Not Like the Movies + I Lily Love You

As far as flakes go, I love I Lily Love You more than even Nubar 2010 (the Hidden Treasure dupe) because it flashes more than just two colors. This is three coats OPI Not Like the Movies topped with one coat OPI I Lily Love You. My camera really likes to make my hands look like a lobster, but I wasn't this red in person. Promise!

 I was worried this would cover up the green side, but it didn't.

I loved this so much I bought a bottle for my sister. She actually asked for work appropriate colors ("oops"... hee!) so I got some of those for her as well. I want to buy a backup for myself but I think I'll wait for OPI to release this in other colors and hopefully a clear. Well, I have hope anyway. Actually, I should just hope that they don't change the formula for the worse the way they did Not Like the Movies.

The glow in the dark polish from Dollar Tree glows really well + a quick and messy experiment

I still saw some hanging off the endcaps if anyone wanted to pick one up. They come in neon blue, neon pink, and neon yellow. I only picked up the yellow because I don't have that much use for glow in the dark polishes.

This is what the packaging looks like. Sorry, I opened it up before I thought to take a picture, heehee.

This is one coat over black, white, and the pinkie is For Audrey. The ring finger is two thick coats. Ew, I will never wear this polish alone. DISEASED! Sorry for the bubbles and smudged polish. I rushed this experiment too much.

Charged under the lamp for 5 seconds and taken with a four second frame:

This is two coats GiTD.

Charged five seconds under the lamp with a four second frame:

 

Thoughts: This glows really well and for a long time! I charged my nails and went to bed. When I woke up about five hours later I freaked out because why are my nails glowing like that? Oh, right! It's made in China which made me nervous. Perhaps it glows with the help of radium-266?? But I checked, the glow eventually fades. 

Over black it isn't great. I want to try this over a light blue or silver next. Oh, and one more thing, this stuff stinks like hell until it dries. But for a dollar I think it's worth it!

*****

Ingredients listed(if you were wondering):

Butyl Acetate, Nitrocellulose, Ethyl Acetate, Acrylates, Copolymer, Pigment (?..), Isopropyl Alcohol, Acetyl Tributyl Citrate, Alcohol, Butyl Alcohol, Camphor 

May contain:D&C Red No. 7 Ca Lake, D&C Red No. 27, Iron Oxides, D&C Red No. 22 Al Lake

Sinful Courtney Orange

Apparently I can't bump off polishes off my untried list if I've only used them for a franken, because in my head this was a light orange with gold shimmer. I even recommended it as such in passing to Kimberly from http://libbyspinkvanity.blogspot.com/.... but thought I'd check with a quick swatch... DERP.  As you can see, red-orange, vividly so. Not exactly neon but still so bright it made my skin look almost grey in real life. Pointer and ring are two coats, middle and pinkie are three. As you can see, there's barely any VNL even with two coats.

Okay, see the gold glitter shining in the bottle? That's what I thought the polish looked like when I bought it. DERP.

 Sunlight pushes this closer to what I thought it was.

This polish is eye-searingly out of my comfort zone, but at the same time it's such an awesome color! Thank you, Kimberly, for piquing my interest in this and helping me discover an amazing and cheap gem in my stash!

I'll have to bust this out again for Halloween.

Have I Mentioned How Much I Love Matte?

So much that I did something I've never done before. I took off a color of polish and put it back on again. Well, kinda.

I bunged this one up a bit. I was aiming for as few coats as possible but ended up with seven (!), including base coat. This is two coats Essie Licorice which was almost a one-coater but I mechanically put on two. Plus one layer of OPI Grape Set Match and I am once again ignoring the ellipses. Plus one thick coat of LA Colors Sparking Diamonds. Matte polishes look cruddy when bumpy so I added a thick coat of Seche Vite which smoothed things out nicely and helped dry, topping with Essie Matte About You. You can see how thick it is on my pointer and for once it doesn't bother me in real life, but I may as well have gone with three coats of GSM. Hmph!

All under the lamp.

I had a little trouble getting the large hex glitters where I wanted and it was the first time that I understood what other people meant when they said that, heh.

Surprisingly easy to remove. Three cotton balls but with acetone-based remover and not pure acetone. My usual for two coats of creme is two cotton balls.

OPI Grape Set Match

OPI Grape Set Match (I'm going to ignore the ellipses) from one of the England Glam Slam sets. I love this color! I took a hundred pictures but I'm not loving any of them. Bugger. But at different angles it's violet, purple, or blue. This is going into the top 20 of the year! and I'm sorta bummed more people aren't talking about it. A consequence of an oversaturated market.

Three coats plus topcoat. Under the lamp:

Sunlight:

GSM comes with a holo topcoat but I don't really like the combination. It just looks too busy. But I decided to play right before taking off the polish. Pointer and middle are one layer of Servin' Up Sparkle, ring and pinkie are one layer LA Colors Sparkling Diamonds.

And I'm almost, almost caught up on email and everything else. Almost.

Sparkling Diamonds For Audrey

For some reason, my email was frozen and my blog deleted yesterday. I don't know if it's  something I did, a glitch, or something more nefarious *side-eying the internet* but a nice person at Blogger fixed it (thanks!) and I'm back!

I've got an easy-peasy franken to show today. I picked up a LA Colors clear with small round and hex glitter from the Dollar Tree called Sparkling Diamonds. This recipe is one-third China Glaze For Audrey, one-third Sparkling Diamonds, and one-third clear. I didn't think it was glittery enough (what have you done to me, nail board??) so I painted a thin layer of Sparkling Diamonds on top.

Shown is three coats, natural light but cloudy day. Sorry if the pictures look dark, but they aren't as dark if you click and enlarge. For Audrey isn't as dusty in person.

The white base of For Audrey makes the hex glitter look white. Which I suppose is why I didn't think it looked glittery enough.

Blurry on purpose,  how SPARKLY.

I think if I were to do this again I would add more Sparkling Diamonds and some more clear. I was aiming for a jelly finish and I underestimated how pigmented For Audrey is.

This franken was more or less inspired by Revlon Starry Pink.