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!

Color Club Beyond

Today's polish is one of the wonderful Halo Hues, excellent metallic holos that stamp like a champ. Beyond is what passes for a black holo, although the enormous amount of silver holographic pigment lightens it up so it reads as charcoal grey.

 I just hate the way this color looks on my skin, but this is still an amazing polish. Amazing formula, killer holo flame (even in low light), and I'm also really in love with the super-reflective holo cap.

 I bought this as part of a set from the Color Club website back in February. They have great sales from time to time. The Halo Hues are an absolute classic; even though I have lots of gorgeous linear holos and these are so silvery that none of them has a very saturated base color, these are so fool-proof and versatile that I use them a lot.

 I've stamped with Beyond quite a few times, but somehow there's no visible fill line in the bottle. Speaking of the bottle...

I got my exposure and white balance settings fixed up today, so I'm going to be including more bottle shots and close-ups. Join me tomorrow to see more overly dramatic photographs of nail 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!

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!

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.

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!

OPI 50 Years of Style

Today's post is another gold polish, OPI 50 Years of Style. I'm not a huge OPI fan, so all the ones I have, I bought on sale. 50 Years of Style came from an $8 two-pack at TJ Maxx.

It's metallic

The other polish in the 2-pack was a re-labelled glitter called "Golden Waves." TJ Maxx sometimes has old OPIs that have been renamed; I've read that they're polishes that are from collections that were associated with a particular celebrity or brand. When the license runs out, the polish has to be renamed, was the theory. That makes sense, although I wonder why 50 Years of Style not only didn't get renamed, it still has the horse-patterned wrapper on the cap. (I've also never been able to figure out what Golden Waves originally was - maybe by the time I get to the G's, I'll have some readers and someone will recognize it)

I'm always looking for nice gold polishes. This one I bought some months ago and never got around to wearing. I actually like it a lot! This is two coats. It's slightly sheer and has a very smooth, fast-drying formula. I'm not usually a person who mattifies all the things, but I thought 50 Years might glow a little under a matte top coat.

Honestly, I don't have a lot to say about this polish. It's nice, but nothing really special. Join me Wednesday for something orange!

Sally Girl 24 Karat

Hello again! So in my introductory post, I didn't outline the premise of this blog. Basically, I'm going to be swatching polish from my stash and posting pics and thoughts on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On Saturdays, I'm going to post nail art that is hopefully made from that week's polishes (unless they are completely fuggo together, in which case I have some alternate features planned). I'm going to post in roughly alphabetical order; this blog was almost called something like “alphanailmeric,” but I didn't want to commit to only swatching in alphabetical order and also that name looks stupid.

Without further ado, here's today's polish: Sally Girl 24 Karat!

Indoor lighting

For those of you who aren't familiar with this brand, Sally Girl is sold only at Sally Beauty...or was, it's actually been discontinued recently and replaced with something else. Not the most auspicious polish to start with, now that I think of it!

Sally sold these little tiny bottles for 99 cents, which made them both temptingly cheap and a complete rip-off. Swatching this basically emptied my bottle, although in 24 Karat's defense, I did a mani with this prior to nubbing. I considered putting the pics here, but trust me, they are terrible. 24 Karat is a perfectly average gold foil; there's absolutely no point in reviewing it, since you're not likely to find it anywhere, and the tiny brush is pretty miserable to use anyway. 

That was my first set of swatches! Join me Friday for a polish that is the opposite of this one in a lot of ways (by which I mean, you can and should buy it)!