction, too.

Three coats, some dullness due to oil on my hands, and a lot of really amazing gilded shimmer buried into this polish.

Close the doors, spark up the fireplace, I feel autumn rumbling into town.

Here's a macro

You can see how it looks like a royal purple, but sometimes it looks almost maroon.

The topcoat is absent, so it's not a high gloss finish.

L.A. Girl polishes are available on the LAGirlUSA website, but they are also readily available on the DiscountCosmeticOutlet website as well, for a lower price I will add.

I swatched a periwinkle one here, and really want to add more of these to my collection.

Humble Holos

Humble holo is not.

But in the case of holo glitter when it is rather fine, it's delicate and quite beautifully demure.

Here is an old discontinued LA Girl color:

Really more a garnet than ruby, it's a red warmish shimmer loaded with small holo glitter. Old L.A. Girl bottle that is cylindrical and not their mod shaped one with big shoulders and wacky font choices. This one was on their website a few years ago, I grabbed it, for some odd reason, and am really pleased with the formula.
Yes, it took a solid three coats, but it has that delicate haze of holo glitter that absolutely needs very little light to zap out the rainbows.
I tried searching for this shade on the internet, but only found the more recent release with big holo pieces that don't seem so ready to give up the actual holo (I confess I didn't find the 3D Effects collection very exciting, but have a trio of bottles only because of a failed swap attempt. Pewp)

The good news: it's currently on Discount Cosmetic Outlet's website. Win. I put this on par with doing a top coat with China Glaze Fairy Dust, or a mani with China Glaze Grape Crush, although the holo is smaller, more delicate and more holo under lower light conditions.
Full win.

I compared it to my perennial, Essie Wild Thing, which suddenly fell out of favor by comparison!

Instead of a shimmer, Essie gives us a jelly base, which shows ridges. The holo glitters are larger, but in some way less strong than the L.A. Girl polish.

Formula for the L.A. Girl was more superior: it dried quickly, was easier to work with and was more build able. Oh, and instead of delineating my ridged nails it smoothed things out.

Dang!

I've ignored this sad little polish for ages. Why? Oh, because I was polish shopping/swapping/blog-saling like a drunken sailor trying to pick up stuff that I thought was going to be more genius than this $1.49 bottle o' cheap polish?

Ok, so the holo doesn't come out and slap you on the chops, but it does dance around your nail, like any good holo should do!

Here's the bottle shot:

In many ways it's apples and oranges: jelly versus shimmer, berry versus garnet red, larger holo versus small, but they are so similar in my collection, I thought I'd put them together.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Shake Your Shamrock, So Says Glitzology!

The topic is green, the finish is glitter. Two great polishes get together and have a party!

Glitzology Shake Your Shamrock over L.A. Girl Metallic Olive

My gigantic thumb is an optical illusion, I'm not Sissy Hankshaw

Hard to fault this baby.  I love this shade so much! It's got the gold larger hex glitters, some real bright green and splashes of smaller glitter in a shimmery base. The bright green is like little shards, but also some are round, there are small green and gold glitters and it's a kick to look at.

Like little leprechauns dancing around their gold coins.

This is two coats applied with a flat brush. Easy to use, no battles at all. 

I got a lot of complements on this baby!

The base is a stellar green, too:

A shimmer packed with a similar combination of true green and gold, yielding a delicious olive.

They call it metallic, OK, sure! No arguments here!

Shake Your Shamrock is on Etsy, at Glitzology Beauty. 

The "metal" series is easily found at L.A. Girl, and a few other etailers. Try Beautyjoint, cherry culture and discount cosmetic outlet (the latter may be the cheapest, I love that place!)

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Iron Red

Right now I'm catching up on a few "pre-green" posts.

Perhaps the most coveted, for me of the L.A. Girls Polishes in a while. I'd seen this on Scrangie awhile ago and felt like I needed it.

It isn't the first Scrangie-inspired lemming and wont' be the last.

Though I will say my photo cries "reblog!" It is a cherry leaning red with a metallic finish.

It's a metallic that has small shimmers of silver running though it. Quite amazing.
Very luminous and two coats here.
Though, if you don't like brush strokes or some bubbling, it may not be your speed. In the meantime, I do love this polish.

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Comp-ish

Well, I've been hoping for some sunshine, but the one day it shone, I wasn't able to swatch, so holo greens are kind of off the table for march, but I plan on doing holos later this summer.

OK, so what do I have?

An OPI: Jade is the New Black.

I am not sure where the title comes from, but hey, it's OPI, pun-tacular polishes are de rigueur.

It is not a super bright green, but not like any jade I have ever seen - for the sake of clarity I've been to museums in London, New York and Taiwan, that's my experience with jade sculpture, and white jade is even more valuable, plus I had some jade jewelry while living in Japan.

However, despite my experience, this does fall under the jade category. It's a soft green, not dusty, but demure. It reminds me of Essie Going Incognito, but not quite as nice, frankly.
I blogged about it here.

I feel like it's a workhorse green. Last time I wore it I was stunned by the incredible lack of stamina it had in the tip wear department. This was not much better despite double topcoat action in a subsequent wearing.

Two coats, nice dry time and a pretty color.

What else to do with a color that leaves me a little less than enthralled? Use it as a layering polish!

Onward with the comps!

I have these three white/cream colored polishes with a blue shimmer that remind me of Illamasqua's Prism. Though Illa calls theirs an iridescent, it sure looks blue in a lot of swatches, although I am sure it pulls some pink, per their site photo.

I am in kind of a mode to declutter and am building up toward a blog sale basically because I really feel I've got little room to expand when new stuff I'm excited about comes along.

Ok, so here are the bottles:

OPI - Give Me The Moon. A milky sheer in a pale gray/white base. Blue shimmer is strong.

L.A. Girl - Sheer Impulse. The lightest latte colored, almost buff really, one and it has a blue shimmer, too.

WetnWild - Ice Blue Pearl. White base, blue shimmer.


I put them over JitNB:

You can see that GMTM is in a pale shimmer base, Sheer Impuls is also in a less translucent base and the IBP is in the most translucent base.
I think I used two coats on all of them. GMTM was reviewed here in the OPI Night Brights Collection I did last year.

No opalescence, but blue shimmer. WetnWild seems to be closest to a sheer top coat, etc.

Then I plonked them over a pale pink/nude from L'Oreal called Pink-a-Boo. This is a Dollar Tree polish that is pretty nice for a base coat and lets these sheers do their thing: let the shimmer shine through.

Photos enlarge, too.

(I sometimes see my blog on a monitor with a different resolution than my home computer and I kind of freaked out how big my photos are, so I am making them a touch smaller)

This is all two coats over the base coat.

I love how this base polish looks, I also like all three shimmers. Each has its strength and though L.A.Girl is probably my least favorite, the WetnWild is such a win, if you don't have a blue shimmery polish, try to find it - it's not on the market at the WnW drug store display - because it does pull a little pinkish/purpleish, too, so it has that iridescence, which reminds me of Illamasqua Prism.

OK. Wow. I just googled it and I see it's a hard to find polish. Yoiks. How did that happen? Holy cats!

Thanks for reading my little nail polish journal!

Seeing Green?

L.A. Girl Deep Sea Mica is a hard polish to photograph.

I swear I think I'm in an alternative universe when I see this photo. I swear on a stack of bottles of acetone that this is actually a much more green polish. It is a teal-y kind of green, with some green flash going on. My camera would not see it any other way.

So this is sort of the exception to the greens, but it is a beauty of a polish. Three coats, very metallic, but not chrome.

Here's the bottle:

Am I drifting away from green? Like a leaf in a gust of wind, I go where my eye takes me, though my camera may not follow.

Meanwhile, three coats, easy to work with formula and pretty good dry time, though not one of those "wow, it's already dry?" kind of polishes.

I find mine at Discount Cosmetic Outlet's website, a sort of online Dollar Tree, that appears to have them cheaper than Cherry Culture and L.A. Girl's website.

Thanks for reading my nail polish journal!

More Layering Fun and Excitement!

I love to see how stuff turns out when I layer it. I will say in advance I am trying to practice clean-up here and there, but as you will see, I might not be adding to the aesthetic of my nail, but well, making it wonky!

Here we go. Picture heavy but lots of stuff.

As a base I used Jordana's Hypnotizing:

A very dark purple that is knocking on the door of a warmer shade. Odd but interesting color.

Much lighter in the bottle:

Even though this is a little blown from the lighting, it's still pretty rich in the bottle and a tad less red, but still you don't think "vamp" when you see it.

I occasionally see these at Kmart, but I go there only once every three months or so, and they have a little display, but I never seem to pick them up. I might rethink this, because the formula was freaking amazing. No other way to put it! Yes three coats were comfortable, but two would do. Also, it dried pretty easily and seems to have an salon type of finish. Rich color and gorgeous gloss, sums up a win all around.

To the layering.
As I always say I have a lot of sheers and top coaty kind of things, so it is often a somewhat random way to get the party started.

Princessa

Unnamed, in a 5 pack with another water with no shimmer, a gorgeous deep purple shimmer and a pale pink with a red shimmer, I've yet to see these again after that first time, but I am glad I got it. Though the pink drove me to distraction - still does I just tried it again the other day, not getting much love, self wetting at every coat and really splotchy - the rest seem to be shaping up into nice stuff.

I call this a blue shimmer in a pink water. It's not even close to being a jelly at all. But, the shimmer is quite beautiful.

Charmingly dense shimmer that loves the flash, and even shows up well under the regular lamps at the top in the bottle shot.
One coat, no complaints, easy to use. Though, I would say, impossible to find, unless you own this set and aren't sure what to do with it. Here's one thing!
:D


Sally Hansen

On that same theme, I have from a small pack of Sally Hansen's a little sheer that has a blue shimmer but is in a plummy purple base, perhaps I'll go out on a limb and call it magenta.

I swatched it onto my thumb to show how strong the base comes through, but though sheer, I feel about three or four coats - pant pant - could make it a stand alone. I like it layered though, and I think in the future this would look hot over some magenta or hot pinks, etc.

A little clean up around the edges might enhance this one, I will say it.

Similar to the Princessa but slightly tilting more into the purple range, I think this is old Sally Hansen Xtreme Wear, but I don't know the shade. Wouldn't it be funny if it were Grape Going? *Ponders her own obtuseness for a moment* I don't think so, but then again, I don't know. I think since this one is and Xtreme Wear versus Grape Going being a Quick Dri, I can toss that idea aside. OK. Besides Grape Going's base is more of a blue based purple not so magenta.

Onward!

Elle Elle
Let's drop the shimmers for a moment and try some glitter:

That glassy particle glitter, rather than the larger glitter we all know and are familiar with in Elle Elle, aka LDL, #433.

I am including a bottle shot because if you do see these, you should grab them:

Three things that are plusses:
Rectangular bottle with that post modern edge
Delicious gauzy gold floating in a clearish base
Removable cap

Nice!

This is one coat, perhaps two, but a simple glaze and some delicate gold seems to work. Not a heavy glitter.


L.A. Girl

L.A. Girl, A brand that keeps on giving!
Let me start by saying that I was on their website the other day and it appears that they have discontinued a lot of their cylindrical bottle polishes. Including the Orly Fantasea dupe, Enchanting. They do have it listed under their "Nudes" line, but I can't tell from the swatch if it is it or not.
Many of these can be found at Discountcosmetics.com, which is essentially an online Dollar Tree with not so "dollar-y" prices. They have a lot of the discontinued polishes. Some of their pricing on old Sally Hansen Chromes is worthy of the best eBay scalper. Why do I go on about this? Before it becomes a book report, lets see the pictures:

When cleanup goes tragically wrong! Yes the brush hooked upward and made this darling dent! Gah!

A gorgeous deep green shimmer. Pure green, leaning into the pine family, but never suggesting blue.

It is a shimmer particle, not a tiny glassy flake, and quite a gorgeous one!  

Two coats and the photos - hundreds of them - can't seem to capture it very well, except in flash. Gorgeous!
Personally I can't get enough of it.

What the heck is it??? It's L.A. Girl Metallic Green 262. No longer available and a totally perfect sheer that has a thin base of green that is so watery it would make a perfect franken ingredient or a great complement to the CND Color Effects collection you may have, don't have CND Color Effects? Get this baby. Same concept. Not sure if that was the original intent of this polish, but it's quite a nice discovery!

These old polishes are only $1.99 at Discount Cosmetics Outlet, so they are very close to the same price that they were on the old site. No, I am not affiliated, but I have made an order in the past and was happy with affordable shipping the polishes I got.

I kind of want to run around and try it out on about a dozen nail polishes! Greens, navy jelly, franken it with a few other things...well you get the drift. Nothing like finding a polish that is really fun to wear and goof around with!

Here is a bottle shot:

Nom, nom, nom!

Thank you for reading my little nail polish journal!