On Wednesdays We Wear Pink: Bubblegum!

I’ve had this idea just rolling around and idling in my brain for MONTHS. Months, I say. Torture? Yes. Very much.

Base: OPI Alpine Snow in Matte
Dots: Various pinks, I used about 7 different pinks, all cremes. However I can’t remember the name of them all. 😛

The dots were freehanded using dotting tools from Born Pretty. Here’s some spam, because I really like this manicure and I know you will too.

An interesting thing I noticed, the dots were very defined until I applied Seche Vite, which at that point they blurred and adopted this dreamy feel. Cool huh? 🙂

Glitter in the Air

You thought I was done with my Lippmanns, didn’t you? So did I! The other day I went to a photography exhibition and my friend, Liane, presented me with this:

Glitter in the Air! So my theme week has gone on for an extra day, making it a total of about 9 days. Wow! 🙂
This is a GORGEOUS polish. I have ordered my own bottle actually. I had to. I couldn’t NOT have this.

Brief swatch. I thought/hoped that the murky grey/pale blue or lilac base would transfer onto the nail, and no dice as you can see above. That was about two coats. It’s a mix of pink and blue hex/round glitter.
So I decided to layer it on a pastel baby blue and wow is it ever gorgeous. It’s a very Easter-y color, too.  I chose Avon Vintage Blue:

Then I layered Glitter in the Air over this!

The only issue I had with this was that it was very hard to align the glitters, but I think that’s just a thing we deal with when dealing with glitter toppers. The sheer murky base muted the pastel blue down and it was PERFECT. However I logged on this morning and found out Chloe did the EXACT same look! GRR. 🙂 I should have gone with yellow or grey. Liane did lilac, (American Apparel L’Esprit if I remember correctly) with matte and it was gorgeous. Oh, speaking of matte…

Yep! I felt that the matte topcoat gave it a lot more Easter feel, it was like an eggshell you know?

However this one reacted badly with the Seche Vite and I felt like it shrank by the hour. Horrible. You can see some tip wear already, and I think this was definitely over 15 hours of wearing it. 😦

Glitter in the Air

You thought I was done with my Lippmanns, didn’t you? So did I! The other day I went to a photography exhibition and my friend, Liane, presented me with this:

Glitter in the Air! So my theme week has gone on for an extra day, making it a total of about 9 days. Wow! 🙂
This is a GORGEOUS polish. I have ordered my own bottle actually. I had to. I couldn’t NOT have this.

Brief swatch. I thought/hoped that the murky grey/pale blue or lilac base would transfer onto the nail, and no dice as you can see above. That was about two coats. It’s a mix of pink and blue hex/round glitter.
So I decided to layer it on a pastel baby blue and wow is it ever gorgeous. It’s a very Easter-y color, too.  I chose Avon Vintage Blue:

Then I layered Glitter in the Air over this!

The only issue I had with this was that it was very hard to align the glitters, but I think that’s just a thing we deal with when dealing with glitter toppers. The sheer murky base muted the pastel blue down and it was PERFECT. However I logged on this morning and found out Chloe did the EXACT same look! GRR. 🙂 I should have gone with yellow or grey. Liane did lilac, (American Apparel L’Esprit if I remember correctly) with matte and it was gorgeous. Oh, speaking of matte…

Yep! I felt that the matte topcoat gave it a lot more Easter feel, it was like an eggshell you know?

However this one reacted badly with the Seche Vite and I felt like it shrank by the hour. Horrible. You can see some tip wear already, and I think this was definitely over 15 hours of wearing it. 😦

Boom Boom Pow

We’re nearing the end of our Lippmann week, and I have something unique this time. Today Was A Fairytale was layered over a fantastic red creme, well this time, I layered it over a new arrival: Illamasqua Milf.

Buddies, all ready to go 😉

Milf is a gorgeous mint pastel creme. GORGEOUS. Very eye-catching too, and looked great with my skin 😀 Totally worth the money.

 Boom Boom Pow is suspended in a clear shimmery base, with gold hexagonal glitter mixed in with small round glitter.

 Boom Boom Pow is said to have the dust of 24k gold. 😉 Gold glitter looks extremely luxe on mint polish, and I’m glad I took Liane’s recommendation.
No matte shot, because I forgot. 😀

Don’t forget to go here and vote for me in the Bundle Monster nail art entry! 

Boom Boom Pow

We’re nearing the end of our Lippmann week, and I have something unique this time. Today Was A Fairytale was layered over a fantastic red creme, well this time, I layered it over a new arrival: Illamasqua Milf.

Buddies, all ready to go 😉

Milf is a gorgeous mint pastel creme. GORGEOUS. Very eye-catching too, and looked great with my skin 😀 Totally worth the money.

 Boom Boom Pow is suspended in a clear shimmery base, with gold hexagonal glitter mixed in with small round glitter.

 Boom Boom Pow is said to have the dust of 24k gold. 😉 Gold glitter looks extremely luxe on mint polish, and I’m glad I took Liane’s recommendation.
No matte shot, because I forgot. 😀

Don’t forget to go here and vote for me in the Bundle Monster nail art entry! 

Some Enchanted Evening

We have a salmon-pink Lippmann glitter, perfect for Pink Wednesdays!

It’s a salmon hex/round glitter suspended in a clear base. Like Boom Boom Pow/Today Was A Fairytale, they would never be sheer. This time I took a brief swatch on a naked nail to give an idea:

This is actually about two-three coats. 🙂
So since I was wearing this for Pink Wednesday I chose a pink base, but I was torn between two colors so I combined them.

 The base is China Glaze in Diva Bride. A very light pastel baby pink creme. The tips are Essie Mod Square, a bold bright pink creme.

I liked how it turned out 🙂 The tips were created using scotch tape.

 I was curious, so I took out China Glaze Matte Magic. It’s still sparkly, and the photos don’t show much difference but in person you can see the difference. With the matte topcoat on, the glitter comes out while for the glossy version it was seche vite doing the shiny work.

I like both. I feel like the matte version is “cleaner”or more professional. I don’t know. =)

Some Enchanted Evening

We have a salmon-pink Lippmann glitter, perfect for Pink Wednesdays!

It’s a salmon hex/round glitter suspended in a clear base. Like Boom Boom Pow/Today Was A Fairytale, they would never be sheer. This time I took a brief swatch on a naked nail to give an idea:

This is actually about two-three coats. 🙂
So since I was wearing this for Pink Wednesday I chose a pink base, but I was torn between two colors so I combined them.

 The base is China Glaze in Diva Bride. A very light pastel baby pink creme. The tips are Essie Mod Square, a bold bright pink creme.

I liked how it turned out 🙂 The tips were created using scotch tape.

 I was curious, so I took out China Glaze Matte Magic. It’s still sparkly, and the photos don’t show much difference but in person you can see the difference. With the matte topcoat on, the glitter comes out while for the glossy version it was seche vite doing the shiny work.

I like both. I feel like the matte version is “cleaner”or more professional. I don’t know. =)

Collection Swatch: a-england

So being the geek I am, when I found the a-england polish site I had to buy them all because OMG AWESOME NAMES. They arrived about last week (or maybe two weeks ago, okay, I’m kinda behind) and while I was staying up with Nick supervising him doing his homework, I swatched them all.

General notes before we begin:
— Most are two coaters, with the exception of Merlin, which is one-coater.
— No topcoat, only basecoat
— Formula was great with them all with a few exceptions
— I am still not exactly sure if they are deserving of their price tag, as the bottling and formula is kind of typical and their colors are not extremely unique (however beautiful).
— I am extremely, I mean EXTREMELY surprised there are no greens in this collection!! Green is a very medieval color, at least to me.

Here we go.

 Dark purple duochrome, with a slight blue flash.

 Excuse the horrid picture. Camelot is a gorgeous black, with a brown base and is an one-coater if you’re careful.

 Elaine is a very dusty purple/gray and I love it. Very muted, a nice color.

 There’s a saying among us nail bloggers– everyone needs one nice silver foil in their collection, and I can definitely say this one is mine. Not to mention the kickass name 😉

Galahad is an interesting light blue. This picture makes it look like a shade of the sky blue family but I would say it borders on being teal. Again, another favorite. 

 Guinevere is a dusty lilac creme. Pardon the hair on my ring finger– a piece of the cotton ball I used earlier.

 Holy Grail is a very nice warm gold, with a shimmer.

 This one kind of gave me trouble. A very pale sheer pink, almost a french pink. The formula was an issue and even after THREE coats there’s a visible nail line up there. The brush on this one was wonky too, and threw me off.

 Grey duochrome with a hint of … I don’t know? Green?

 Dark purple holographic goodness! I love this one too.

 Lancelot.. Good lord it’s an extremely dark plum. It’s pretty much another black. I included a picture of the first coat, so you can see its true color.

 Merlin is a silver glitter suspended in a clear jelly base. Extremely dense, what you see above is one coat.

 A sheer duochrome silver/white/pink, great for layering. Three coats above and it’s still sheer which is why I think it’s for layering on other polish (something I haven’t tried, this was swatched at the end– dammit)

 Lovely red. This is THE red, for me. Shimmery.

 Blue holographic goodness. What’s the difference between Tristam and Lady of the Lake, I asked myself? See below.

All two coaters, but you can see Lady is more pulling on purple while Tristam is on the navy side.

Thoughts? 😉 

Collection Swatch: a-england

So being the geek I am, when I found the a-england polish site I had to buy them all because OMG AWESOME NAMES. They arrived about last week (or maybe two weeks ago, okay, I’m kinda behind) and while I was staying up with Nick supervising him doing his homework, I swatched them all.

General notes before we begin:
— Most are two coaters, with the exception of Merlin, which is one-coater.
— No topcoat, only basecoat
— Formula was great with them all with a few exceptions
— I am still not exactly sure if they are deserving of their price tag, as the bottling and formula is kind of typical and their colors are not extremely unique (however beautiful).
— I am extremely, I mean EXTREMELY surprised there are no greens in this collection!! Green is a very medieval color, at least to me.

Here we go.

 Dark purple duochrome, with a slight blue flash.

 Excuse the horrid picture. Camelot is a gorgeous black, with a brown base and is an one-coater if you’re careful.

 Elaine is a very dusty purple/gray and I love it. Very muted, a nice color.

 There’s a saying among us nail bloggers– everyone needs one nice silver foil in their collection, and I can definitely say this one is mine. Not to mention the kickass name 😉

Galahad is an interesting light blue. This picture makes it look like a shade of the sky blue family but I would say it borders on being teal. Again, another favorite. 

 Guinevere is a dusty lilac creme. Pardon the hair on my ring finger– a piece of the cotton ball I used earlier.

 Holy Grail is a very nice warm gold, with a shimmer.

 This one kind of gave me trouble. A very pale sheer pink, almost a french pink. The formula was an issue and even after THREE coats there’s a visible nail line up there. The brush on this one was wonky too, and threw me off.

 Grey duochrome with a hint of … I don’t know? Green?

 Dark purple holographic goodness! I love this one too.

 Lancelot.. Good lord it’s an extremely dark plum. It’s pretty much another black. I included a picture of the first coat, so you can see its true color.

 Merlin is a silver glitter suspended in a clear jelly base. Extremely dense, what you see above is one coat.

 A sheer duochrome silver/white/pink, great for layering. Three coats above and it’s still sheer which is why I think it’s for layering on other polish (something I haven’t tried, this was swatched at the end– dammit)

 Lovely red. This is THE red, for me. Shimmery.

 Blue holographic goodness. What’s the difference between Tristam and Lady of the Lake, I asked myself? See below.

All two coaters, but you can see Lady is more pulling on purple while Tristam is on the navy side.

Thoughts? 😉 

Zoya Summertime

Here is the other half of the Zoya Summer 2011 collection, Summertime. This is a six piece collection featuring cremes.

The polish was two coater in all of the pictures. Had VNL issues with the red ones, but mainly not too terrible. Formula was stellar. I love Zoya although their price tag could go down a little bit more. 🙂

Love Areej! Such a nice take on the Pantone 2011 Color of the Year: Honeysuckle color.

 Areej, a very strong fuchsia.

This is a bit darker in real life. My camera, and the uploading process washed it out 😦

 Breezi, an interesting blue. Almost teal, almost periwinkle. I looked this color up and it seems to match Munsel Blue, according to Wikipedia’s list of color drops (the little blue square above).

Very dark fuchsia creme.

Great purple creme, this photo shows a bit too purple. It’s a lot more “pastel” (washed out) than the photo showing.

 Sooki is a very cool cherry red. It’s the perfect red creme! I don’t LOVE this because the name reminds me of that horrible Snooki from Jersey Shore and I can’t stand her. 😦

Tamsen is a much warmer red– you can see it has a lot more orange than its sister Sooki above. Dark tomato red. It leans a lot towards the orange side than Sooki, who leans towards cherry. 

Love these cremes… I could do without the two reds though. How about a green? 😉 

I also want to see Zoya name their polish after some REAL women, not these vapid beings that you see on trashy, brain-cell-slaughtering TV shows. =\