Zoya Bay

Oh boy, Zoya Bay! Remember a while back when Zoya said they were discontinuing the pixie dusts? They didn't! Summer 2016 saw the release of six pixie dusts (the "seashells" portion of the Sunsets & Seashells collection), and I have all of them. Bay is one of my favorites.

Zoya Bay has a regular pixie dust finish, so it's slightly gritty and very, very sparkly. Contrasting shimmer has been a big trend this year, and I think Bay falls into this category with its golden sparkle. It stands out brilliantly in the sun. I think this is three coats of Bay; like a lot of the pixie dusts, it's a touch sheer and dries rapidly.

I have all six of the seashells because of a Good Morning America sales code, so that's awesome. I thought it was so cool that I had a whole collection (well, half of one), and these were the first polishes I ever swatched. If you want to see the original swatches, many of which were taken with flash because I am such a pro, you can check out my Instagram. I loved Bay when I swatched it the first time, kind of forgot about it, then got to swatch and love it all over again.

One thick coat of Seche gives a glassy finish and makes the sparkle just explode. I absolutely adore this shade of sky blue, and the golden glitter in it gives me a Cinderella feel. This is a summer polish, but I really think it's delicate and pretty enough for spring, and icy enough for winter.

Even though pixie dusts aren't super awful to remove, I did wear a peel-off base coat under this and Balinese Bay earlier in the week. Come back tomorrow to see how peel-off base coat inspired some avant garde nail art.

Revlon - Balinese Bay

Boy, Revlon. This was one of my go-to brands just earlier this year, as I was getting really into collecting polish. Their Spring 2016 collection actually had a lot of good stuff in it, then nothing for summer and two polishes for fall - just like last year, actually, except last year we got Untamed, while this year there's like a hot pink with blue shimmer and some purple-blue glittery fake duochrome thing. I won't touch those, sorry Revlon. I do have a lot from this brand that I love, but I guess they must come later in the alphabet, because...

Today's polish is Balinese Bay. In all fairness, I do like this polish for what it is, which is an insane pink and black texture with scattered holo glitter. I mean, my god. I'm simultaneously delighted and appalled by this polish. I bought it at the Dollar Tree, along with a lot of Moon Candies and some Colorstays, and its collection mate Mayan Riviera. If you've heard that rumor that Seche Restore melts glitters, this is my evidence to the contrary. The same consistency as left over Nesquick at the bottom of a glass of chocolate milk, Balinese Bay has required a lot of thinning since I've had it. 

While I appreciate it as a matte texture, Balinese Bay can also be top coated with a couple thick coats of Seche Vite. You can see the little holo glitters popping.

For $1, I've actually gotten a lot of enjoyment out of this polish, and I've worn it a couple of times. I'm really not a fan of pink, but for some reason, this combo just makes me happy. While scraping Balinese Bay out of the neck of the bottle and trying to spread it on my nails is an ordeal, and the result is an extremely busy polish, I do really like the results. I used NYC Strip Me Off peel off base coat underneath, because this polish is currently 92% glitter, 7% Seche Restore, and the rest is actual suspension base. Join me Friday for another texture!

Sinful Colors - Bali Mist

Today's polish is as mysterious and shifting as the mists of Bali, I guess? It is a duochrome...no, really...

Even though it's a pretty well-known nail polish trick to wear sheer duochromes over a black base, I figured I would judge Sinful Colors Bali Mist on its own merits and try it out alone. In the bottle, it's a pale pink with an oily green sheen; on the nail, it's basically just pink, A lovely, pearly pink, if that's what you're into. But just pink, Over black undies, though, Bali Mist looks very different.

This is one coat over Wet N Wild Black Creme, and ok, in this shot it basically is still just pink. Bad example. Let's try again.

So in the shade, at certain angles, Bali Mist is, indeed, a duochrome. In direct lighting, it's a brushstrokey sheer metallic pink. When you make decals out of it, they look like cellophane wrapping paper and it's pretty cool, I messed with that a little bit while swatching this polish and want to revisit it later. Check back on Wednesday to see a polish that is also pink, but is anything but sheer.

Saturday Nail Art - Jelly Sandwich of Sorts

This week's nail art is a little bit of a hard sell. I had two polishes with holo in them, and two polishes that were a jelly finish. I did a little experimenting (outtakes at the bottom of the post) and realized that Zoya Aurora and LA Colors Atomic actually combined to make a pretty awesome deep plum.

I decided to go with a dry brush mani. I did a base coat of Aurora, then swipes of Atomic and Liquid Sky Lacquer Babi's Bur-Bindi, the polish I was afraid would clash hard with the other two. In fact, it got kind of lost in the Aurora sandwich. I knew the formula was pretty opaque in one coat, so I thought I would see if it stamped...

...and so it does! The red-brown still doesn't stand out super well against the warm purple, but maybe you can tell that these are roses. I am pretty sure this pattern was from a Born Pretty plate, although I am terrible at making a note of what plate I used or remembering what they are called.

Not sure if I would call this mani a success, or just a surprisingly pleasing failure. 

Here's the test run, when I discovered how cool the two colors look together and that Babi's could be used to stamp a lovely little fern. This was a pretty good week overall; come back next week for some stranger things.

Liquid Sky Lacquer Babi's Bur-Bindi

Here's a polish that was one of my first indie purchases. Liquid Sky Lacquer had a sale last summer, when I was still a broke student, so I spent the $8 or whatever that I had in my PayPal account left over from doing transcription jobs at her sale. I bought my first holos: a mini of Pure Luxury, and a mini of a red holo I can't remember the name of. It turned out to be out of stock, so Carolyn, the maker (as you can see on the label below) gave me a partial refund and included a sample of today's polish, Babi's Bur-bindi.

This polish was named after the blogger who runs Colorsutraa. I'm not sure if it was a collaboration shade or what, but it's definitely a unique color. The official description calls it a burgundy, but I think it's more of a mahogany. It's a reddish brown base with a rose metallic gleam in some lights. 

 I've gotten two full manis out of my sample bottle so far, and I'm pretty sure there's enough for a third in there. I feel like I don't hear a lot about Liquid Sky Lacquer, but they've really got some nice brown holos in the shop (this particular one has been discontinued). I think these were actually my first holos, and even though I love them, I haven't bought anything else from this brand. I should probably change that!

I had two holos and two jellies this week! Come back tomorrow to see if I was able to successfully combine them.

Zoya Aurora

Oh my gosh, you guys, the first Zoya! I was pretty resistant to Zoya when I was newer to polish because I had heard that some people have problems with it if they're not using Zoya base and top coat. It chips fast or doesn't apply well, those sorts of things. I took a chance on Zoya during one of their Four Free sales, which is essentially a 50% off sale, and long story short it's now my favorite mainstream brand.

Aurora is one of Zoya's scattered holos, and is probably the most renowned. It's packed with holo flakes in a sheer but pigmented jelly base. I'm not going to lie, I'm really, really glad that Zoya came out with Finley because I prefer a blurple to a red-violet like Aurora, but that's not to say Aurora isn't gorgeous.

 I mean, look, I couldn't stop taking pictures of this polish. It's amazing in every light. I also love the Zoya bottle so, so much. It's got such a great shape! Another great thing about Zoya is it's really easy to get featured on their website if you use the hashtag #everydayzoya on Instagram. I've gotten a few on their and it's very gratifying. Join me next time for another holo!

LA Colors Atomic

So I know a complained a lot last week, because the polishes I was swatching were ugly and annoying. I hesitate to criticize polishes too harshly, though, because I have been wrong in the past. For example, here's a polish I hated when I bought it: LA Colors Atomic.

I hated it because it was sheer, and at the time (sometime in the summer of 2015), I didn't know what crellies were. Yep! So I wrote off the polish and the brand, which is for the best because otherwise I would have a million of them, since they are $1 or less. Swatching Atomic for the blog, though, for the first time since I bought it, I realize it's actually a winner. Yes, it takes three coats, but the formula is smooth and easy to apply and the finished result is beautiful. These pics are with no top coat, Atomic is just that shiny. Join me Wednesday for another winner, and the blog's first polish from my favorite mainstream brand.

Saturday Nail Art - Chevrons

So, against all odds, the nail art I made from this week's polishes turned out...kind of OK?

 Nina Ultra Pro Art Walk, if you recall, is a hot pink creme with bright blue microglitter that just doesn't look right. Revlon Artsy has quite noticeable large bright blue glitter, and it seems like the colors actually go together (in a tacky sort of way). The subdued pink of Astra separating the two saturated colors ties it all together. I actually kind of like this.

I didn't remember to do a step-by-step for this art, but basically, I started with a base of Astra and then I used Scotch tape. Pretty simple. Join me next week when I finish up the A's!

Cirque Astra

So I swear I'm not some indies-only nail snob. It was not intentional that both the mainstream polishes (one salon, one drug store) would be hideous and the indie would be one of my absolute favorite polishes. I didn't invent the alphabet! Today just happens to be Cirque Astra.

 I had some indoor photos too, but the colors were off and just didn't do justice to this polish. I love taking pictures of Cirque Astra (my very first Instagram posts were of this polish!), and when I get my indoor lighting setup figured out, I'll probably take some more pics of it.

Astra, like Acid Wash, is from Cirque's Spring 2016 Speckled and Sparkled collection. The silver and charcoal specks make it look so much like marble when it's shiny; mattified, it reminds me a lot of easter candy, specifically those little chocolate eggs with the chalky candy carapace. Astra has the best formula of the four speckles, in my opinion. I considered leaving Astra out of this week's art, because it's clearly in a different league than the other two polishes, but I decided to just go for it. Come back tomorrow to see the art!

Revlon Artsy

First off, I'm just going to apologize for the poor quality of this post: I'm sorry. I'm sorry about my bad retouching...

 The lighting isn't so great either...

There's some really inconsistency in the photo editing...

And what a lack of variety in the hand poses!

Overall, a really inferior post, even for this blog. But you know what? I can't bring myself to reswatch this polish. Monday I mentioned the mental garbage pile? Yeah, this one is in there, too. I'll be generous and say this polish was "challenging" to apply. Lots of pushing glitter around in a thick base. This isn't a polish you brush on; you dab it, or better yet, you don't buy it in the first place. It does look pretty cool matte, I'll give it that. Join me Friday for this week's good polish, which happens to be my favorite pink.

Nina Ultra Pro Art Walk

Today's polish is incredibly ugly. It's...just look at it!

I paid I think $2.79 for this, and I want my money back. Nina Ultra Pro Art Walk is a bizarre hot pink with electric blue microglitter scattered throughout it. It looks strange in the bottle and appallingly ugly on the nail.

OK, so maybe I am being a little harsh on Art Walk. The above photos are without base and top coat, and I don't usually wear anything without base and top coat (except maybe Zoya Pixie Dusts). Let's see if Art Walk is redeemed by a coat of Seche.

It's actually much better with top coat. The blue glitter just comes off looking kind of like dirt in the base color, though. I can see why someone would think this combo would work, it sounds like it would have a 90's sort of lovable neon horribleness. I don't know if the base of this polish is too thick or if it's something with the glitter itself, but either way, this has a KBShimmer A-Blazing-esque resistance to sparkling.

If it sparkled, that would be different. I'm not doing this project with any intent to destash anything, but I am assembling a mental garbage pile as I go along, and right now I'm imagining myself throwing Nina Ultra Pro Art Walk into it. It's too bad, because hot pink is one of the few varieties of pink that I like on me. Come back on Wednesday to see another dud...uh, I mean, another interesting polish.

Saturday Nail Art - Green Blobs

Sounds great, right? I was pretty stuck about this nail art. I did all the swatches for this week back in August, right after I got back from vacation, and I did not think I was going to be able to make nail art for this combination of polishes. Alluring Rose was messing me up. I did swatches of a franken I'd made and was going to post those instead, but all the photos turned out crappy. Fortunately, I came to the realization that Angel Kiss is green and Appletini is green, so let's just forget about Alluring Rose and do a green-on-green blobbicure.

 I had to redo a couple of nails because the thing about blobbicures is, they take their sweet time to dry. I mean, it's a blob of polish, so yes this is common sense and I should have known better.You can also see on the ring finger where I added an extra dot of polish after I'd top coated; this was not a good idea either.

I still wouldn't go so far as to call this a nail fail, because I do like the way it turned out. Not sure why I initially thought these colors wouldn't work together. That's part of the fun of this blog anyway: giving myself permission to make ugly things! I'm also going to be swatching some fuggo polishes next week, so if you're a fan of hideous things, be sure to stop by!

NYC Appletini

So on Wednesday, I said that this polish was the opposite of Color Club Angel Kiss. This is NYC Appletini, a polish I bought on a whim at Winco while grocery shopping. It's a creme that's so very saturated that it's eye-catching, where Angel Kiss was a grayed-out metallic that would be really unitneresting without its holo flame. Look at this yellow-green beast.

I have a couple other long-wearing NYCs, and while I really like the brand's In A Minute formula, I dislike my other two long-wearings. They have a runny, slow-drying formula. Appletini has a creamier formula, although the first coat always has a lot of bald spots. Two coats gives perfect coverage and makes your nails the color of a not quite ripe Granny Smith apple.

I had my first ever appletini on vacation in New Hampshire with my boyfriend's family. I got wrecked and totally killed at foosball. That has nothing to do with this polish. Come back on Saturday to see the weekly nail art!

Color Club Angel Kiss

Angel Kiss is one of the Color Club Halo Hues, which are some of the strongest linear holos around. All of them are so heavy with silver holographic pigment that the colors are quite muted, so I tweaked this one a little to try to show the color more; Angel Kiss is a seafoam green.

The Halo Hues are absolutely crazy, and I feel like they're essential if you're into polish. Only two of the below pics were taken in direct sunlight, but you can see the rainbow in Angel Kiss in pretty much any light. It's got a wonderful smooth formula and it's opaque in two coats. These are also known for their great wear time. If the base colors were a little more vivid, these would easily be the best holos ever.

Angel Kiss is also very easy to take pictures of, since it's full of rainbows 24 hours a day (except when the person wearing it is asleep and has the lights off, I guess). I absolutely love this polish and all its brethren, While I'm singing its praises, I'll add that Seche doesn't dull it, it dries quickly, and you can stamp with it. Angel Kiss is an appropriate name for this polish, since it is perfection. The one annoying thing about Halo Hues is that removal generally leaves powdered rainbow pigment all over my cuticles. I consider this a small price to pay. Stop by on Friday for a polish that's the opposite of this one in a lot of ways.

Maybelline Alluring Rose

Welcome to a new week of swatches! I'm pretty happy that I've managed to post four times a week all through August, even though I was on vacation for part of it. The weather is starting to go back to being cloudy and rainy, so I'm going to be investing in some daylight bulbs and taking more indoor pictures. Right now, here's a photo of Maybelline Alluring Rose.

One of my earliest polishes was Maybelline Bold Gold, which, like Alluring Rose, has the word "holographic" written on the cap despite not being holographic at all. None of the Maybelline "Holographics" (I also have a third, Blue Blaze) are holographic; in fact, they are all metallics, and this one is a sheer rose to gold duochrome. It reminds me of an inferior version of Color Club Sorry, Not Sorry, which has a more opaque formula and a stronger shift. Not that Alluring Rose isn't pretty in its way...

You can see a slight, foil-like sparkle in the upper right shot, but it's generally just a metallic gold that shifts to a pale rose. It has a smooth, thin formula, so even though it's lying about being holographic, it's not a bad polish. I can't think of a Maybelline Color Show that I've really had trouble with, and it's actually the brand that got me into polish! Check back Wednesday for an actual holo!

Saturday Nail Art - Stamped Textured Gradient

Welcome to Saturday Nail Art! I used two polishes from Holiday 2013 collections (OPI All Sparkly and Gold and China Glaze All Wrapped Up), but I used them to make non-holiday nail art.

I ran out of liquid latex, so I used NYC Strip Me Off as a barrier

All Wrapped Up was a bear to apply with the brush, and it dried matte but not exactly with the pebbly feel I think a polish needs to qualify as a texture. Sucking up the thick purple base with a sponge made application a lot easier, and the microglitters stood out enough to turn it into a proper textured polish.

I guess I must have been pleased with how this turned out...

...Since I took so many pictures.

After I'd done the gradient, I decided to stamp over it with Konad White. I used one Born Pretty plate and one Ejubias plate. I really like stamping over textures, I feel like it's kind of a rustic look.

I think this is one of the more successful nail art combos I've done on the blog so far. Of course, two of the polishes just happened to be textures, and I didn't try to work in Bonita All Things Blue (I thought that would be a recipe for disaster). Next week, I'll be swatching my first duochrome...well, sort of.

China Glaze All Wrapped Up

I've said before that one of the reasons I started this blog was to rediscover polishes in my collection. I had worn this polish, China Glaze All Wrapped Up (which, like Monday's polish, also came out Holiday 2013), once before, and I remembered that it was a microglitter that was hard to get off. I wore peel-off base coat to help with removal. What I didn't remember was how much I hate the horrible sludgy formula.

Seche Vite on first two fingers, no top coat on last two

I bought this polish last December at my local TJ Maxx, brought it home, and put it away to wait for the inspiration to wear it. That spring, I picked up one of my favorite cremes, Revlon Irresistable. I thought All Wrapped up would make a great accent, so I took both polishes out and set them on the end table next to my boyfriend's and my bed (I didn't have my workstation set up yet). Disaster struck when my boyfriend knocked a pillow onto the table and sent my polishes flying. I found Irresistable quickly, but All Wrapped Up seemed to have disappeared. I searched the whole bedroom, under the bed, under the mattress, I used a flashlight, a dowsing rod, I consulted a psychic...no trace. I found All Wrapped Up on Amazon and was totally going to buy another bottle just so I could do this mani I had in mind.

Fortunately, I didn't have to buy the other bottle, because I found this one. I used to keep my purse in front of the end table (which eventually lead to my boyfriend spilling an entire drink into it, because he is a hazard), and I had searched it repeatedly since it was the obvious place for the bottle to have fallen. One day I turned my purse upside down and the bottle fell out; it had dropped into a pocket I never used and forgot was even there. Awesome story, right? Did I mention that this polish has a horrible, unworkably goopy formula that dries dull but not textured and is just generally obnoxious? Thank god I didn't buy that other bottle. Stop by on Saturday to see if I can redeem this mess.