Reverie Nail Lacuqer Hot Chocolate + nail art

This polish has been sitting around in my stash for far too long without being shown off!  I won it in an Instagram giveaway from Reverie Nail Lacquer quite some time ago.  I think it's from the winter/holiday 2014 collection.  I actually did swatch it back then, but I never wrote up a blog post about it and forgot how many coats I used and everything, so it never got published.

Anyway, I decided to don this beauty again this week because it's the first week of autumn!  Huzzah!

Hot Chocolate is a truly gorgeous chocolate brown holo.  It's a bit sheer, so I have one coat of Hot Chocolate over one coat of Zoya Nyssa (which is a beautiful chocolate-milk brown creme).  Talk about chocolatey goodness!

This polish definitely makes me crave a steaming mug of hot cocoa.  You haven't lived until you've tried my Mom's instant hot cocoa mix!  Although hers is a lighter shade of brown than this polish. ;)

This first week of autumn has been infuriatingly cloudy and rainy, so I didn't get any sunlight pictures; but here's a direct light shot for you!  I absolutely adore the holo flashes in this.

I won this set of vinyls from mrspoole1128 on Instagram - aren't they great?  The red polish is Zoya India.  She's not holographic, but she's absolutely stunning!

This is the first of many autumn manicures that will be headed your way this year - but I do still have a couple of leftover neon manis to show you as well!  Since it's September 30, though, I'm thinking that the next month's worth of posts will be all Halloween-themed.  So stay tuned, because I have some great ones planned!

Harry Potter release party nail art!!!

OH MY GOSH, YOU GUYS, THERE IS A NEW HARRY POTTER BOOK COMING OUT TOMORROW NIGHT!!!!!

Okay, it's the script to a play, not a true novel like the rest of them, but IT'S HARRY POTTER AND IT'S WRITTEN BY JK ROWLING SO IT'S CANON SO AHH I'VE BEEN PEEING MY PANTS LIKE ALL WEEK.

My favorite local bookstore is having a midnight release party for which I am SUPER pumped.  I haven't missed a Potter midnight release since the fifth book came out (book #4 had a morning-of release party, a bit more kid-friendly).  There's going to be a costume contest and, thanks to the inspiration of my friend Joanna, I'll be dressing as a wizard masquerading as a muggle.  Or, I guess, a no-maj since we're in America.  But anyway I have a super silly outfit planned, parts of which came from the thrift store, and I decided to do my nails to not-really-match.

You've seen all of these polishes on the blog before: they're the Houses and Horcruxes and We'll Take the Lot collections by Twisted Colors (who has tragically stopped selling polish).  I debated only using the Houses and Horcruxes collection since they're more recognizably Harry Potter themed, but decided to use all 8 of my Potter polishes because how could I leave the others out? <3

Since these have all been featured on the blog before, I won't go into detail about their names or their coverage.  Follow the links above for more details on each specific polish!

I actually kinda messed up the order on my left hand!  I meant to paint them on in the order of which House I most relate to: Ravenclaw (that's where I've been sorted on Pottermore), Hufflepuff (where I always kinda felt I'd end up when I was a kid), Gryffindor, Slytherin.  But I accidentally reached for The Sword before The Cup so there we go.

On my thumbs, I painted Deathly Hallows symbols over white with Fairy Dust because holo sparkles = magic.

This part of the manicure totally doesn't show up on camera, but I used a scented top coat by Dream Polish so that my nails could smell MAGICAL!  One Good Jump on my right pointer finger is chocolate scented, so that is also magical and just makes me smell delicious as I sit around.

It's super fitting that this midnight release is happening so close to my blogiversary, because I got to look back at my old photos and sort of see how far I've come.  I first swatched them all in my first year of blogging, and while the photos look fine, it's nice to have a redo with my new lighting setup and macro lens.  So I'm going to force extra photos down your throat, including some of the old ones.

This is, to this day, one of my favorite nail polish photos I've ever taken.  And it was only in my fifth-ever post!  I just love the depth of field on it, and the way I have my fingers positioned against the bottle.  This was long before I had a soft box for my lighting, so the glare is super harsh.  I don't even think I was wrapping a white pillow case around my LED lamp at this point! :D

Back in the day, my idea of a macro shot was to take a picture with the best focus possible and crop it tightly to one nail.  It technically worked, but it certainly doesn't capture the depth of a polish the way an actual macro lens does!

Oh yes, it's time for a storm of macros.  Here we go...

My macro lens isn't perfect - it is so very macro that I have to hold it about 1-2 cm away from my nail, and its depth of field is so narrow that I often struggle to get a good plane of focus on my very curvy nails.  Still, it clips on to my cell phone's camera and it only cost like $15 on Amazon, so it's pretty decent.  And it definitely has more of a true macro look than simply cropping a regular photo!

The silver glitters in The Locket are holographic, which you can especially see when you look at the ones in the bottle.  LOL I CALLED THEM "SHINY" IN MY ORIGINAL POST DID I NOT EVEN KNOW THE WORD "HOLO" YET?

 

That "perfectly stacked 90 degree angle" hand pose was so uncomfortable for me.  I almost feel like you can see the discomfort in the photos.  My current slanted hand pose is so much more relaxed and natural-looking for me.  Back then, I was trying to emulate some other bloggers' poses, but eventually I learned that I had to find what was comfortable for me, because when a hand pose feels better, it looks better.  And, doesn't my watermark look so much better wrapped around my middle finger's cuticle than crammed randomly between whichever two nails?

Well, that's enough reminiscing for now.  I may or may not do some more looking back and re-creations over the next week or two, who knows?  In the meantime, be sure to enter my blogiversary giveaway first thing on Monday!  And please, no calls on Sunday.  I'll be reading some new Harry Potter content all day <3

Independence Day Nail Art

Happy Independence Day Weekend, everybody!  And happy regular weekend to my non-American readers ;)

The Fourth of July was the very first time I tried my hand at nail art - you can see my 100% freehand, no-tools flag design in last year's post.  Ever since then, I've enjoyed playing with different designs to celebrate the holiday.

This year's design is inspired by Jamberry's wrap design  Black and White Quad.  I've been doing abstract designs for the past two years, and I kind of wanted to stick with that.  I'm also really proud of how not-yellow my nails are right now, so I wanted to show them off with a bit of naked nail art!

The colors I used are the same as always for the 4th: OPI An Affair in Red Square, China Glaze Blue Iguana, and Sally Hansen Hi Ho Silver.  My bottle of An Affair in Red Square is quite old and I didn't add enough polish thinner to it - so it was actually really hard to get even coverage across the tips of my nails.  It was so thick and gloopy that even with two coats of fast-dry top coat, plus a few coats of Zoya's quick-dry drops, AND washing my hands a few times in cold water, it was still wet enough to get dinged and smooshed after a few hours!  It may be time to retire this beauty :'(

So, after I'd painted the silver base on my left hand, I was suddenly struck with inspiration to use my Crackle polishes.  I tested the idea out on my right ring finger and I liked it so much that I went a little crazy with different combinations!

My silver crackle is Sally Hansen Fractured Foil, while the blue is OPI Turquoise Shatter.  I used the same red, blue, and silver underneath the crackles and decided to see what crackle looks like over naked nail because why not?  I think my favorite look on this hand, especially for the Fourth of July, is my ring finger.

What do you think of this mixed mani nail art?  Which style is your favorite?  Got any exciting plans for the holiday?  Let me know in the comments!

HOLO RAINBOW

I've recently discovered that gradient nail art is one of my favorite things to do.  But so far, I've always done the same gradient on all 10 nails, using a maximum of four colors.  This time, I decided not only to do each nail in a different color, but also to switch up the direction of my gradient!

This vertical rainbow holographic gradient turned out pretty darn awesome, although it looked a little bit neater in my head.  And I couldn't stomach the idea of leaving out an entire nail, or of photographing my right hand, so once again you get to see my stubby little broken pinky nail!

I used Gothic Gala Lacquers Make It So, My Partner In Crime, It's Green Sir, The Dancing Doctor (all from the Star Trek collection), Sinfully Stephanie, and All Mixed Up Lacquers Look At My Holo from the Nail Chicks Be Like... collection.  Each nail got two colors, starting with red and ending with pink as the rainbow goes.  Then I topped it all off with China Glaze Fairy Dust because why not make it sparkle even more?

As you can see, I had a bit of a hard time sponging the colors all the way down to my cuticles.  Even though I used a latex mani barrier and sponged all over it, I just couldn't fill in that little line of black base around my cuticles.  A problem I find unique to vertical gradients.

This was all done on top of a black base, Salon Perfect Oil Slick.  I decided to use black as a base instead of white to help make the holos pop, and to make the mani look a bit darker overall.  I'm pretty sure that a white base would have made the colors look a lot more pastel, which would be nice but that wasn't the look I wanted today.

SHAZAM!  Look at that holo polish + Fairy Dust in action!

I had intended to make a video tutorial for this look, but as I was setting up my tabletop tripod, one of the legs snapped right off!  I do still have my full-size tripod but it was way too awkward to work around.  Maybe when I get a replacement tripod, I'll just have to do another gradient and make a tutorial!

Side note: my right pointer finger has had a nerve twitching in it on and off for a few weeks now.  It's not painful and it stops for a day here and there, so I haven't bothered to get it checked out.  Anyway, when that nerve twitches, it causes my pointer finger to twitch really quickly.  It's been annoying to have to deal with that while painting my nails - this was going on the whole time I swatched the Nail Chicks Be Like collection - but, clearly, I managed to work through it!  I'm impressed that I was able to do a full nail art mani with my twitchy finger.

What do you think of this design?  Let me know in the comments!

CDB Lacquer: Apocalypse Averted collection

I first discovered the show Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the 7th grade.  It was still airing its final season on TV, but I had to catch up on the first six seasons on DVD.  (Netflix was around at this time, but if they did offer instant streaming already, my family with its dial-up internet did not utilize it, and I didn't have much say over which DVDs we received.)  I quickly became obsessed and have since re-watched the show at least three or four times, plus several annual viewings of the three Halloween episodes.

When Cheyenne of CDB Lacquer released a Buffy-inspired collection last March, I knew that I absolutely needed all of them.  There was no way I would be able to buy just the blue and maybe one other polish, because that would feel too much like leaving out my closest friends in favor of only two of them.  So I got the whole collection in mini sizes, in order to save my wallet a little bit of the trouble.

Due to many silly reasons, it's taken me well over a year to finally get around to swatching all of these.  (You'll even get to see my old nail shape again!)  The polishes are long gone from cdblacquer.com, but they're far too beautiful for me not to share them with you!  Who knows, perhaps with enough demand Cheyenne will be incensed to bring them back to the shop.

I wasn't blessed with any sunny days at all when I was swatching these polishes, and they're all at least a little bit holographic!  Direct sunlight shows off holos the best.  Under my lamps, the holo glitters still look nice, but you don't get to see the rainbow sparkle very well.

Powerful Magics

"The magics I use are very powerful.  I'm very powerful."

That perfectly royal shade of purple, Powerful Magics draws its inspiration from the character Willow Rosenberg.  I think this color fits Willow perfectly.  It would compliment her fiery red hair very well, for one thing.  The holographic sparkles in this polish, which are subtle in indoor lighting but brilliant in sunlight, also remind me of Willow.  Like the sparkle, Willow's powers were subtle in seasons 1-3; then in seasons 4-7, she grew into herself, her confidence, and her power.

Two coats was enough for full opacity on this one, but I used three coats on my pointer and ring fingers just to see if it affected the color at all.  I think a third coat makes the color a little bit deeper and darker.

A Monster's Nightmare 

"I'm the thing that monsters have nightmares about."

This shade is inspired by Buffy herself.  It's a truly gorgeous shade of bright, ruby red.  I think Buffy would love this polish.  In the show, she mainly sported the delicate pinks and taupe-ish nudes that were so trendy in the 90s, but I think she would also really like this vampy color.  (Um, can I call this vampy if it's inspired by the Slayer??)

On the first coat, the color kind of reminded me of raspberry jelly!  I was tempted to lick my nails.  Two coats of A Monster's Nightmare is plenty for opacity.  I have three coats on my middle finger because my second coat came out a bit streaky (the downside of minis - tiny brushes tend to lead to uneven application).  I'm about 95% sure that the streakiness was only due to the small size of my brush, and not the formula of the polish.  As you can see, a third coat deepens the color a little bit, but not by much.

Removal of this polish is surprisingly easy!  With red nail polish, I usually wind up with red stains all over my fingers so badly that I have to exfoliate my skin in order to get rid of the red.  Not so with this polish!  My skin was nice and stain-free, and with two coats of base coat, my nails also escaped red staining.

He Sees All

“Seven years, working with the Slayer.  Seeing my friends get more and more powerful, all of them.  And I’m the guy who fixes the windows.  They’ll never know how tough it is, Dawnie.  To be the one who isn’t chosen, to live so near to the spotlight and never step in it.  But I know.  I see more than anybody realizes because nobody’s watching me.”

He Sees All is inspired by Xander Harris.  It's a lovely shade of blue-toned gray that reminds me of a starry sky.  That seems very fitting for Xander, in two ways: abstractly because his sight is as endless as the night sky; directly because many times throughout the course of the show, he speaks of his Christmas tradition of camping out under the stars to escape his dysfunctional family. 

As with the previous polishes in this collection, He Sees All is opaque in two coats.  I have a third coat on my pointer finger because a stray fuzzy forced me to ding up my second coat a little bit; as you can see, there isn't really a difference in color or glitter depth between two and three coats.

Bloody Hell

"Inspired by 'William the Bloody' aka Spike, a vampire who fights for his soul. Spike sacrificed his life in the final battle against the First Evil, permanently closing the Hellmouth."

If anyone in the show deserves a blood red color in their honor, it's Spike!  From his vampiric need for blood to his frequent British use of the expression "bloody hell," any time I see a vampy blood-red color I immediately think of Spike.

Bloody Hell leans a bit to the rusty side of the red spectrum, more reminiscent of half-dried blood than fresh blood.  But it doesn't look nasty rusty, because it sparkles!  Nothing that sparkles this much can truly look like a nasty patch of dried blood.

This one is the thinnest of the bunch, requiring three coats for full opacity. 

Apocalypse Averted

"Inspired by the several events that almost caused an apocalypse and were averted thanks to Buffy and her friends aka the Scooby Gang."

Throughout the course of the show, there were no less than eight apocalypses that the Scooby Gang thwarted off.  One could argue that there were more, and one would probably be right!

Apocalypse Averted has a clear base, and as a result it's very sheer.  I have two coats over my naked nail on my pointer finger; one coat over black on my middle; three coats over naked nail on my ring finger; and two coats over black on my pinkie.  Personally, I prefer the look of this polish on top of a solid color, but it does look good over the naked nail too!

This one is definitely the most holographic of the collection!  The microglitters are suuuuuper fine and holographic.  We're talking so fine that this almost applies as smoothly as a creme!

Macro at one coat over black

Angelic Demon 

"Inspired by Buffy’s true love, Angel aka Angelus. Angelus was cursed as vengeance for killing a member of a gypsy clan. They returned his soul, forcing him to live eternally in guilt over the countless crimes he had committed as a soulless vampire."

Angelic Demon is a thermal polish, which means that it changes color based on temperature.  When it's warm, it's significantly lighter than when it's cool.  I think a thermal polish is perfect for Angel because he's always so darn moody.  And blue makes it even better because blue is often associated with sadness, and Angel is definitely sad and broody most of the time. ;) 

This is my very first thermal polish!  I'm super impressed and may or may not have launched a new obsession.  My nails are so long now that, in a neutral state, the color is lighter near my cuticles and darker at my nail tips!  It's a lazy woman's ombre mani!

The shade of blue here is stunning.  When it's mediocre-warm, it reminds me of the blue raspberry jellybeans that were my favorite as a kid!  Angelic Demon definitely has that squishy look to it when it's warmer.  When it's cooler and darker, it is still gorgeous but loses a fraction of the depth to its dark pigmentation. 

What do you think of this collection?  If you're a Buffy fan, what do you think of the colors for each character?  Let me know in the comments!