Sinful Colors - Splatter Spell, Cauldron Couture and Mystery Moonshine Swatches & Reviews

Firstly, these swatches suck large amounts of horse hineys (autocorrect wants to change "hineys" to "chimneys" which, if horse chimneys were a thing, these swatches would be sucking those as well). I wouldn't even pretend to be mad if somebody told me so, either. I agree with you, friend. Such suck.

But it's what I have, soooooooooooooooo...

Found these bishes at Walgreens a couple weeks ago on an un-built display, still in their boxes. I sneakily snuck one of each out, even though I'm pretty impartial to glitter toppers. I figure for Halloween maybe I can get into it a little bit.

Bleh.

The problem with drugstore glitter toppers, I've found, is that the ratio of glitter to base is pretty weak. I mean, obvs I'm not looking for a full-coverage glitter, but as thick as these polishes were, I would have liked to have gotten a better payoff, you KNOW? I had to do some fishing for an even layer of glitter. All swatches were taken under OttLite (even though it's a beautiful day out and likely one of the last of its kind this year :/  ).


First up is Splatter Spell which is a metallic orange shard/hex and various-sized black hex glitter mix in a clear base. Shrug. I kind of wish the orange was more saturated, I guess.

Shown below is two coats plus a few dabs over Sinful Colors - Enchanted.

Cauldron Couture is similar to Splatter Spell but it's, oh you know, metallic green and black instead. There also seemed to be a much higher glitter concentration in this one, making it my favorite of the three, and I still don't really even like it that much.

Shown below is two coats plus a few dabs over Sinful Colors - Innocent.

I thought Mystery Moonshine was going to be my favorite because of the lack of black hex glitter, but this one can just go straight to heck. It was a goopy nightmare with very little glitter payoff, plus the super-thick base was tinted pinkish (though I don't know if it was intentional or because of glitter bleeding).

Shown below is two resentful coats plus countless dabs over Sinful Colors - Cool Gray.

I'm only keeping these guys because I collect Sinful Colors and they look pretty in the bottle, but I very highly doubt I'll be actually using them anytime soon. Whatever, they were $2 a pop (because somebody didn't just wait until Walgreens was having their $.99 Sinful Sale...).

Whatever, I say. Hey, Halloween isn't until, like, a month from now. I have time to find successful Halloween polishes, right?

Revlon Street Wear - Monster Mash

Oh, hey, it's Tuesday.

May the Fourth, Cinco de Mayo and all of that! I played Lego The Hobit for most of the weekend and volunteered with my best friend at a food bank yesterday. We did, however, go to a pretty excellent Mexican restaurant after so I guess that kind of counts.

Oh, hey, the mailman's here and it's only 10:30am.

I don't remember from where or at what age I procured a certain Street Wear Monster Mash, but I had it, and now I don't because I sold it. Because I hadn't worn it for about a hundred years. But now I kind of regret it. I swatched it a while before putting it up for sale and was like 'oh, this is neat, but I won't wear it on the reg'.  And now I kind of miss it.

I took a bunch of pictures of it. It's from the 90s, it's green, and is glittery. It's, like, a full-coverage glitter. I'm pretty sure this was only three thin layers over nothing. Nothing but nailz. Also it's pretty much impossible to find, I guess. I saw one that was auctioned on British eBay for $62. I didn't sell it for close to that much because a.) evap and b.) I painted the bottle handle with other nail polish years ago and when I was cleaning it off with polish remover it started smudging the ink of the label off. Such lame. I also had Costume Party (which I didn't swatch before selling :/) and still have Black Widow and I kind of feel like maybe they were sold in a set together.

Oh, hey, also this polish is the only example of the use of bar glitter than doesn't make me puke in my mouth.

So anyway, here's six of those pictures I was telling you about:

Under OttLite

Under OttLite

Under OttLite

Natural light, shade

Natural light, shade

Direct sunlight

Sooooo, yeah. I probably would have worn this again, actually, now that I'm staring at these pictures. I mean, I'm glad Monster Mash has gone to somebody who will love him. I liked him all right in a sentimental way, but I didn't really treasure his full value. If you love a polish, let it go...

We just weren't that close, you know? But maybe we could have been. Maybe I should have just given him a chance.

Hey, so I've been writing this while listening a conversation going on and I'm not even going to reread it because I'm sure what I've written is absolutely brilliant. I'm, like, 101% confident.

Enchanted Polish - March 2014 and April 2014 Swatches & Reviews

Do you ever start updating your blog and notice that what you're writing is boring and lame and delete it?

We're up to month 4 now with the Enchanted Polish mystery pre-sales and the colors keep getting better, though the three polishes she released for that Mishka collab thing (which I find completely bizarre by the way and I'm a weirdo) are goooorgeous. I would assume that's why March and April were pre-sold together.

N
  E
    Wayz...

March 2014 is a happy apple green with yellow highlights, that signature light blue microglitter, and completely in. ya. face. linear holo. I had a sneaking suspicion that March would be a green polish (for St. Patrick's day, you know, since February was pink like Valentine's Day and January was dark teal for... uh... seasonal depression) and it's a really good green. It works really well with my skin tone I think and it's not just boring crayon green so I'm pleased. Brandy is pleased. Also the formula is thick in a pleasant and workable way and self-leveling.

Shown below is two coats with topcoat in BEAUTIFUL OHIO SUNLIGHT CUZ IT'S LIKE 68 DEGREES OUT, BISHES.

April 2014 is a soft blue-grey with white highlights (can that even be a thing? I want to say they're like really really really pale pink but I could seriously be crazy) and subtle linear holo. It's a sweet, feminine color. Blue for Autism Awareness Month? I'm glad it's not your typical spring pastel which I absolutely haaaaaaaate. I'm one of those people. Same formula as March 2014 (or, as usual really for EP).

Shown below is three coats with topcoat.

 April 2014 has reeeeally grown on me. I love how it kind of looks grey in some light and I superlove how it looks on my nails. I'm still pretty excited to see what future months will bring. I was thinking about this whole thing and how long she's going to do the monthly pre-sale. Is it just going to be this year? Will she go back to regular releases afterwards? I wonder when she'll stop making polish.

Deep thoughts.

Anyway, we're going to the park because, like I said, it's awesome out. It's supposed to snow next week. OHIOOOOOO. Better enjoy the warmth while I can.

Colors by Llarowe - Wind Beneath My Wings Swatch & Review

Heeey.

Llarowe released some limited edition polishes a few weeks ago in the name of charity! That's pretty great in and of itself (by the way, all of the proceeds from the sales of the polishes went to their respective charities) but the colors were baaaaaallin', too!

Unfortunately, I'm broke as a joke (that's something people say, right?) so I was only able to get one of the colors. But it's a really good color.

Wind Beneath My Wings (which was created to help fund the Prostate Cancer Foundation) is a medium blue-grey with a dramatic orange to green shift and barely-there linear holo. The first three pictures shows the orange half of the shift while the last two show the green, which I bet you would have noticed just by looking at them! Because you're very smart.

Shown below is two coats with topcoat.

This color was pretty much the star of the group for obvious reasons. I've seen a lot of blue-based polishes with the red/green shift going on, but not anything exactly like this.

And that concludes my unintentional two-day Llarowe fangirl polishfest. I don't even know what I'm going to post about tomorrow. No, wait, I do. Okay, okay.

Don't worry, guys. I'm really good at this.

Ethereal Lacquer - Looking Glass Swatch & Review

Oh, hey. Monday.

The first Ethereal Lacquer swatch I ever saw was of Looking Glass and I remember just being like, uh, yeah, I need that. It took a couple months, but I found somebody who wanted to swap for it, and then I swatched it. For you! I did that for you!

Looking Glass is hard to describe kind of. It's a bit sheer and it's got linear holo and a bright green flash (that, in certain light, looks peachy orange), but I don't know what the heck to call the base. White? Silver? Halp!

Because of its sheerness, I've layered it over China Glaze - Dandy Lyin' Around since it isn't a totally opaque, stark white -- I wanted to keep a bit of the, I don't know, ethereal quality of Looking Glass. The formula was easy to work with but I don't think it would ever build to complete opacity on its own. Or maybe I'm just too impatient.

Meh.

Shown below is three layers of Looking Glass over Dandy Lyin' Around with a coat of Essie G2G on top.

It's a lovely, soft dreamy color that I desperately wish was less sheer. I'm sure it would make a nice holo topper (which I look forward to experimenting with different bases to go with that green flash).

Emily de Molly - Monet's Garden Swatch & Review

I'm trying to go through my untrieds but I keep getting more polish. Polish problemz. Today, for example, I got Monet's Garden in the mail and uhhhh had to immediately put it on because green jelly with glitters.

So!

This isn't my first EdM; it's my third, but it's the first one I'm bothering to swatch because the other two I have are Cosmic Forces and Oceanic Forces and my nails are far too, I don't know, lame too stand up to super huge circle glitter. Oh, you know what? I swapped Oceanic Forces. I've got two EdM, then, and here's this one.

Monet's Garden is, if you didn't catch it earlier, a green jelly base with various small-sized glitter in green, lime green, bright green, magenta, purple and blue (some of which is holographic). The formula was nice and work-ably thick though I used pretty substantial coats to achieve the density of glitter I wanted.

Shown below is three coats with Essie G2G on top.

Quite lovely, and the glitter mix is definitely invocative of the polish's name. EdM has a way with glitter! Not that we don't have an insane amount of awesome indie polish in the States, but I often wish shipping cost was, uh, nonexistent internationally because I would definitely have more EdM in my collection.

Leaf NOTD (China Glaze: Budding Romance & Striping Tape)

Firstsies, this is the best picture I have ever taken of my nails, or possibly anything:

"I'm Leafnails and I approve this picture."

Secondsies, it took me 948293841983749 tries before actually coming up with something leaf-inspired that didn't suuuuck. And it was the least, like, doing-things idea that I had the whole time.

Totally real pine cone.

I wasn't smart enough to do a toot-torial, but I can explain things super good so here you go.

How-to-do Leafs! <3
Step 1: Put striping tape on your bare nails in a leaf way.
Step 2: Paint your nails a leaf color.
(Optional Step 2.5: Keep going over the polish until you accidentally start dragging it to the edge of the nail but by some stroke of luck it totally works for what you're doing. Make sure you cannot successfully duplicate that happy accident on any other nail.)
Step 3: Don't let the polish dry all the way because it's getting late and you're tired and have already tried 948293841983749 things.
Step 4: Remove striping tape.
Step 5: Use acetone to fix all of the wonky parts from the goopy polish gooping all over the place.
Step 6: TOP COAT TIMMMMMEEEEE.

My nails are so stained. It's pretty horrendous. But!, that kind of worked out for this. Plus Budding Romance is, like, the perfect shade for leaves-just-about-to-turn for Autumn. I love that it's more yellow-toned the less layers of it there are. I don't like green polish usually, but this is my jam.

Maybelline Color Show Nail Stickers: Divine Crocodile Review

Fun Fact: I got 22 polishes in the mail today from 3 different sources and it was AWESOME. Did I take pictures? Nope!

I was at Big Lots the other day and saw some Maybelline nail stickers for $1 per pack, so I was like, yep! I bought this one and one called Metal Prisms, but I haven't read great things about the metallic kind so we'll see how those go.

Awkward Hand Alert!

Divine Crocodile, however, has been awesome for the last 48 hours. I've washed dishes and showered twice, changed countless diapers, picked price stickers off of polish bottles and lots of other, you know, hand-things whilst wearing these and they're still stuck fast with the most minimal of tip wear, which is even less noticeable thanks to the pattern.

I did, however, put a coat of Seche Vite on over top of these, making sure to focus on coating the tips to prevent peeling. None of the edges are currently peeling.

This is my first experience with full-color nail decals, and I'm really happy with them. I looooove the color and that bare nail is peaking through the decal. They really were super easy to apply (directions say to pull the decal over the edge of the nail and file off excess but I have suuuper thin, bendy nails so I used cuticle clippers to get rid of excess) and the result is awesome. I was able to get good results on both the longer-length nails on my swatch hand -and- on the short, nubby bummer-stumps on my right hand, so I think that these nail stickers are a pretty good product for whatever length of nail you have. As a bonus for shorter nails, since the sticker itself is so long (even though one end is more rounded and one end is more squared) you might be able to get 2 uses from one set of sizes that fit you. Plus there are 9 different sizes per pack, so you should be able to find a good fit, whatever your nail length/width.

I definitely plan on picking up some back-ups of this pattern.

OPI: Man of La Mancha Swatches

I can't get enough of this multichrome OPI gloriousness (spell check seriously thinks I'm illiterate for the record). I'm a total OPI fangirl and I'm not ashamed to admit it. So, about this polish: Man of La Mancha is also from the Holiday on Broadway Collection. I looked at a thousand swatches of La Boheme (a lemming for me for a while) but after swatching this and Movin' Out I don't think I even need it anymore is how righteous this polish is.

The swatches are 2 coats of Man of La Mancha over German-icure by OPI (which is freaking awesome also), topped with SV.

Overcast Sunlight

One coat made for a nice, sheer, sparkling red-orange topper to the rich shimmery burgundy of German-icure. And I know chromes over black make for the best, you know, color shifts, but I wanted to mess around with the deep red tones of La Mancha. I'll have to try it over black too, as I don't know if it made a difference or not (but I dig the contrast on the accent nails and I much prefer German-icure to straight black). I also wanted the full impact of La Mancha, so I went for the second coat. Instant nail polish obsession time.

Man of La Mancha shifts between ruby to coral to orange to yellow and even to lime green in very certain lights. Example A:

Facing away from Overcast Sunlight

Example B:

Artificial Light

This one has red/orange scatterd microglitter in it too, cuz it's not already amazing. Application was great, or whatever, and I just realized that I didn't lay down a base coat. Bummer. I'll be chipping the crap out of this in no time!

OPI: Movin' Out Swatches

So a tip from a new friend-in-nails (get it kind of?) (HEY visit her blog: lacquerheaded) lead me to purchasing two of my very first lemmings: OPI - Movin' Out and Man of La Mancha. Today I have for you a few swatches of the most excellent Movin' Out, from the 2003 Holiday on Broadway collection.

Yellow Wall, courtesy of 1994

Movin' Out is one of the rainbowest in-the-bottle polishes I've seen. It looks like liquified dreams. I'm holding it right now and in my living room light, it looks like it's got this ectoplasm-green shimmer. I tried taking a picture of it and failed, so you just get to imagine how awesome that looks.

While the spectrum of colors don't translate onto the nail entirely, there's still a huge and delightful range o' colors. I will show them to you now (I used 3 coats of Movin' Out over 2 coats of Orly - Velvet Rope with 1 coat of SV for all photos below.. kind of labor-intensive but wooooorth itttttt).

Sunlight

That looks like a nice bright mauve shimmery delight, yes? The red/orange blurry dots on the leftmost nail give the best color accuracy of the scattered microglitter in this sweetheart.

Shade

The chrome-ality is much more apparent out of direct light (like all multi-chrome polishes, I'm finding out, likely because of ... stuff. Indirect light beams and scattered sun particles and, you know, really scientific things).

Artifical light / Shade

Aaand in indirect artificial light was where I was able to pull the most color shifting from. Plum, mauve, bronze, gold, yellow, green. And that glitter! <3

<3 <3 <3

So, there it is. The scattered glitter is apparent in Man of La Mancha, too. It reminds me of camera flashes in a stadium (OR A THEATER, BROADWAY COLLECTION...). I'm super happy I was able to get a hold of this polish. While it's not suuuuuuper htf, it's still a polish I'm quite pleased with adding to my stash-a-roo.

Orly: Space Cadet Swatch & Review

Good day to you!

I know this is polish is a few years old but I just picked it up a couple weeks ago at Ulta when all of their Orly polishes were $4.99. What the hay?

Space Cadet is rad. It's been pretty dreary and chilly here the last few days so while it's not a summer color, it definitely fits the weather currently.

3 coats, cloudy sunlight

The particles flash between a pinkish mauve to a nice grass green with bronze and gold in between, and even a bit of blue and purple in the right conditions. Like I said, rad.

Blurred for your enjoyment, shade

Under a running tap (?), cloudy sunlight

I've been seeing chromatic polishes photographed under water because the light diffusion allows for a wider range of, like, colors happening. Or something. But I literally don't have a single sink in this apartment (out of 2) that I can plug up without going through some trouble and I don't know what the baby did with the tub plug. But I think the effect is there anyway, somewhat. 

That's that! I need to pack more. Mooooreeee. More always. Moving. Is. The. WORST.

Oh, um, application was pretty solid. 3 layers did it for me. Things and things.

Striping Tape & Gradients: NOTDs

In the midst of the moving madness, I still find the time to paint my nails. I guess you can probably see my haste, hahaha. Not the best cleanups in the world... Not that it matters. My nails have been chipping like maniacs what with packing and all. No breaks yet! Knock on wood.

First up is a little striping tape action. I don't love striping tape when left on the nail because no matter how careful I am to make sure to cover up the ends with top coat, they always start to peel within like, an hour. But using striping tape to make line designs with layered polish is definitely my currently favorite technique.

Orly - Glitz & Essie - Sunday Funday, sunlight

I've been using the Essie quick dry top coat and I must say, it's a nice change from my insanely gloopy almost-empty bottle of Seche Vite. It's not as, hmm, sturdy (?) feeling as SV, but it still leaves my nails super-shiny and it does dry rather fast.

Barielle - Berry Blue under Hard Candy - Bity Blue & Essie Naughty Nautical, sunlight

I mean, I really love that design, too. It was a Julep NOTD a while ago and she used gold and army green which is really quite lovely too. This got messy, however. Besides my wonky pinky paint-shape, my cuticles were, indeed, blue. Berry Blue is a gooorgeous deep blue, but it bleeds like no other during cleanup. 

SOPI - Is It Payday Yet?, Salon Perfect - Robin's Egg Blue & OPI - Parlez-vous OPI?
Zoya - Maria Luisa (awesomeeee) on my ring finger, sunlight

I joined a new facebook group called Nail Polish Challenge the other day and one of the prompts was pastel gradient. As you can tell, I suck hard at gradient. I understand the technique, but I'm not patient enough to let the first coat dry all the way before sponging on a second layer and it gets all sponge-marky. I like the color combo, though. I'll try this again around Easter, I think. Maybe I won't be so bad at it by then!

I bought Charla and Maria Luisa from Zoya.com a couple days ago. As a new registered user, I got one polish for free which was pretty great. Plus shipping was free too (I think because of a promotion that was running...?) Also, I've discovered pinterest nail polish sales/swaps! Oh nooooo! That just took this obsession to a whole new level!

I also recently did my first swap with the most lovely lady in Canada. She writes a darling fashion blog that you should check out here: bluecollarredlipstick.com. She was super patient with my complete cluelessness about swapping. Plus, she swapped me some really spectacular and HTF polishes!! I can't wait for that package to come. Friendliness really seems to be a trend in the nail polish community. It feels like everybody's rooting for each other and trying to help locate lemmings and things like that. That's not very common on the internet, I've noticed.

Well, have a good weekend, everybody ever!

  

Barielle Orange Parfait & Pure Ice Heartbreaker

Hi friendos.

I was thinking about doing an ombre mani... gradient mani... that mani where a dark version of a color blends delightfully into a light version of said color. But I didn't. Instead, I painted a layer of Heartbreaker over Orange Parfait and ended up with this:

This was in the sun, I swears. 

Orange Parfait looks like a creamy coral in the bottle but actually dries a bit darker and brighter on the nail WHICH I didn't get a picture of. I dug it as-was. However, Heartbreaker rules hard, especially over orangey polishes I've found. It's all, oh I'm so shimmery and green!

Two coats of Orange Parfait, one coat of Heartbreaker except on ring finger which had 3.

The formula was Orange Parfait was just a touch thick but not so much in a bad way. I didn't think I was going to like this color much until I swatched it for my never-ending swatch book.

Shade. Heartbreaker duo-chrome-ness.

I bought Heartbreaker long before I was super into the, you know, polish lifestyle. I tried wearing it by itself and was pretty confused by its inability to be seen except for in bright light. I guess it was maybe kind of obvious that it's meant for layering anyway, despite being new at nail things. Whatever. I know now, okay? I learned. I learned the ways of the sneaky topcoat. 

A story:

I hate spiders. I have this insane irrational terror of the little bastards. It's bad. It's considering-going-to-a-hypnotist-about-it bad. SO, I'm cleaning my apartment yesterday and I notice this piece of cotton-looking fluff on one of my kid's sandals. I go to remove it and BAM this seriously blink-fast spider (that was by no means small) jumps out from under a sandal-flap and basically I unloaded a can of bug spray onto it which was real dumb because then I had to barricade that area so my put-everything-in-his-mouth child wouldn't insecticide to death. Spiders are THE WORST. I don't even like seeing the word. Have you seen those? The kinds that make these webs with holes going into them that they crawl out of. Heebie to the jeebie. I can't stop shuddering. I'm from Ohio, okay. I know Ohio spiders are little sissy spiders compared to, say, Texas spiders. They're still just awful.

What is today, even? Friday? All right, well, do have a wondrous weekend!