Colors by Llarowe - Young Turks and The Mighty Red Baron Stripe Nail Art

I bought Young Turks and The Mighty Red Baron a few weeks ago and somehow haven't done anything with either of them despite their awesomeness. I also bought Sally Hansen - Lick-O-Rich (bluuuughhh) for $.90 at Big Lots to use pretty much for this exact reason. I love texture stripes over regular polish. I heart it!

I used two coats each of Young Turks and The Mighty Red Baron, applied the tape, then carefully painted on one coat of Lick-O-Rich (the formula for the Colors by Llarowe polishes is freaking spectacular, by the way).

I wish my nails were, you know, the same length and all. I have no idea for what occasion I could possibly wear these (oh, you know, a funeral maybe... job interview...) but I like them. And I like feeling them. Since stopping biting my nails I've become a nail-messer-with. I fidget around with them constantly. Texture polish is like tactile crack to me.

The mooore you knooow!

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?

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.