Formula X by Sephora - Hyped Swatch & Review

I'm not into this year's "it" color - Radiant Orchid. I dunno... it's too Microsoft Paint for me, you know? Hyped is in the same color family, but way awesomer. Plus it's neon. Plus shimmer.

Hyped > Radiant Orchid.

Below is three coats with Essie G2G as it dries matte (which still looks rad). The formula is a little thick but not unhandle-able. However, I noticed that even after 3 coats there were still spots that were patchy in certain light.

Those superfine flakies even! It has a bit of pink/blue sparkle that doesn't quite show up in the photos. I'm pretty excited by Formula X by Sephora... there are a lot of polishes in the current line that I've got my eye on.

Dollish Polish: Expecto Patronum Swatch & Review

I've been an HP fangirl from day one, for realsies. There's nothing that gets me in the feels more than fantasy and magic and blah blah pushing my glasses up and living in my mom's basement and all of that. My patronus would for sure be, like, a potato. So, anyway...

Expecto Patronum is a (not too) sheer milky white base with small aqua hex glitter in varying degrees of smallness (some of which are holographic!) and magical iridescent shards. I know I rave, like, a lot on this blog, but I LOVE THIS POLISH.

Sunlight

Cloudlight

I bought this polish from a Pinterest sales board and it's slightly older, round-bottle style. Some of the glitter has settled against the side of the bottle (and I will be googling methods to correct this shortly), but the glitter payoff was still good. I didn't struggle getting an even dispersion of glitter at all. I used three coats for full opacity, but you could probably be fine with just 2. Also, I'll probably just layer this over while next time. It applied super smooth too.

This polish is definitely made of happy thoughts, man.

Layla: CE 52 The Butterfly Effect Swatch & Review

Because one can never have enough flakies in one's life.

I found a college textbook from a couple years ago in my mom's garage and traded it in to Amazon for more money than I thought I'd get sooo of course I got a whole bunch of nail-related things (a Konad stamper and Russian nesting doll plate being two of which...) including this polish! I almost got Nfu-Oh 51 with my first swap but didn't, and not that it's, like, the hardest polish to find ever or anything but I didn't actively seek it out after that. But when I saw that The Butterfly Effect was a dupe for it, AND on Amazon at a reasonable price (um, also gift card), I had to get it because duh.

Here're some swatches, ya'll! This is 4 coats (Doofus McDingbat didn't use a colored base, but it didn't take too long anyway).

Sunlight-ish

Sunlight

The Butterfly Effect is a purple jelly base packed with red-orange to green shifting flakies. For real life, orange and purple are soulmates. They look so dang good together. And how the orange takes on a sort of coral tone to it because of the purple all over it... yes.

Shade

Shade-ish

I didn't do a very good job capturing the green shift but you can see the spectrum of orange to yellow to green along the left side of the nail in the last two pictures.

Application was fine overall. A couple issues with bald patches here and there (I knoooow because of the whole not letting it dry thing. Okay). I scooted some of the flakies around during the 2nd coat which was completely not needed since by the 4th they were all, you know, all over the place evenly.

I'm quite satisfied with this guy. I now own 3 Layla polishes and I haven't been disappointed yet. 

Side note: isn't my pinkie nail just the saddest thing you've ever seen? I've tried cropping it out but swatches look legit weird with only 3 nails.

Side not dos: I just ate an entire bag of xplosive pizza flavored Goldfish.

Essie: Shine of the Times

Hey.

It's been a while.

We're in the process of moving. Moving sucks.

Here's a picture of Shine of the Times over Salon Perfect Electric Grape, with Revlon Matte top coat:

And a macro:

Right on. 

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.