Enchanted Polishes & glitters, oh my!

Sorry I haven't posted in so long!

Life keeps happening. My grandfather was in the hospital and had to have surgery, so I was very worried about him, but fortunately he was able to come back home.

Also, my birthday was on the 9th. It was uneventful but hey, I'm 29 now.

Anyway, I have some manis to share from before I broke my nails and had to go to nubs! The worst break was my pointer finger.. and it happened trying on knee braces, believe it or not.

Without further adieu, here are some swatches!

Pointer & pinky- Enchanted Polish February 2013

Middle and ring finger- Too Fancy Lacquer- the Crown Jewel
I also did an experiment with this mani- since I have both Lumina Lacqurs Mucking Rainbows and Prismatic, I layered them over the Too Fancy color to see the difference.
Prismatic has a lot of beautiful flakies in addition to mulicolored, large circle glitters.
Mucking Rainbows is one of the polishes I am happiest to own, and I love how one of the green dots almost looks matte on my nail.

This is another mani I did with February 2014.
My middle finger nail is topped with Bellisima by Emily de Molly. Bellissima is a gorgeous, dainty glitter topper.

My ring finger has Diamond in the Rough by Lilypad Lacquer.

The beauty on my pointer,middle, and pinky fingers is Enchanted Polish- April 2014.

My middle finger is topped with Emily de Molly, LE 02.It is a lovely lavender/light purple,with hearts in it!
The ring is Colors by Llarowe- My Big Girls Panties. I wish I had holo underwear like that!

I still have some catching up to do, so you will get to see a few more pictures that I took before having to cut my nails! I miss them and it will take what feels like forever for them to grow back!

2 Aurora Lacquers Shimmering Orchid Manis!

Hello, lovelies! Sorry for disappearing once again. I've been more active on Instagram but for awhile I wasn't feeling well. I had a bad reaction to a medicine they were trying me on and even had to go to the ER but now I'm finally beginning to feel better.

 I'm normally not a wearer of pink polish at all, but I was in love with the shade Shimmering Orchids by Aurora Lacquers so I wanted to show a couple of manis I did with it.

The first one was for an important cause. April 9th was the International Day of Pink. It is to show that you stand against homophobic and transphobic bullying in schools.


For this mani I used Shimmering Orchids on my tips and on my thumb, pointer and pinky, Mentality Sorceress (I had some application issues, but it may have been my basecoat) and on my middle and ring finger I used Aly's Dream Polish Super Black and then topped it with Sparkle Nail Lacquer Rapid Heart Beat. I also used Pretty and Polished Matte is Back to try to smooth out the Mentality polish.

I usually don't have any issues with their matte polishes, so if anyone has any tips or know if it is just this color, can you please let me know?

Did any of you do an International Day of Pink mani? If so, I would love to see it! :)

For the other mani, I used the new version of Colors by Llarowe Purple Rain. My Accents were Bullet by Pretty Bitch Polish and Shimmering Orchids, topped with another Aurora Lacquers color called Moirai. It is a really pretty glitter topper with holo stars and other added glitter pieces. I had a fun glitter overload!

The Snow Prince and a bonus mani!

This is the first year that I've actually gotten holiday/Christmas themed polishes!

I had a hard time picking undies for the Snow Prince by Lumina Lacquer. It has a lot of different colored glitters, as well as big snowflakes, snowmen, and hexes/snowball looking glitters.'

I love green and I ended up using Oh, Christmas Tree by Colors by Llarowe with Absinthe by Models Own on my ring finger as an accent. Absinthe is from the Velvet Goth collection, and all the polishes come with a velvet cap. The polishes are semi-textured glitters that smooth over with a topcoat.

Also, I have a bonus mani! When I was trying to decide what colors to use with The Snow Prince, I did a semi-skittles mani:
From pinky to pointer:
CbL Oh Christmas Tree, KB Shimmer Snow Flaking Way, and Liquid Sky Lacquer Teal it Like It Is

(somehow I ended up with an odd glitter arrangement that made it look like my snowman has feet)

I ended up deciding to use green undies with The Snow Prince because of the light green sparkles that showed up with flash.

33 Day Challenge Day 7: Oldest Untried

I thought I would have a lot of untried polishes that had been sitting around for ages to choose from, but it turns out that I usually get really excited about my polishes and usually at least swatch them.

But I remembered that I've had Emerald by Nails Inc for awhile.

From ring finger to pinky I used: Fresh cut grass by Colors by Llarowe- on accent nails- Rainbows in Space and Golden Delicious by Lilypad Lacquer (with Emerald by Nails In in the middle.) The pinky is Margaritaville by Liquid Sky Lacquer. It is another thermal that creates a gradient effect on its own.

This picture mainly reflects the green, despite color correction!

I added Raver Girl by Liquid Sky Lacquer to my middle finger to make it look a little more fun. Also, you can see my pinky color getting darker since my hand was getting cold.

Check out what the other talented ladies did for this challenge!

33DC Day 5: Mexican Nails

I'm still running a day behind, unfortunately!

No, it's not Cinco de Mayo, but we are celebrating Mexican Nails for Crumpet's Nail Art Challenge!

I really looked forward to this challenge. I started out at my university as a Spanish major. I didn't get the chance to study abroad, though..

I decided to try to keep this simple, and not try to do sugar skulls or anything, but it was still harder than I thought it would be.

I kept having issues on my middle fingernail with the colors running or smearing into each other. So I redid that one more times than I would like to admit, and that's why this blog post is being done closer to when I should really be doing Day 6. You're seeing my 2nd set of pictures for this challenge.

From ring finger to pinky I used:
Limelight by Smitten Polish
for the Mexican Flag: Reclaim by Nubar, Angels Sing by Llarowe, Dora the Explorer (aka Cherry Bomb) by Colors by Llarowe)
Angels Sing by Colors by Llarowe with heart gems from the Born Pretty Store
Golden Garnet by Lilypad Lacquer

Check out what the other very awesomely talented ladies did!

Stars and Holo and Glitter, oh my!

First of all, I have reached what many of you probably think is a small milestone- my blog has reached over 1000 views! Yay! I'm so excited!

This is going to be a mouthful... (In fact such a a mouthful that I couldn't fully tag this post. I broke it. Oops!)

 From thumb to pinky, I have: Liquid Sky Lacquer very appropriately named Brit's Hella Holo, Fairy Footprints from Lilypad Lacquer layered over You're my Boy Blue by I Love Nail Polish (Fairy Footprints was a little sheer on me, but it's a gorgeous color!)
I am holding Stars on Fire by Sparkle Nail Lacquer. it is layered over Neutron Starlette by I love Nail Polish, Man in the Mirror by Colors by Llarowe!, and Beat it by Colors by Llarowe.

Man in the Mirror is the color that inspired it all.

With flash, in living room

Without flash 

This is an outside shot of Brit's Hella Holo because the color is so awesome!

This is my left hand with the mani reversed.

With flash, everything is so sparkly it's hard to make out all the stars and holo!

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Black holo comparison

I know, I know, we've seen these before. But I did one of my own once I realized that I had enough black holo polishes to do this with!

I wanted to ask which one was the closest to Emily de Molly Chasing Rainbows. (so I could use it as a consolation prize to myself.)

From thumb to pinky, I have- Glitter Gal Brain Freeze, Layla Flash Black, Jade Magia Negra (my favorite) Colors by Llarowe Black Gold, Texas Tea, and Color Club Beyond.

Bear with me- I'm describing 5 different polishes here!

 Indoors:

In indoor lighting, the Glitter Gal and CbL appear to be the only true black- then the Jade and Color Club seem kind of charcoal, while the Layla looks more gray/silver. The Layla is the only one with every color of the rainbow, however- if you look really closely, you can see the purple part of the rainbow!

I love Layla Holographics- they are the first ones that really started my passion for nail polish as an adult- but as you can see (even though I used an aqua basecoat) there is a bald spot on my nail. Layla dries kind of patchy, unfortunately. Unless you were lucky enough to catch a sale, I think Layla and Glitter Gal were probably the most expensive when Laylas were first released, because Layla is an Italian brand and was extremely popular (blame sneekpeeq.com for getting me hooked on them.)

The Jade one is my favorite because it makes my nail so rainbowy, and that is just in indoor lighting. They are from Brazil, but they are half as expensive as Laylas (when they were first released) and they have a huge color range. They even have gold holos, which I have rarel seen.

Colors by Llarowe is my 2nd favorite- and I am so glad that she re-relased Black Gold, Texas Tea- which is a limited edition polish she made to donate some of the proceeds to help tornado victims.

Outside:

Look at how crazy the sun makes the polish look! (Except for the color club, but my pinky was at a weird angle, boo.)

Sunlight hitting your nails is what gives holo its magic- and these holos all seemed to play nicely with my topcoat, (I believe I used FNUG Igel topcoat this time- and look how shiny and glassy it made my nails look.)

Black Gold, Texas Tea reminds me of Pink Floyd's "Dark Side of the Moon" album cover because it's so black- and inside, the holo really did just make a perfect triangle prism like this:

Colors by Llarowe- Her Eyes Shined

My mouse stopped working so I will let the picture explain what I did LOL.

But I was REALLY happy to find this beautiful Femme Fatale color on Ebay for a normal price!! Then the next day I got one of the Colors by Llarowe in the mail- Her Eyes Shined. It is beyond beautiful.

I haven't used many jelly polishes, but this is the best kind I've ever used. I love how the blue shimmer sparkles on my nails without even using topcoat.

This is the result of my experiment:

You can get Colors by Llarowe on- guess where? llarowe.com! She's having a restock tomorrow. She has stocked twice and I still have not been able to get any of her holos. Wish me luck?