Polished For Days Glacier

Hi guys!!
I don't know how many of you are aware of a box called For The Love Of Polish but I have been getting it for a few months now and it is awesome!! There are two regular makers and the third is always a guest. Polished for Days has been a regular maker for a while and the other one used to be Illyrian Polish but she just handed over the reins to Pahlish. I have always been seriously impressed with the polishes and I am super excited every month to see what they come up with.

The polish I am going to show you today is by Polished For Days called Glacier and it's from the FTLOP box from January 2018.

I've realized I'm not a huge fan of pale holographic polishes as previously seen in this post. I was apprehensive getting this polish in the box but I ended up loving it!

Glacier is described as an icy blue linear holographic polish with micro holographic flakes and copper to red to green shifting shimmer. Perhaps it's the blue base color or perhaps it's the shifting shimmer but I thought this really worked for me. I loved wearing this in all lights but especially in sunlight.

I could post so many more pictures of this but I'm going to stop here. That's it for now! Check out For the Love of Polish on Facebook. They sell the beginning of each month and it's a preorder for a few days. I have many more beautiful polishes coming up in the future so thanks for looking and see you again, I hope!

Tonic Polish Coco on Canal Street

Hello everyone!

Another Tonic Polish for you today. This one was a limited edition and it was I think offered exclusively through Color4Nails as part of an NYC duo. It's not your average red. It's has a touch of holo and a touch of duochrome taking it from a almost fushia to hints of orange at the edges. Hopefully the pictures below can show you all the variations!

Alright, I don't feel very talky today so that's pretty much it! I entertained the thought of stamping over it while I wore it but I didn't have time/was too lazy. Next time!

Broadway Dark Night with red-green-gold shifting pigment (aka Unicorn Pee)

There is a lot of hype right now with this red/green/gold color shifting pigment. It started off with Clarins 230, something I'll never get my hands on, THE Unicorn Pee. Then, (and I consider myself lucky to have gotten into nail polish long enough ago that I could do this,) I saw that Cathy from More Nail Polish got her hands on some of that color shifting pigment and was offering it to her readers...even internationally! I am so thankful to her to this day. She is an amazing lady who parted with this and a gold-green and a green-blue color shifting pigment for dirt cheap. This pigment really is gorgeous and looks amazing over blues and purples! That didn't prevent me from getting a bottle of ILNP's The Magician but I'm sure I could have not bothered.

I had a hard time getting the green shift on camera for some reason so you will just have to see the awesomeness of the red shift. This is one coat of my franken with the red-green pigment over Broadway Dark Night.

I will have to wear it again and show better pictures of it another time. Until next time!

Different Dimension Tulips Are Better Than One

Hi all!!

Today's polish is something I purchased a long time ago. I *think* it's still available on the bigcartel site. It's really lovely and I loved wearing it!! It was pretty sheer so I needed to wear three coats. I had to rush the application due to the limited time I had and the formula was a bit thicker as well and so the combination did lead to some bubbling. I didn't mind but I suppose it doesn't really lend itself to being the sexiest of swatches. Thank goodness the polish is so gorgeous that it doesn't matter!

The first three pictures are taken in the lightbox. Really shows the duochrome-y nature of the polish.

These next two pictures are taken outside in cloudy weather. 

After a couple of days, I added a little stamping. I...don't remember what I used. I'm getting lazy, I know.

Well, that's it. It's after midnight so off I go to bed. I love shades like this. I love the glowy nature of this. I could never get tired of it. Next time, I need to keep it from bubbling.

Tonic Polish Lula with ILNP The Magician

Hi everybody!
My post today is just an extension of the last post. A day or so before I took off my last mani, I layered it with the latest resurgence of the much loved sparkly red/green/gold pigment, aka Unicorn Pee! I had obtained the actual powder for this color shifting powder as a well as a couple of others (red/gold and blue/green) from another blogger years ago. I had made my own topper by mixing it with some clear polish and suspension base and I have used it a couple of times in the past. I am stunned that I haven't posted those manis here yet. Although, actually I'm not. I have an long array of manis that I've photographed, watermarked and filed and yet still have to blog about. *sigh*
Anyway, the point is, I had the pigment already and I tried really really hard to resist buying The Magician from ILNP. I finally caved when I realized that I could use the bottle from ILNP as my official Unicorn Pee bottle and just refill it with my own pigment as the fill line got lower. Any excuse, right!?

I got the bottle in the mail while I was wearing Tonic Polish Lula and I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to try it out! I could compare it to my own franken as well. So, I wore a layer of each on different fingers and here is the result!

Can you tell which one is which? My franken is on the pointer and ring fingers. The Magician is on the middle and pinky fingers. Not sure if you guys can tell but I think my franken has more of the pigment in it. There was a time when I thought it wasn't dense enough so I added a little more pigment to it. Otherwise, they're the same!

It was truly magical over Lula. Those holographic glitters peeking through the color shifting pigment is amazing! I am concocting a scenario where I put tiny holographic glitter, iridescent flakies and Unicorn Pee all in one glorious topper!!

Barielle Jordana's Skinny Jeans with Sally Hansen HD Laser

Another gorgeous Barielle blue polish for you today. Before I get to the swatch of the polish, let me show you a really fun layering comboI did  with this polish. This is Sally Hansen HD Laser, a wonderful duochrome shimmer that shifts from blue to purple. It was so sparkly!! And, as with all duochromes or multichromes, it was really interesting on cloudy days and other lower light situations. 

This is what Sally Hansen Laser was layered over, Barielle Jordana's Skinny Jeans. This was two easy coats of this polish. It did not give me any trouble at all and it did not stain with removal. 

Accessorize Ultra Marine Green and Mineral Violet

Hi everyone! I'm going back to showing you guys swatches of my Accessorize polishes. This time I'm going to show you two polishes that are metallic duochromes Ultra Marine Green and Mineral Violet. 

In the interest of full disclosure, I need to let you guys know that I'm going to be going back and forth between older manis and swatches (not too old) and the most recent stuff. Because of that, you eagle eyed viewers are going to notice that my nails are going to look different in these pictures in terms of length and shape from post to post. So, sorry if that gets annoying. It'll be that way until I get caught up with my backlog of pictures.

This first polish, Mineral Violet, is a purple duochrome that shifts to a grey at the edges. This polish took three coats for coverage. It looks like this polish is a dupe or at least very similar to China Glaze No Plain Jane. The pictures make it look more brushstroke-y than it is in real life. I really liked this polish on me. It's a chameleon polish in that it changes the way it looks depending on the lighting it's under. You can see that it looks slightly different in each of the pictures below.

This next one, Ultra Marine Green, is another one of those gold green shifters (I must have been really into those two years ago), that is heavier on the green. Also three coats and more brushstrokes seen in the pictures than in real life.

Again, the above pictures are taken under different lighting conditions and you can see how it looks different each time. It's so shifty, I love it. I don't think it's the greatest color for my skin tone but there's something about that color I really like so I'll keep it around for a while. It's got an amazing shine in the sun!

So what do you guys think? Now that the fuss is all about the ultra ultra multi holo uber chromes (okay that's not really what they're called but they may as well be), is there still a place for these simple mild mannered duochromes? I think so. See you next time!

Sinful Color I Love You

From the very beginning of my nail polish obsession, I knew that I loved purples. It's probably the color I have the most and I need very little reason to buy more. Sinful Color I Love You was one of the first purples I bought but it took me forever to actually wear it. It has a purple jelly base with microglitters/microflecks that I believe are duochrome purple/gold. It's super pretty and I just love this color!!

What I didn't love so much about this polish was how sheer it was. It took FOUR coats to get sort of opaque and get rid of the visible nail line. Tip shrinkage was inevitable with Seche Vite. Normally, that would keep me from using it again but then again, really pretty purple!! I'll just find a way to make it work with layering or jelly sandwiches. I love the color way too much!

Meanwhile on the home front, working on looking for good daycare options for the older son while trying to figure what the heck the rash is on my baby son's face. He is seriously cute but this rash is very much not :-(

Do you guys have any polishes that you might have otherwise purged if not for how amazing you think the color is?

Polished by KPT Nostalgia

Hellloooo everybody!!

Today, I am super excited to show you an amazing thermal polish created by Katherine, owner of the Polished by KPT line of indie polishes. I used to not have all that many indie polishes. I started with Cover Band Sticks and Stones (remember that one?) and a bunch of Hare polishes, most of which have yet to make it on the blog. Not for any lack of love on my part, I just haven't got around to it. Then, something happened over the last few months and now I'm mad for indie polishes. They offer so much more variety and uniqueness to a polish collector. One the brands I was most impressed with and had to have a bunch of polishes from was Polished by KPT. I especially loved all her thermal polishes and today I'm going to show you one of them. This is Nostalgia. 

It is from The Required Love collection and is a dark purple fading thermal with a fine pink/purple to green duochrome shimmer. The picture above and the two below are taken outside in sunlight. I love that my nails are just long enough for the thermal effect to do its thing in this cool fall weather we're having. The warm color is an almost clear/nude color and the cold color is a blackened purple with green duochrome shift. The sunlight really brings out the shimmer. Coverage is amazing with total coverage in just two coats.

The picture below was taken in the lightbox and you can see the blackened edges a bit better. I had this on when I sat on a panel for a work thing and my nails felt very professional. I love that it is very safe for work but has so much going on!

I made a feeble attempt at some freehand flower art because I wanted to see how the changing color would look under the nail art. I'm not happy with the actual design. I'm going to have to try again with something less...amateurish. Maybe I'll do some stamping on it. 

Bottom line, I loved loved loved the polish and I can't wait to try the other colors. Also, I didn't have time to change for a few days and it looked virtually flawless on the fifth day! My topcoat is a 50/50 combo of Seche Vite and NYC Grand Central Station. I only changed it because, well, I can't keep anything on for longer than a week. I get antsy.

Nubar Duochromes: Wildlife with black saran wrap design

Hello polish lovers!

I can't believe I'm getting a post before one week from the previous post! Having a child is wonderful but it's seriously a moratorium on free time for the forseeable future! A little update, last weekend we got some professional photography done with our little guy. I am so excited to see the pictures!! The photographer we worked with was wonderful. She had him quiet and mostly sleeping for most of the photo session, which was the better part of four hours. I was sorely tempted to ask her to come by at night and put him to sleep at bedtime too :-)

This is the last of the Nubar Duochromes that I have. To see the posts for the others, follow the links below.

                Indigo Illusion

                Purple Beach

                Iris Dust
                Moon Eclipse

Onto today's look. This is Nubar Wildlife. It has a pink/bronze shimmer head on with murky green edges. As the light shifts, you can see the shift towards brighter and brighter green.

I embellished this one a bit by adding black with plastic cling wrap. I painted it on the plastic and then carefully dabbed it onto completely dry base. On the ring finger, I added a coat of Jessica 18K gold flake polish.

And here are the collages and the video.