Monday, January 28, 2013

Eggplant Iridescence

I suppose Revlon Heavenly is the closest polish to a "lemming" that I've ever had, although it wasn't hard to find, expensive, or discontinued.  I just kept seeing it, almost buying it, but then putting it back, and repeating this cycle every time I saw one in a store.  But today I found it at Walmart, and decided that I'd already broken my New Year's resolutions by buying some things at the Sally's across the street, so I might as well stop thinking I *needed* it every time I saw it at a drugstore.  


This is layered over two coats of Revlon Sangria.  I love the different shapes as well as colors in the glitter.  The squares are more blue-green, while the hexes are orange-pink.  I tried to get a picture of the glitter, but you'll have to excuse my icky cuticles and overall cleanup job.  My nails were getting weak and stained and I decided to just cut them all down, but somehow the skin under them had grown onto the nails, and sort of ripped when I cut them?  I'm not really sure what happened, but all around my nails is currently really sore and didn't want to be exposed to anywhere near as much acetone as I'd already put them through.


These were all one thick coat, dabbed/painted on.  It wasn't at all hard to get decent coverage of the pieces, but I did find it a bit tricky to get the amount of glitter uniform between all of my nails.

So that's that.  I'm happy with it, and I'll definitely use it more.  While it looks gorgeous over this dark polish, I think it would also look really nice over something like Sinful Colors Cinderella, and I'm probably going to mattify it at some point tomorrow after my classes are over.

Hopefully I'll be able to get back to posting somewhat regularly, but I'm having trouble keeping up in o chem, and I'm not sure how much time I can really give to this for the time being.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Green-Blue Glitter Gradient

After having purchased China Glaze Spinning in Circles from a blog sale before Christmas break, I was eagerly waiting to get back to my dorm room and try it out.  I wore it plain on my nails for a day or so, and it's absolutely gorgeous, but then a couple of the tips chipped, and so I had to play with it some more.


I was going to just layer Pure Ice Strapless over it, but after the first nail, I realized that would take way too much polish to build up to where I wanted it.  So I first created a very sloppy gradient with China Glaze Ride the Waves (I assume a polish from some collection, as I got it on super clearance from Sally's), which is a really pretty blue jelly that nicely matched the tone of the blue glitter.


I wish I'd left a bit more of the green showing, but I seem to have this problem with every gradient mani I do.  I end up taking the top color down way too far and then there's just a tiny bit of the base color peaking out at the bottom.  I'm completely in love with this combo, and at some point I'll probably try a dot gradient (because apparently I didn't learn my lesson about using glitters for that last time...) because this combo makes me ridiculously happy.  It reminds me of a jungle stream or something like that.

Posting is likely to be a bit more sporadic for a while, as I'm trying to keep up with o chem and actually spend the time I need to working on my homework each night (I say, as I'm posting the night before the first quiz of the quarter...), and when I'm busy I tend to just do plain color rather than nail art or anything I feel is worth posting on a blog.

Friday, January 4, 2013

My First Attempt at Interlocking Dots

My initial thought with this mani was to do a glitter gradient (of course), and after I decided that that would be too similar to everything else I've done recently, I was going to do chevron tips.  Then I remembered that I'm always wishing I would have tried the interlocking dots mani, but I never remember to consider it until I see a picture of someone else's.  So at last, I remembered!



The glitter on this one was for some reason extremely hard to get my camera to focus on, but it's a whole lot of shiny, and I love it.  I also really like the contrast between the glittery green and the creme plum color.  The glitter is Pure Ice Emerald Crush--though it's really a lot more of a lime, or maybe Peridot, color than a deep emerald--and the plum is Sally Hansen Perfect Plum.  While I would still recommend putting it over a base color and not bare nails, this glitter, along with at least a couple others from the Pure Ice Holiday display, go on opaque in two coats, rather than just being glitter toppers.




Unfortunately, this proceeded to smudge overnight, despite having waited 4 hours just to make sure all the goopy dots were dry.  I guess next time, I'll have to try to use smoother polishes.  I think Emerald Crush was just too thick and lumpy for this to really work well.



Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Playing with Polish! 3 Manis in one day

First off, I'd like to mention Zoya's promotion, which will go live the 7th, for 3 free nail polishes if you pay the shipping price of $10.  The details can be found here.  I'm still deciding if I want to let this count for my "one" January item.  On one hand, I'd intended to buy 3 of their polishes I've wanted for a while when they did the $20/3 offer a month or two ago, then decided that was still a bit too much.  For $10, I'd be totally willing to buy them, but I don't know if I'll find anything else during the month that I also "need."  I guess I've got a few days to decide.

Today's mani is actually several, as I've been playing with quite a few of the new polishes I got from the Rite Aid clearance, and CVS.  The first was a scallop design that I actually loved the color combination on, but smudged half my thumb nail off absentmindedly playing with my hands.  Oops.


Base: CQ Silver Taupe (Rite Aid Clearance)
Green: Revlon Entice (CVS)
Shimmer: Chameleon Mist


Silver taupe was incredibly sheer.  4 coats and you can still see through it a bit.

The next mani is currently on my left hand.  I was going to just do Entice topped with Mist on all my nails, after realizing that I loved them together--very mermaid-y.  I decided to do a bit of a dot accent nail on my index finger, though, but I think it would have worked better with a darker polish on a lighter one.


Finally, currently on my right hand, is a gradient with Entice and Mist.  While I'm not sure how soon I plan to get back to it, I definitely want to use this again.  After not being sure what to wear Mist with when I bought it (but for 75% off, I couldn't pass it up, apparently), this was the perfect color.  Entice on its own is also a gorgeous color.  My skin tends to be much too yellow to really wear the typical light mint green shades, and this is more of a seafoam shade.




I've concluded that shimmers and glitters are best for gradients, because it's harder to tell how bad I am at maneuvering a sponge to where I want the color.  In case you couldn't tell from my past few manis, I'm rather obsessed with gradients at the moment, while a couple months ago I found them impossible.  My main "trick" that I rely on is ripping the sponge (I've also heard of using non-cosmetic sponges, so they have larger holes to begin with) so the edge you're sponging with is a bit more jagged and doesn't give you a perfect line, as I still have not mastered the "repeatedly apply two stripes of different colors on a sponge, then to the nail" method that most people seem to use.

I hope everyone's new year is off to a good start.  I'm not sure how well I'll manage to stick to my resolutions (hey, at least I left gym use unspecified....), but I hope you all are as successful as I'm determined to be!

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