Cupcake Polish Berry Good Looking

Hello! It's October, and today's polish is from last summer, but somehow this warm purple feels right for fall. I actually wore this polish for a whole week last week, which is an eternity for me. When you've got perfection on your nails, though, it's easy to leave it alone.

In my last post, I mentioned that I was planning on getting some daylight bulbs and a second light source. Well, I did! It's autumn in Oregon, which means lots of rain and very little sunlight, so I knew I had to make a change. I also realized that the indoor shots I was taking under a regular light bulb were not the best. I'm really enjoying taking pictures in my new lighting setup, and it seemed like Berry Good Looking was a perfect polish to start this new phase with.

It's perfect partly because it's such a crazy-looking polish that I immediately got a lot of practice by taking a million pictures of it. It's also perfect on a more symbolic level. When Berry Good Looking came out last year, everyone went nuts over how amazing the color and the holo flame were. It got a ridiculous amount of hype, but I held off buying it because I thought it was pink.

It's hard to take accurate pictured of BGL, and it's also completely different in the bottle than on the nail. I was justified in thinking it was pink, because in the bottle, it is! On the nail, though, the polish pops such a supernaturally strong blue flame that it darkens up and becomes the most mind-blowing, saturated hot purple.

Just like I put off buying BGL because of my uncertainty, I put off stepping up my lighting game for the same reason. If all this pontificating and metaphor-making seems like stalling, well...it totally is. I stuck to the same format for all my previous blog posts: indoor light photo with some kind of cheesy editing, collage of outdoor shots, repeat. I still want to do collages, but I feel like in a way, I was using them to distract from my posing and photography. So I am planning on including more full-sized pictures, more bottle shots, working on my poses, and just generally having more variety. I realize this was more of a meta post about my blog than it was a post about Berry Good Looking, but honestly, doesn't everyone have this already? 

Saturday Nail Art - In 3D

This week's nail art is either my greatest triumph, or my most abject failure. You be the judge, hypothetical reader.

OK, so I forgot to take step by step pictures of this nail art. I'll just describe what I did. For my base coat, I'm wearing 2 or 3 coats of Sinful Colors Bali Mist. For the...uh, let's call them "sculptural elements," I took my peelies of Revlon Balinese Bay and Zoya Bay and cut them up with a pair of scissors. I then used an old, gooey bottle of NYC Grand Central Station to stick them onto my nails in a random arrangement. So there you go.

The peel-off base coat I used was NYC Strip Me Off (two coats), and the pieces were fairly stiff. Still, it was possible to shape them to the contour of my nail, and they stayed on fine. I've never seen this style of nail art before, and I surely don't expect it to catch on because it's sort of gross, but if you want to try it out and put it on Instagram please let me know if you're able to come up with a clever hashtag, because it's just not happening for me tonight.

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 - 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!

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.

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 - Cherry Blossoms

Today's nail art was done spur of the moment, after I had finished swatching the week's polishes. Word of warning: I was suffering from some noticeable dryness at this point, so a lot of these photos have been retouched. I started out pretty uninspired, and my first attempt was...uh, indefensible.

I have no idea what I was thinking with this

I saw that what I was doing was hideous, stopped myself, and thought it over. I had a beautiful neutral base, a brown creme, and a coral creme with shimmer. Suddenly, it became obvious: cherry blossoms!

In progress

I was so excited by this revelation that I didn't think to get in progress shots like last week. Basically, I just used a detail brush to draw branches using OPI A-Taupe the Space Needle, then a dotting tool to add flowers with KBShimmer A-Blazing, on a base of KBShimmer Acetone it Down. Here's a collage of the finished product, sun shots on the right and shade on the left:

I'm holding the bottle of A-Blazing in all these shots because this nail art really redeemed it in my eyes. When I swatched it, I was horrified at its pinkness. Combined with the other two colors, it read as the orangey-red I had wanted it to be all along. I really like the way this turned out, I didn't expect these colors to go together at all. Join me next week for some blues!

KBShimmer A-Blazing

Today's polish is from one of the most well-known and beloved indie brands, KBShimmer, yet it's still obscure. It's called A-Blazing, and it's a creme with sparse, scattered shimmer particles. I've got to say...it's not one of my favorites.

It's pink.

This polish was an exclusive from A Box, Indied. The very last A Box, Indied, as a matter of fact, from June 2016. I had seen swatches of all the polishes before I decided to buy the set, but bloggers didn't say that A-Blazing was pink. It was supposed to be orange; one person described it as coral, but it sounded like a coral-leaning orange with orange sparks of shimmer. It is not.

The box's theme was campfire stories, and all the other polishes were named after spooky urban languages. A-Blazing was supposed to represent the campfire itself, an idea I really like. I feel like KBShimmer, as an enduring brand that has acted as a gateway to indie polish purchasing for many people, earned the right to occupy the central space. Unfortunately, I'm not really into the polish itself. The formula was great (this is 2 coats but with careful application, one would suffice), but the color, yikes. I also always find it kind of ironic that KBShimmer is a brand that is not known for its shimmer polishes, and in fact the shimmer in this is the weakest element. There is a little bit of sparkle in the sun, as you can see in the lower right of the collage, but it's not very much. The shimmer is somehow too subtle and obtrusive at the same time, and this is because it doesn't dry smooth. It's not textured or anything, just a little bumpy, but still. If I was into pink cremes, I would love the formula on this polish but still be a little disappointed with the chunky shimmer. I've got to give this one a meh. Things will look up Wednesday, though, with a polish that I found to be a pleasant surprise.