Mani Monday: Glitter, Polka Dots, and Mint

Happy Monday everyone!  Did you all have a nice weekend?  I'm super excited right now because tomorrow I'm going to go pick up my wedding dress.  Whaaaaaaaat??  But LacquerVixen, you're not getting married for ten months!  Well yeah, but it wasn't supposed to be ready until January/February and then I got an email two weeks after ordering it that my dress had come in.  Apparently they happened to have my size in the warehouse.  Yeah, so here's hoping it looks all nice and new.   Cross your fingers for me y'all!

Today's mani was originally inspired by those Caboodles Nail Valets that are super nifty.  They have compartments to fit your polishes so that they do not wiggle around in travel and different areas for extras, including brushes and dotting tools.  And they look like this:

Now I love me some black with white polka dot, so I have been wanting this one for so long.  So my nails started out looking like the box, then I started adding extras.  What do you all think?

On my thumb and pinkie I have OPIs My Dogsled is a Hybrid from their Nordic 2014 collection.  It is a mint cream that was nearly opaque in one coat, I added a second to cover up a few bald spots.  Seriously, this is a great polish and it is still available in stores.  If you don't own it already, go out and buy it now.  I topped my thumb with Sephora Formula X in Chaotic which has black and white hexes and black bar glitter.  Now this Formula X is from Sephora's first and short lived launch of their store brand polishes.  I found this at Big Lot's for less than two dollars, so it's not particularly easy to find, but there are plenty of other brands that came out with the same kind of thing.  China Glaze and Hard Candy are the first ones that come to mind.  On my pinkie, I just have a coat of ORLY's Shine on Crazy Diamond which is a sparse holographic topper.  The glitters are slightly larger than China Glaze's Fairy Dust.

On my pointer finger I have two coats of Nails Inc in Noho which was from their Leather Effect polishes.  It is slightly textured and is probably my favorite black, glitterless texture polish.  I also added a silver square shaped stud on the base of my nail.  In the past, I have always just used a dot of top coat to glue studs on, but they would only really last about twelve hours before they popped off.  So today I used brush on Gel Resin.  So far it has lasted through a shower, sleep, and cooking, so it works pretty well for me.  

My middle finger is just two coats of Essie's Hors d'ouevers.  It is a dense gold glitter polish with silver hexes.  Finally, on my ring finger I painted one coat of my much beloved Cult Nails Fetish then made my dots with OPIs My Boyfriend Scales Walls.  

I am pretty happy with the over all result and I hope you guys like it too.  :-)

As the usual kind reminder, these products were purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have companies send me free stuff to review them. ;)

Hard to Find Friday: Sephora Formula X Whatcha Nail Callit

Hey everyone, I have something totally exciting for this Hard to Find Friday post.  Well, at least I think it's exciting.  Remember when in 2012-2013 Sephora had been coming out with their Disney Princess collections?  Everything was super hard to find.  There was always a gorgeous decorative compact mirror that sold out right away.   They also released a large eyeshadow palette that was usually lacking quality, but also sold out before I could even take a look at them.  Oddly enough, the nail polish was always available.  Well they came out with a Little Mermaid collection and of course I had to have something from it and lucky for me I found the polish set.  At this point I had become notorious for my addiction of polish and my love of The Little Mermaid.  So for my birthday one of my best friends got me this kit, after I had already boughten it for myself.  :-P

It consists of 6 mini bottles of polish in a .13 fl oz size.  The only place I can find them on sale now is on eBay, so if you're interested check it out there.

Over all,  the polishes paint well and I am mostly happy with them.  I just... don't like the names of the polishes.  I feel that they don't do the polishes or The Little Mermaid justice.  Most of them are just lyrics from Under the Sea.  

This is We're in Luck Here.  It is a warm coral red cream that was opaque in two coats.  I'm generally not a fan of these kind of colors, but they compliment my skin tone well and I like this one better than most others.  But ugg, this polish really should have been called Ariel because of her trademark red hair or Sebastian, or something!

This is Off the Hook.  Just one single coat and you get this awesome purple toned metallic.  I loved this polish.  It was a tad thick in formula, but it painted on really well.  For a name, this one is okay I guess. Hooks are metallic, but then you use a hook to catch fish and that's kind of twisted.  

Have I mentioned before that I love dark almost black colors?  Well Hotter Under the Water does not disappoint.  It is a deep, dark purple that is almost black with maybe a touch of dustiness.  It took two coats to make the polish opaque and that was to cover up the odd bald spot.  Now, am I the only person who thinks this polish should have been a reference to the nefarious sea witch Ursula?  Really Sephora, you guys keep dropping the ball on the names.  

I topped Hotter Under the Water with Life is in the Bubbles.  It is an iridescent glitter topper with iridescent flakes scattered through it.  The glitter is dense enough that it paints evenly on the nail, but don't ever think that it could become opaque with a reasonable number of coats.  The flakes were a nice touch, but too difficult to get evenly on the nail.  You can see that I don't even have any on my pointer finger.  I wish that the had been more flakes in the polish, but that could also be caused by the small bottle and short brush.  Out of all the polishes, this is the only one I don't really have an issue with the name.  ;-)  It does remind me of bubbles.  Life is in the Bubbles was also the BoyToy's favorite polish of the set.  

This bright blue beauty is Devotin' to Floatin'.  This polish is my favorite.  It's that mermaid color without being too teal.  I got this color with two coats.  The first coat was patchy and disappointing, but the second one give it that gorgeous glowing color you see.  In the bottle you do see a bit of purple duochrome, but it didn't transfer to the nail at all.  As usual, the name was meh. 

 

The final polish I have for you is the mermaid's namesake, Ariel.  It is an iridescent glitter in a teal base.  It painted on well and the glitter dispersed pretty well, but I don't think it is all that unique of a color.  It reminds me of Sinful Colors in Nail Junkie.  I can only assume that it was named Ariel because it looks like a mermaid's tail, but I don't think it does her justice.

Overall, this is a pretty nice collection for any Disney nut and polish junkie to have.  If you can find it on eBay for a decent price, I say go for it.  

As the usual kind reminder, these products were purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have companies send me free stuff to review them. ;)

Mani Monday

Good news everyone!  My computer finally works again.  Originally my track pad wasn't working and my computer would freeze up on me, and then finally the hard drive just died.  But now both the hard drive and the trackpad got replaced.  The future Mr. LacquerVixen is very happy I'm not stealing his computer anymore to sporadically do my blog posts.  Now we can get back onto a normal blogging schedule and my near daily polish changing isn't me being crazy, but being committed to you guys!  ;-) So here we go!

I am not big on team spirit.  I don't do the matchy matchy thing. But when my manager told me, very seriously, that I was expected to be "part of the team" for a work event I kind of had to.  So what do I do?  I pull out polishes in our team colors and some nail art.

Our team colors were orange and teal, so I started with three coats of OPIs Call Me Gwen-ever with is an orange cream.  On most people, two coats would have been perfectly fine.  The formula is smooth and painted on without a problem.  Unfortunately, because my nails are long and there is a large amount of white tip area, I could still see VNL with two coats.  The third coat made it perfectly opaque for my high standards.  Call Me Gwen-ever is from OPIs 2012 Amazing Spider-Man collection, so it would be considered a hard to find polish.  I did buy this polish when it was readily available in most stores, and since then I have only seen it once in a random mom and pop beauty supply shop.  Would I say it is a must have polish?  Meh?  I'm not the hugest wearer of orange polish and I'm sure other brands have more readily available options.  If you happen to come across it at a decent price, go for it, especially if you are a comic book lover.  

For the rest of my mani I used Essie Comfort Zone and Sephora's Formula X in Zing.  On a whim, I also grabbed my Ciate Flower Manicure kit.  I painted Essie Comfort Zone on my ring finger as an accent.  It is a silver and gold microglitter that is pretty dense and painted on in two coats.  It is from Essie's Winter 2012, so you can't really find it in stores too easily, but it is available on Essie's website.  For the polka dots on my pointer finger and pinkie, I used Sephora's new house brand of polish Formula X in Zing.  It is a great teal blue cream that is actually opaque in one coat.  *gasp!*  Shocking I know.

Now for my super interesting thumb and middle finger.  I used the Ciate Flower Manicure kit which comes with real pressed flowers, a mini bottle of Candy Floss (a standard pink cream), and a full sized bottle of fast dry top coat.  According to the instructions, you paint your nails as normal and while the top coat is still wet, you place the flowers on your nails, then brush another coat of the fast drying top coat.  Now, I hate opening a bottle of top coat when I'm already in the middle of one.  I don't like having multiple open bottles of something so standard, so I used my usual HK Girl instead of the Ciate top coat they had supplied.

At first I thought that it had worked just fine.  My nails looked pretty damn cool and I was excited to show them off at work.  But the next morning while I was in my shower, the top coat peeled off.  The flowers became exposed and fell apart in the water.  It totally sucked.  I don't know if they always do that and this kit is meant more for a one day use kind of thing, or if their top coat really makes all the difference.  I will have to try it again and report back my findings.

As a side note, when I removed the flowers with nail polish remover, they stained my fingers like crazy.  I suspect it has more to do with the color of the flowers than the product itself.  I don't think the lighter colored flowers in the kit would do the same thing.

As the usual kind reminder, these products were purchased with my own money.  I am not cool enough to have companies send me free stuff to review them. ;)