Catching up, manis from Instagram

So I still haven't been feeling well but I have posted a few manis on Instagram while I've been under the weather (literally- I'm not just fighting bronchitis, but I live in one of the places that got a crazy amount of snow! Then, we had windchills that this state had not seen in the past 20 years and there were a lot of power outages. Fortunately mine were intermittent and didn't last long, but now that the snow is starting to melt, we are experiencing flooding. Everything was shut down here for almost a week. Just so you all know, my name on instagram is chocoholofreak, so these will be tagged differently.

Literary Lacquers If It Pleases You with an accent of Colors by Laura K You're Shrinking, Gilbert!

The Literary Lacquers took 2-3 coats to reach full opacity because it's a jelly holo. I thought it would be darker, but maybe it looks darker on other people because of their skin tone? It is a really nice color with a strong holo. My grandmother really liked the color on me when she saw it, and she even said she would wear it- and she almost never wears nail polish and almost no makeup except lipstick.
      The Colors by Laura K speaks for itself- it's a nice shimmery purple, and she said that she used something different than glitter to facilitate easy removal. There is also holo in it. I do't know how she did it, but it really didn't take forever to get off or a huge amount of effort. I didn't think to use glitter-a-peel or anything first so it did take me 2 tries but it was no hassle.

This was my mani for New Years' Eve! On my pinky and pointer finger are Girly Bits Purple Potion. On my ring and middle finger are Zoya Carter, a textured purple polish. I was surprised at how closely these matched on my camera, since Carter is a more red-toned purple. My ring finger has Cirque XX, which I've previously mentioned is my favorite rainbow glitter so far. (warning- post contains adult language)

Anyway, I had a really bad break on my middle fingernail that turned out to be beyond repair, and then on my right hand my thumbnail broke down really low (like bandaid for a week low) so I didn't do my nails at all for awhile. The nails on my right hand were so short that I had to use Rejuvacote to even get them to nub status. So the next post you see from me will probably be my rarely seen right hand.

Lilypad Lacquer True Blood + Let's take Planet Caravan to the Funhouse!

I'm sure that most of you have heard about Lilypad Lacquer by now.

True Blood is one of their most popular colors- in fact, I had to get this one in a group order because I forgot about the launch on Llarowe! I was just a few minutes late (which may as well be a century in the nail polish world LOL) but True Blood, Fairy Footprints, and probably a few others had sold out right away!

I usually don't wear colors like this. But as soon as I put True Blood on, I fell in love. This is one color that I can truly understand people paying crazy amounts of money for if it is ever discontinued!

 I am wearing:
True Blood (thumb, ring finger and pinky)
My middle finger has Respect by Mentality (Isn't that funny?) Respect is a matte purple, but it still picked up some shine from my bathroom light.
My ring finger still has Planet Caravan by Cirque.

Look at the beautiful blue and purple in the holo! It makes this a truly amazing color.

This is in my living room light- Respect looks more matte now.

You can also see how True Blood has some duochrome-like appearance in different light- in fact, I think this picture demonstrates why some people say this could be a dupe for Enchanted Polish Mr. Burgundy.

This lighting picked up some beautiful red sparkles in the holo as well!

The next day, I put Funhouse by Dandy Nails on my middle finger.
Funhouse is definitely the right name!
It has beautiful fuschia, pink, and green glitter that looks like shards of glass from a mirror.

This one is a little blurry- it shows how the glitter twinkles in real life. It also picks up the green that the other picture didn't.

Lilypad Lacquer can be found on her etsy page and Llarowe.com.

Menality Polish can be found here.

Dandy Nails can be found on etsy and Ninjapolish.com.

Cirque Erda, Lonesome George, Cypress, & Planet Caravan- please help!

Because my bottle of Fascination Street seems to be a dud, I tried on some of the other Cirque polishes I got around that time to see if they look how they are supposed to.

         

Indoor lighting with flash

From thumb to pinky- Erda over black, Lonesome George, Cypress, Planet Caravan, and Erda on its own

Erda is supposed to be a duochrome green/purple/blue. Layering it over another color is supposed to bring out the duochrome more in some polishes, but I'm not sure it made much difference in this case. I guess on my thumb, you can see some slight purple tint as opposed to my pinky.

I like Lonesome George, although it is very similar in color to Erda. It's holo and I am obsessed with holos.

I am not usually one to wear bronze/copper colors, but Cypress was surprisingly my favorite color from this mani! The holo shows up very well. 

I also think Planet Caravan is very pretty. In the right light it also has a copper shimmer, so it compliments Cypress.

So if you have any of these polishes, can you please let me know if these look how they are supposed to? Thank you!

(Not so) Fascination street

I am sure that if you have been reading my blog, you may have slightly noticed that I love blue and purple.

Well, even though I was really excited to get Cirque Fascination Street, I hadn't gotten around to wearing it yet. But I saw someone post a beautiful swatch of it and I decided to put it on.

Everyone loves this color. I even saw The Swatchaholic name it color of the month!

Also, I was introduced to the song "Fascination Street" when I saw a good friend of mine singing it at karaoke. He is also a very talented dancer- so all things considered, this polish was a must have for me!

Well. . . I wasn't sure if it was my skin tone or what, but it looked grayish-purple on me. I thought maybe it's because the holo is so strong, but I haven't seen any other swatches where it looks like this.

Also, even though these pictures are after only having had it on for one day, I have tip wear. Is that normal?

Indoors without flash (notice how my camera picked up a big silver/gray chunk? It almost looks like water marbling.. very odd!)

Indoors without flash (if you are wondering- the other colors are Lilypad  Lacquer Lilac Lovely [ring finger] and Dance Legend Moondust with Revlon FX over it [middle finger])

Dance Legend is a textured polish, but the Revlon polish has a shiny base underneath all the glitter, so it smoothed everything out.

I had fun applying the Revlon polish- if you look really closely can you see how there is a sort of diamond shape on my nail? I tortured my boyfriend singing "Diamonds in the sky" after I put it on.

Indoors with flash

See how much more purple the Lilypad one is?

If anyone else has this color, can you please let me know if this is normal or not? I emailed Harlow & Co but so far I haven't heard anything... but I got them there instead of directly from Cirque because there was a sale at the time, and also on Cirque's site you have to spend $75 to get free shipping. Otherwise you have to pay more shipping for each bottle- but now that I have seen their fancy packaging on other blogs, I understand why.If anything, Cirque is an excellent brand at presentation!

Cirque XX- The best glitter of all time!!!

I recently got a polish that was so amazing that I think I might never buy a rainbow glitter polish again.

It looks so awesome that I feel like nothing can compete with it. As soon as the brush touched the tip of (not) my nail. , I was like:

If you're wondering why I said (not) my nail, on my right hand, my thumb, index and middle fingernails  keep breaking, They keep cracking and peeling and they got so short that  it was actually painful, so I broke down and put on some fake ones so I didn't look like my hands belonged to 2 different people

Anyway, LOOK AT THIS.

I drove myself crazy trying to get pictures that showed how sparkly and beautiful that this color is. No pictures do it justice. but just look at it.

I put this over Revlon Royal, and the base of the nail has some Enchanted Djinn in a bottle but the awesomeness of the holo is being overshadowed.

If you are curious about my pinky, that color is A England Rose Bower, also with Djinn on it.

This was part of my 4th of July mani, so my pinky has some chipping and tip wear. Sorry! The picture from this angle is 2 days old.. but as I said I really could NOT find a way to show how awesome this color is unless you see it in person.