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!

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 - 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!

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.

Cupcake Polish Bat-chelor Pad

So you might notice something about today's polish: alphabetically, it comes before Zoya Bay. I had both of these when I started this blog, so it's not a matter of getting added late; I plan these posts out weeks in advance using Google calendar, and I had them on there in the correct order. Why did Bay appear last week? Well, remember the weird nail art I did using Balinese Bay and Regular Bay after I'd peeled them off? I guess I thought that was such a good and natural idea that I put Bay into the wrong week just so I could create it. I only bring it up to reassure everyone that yes, I am sticking to my loose, mostly alphabetical structure, and I do indeed know the alphabet. Anyway, here's Bat-chelor Pad.

 Bat-chelor Pad is from Cupcake's Fall 2015 Modern Vampire collection along with Bloodhound, which will be making an appearance here soon. This is a very dark navy blue linear holo. Like all of the Cupcakes I have, this polish has a super thick but very workable formula and dries rapidly.

This is a really beautiful polish! This tone of blue is not my absolute favorite to wear, but this is such a sparkly rainbow-fest on the nail that I love it. These pictures are with base and top coat (unlike Wednesday's polish...you'll be able to tell the difference, trust me) because I wore this as a full mani, but I don't remember how long I had it on for or what the wear was like. I'm assuming it was good. Come back Wednesday to see...Actually, if you want to skip Wednesday's post, that's probably for the best. Definitely come back Saturday to check out the nail art, though! It turned out pretty well this week!

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.