The Unknown Street Wear Mystery Color [Diamond Girl]

EDIT, YA'LL: Thanks to THIS fabulous website and its Street Wear flippin' library, I have discovered the name. It's called Diamond Girl. MYSTERY SOLVED. OUT.

Howdy.

I don't remember when or where I picked this polish up. I don't feel like I was ever the kind of girl to be like "ooh, baby blue with see-through rainbow glitter!" But apparently I was. Or it was sold with other polishes that I liked. Or I stole it from one of my friends. Who knows? Regardless, the sticker on the top that said what the polish name is has been gone for ages and I can't find anything online about what it's called.

The illusive

So, yeah. That's what it looks like. It's this gritty light blue with a crap-ton of opalescent (is that what it's called even?) [EDIT: IRIDESCENT, DOY] hex- and micro-glitter. I should probably swatch it at some point.

A la flash

The light blue is somewhat present on the nail but it's not, like, a jelly or anything. It's textured almost like it would be glow in the dark, but it's not. That'd be sweet though.

dem glitterz

It's one of those polishes that I've had forever but haven't really paid any mind to. I'm pretty sure I've never worn it, actually. Except for right now, there are two coats on my left thumbnail so I could describe it better. I guess I could take a picture of it so you can see, but there's almost pizza here. Pizza.

Anyway, if you or someone you know knows what this polish is called, please tell me. I would quite like to know. Much obliged!

Nail Polish Swap Cluelessness and Other Things

Well, this is embarrassing, but I don't have even the slightest clue how to go about finding a swap partner. I guess my first order of business would be to gather all the polishes I'd be keen on swapping, yeah?

I need more indie polishes in my life.

Oh, I know! I'll make a wishlist.

Just when I think I'm content with the list of polishes I want I start going through old entries at The PolishAholic and am reminded how limited my wants are. And seeing beautiful swatches from, like, 2009 so the polishes are htf now. And trying to find an in to the black market so I can pawn whichever organs I have multiples of so I can buy polish.

I have two ideas:
1. LAZOR NAIL POLISH OF THE FUTURE (the technicalities are still being worked out)
2. Polish that turns into cheeseburgers when you want it to so you can tell your boyfriend "It's okay, we can eat it later!"

No, all right, my boyfriend is pretty great when it comes to my obsessions. My three most recent collecting obsessions have been:
1. Stamps
2. Magic the Gathering cards
3. Nail Polish.

I didn't start a blog about either of the other two things OR grow out parts of my body to display them. So, me and nail polish, we have a special thing going.

Anyway, my boyfriend, he works ALL DAY and at the end of the day when he comes home and once the children are asleep and it's quiet, he'll play Skyward Sword and I'll paint my nails. We've got old people habits already. It's sweet. He makes fun of me for it, for the nail polish, and he always asks me really stupid theoretical questions, the most recent being "what would you do if you came home one day and I had smashed all your bottles of nail polish?" I don't know what I would do! Would it break the spell? Would I be so discouraged I wouldn't ever start collecting again? I would smash his face is what I would do. But I can't know what I'd do, really, because I know he wouldn't do that. Who would do that? But especially he wouldn't.

What a weird picture I've painted of my anonymous self! I collect nail polish and am a huge nerd.

"Little Sticky Pieces of Old Paper of Love"
"Fantasy Playing Cards that I Have No Technique to Playing Them of Love"

I'm for realsies making a polish, um, thing. Like, swatch book except it's not a book (the swatch book I was making failed so hard I don't even want to talk about it). I really will take pictures this time.

TL;DR
Where can I find polish swapping partners? Thx 4evs

OPI: DS Illuminate Swatch

I'm seriously addicted to dusty hunting. I live in NE Ohio so there's a nail salon like every twenty feet. We don't have a lot going on around these parts, you know? I ran a few errands the other day and in between doing things I needed to do I would stop at every salon along the way. Lots of places don't sell their polish which can be a bummer, especially when one employee says "sure, go ahead and look" and I find something awesome and then the owner, I presume, says "only for customers!". I'm technically a customer, right? I mean, clearly nobody has gotten their nails done with that color in at least three hundred years... just sell it to meeeeee.

So that's almost what happened with DS Illuminate, here. I walked in and seriously the whole wall of this place was just filled with every brand of nail polish you can think of. Of course I was told that the polishes weren't for sale. I thanked her and started to walk out. "Well, I do have just a few polishes I could sell, since they're doubles of ones I already have". Fair enough!

DS Illuminate immediately caught my eye. I knew it wasn't from the older series because of the scattered holographic-ness, but I thought it was beautiful all the same. She had a couple other OPI and a China Glaze that I didn't love but am considering going back for now that I've looked at them swatched. Anyway, here ya'll!

Do you like my fancy nail polish display stage?

DS Illuminate is a burnt umber shade with copper-shining flecks and tiny holographic glitter and oh, also, it shimmers green. It looks likes if a bunch of sand got sunburned, took a refreshing shower in a rainbow waterfall and then, um, put on moisturizer made from the tears of mermaids.

The little triangle friends are SP Robin's Egg. I use that color a lot I guess

This is in the tiny amount of sunlight I was given before this big, stupid cloud came and made it all shady for about nine millennia. Sunny all morning. Go to swatch. Big stupid cloud. But anyway, does it not look like I dipped my fingertips in the melted skin of a bronze god?

In the shade

Note the bit of nail sticking out over my finger in the top right corner! Growth!

And the culprit. Look how stupid it is.

So that's that. I'm not even calling this a review because it's, you know, not one. Basically I'm just raving about how pretty this polish is. This is the first manicure I've done in months that I've kept for more than -a- day. 

First-time Dusty Hunting Success

So, okay, I'm brand-new to the polish world. Like, I've always liked painting my nails but I had no, you know, technique. I didn't know you weren't supposed to paint all the way down to the cuticle, or what even to do WITH the cuticle. Wtf is base coat? Top coat? Plus I had bitten my nails since I can remember. Nervous habit. Soooo bad. Basically, I had chippy, streaky, nubby little rainbow bits on the ends of my fingers.

THAT BEING SAID, I still don't know for SURE what's, you know, legitimately rare and whatnot these days. I didn't even know nail polish could be frigging collectible until like two months ago. I don't claim to be any kind of nail polish aficionado, but from what I've read on various blogs (from googling things like "how to dusty hunt" and "htf nail polish" like a true champion) I done good.

Behold:

L to R: Blue Moon Lagoon, LOL, DV8, Sexagon (real subtle, CG)

The first strip mall salon I went into had two ladies working, one being the store owner. I asked if she sold polish and she showed me two displays; one containing OPI, one containing China Glaze. I immediately recognized the silver caps as being potentially awesome. I wanted polishes specifically from the OMG collection but I figured since it came out in 2008 I would likely have to do some pretty hardcore searching. Well, the first bottle I picked up was DV8. I nervously looked at the names of other silver-capped bottles and quickly, without remembering any of them, paid for a new bottle of DV8 ($7, btw) and left, giddy.

I got home and did some research. I started writing down the names of every htf nail polish I liked and then, armed with a bit more info, went back to that glorious salon and picked up the other three. That was the last bottle of Sexagon and it's a little over halfway full so she only charged me $3. LOL was also $7. BML was $8. The lighting wasn't the best so I almost didn't even look at the label on that one as it appeared to be a fairly regular baby blue shimmer, but once I did my heart did a little back flip. Prior to this mini-haul, the only holo polish I owned was Sally Hansen Nail Prisms Diamond from like a hundred years ago and the bottle's almost empty, tears.

Aaaaanyway, I saw a couple of other colors I intend on picking up (Parlez-Vous OPI being one, and likely the rest of whatever she has of the OMG and Kaleidoscope collections) but I need to stagger my purchases so everybody that knows me doesn't, like, force me into addiction therapy.

So, as a newbie-supreme, did I do all right for my first (and second, kinda) dusty hunt? 

Barielle Jillian's Jammin is my new favorite

So, I went on my first dusty hunt and it was AWESOME. More on that tomorrow...

Today, however, I offer you a beeee-aaaaa-uuuu-tiful polish from Barielle, a company I had never heard of until two days ago. I was shopping at the local Marshall's and came upon a couple boxes of 5-pack polishes for $8. The pack I bought contained Coco Bar, a chocolate brown creme; Orange Parfait, a warm coral creme; Angelic, a somewhat gummy baby pink; Glammed Out Garnet, a jewel-toned magenta glass fleck and this:

Jillian's Jammin (<3!!!!)

Jillian's Jammin is so dang pretty I don't even know where to start. Around the very edges of the bottle you can see the green-tinted base, and the picture there doesn't do even a little bit of justice to the cerulean/violet duochrome glass fleck action. I've seen pictures of this swatched without a darker coat underneath and felt like it didn't bring a lot of justice to the beauty of this polish, so I swatched it layered over Sally Hansen Gem-Stone.

Two coats of Jillian's Jammin over one coat of Gem-Stone, Seche Vite'd

Flash. Loooook atttt ittttt.

Looooooooooooooooook.

Hello, purple!

It took a minute for me to find the right lighting condition to be able to coax the violet out. I had painted my nails last night in artificial light and the color shift was constant. It was actually harder for me to find the bright blue through the violet. My camera also wasn't cooperating with the subtle shifts.

I mean, this polish is seriously gorgeous. I will definitely experiment with layering it over other dark colors. I'm super happy I picked the pack up, especially since none of the other colors blew me away. I would definitely have paid $8 just for this polish alone and I'm thrifty as ffffff.

Teaser for tomorrow: DV8 and Blue Moon Lagoon. 

Funky Fingers Solar Collection: Solar Flare & Lil Miss Sunshine

Solar Flare

Solar Flare is a seriously lovely neon yellow creme with green shimmer that is supposed to turn bright brick-ish red in the sun. 

Two layers over white on ring finger, four (!!!) layers on the rest

I haven't bitten my nails since I started this blog, PS. Slowest. Growing. Nails. Ever. The middle one broke, to be fair. Also, you'll notice that my ring finger has a layer of Zoya Purity (white) under the Solar Flare since we all know that's how neons are supposed to be, you know, worn, or whatever. Formula-wise, the polish is a little on the thick side and coverage isn't great if it's not layered over white which is pretty normal as far as I know.

dat shimmer

What stands out for me about this polish is the green shimmer. That's good and bad, because what should probably be the selling point of a color-changing polish is its, um, ability to change colors. 

I mean, okay. It's definitely a more orange-toned yellow and not neon anymore. But it's definitely not anywhere near the color it said it would turn in the sunlight. I shall henceforth refer to this polish as Solar Normalcy.

Then there's this little fella:

Lil Miss Sunshine

Lil Miss Sunshine is a pearly white creme that's supposed to turn orange in the sun. You know, it doesn't specifically say "in the sun" anywhere on the bottle. It says "OUTSIDE". I didn't, however, go outside. I opened my window and stuck my hand in the sunlight. Maybe that's what the problem is... maybe you have to actually BE outside. Maybe the polish knows....

Two layers over white on ring finger (it's my right hand, PS), three on the rest

I think I might change the name of this blog to "Pictures of How Effed Up My Fingertips Look". I seriously have got to have the deepest-ridged fingerprints in this entire world. And I can't even grow my nails out too long because when I try to put in or take out my contacts I, like, scratch my corneas off. MY LIFE.

Anyway, it's pearly white. See? Aaaand now in the sunlight:

It goes a nice pastel apricot. Orange, no. Still a fruit, I guess. And it's a pretty nice color all the same, but still not the in-your-face color change I was hoping for. I declare this polish Lil Miss Peachface.

So there it is. You can pick these guys up at Five Below for $3 a pop. Other colors included a bright teal that changes (maybe) to a dusty blue-grey, a bright bubblegum pink that changes to a darker version of itself and a vivid fuchsia-purple that changes to eggplant. 

Seafoam & Poppy Mani

I was seriously all about this blog in the beginning, okay? And I still intend on being. Just stuff and stuff.

So, nail stuff, then.

I have these Sonia Kashuk hairbrushes that I seriously love the colors of (they were on clearance at my local Target, hay) sooo I decided to paint my nails in one of the brush's, um, honor.

There's some Salon Perfect Robin's Egg (which is more green-hued than what I typically think of robin's egg blue being), a bit of Zoya Raven (which has almost unrecognizable shimmer) and Essie Meet Me at Sunset (which is my favorite color currently, an orange-tinted bright red crelly? I'm clearly confident with my nail polish, like, technicalities...). I first taped the top half of my nail off and did the Robin's Egg, then (impatiently) removed that tape and taped off a little further up for the Raven. I have had absolutely zero percent success with taping over existing polish. I know it's because I don't wait long enough for it to dry. But having done two coats with the tape on, the polish forms a little ridge for me to be able to bump the brush right up against the next color without having to worry too much about the new color going all up on the previous one.

SO ANYWAY MANI INSPIRED BY HAIRBRUSH which should obvs be in some sort of manicure-month thing.

I picked up some pretty rad changes-color-in-the-sunlight polish from Five Below that I'm going to swatch soon. I know you're on the edge of your seat!

Fingr's Striping Tape Manicure Round 2

I used Salon Perfect Robin's Egg and Essie Go Overboard, Seche Vite blah blah blah.

Look at how long my nails are getting. Ha ha. But it's true... I keep catching the tips on, like, everything. I guarantee these mofos are all going to break off within a week of my getting them to a decent length. I'm a clumsy Clara. I somehow forget that it's not only because I bite them that I can't grow them out.

HEY SO I'M THE WORST BLOGGER EVER. I started this as a draft like a week ago, or like, however long it was since my last post. I've done like 239846203984 manicures since then and took pictures of exactly zero of them. Cool!

In other news: my little baby boy turned 1 two days ago! He likes to sit in my completely disorganized bin of polishes and crawl around absconding said polishes and I find them all over the house. Whatever, guys. Don't judge. (Guys... pfft. Me. I already know I'm a hot mess).

Today, also, is MY birthday! I'm about a million years old. No, okay, I'm 28 but that's CRAZY. I was 18 TEN YEARS AGO. Shoot my brains out.

I'm making a swatch book, thanks for asking. I'm using these Post-it page marker thingers and I'll probably never get around to taking any pictures or any of that because of that being an awful blogger thing. 

Fing'rs Striping Tape 90s-Looking Manicure

Happy Wednesday, ya'll. According to the United States Postal Service, my first Julep box is currently in transit to my house. It's the Boho Glam starter box, and neither of the colors like, blew me away online but I liked them more than the other types, so we'll go with it. I'm on the waiting list for Ipsy, too. I have a new weakness for subscription boxes.

I picked up some Fing'rs striping tape the other day and did a super simple manicure using Essie Sand Tropez and Smooth Sailing. I liked it for about eight minutes before it made me think about those pictures you see hanging up in hotels or whatever from the 90s. The flower ones, where the colors are all muted because of them being old and awful. Shudder. I have a real issue with the 90s. That horrible super-yellow cheap-looking gold with pastel turquoise and periwinkle and, like, peach. Barf city.

But anyway, now that I'm looking at the picture I don't hate it as much as I thought I did.

Please excuse my toe-looking ring finger. I have to learn not to press down using that finger, I guess. Plus it's way shinier than the other ones. I should probably cut it off for future photos so you don't have to be subjected to its awkwardness.

But, yeah. Kind of wishing I had given it a chance. Oh well. I love Smooth Sailing by the way. I don't often proclaim my love for periwinkle (after all, periwinkle?!) but this color is so lovely with its silver NO WAIT subtle turquoise and lavender shimmer.

I shall explore this striping tape deal more in the near future, I think.

Salon Perfect: Electric Grape Swatch & Review

Firstly, I wish my camera could do this color more justice.
Secondly, I'm staring at my hand right now and my nails are dark, and right next to me is the Electric Grape bottle and the polish in there looks like it could almost be neon.

 I'm gonna be totally bright, I swear!

Electric Grape is, realistically, a fairly opaque eggplant shade loaded with micro glitter; lots of bright pinky-purple and a little blue. Slightly Static Plum. 

Two coats, in the shade. Really overcast lately. :/

Zoya Anchor base coat. This was pretty opaque with the first coat and as soon as I applied it to the nail it looked like it does in the bottle, but twelve seconds later it darkened. Added another coat to even things up completely. The Seche Vite top coat seemed to lighten the polish up but again it went right back to eggplant once it dried. 

Tried to get the sun involved, here.

I mean, I think I prefer the color it ends up being anyway. I feel like a more neon shade would be less wearable for me. The polish really is quite a few shades darker in person. From far away, also, the glitter is super subtle but it still adds, you know, that somethin' special. More than a straight shimmer would, IMO.

And that's more or less what it actually looks like. But I really am as pale as all the other pictures make me look.  

Salon Perfect: Bermuda Baby Swatch & Review

Oh, haaaay!

Foreword: I love teal. As soon as I saw this color I was all 'yep'. Upon returning hope I noticed it was called Bermuda Baby and not Going Sailing Tropical Escape as it was on display as at Walmart. (Note: I have just returned from a polish trip and noticed that the display says Tropical Escape but it's fully stocked with Bermuda Baby and behind some pink shade was a bottle of Going Sailing which looks like a slightly dusty version of this color without the glorious shimmer. I never actually saw what Tropical Escape looked like. Boom.) That being said...

Hello, I'm neat!

Bermuda Baby is a bright sky-bluish teal with a fairly subtle light blue shimmer. At first, I thought the shimmer was more in the pink family, but it's, um, not. It's blue. And I love it. 

Three coats, indirect sunlight (shade, I guess)

I used Zoya Anchor base coat. Application kicked my face in. I don't know it's because I'm new at this or what but it was a wet-to-matte streaky see-through nightmare coats 1 and 2. Coat 3 evened things out to opacity bit but it was the mighty Seche Vite that saved me from the uneven texture. It was really hard to capture full shimmery action with my camera but a good example of how lovely it is color-wise is between my middle and ring finger shadows. 

A little more sunlight, here. Look at!

Overall, I dig the heck out of this polish. Chances are, I just need to get used to Salon Perfect application (and China Glaze, while we're at it) and maybe have some more nail to work with. Despite the small struggle, I'm quite happy with the finished result. 

Totally on purpose.

In fact, the color matches a tattoo I got almost ten years ago (oh, god, sob)! It's kind of like I was destined to find this color. We're color-mates. So, anyway...

There it is. Bermuda Baby. My very first swatch and review. Exhale!

New Blog! First Post! There's Gonna Be Nail Polish!

The story of a girl without nails who started a blog about nail polish.
  1. No, I do have nails but they're short because I bite bit them.
  2. Because there aren't already 32463854354364 nail polish blogs written by those who actually, you know, know about the subject matter.

All right. So, hi guys. I'm Brandy. I'm 27 and a SAHM with a one-year-old (almost) whom I birthed and a five-year-old whom I did not. They're both very handsome fellows.

Because you're just dying to know, I love these things in addition to nail polish: video games, printmaking, general crafty things, owls, the color cerulean blue.

OKAY AND HOW I GOT STARTED ON OBSESSIVELY COLLECTING NAIL POLISH EVEN WITHOUT POSSESSING BEAUTIFUL, HEALTHY, LONG NAILS:
My pretty much sister-in-law works at a dermatologist's office, attached to which is a fancy little boutique. I see her one day with tiny flecks of real flippin' gold stuck all over her nails and I'm all "whaaa?" and she's all "Zoya: Gilty" and being that I'm, like, part crow or whatever the sparkly receptors in my brain went cray and I had to own it. I don't even like gold, really. And then she let me paint my nails with her not-crappy polish collection (using a base coat and top coat, neither of which I had ever used before because I'm a nail-hobo) and the rest is history. I don't have an impressive collection by any means but it continues to grow unreasonably often. I'm still learning the tricks of the trade and the terminology (just today I found out what "crelly" and "greige" are and my spell-check thinks I'm stupid) but I. Love. Nail. Polish. Doing things with my nails is pretty much the one aspect of my life that I have legitimate control over. Plus there are so many colors. Plus spaaarklessss.

So, there you have it. Let's see what happens.