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.

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. 

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 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.

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!

Wet N Wild Be More Pacific

OK, so my nails look wrecked in this post. Because I don't wear a base coat when I swatch, cremes show every flaw in my nails. Later in the week, you'll see a change in my nail shape, and these pics are part of the reason why.

As for the polish itself, I actually really like this one. It's a nice thick two-coat creme, and the color is right between green and blue. Also it was like seventy-five cents or whatever. Cupcake Polish also has a polish called Be More Pacific, but this one came first. I think this is a beautiful color and perfect for summer. I don't have a lot to say about this one, come back Friday for something shinier.

Saturday Nail Art - Golden Giraffes

All the polishes this week went pretty well with each other, so I did a more elaborate look than last week. I took step-by-step pictures for this week. I can't guarantee I'll always remember to take step-by-step pics, but I will try to do it every once in a while.

I started with a base coat of Monday's polish, OPI 50 Years of Style. I decided to do a smoosh mani using 50 Years and Wet N Wild 9021Orange. I painted my ring and pinky nails using Nicole by OPI A Heart of Gold. The smoosh marbling didn't work super great because 9021Orange is much thinner than 50 Years of Style.

To combat the sheerness, I blobbed the polish directly on my nails and then smooshed it with my stamper. Eventually, I just dabbed 9021Orange onto the nail and left the blobs to dry. It's a fast dry polish, so this actually worked. In the last pic, I've got 9021Orange on A Heart of Gold, and all my nails have been mattified. At this point, I had kind of a gold and orange giraffe thing going on, which, it turns out, nicely complements the stamping image I put on last. 

Stamped with Konad Black + Wet N Wild Black Creme

BP-L010 is the strange Born Pretty stamping plate I used. On the website, it's called "Aztec Plate," yet the images are dreamcatchers and giraffes and pi inside a target that's partially covered in bacon? It's a very, uh, interesting plate. It's good quality, and picking up the images was fairly easy (even with my worn out stamper). I like the way this mani turned out! It was just dumb luck that these polishes ended up being in the same week, and I think doing this weekly nail art is going to get more challenging and I will probably end up cheating and rearranging polishes to avoid making anything too hideous. Monday will be another first: the first indie polish, not counting that horrible picture of Vapid Spellcaster in the first post.

Wet N Wild 9021Orange

Today's polish is another Wet N Wild, this one has a great terrible pun for a name: 9021-Orange. It's a lovely orange glass fleck. 

Indoor pics

 This one came out with a whole collection of other colors with bad TV show puns for names. I snagged this one because it's gorgeous, although it is annoyingly sheer. All these pics are 4 coats.

4 coats!

 I feel like it's very likely that Zoya has an orange glass fleck that probably takes fewer coats (Tanzy? or Amy?), and I love this one so much that I think I might pick it up.

Mattified, it gets all glowy and also kind of reminds me of carrots. I wouldn't have described it as a carroty-orange when it was shiny, but matte, it just seems brighter and less golden. 

Because it's so sheer, I wonder how this would look as a topper over a red, orange, or yellow creme. I've frankened with this, but hadn't worn it before and I love it! It's a really pretty shimmer in a beautiful color. Join me on Friday for the blog's first textured polish!

Saturday Nail Art - Stamping

Part of the point of this blog is to wear polishes I wouldn't have otherwise gotten around to. I've just shown swatches up to this point, but I think part of getting to really know a polish is using it for nail art. I didn't find the time to do anything really ornate this week, but I did want to see if Sally Girl 24 Karat would stamp well.

I edited this pic a bunch, but I didn't add the lens flare. That was in the picture already and I thought it looked cool.

Stamping isn't something I'm an expert at; even using a clear stamper, I have a hard time lining up the image on my nail. I used two images from the Uber-Chic succulents mini-stamp plate. I love succulents, so this was the first stamping plate I felt like I had to have. 

Stamped with Konad White and Sally Girl 24 Karat

The plate has a lot of cute images on it. I picked a design that actually appears twice on the plate in different sizes; the small one is perfectly pinkie-sized. I swear I'm going to stop blabbing about how my nails used to be long, but I actually swatched this week's polishes on them before the break. They turned out looking pretty bad, and I didn't get sunlight shots, just desk lamp. I thought I would show a couple even though they suck and I didn't edit them.

L: The plate
R: My nails dwarfed that tiny bottle :(

Join me next week when I resume swatching and eventually get to a polish whose name starts with a letter!

Wet N Wild Megalast 2% Milk

Today's polish is a sheer nude. It's a well-loved, accessible, affordable, and effective YNBB (your nails but better) polish from classic cheap drugstore brand Wet n Wild. I bought this because it came so highly recommended by the nail community, even though I hate sheer nudes. I don't want my nails to look milky and shiny! It grosses me out, just like actual milk. Maybe it's not so much a YNBB; maybe it's more of a YNBS (your nails but slimier). This is the slimiest polish in the galaxy.

This is a heavily edited photo. 

This kind of polish is seen as essential that everyone should have in her collection, though. It's versatile, subtle, and is appropriate for a wide range of situations. If you need a sheer nude to round out your collection, you could certainly do worse than 2% Milk.

In the end, I have to say I do like this polish. It applies really well, with very little streaking and no dragging. I did 3 coats for the pictures, but I wish I had left it at 2; more layers make the polish more gelatinous-looking, rather than more opaque. To really make this one shine, you need a matte top coat.

I edited this with the Windows 10 image viewer, so it's technically not Photoshopped..

Speaking of cheap-yet-high-quality drug store polish, here's NYC Matte Me Crazy on top of 2% Milk. Mattifying gives it a frosted-glass look that I love. I'm not a huge matte polish person, either; there's just something about this color with this finish that makes me feel like my nails are made of porcelain. I feel like the daintiest.

The plan for tomorrow is to show nail art made using this week's polishes. It's nothing super fancy, but I wore it all day and kept admiring it (even though I'm still missing my long nails). Check out tomorrow's post to see.