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!

Barry M Cosmic Glow

Hello everyone!
A little magnetic fun for you guys today. This is one of the nail polish trends that I will never get tired of. I gave up on them for a while since I thought my nails were too curved for this to look pretty with. Then I realized, it was only certain designs that I didn't like, not the magnetic effect itself. This polish, Barry M Cosmic Glow, came with a magnet that seemed to actually work with my nails. I also absolutely love the holographic particles in this polish!

This polish was released in 2012 along with a few other magnetic colors. This was the only one with holographic glitter in it so the only one I felt like picking up!

As with magnetic polishes in general, this took about two coats. I did not use the magnet with the first coat and only used it with the second coat. I've had a lot of trial and error with magnetic polishes in the past which let me get the best out of this one. Even so, I still got a little smudge on my ring finger where I got too close to the magnet.

I was super worried that my topcoat would smear my lines as it has done so in the past, so I let it dry for a long long time before putting the topcoat on. I used Seche Vite here. Even then, there was some blurring. This is the crispest they were. They kind of spread out slightly over time. Something I wish I had known about magnetic polishes ahead of time so I wouldn't have been so disappointed when I first started using them. Now that we have those very strong neodymium magnets, I have been itching to try it with these polishes.

And that's it! See you guys next time!

My Fourth of July themed manicure using magnetic polishes

Happy 4th of July everyone!! I had most of the weekend off and just had to work a little bit today. It's been an amazing, relaxing weekend with awesome weather and a lot of hanging out with family thrown in. I'm really sorry to see the end of it!! 

Even though I'm behind in showing you guys my regular manis, I have to try to show you my holiday manicures relatively on time. I have been really into magnetic manis lately, not that you could tell since I haven't shown you most of them yet. Since I've been so into them lately. I decided to do a magnetic polish July 4th mani. 

For this look, I dry brushed a magnetic polish over the same color metallic polish, added a thick coat of Seche Vite and then used a neodymium magnet over it. 

The polishes I used for this are Sinful Colors Snow Me White (white base), Orly Torrid (red base), Wet n Wild Pop up Blue-tique (blue base), Finger Paints Colorful Collage (holo hex glitter), Wet n Wild Don't Break the Circuit (blue magnetic) and a non name magnetic red from Rite Aid bought some years ago.

I forgot what an amazing red Orly Torrid is until I used it again for this mani. I had used it last for an anniversary mani some years ago. It looked amazing mattified at that time. I'm also very glad I didn't write off Don't Break the Circuit either after my last experience with it. So glad neodymium magnets started getting used with magnetic nail polishes! I love it much more than the magnets with designs right now.

That's all for now! See you next time!

Sinful Colors Captivate Me (trying to imitate Masura magnetic polishes)

Hi guys!
I am very excited to show you guys today's post! After having drooled over Jeanette's (@theswatchaholic) Instagram pictures of magnetic manicures using a neodymium magnet fior a few weeks and then looking at pictures after pictures of Masura magnetic polishes online and lamenting the fact that they are so hard to obtain here in the US, I finally decided to get my own neodymium magnet and try out this new technique of using magnetic polishes. I swear this has given my old magnetic polishes new life. This much more powerful magnet doesn't put little designs on the nail, it just moves the metal powder in the polish around in such a way that the end result looks like rich fabric or a gemstone. I think my nails today look like red velvet (not the cake, the fabric).

This is Sinful Colors Captivate Me, purchased by me ages ago when everybody was making magnetic polishes. It is a berry red with tiny little holographic particles in it. As with all magnetic polishes in my experience, it took two coats for full opacity. It was thick but easy to work with.


I stamped over it with China Glaze Passion and a design from an Uber Chic plate 1-03.

And more pictures from different angles.

Now more pictures of it stamped.

I even took some videos to try and capture the depth the polish gets when using the neodymium magnet. I just purchased a thin rectangular magnet from Ebay. 

So, the method: I painted a coat of polish over all the nails. Then one nail at a time, I put on a second coat of polish, immediately held the neodymium magnet over the polish at an angle with the thin side facing the nail for a few seconds. It doesn't even have to be all that close to the nail. You can literally see all the metal powder in the polish gather together under the magnet. Then a few seconds later, I rotated the angle about 180 degrees for just a second.to disperse the particles slightly. That's the method I used here. Maybe I'll find a different method later that I also like but that's what I've picked up from watching Russian nail bloggers with perfect manis on Instagram work their incomprehensible magic on a 15 sec video. 

Thanks for looking!!

Wet n Wild Don't Break the Circuit (topcoat fail)

Hi everyone! This is the last of the blue manis from my blue week. This one I'm not so proud of. It looked good for maybe 20 minutes and then I ruined it :-( This is Wet n' Wild Magnetic Don't Break the Circuit.

It looks nice right? Beautiful blue color, strong magnetic stripes. The magnet itself doesn't have a finger rest on it so I accidentally bumped my index finger nail on it but no big deal. It was a small mistake compared to all the trouble I've had with it in the past. The one disappointment I did have was that when I first bought it, the polish looked like it actually had holographic particles in it. But when I worse, I didn't see a one, not in the bottle or my nails. Rite Aid lights fooled me!!

I usually don't take pictures of my nails if the next step is to just topcoat it. If I'm going to be doing more nail art, I might not bother. Something was nagging me about the topcoat step, though, so I decided to heck with it, I'll take pictures! I'm glad I did. My next step was to use Diamond Dry topcoat and this is what happened...

Whaa...? I lost my crisp lines! Maybe it's because I used the topcoat I did, maybe it's because I used a topcoat at all. But I didn't like it. I ended up putting some Revlon Blue Mosaic on the tips as a gradient but I still didn't like it. It came off the next day.

Has this happened to anyone using topcoats and magnetic polishes? I haven't used many magnetics but this was a new one for me.