Happy late Fourth of July!!

Here it is, more than a day late! Oops! Hope everyone had a good Fourth of July! I used Fun Lacquer Blue Tears and Goddess of the Dawn and used a generic white striping polish for the white in the middle.

NailaDay: Barry M Coral and China Glaze Blonde Bombshell Skittlette

Another mani that's great for summertime. I know. It's almost Fourth of July and I'll have an appropriate manicure for you guys soon but this is one that I pulled out from the vault that I wore last year. It's with Barry M Coral again, what a great polish! I just love all the polishes I have from Barry M. 

The accent nail is China Glaze Blonde Bombshell and the stamped image is from a Pueen Encore plate. I use that set a lot, don't I? It's the only one handy enough for my lazy self to dig out because all of my other plates are currently stuck in boxes and I could use this set 50 more times and still not duplicate myself. It was a pretty good purchase. 

Here we are with Barry M Coral and CG Blonde Bombshell without the stamping. I tell you, I fell in love with Blonde Bombshell in this mani. I love the mix of small and medium gold glitters. It's a simple formulation but the density and sparkle is really nice! This here is about 2 1/2 to 3 coats.

Thanks again for looking!!

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!

Born Pretty Holo #4

A long time ago, a time when you weren't tripping over a holographic polish every time you turned around, when indie holographic polish was just starting to become a thing, I found out that the Born Pretty Store carried holographic polishes and they were a reasonable price for a small 6 ml bottle. Well, I surely did get myself a bunch of colors and this is one of them. They don't have any fancy names. This one is just called #4. These days, this would be a fairly ho hum holo polish. Nothing fancy, no shimmer, no glitter, no flakies. Definitely no multichrome pigment added. Just a lovely pinky/red/coral (what the hell is this color? Watermelon?) straight holo. And I wore it that way. This is three coats. No stamping, no gradient, no art. It was very pretty. 

Thanks for looking!

Zoya Stevie

When the Zoya Pixie Dusts first came out, I was completely enamored! The sugary, confectionery look of them was incredible. And then the sparkle when you topcoat them! Just gorgeous! I wanted to own every single one. I haven't been able to quite keep up with that desire since I'm missing some of the ones from the latest release but one day....

For now, we will have to rely on this beauty, Zoya Stevie.

I absolutely love the color but I wasn't a hundred percent sure I loved the color on my nails. But, that's the way I feel about 90% of pastel type shades and I'll continue to wear them anyway so....
As most of their pixie dusts, this one went on beautifully. It had great coverage in two coats. The first coat dried almost instantly and the second coat took several minutes but that's not unusual either for this formula. The texture is finely rough and it looks like sugar crystals on the nails in the sun.

In these pictures below, I paired it with China Glaze Plur-ple, added stamping from a PUEEN plate and topcoated some of the nails. I liked the look overall but here in pictures it does look a little mish-mash-y.

And, that's it! Hope you guys liked that and I'll see you next time!

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!

Barry M Bright Purple

Hello everyone!

A quick post today, as these Barry M posts tend to be for me. I still have a few more that I have swatched, waiting to be posted. I chose to show this one today, Barry M Bright Purple. This is a beautiful and bright jelly like creme. This took me three coats to get great opacity. I've used this polish before in one of my all time favorite manis.

I love polishes that have this somewhat squishy quality to it. There may be a sense of patchiness when you look at these pictures but in real life, it was not at all noticeable.
That's all for today. Have a good night, everyone!

ILNP Sirène (H)

Hey polish lovers!  I have an old one from the archives today. This is ILNP Sirene (H). It took me a while to get to wearing it and it took my a while to post this. The bottle is the old round style so that goes to show you how old this polish is. This was one of my first indies and one of my first multichromes. The only others I had were the Hits collection of multichromes, one of which I've shown you before. 

On the website, this polish is described as follows: 

"Sirène (H) magically shifts through spectacularly vivid hues of green, blue, violet, red, and even offers subtle hints of gold depending on the angle of your fingertips and the type of lighting you’re under!"

I certainly got a lot of shifts from this polish in real life but the most prominent were green, teal and violet. It was hard for me to see the red and gold. I used three coats here. The first coat was a little sheer and patchy but that quickly corrected itself with further coats.

Outside shade:

Outside sunlight:

That last picture was taken after a few days. You can see the growth at the cuticles. Look how perfect it still looks otherwise! This polish had really good formula and great lasting power on my nails! I have not really been disappointed with any of my ILNPs that I've tried so far and this is no exception.

I seem to keep accumulating more pictures of polishes at a faster rate than I can post them here. So, I will keep interspersing older pictures with newer pictures until I get all caught up....which will be approximately in 12 years.
Ok, until next time!