Colors by Llarowe Black Gold, Texas Tea

This is a nostalgic polish for me. It was my first ever black holo, and one of my earliest indie purchases. It's an absolutely stunning, inky blue-toned black and I love it so much I wish I could sleep in a vat of it.

It's kind of in-between an old school, fussy holo and a newer formula; it doesn't need aqua base coat or anything (thank goodness), but Seche does dull the holo, so all these pics are sans top coat. 

I have a few other pitch-black holos in my collection now, but this one blew me away when I got it. I bought this as a response to Color Club Beyond, which, as you may recall, is a silvery charcoal grey holo. I wanted so badly for it to be black that I went on the hunt and found this polish, which I love so much that I made two overly busy collages featuring it.

It's a bonus collage!

I was delighted to discover Colors by Llarowe when I was first starting to look for polishes that weren't super easy to find when when I was looking for them, like pitch black holos or translucent flakies. I don't really buy from the brand any more, but I do love the CbL polishes that I have. Black Gold, Texas Tea isn't the most wearable polish due to the top coat dulling issue, but I'm sure there's some trick to get around that ( I didn't try putting clear polish over it, that might work). The formula is excellent, although personally I'm not the biggest fan of these little square bottles. Join me Wednesday for some more black holographic goodness.

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.

Sally Hansen Black Diamonds

Today's polish is one of my oldest. It's not vintage or anything, I think I bought it on clearance at Sally Beauty in 2011. In real life, it's a flat black with dusty silver flecks that reads charcoal. I kind of hate it on me in person. In these pics, though, I kind of love it!

 See those teal sparkles? I never notice them in person and was surprised to see them on camera. And while you can't see the fill line in any of these pics (I assume because this polish is so thick it clings to the sides of the bottle), I have worn this a few times and it's about half gone. I think I've thinned this with Seche Restore, because I remember hating the formula of this, but I had no problem with it this time.

 Mattified, I don't like this but I feel like if you were doing roadwork-themed nail art, this would be a good base. I didn't do nail art at all this week, but check in tomorrow to see something lovely.

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.

Bonita Big Dipper

I realized several things when I was editing the pictures for today's post. First, I realized that I bought this polish last winter, when Bonita had several sparkly things on offer at the Rite-Aid by my job.

Big Dipper, Golden Girl, Flirty Shirley, Flamingo, and Tinman's Brew are some of the gaudy, glittery, and even holographic Bonita polishes that I have, and I picked up almost all of them at the downtown Portland Rite-Aid on my way to work. This year, that same Rite-Aid has the summer neons still out, and no other Bonitas in sight. Bonita! Where did you go? I need cheap holo glitter that sparkles under fluorescent lights to get me through the miserable rainy winter!

 Another thing I realized is that I like making overcomplicated collages. Since I got my new lighting set up, I have been taking enormous amounts of pictures and deleting most of them, and I'm also starting to really enjoy taking bottle shots. I realized that I stole the idea of the collage with close-up bottle shot from Nicole at Bedlam Beauty, but while she makes consistently clear and well-balanced collages, mine are kind of a mess. I'm not worried about it, since I'm blogging for myself and not to provide any kind of service to others. I'm gonna call it art.

The third thing I realized: The brand name is "bonita by Royal Essence." I have never, ever heard of Royal Essence. Who or what is Royal Essence? I googled them and found a jewelry/candle company, an essential oils company, and a perfume company all by that name, as well as at least one salon.  

 Bonita has their own website, and on the about page they call themselves "Nono Cosmetics." The website says nothing, anywhere, about Royal Essence. I'm sorry this blog post raises questions it can't answer, but Royal Essence will just have to remain a mystery for the time being.

Oh, I guess I should talk about the polish itself, huh? Big Dipper is a mix of medium and small silver metallic and silver holographic glitter. I've got one coat on my index and pinky, two coats on my middle, and I sponged it on my ring finger. It's jam-packed with glitter, but the base isn't goopy or hard to spread. If you ever happen across a bottle of it for $1.75, as I did, it's a nice little holiday-feeling glitter topper. I'm wearing it over Wet N Wild Black Creme, which I was going to include solo shots of in this post before it turned out to be inexplicably long. Join me Wednesday for a more seasonally-appropriate polish.

Saturday Nail Art - Watermarble

I don't watermarble very often because it's very messy, and I never feel right pouring the water down the sink at the end. I don't know what else to do with it, and there's no polish in it, but it feels wrong. Anyway, I recently got a bottle of Girly Bits Border Patrol, so I decided to use it to keep my fingers clean and do a watermarble.

I started with a base of Monday's polish, Cupcake Berry Good Looking, which I wore for an entire week. I tried a couple of different combinations on my right hand; Color Club Beyond and ILNP BFF's both spread easily in the water, but Berry Good Looking didn't, and I also tried a coat of BFF's over BGL topped with a watermarble of Beyond and a clear polish...but I didn't like it. I like this way the best, which is rings of Beyond and BFF's over a base of BGL.

I don't feel like this turned out super impressive, both because the colors don't contrast and because I'm not skilled at watermarbling. It's not as hard for me as it seems to be for some people, but again, I don't do it that much, so actually drawing the patterns in the water isn't something I'm good at yet.

This week had kind of a spooky palette! A nice coincidence! Over the next couple of weeks, I'll be getting into some spooky black polishes and some Halloween specials!

ILNP BFF's

When I went to add tags for this entry, I was shocked to see that this is the first ILNP to be on the blog. I actually got After Midnight recently, but after I had already gotten through the A's on here. Someday I'll have to do a catch-up week where I go back to previous letters. In the meantime, here's ILNP BFF's.

I have this polish listed in my spreadsheet as "BFFs," no apostrophe, but it is actually BFF's. It came out in Spring 2016 with several other deliberately sheer holo jellies. These pictures are three coats, which is my standard for most polishes and especially ILNP.

ILNP was my first indie brand, and if I had to pick one brand to wear for the rest of my life, it'd be my choice. The formula always applies and last so well on me, and there's such a wide selection of colors and finishes, and I just love all of them. I also love the way the collections are split into two sets, one seasonal and one based around a finish or theme (Spring jellies, Summer shimmers, and now the Fall neutrals).

 The jellies are great for nail art, although I don't feel like I used it very wisely this week. They're really great for reverse stamping, dry marbling, and syrup gradients.

I don't talk much about availability, but you can get this polish on ILNP's website. Join me tomorrow for some nail art using this week's fabulous sparkly polishes!