Daring Digits - Horde Swatch & Review (and some Warcraft nail art)

Back when the baby was immobile, I Warcrafted around with a Night Elf Hunter babe named Pancayk. Then I started working from home (cue quasi-adulthood) aaaaand my days of dungeon crawling were over. *Nostalgic siiiigh*. I first played WoW in the summer of '06 at my friend's house-- it was the first time I really played an MMORPG (as I owned a cute indigo iMac which wasn't exactly suited for online gaming) but that was my only frolic around Azeroth until last year when my boyfriend bought a computer built specifically, seriously, to play WoW from one of his co-workers. Ughhhhh. Some people long after previous lovers, previous jobs, previous living conditions... my heart yearns for the sweet touch of my Razer Naga.

Going right along with my unintentional theme of TV show/video game inspired polishes, I bring you Horde by a polish brand I had never heard of until I saw this polish on Storenvy: Daring Digits. It's from an entire WoW collection which I can basically find nothing on. Oh hwell.

Horde is, of course, a blackened jelly base with small metallic red dots and larger, I want to say, like, satin-finish hex glitter. Application was meeeehhhhh. Trying to get the glitter on in a single smooth coat was akin to finding Ashes of Al'ar-- lots of glitter fishing to be had, and the base was pretty sheer so I would definitely recommend layering it over a black or other dark polish.

Shown below is two coats of German-icure by OPI with Horde applied in a dabbing sort of way (with a thin coat of the base applied between dabs for more dimension). Accent nail is two coats of Zoya - Raven with China Glaze - Xtreme Thrash for the Horde symbol (touched up with Sinful Colors - Cross my Heart). All topped with two coats of Essie G2G (I found it!).

This was my first adventure with free-handing nail art and I'm pretty relieved that it doesn't look like complete poop-poop. I didn't have a super tiny brush so I, um, found the smallest one I had and cut the bristles on the side so just a little tuft remained. I thought that Xtreme Thrash (ridiculous name, by the way) would be too orange-leaning to match the red glitter but it was spot on. I also realized that I don't own a single red creme polish. Is that some kind of crime in nail world? (Also were you completely creeped out by my spider-hand in picture 4? Good).

The formula with this guy definitely left something to be desired, and I kind of desperately wished it included tiny red glitter too to break up some of the glitter-less space, but I do like how it looks on the nail. Definitely evocative of Horde-y things.

Sinful Colors - Pride Swatch & Review

HEY.

I GOT COLORS TODAY.

Sinful Colors - Pride is red and pale yellow and green and blue and magenta hex glitters in varying sizes suspended in a slightly thick, clear base. I have a couple other polishes like this (Ulta - Pinata-Yada-Yada and Milani - Gems) but this one definitely has the best glitter payoff. The formula isn't unbearably thick, either. I feel like this would be perfect for a glitter gradient!

Swatches show Rejuvacote as the base, a thin layer of Essie - Waltz, three medium coats of Pride and no topcoat.

For good measure, I then added a thin layer of Essie - Waltz. I looooove how it dulls the metallic shine of the glitters. This reminded me of a more muted China Glaze - It's a Trap-eze, which I don't yet own but have been considering getting. I have such a thing for glitter in a white base, which I'm sure I've said before.

Party on my nails!! This was, however, a little bulky what with the layers. In the future, I'd probably be a little lighter-handed with Pride and stick to using it as a full-coverage polish as an accent nail or two.

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.

Autumn NOTD

Since having a baby, what summer is has changed for me. It's no longer drinking beers on a patio somewhere, taking night walks and participating in general, warm-weather shenanigans. Now it's more, um, do the same stuff every day except not hate it as much going outside because I'm not freezing to absolute death. I loved summer. Like, loved loved it. I dreamed about it during every other season. And I still do, really, it's just different.

So, the fact that it's going to start getting colder doesn't affect me as much because, like I said, it's not really going to change how I spent my days. No more hiding from thunderstorms or hordes of spiders, so that's pretty cool. Also Fall is my second fave (maybe first fave-tied) so, you know, whatever. It's all peachy. OH PLUS APPLE PIEEE.

Here's an Autumn inspired NOTD using a bunch of untrieds I have.

Starting from the tip, there's:
China Glaze -Xtreme Thrash
Sally Hansen - Chop Chop Copper
OPI - London Bridge is Falling Brown (also on index finger)
Layla - Softouch Effect 11
OPI - DS Illuminate
and the dark brown underneath it all is Barielle - Coco Bar.

 

Looking through my polish stash on Pinterest, I have sooo many flipping fall colors I haven't tried yet. Geez Louise, guys! I need to get it together.

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?