My Introducion to Paint it Pretty Polish

Note: these polishes were sent to me in exchange for an honest review.  All opinions are my own.  Also, there is a lot of sorcery in these nail polishes.

I haven't had the opportunity to review a thermal polish in a while, so I was super excited when Sherri of Paint it Pretty Polish (my first Canadian indie!) asked me to swatch for her!  This collection is all color-changing.  Cosmic Kisses and Reach For the Stars are thermals, while Blushing Sun is UV-reactive.

Cosmic Kisses

Cosmic Kisses is a lovely pink-purple.  When it's warm, it's a bright, rosy pink with a shimmer that's almost golden, almost holo.  My camera really couldn't capture how pretty the shimmer is.

In its cool state, Cosmic kisses is a shade of purple that I find hard to describe. Lavender-violet, I suppose?  The shimmer really shows through in the purple state, adding a gorgeous pink undertone to the purple.

Three coats of Cosmic Kisses is needed for opacity.  I actually have four coats on my middle finger and pinky, because I dinged both fingers while they were drying, but it was opaque at three coats.  Really, two coats could cut it, but I wanted the additional layer of color just to make sure that the whites of my nails weren't deceiving my eyes during the polish's transition phase.

No review of a color changing nail polish would be complete without a video, so here you go!

Reach For the Stars

Okay, my blue bias is going to show through here: this color took my breath away!  I think this is the most drastic color change in any of the thermal polishes that I own.

In its cool state, Reach For the Stars is blue with purple undertones from the shimmer.  Like Cosmic Kisses, the shimmer is almost holo.  I mostly noticed it looking holographic under my phone's flashlight, but not so much in natural light.

Except for when it's warm!  Reach For the Stars turns almost-white in heat.  It's absolutely GORGEOUS and I am so glad that I swatched this in the summer when my fingers are always warm!  When it's warm, the shimmer in Reach For the Stars stands out much more holographic than when it's cool.  At certain angles, the purple in the shimmer stands out really well, though my camera couldn't pick that up.

I couldn't help but think of Elsa with this color.  The cold state reminds me of the bottom of her dress, while the warm state reminds me of her... uh... arm cloaks?

Blushing Sun

I'll start this one off by saying that the name is perfect for this polish.  Indoors, Blushing Sun is a cheerful, sunny yellow with flakies that are just noticeable.

But take it out into the sunshine (or stick it under a UV lamp if you have one) and BAM! it becomes a bright, orange-y pink.  The flakies stay yellow, so they really stand out in the sunlight!

I am obsessed with this color.  It wasn't really possible to get a transition photo like I did with the thermals, because the UV rays change the color so quickly.  You can tell how direct the sunlight is by the color the polish turns!  In direct sunlight, it's very pink.  On a cloudy day, it's more orangey, halfway between pink and yellow.  It's also sort of in between if the sunlight is filtered through a window.  I highly enjoyed making a fist to hide my nails, then opening it and watching the color change again.

I have three coats of Blushing Sun on my nails, and as you can see, it's still fairly sheer.  I tested out a fourth coat on my thumb, but it didn't really make a difference.  If you want solid coverage, I'd recommend layering it over a white base.  Or maybe a pink or yellow base to be more playful!

I am so happy to have these magical polishes in my collection!  A big thank you to Sherri for letting me swatch these for her.  If you're a fan of thermals and/or UV-reactive polishes, you definitely need these in your collection!

Fun with Salon Perfect Halloween glitters!

Oh my gosh, you guys, I still have TWO MORE Halloween nail art posts to share with you.  I'm so sorry that I've been lagging behind my regular schedule lately!  I guess working 3 days a week has been harder on me than I thought it would.  I do absolutely love my job, but usually on my two days off I just feel like lazing around instead of doing any blog work!  Anyway, I'll probably post the next 2 Halloween manis in the same week so I can start posting some more seasonally appropriate nail art!

Last year, Salon Perfect and Nail It Magazine teamed up and gave away 100 sets of Salon Perfect nail polishes.  And I was one of the lucky 100!  I got 4 Halloween-themed glitters, a clear top coat, and green, orange, purple, and black polishes.  None of the glitters made it in to last year's Halloween challenges, but I wanted to feature them this year since I wasn't sticking to any specific challenges!

I couldn't settle on one design for these polishes, so I pretty much used all of the designs!

I was super, super happy with that purple-to-green gradient!  I almost wished I'd done it on all of my nails, but I do rather like the solid nails, too.  The larger glitters on my first 3 nails is called Witches' Brew, while the tinier glitter on my pinky is Wicked.

I'm pretty sure the Halloween glitters were limited edition last year, but Loopy Lime and A Royal Affair (the green and purple) are part of Salon Perfect's core collection.

Are you ready for this?  You're about to see my Cinderella hand!

I was too impatient to use the other glitters to wait for another full manicure, so I did a different mani on my right hand. :)  Traffic Cone, Oil Slick, and Sugar Cube (the orange, black, and white) are all core collection polishes, while the glitter, Trick or Treat, is once again limited edition from last year and no longer available.  I tried using the other glitter that I won, Spider Legs, but it had far too many black glitters for it to show up, even over this gradient!

Which of these two looks do you like better?  What did your nails don for Halloween, the most awesomest day of the year?  Let me know (or show me your nails) in the comments!

Oxi Day nail art

Halloween is right around the corner, but today is a very special day, too!  Today is known as Όχι Day, or Oxi Day in English - also spelled Ohi Day, pronounced "OH-hee."  It's Greek for "No."

Because this is a Greek holiday, I thought I would celebrate with some Greek key nail art - and take this opportunity to teach you guys about Oxi Day!

These Greek key stencils were way hard to use, and the design came out a bit sloppy looking on my nails!  Oh well.  I love Greek keys - which, in the spirit of this educational post, are known as "Meandros" in Greek ("Μαίανδρος") and have been a common motif on buildings and pottery since ancient times, most likely symbolizing infinity and unity.  (side note: if I ever gather the guts to get a tattoo, it will absolutely be a Greek key around my ankle.)

On October 28, 1940, Italian ambassador to Greece Emanuele Grazzi met with Greek Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas.  Grazzi demanded that Metaxas allow Axis powers to occupy Greece, or face war.  Metaxas' response was, for reasons unknown to me, in French: "Alors, c'est la guerre!" which means "Then it is war!"  Italian troops that had been stationed in Albania quickly attacked the Greek border, plunging Greece into World War II.  Greek citizens gathered in the streets, shouting "Oxi," unified against the Axis powers.  

October 28 became a national holiday in Greece in 1942.  It is celebrated with parades, military grandstanding, and lots of patriotic flag-waving.

An Oxi Day parade in Canada - it's celebrated in Greek communities

worldwide!  image source

Here in the states, I'm celebrating a bit more subtly with some Greek nail art!

The Greek flag is blue and white, so I used Zoya Tallulah on top of Sally Hansen White On.  I can't remember where I got the vinyl stencils - I bought too many vinyls from too many different companies too close together, so I honestly have no idea where any of them came from!

You can learn more about Oxi Day on Wikipedia and Living in Greece.

I hope I've managed to teach you something new today!  If not, tell me when you first learned about Oxi Day in the comments!  Do any of you celebrate Oxi Day by going to a parade or a festival, or maybe just by eating Greek food every October 28?  Let me know in the comments!

And Happy Almost-Halloween!

Update: a commenter (My Mom :) ) shared this 4 and a half minute video in the comments, and it's a great watch!

 

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!

October nail art challenge Day 4: Candy Corn!

Oh boy!  I love candy corn!  And I have the absolute perfect colors for it.

Sally Hansen Orange Zest, China Glaze Happy Go Lucky, and Salon Perfect Sugar Cube paired up for a great candy corn gradient.  My nails look good enough to eat!  In fact, they smell good enough to eat, too.  The Mani of the Month box that I got for September is Monster themed, and Dream Polish put in a scented base and top coat.  The scent is called Zombie Food, and I can't quite place it, but it smells delicious!  Scented polish technology has certainly come a long way from the nasty grape stuff I had when I was a kid.

Here's the challenge for you!  It's not too late to start playing along, so start thinking about what pattern you'll do for the 7th if you'd like!

Polka Dot nail art recreation

Whenever I'm feeling a bit of a nail art slump, I turn to other bloggers and nail artists for inspiration.  This week, I found an awesome design by Nessa of @nessas_nails_ that I decided to (mostly) recreate! 

Here is her original design, which she did for a nail art challenge back in May:

 

And of course, I'm super in to my neons lately so I chose to recreate Nessa's look using a neon orange - Deborah Lippmann Don't Stop Believin'.

I don't have any large charms like Nessa's, so I used a small gem from a set that I got as a gift a few years ago (I don't know the brand).  My white base, as always, is Salon Perfect Sugar Cube.  I used the white base beneath my solid orange nails as well so that it would perfectly match the tip of my middle finger.  Don't Stop Believin' is fairly sheer, which is common for neons, so a white base is always a good idea.

I had a lot of fun recreating this look!  Laying down the striping tape was tricky, because I'm not used to it, but I made it work - even on my right hand!

What do you think of this look?  Which color scheme do you like better?  Let me know in the comments!

All Mixed Up Lacuqers: Nail Chicks Be Like... Collection

Okay.  I'm supposed to be on a no-buy.  For everything.  Until I find a job with reliable income.  But, obviously, that's not really happening because the indie nail polish world is so amazing and tempting!

This is my first time using All Mixed Up Lacquers.  I saw a collage of this collection pop up in my Instagram feed, and I went to the profile to investigate (I guess I need to stop doing that if I want to follow my no-buy) and found that this is a 10-piece collection made as a collaboration with bloggers Bethany of Hosuewifenails and Mercedes of Manicutie, inspired by things that nail polish fanatics say.  And you guys know how much I love buying nail polish because it has a cool name, so yeah, I had to have the whole collection.

To my surprise, my order was delivered while the collection was still in pre-order mode!  I kicked myself into gear so that you could feast your eyes on these 10 gorgeous babies as quickly as possible.

Warning: TONS of pictures ahead.  But that's the best part of a nail polish review, right?  And my pinky nail is still short and awkward so it's not going to be in the photos.

What No Buy?

Ha, yeah, of course this one would exist!  I see other ladies talking about breaking their no-buys alllll the time.

What No Buy? is a holographic glitterbomb.  The base is clear but quite dense with holo dust, and there are lots of small-to-medium shiny glitters in pink, orange, green, and blue.  I have two coats over white, one coat over black, and two coats over my naked nail.  You can see that the base is dense enough for semi-opacity in just two coats over naked nail!

 

Just look at all that holographic glitter!!!

This Looked Better in My Head

I've definitely said this, either to myself or in a post, about a lot of the nail art designs I've done!  Nail polish can be finnicky and it's hard to get the image in your mind to turn out exactly on your nails.

This Looked Better In My Head is a bright fuchsia jelly with matte purple flakies and some very fine holo microglitters, although I'm not sure those ones picked up on my camera.  From pointer to ring finger, I have two, three, and four coats on my nails.

My camera really flattened out the color, so I did my best to edit it on the computer.  The brightness of the fuchsia is most accurate in the macro shot above.

One Coat Wonder

Every nail polish lover covets a one coat wonder!  They save a ton of time end effort.

One Coat Wonder is supposed to be an actual OCW itself, but that wasn't really the case for me.  Partly because of the tiny brush in the mini bottle, and partly because of how long my nails are - they require a lot more polish than your average shorter nail!

I did use only one coat on my ring finger, and I thought I did it nice and thick, but while editing the photos I realized that no, it was a little streaky.  I decided to show my bum pinky nail because, again, I thought that with its shortness I'd be able to get away with one coat, but again, nope.

But don't get down on One Coat Wonder!  Even if it always needs two coats, it's still such a gorgeous mint-teal-turquoise color with more superfine holo dust.  I highly recommend buying this one in a full-size bottle if you want it to live up to its name!

Look at My Holo

Holo sparkles are the best sparkles.  If you're friends with a nail polish fanatic, she's eventually going to shove her holographic nails in your face and say "LOOK AT THEM SPARKLE!"

Look at My Holo is a neon pink crelly with TONS of holo dust.  I have two coats on my pointer finger, three on my middle, and four on my ring finger.

Once again, my camera really muted the neonness of this one so I did my best to edit the colors on my computer.  The color accuracy is best in the sunlight and macro photos!

#nailmail

Getting nail mail is one of the most exciting things in my life, and it has been since the time I discovered the indie polish scene!  And using the hashtag on Instagram is a must so that I can share my happiness with everyone.

#nailmail is a white crelly base packed full of holographic glitters of many colors - soft and hot pink, teal, lime green, navy...  It's like the explosion of color and happiness that you get whenever you open up your nail mail!

I have three coats on each finger in the photos.

The glitter density here is great - it's quite easy to get the same amount of glitter on your nails as you see in the bottle.  I had to do a bit of dabbing to get glitters to apply evenly, which is normal for glitters of this size; still, it might have been easier if I had a full-sized bottle with a bigger brush.

#mynailsandmydrink

Here's another popular hashtag for polish lovers!  I usually see this when people have exciting drinks like Starbucks or artisan beer/pop or even just a really cute thermos.  I myself usually use this hashtag when showing off my fancy artisan pops that I like to try out every now and then.

#mynailsandmydrink is a beautiful pink-toned beige crelly with holo dust in the base, and beige small-to-medium chunky glitters.  The base color is one of my favorite browns that I've worn - it's a lovely cream-in-my-coffee brown.  I don't think my camera really captured the pinkish undertones, though, so once again I did my best to edit the photos and that's why my skin looks extra pink!

I have two coats on my pointer and ring fingers, and three coats on my middle finger.

Just like #nailmail, the glitter density is really good and I had to dab it around a little bit, but not infuriatingly.

I was drinking boring water in a boring glass when I swatched this, so here's a more exciting picture of my nails and my drink!  The totally awesome cup actually came with my order of this collection (I have no idea if it was a pre-order special or if it will come with all orders).  My totally awesome drink is a ginger ale float spiked with my apple pie moonshine that I got when I was in Tennessee, and my totally awesome mani will be featured on the blog next week so stick around for more details on that!

Matte All The Flakies

If you've been following me long enough, you'll know that this isn't actually something that I'm prone to saying.  Matte is a great effect and all but I usually prefer my nails to stay glossy!  But using a matte topcoat over a flakie polish can look really, really cool.

Matte all the Flakies is a clear base with white holographic flakies and, of course, superfine holo dust in the base.  I was all prepared to take glossy photos and then use my matte top coat for some matte pictures, but THIS ONE DRIES MATTE!

I have three coats over naked nail and two coats each over black and white.  The holo-ness definitely didn't show up as well over naked or white, but it looked AMAZING over black!  I suggest always using this over a darker color so that the holo can really pop.

Buy All The Polish

Now THIS is definitely something I say all the time!  Screw everything, buy ALL the nail polish!

 

Buy all the Polish is a super festive glitterbomb.  Purple, teal, soft pink, and hot pink glitters all float around in a clear base.

The glitters applied pretty nicely, but I definitely needed to dab them around.  I'd say that the dabbing was a little more intense than with the two crellies above, but still not infuriating.  And I didn't have to fish around for the glitters, which seems to happen more often in a clear base for some reason!

I have three coats over naked nail, two coats over black, and two coats over Sally Hansen Blue My Mind.  I honestly can't decide which look I like best!  They all look like a party on my nails.  I think I'm gonna need to incorporate this into my next birthday mani.

Look at this bottle shot macroooooo you can see so many layers of glitter floating around in there <3 <3 <3

It's So Squishy

I think this about every jelly-based glitter that I've used.  I don't know what it is about jelly polish that looks so squishy even when it's days dry, but it definitely does!

It's So Squishy is yet another glitterbomb with tons of different colors, sizes, and shapes of glitter.  The base is somewhere in the realm of sky-aqua-teal-blue, which makes it look even more squishy.

I have two, three, and four coats from my pointer to my ring finger.  Once again, the glitters applied nicely with a bit of dabbing and no fishing.

#nailporn

This is another phrase that I haven't really said before, but I've seen it used before on Instagram and I would definitely say that this post constitutes as nail porn.

#nailporn is a neon-lime green crelly packed with holo dust.  It's barely less holographic that Look At My Holo, and just as neon.

This one was opaque in two coats and I didn't see a need to build up to three.  It applies super smoothly and evenly, even on a mini brush!

As you can see, my camera had a hard time with this one yet again.  The color is most accurate in the sunlight photo!

So, that's the end of this incredibly gorgeous collection.  I hope you enjoyed it, I hope that you're as tickled by the polish names as I am, and I hope this post doesn't cause a problem for you if you're on a no-buy!

Which polish is your favorite?  Do you find yourself saying any of these phrases all the time?  Let me know in the comments!