Temporary Hiatus

Hello, hypothetical readers. I'm an American, and two days ago, something extremely terrible happened in my country. The white supremacy, misogyny, selfishness, admiration of aggression, and arrogance that have been traits of United States citizens for as long as this nation has existed have resulted in the election of Donald Trump as our next president. This has left me sick at heart to a measure I could not have fathomed. I am extremely privileged to live in Portland, Oregon, a bastion of liberalism, and therefore I feel obligated to spend my spare time taking political action in any way that I can. This means that I have neither the time, nor the will, to blog about nail polish right now. This is a temporary hiatus; I will make time to continue blogging, and I will achieve the balance in my life necessary to incorporate self-care, including painting my nails. I am currently in a state of shock and horror, and I don't know when that's going to wear off; I am struggling to find ways to cope, but I am compelled to look outward and do anything I can to serve in this time of fear. I don't know what's going to happen, but I know we let this happen and I know I cannot accept it.
Thank you for reading Unsweetened Nails. See you again.

Zoya Blaze

Today's polish is perfectly wonderful, in my opinion. It's sparkly holiday sensation Zoya Blaze!

 Zoya has a whole lovely line of scattered holos that everyone adores. Blaze is definitely the black sheep of the bunch, because it's the least holographic. The base is a bright cherry red (sorry it's so many different shades in these pics, the indoor lights make it appear darker than it is), and the saturated jelly base tints the holo flakes so that they mostly appear as pink, purple, and gold sparkles. Personally, I love the way this polish looks! It's definitely not as spectacular as Dream or Aurora, but it is very pretty in its own way.

I feel like I just gave myself holiday whiplash, going from so much Halloween directly to Christmas. Is this a blog, or Macy's? Haha! Yeah, that was totally lame, but Friday's polish is another fall-appropriate vampy sensation. Stop by to check it out!

ILNP Black Orchid

Today's polish is a classic from one of my favorite brands, ILNP. Black Orchid is a stunning vampy holo that apparently looks quite different in various lighting. 

 In real life, it's a rich deep burgundy with a metallic, linear holo finish and a bright magenta sheen. The indoor lighting brought out this sheen so intensely, the whole polish looks magenta in this photo.

 In the muted autumn sunlight, Black Orchid is the color of blood. This isn't one of ILNP's Ultra Holos, but it's still full of gorgeous prismatic sparkle. In a couple of these pics, you can see there's a little patchiness close to my cuticles; the formula on this one is a touch finicky, and like most ILNPs, it's at its best at three coats. The patchiness isn't visible in person, just in photographs, but I still recommend letting it dry thoroughly between coats.

This is such a classic color and a must-have ILNP. I've got another excellent burgundy holo that'll make an appearance on Friday; join me tomorrow for a less well-loved, but still quite lovely, holiday red holo!

Halloweek Spooktacular - The Final Chapter

I'm not going to lie, I really overextended myself this week. I decided to do this Spooktacular, came down with a terrible cold, and just wanted to spend my weekend loafing around in bed...although I also had to catch up on the housework I'd been neglecting. So yes, this post is a day late, and I'm going to avoid trying to post every day from now on because this is crazy. Today's post is just a bunch of Halloween nail art.

Here's China Glaze Getting to Gnaw you, mattified and stamped with Powder Perfect Orange Stamping polish and an image from their Halloween plate.

A collage of various spider-themed manis I did, all of which I posted on Facebook. Upper left and lower right are Pahlish Rum Runner Hibiscus, stamped with Powder Perfect White Stamping polish and the Halloween plate; lower left is ILNP BFF's, stamped with Konad White and Hehe 046 plate; upper right is Fantasy Makers Whiteout, the webs were hand-painted with Fantasy Makers Black as Knight, and the spider was built out of Butter London Gobsmacked with little red eyes made from Fantasy Makers Bloody Marie. As an aside, I tried to tag all the polishes I used in this post but I ran out of characters.

 Here's a franken I made out of Sally Hansen Pumpkin spice and orange holo craft glitter from JoAnn's Fabric. The craft glitter bled and colored the base this nice umber color, and the formula remained surprisingly workable; I think it's actually better than it was when I picked it up at the Dollar Tree. I hated the streaky jelly base and sparse glitter.

 Here's the franken stamped with Powder Perfect Golden Stamping Polish and the Halloween plate. Can you tell I really love these? I've been calling this "the franken" because when I initially made it, I thought it would be funny to call it "Pimpin' Spice." Because I pimped this polish out, get it? I have since come to realize that that is gross and I'm embarrassed to have called it that. Pimps are terrible and it's not cool to glorify them.

 Lastly, here's a polish I did for a contest in the Hella Holo Customs Facebook group, using all HHC polishes. The black is Crows Toes Sleep With One Eye Open; from left to right, the other polishes are Dreamland Lacquer Makai, Crows Toes Beyond Your Fears, Girly Bits Terra with red eyes of Powder Perfect Bruised Rose, and Dreamland Mauka.
So concludes Halloweek! Tomorrow we're back to regularly scheduled swatching of three lovely red and burgundy holos! See you later!

Halloweek Spooktacular Day Five - Sinful Colors Nice Guise

Tonight's post is a comparison. When I was picking out colors from the Guys and Ghouls collection, I hemmed and hawed over this one, Nice Guise. I thought, "Doesn't this look kind of a lot like Zoya Remy? No wait, isn't Remy greener? I've never even worn Remy so maybe I should skip this one."

 In the bottle, it does look a lot like Remy. The base color is a really similar deep blue, and it has a similar golden shimmer. Despite the claims of its sticker, Nice Guise doesn't really have any magical color-shifting chameleon properties. Still, I decided it would be worth it to buy it and compare the two. As it turns out, they're the same color but far from dupes.

In these pictures, I'm wearing Nice Guise on my index and ring fingers and Remy on my middle and pinky. Here they are at one coat; you can see the shimmer in Nice Guise is sparser, and while the base is pretty equally pigmented on both, Nice Guise applies a bit patchy.

 At two coats, Remy's shimmer is so built up that it looks like a completely different polish. It's very much a shimmering glass fleck, while Nice Guise is more of a sparkly jelly. Being so packed with shimmer definitely makes Remy look greener, too.

Here they are in their final form: under a coat of NYC Matte Me Crazy. Remy gets a glowy, mermaidy quality. Nice Guise, lo and behold, actually does do a little gold-to-green color shifting! Is it worth it to buy both of them? I mean, Nice Guise is only $2, so...sure?
For nail art Saturday, I've got a whole bunch of random nail art, a franken, and one last Halloween Sinful Colors. Come by tomorrow for the last day of the Spooktacular!

Halloweek Spooktacular Day Four - Sinful Colors Cloak and Swagger

Here's probably my favorite of Sinful's Halloween offerings, Cloak and Swagger. Haha! I love the name! And I love the polish, which is a gorgeous, vampy, plummy burgundy with the same fine grained texture and silvery sparkle as a Zoya Pixie Dust. I mean seriously...

 I adore Pixie Dusts, but I don't have one this color. Rather than using cute imagery involving sparkly fairies, Cloak and Swagger boasts a "tombstone matte" finish, which is just so spooky. It's so great!

 And it's maybe even greater with top coat. One coat of KBShimmer Clearly On Top eventually got sucked up by the texture, so that the finish was glossy but pebbly. Wet, like a tongue. Two coats makes it perfectly smooth; the silver glitter spangles the dried-blood base, and the result is a polish that is good all year round. Play Dead impressed me with its formula, but it was obviously a novelty polish.

Tomorrow I'll show another Sinful from this collection that also reminds me of Zoya, although it'll actually be another first for the blog: a comparison post! Come back tomorrow night to check it out!

Halloweek Spooktacular Day Three - Sinful Colors Play Dead

What's this? What's this? A new polish on my blog! I had been reading about Sinful Colors' Halloween collection, and I just had to go check it out. I neither work nor live near a Walgreen's, but I made a special trip to the closest one and picked out a few new Sinfuls. Today, we're looking at Play Dead, a truly special polish.

Here it is at one coat (all other pics are two). The base is a pretty foily silver that's somewhat sheer, but gives great coverage. I mean, look at that! There's barely even any VNL!

 At two coats, it's a silver metallic with a somewhat lumpy look and orange hex glitters peeking through the base. It's got a warty look that makes me wish someone would use this finish with a green palette. Maybe Sinful Colors will bring this finish back next year. I know of another company who made quite a few polishes like this, collection after collection...except in a Halloween collection, where this weird finish is actually appropriate and fun.

 Top coat brings out the sparkle of the foil, but also emphasizes the lumpy bumpiness. If I was going to wear Play Dead out and about, I'd either skip the tc completely or do this:

With a matte top coat over the quick dry, Play Dead becomes its best self, in my opinion. It has a surface-of-the-moon quality, but the orange glitter makes it uncanny and strange. I'm kind of blown away that Sinful Colors took this horrible finish, adopted it, and found a way to make it effective and interesting. The formula on this one is also surprisingly excellent. In a time when mainstream brands have been basically ignoring Halloween - and even Christmas, this year - Sinful really stepped in and took control. Come back tomorrow to see what other outstanding offerings this collection contains!

Halloween Spooktacular Day Two - China Glaze Howl You Doin?

Today's polish is a real beauty. It's a rich, red-toned violet jelly filled with little purple glitters and orange flakies. It's so rad!

 Apologies for the sticky stuff on the front of the bottle, pretty sure that's reside from the price tag. This polish is super neat, although I did get a little dragging. I wanted to stamp over this mani, but I wore peel-off base coat under this polish and it wrinkled and slid around my nails when I pressed down with the stamper. Maybe next year!

It looks amazing matte, too. It's so tragic that China Glaze decided to just re-release cremes this year for Halloween instead of making some more great flakie-packed jellies. We've got indies to fill the Halloween void, I suppose, and there's a drug store brand that really knocked it out of the park this year. Join me tomorrow for my first swatches of an excellent spooky collection!

Halloweek Spooktacular Day One - China Glaze Getting to Gnaw You

Welcome to Unsweetened Nails, scary Halloween edition! Even though I don't have kids or go to parties, I still think it's a downer that Halloween is on a Monday; to compensate, I'm going to be posting Halloween manis ALL WEEK LONG! I'm also going to be featuring brand-new polishes that I just bought at Walgreen's!!! An exciting week awaits! Let's kick it off with China Glaze Getting to Gnaw You.

Last year, the TJ Maxx closer to my apartment (not the one by my job) had quite a selection of China Glaze holiday polishes. I picked up today's, tomorrows, and I think All Wrapped Up (featured in August) at the same time for $2.99 each. This year, even China Glaze doesn't have China Glaze holiday polishes.

 Getting to Gnaw You has a similar, but better, formula as All Wrapped Up. It's a jelly so packed with small glitter that it has a textured appearance without topcoat, and a ton of gorgeous depth with it. The glitter is more copper than orange, but it's so obviously a Halloween polish that it reads orange to me.

I enjoy this polish. It's pretty with top coat and despite being packed with glitter, went on pretty smoothly. Also the name cracks me up. Join me tomorrow - yes, Tuesday! - for another Halloween lovely from China Glaze.

Saturday Nail Art - Golden Ghosts on a Gradient

This week went wrong in more ways than one. I schedule my posts ahead of time, and it looks like I accidentally scheduled Black Holo Witch for today, when it should have gone up Friday (it was also the last of my backlog; I'm writing this on the day it goes up, and it's going up late). I also messed up when I picked the colors for this nail art...I used CbL Black Gold, Texas Tea (which was featured this week) and ILNP Black Orchid (which has black in the name, and is a holo, but wasn't part of black holo week).

I did a simple gradient with a makeup sponge. These pics look to me like I used three polishes, but the purple in the middle is just the two mixed together.

I stamped it with Powder Perfect's Golden Stamping Polish and Halloween plate, then put a border of Revlon Black Magic around the edge.

Even though I used NYC Grand Central Station, my ghosts smeared a little bit. I really do love this stamping polish; I bought all five of them, and the stamper, and the three plates, and I've been stamping my heart out lately. I'm definitely not the most skilled stamper, but I've certainly been getting a lot of practice!

Because Halloween is on Monday, and I just took a trip to Walgreen's and picked up a few new seasonal lovelies, I'm going to be posting Halloween polishes and nail art all next week! I'm calling it "Halloweek" because I am a genius. Join me Monday for my first spooky polish!

F.U.N. Lacquer Black Holo Witch

Not sure what happened this week, but I've got a lot of pictures of various polishes that I love and think turned out great, and then I've got my photos of F.U.N. Lacquer Black Holo Witch.

I feel like I should say a few words here. This polish was part of a collaboration between the lady who makes F.U.N. Lacquer and the lady who runs the Simply Nailogical account on social media. I used to think Simply Nailogical was really funny, and I loved that she was combining nail art with comedy in her videos. I learned a lot about gradients from her blog when I was a newbie, she's the reason I started using nail oil (I still use Bliss Kiss Simply Pure, and I still love it), she's the reason I got on Instagram. Hell, I think her blog is the first place I saw ILNP swatches, which was my gateway indie.

The thing about being on Instagram, though, is seeing her fans, who are mostly terrible and too young to be on Instagram (that's not a cranky old person judgement call, I mean according to the terms of service). Seeing them throwing around her catchphrases and tagging her everywhere got annoying, and then seeing her actually encourage their obnoxiousness was it for me. She runs a second account on Instagram called SimplyNotlogical, and it's a repost account. It's awesome that she uses her popularity as a way to get other nail art accounts some exposure! It's not awesome that she also reposts poorly-thought out memes made by her ignorant fanbase!

And that's all I really have to say about that. I have exactly one other F.U.N. Lacquer (not that there aren't more I want!), and it's also from this collection. I was a fan at the time and justified the expense by thinking it was nice to support a nail artist I liked.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Oh, I totally forgot to talk about the polish itself. It's a really thick charcoal micro glitter. The formula is difficult to work with and the end result isn't that dissimilar from any other holo micro glitter (over black, I might as well have used China Glaze Fairy Dust). There are cool things you can do with this polish, but it gets all over the place and is very annoying. Join me tomorrow for some spooky nail art that breaks all the rules!

Orly Black Holo

This is such a weird polish. It turned out to be Black Holo week on Unsweetened Nails, and to prove it, I've got a polish here called just that. Now, when I picked up this polish in the store, I was stunned. I mean, look at it in the bottle!

It's got a crazy warp-drive look to it

 Black Holo is indeed black and holo. Sadly, it's black holo bar glitter, so applying it is a mess. It doesn't stick up, so that's nice, but it requires a lot of manipulation.

Index: 1 coat over Revlon Black Magic
Middle: 2 coats
Ring: Sponged on
Pinky: 1 coat and sponged tip

It looks weird, and it inspired me to do some weird photo editing.

If I recall correctly, I got this polish at my local Bed, Bath, and Beyond during a big liquidation they were having. They were the only store in town with a Color Club display, and one of the few places I have ever seen Orly Color Blast. Which is good, because Orly Color Blast is a rip-off. The bottles, as you can see, are 11 mL and I think they retail for like $7. I don't know much about them, since no one buys them if they can avoid it, but I'm under the impression that a lot of them are just regular Orlys decanted out of their giant bottles into these little ones and sold for $1 less.

I do like the name "Color Blast."

While tagging this, I realized this is the first Orly I've ever posted about. This is also Unsweetened Nails' 50th post! Yes, a polish I would never actually wear from a brand that I have like six polishes from (OK, I checked and I have 13 Orlys. But still.)! Well, I started this blog with an obscure polish, so I guess it makes sense that my 50th post would be something equally obscure. Come back Friday for another black holo with black holo in the name, although this is a polish you will probably have heard of and seen before.

Colors by Llarowe Black Gold, Texas Tea

This is a nostalgic polish for me. It was my first ever black holo, and one of my earliest indie purchases. It's an absolutely stunning, inky blue-toned black and I love it so much I wish I could sleep in a vat of it.

It's kind of in-between an old school, fussy holo and a newer formula; it doesn't need aqua base coat or anything (thank goodness), but Seche does dull the holo, so all these pics are sans top coat. 

I have a few other pitch-black holos in my collection now, but this one blew me away when I got it. I bought this as a response to Color Club Beyond, which, as you may recall, is a silvery charcoal grey holo. I wanted so badly for it to be black that I went on the hunt and found this polish, which I love so much that I made two overly busy collages featuring it.

It's a bonus collage!

I was delighted to discover Colors by Llarowe when I was first starting to look for polishes that weren't super easy to find when when I was looking for them, like pitch black holos or translucent flakies. I don't really buy from the brand any more, but I do love the CbL polishes that I have. Black Gold, Texas Tea isn't the most wearable polish due to the top coat dulling issue, but I'm sure there's some trick to get around that ( I didn't try putting clear polish over it, that might work). The formula is excellent, although personally I'm not the biggest fan of these little square bottles. Join me Wednesday for some more black holographic goodness.

Saturday Nail Art - Flakie Edition

So today's nail art is sort of a cheat. I really just wanted to take a bunch of pictures of Nfu-Oh #51.

Here's a collage of just bottle shots! 

 I did do a little nail art as the base of this mani: a gradient of clear and black polish (both Wet N Wild; I tried to use China Glaze Liquid Leather, but the base was too crelly-ish). This is just a simple gradient done with a makeup sponge.

L: Before top coat
R: After top coat

Writing this post, I'm wondering why I bothered to top coat before I applied Nfu-Oh #51; I think it's because I had brushed - rather than sponged - Wet N Wild Black Creme onto the tips, and was afraid it wouldn't level. Probably not necessary, but anyway, here it is after two coats of Nfu-Oh #51.

I bought it on Amazon for $12.50. 

So I didn't get into polish until spring 2015, and a lot of the trends seemed to be in decline at the time. I feel like I was reading a lot of people expressing delight and relief that crackle and texture were going away. I don't have a single crackle in my collection, and honestly I think they're hideous. I can see how they might be useful for nail art, but I never like the look of just crackle over a color. I do have quite a few textures, but the only ones I really love are Zoya Pixie Dusts. These clear flakies were also not as popular as they once were; 2015 seems to be the year that UCC (Ultra Chameleon Chrome, which sounds awesome) started taking over, and now I see a lot of UCC flakies in holo bases. It's a wonderful time to be alive.

The bottles are shaped like ladies, it's really adorable and weird.

My point is, this polish was all the rage back in like 2012. When I started getting into polish, I was a broke college student, so my collection was strictly drug store. I think I bought this lovely lady when I was temping at my current job and $12.50 started to see, like a reasonable price to spend on amazing polish. Mostly, I was so shocked to see this come up when I searched for it on Amazon (sometimes a surprising place to find discontinued polishes: I also scored Zoya Kotori and Crystal on there) that I knew I had to get it.

In a couple of pictures, you can see my thumb, which is three coats with no undies. The flakies shift from red to green to gold over black, but suspended in the jelly, they just flicker like little chips of ruby. Mattifed, the olive to gold shift becomes more prominent, but I honestly didn't like most of the photos I took of it matte. I'm going to put in one more picture of Nfu-Oh #51 and encourage anyone who might be reading this and not in possession of this beauty to search Amazon for it. It's still on there at the time of this writing.

Sally Hansen Black Diamonds

Today's polish is one of my oldest. It's not vintage or anything, I think I bought it on clearance at Sally Beauty in 2011. In real life, it's a flat black with dusty silver flecks that reads charcoal. I kind of hate it on me in person. In these pics, though, I kind of love it!

 See those teal sparkles? I never notice them in person and was surprised to see them on camera. And while you can't see the fill line in any of these pics (I assume because this polish is so thick it clings to the sides of the bottle), I have worn this a few times and it's about half gone. I think I've thinned this with Seche Restore, because I remember hating the formula of this, but I had no problem with it this time.

 Mattified, I don't like this but I feel like if you were doing roadwork-themed nail art, this would be a good base. I didn't do nail art at all this week, but check in tomorrow to see something lovely.

Fantasy Makers Bloody Marie

Gosh, I feel like every week I work on this blog, I learn something. Like just now, I learned that, while it's great to take pictures and schedule posts ahead of time, sometimes you need to be wearing the polish while you edit the pictures because you can't remember what color it really is

It could be any of these! Just kidding, it's definitely not as dark the upper left box, but I think it's not as bright as on the right. Lower left is probably the most color-accurate. Not that you're likely to find this polish around, anyway...

It's a Fantasy Makers by Wet N Wild, and as far as I can tell, they don't appear to be a thing this year! They weren't even that impressive last year; I saw all four for $2 each at Rite-Aid and bought them all, mostly because I thought the bottles were cute, and Bloody Marie here turned out to be the best one. The others are a crappy black that I frankened with clear polish to try to turn into a jelly, a crappy white, a glow-in-the-dark that only glows in the bottle, and this red jelly that is basically a dupe for China Glaze Masai Red. 

.

 Since I didn't have that many pictures of Bloody Marie, and the ones I have are ridiculous, I thought I'd better flesh out this collage with some pics I took of Wet N Wild Black Creme. Since it's the only polish I see at the Wet N Wild Halloween makeup displays this year, I guess it's officially a Halloween polish now, huh? In the upper left is the black Fantasy Makers polish, Black as Knight; that is not what I'm wearing on my nails. Black Creme is a great polish, Black as Knight sucks and was a streaky, watery mess before I even messed with it.

 I took these when I wore Black Creme under Bali Mist, so they are summer sun pictures and my nails were still pointy. This was the indoor pic under my horrible old bulb. I decided to go for it and just make the picture black and white...I mean, holding black polish with black nails in a black and white photo is a great idea, right? Friday will continue our spooky nail polish times with another black polish.