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.

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 - 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.