Serum No. 5 - Shrinking Violet Swatch & Review

My pinkie nail finally broke. ENDLESS WEEPING. At least the break isn't as deep as my nails usually break, but freaking STILL. The teabag fix worked like a charm for four whole days.

Today I have a Spring-y little polish from Serum No. 5 Love Lacquer (whom I haven't tried before) called Shrinking Violet. It's a very pale pearly pink-lilac base with purple and sky blue hex glitter and gold micro glitter. The formula was pleasant but the polish is quite sheer and the glitter a bit sparse so if you're not into the semi-opaque look it would best be suited over another light color. It does build to opacity but it takes a while though since the formula was so workable it wasn't an endless process.

Shown below is four coats with a layer of Essie G2G.

I had Nicole by OPI - On What Grounds from my March Ipsy bag laying around so I decided to add some textures tips just cuz.

That photo kind of shows the base color a little more accurately. It's pretty but I think it's maybe too dainty for me, especially with the NOPI added. Man, that little pinkie nail is so sad. It's even blurry, to add to its sadness.

Salon Perfect - Bermuda Baby Swatch & Review (round two!)

Hi!
I've been meaning to re-swatch this polish since I grew out my nails because I'm seriously in love with the color. I'm not saying I'm a pro, but I at least have, you know, nails to swatch on now. (The original swatching can be found here, if you were looking for a good chuckle and something to go 'awww, that's precious' to.)

Without further ado...

Bermuda Baby is a bright turquoise creme with sky blue flash that dries matte. This guy dries lightning fast so be precise with your application or wait a minute before going over the same spot twice. At least the wait time between coats is pretty minimal.

Shown below is three coats (though you might be able to get away with two thick ones) followed up with Essie G2G.

This polish screams Summer which is so lame because it's currently blizzarding outside. At least my finkies are all tropical.

The Polish Bar - Shiny Pebbles Swatch & Review

Frans.

I've had two nail breaks in the last four days; the ring finger of my swatch hand and the middle finger of the other. I'm right-handed so my right hand's nails don't usually ever get to grow past the very tip of my finger because of how gawky-handed I am. I do believe I've mentioned this.

Also my skin is soooo dryyyy. This Ohio Winter has been rough. I'm ready for Spring and flowers and sunshine and.. allergies. The bad with the good, blah blah blah.

I hadn't heard of The Polish Bar prior to seeing Shiny Pebbles on a Pinterest ISO board. I pinned the crap out of it and went about my business as I had just enforced a no-buy. So lame, no-buys. Anyway, after a few polish sales, I kicked that no-buy in its stupid face and bought a couple polishes from my want-list and Shiny Pebbles was one of them. Glitter in a milky base will forever be my favorite polish genre, however much I hate the word "milky". Ugh.

Shiny Pebbles is a milky white base packed with orange, light orange and brown hex glitter in varying small sizes and turquoise small square and micro glitter. The result is a non-literal translation of what reminds me of river rocks and it is so great.

The formula, despite the amount of glitter, is smooth and super easy to work with and reaches opacity in two medium coats. I used three thin coats over a coat of Rejuvacote, finished off with another layer of Rejuvacote. I need more fast-dry topcoat ASAP-- my Essie G2G has turned into a gloopy disaster and I finally accept that, sigh.

So, uh, yeah. I love it. There is such an ungodly amount of awesome indie polish out there, a lot of which I'm sure I'm not even aware of yet. 

It looks like Shiny Pebbles is out of stock (and I'm not sure if it's going to be restocked anytime soon or what) but you can see and purchase other lovely polishes by The Polish Bar here.

PinkDipsyBulle - Water Lily Swatch & Review

Disclaimer: I don't own RBL - Water Lily, but I do own Gap - Bright Pool which I have seen is very similar to the RBL.

Unlike Bright Pool, PinkDipsyBulle - Water Lily is a jelly, and the base is less straight turquoise and more of an ocean water green that gets its turquoise-ness from the pink shimmer.

Below is three thin coats, topped with Essie G2G under daylight lamp.

As uuuuusual, the pink doesn't photograph as color-accurately as I ask it to. As you can see, there's still some VNL action.

I'm a jelly junky and I loooove Bright Pool, so it's nice to have a happy combination of the two.

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.