Smitten Polish - Klaatu Barada Nikto Swatch & Review

COLDS ARE THE WORST.

My 20 month old little boy's nose has turned into a waterfall and I'm following him around with tissues so he doesn't wipe his snot all over every surface. I somehow don't have the cold, yet. My immune system is on a timer or something... I get illnesses one week after the whole rest of the family gets theirs. Also he wakes up screaming in hour intervals because he can't breathe through his nostril faucet and he hasn't yet mastered the skill of mouth-breathing. I really, really, really love coffee these days.

Little Bottles of Love and The Disease of the Week.

Completely unrelated to having a cold, today's little love is called Klaatu Barada Nikto which (as mentioned on the Smitten Polish shop site) is "the incantation Ash uses in Army of Darkness to retrieve the Necronomicon." In most lights, the polish looks like a true blurple with scattered holographic glitters, but it leaned more blue in OttLite. It's beautiful either way and makes me think very little about dead books, or whatever.

There's a lot of depth to this polish that I feel is lost in pictures. The rainbow effect is much more apparent in less-direct light, and it's suuuuuper sparkly. The formula is like, not thick, but reminds me of a watery gel if that makes any sense, in a very good way. Man, that description sucked. It's good, yeah? It should be noted that it also dried with quite a dull grit to it but topcoat brought it back to life.

Shown below is two coats, followed with a coat of Rejuvacote, followed by a coat of Essie G2G for ultimate gloss-ocity.

For funsies I also took a blurry bottle macro to acquaint you with the rainbowy goodness that my swatch pictures are failing to show you:

Aaaand finally a really blurry bottle macro that looks like it should have some kind of girly-fonted inspirational/love quote with a little <3 at the end that a seventeen-year-old girl would put on Facebook after getting dumped. Just to, you know, cover all my bases.

Glitter glamor shot! I often say "pictures doesn't do this polish justice" though I've seen swatches online of said polishes that look pretty ding-dang amazing, so I feel like I should maybe amend that statement to say "my photo skillz don't do this polish justice" to be completely fair. I'll be using a different camera soon so we'll see if that changes things in the quality department. Finkers cross't!

Sally Hansen - Indi-glow Swatch & Review

1. The touch screen on my camera doesn't work anymore so I have to use the *gasp* auto setting. Not that I'm a brilliant photographer by any means, but that's why my swatch photos have kind of sucked butts more than usually lately. The butt suckage has increased in, uh, vacuum-strength.

2. I fixed a break in my nail with the teabag trick for the first time! And then the other side of the nail chipped aaand I had to file it down. Ha-ha. I often wonder if the swatch gods are trying to tell me things.

I was at Giant Eagle (it's one of the big grocery store chains in this area... Giant Eagle though. We call it Big Bird) and saw a display of Sally Hansen LE Glitters. It's called the Color Vibration Glitter Mania collection (geez, Sally) and Indi-glow seemed to be the only color that wasn't just glitter in a clear base. I'm not the biggest fan of Sally Hansen glitter polishes; the formula has a gel-like thickness and it smells like Kleancolor, and the glitter payoff is kind of weak.

The color I picked up from the collection is called Indi-glow and it's a sheer indigo (whaaat?!) base with green/blue iridescent hex glitter. As is the case with iridescent hex glitter, it looks a lot more awesome in the bottle than on the nail.

The formula, like I mentioned, is thick but not entirely unworkable. In my haste, I didn't let the coats dry entirely between each one so I had a bit of an issue with dragging and unevenness. There's VNL (visible nail line) after three pretty heavy coats, which I suppose is reasonable since the base is so sheer.

Swatches show three coats, no top coat.

The glitter iridescence doesn't translate entirely onto the nail, disappointingly. I'd be more inclined to do a jelly sandwich with a blurple jelly and China Glaze - Snow Globe if I was going for this look alternatively. I don't hate this polish, but I'm not impressed either.

Have you gotten anything from the Sally Hansen Spring 2014 Xtreme Wear collection? Thoughts?

Colors by Llarowe - This Girl is On Fire..Help!! Swatch & Review

This Girl is On Fire..Help!! is one of those colors that, like, I don't know what the heck kind of fancy magical camera I need to capture its wondrous beauty or what, but the pictures don't do it justice.

For startsies, it has this deep blurple base with teensy weensy pink and blue (and purple? And green?! My eyes are confused) sparkles and oh um also there's holo. It's not the strongest holo in the, uh,  holo brigade... but it's there.

Fully covered in 2 coats. Shown here with a layer of Essie G2G which didn't appear to dull the holo, but I guess maybe I could have taken picture beforehand to compare. Dries a tiny bit dull on its own.

Another stunner from CbL. I wish I knew the reasoning for its name. I get that it probably has something to do with that Alicia Keys song, but why is it blurple? Please advise.