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 - Are You Plaid to See Me?

So first off, you might notice in this nail art something I alluded to earlier in the week: a change in my nail shape. Yep, I filed 'em square. I did this for a few reasons; I had a peelie on my left hand that looked like it was going to get worse, I had a hard time filing my points evenly and wanted something neater-looking, and even though I never hear anyone talk about this, it's been my experience that pointy tips get tip wear faster. Your mileage may vary.

 As you probably guessed from this post's hilarious title, this week I was inspired to do some plaid nail art. Remember last week, when I inadvertently switched Zoya Bay and Cupcake Bat-chelor Pad? It actually worked out for the best this week, too. I started out by hand-painting striped of Bat-Chelor Pad and Wet N Wild Be More Pacific over a base of China Glaze Bend Over Backwards, which would not have gone as smoothly if I'd been trying to use a texture.

 I love this color scheme, makes me think of old wool blankets. I stamped with Konad White, as usual, and the plate was from Born Pretty.

To me, this is probably the most successful nail art I've had on the blog yet. I only did it on four fingers, but I would definitely recreate it maybe as an accent nail. Next week might get a little awkward, as I have three holos to swatch and the weather is starting to turn gloomy. I'm about to get daylight bulbs and invest in a second lamp so I can take better indoor pictures, since that's what I'm going to be stuck with starting in a month or so. Fortunately, next week's polishes are super sparkly, super holographic, and gorgeous in any light!

China Glaze Bend Over Backwards

I discovered this year that I really love red oranges. I was super pumped when I came across this polish at TJ Maxx, because at the time I didn't have any red metallic shimmers at all, and then I just never got around to wearing it. This summer, though, Nine Zero Lacquer had a sale and I picked up Volcanic, which is a beautiful red-orange creme packed with coarse gold shimmer. I wore it until it chipped. I've always liked red polish, but cool-toned reds just don't look as good on me as orangey ones, and I owe this realization to Nine Zero Volcanic.

Bend Over Backwards is from the Cirque du Soleil collection, which I just looked up and wow it's from 2012. This is kind of interesting, because in indies, it really seems like 2016 has been the year of the red-orange. Last year, I wanted an orange holo and ended up hunting down Different Dimension on Storenvy. This year, I could buy an orange or red-orange holo from Cupcake (actually they have a couple), Vapid, Different Dimension, Potion Polish, KBShimmer, Colores De Carole, Dreamland Lacquer, Nine Zero, Picture Polish (Autumn is actually from 2015), Powder Perfect, Pahlish, Tonic, Celestial, Polish M, and probably more. I have a mystery polish from Baroness X called Demeter that is an incredible red-orange, and one of September's Hella Holo Customs was an orange holo from Crow's Toes. Part of this surge stems from indie makers producing Halloween collections, because a lot of people love Halloween polish and mainstream brands seem to not really care about making them anymore. Part of it is probably because orange polish is awesome.

Bend Over Backwards is a nice shimmery metallic. It's got a good formula, thin but not runny, and it's opaque in two coats. I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of brushstrokes. I feel like this is a very fine fall polish, definitely worth the $3.99 or whatever I paid for it. Both my local TJ Maxx stores used to have a lot of China Glaze polish; it's how I first tried the brand, and I have always been impressed with them. Unfortunately, the TJ Maxx by my work has mostly OPIs and Essies right now, and the TJ Maxx by the train station closer to my apartment just doesn't have nail polish at all anymore that I can see. Last holiday season, they had a ton and I cleaned up, but since then it's been dry as a bone. Geez, this was a wordy post! Check back tomorrow for less words and more nail art!

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.