Swatch & Review

   Today I'm sharing a pretty polish from Laquerlicious.  I bought a couple colors that were being discontinued and Michelle (creative genius behind the brand, and yes she leaves the C out of the name intentionally) was kind enough to include 3 minis for me to sample and share on the blog!

   Melted Ice Cream is a blend of shredded glitters in a clear base.  They all have a satin or matte finish, and the colors are black, white, lavender, baby pink, and cherry pink.  Shredded glitter can be finicky but I'm happy to report that I had no issues with rogue glitters trying to stick straight off my nail!  How much I had on each brushload was hit or miss, but that could be in part from working with a mini bottle.  It covered well and I simply dabbed a little extra on the few bare-looking spots that I had.

   This polish really ended up winning me over.  (Even with its abstract 80's confetti vibe.)  It looked cute in the bottle but I wasn't sure if I'd like it on my nails.  Well, I love it on my nails!  The mix of colors is great, especially over my chosen base color...

   Sinful Colors Mint Apple was a polish that I kept seeing, picking up, and putting down.  I really liked it but I already have so many minty green colors, right?  Well, I've finally come to accept the fact that I've turned into a minty/murky/pale green collector and finally snagged it for a whopping $2.  The color is beautiful and the shimmer is wonderful.  Mint Apple is one of those special polishes that looks the same on your nails as it does in the bottle.  It stands out from my other minty colors.  It is a bit sheer, and I did 2-3 coats depending on the nail.

 

   If you're following me on Instagram you probably already spotted this combo, as I posted it with a new tag: #NailsandNintendo  I'm holding my DS in that shot.  I'm not much of a gamer but I love my DS, partly for the fact that I covered it in roses and jewels, yes.  If you paint your nails and you own anything Nintendo related be sure to join in the fun!  =)

   You can buy Laquerlicious polishes on etsy, they are $8.50 for a full-size bottle.  If you would like to own Melted Ice Cream, be quick!  It is on sale for $6.50 and once it's gone, it's gone.  Michelle's customer service is great and the shipping is fairly priced, so I definitely recommend her shop.  You'll be seeing a few more of her polishes on my blog soon!  Thanks for reading!

Swatch / NotD

   It took me way too long to get around to wearing this polish after nabbing it from a blog sale.  Butter LONDON Knackered had been on my wishlist for awhile, though I had no idea what the name meant.  It prompted me to look into British slang, and in that way I found that it means basically means exhausted.  Cool!  British slang is fun!  And so is this polish.

   I have to admit that I was knackered when I did my nails.  I used one coat of Wet 'n Wild Black Creme as my base (yes, it really is good - my first time trying it), and one coat of Knackered over top.  I didn't do my best work with this manicure, and I didn't realize how sloppy it was until it showed in the macro shots... yikes!

   Butter LONDON Knackered has a thin consistency that dries pretty fast.  I think it would have looked better with either two coats or a thicker, better-applied coat.  Even so this polish is super gorgeous, looking the most stunning in low light when it's holo microglitter sparkles like crazy and it has more of a blackened smoldering effect.

   The purple-to-green shift this polish has is awesome.  It also shows pale blue in the bottle but I don't really see that on the nail.  I believe that is just from the sheer tint of the polish.  If I use Knackered alone it would look more grey-blue, and not have such a strong color shift.

  The sparkle reminds me of China Glaze Fairy Dust very much.  I expect you could create a similar manicure just by layering Fairy Dust over your favorite duochrome polish.  I loved wearing Knackered so now I'm inspired to create other versions of this manicure through layering.  What do you think of it?

Swatch & Review / Nail Art

   At first I was planning a regular swatch post for the few Layla Mirror Effect polishes that I picked up.  But the plain fact is that there are already awesome swatch posts out there with all the individual colors, my favorite example being at A Polish Addict.  (Here's part 2 from her, as well!)  All the polishes have an identical finish so rather than more plain-ole' swatches, I had fun with nail art!

   I bought my Layla polishes from FabulouStreet.  I managed to pick them up on sale, their regular price is $15.50 per bottle.  The special chrome formula is intended to be used without a base coat on freshly buffed nails.  (You can even buy a special Layla file for this purpose, which came out with their holographic collection.)  I ignored this.  Instead I used a peel-off base coat on my unbuffed (nonbuffed? buffless?) nails.

   As you can see these truly show every little imperfection in your nail.  They dry super-fast into a thin foil.  Personally I hate to go without a base coat, and these applied just fine over what I had on, so I think next time I will try tricking them with a super-thick glossy base!  I used a fast-drying drying topcoat on all my fingers and a thick topcoat on my thumb, no issues there either.  Wait for the polishes to dry before top coating them!

   The opacity on these metallics is wonderful despite their thin, almost watery consistency - you're looking at just one coat of each polish, both in the base and each layer of the cloud design that I free-handed with the polish brush.  The least opaque seemed to be Titanium Sky, which if seen at the right angle in certain lighting had a thin spot.  Can you tell?

  Layla did a very nice job with this line of polishes.  Finally, metal-finish polish without frosty brushstrokes!  They are the most chrome-like metallics I've ever seen, but nothing as shiny as their bottle caps.  Because of how they show every tiny ding and dent in your nail bed I will probably stick with using these for nail art.  I'll probably hold off on buying any more of them until they release more unique colors, though.

   Layla is an Italian brand, specializing in various "effect" polishes, and all Big 3 Free.  They are on the pricey side for my budget, but I've enjoyed every polish I've bought from them.  Have you tried anything from this brand?  Do you these metallic nail polishes?  Let me know!  =)

Swatch & Review

   This is an extra-special review post, because I'm getting to share my very own custom polish creation from Different Dimension on Etsy!  After seeing a similar polish in her shop I was inspired to request my own tweaked version called Pastel Nonpareil.  Isn't it lovely?

   My inspiration for the name was taken from these amazingly tasty and especially eye-catching treats served at our belated wedding reception.  They were made by my sister-in-law!

   Didn't she do a stunning job?  Let me tell you, these did not last long at all.  Everyone loved them!  Nonpareil (non-puh-rell) sprinkles are my favorite sprinkles ever, too!  Put them on something and I'll want to eat it.  Thus the name behind my polish!  So, let's get down to the nitty-gritty on custom polishes from Different Dimension.

   First off, sizing and price.  A custom polish from Different Dimension is going to be in a full size Different Dimension bottle which holds 15ml.  The cost for calling all the shots on your own Big-3 Free blend is $10, which I'd say is a smoking deal considering the quality Missi is known for and the fact that every custom polish comes with a personalized gift.

   Admittedly, I had it pretty easy in describing my request.  "Like what you made there, but with X color added and no shimmer."  Still, the customer service was great.  My questions were answered and I had some options to work with before I fully made up my mind.  I gave the polish a name and Missi had it finished for me in no time at all.  Here you can see it has a printed label, finished the same way that one of Different Dimension's regular polish offerings would be.

   Oh, and that free gift?  It's a handmade necklace of your polish that arrives in a little drawstring bag.  Missi takes a bit of your custom blend and pours it into a cute glass vial, corks it and puts it on a long chain.  (My chain was 24", it can be cut down easily if a shorter length is desired.)  The cork is sealed into the bottle with a very strong clear glue.  I don't know if the polish will ever dry out inside the bottle but I doubt it would change the look much if it did.

   Isn't it adorable?   The bottle measures 1 inch including the cork, so it makes a nice piece for layering.  I can definitely see wearing a couple of these necklaces together.  I was very happy to open my package from Different Dimension and be able to wear my custom polish right away - no dry time!

   One other thing to note is the value of the necklace.  You can buy a vial necklace filled with one of the colors regularly offered in the Different Dimension store.  It's essentially the same thing, and the cost is $5.00.  So if you figure that you just spent $10 for a 15ml nail polish made just for you and that polish included a free gift valued at $5.00...  I don't need to point out how good of a deal that is, do I?

   Pastel Nonpareil is a white jelly polish filled with small holographic glitters in a mix of rainbow colors.  As you can see in the above macro shot there is a lot of glitter!  It mixes easily and the somewhat thick formula is easy to work with just like all the other Different Dimension polishes I used beforehand.  I almost used a white creme polish as a base, but I'm so glad I didn't.

   Above, three coats is squishy white jelly perfection.  Top coat smoothed everything out, but I've also worn this polish without a top coat and the glitters aren't annoying or snaggy.  You can see a hint of my nail line in this picture, but I hardly noticed it with my non-macro eyeballs.

   What surprised me is how much I loved it at one coat.  I'm not generally into sheer polishes, but Pastel Nonpareil won me over.  The white jelly base is what makes it work, evening out perfectly and making my nails look like they must be lovely on their own, not slightly stained from all the dark polish I wear...  Oh, and the glitter helps, of course.  ;D  I actually wore my manicure with 3 coats one one hand and 1 on the other, and the winner remains undecided.  I'll wear it both ways!

   I've also used this polish in layering for jelly sandwiches, and it was wonderful like that, too.  I ended up with a very versatile polish!  Which Pastel Nonpareil manicure is your favorite?

   In conclusion, I definitely recommend Different Dimension for custom polish creation.  I already have a few more ideas cooked up and am excited to say that you will be seeing a polish named by me in the Different Dimension shop soon!

   Today I'm happy to share my haul from Digital Nails.  I got these polishes last month and have had a lot of fun with them already!

   I purchased these for myself: Rainbow Dash, Spectraflair Topcoat (x2), and the mini was sent along for free.  Before I get into the polishes swatches let me talk about buying from Digital Nails on etsy, which is run by a girl named Raphaelle.

   Today I'm finally revealing my first ever self-made, or "franken", nail polish!!  So, prepare for lots of pictures because I had a hard time narrowing things down!

   I made this back in January... yes four months ago, and only now got around to trying it because the lack of sunshine made me ignore most of my holographic polishes.  It has a little bit of a story behind it, too!  I made this nail polish for my mother-in-law-to-be, because she really liked my Nfu-Oh holo'd nails.  After its creation I was trying to come up with the right name, and my fianceé, determined that it had to have "hologram" in the name somehow, coined Hologlam.  I had to admit it was pretty clever, so I'm going with his name choice.

   The polish doesn't require and special base coat to use, so it's a stand-alone item.  I bottled it in these adorable star-shape bottles, which I accented with a pink rhinestone.  A fun fact: these bottle shots are from January, and amongst the very first photos I took of my then-brand-new camera!!  (So, I didn't know what I was doing...)

   Lots of sparkle in there!  But how does it look on the nail?  Well...

   I did a super-quick mani to compare a couple of magnetic polish colors.  The Black Sparkle from Icing has been on the blog before, but I wanted to see how it compared to the Claire's Silver that I found not too long ago.

   More pictures and observations after the jump!

   I picked one nail polish out with my last Forever 21 order.  I'm always drooling over their accessories and every so often they have some neat polish up for grabs.  I don't have a F21 store nearby, so I just chance it going by Online descriptions, and get to be surprised when it all arrives.

   When I was unpacking this bottle I was at first afraid it wasn't going to work for me, seeing all the orangey-yellow sparks in the bottle, but then I looked closer and I realized it is something special.  This nail polish has no real name - the label just says Blue/Clear; Online it is listed as "Blue Stars Nail Polish".  But when I looked at it in person, saw the flashing aqua-blue stars and unusual iridescent glitters, to me this polish is Sea Stars.

   More about the glitter polish after the jump.  I have to say that last week was really, really rough for me.  I was having a bout of being depressed, sad, whatever you want to call it, and after a week I really wanted my usual chipper demeanor back.  (So did my family and boyfriend, it was rough for all of us.)  So when it was time for my nails to be refreshed I went for the happiest color I could.  China Glaze Happy-Go-Lucky was my yellow creme base - 2 coats.  It actually looks better on my skintone than these pictures suggest, but it is pushing for me, I know.

   Fortunately my mood did pick up yesterday, along with the sunshine.  These nail pictures are taken in full sunlight, no flash.  (Love my new camera - I took these in a moving car!)  If you'd like to see glitter bottle shots keep reading!

    Look at what Color Club sent to me!  I actually won this nail polish from them!  I was so surprised; I rarely win contests.  It was really nice to win, and proves that yes, they really are connecting with their fans and giving things away.  How did I win it?  I follow them on Twitter.  Every Friday they post a picture of one of their colors (to their facebook, but they tweet it too), and accept E-mails of people guessing what the nail polish in the bottle is.  You get two guesses.  Very fun!  For their last contest I had just one guess: Naughty-cal Navy.  Imagine my surprise when I was contacted as a winner!  I figured I would hear back from them, I've guessed incorrectly and they personally thanked me for playing anyway (scoring big points in my book).  But this time... I won!  And they sent the polish out to me super quickly.

   I was expecting a bottle of Naughty-cal Navy, but instead I ended up with Blue-topia.  Very cool with me because I like the name better and it is a neat color.  It would fall into the family of navy blues.  Not a color that I was looking to buy for myself, yet one that I knew I could use for layering and art.  So how convenient to get it for free!  Lots more piccies after the jump~

   I was planning to make a different post today but I had to share this color instead.  I guess this is like a pink Wednesday post!  I don't do pink Wednesday on purpose, I'm way too random with my color wants.  But today is LA Colors in Pink Chiffon.  Perfection in pink polish.

   This is just one coat - application was so great!  It is easy to work with and opaque.  If you work quickly it self-levels beautifully and starts drying fast.  It is a rosy pink creme with extremely fine silver shimmer that gives it depth and gorgeousness.  No brushstroke issues, either.  No topcoat in these shots.

   I think I'm getting the hang of my new camera, too!  It is a learning process for me but slowly and surely you will be every speck of glitz in my polish, every ragged torn cuticle, each dried piece of skin... exciting, right?  =D

   Anyway, later I will be sharing these nails again with a super dose of glitter, but I loved this color too much by itself to not share it.  Like I said, really great pink.  It's girly and feminine, but has an air of sophistication about it.  It says "I'm a lady, and I have good taste in what I wear".  Plus it looks great at just one coat so HELLO base for nail art and layering!

   Anyone else own this one?  Or other colors by LA Colors that you love?  I had picked this one up because it looked pretty enough (better on the nail, I'm glad to say) and because of the name.  I'm a seamstress, so "pink chiffon" appeals to me.  What do you think of it?  Thanks for looking!

   I tried Zoya for the first time last year.  I picked two of their colors when they were doing a promo and I said to myself "sure, I'd try Zoya out for that price".  My choices?  The sparkling duo of Kissy and Izzy.  Picked partly because of the colors (pink!), partly because of the finishes (glitter, foil!), and partly because of the cute names.

   Kissy is the glitter, Izzy is the metallic.  The box they were sent in even matched nicely with their pinkness.  I have actually worn these colors together twice and not gotten pictures... shame on me.  I will say that I rather liked, even preferred, Izzy all by herself.  The next time I wear Kissy I'm going to try her over a dark creme.  =)

   Kissy is a wonder in the bottle.  She is made of tiny red glitters, small hot pink bar or "string" glitters, and larger holographic bar glitter.  My suggestion to you is to grab a bib and view this larger:

   Soon after these two cuties came into my life I was buying all sorts of Zoya nail polishes and now I have a nice little collection of the brand.  Love that it's Big 3 Free and no animal testing!  And don't forget that this Thursday is my second Picturesday.  The theme is Zoya Nail Polish.  Click the Picturesday tab at the top for the details - if you submit a picture of your Zoya polish worn you'll be featured on the blog!  =)

   I wanted to play with one of my new flakies for my last manicure!  I picked Glass Slipper since it is a clear polish and I didn't want to alter the color of Nyx Dusty Pink - one of my untrieds.  Actually... this entire manicure was made of untrieds!

   I used Nyx Girls in Dusty Pink (2 coats), Sally Hansen Glass Slipper (1-2 coats), China Glaze Frosty (2 thin coats), and Zoya Purity (1 coat).  I had intended on decorating each nail with some sort of design but never got around to it...

   I've got more magnetic nail polish swatches to share with you today!  Last week I tried two more colors by the Layla brand.  One I loved, one I was slightly let-down about.  First I tried Brown Sugar:

   There were very few swatches of this one Online and it was really hard to judge if it would fit my skintone or not, so I chanced it.  I'm very glad I did!  I ended up loving this even though it is an unusual polish color for me.  It tends to look just a bit darker, like this:

    It is a very neutral brown and doesn't lean too red, too orange, or too anything else.  The silver magnetic particles really pop, and the diagonal line design made me think of turkey feathers.  I tried straight lines on my thumbs... not bad.

   The other thing that was just great about this polish was the application.  This is just one coat and it was completely opaque.  I didn't have any "dead" spots where the magnet didn't effect the polish, and it dried on it's own fairly quickly.

   I'm going to venture to say that Layla Magneffect Brown Sugar has a lot of movement, meaning that the magnetic particles show a strong illusion of moving within the polish.  The silvery lines in this were constantly shifting and changing width, disappearing and reappearing.  It's a fun color to wear.

   The next polish I wore was Layla Magneffect Velvet Groove.  I was hoping for a rich cool-toned burgundy red, but to me it looks mostly purple.  After enjoying Nails Inc. Houses of Parliament I was hoping for something different in my collection.  I did use the Nails Inc. magnet on this color, though!

   The pictures show it as being more red-tinted than it looked in most lighting.  A pretty color anyway, though... oh well!  Hopefully another brand will come up with the perfect rich red magnetic polish.  (Or Layla could just come out with more colors - that's cool with me!)

   The good news about both of these colors is that they both wore well with just minor tip wear.  What do you think of them?

   I'm at the point where I have so many new polishes that I can hardly decide what to put on my nails next!  I made my first Cult Nails order last month and finally decided to ignore all the other new things and try a full mani in the color My Kind of Cool Aid.

   It is definitely My Kind of Color!  In most lights it looks a little darker than this.  A muted, greyed-out lavender with silver shimmer.  The shimmer shows more in the bottle than on the nails, but it gives the creamy polish some character.  Also this doesn't dry very shiny on it's own, but a top coat glossed it right up.

   I added a few star paillettes to some of my nails!  And there is my thumbnail, steadily growing back out...

   Even though it has a big round cap it was still pretty easy to paint with.  Not the most comfortable, but not bad like I expected.  I really loved the formula on this.  It was easy to work with and didn't destroy itself or create bald spots.  Also, the coverage on this polish is awesome.  Here it is at just one coat:

   Isn't this gorgeous?  My of my Cult Nails polishes were.  I picked up Time Traveler for my Mom so I don't have that one to show you (though I've seen it on her nails and can tell you that it is the prettiest deep navy-sapphire-blue).  I have Feel Me Up, Clairvoyant and My Kind of Cool Aid.

   Sadly I shouldn't have risked buying Feel Me Up.  It is not a yellow I will wear, so I'm leaving it brand-new and hopefully I can swap it.  (Anyone interested in this color?  It is currently not available from Cult Nails.)  Clairvoyant is awesome, of course.  Mom got a bottle of that, too.  I might have to do a full flakie manicure next!

   Anyone else use Cult Nails?  I guess I'm late to the party, but I am really impressed!