Untried Wednesday: Illamasqua Radium and Funky Fingers Glitter Explains It All

Happy Hump Day everyone!  I hope you all are having a lovely week so far.  We are a flurry of activity here at LacquerVixen Headquarters, but not for anything particularly exciting.  We've been trying to tidy up the place and had boughten one of those nifty cube organizers from Target, only to find out that it was missing all of the screws and hardware.  After having to tote it back and forth, up and down stairs, and getting a new little bag of tools from Target, we found out that the box we had boughten was a repackaged return!  Some people had already attempted to put it together, wrongly I may add, and had left screws and pegs jammed into the wrong spots.  So right now, Mr. LacquerVixen is banging away trying to force it to work because we are both exhausted with dealing with this.  Moral of the story?  Target Threshold furniture sucks.  Now let's move on to my nails, which we all know why you're really here today.

On my nails I have Illamasqua's Radium which is a bright, lime green cream with a bit of light shimmer.  There are two fantastic things that you have to know about this polish, this bright neon color was achieved alone without the help of a white base, also this is just ONE COAT.  It is a bright, fantastic color that I am very glad to have in my collection.  It is a bit brighter than Finger Paint's Mistful Thinking and Essie's More the Merrier.  It also lacks the blue flash that Sally Hansen's Chartreuse Chase.  I don't own Chartreuse Chase, but The Daily Varnish has a nice swatch.  Also, all of those polishes do end up needing three coats, while Radium only needs one to be completely opaque.  If Illamasqua is ever up on Hautelook again, this is a polish you need in your life.

My accent today is Funky Fingers Glitter Explains It All.  This polish was released in a trio of other bright glitter toppers that were all named after 90's television shows, I don't think they had a collection name, but they are fun to have.  Glitter Explains It All has white, blue, and lime green hexes along with small blue glitters.  After I had painted my nails, it occurred to me that my base was the same color lime green as some of the glitters.  Oops.  Over all the glitter pay off was very nice, and it painted on smoothly on the nail with out the need to place or dab any glitter.

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: Red and White Polka Dots

Happy New Year everyone!  I hope you all have been having a lovely year so far.  I'm finally back.  The holidays always keep me super busy going back and forth between my family and the in laws, so I wanted to give myself a break and make sure I could start the year off right.  Now I'm all refreshed and can't wait to get back into the swing of things.

I am starting off today with one coat of Illamasqua's Throb.  Yes, you heard me right, one coat red cream.  It was smooth, opaque, and easy to use.  In case you did not know, Illamasqua is a UK brand that is only available on their website.  They used to be at Sephora, but no longer are available there.  One of the downsides of this polish, is that after exchange rates, they come to about $25 a bottle.  It's about the same range of other high end polishes, and down right cheap in comparison to the infamous Loubiton polishes that most nail junkies are freaking out about right now, but as we all know, I am cheap.  Recently Hautelook did have a sale on Illamasqua polishes, which is where I got this one and a few others.  They were on sale for $7.50, so I had no qualms swooping them up.  If you are not already signed up with Hautelook, you can totally use my referral link.  ;-)  I think they're a great place to pick up some high end products, whether it is beauty, home goods, or clothing.  It's where I got all my the Balm palettes.

I loveds this polish so much that I could not make myself do anything particularly elaborate on my nails.  For some reason, red polish always calls out for white polka dots to me.  I don't know if it is the Disney kid or the vintage gal in me, but I love red with white polka dots.  I used OPIs Alpine Snow for my dots.  It is not a one coat white, so I had to make sure my dots were super dense.  Unfortunately, that means I should have waited a little longer to top coat them, as you can tell by the slight streaking on my ring finger.  I topped off my pointer and pinkie fingers with a thin coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust.  It is a cult classic scattered holo topper.  There is no way of making this opaque, but it is a lovely way to spruce up a basic cream.

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: Lush Lacquer Mr. Bubble and Illamasqua Phallic

What happens when I start talking about how San Diego never really hits over 85 degrees?  I get two days straight at 90 degrees.  Ug I've been dying here.  It's terrible.  You know, with my 90 degree weather.  :-P  I only complain because we don't have air conditioning at all and I'm a big baby.

Originally, when I was choosing my HTF Friday polish I eventually decided on Lush Lacquer's Mr. Bubble for a couple of reasons.  I LOVE this polish so much.  The first time I saw it was in SunOnWater11's stash.  I kept threatening to steal her bottle, so being the amazing person she is, she found me a bottle in a destash sale.  She also told me that the reason that Mr. Bubble was so difficult to find was that Lush Lacquer had been slapped with a few cease and desist orders in the past.  The first was for their brand its self from the cosmetic company Lush.  The second was by The Village Company, which owns the bubble bath Mr. Bubble.  Lush Lacquer did end up changing their name to Polish Me Silly, but they pulled Mr. Bubble.  Last I heard, the company was looking into a supplier that could get them the glitters for Mr. Bubble and they would just rename it, but it has been a while.

I also chose Illamasqua's Phallic as my base color.  So when I went searching online for somewhere to link to purchase it, I discovered that none of the US stores have it anymore.  I had originally purchased this polish at Sephora a few years ago, but it looks like they stopped carrying the brand.  Someone let me know if I am wrong, but the only place I could find to buy this polish was on Illamasqua's site itself.  It is an English brand, so that makes it even more difficult for most people to get it now.  They do offer international shipping, but I wonder if that means that it will be shipped by boat instead of my air, making it take weeks to arrive.  So hey!  I have two Hard To Find polishes for you guys today.

First off, let's start with Illamasqua's Phallic.

Oh be still by polish heart.  I had forgotten how gorgeous this polish was.  It is a midnight blue polish, so dark it is almost black with a bit of shimmer.  Two coats and it is perfection.  Thought looking at my cuticles, this may be a stainer.  This picture is without top coat, so it is that glossy and reflective on its own.

Mr. Bubble is a glitter topper in a clear base full of medium and small hexes along with small glitters in pink, blue, and white.  For being as old as it undoubtably is, it was a pretty good glitter formula.  The glitter was this thick from 1-2 coats.  I wish I could have gotten a few more of the larger hexes on my nails, but they had all sunk to the bottom of the bottle.  I'm going to need to dig out some more stainless steel mixing balls to add to the bottle, but that should fix it right up.  

Over all, I am happy with these polishes.  If you manage to find either of these guys in a destash or by luck at a random Sephora, get you some!  When I had purchased this Illamasqua polish, and my handful of other ones, they had been about $14 a piece.  Now they are 14.50 pounds.  (Sorry, I have no idea how to add the pound sign on this computer) That would make them just shy of  $24!  That's more expensive than my beloved Deborah Lippmanns that I refuse to buy at full price.  

As the usual kind reminder, these polishes were not sent to me for review.  I got it as a birthday present or bought it myself.  :-)