Bonita All Things Blue

Today's polish is another neon, again without undies. It's Bonita Salon All Things Blue, and it's three coats of lovely summery loveliness.

Bonita is kind of a mysterious brand. I only ever see it at Rite-Aid, and these Bonita Salons showed up in the summer season. They are a "gel-like" polish, but unlike every other gel-like polish I can think of, there was no top coat sold with them. They do have a top coat, I've just never seen it on display. Even without a gel-like top coat, I got good wear out of this polish; I wore it as a pedi over vacation and went a week without chips.

You can actually buy Bonita products online at http://www.bonitacolors.com/ (not affiliated). Even though I've always thought of them as cheapo impulse buy polishes, they actually do have some neat polishes (unfortunately, awesome golden holo glitter Golden Girl is not on the website). I also want to note that this is the first time I've had trouble capturing a polish's actual color. It's actually darker and not as sky-blue as it photographed. Check out Friday's post for another blue polish.

OPI All Sparkly and Gold

Today's polish is another mini. Unfortunately, this is an OPI mini. Like I said, I'm not a huge fan of OPI in general anyway, and their minis are kind of notorious.

The tiniest bottleI had to check my spreadsheet to make sure of the name of this polish, since the hilariously small bottle doesn't even have room for a name sticker. The little fluffy brush makes application a real pain in the butt, but the formula was quite good.

This is another gold texture, but it's less of a yellow gold and more metallic than NOPI A Heart of Gold. While I am a fan of gold polish and textured polish, this is another one that I got in a pack of minis. I have three other polishes from the Mariah Carey Holiday 2013 collection; I bought these on a whim from Amazon, I think the pack was $5.

With top coat, it's even more sparkly. I tend to overlook my minis, since I don't keep them within my Helmer, but this is a lovely polish and works as well in the summer as the holidays. Wednesday I'll have a much more season-appropriate polish.

Saturday Nail Art - Marbled Marble

Have I mentioned how much I love my Simply Neat mat? Well...I love my Simply Neat mat. For today's nail art, I used it to make some dry-marble decals.

I marbled Cirque Acid Wash, Nina Ultra Pro Ahoy Matey, and Essie All Access Pass together using a small brush, and sandwiched the marble between coats of Wet N Wild Clear Nail Protector. When I make decals, I always make a few extra because I know I'm going to screw up some of them. I only needed four usable ones, and here they are.

The one thing I don't love about making decals is cleaning up. I need to get some of those little curved scissors so I can trim the sides, because dissolving a large amount of decal with acetone is gross. I put down a peel-off barrier to mitigate the dryness, but I still always end up with a goopy mess on my fingers. 

I wasn't sure that All Access Pass would look good with the other two polishes, since they're blue, but I think it turned out surprisingly nice. I also did some stamping over this art, check out my Instagram if you want to see it.

Essie All Access Pass

Today's polish is a mini that I bought in a four-pack at TJ Maxx. It's Essie All Access Pass, from the summer 2015 neons.

I swatched this one with 3 coats and no white undies, even though it is supposedly a neon. I don't feel qualified to judge whether or not something is a neon, but I think these Essies aren't bright enough to count. It was opaque in two coats, but since I've worn this before and I'm about halfway through the bottle, the formula has gotten a little goopy and I needed the third coat to even out the surface.

I've got three more of these neons, and I think this one is probably my favorite. It's a very pretty, bright summer purple that's just a little more saturated than the pictures show. I might hunt down a full-size of this once I'm through with the mini. Join me tomorrow for the week's nail art!

Nina Ultra Pro Ahoy Matey

Ahoy, mateys! Today's polish is a runny blue creme from weird brand Nina Ultra Pro!

I found this polish randomly at Sally on clearance. Sally Beauty Supply is the only place I have ever seen this brand, so I have just a few of them.

3 Coats

 I haven't been blown away by any of the ones I have, but I am impressed by the ginormous brush. I love a wide brush (like the Sally Hansen Complete Salon Manicure, Wet N Wild Megalast, or Baroness X brushes), but this one is as wide as a Swiffer. 

I needed to use three coats, because the formula is quite sheer. It applied well, though, and it's a pretty dusty blue. Aside from the enormous brush, there's not much to say about this brand or this polish. 

Cirque Acid Wash

Today's polish is from spring of this year, part of Cirque's Speckled & Sparkled collection.

It's actually the only one I had left untried

I had heard good things about Cirque, but had held off buying any until this collection. I picked up all four of the speckles, which are all crellies with little pigmented and metallic flecks in them. Acid Wash has blue and silver speckles in a white base, and it resembles a fancy countertop. 

I love this finish so much, and Acid Wash has a beautiful color scheme. All the speckles are among my favorite spring polishes. 

One downer about these polishes is they all have kind of a chunky formula. The base is slightly thicker than it should be, meaning that doing more than two coats is useless, since the flecks stop showing through. At the same time, it's almost always necessary for me to do three coats to get the polish even. These have a quick-drying (as in, "dry while you're applying them" quick) formula, and they don't self-level as well as I'd like. I think it's worth wrestling with them because they look so awesome.

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!