Tonic Polish Becoming

Hi guys! Welcome back! I am typing out this post on my phone right now, while on vacation to attend a family members wedding. For this trip, I finally forayed into the world of pigment powders and gel manicures and I must say it’s working out well! But more on that another time. Today, I’m going to show you another one from one of my favorite indie brands, Tonic! Lindsey Buck, maker of the polishes, herself forayed into magnetics sometime last year and of course, as is her style, made it something completely unique. 

This is Becoming, one of the Tonic magnetic multichromes. This was part of the 2017 holiday duo along with another non magnetic polish called Superstar. This one is described as having a dark blue base with magnetic green to purple shifting multichrome pigment and iridescent orange-red flakes that shift to green. I thought this was a very shifty polish and I had no trouble seeing all the colors come out in different lighting. To that end, I have a ton of pictures below to show you guys all those shifts.

The pictures above show the polish in a variety of different lighting including outdoor cloudy, indoor office lighting and the last one was in direct sunlight. I also had no trouble getting the magnetic part to work. One thing I realized is that I paint my non dominant hand first and then paint my dominant hand. I also take pictures of my non dominant hand for my blog. Which could mean that when I'm holding the magnet to get the line on my dominant hand, that could be spreading the particles on the hand that's holding the magnet. I should try to do the opposite order next time and see if that gets me a sharper line. If you guys are following what Tonic does, you would already know that they just released a whole bunch of magnetic polishes with unicorn pee pigment, double multichrome and holographic pigment as well. Aaannd, of course I picked them up! I'm going to have a lot of polishes to practice with in the upcoming months. Until then, thanks for visiting!

Illyrian Dream Hopper with Indigo Bananas Bonanza

Hello all! How is everyone? I see that I'm getting a couple of views here and there so there must still be people reading my posts...fancy that! So, for the five of you out there who will read this one, here is a polish from another new to the blog indie maker, Illyrian Polish.

I have been in love with Illyrian polishes for a while now and even though I have a sizeable collection at this point, this is the first time I'm wearing and blogging about them. Today's polish is a base for the manicure you see above and below and it's called Dream Hopper. It's a multichrome polish that shifts green to purple with a murky dark base that gives it a near black look. In real life, it looks like a dark purple brown color with a mysterious shift in the colors at different angles. I wore it alone for a day before the urge to layer it with something came. The base is versatile and I could have layered it with many things but I chose another untried polish, Indigo Bananas Bonanza. The green to blue to purple shifting flakes were set off wonderfully over Dream Hopper. 

Here it is, all by itself. You can see how it has that purple brown base with the multichrome pigment that goes from green to purple. I thought this would be the polish I liked the least out of my collection and I liked it quite a lot anyway so hopefully I really love the other polishes in my collection. 

And, that's it for today. Hope everyone is having a good beginning of 2018 so far!!

Polished For Days Anemone

Hello everyone!

I’m back with another indie polish that I’m loving. I have not posted about their brand before. I first noticed them when I started buying the For The Love Of Polish box from their website. Then I started browsing the other polishes offered and really loved a bunch of them. The brand is Polished For Days and the polish is Anemone.

This is from the June 2017 FTLOP box. According to the description on the original swatch post by DeLicious Nails, this polish is made up of a purple holographic base with bronze and rose gold flakes, sterling silver flakes, holo flakes, and green/gold/blue chrome flakes. Now that I know all of that is in there, I can pick them out. Otherwise, it looks like a lovely sparkly holographic chrome flake polish in a pale lavender color. As with all these polishes, it comes alive in directed light, especially sunlight. In the shade, it’s still lovely but sedate.

I’ll post a few more pictures in different lighting. What I also discovered with this polish is that the formula for this was amazing. I applied two coats with no difficulty at all. It dries smooth and even. Soon after I applied the polish but before the topcoat, I had to suddenly take care of removing and washing my son’s sheets due to a vomiting incident and I was convinced I would have to redo my nails. I only ended up having to fix the tips of a couple of them. It dried so fast and held on really well.

I really hope indie polish never goes away. I don't think it will. I can't believe the breadth of creativity of all these makers with their polish creations. Now with these curated and themed boxes, special Facebook group offerings, special limited editions like the Polish Pickup monthly polishses, I keep finding new brands and finishes and it's nuts! I wish I could own them all!

Third day transformation with Glam Polish You're Our Only Hope, Frank!

Hello everyone!!

For today's post, you guys are going to have to forgive my day three tip wear. I was too excited about this polish to really worry about all that. I will have to wear it by itself another time. So, I had been walking around feeling blah about my Femme Fatale The Secret of Secrets when this beauty arrived in the mail. I thought the color was spot on to layer over so I tried it....and loved it!

This polish is so complex I'm not sure what all is actually in there but I do detect small color shifting flakies, some color shifting iridescent glitter, the same one that is throughout this Magical Creatures collection, and holographic microglitter. It was so sparkly, I loved it!

Someday, I will wear this all by itself but I have a feeling this one looks spectacular over a variety of colors.
This is a limited edition shade but it's still available on the Glam Polish website.
Until next time!!

Couple of Barielle polish swatches - Putt-e On Me and Buddha-ful

Alright, about a month ago, I told you guys I'd show you Barielle Putt-e On Me by itself. I had used it as a base for ILNP Supernova as seen in this post and it worked great. I really love the color by itself too. It's a really flattering shade of taupe-y brown that works great for my skin tone. Two coats gave me excellent coverage. 

The second swatch for this post is Barielle Buddha-ful. I remember this being all the rage a while back. It was one of the first "flakie" polishes. Now we're knee deep in flakies but I keep this one for sentimental reasons. The base is a very soft sheer pink. Think any one of a number of Essie polishes that look like this. The flakies are color shifting flakies that shift from a pale gold maybe? to a bright green. Most of the time the shifting happens when the light hits it from an angle. Seen head on the flakies almost seem to disappear. I have pretty prominent visible nail lines but I was kind of frustrated that even at three coats I really couldn't hide them that well from the camera. They were not quite that prominent in real life.

ILNP Supernova over Barielle Putt-e-On Me

Happy New Year everyone!! 

So I did have some lovely sparkly nails for New Years but I'm not as excited about those as what I'm going to show you today. I wanted to start the year off with one of the loveliest polishes I wore last year so I am going to show you ILNP Supernova. What makes it even better is that this polish was given to me as a random act of kindness by someone and started my love for the multichrome flakies. 

In these pictures, I wore it over Barielle Putt-e-on Me. I'll show you the swatch of that in a post real soon. It made for a great neutral base with which to show off the multichrome beauty of Supernova. The colors mainly shifted from teal to blue to purple but at extreme angles you could see a slight fuschia and gold as well.

The three pictures below are my attempt to show you what it looked like when not under the lightbox. The lights are bright incandescent lights of the kitchen and natural sunlight on a cloudy day. 

I'm looking forward to wearing many more of the multichrome flakies I've purchased since receiving this beauty over the next year.

Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Black Tie and mylar flake accent

Hi fellow lacquer lovers!

I blinked and a whole week was gone! Well, not quite that easily. The first part of the week was hellish and might explain why I've been gone for so long. I lost my ability to sleep! I've been finding it more and more difficult to stay in any horizontal position for a good length of time. I was getting bad rib cage and back pain that was waking me up and needless to say, I started feeling more and more like a zombie with each day. I finally got fed up a couple of days ago and took myself off to the guest bedroom with all the pillows I could get except for one for my husband. I made a pillow fort in the guest bed and pretty much sleep partially sitting up. I feel normal again! I know what all the mothers out there are saying right now. No sleep? Get used to it. I'm just praying it's never that bad all the time.

I'm really excited to show you my manicure for this post. This was a very unassuming bottle of Sally Hansen Diamond Strength Black Tie that I picked up from a clearance bin because, honestly, I think it just got caught up with a few other bottles in the heat of the moment. I didn't think much of it in the bottle. I had an idea for a mani that I wanted to use a near black color for and I picked this up to try. Once I actually put it on though, whoa! Duochrome goodness! It's not a super obvious duochrome but enough that non polish lovers noticed the fact that there were multiple colors present.

The first picture was in my light box at night. Duochrome is not too obvious. All the pictures after that are taken outside in varying depths of sunlight. This one above was taken in the shade.

A little more sunlight....

A lot of sunlight!!! Look at all the shimmer....

A distance picture. The accent nail was done by painting a couple of coats of black. Then when the last coat was still wet, I took pieces of mylar flakes from a dollar store nail art package and individually layed them down near each other. I did struggle with this part a bit because the pieces were a little too stiff and kept sticking up all over the place. These pictures show this mani with about three coats of topcoat. It was still slightly uneven. I'm glad I did just an accent nail because the removal was a bit of a pain too. I would do it again, though. I loved the result!

The package of mylar flakes I used. I actually only used the one on the top left. It was still iridescent enough to show all those different colors over black.

My husband loved this one. It got a 10/10!! What do you guys think? Love it? Would the flakies drive you nuts?

Deadly Sins Challenge Day 13: Pride - Finger Paints Tough Art to Follow with Studio M Covered in Diamonds

Hi everyone!

Another Deadly Sins Challenge mani today. This week, the theme is Pride. The prompt for this one was "Recreate your own work to make it even better". One thing I am proud of is how far I've come with respect to nail care, polish application and the quality of my manicures in general. One of the very first manicures I was really proud of was this simple manicure of Sinful Colors Last Chance and Studio M Covered in Diamonds. Right after I wore that mani, I swore to myself that I would wear it again soon because I loved it so much! Two years later, I still hadn't recreated and I thought this would be the perfect opportunity. I really didn't change the essence of the manicure at all. I just figured with how far my nails have come, it's bound to look even better. 

The base I used for this was an untried. I used Finger Paints Tough Art to Follow.  A deep forest green almost jelly. It was a little uneven with application and I had to pain about two to three coats to get it looking nice in real life. In pictures, it looks like it could have used another coat. I went ahead and used Studio M Covered in Diamonds again. Color Club has the exact same polish with the exact same name. This polish is not for everyone. Those mylar flakes do tend to clump and stick up here and there and it takes careful maneuvering to get it even and sitting properly. Even so, I love the effect of the shards.

Here is FP Tough Art to Follow by itself. 

This is the one picture of that mani I loved so long ago. Despite the stubby nails and lack of clean up, I still love this picture. Look at those shards glow!!

I forgot to ask my husband to rate this one. I guess we'll never know...

See below for what the others have done for this challenge!

Wet n Wild Private Viewing with Zoya Opal

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So, this past week has required me to take a bit of step back in terms of how much I can do with my nails. I started taking cases to the OR for real this week and wow, did that create a drastic decrease in my free time! Hopefully I'll be able to figure things out and come up with a reasonable plan to keep some posts going on a regular basis.

The mani I'm going to show you today is not one of my favorites. I wasn't even going to post it but I figured others may have different opinions than me. The base is Wet n Wild Megalast Private Viewing. As a side note, the combination of the color and the name always makes me feel a little dirty when I wear it. It just looks like...naked flesh. Maybe it's just my mind in the gutter!