Hard to Find Friday: Bliss Like Totally

Happy Friday everyone.  I hope you all have some fun weekend plans.  I know my weekend is going to be super super busy.  We have a Padres game tonight, I have a polish meet up tomorrow, and then we have a cake tasting on Sunday.  This is going to be an expensive and fattening weekend.  -.-

Today I have Bliss Polish's Like Totally from her 2014 summer collection.  It is a fantastically bright, neon green holo.  Bliss Polish was hoping to bring this polish back this summer, but the pigment used for it does not mix well at all.  It is super chunky and leaves pigment clots, no matter how she mixes it.  Fortunately, her new Freestyle Summer collection that released yesterday has a neon green holo.  It is a touch lighter than Like Totally, but hopefully if you need this, that will do.  You can find her store front here.  It took three coats for complete opacity.  My middle finger does look like there is nail line, but that is actually from a gel polish mishap.

I like to wear a neutral colored gel as my base for my manis and when I get bored I just change out the polish on top.  It gives my nails and extra bit of strength and when I'm not swatching, the polish actually lasts longer on my nails.  Well recently I tried a new base coat that worked a little too well.  So well that I have patches of gel polish I can't get off my nails.  They were filed down and buffed as smooth as I could get them.  I'm just hoping that they come off over time and I don't have to wait for my nails to grow out.

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. ;)

Untried Wednesday: Rainbow Honey Sugarberries

I have a basket that I keep next to my desk of all my untried polishes, after they are swatched on sticks and are added to my spreadsheet.  I had been doing so well on witting them down and I had finally gotten below thirty bottles.  I know there are two different responses to that.  The casual nail polish enthusiast is shocked and maybe appalled that I have so many.  The junkie probably just snorted with derision and said "that's it?".  

Now if you follow me on Instagram, you would have seen my latest haul, which added too many more polishes to my untrieds.  It included make up, stamping stuff, and of course, lots of polish.  You will see swatches of those up here in the next couple of weeks so just stay tuned!

Today's untried polish isn't super new to my basket, it is actually from my Black Friday Haul from last year.  It was not one I had picked out for my self, but a free gift that Rainbow Honey included with purchase and I am very glad that they did.  It is a red jelly jam packed with gold hexes in various sizes and large iridescent hexes.  Even with all the glitter it was still easy to work with and was opaque in two coats.  There was no need for dabbing on the glitter or anything.  It dispersed easily on the nail.

The full sized bottle of this polish is on sale on the Rainbow Honey site here.  From $10 it has dropped to $7.  If you're interested go check it out!

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. ;)

Random Post: Nonie Creme Color Prevails Swatches

Hey all, this impromptu hiatus is finally over.  Life as just been chaotic and I finally just put the breaks on it all and cut some stuff out that were just taking over everything.  They just were not that necessary.  I missed LacquerVixen and I needed to make time for her and all of my other personal projects.

Today I have swatches of two Nonie Cream Color Prevails polishes which have just started popping up at Walgreens.  This is a new make up line created by the creative mind behind Butter London.  They aim to have multi purpose products that are ergonomically designed.

As you can see from the polish bottles, it is an odd but beautiful shape.  I love how different it looks with that butterfly wing, but I was not sure how easily I would be able to paint with it.  It seemed awkward and bulky, but once I actually started using the polish it was very easy.  You do grip the brush between your index finger and thumb, your index curved over the wing and the wing resting on your thumb.  The polish did glide on my nails with minimal clean up, which for me is a feat.

This first polish is Cocky, a mauvey red toned purple cream.  The formula was smooth and easy to work with.  On a swatch stick, it was opaque in one coat, but on the nail it did need two coats.  

This is Frock Star, a silver microglitter with teal and pink specks.  It is so amazingly shiny that I almost cannot deal with it.  It is so reflective that I couldn't really get a good picture of it.  That or my camera just sucks.  Hopefully I can manage to get a new one soon.  The teal and pink are also really hard to see unless you are looking closely at it.  It took three coats to be mostly opaque with a few bald spots, but I was happy with it.  Sponging on the glitter would probably make it completely opaque in three coats, possibly even two.

Over all, I love the bottles and I think the formula is pretty good.  They do retail at Walgreens for around $8 I think.  I swear the price tag was $10, but they rang up at $8 and the sales girl didn't know anything about a sale.  I want to go back and see if I can pick out any other particularly unique to my collection colors.  :-)

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: Julie G Old San Juan and Funky Fingers Glitter Matters

Guys, I don't know what's wrong with me.  I don't do neons, brights, or particularly summery colors, but that's all I've been wanting to wear all week.  I think I have a feeeeeeeeeeeva!  :-P

I am wearing to coats of Julie G's Old San Juan from the Summer 2014 Cruise Collection.  It is a very bright orange cream that almost looks neon.  These are the kind of neons I like, bright but not blinding.  The formula is super smooth and you could probably get by with one very careful coat.

My accent glitter is Funky Fingers Glitter Matters from their Neon Glitters trio.  It is a clear base full of hot pink, neon yellow and white hexes in various shapes.  I did not have to do any fishing to get the glitters on my brush, but I did have to make sure I moved them around on my nail or else I would have ended up with lots of clusters of white 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. ;)

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: Rhinestones and Cookies

Happy Monday all.  I hope you all had a lovely weekend.  I have a relatively easy mani for you all today.  I hope you like it.

On all of my fingers, except my pinkie, I am wearing two coats of Color Club's Mad Batter from their Cookies and Cream collection.  It is a off white crelly base with tons of small, matte, black glitters.  The first coat had very little actual color, but deposited a lot of glitter on the nails.  The second coat made it magically opaque.  As the name of the collection says, it looks like cookies and cream ice cream and I have a crazy craving for it right now.  I am sad to say that this is not the first nail polish to cause me to have a craving.  :-P  You can find this polish on Color Club's website, along with the rest of the polishes from the collection.

On my pinkie I painted one coat of my usual  Cult Nails Fetish, which I have mentioned a countless number of times already.  Once my nails had dried completely, I used Nail Vinyls Straights to split my ring and thumb nails.  Now, you can do this entirely with just striping tape or even normal scotch tape, but striping tape is too thin for me to now accidentally paint on the other side, and I could not find my scotch tape.  I painted half black and then used my trusty gel resin glue to adhere the rhinestones on the seam between both colors.

See, easy peasy.  :-)

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: LOreal Masked Affair

If you've spent any amount of time as a nail polish junkie and following the community, you've noticed that there is usually one specific polish that everyone is rushing out to get because it has some unique aspect to it.  Whether it is a one coat blue that doesn't stain (RIP Sally Hansen Pacific Blue), a mainstream polish with multicolored flakes (RIP Color Club The Uptown), or something else all together (I still don't understand what the big deal was with Sinful Shine Prosecco), there is always something that us junkies are looking for.  And when we set our sights on something, they become that much more difficult to find.  Right now the current obsession is LOreal's Masked Affair from their Dark Sides of Grey collection.  This polish can be found only in the Dark Sides of Grey displays, and the only stores that have been carrying them are Rite Aid and Walgreens.  The kicker is that the displays only have two of each polish and they do not get restocked.  So if you like this polish, head out to look for it RIGHT NOW.

(sunlight)

(indoor lighting)

Masked Affair is a purple tinged, silver, linear holo, and a very strong one at that.  I used two coats for complete opacity.  The first was smooth and even, if not a touch thin, but the second left everything perfect.  From my understanding, there can be a bit of pulling with the second coat, so I would wait until the first coat is completely dry before adding more on top.

In the sunlight this polish is ridiculously holographic, pretty much to the extent of my Color Club Halo Hues I feel.  To see something like this at the drugstore level is pretty crazy I think.  My indoor lighting picture did not really do the polish justice.  Looking at my nails right now, in my apartment's terrible lighting, I still see a bit of a rainbow sheen and a touch of purple shift.  In the bottle you can faintly see the purple and I could not get this to translate into the pictures.

If you want this polish, you need to grab your polish loving bestie, or your very sweet significant other and go hunting for it.  I think it's totally worth 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. ;)