KBShimmer Be Scareful

KBShimmer's Be Scareful released in Fall 2015.  I got it a few weeks ago from a destash sale - I forget whose it was, but she had a lot of awesome indie polishes up!  I limited myself to one, and of course I chose a Halloween themed polish.

I applied Be Scareful using the sponge method.  First I brushed on one thin coat, to get an even coverage of the white crelly base, and then I sponged on two more layers of the glitter.

Isn't it so fun?  It looks like Halloween threw up on my nails!  I'm definitely glad that I used the sponging method.  The crelly base applies nicely, but the glitters are large enough that it's tough to brush them on.  I highly, highly recommend that you try out the sponge method!  Of course, if you do, you should protect your cuticles with some kind of peel-off barrier, because you'll get glitter all over your skin without it.

As you can see, it's not completely opaque - there's still some noticeable VNL.  I could have tried out one more layer, or layered this over a coat of solid white, but I wasn't all that concerned with getting full opacity.

Look at those tiny little orange glitters floating in there!  They're not super noticeable to the naked eye, but once you get this close up, it's hard to miss anything.

Oh, and when I went to bed after applying this polish, I got a pretty big surprise...

Be Scareful GLOWS IN THE DARK YASS!  I love a surprise glow in the dark nail polish!  I'm always like, "what's that weird light coming from - IT'S MY NAILS?!" and then I shove my hands in Derek's face and he's a bit concerned for my sanity.

Because it's Halloween, and because I still have plenty of the water decals that I used last Halloween, I decided to do some art on top of this!

I just love these decals!  They're so cute.  I mean - scary! :)

My friends at my crochet group were particularly thrilled with the spiderweb decal on my thumb.

Be Scareful isn't available anymore, but KBShimmer has an AMAZING lineup for autumn 2016!

What do you think of this polish?  What are your favorite KBShimmers?  Have your nails been celebrating Halloween all month long like mine have?  Let me know in the comments!

Aliquid Lacquer: Angerona

Back in September, I swatched Aliquid Lacquer's Egeria from her When in Rome collection.  Today, I'm happy to bring you another polish from that collection, Angerona!

I decided to don this nail polish back in January because, in addition to its beauty, the milky white base with blue, black, and bronze glitters sort of looked like snow to me.  With all the snow on the ground when I swatched this (we got close to 20" in my corner of the DC area in January, holy crap!), I thought it was pretty fitting.  And then, when I went to the store page to remind myself of the inspiration behind Angerona, I found this:

Angerona was a goddess who helped the Romans endure pain, sorrow and hardship, especially during the dark days of winter. She was also responsible for keeping Rome’s sacred name secret from its enemies.

Aha!  I thought that was pretty cool.  If Angerona helped Rome during the dark days of winter, I bet that Alison was at least sort of aiming to make this polish look a bit snowy.  Well, good job!

Anyway, on to my usual review talk:

Angerona is a crelly base.  It leaned a little closer to jelly in terms of application; it was a bit thin, and I needed three coats to achieve full opacity.  But a true jelly usually needs at least 4 coats, and they're often much streakier than this polish was, so it's definitely a crelly.  Its sheerness is probably more a result of how light the color is than of its formula.

I couldn't get many of the darker glitters onto the nail in each coat, but between three coats I did manage to get a decent coverage!  I was a little more interested in getting those barely-there irridescent blue glitters onto my nails, anyway.  I almost didn't even notice them until the light hit my nail just so during application, and then I was captivated!  The irridescence of the blue glitters is highly reminiscent of snow.  And perhaps, since they're barely visible, they're also reminiscent of the secrecy of Rome's sacred name?

I definitely really like this polish.  Cleanup was much easier than my cuticles make it look - I used my glue base coat so that I wouldn't have to fight with the glitters to get them off later, and that always makes cleaning up my cuticles turn into a gloppy mess.  I did my best for these photos, but man, you don't wanna see my right hand! ;)

This is one of the few polishes that I absolutely love with a matte top coat.  You know how I am - I enjoy matte, especially for the right kind of nail art (remember the tiny chalkboard I made once?) - but for most polishes, I'm usually disappointed with how matte flattens out the color and dims sparkles.  But a matte top coat looks great over Angerona!

This polish is definitely a hit in my book!  It may be basically spring now (well, down here in Maryland, at least!), but the delicate snowy colors of this polish are definitely wearable year-round.

What do you think of this polish?  Do you own any of the When in Rome polishes?  Which is your favorite?  Let me know in the comments!

Creative Cuticles Nail Polish: Creepy Cocktails collection

I have an awesome indie collection to share with you guys today!  You might remember seeing some of Creative Cuticles Nail Polish's Christmas polishes on the blog last winter; now, I have all 3 of her Halloween polishes to share with you!  I did receive these polishes in exchange for an honest review, and I want to assure you that I didn't promise to say anything in particular.  These words are my own and the fact that I didn't pay money for this nail polish doesn't influence my opinions in any way.

The Creepy Cocktails may have Halloween-y names and are perfect for Halloween manis, but they're also super versatile for any time of year!  As much as a love a good Halloween-themed glitter, I equally love a polish that I can use in anything.

O Negative, Please

The perfect blood-red nail polish, O Negative, Please is the most opaque in this collection.  Two coats was fully opaque with no VNL peeking out.  The formula is creme, but it felt like it leaned a tiny bit on the crelly side to me.  It's just so juicy looking, something I usually only see in jellies/crellies!

I don't really know what's going on with my ring finger in this picture; it looks a lot darker to me.

I guess maybe that finger was accidentally pointed out of the light, or something, I don't know. 

Witches Brew

Witches Brew is a beautiful dusty purple, perfect for fall and the ultimate shade of Halloween purple!  Two coats was mostly opaque for me, but there is still just a tiny bit of VNL.  It's not as noticeable in normal lighting, though - the lights I use for these photos are super bright, so the whites of my nails tend to stand out more than they do in other lighting.  The formula is very similar to that of O Negative, Please - a juicy, crelly-leaning creme.

My camera picked up this color a little weirdly, so I had to cool it down by adding some blue to the photo for color accuracy.

Ooze On The Rocks

I love the name of this one!  Ooze on the Rocks is a wonderful slime-green, absolutely perfect for Halloween manis but also great for any of your bright green needs.  This one is a true jelly, so it's the sheerest of the bunch.  I have three coats shown on my nails, and you can see that there is still just a hint of VNL.  Again, that VNL stands out more under my photo lamps than in other lighting, but if you want a fully opaque mani, I recommend either layering this on top of white or building up to four coats.

These polishes are set to release on October 1 in Creative Cuticles Nail Polish's shop.  Will you be adding these ones to your collection?  Do you have any favorite, must-have Halloween polishes or mani designs?  Let me know in the comments!

Jior Couture: Part of the Merry Movie Collection (retiring soon!)

I'm super excited about this post, because for the first time since I started blogging, I received these polishes at a highly discounted price in exchange for swatches and a review!  So, to start off, let me promise you that I did not promise to say anything in particular; all of the words and opinions you'll read here are 100% my own and are influenced only by the polish itself, not the low price I paid for it.

These polishes are all from Jior Couture's Christmas 2014 collection, and each one is inspired by a different Christmas movie.  The colors are very versatile - they don't scream "Christmas on my nails" the way you might expect.  Which is awesome because, as much as I love a super-Christmasy polish, I like to feel like I can wear my polishes at any time of year and not feel out-of-season.

Believing Is Seeing

Believing Is Seeing is inspired by the movie "The Santa Clause," which I've actually never seen.  And even though this soft pink crelly is a Christmas polish, it really looks to me more like a spring polish!

A beautiful delicate pink crelly with several different colors and sizes of glitter, Believing Is Seeing really surprised me.  Pink is simply not my favorite polish color, and I've never seen a pink polish that made me go, "Ooh, I need that!" the way most blue polishes do.  So I wasn't really expecting to be terribly impressed by this polish, but wow, it is gorgeous!  I love the subtle, delicate shimmer in the base (which is much more visible in the flash photo).  And even though the glitters look pretty dense in the bottle, they come out pretty sparse onto the nail.  I suppose that could be a negative thing for some, but I liked the delicate effect of fewer glitters.  More "Oh, what a pretty polish, and look, it has some glitter in it!" and less "Ooh, what a dense glitterbomb!"

As far as application goes, Believing Is Seeing is really great.  It's very smooth, and the glitters don't cling to the brush or wipe off the nail.  It is very sheer, though, so if you don't want to see the line of the whites of your nail, I highly recommend using a base of white or a similar shade of pink.  Otherwise, you might need to build up to 4 or 5 coats; I stopped at 2 on my first two fingers, and went up to 3 coats on my ring and pinky fingers.  Three coats is opaque enough that from a distance you can't really see the whites of my nails, but up close and in the photos it's still sort of visible.

I recently got a macro lens for my phone's camera!  I haven't quite mastered the macro nail shot the way 

The Mercurial Magpie has, but in-the-bottle shots are pretty easy, so feast your eyes!

Son of a Nutcracker

Son of a Nutcracker is inspired by the movie Elf.  It's a really fun glitter polish in a pinkish-red jelly base.

 

I was actually really surprised at the opacity of this polish - two coats was pretty opaque!  I built up to three coats on my pointer and middle fingers, but left it at two on my ring and pinky fingers.

Application was pretty nice, but in order to get a nice distribution of glitter I did have to dab a little bit.  And I was slightly disappointed at how hard it was to grab those big white hex glitters - there are so many in the bottle, yet I could barely get them onto my nail.  But all the rest of the glitters went from the brush to my nails quite easily.

There's an incredibly subtle shimmer in the base of this polish - so subtle that it definitely doesn't show up in my camera even in macro mode, but if you look really closely in person, it's there!  I think subtle shimmers are one of my favorite features in nail polish.

Means A Little Bit More

Means A Little Bit More is inspired by the movie How The Grinch Stole Christmas.  (The cartoon or the live-action version?  I'm not sure, but either way this polish nails it!)  Of these three polishes, it's definitely the most Christmas-y, but I still think it would look nice in a mani any time of year!

Its green jelly base is very sheer.  If you want complete opacity, you'd probably need at least 5 coats of this one - or just use a base color.  I have three coats over naked nails here and, although my nails are tragically short after a ghastly break, you can still juuust make out a little bit of the whites of my nails at the tips.  The break that I suffered led me to cut my nails down so short that there's barely any whites left - and on my middle finger, one side broke so far down that I wasn't able to cut it into an even shape.  It was heartbreaking :(

Anyway, the polish!  I absolutely loved this one.  Application was super, super smooth - the glitters landed where I wanted them to and stayed in place, and it was nice and easy to get a good distribution of every size and color of glitter!  Pink, blue, red, silver, they're all there looking super festive and pretty.  I really like the sizes of these glitters - I think smaller glitters apply easier and look a bit better on my nails.  That's not to say that I completely dislike larger glitters - you all know that I love a good crazy glitterbomb! - but sometimes it's refreshing to use a, for lack of better word, simpler glitter polish.

 

So, that's it for this post.  These polishes are all available for purchase at jiorcouture.com, and they're on sale because they're going to be retiring this week!  If you're interested, hurry over to the shop!  There are three other great-looking polishes in this collection.

What are your favorite Christmas polishes?  Do you ever miss pairing traditional Christmas colors together throughout the spring and summer?  Let me know in the comments!

Part of Two Pleasant Peninsulas by ALiquid Lacquer

I've really been getting in to indie nail polish makers lately, and my most recent indie polish was a gift from my mom.  As I was browsing through ALiquid Lacquer's shop,, I discovered their collection inspired by all things Michigan, called Two Pleasant Peninsulas.

As some of you may know, I'm from Michigan, and I moved to Maryland a little over a year ago.  Even though it's been over a year, I still get totally homesick when I think about my home state, so I loved this collection immediately.  All the polishes in it are really cool and they have great names, but there were three that stuck out to me the most.  Wolverine Loves Spartan is awesome because I went to Michigan State University, and about half of my family are University of Michigan fans.  I'm Heading Strait to Mackinac is special to me because I love visiting Mackinac Island - it's one of the most beautiful, romantic places in Michigan (and for those of you who don't know, the Straits of Mackinac are the waters that separate Michigan's peninsulas, so that's why it's spelled that way).  And finally, I hold Motor City dear because I grew up in the suburbs of Detroit and I absolutely adore the city.  I'm the kind of person who will give you a 20-minute lecture if you make a joke about Detroit being a bad place.

And, conveniently enough, the three polishes with names most dear to me also happened to be my favorite colors in this collection!

Who else was a dear?  My mom!  She ordered these three polishes and had them delivered to my house in Maryland.  So I totally got these awesome polishes without having to break my polish-buying embargo!  Heck yeah!  I've been staring at these colors for days while working on other blog posts, and it's finally time to wear them and review them.  So let's get to it!

Motor City 

 

Sweet baby Jesus, I ADORE this nail polish!  It's a glitterbomb in a black jelly base, and the glitters are sooooo awesome.  The website says that it's inspired by Detroit based on Motown music and the auto industry - the glitters certainly remind me of those things!  The biggest circular glitters remind me of records.

JUST LOOK AT ALL THAT GLITTER.  HRRRNNNNGGGHH.

I just couldn't get enough of this polish!  Glitterbombs always provide a unique application on each nail, so I wasn't surprised about that, but oh my gosh, each nail was so amazing and awesome on its own!

This is the first polish in a while where I've actually REALLY liked having a matte topcoat on it.  I think matte flattens out all polishes, and in this case it makes it look amazing.  It just made me think of space, somehow!

I LOVED the way those two glitters in the center stacked, and then reflected blue in the light.

It was a bit tricky to get the bigger pieces of glitter to apply to my nail, but that's fairly standard for glitters so big.  Three coats looked nice, but you all know as well as I do that I did four coats. 

Wolverine Loves Spartan

Wolverine Loves Spartan reminds me of those giant, fist-sized jawbreakers.  It's a glitterbomb in a white crelly base - that's a creme-y jelly.  Not as thin as a jelly, not as thick as a creme.  The glitters vary in size and shape, and the colors represent Michigan's two biggest universities: blue and yellow for University of Michigan (boooo), and green to go with the white base for Michigan State University (GO GREEEN!).

I put a matte topcoat on my ring finger, and I really like it!  It makes it look even more like a jawbreaker candy.

Three coats yields great opacity and glitter depth.

This is the perfect Game Day polish - I'll definitely be wearing it on the day of MSU vs U of M!

I'm Heading Strait to Mackinac

This is a really, really pretty polish!  It's a creme with a subtle holographic sparkle, which is a simply gorgeous effect. 

It photographs a little bit brighter and bluer than it actually is - it's more of a periwinkle in person.  My camera had some trouble capturing the holo in it, of course.

I put a matte top coat on my ring finger, but it actually muted the holo sparkles a bit too much for my taste.

Two coats is perfect on this one.  One coat was actually really close to perfect, but there were a few small spots that I needed to go over again.

I'm super, super happy with all of these polishes.  I'd love to own the whole collection some day!  What are your favorites from Two Pleasant Peninsulas?