PWI twofer: Sinful Colors Love Nails and OPI Sedona Seduction

Okay, this gets pretty complicated. 🙂 You see, Mama T bought me a set of nail art tools!

I find nail art intimidating. For one thing, I keep my nails SO short; for another, I fear it sneaks into an “even a grad student can’t get away with this,” even though I cheerfully wear disco balls and neon colors to work. Also? It seems scary and hard.

But… those are dumb reasons. I paint my lips non-earth colors all the time,* just not at work. And being scared of nail polish is a bit mental. I mean, really, what’s the worst thing that can happen? Thirty seconds of acetone?

So. Step 1 is yet another SC teal, Sinful Colors Love Nails.

Pretty blue glowy things! There
beginneth and endeth the joy.

This color and me, we are gonna love-hate fierce. It’s really very pretty, and it kind of has a deep internal glow that sunlight catches beautifully (and cameras don’t). But the deep internal complexity comes because this is six coats. I don’t have time for six coats! Nobody has time for six coats! >:-( THPT. I’m wondering if I could get a similar look by layering it over a more polite teal, which I certainly have in abundance.

Anyway, next up, I grabbed OPI Sedona Seduction, a cold ice blue, and a dotting tool (least scary). Also, Zoya Mosheen.

left
Right hand: Sedona Seduction dots over Love Nails; Sedona Seduction alone; dots; Mosheen
over Love Nails; dots. Left hand: dots; dots; Mosheen over SS; dots; dots.

So yeah! Love Nails is a beautiful PITA. Sedona Seduction is a very icy, almost-silver blue, opaque enough to make dots with. Mosheen is a very fine glitter; it’s hard to tell here, but it’s paler over Sedona Seduction. I need to experiment with it further before I declare it PWI’d.

And… I can make dots! ^_^

* Speaking of:

Lipstick color is true, achieved with lighting that makes the rest of my skin look grayish. I swear I’m not a Yuki-Onna.

I recently placed an order for a large number of inexpensive samples with the Portland Black Lipstick Company. This is Artificial Amethyst, which Mr. Fix-it doesn’t hate. (He kind of does hate some of the other weird ones. Sigh.) Also, their swatches are terrible, look for other people’s if you’re interested.

PWI twofer: Sally Hansen Red Carpet & Sinful Colors All About You

May19

I have to say, I picked up the red here under the belief that it was a glitter. In the fluorescent store lighting, believe me, the shimmer was a lot more prominent. On hands? No. It’s a deep, shimmery, vampy red, but it’s not glitter. I do like it; I don’t much like the three-coat minimum for opacity, but I’ve heard it layers well.

Sally Hansen Red Carpet.

After dark and taken, unusually, with flash.
Reds mostly go deep and sexy at night. Mostly.

And then, partly because I wasn’t really having a True Red day and partly because I had tip wear by morning, I did half-moons with Sinful Colors All About You:

Sorry, crap picture. It’s what I got. You can
see the red is much brighter in daylight.

This whole thing was just a mess. The red’s an insta-stainer, so where I got it on my cuticles, it stayed. (Usually I scrape it off before it sets; in this case it didn’t help.) The index finger flaked off about 20 minutes later (note clever pose above), and the gold is not remotely opaque at three coats. I like the idea of the red-and-gold combo, but… not this red, not this gold.

Nothing really terrible or hall-of-shame-worthy by itself, but I ended up taking the whole thing off pretty fast. :-/

PWI twofer: Sinful Colors Opening Night & Wet n Wild Slap the Bass

May14

This is one of those posts where I chose a color based on the glitter I wanted to put on top of it. I have a remarkable number of toppers to get through, given that we’ve established that I’m all weird about mismatched glitter. I mean… okay.

As far as I can tell from some casual research, the “nail care market” has been undergoing insane growth since about 2008, with a 32% increase in profits in 2012. Analysts were upset because 2013 was “only” showing 19% growth (I’m playing a bit loose with dates, but roughly). The market is starting to saturate, with some people declaring the nail polish fad to be drawing to a close, although in actuality if the market stabilizes at its current sales rates there’s a hell of a lot of nail polish going out into the world. In fact, since 2008, nail polish recession sales outpaced the famous “lipstick effect” that I had never heard of. (Short: during recessions lipstick sales rise, as women put off bigger pick-me-up purchases.)

Meanwhile, there are only so many colors the human eye can differentiate, and even fewer that most people care about. The number of nail colors is further limited by chemistry – there are only so many body-approved, stable, acetone-soluble, mutually compatible, etc. pigments. So, there are only so many nail polish colors. Hence, finishes. Glitters, shimmers, cremes, glass flake, flakies, textured polishes… I know I’m missing a zillion variants.

Why the economics lesson? Because there’s huge money in continuing to produce nail polishes that differ from previous ones. (Well, and also because I’m something of a pedant.) Anyway, even given my sharply limiting preferences, there’s always something interesting to buy, and often it’s new toppers.

Enough lead-in? Yeah, I thought so. Here’s Sinful Colors Opening Night.

Which, all things being equal, is a very nice, very shiny, very dark teal. I don’t think I have anything similar.

I wouldn’t call it a foil, but those are the trees outside my apartment window, so maybe I have to?

Nice, anyway. In indoor lighting it’s much darker, but not so much that you can’t see flashes of color. Chosen, as I said, to complement…

Wet n Wild Slap the Bass:

Whiiiich is actually there. Although you might have to take my word for it.

While the glitter is almost invisible, it does make the polish quite a bit brighter. Mostly it makes it look like a very well-lit Opening Night. I really liked the effect on myself, especially as the light failed.

If you’ve ever wondered why it’s sometimes Wet-n-Wild, sometimes Wet n Wild, sometimes Wet’n’Wild, and so on: it’s because they themselves are inconsistent; I mostly just copy from the bottle.

If you wondered why “Slap the Bass” is a name for a teal glitter, I can’t help you. I can tell you it’s funnier if you assume they’re talking about the fish, though.**

** Yes, this is the part of the post I spent the most time on. Do you suppose they’re actually going to give me a PhD? It seems… unlikely somehow.

PWI twofer: Elevation Polish Alpine Heights and Sally Hansen Galaxy Green

May11

I really enjoy painting my nails (you probably should have noticed that by now to bother going forward), but I often look at the huge pile of little bottles and go “Buh?” – especially on a Friday night after a long, stressful week. So, annoyed, I did a “I am going to grab blindly and use whatever comes out.”

The universe is good at calling bluffs. In this case, what came out was a glitter-and-flakie topper of the subtle sort. I don’t think any number of coats would make this opaque. I’m not sure the bottle is opaque.

So I poked around until I found something I should have tried before now, Elevation Polish Alpine Heights:

Indoor lighting. Because I paint my nails at night. Which is when I’m home. (Okay, okay, sunlight pics below.)

It’s not the Platonic ideal green I’ve been looking for – too blackened and not saturated enough – but it’s a nice green! Especially in sunlight. This is three (thick) coats. It’s thick but not gloopy or hard to control, which is strange.

Also, I think it makes an amazing base for Sally Hansen Galaxy Green.

Green galaxies are hard to photograph.

The MONSTERRR photographs are a forlorn attempt to show off the sparklies.

The whole concept of “glittering” kind of entails motion, wouldn’t you say? “The dragon’s hoarde glittered as we walked around it, admiring.” Otherwise it just… shines, or something. Bah.

Well anyway! A mostly green/some gold topcoat with rare green flakes. I think Green Galaxy is a great name for it; it looks very galactic, especially at night, although that’s super hard to capture. Anyway, I was pretty pleased with the results of the random-grab approach. I will probably try it again!

Bottle pic, so you can see what the universe threw at me for “I’ll use whatever I grab”.

PWI: Zoya Neely

May9

I’m not having much luck photographing the Zoyas! I don’t think it’s anything about them, or anything. I think it’s a mediocre photographer, with a mediocre camera, in a hurry. So these are blurry! That said, the color comes through pretty well, I think. (This is a creme, so there’s no interesting shimmer to get lost, or anything.)

Also present: Monet, the I-must-have-it glitter that caused the giant Zoya haul. I think you can see color through it fine? Plus it’s – sigh – the least blurry shot I have.

Zoya Neely:

In overcast daylight. With glitter. And blur. Maybe it’s an artistic choice! (it isn’t an artistic choice)

Much greener in direct sunlight.

I’m not sure about pastels on me generally. It seems like it’s rarely a good thing. That said, I think the grey undertones mute the green in a really good way, making it both more flattering on me and more sophisticated than a purer pastel green like Smush. I think it has a lot going for it! In some doses, anyway. Although I actually think the grey is not so ideal for Monet; it might look good over purer colors. We shall see!

Sorry this post is kind of lame. Mr Fix-It is having one of his legendary headaches, so I’m distracted. In penance, I offer the first of probably many shots of Reasons I Hate Leaving This Campus #3047: ducklings.

First there was the duck with three ducklings, then the one with eight. Then the one with three again. Now
this lady has… eleven? Is she babysitting? (And if that doesn’t cute you right out, I have videos.)

Duckliiiings.

Big holographic hexes! Colors! Orange and green and blue and purple!

The only one that’s deliberately blurry. See? Colors!!

PWI twofer: Sinful Colors Unicorn

May8

My delightfully analytical sister asked me yesterday if formulas were consistent across brands – for example, is OPI strictly better than Sinful Colors. In my experience, mostly no? Most of my SC colors, and most everything else from a major brand, have reasonable formulas (although OPI is the queen of formulation). What IS consistent is formulas across colors. Yellows are notoriously streaky, as are pastels. Neons tend to be translucent, requiring white undies, and almost invariably dry matte or semi-matte; teals are stainers. And so on.

So I’m not completely stunned that the pastel yellow Sinful Colors Unicorn…

Five coats. Five. And it’s still a streaky mess. (Click for the full size if you don’t believe me.) I have better things to do with my time. Hobbies are, generally speaking, fun! This is not fun.

…is a total loss.

So, okay, first of all, “five coats and not there yet” is unacceptable. Among other things, the more coats I do, the more nail polish is going to end up on my cuticles. (And hands. And desk. And, in one memorable incident, cat.) I don’t do the traditional cleanup with acetone and a brush, because, 1, it’s smelly and a hassle, and, 2, errors are basically invisible when you’re not looking at macro shots. So I can’t be arsed, I guess. Second, I look weird and terrible in yellow; I have yet to find an exception to this.

Since this was already horrible, I decided to try something new-to-me. A “jelly sandwich” is a thing where you alternate layers of a translucent polish and glitter, so that the glitter shows to varying degrees. When done correctly, they can actually be really visually interesting. So I poked around and decided on a yet-to-be-reviewed polish.*

It looks worse in real life, strangely enough. I *cough* wonder if a nicer camera might fix that. Which doesn’t matter because I am not getting one.

Not an improvement. Unicorn is murky, not a true “jelly” (transparent, colored polish), so the glitters don’t glitter. You can see on my middle finger (touching my thumb) where I tried to do multiple layers. It just looks like polka dots, basically.

Unicorn, hall of shame! Hall of shame, unicorn. Have fun!

* Wet’n’Wild Caught on Sapphire, if you care. I didn’t really process how dumb that name is until I typed it out.

PWI twofer: Sinful Colors Citrine and Sally Hansen Pixel Perfect

May3

I haven’t much wanted to paint my nails lately. Which is a bit alarming, since I normally paint my nails at the pace of a slow loris asked to clean the toilet, generally while reading web comics. It’s not a lot of effort, is what I’m getting at. I certainly haven’t much wanted to blog – writing things that people see is exhausting.* (For some reason I had the energy to bash things out with WordPress? I dunno.) I can tell I’m feeling better today, since I actually did want to both paint and blog. But I am starting up slowly, using pictures from early this week when I was just coming down with the plague.

Behold: Sinful Colors Citrine and Sally Hansen Pixel Perfect:

Indirect daylight; direct sunlight. My notes
on this just say “Ornj.” Fair enough!

I took a few shots of Citrine alone, but it was in indoor lighting and my camera kinda bugged out. I think you get the idea: it’s a very bright, tomato-ey orange, pushing orange-red. Nice application, two coats.

The glitter† topper has an interesting backstory. One of the early (ish?) indie polish-makers was Lynnderella (again, mostly glitter mixes). Too expensive for my tastes, although some of her mixes are tempting. She got a lot of internet commotion for her black and white nail polish Connect The Dots (swatched here by Posh Polish). And to be fair, it was super unique! But, being super unique, it got so much attention that it quickly collected a huge number of dupes and near-dupes. This Sally Hansen polish is only one of many iterations. (And she eventually got involved in internet drama and blah blah, so you see it around less now.)

I like it! The white keeps it from looking like tiny bugs, even at arm’s length. Next time I’ll use more coats, though.

* Yeah, YOU think I’m whiny? Talk to Mr. Fix-It. When sick, he prefers to crawl into a hole and die alone. I, however, turn into Ms. Whinypants McSnerksalot, announcing at random intervals how awful I feel and expecting people to make sympathetic noises. We’ve slowly worked out a system: I do my best to leave him alone when he’s sick, even though I want to fuss, and he mostly doesn’t murder me mid-whine.**

** Okay, he takes excellent care of me. He is a better person.

† It kind of bugs me to describe non-sparkly stuff like this as glitter. I mean, what does the adjective “glittery” mean to you? But I don’t have a better word. People occasionally say “matte glitter,” which I guess will do. …feh.

PWI Twofer: Julep Cassie and Sally Hansen Sparkling

May2

Julep… Oh man. Let’s talk about Julep.

For one thing, their polishes were originally mostly/only available in a beauty subscription box, which is a thing that mostly means “overpriced and mediocre” but whatever we can talk about it later. Which, fine. Don’t care, you can get them elsewhere now. But even so… they are so expensive per actual nail painting! I mean I know I said I don’t really care about price/oz but I do not like to be insulted.

But I wanted to be objectively fair, so, inspired by my favorite beauty blog and/or my actual background as a researcher, I did some data analysis, based on: (1) what was within arms’ reach, plus (2): what prices I roughly remembered paying and/or Google suggested ish.

Brand	$USD	ml	$/ml
Sinful Colors	2	15	$0.13
Pure Ice	2	15	$0.13
Sally Hansen Xtreme	2.5	15	$0.17
Wet’n’Wild Shine	2.2	12.7	$0.17
Sally Hansen Hard as Nails	2.5	13.3	$0.19
Urban Outfitters	5	15	$0.33
Rimmel London 60 second	3	8	$0.37
Rimmel London lasting finish pro	5	13.3	$0.38
Orly	8	18	$0.44
Sally Hansen Triple Shine	5	10	$0.50
O•P•I	8.5	15	$0.57
Sally Hansen Insta-Dri	6	9.2	$0.65
Revlon	6	8	$0.75
Julep	14	8	$1.75
Sorted by $USD/ml. Also, “formatting” this table makes me feel better about the impending move to wordpress.

So yeah: Julep is officially insane. They have sales all the time, but, but… I mean come on. Julep I can do basic math! Surprisingly many adults can do basic math. Plus your stupid long skinny bottle gets knocked over easily. But then my friend N came over with her enormous collection of Julep polishes, two of which she insisted looked better on me. So now I have some Julep nail polish after all. Ehn.

Julep Cassie:

Indoors. Blurry but faaiirrlly color-accurate?

I actually liked the color, both indoors and out; I rarely wear pink, but this is a warm-toned and (IMO) atypically sophisticated variant. The formula was somewhat sheer… this is three thick coats, and it could probably have used another but I ran out of patience. Of course, the next morning I got interested in…

Sally Hansen Sparkling:

Pink glitter! With a Cassie accent nail, just so you can see it in (overcast) daylight.

I think they work together really well, actually. I was really pleased with the effect.

PWI twofer: Essie Penny Talk and OPI Gaining Mole-mentum

Apr20

I know a lot of you reading already know this, but I have something of an obsession with copper. It’s not my fault! It’s genetic! Passed from my grandmother through my mother to me.

I like lots of copper.

I like amazingly new, weirdly super-pink copper. I like more often-encountered, beautiful oxidized copper. I even think verdigris is pretty cool, personally. Not surprisingly, this has joined forces with my nail polish obsession. I will buy pretty much any damn thing that is copper, or coppery, or copper-ish, or SAYS copper. Sadly, in nail polish as in life, there’s a shockingly lame level of access to copper things! (give me more copper earrings or give me death)

ANY way. I started seeing things on the nail-o-blaggityblog-o-sphere about a copper polish, Essie Penny Talk, which is outside my usual price range but cooopperr. So I ordered it, got the bottle, and it was clearly gold. I mean look:

Essie Penny Talk:

I even whined to Mr. Fix-It, and
he was all “Uh…hm. Gold is nice?”
So I put it on my nails.

So I put on my new gold nail polish. Which did go on gold …until it wasn’t. Like the weirdness of Push’n’Shove, over about a minute or two, it slooowly changed (cured?), until I was looking at this:

Totes copper. Specifically, the very pink color of brand
new, totally untarnished copper. *happy sigh*

What the hell, y’all, Chemistry is magical.

So I really like Penny Talk! But I didn’t top coat it, and like most foils, it chips if you move your hand through oxygen molecules, and after a day the edges were all ragged and sucky. So I added

OPI Gaining Mole-mentum:

Up close you can see that it’s made of little shard glitters in gold, silver and copper.

From a little further away you can see that
it’s just sort of… confused sparkle?

I dunno. When I did Rouge Rush, also with shard glitter, I liked the depth and the almost-flaky-level glow? So I thought I would give this a try. But I’m not so sure. Also, layering it over copper made the copper glitter vanish, which I did not care for. So I’ll try it over something else before I do anything drastic.

PWI: RED. (By which I mean OPI Red, plus threefer Jane Megawatt and Pure Ice Bare It All, but whatever. RED)

Apr13

Soooo, two things about red nail polish!

1. One is always looking for the perfect, flattering, amazing red polish. (And lipstick!)
2. People* are Concerned that red polish may make one look Fast, and, perhaps, Loose.**

That said, one of my oldest polish acquisitions is…

O•P•I Red.

Red. This shot makes it look pinkish maybe? But it’s so primary,
unapologetically red. Maybe a hair blue leaning? It’s not 3-free
or 5-free or vegan or whatever, and I know there’s a newer version
that is, but this is my canonical and beloved Fast Lady red.

There’s a new post-reformulation red. I feel like I ought to try it, I guess. Because I am not completely happy with my existing, classic, vampy, and hot red.^†

Anyway! There are only about 4, 5 “nail art” things I’d be interested in? The simple ones! So I am interested in the “glitter gradient.” Basically, you take a glitter polish with medium-to-bad coverage, and paint it in receding layers, so a gradient comes out. Which is my thing!

The glitter is two things: JANE Megawatt – which is the solid glitter on my index finger – and Pure Ice Bare It All. They are identical. Weirdly so – they are both gold glitter with random copper glits. The PI BiA has thicker coverage, so that’s a difference, the only one. I’ma get rid of one, probably the Pure Ice, because it’s less usable for gradients.


My index finger is the Pure Ice. Less gradient-y but otherwise identical.

But anyway: RED.

* To a certain Type of Person, don’t you know. (The kind that sits on hiring committees.)
** …why? Red? It’s a color? I don’t… even…
^†Yeah, no, I really am.

Half Moons! plus, PWI twofer: Urban Outfitters Bandeau & Sinful Colors Frenzy

Mar26

“Half moons” (those white arcs at the base of your fingertips) are often re-represented on nails in a variety of silly colors. Traditionally this is done by masking off the base of your nails with these:

Which is, you know, pretty amusing.

I’ve tried this look before, but since I exclusively use peel-off base coat,* I always end up just peeling off the entire nail’s polish. ANY way, the other day I was reading some blog about nails (don’t remember whose, sorry!) and the blogger said something like, “Then I put hole reinforcements on my nails, being sure to stick them to the back of my hand first of course…”

Of course.

So obvious in retrospect. I mean if I had really sat down and formulated the question as “How do I make these less sticky,” I would have answered it immediately. Formulating the right question when you see a problem is, sometimes, the only hard thing. Or even realizing you should treat it as a solvable problem. Engineering is hard!

But! It means you get to see my first ever successful (ish) half moons.

Here’s Urban Outfitters Bandeau:

Indoor. I doooon’t need a new camera (I don’t) but
would a lamp be such a bad idea? …I’m doomed

Which is a fairly nice purple creme; 2 coats. In low light it reads as black, in bright light it looks about like this, satiny dark purple. In sunlight, however, it is glowingly purple, as shown below. The odd, slightly satiny finish is accurate.

With Sinful Colors Frenzy, a nice purple-and-plum glitter.

	X
Purple! Indirect sunlight/direct sunlight. Glitter’s hard to take a good picture of. I feel like I would need a star filter or something. For the camera. That I don’t need.

I don’t think this color choice was that successful. I’m not sure why, but it feels off from a bit of distance. Dunno! Maybe I’m just not used to it. Also, waiting for three layers of Frenzy to dry was kind of awful; next time I want something fast for that part. The stickers did pull some of the Bandeau up, I’m guessing because it wasn’t fully dry.

But! Still! Lookit! Half-moons! Purple ones!

* Subject of upcoming post

PWI twofer: Wet’n’Wild Sophisticated Lady and Sally Hansen Ice Queen

Mar20

I bought this at the same time as Wet’n’Wild Champagne Toast, from the same display and, apparently, in the same mood. Behold!

Wet’n’Wild Sophisticated Lady:

pink nail polish is pink

I don’t really get the name. It’s pink. What’s sophisticated about pink? I mean it’s too pale to be bubblegum pink, but? …whatever. It’s pretty, it’s subtle, it’s fine. I feel like if I mixed this and Champagne Toast I’d have a more opaque Nomad’s Dream. Nice to have around.

Then, because I make the same mistakes over and over, I layered on the partially-contrasting Sally Hansen Ice Queen:

Bugz! Little teal bugs on my hand! Ugh.

Big pink glitter, big teal glitter, teeny iridescent multicolored sparkles.

This does a good job of showing why I don’t really like multicolored glitter. Up close, it looks fine, but from any distance the teal glitter just looks like I got scunge on my hands and should wash them. Also, getting the big hex glitters out was a giant pain; getting this many glits took three-ish coats and a mountain of dabbing.

So I’ll either get rid of this or use it for the teeny sparkles. Meh.

PWI twofer! OPI: Vant to Bite my Neck? and SOPI: Beam Me Up Hottie!

Mar18

I did not choose to put these polishes together because they are both complete sentences with punctuation. I would have, but I only just noticed. Dumb sentences, sure, but better than [grabs a bottle at random] “Smush”.

This first one I kinda already knew would disappoint. It’s from the same collection as Eurso Euro (have I blithered on enough about that one yet?), and when I got EE in all its indigo perfection, I hoped the purple would be equally glorious. (Spoiler: it isn’t)

OPI Vant to Bite my Neck?:


These are both pretty color-accurate, because your human meat eyeball with its high dynamic range can see a lot more color depth at once. So the way-overexposed shot on the right that shows the purpliness is, in human eyeball terms, just another part of this polish’s “depth of color”. Stupid excellent meat eyeball.

So, in other words,

Eggplant. Very dark purplish-black. (Unless it’s white. Did you know it’s called an”eggplant” because of the smooth round egginess of the white ones? I didn’t.) Aubergine. Lovely color. Source: the wikipedia article on “the color aubergine”

Look, aubergine is a lovely color that is mostly black. Seriously, when your canvases are 1cm², this is just… black. In direct sunlight (well “sunlight”) it’s… black. (Black with an excellent, long-lasting creme formula, because OPI.)

With hints of eggplant.

So, since I don’t actually really like this polish, I decided to try to spruce it up by doing something I know I dislike, which is adding a highly-contrasting glitter topper.

SOPI: Beam Me Up, Hottie!:


Left: what it actually looked like, which is, mysteriously polka-dotted nails. Right: They’re very holographic polka dots! And I learned that a blurry picture actually captures the holo colors better. I learned this from real bloggers with better cameras. Which I do not need one of. Because I don’t need another hobby.

It seemed like a good idea at the time. …no, no it didn’t. It seemed like something I could reach without dislodging this cat. So that’s like a good idea, kind of.

This is just a bottle full of silver holographic glitter hexes in a clear base. Seems like my kind of looking-futuristic thing, but the formula is such a total goddamned PITA. This is several layers, with much dabbing.*

So… all things being equal, total fail! I’ll probably keep Beam My Up Hottie! for use over silver, where its holographic awesomeness can blend and glitter distribution is less obvious. I kind of feel like McAubergine here is bound for a new home.

* (Basically what it sounds like – sort of “patting” the nail with the brush, pushing individual glitters (glits?**) around.)
** I am pretty sure an individual glitter is a glit

PWI twofer: Sinful Colors Aqua and Shattered Rocket Fuel

Mar17

Occasionally I look at the little bin of things that are post-Project Wear-It, then at the burgeoning bin of things that are still waiting, and I make a little sad noise. Then I remember that it’s just nail polish for crying out loud, if it makes me sad it’s a stupid hobby.

Then I make a little sad noise.

I made lunch (and dinner) from scratch today! Chicken stew. But I was playing around, as I do when I have no-one else present to poison, and it’s… well. I should have made more instacurry. I would describe it as barely edible. So I am sad about that (and a little hungry)… which means I should show you nail polish! Yes. Yes it does.

Sinful Colors Aqua:

Pretty color! It’s not quite this… electric in person. However, since
it was a horrid gray rainy day even by Seattle standards, I’ll take my
bright colors where I find them. Even in misleading photographs.

This is so similar in the bottle to SC Gorgeous, when I find it I’ll show you. This is a very pretty blue-leaning aqua, and Gorgeous is a sliiiigghhtly green-leaning aqua.

But I had an ulterior motive, which was to provide a base for a polish that must be 15 years old minimum, about which the Internet knows nothing. (damn kids)

Behold! Shattered Rocket Fuel:

Green and blue bar glitter everywhere! I, I swear. Honest? This isn’t even
lighting, it’s just teal, honestly the camera adds drama here, I don’t
understand photography apparently, why does the camera add drama.

Yes, it… also looks pretty teal, doesn’t it. Hrm.

See this is actually a mix of beautiful blue and green bar glitter.* In the bottle it looks like some kind of jewel. But in person it looks.. well, aqua. Especially from more than 6 inches away. It’s pretty, especially in indoor light, but compared to the bottle it is disappointing.


What the bottle looks like; what the polish looks like with a little distance. Here the bottle looks less exciting than in person, and my nails look more exciting and glowy. It’s the same damn polish, camera. What do you want from me.

Ah, well. Pretty is still a good thing. I vaguely recall doing roommate E’s nails with this over purple and liking the results, maybe after PWI I’ll try that.

(PS: Also: It may seem as though our living room floor is covered in random objects. In fact, they are cat toys. I don’t know what to tell you.)

* Bar glitter means “long thin glitter”. It tends to hang off the sides of your nails or stick straight up or otherwise be a pain.

PWI: Maybelline Emerald Elegance

Mar14

I am amazingly wiped out. Walking to school yesterday, and back two hours later, necessitated a nap. Putting on nail polish seems like a chore. (Buying it, not so much, it seems.) I think I was all wired up on anticipation and adrenaline for my Job Interview, and now that it’s over, my strings have been cut, and I am tired.

I wasn’t that impressed with the Maybelline Color Show Brocades collection. (Too many words!) But I eventually picked one up, which led me to looking at swatches, which led to the inevitable purchase of…

Maybelline Emerald Elegance.

Big green glitter, smaller green glitter and teeny-tiny gold
and green glitter, and it was easier to find that out on the
internet than by looking at the actual polish, by the way

Rather truer color at half-dark, 5 minutes after previous picture.
Thanks Seattle! When I need “darkness” you are there for me

Two coats. Thick and gloopy as all hell, but not actually hard to work with. The addition of teeny gold glitter makes it lean towards a yellowish green.

I feel like “brocades” is surprisingly apt (especially given the history of cosmetic companies on this). These are glitter polishes, but not sparkly; they end up giving the sense of complexity and something-happening without being glittery or obvious about the mix of colors.

From six inches, anyway. Beyond that, they look “green”. This is the tragedy of fancy nail polish. Le Sigh.

PWI twofer: Sally Hansen Celeb City and Sinful Colors Queen of Beauty

Mar4

Sometimes it’s worth posting base color + topper separately; often it’s not. This is that second kind.

Base coat (which is nice on its own, I mean, I wore it), is Sally Hansen Celeb City:

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Left is daylight, right is indoor, cuticles are covered in silver. Not easy to photograph! It’s no Push’n’Shove,* but it’s a perfectly nice metallic.

Pretty color, nice and even in two coats. It’s shiny but maayyybe the glitters are too coarse to call it a foil? Nah, foil. (I think I’m going to do a post on all these ~~made-up~~ domain specific words.)

Later, topped with Sinful Colors Queen of Beauty:

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Do I need to say which is which? No, I do not. Because the indoor photos are always the ones where I’m in last-stage jaundice.

My camera haaaates this. It took a while to get two even borderline decent photos, I mean, for heaven’s sake. Go look at KittyPNB’s swatches if you care, she has an actual camera. 😛

But basically, it looks like little disco balls. Just straight-up silver glitter. This is 4 [!] coats. I doubt it would be opaque without Celeb City undies, but it was pretty at every stage.

As a side note… who comes up with these names? Some of them are nicely descriptive (Champagne Toast), some are just eh (like, Celeb City, once I see the polish I can make some connection), some of them are straight-up meaningless (Cassie, Hot Wired), and some of them are just weird and misleading (Pull Over is an orange-ish yellow). It’s like paint samples, which are also named by people tripping so hard they can taste colors.

# of clicks it took me to find this: 2.

So now we know what color surreality, quintessent..i…ality? .. and elegance are.

PWI: Sally Hansen Rouge Rush

Mar4

This is another topper-over-previous thing. It’s very convenient! Also, Mr. Fix-It gave me ~~the plague~~ a head cold, which doesn’t change what I have to do to get a job, so forgive me if postings are kind of short and uninspired. Really uninspired.

Over UO Spiked Punch, here’s Sally Hansen Rouge Rush:


Indirect daylight, not-daylight. In person it looks better at night.

These were disappointing to photograph. In person, especially at night, they have a sort of glimmering depth that I usually associate only with flakies. I mean, I’m really too casual a blogger to get a lightbox and a macro lens and suchlike nonsense, but I can see why people do.

The polish has several different shapes of glitter in very, very minor variations of color; I’m a little surprised by how much I like it. AFAICT, it’s: pale pink glitter shreds; pale red glitter shreds; and smallish fuschia hex glitter.

It’s… a lot more harmonious than it sounds?

PWI: Island Colors Old Lahina and Surfing Safari

Feb26

Island Colors is a new-to-me brand, because Hawaii. Cheap, too! I love cheap. (Don’t look at me that way, I’m a student.) Unfortunately, most of the colors are something I already obviously have. They do have some shaped glitters that I found interesting; and let’s be honest, I’m not going to leave a completely new kind of nail polish alone.

I almost always put glitters over basically the same base color, and generally don’t like multicolor glitters. So I picked up the deep red Island Colors Old Lahina, and the lighter red Surfing Safari:

(Does “surfing safari” say “red stars” to you? Because it sure doesn’t to me.)

I started with Island Colors Old Lahina:

3 coats, indoor lighting. Mysterious blue thumb.

Which was actually a nice, smooth creme. 1 coat was pinkish, but the 2nd and 3rd settled down to a nice, deep, not-quite-berry red.

I then added Island Colors Surfing Safari:

Look! Stars! …yeah, I don’t see them either, although I swear
they’re in there. The red is brighter because this is daylight.

Obviously, this is when things went downhill. I like my glitters subtle, not invisible. Also, the stars were a pain; I had to fish them out one by one and blop them on the nail in a puddle of clear carrier. Sometimes, this process scraped the red off part of a star. I feel like working with loose glitter would have been easier, and that’s saying something.

But the main problem is the too-perfect match to the background color. So, when this PWI is over, I may try it on something else. In the meantime, I bought two more colors, because… well, because that’s the sort of thing I do, I guess. 🙂

PWI: Sephora by OPI Indi-go With the Flow

Feb18

Yesterday sucked a lot. Today sucks. Tomorrow will suck. Eventually it will suck less.

Sephora (makeup store) sold “Sephora by OPI”, store-branded nail polish. Different bottles and different colors, but OPI quality. (They make really good nail polish. There’s at least one other “by OPI” brand out there). Past tense because the whole line has been discontinued, replaced by something in-house that costs $15 a bottle — not gonna happen… I’ll buy 2 or 3 OPIs or Essies instead. But, I did pick up a few bottles of SOPI on mega-clearance.

This is Sephora by OPI Indi-go With the Flow:

Meh picture, meh nails, meh polish.

It’s glitter, a sort of steel-blue glitter with larger and smaller glitters in a clear base. I put it over some random fairly-close blue, since I didn’t know how many coats it would take for full opacity.

It’s strange. I could totally like this? I like all the words in the description. But instead I don’t. It’s sort of meh without being work-appropriate, full of glitter without being sparkly. Not Hall of Shame appropriate, just… totally unexciting. I’m not throwing it in the swap pile for now, but… so much meh!

Of Cats, Nails, and Robots

an engineer who loves polish, cats, typography, robots, and many, many other things

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